Front face fluorescence spectroscopy: a rapid tool for determining the effect of replacing soybean meal with scotch bean in the ration on the quality of Sicilo-Sarde ewe’s milk during lactation period

The present study aimed to determine the effects of substitution of a high degradable protein source, namely, soybean meal, with scotch bean, a Tunisian local product, on ewe’s milk quality. Twelve 5-year-old lactating Sicilo-Sarde ewes (third lambing) were kept in environmentally controlled sheepfold and were divided into two homogenous weight matched groups (n = 6). Ewes were fed ad libitum with two iso-energetic diets (20% barley, 3% vitamin and mineral premix, and 77% soybean meal or scotch bean). Physico-chemical analyses and fluorescence spectra were performed on milk samples during lactation period. The replacement of soybean meal by scotch bean induced a significant decrease in fat content (7.85 vs. 6.75 g 100 g⁻¹) and a significant increase in lactose level (3.49 vs. 3.61 g 100 g⁻¹). The principal component analysis (PCA) applied separately to the fluorescence spectral data set showed some discrimination between milk samples according to the lactation period and diet compositions. Finally, common components and specific weights analysis (CCSWA) applied to the physico-chemical data and spectral data sets allowed an obvious discrimination of milks of ewes fed soybean meal from those fed scotch bean throughout the whole lactation period.     

Industrial safety perception among post-graduate engineering students

This paper describes industrial safe perception among University of Aberdeen post-graduate engineering student. The immediate objective of this research is to identify safety perceptions of different high risk occupational industries. Results obtained were analyzed and compared with Health and Safety Executives (HSE) reports as well as the Oil and Gas Producer Safety Performance Report. The result showed that the participants perceive the Oil and Gas Industry is safe, second only to the Aviation Industry and that the Oil and Gas Industry is safest in the European Region. The research also concluded that participants’ perceptions were more influenced towards the concept of accident severity/dread rather than the concept of accident probability.     

A Central Limit Theorem for the SINR at the LMMSE Estimator Output for Large-Dimensional Signals

This paper is devoted to the performance study of the linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) estimator for multidimensional signals in the large-dimension regime. Such an estimator is frequently encountered in wireless communications and in array processing, and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at its output is a popular performance index. The SINR can be modeled as a random quadratic form which can be studied with the help of large random matrix theory, if one assumes that the dimension of the received and transmitted signals go to infinity at the same pace. This paper considers the asymptotic behavior of the SINR for a wide class of multidimensional signal models that includes general multiple-antenna as well as spread-spectrum transmission models. The expression of the deterministic approximation of the SINR in the large-dimension regime is recalled and the SINR fluctuations around this deterministic approximation are studied. These fluctuations are shown to converge in distribution to the Gaussian law in the large-dimension regime, and their variance is shown to decrease as the inverse of the signal dimension.     

Detection of changes in cell membrane structures using the Bioimprint technique

Recent advances in medical sciences have revealed the significance of cellular structures and morphology in biological function. A cell’s membrane represents the boundary between the cells and its environment. The variations in cell surface and morphologies may be used as indications of malfunction or even diseases. If abnormalities such as cancer can be detected at the molecular level this will offer an important means for early diagnosis using small numbers of cells. The use of electron and scanning probe microscopy such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) could facilitates the opportunity to study and examine the molecular processes of living cells in greater details. The difficulties faced in direct cellular analysis when using and operating the AFM in situ for morphological studies of the cells has led to the development of a novel approach called Bioimprint (Traut and Papanicolaou, 1941 [1]). Inspired by the high resolution of nanoimprint lithography processes, Bioimprint has been applied to a new area of biological cell replication for the purpose of imaging and analysis and has revealed some very important biological events when combined with AFM imaging. For this research, the structural features of endometrial cancer cells were investigated. Regulation of selected peptides were examined, especially those which are associated with angiogenic factors that promote the proliferation of nutrient-bearing blood vessels that support tumour growth. Using the Bioimprint technique which is a soft lithography process, an impression of the cell topology was created by applying a layer of monomer mixture onto the cells attached to a substrate and rapidly curing it under UV-light. Fast UV-radiation enables the imprint to lock cellular processes within minutes and replicas of the cancer cells exhibit structures down to nanometer scale. Cancer cells were cultured and incubated in accordance with standard biological culturing procedures and protocols approved by the New Zealand Human Ethics Committee. High-resolution AFM imagery provides the opportunity to examine the structure and topography of the cells closely so that any abnormalities can be identified. To study the replicated imprints, the features that resembled secretory pores on the AFM images were noted. The numbers of pores correlated well with levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) that were secreted by the cells. Further experiments were conducted in which anti-VEGF-coated microbeads were observed in the AFM images to be attracted to the areas of the pores.     

Utilizing a simple and reliable method to investigate the optical functions of small molecular organic films - Alq3 and Gaq3 as examples

This work reports on the optical functions of tris(8-hydroxyquinolinate) gallium and aluminum small molecular organic films grown by utilizing a home-made thermal evaporator and studied with a spectrophotometer. The non-dispersive refractive index of the Gaq3 and Alq3 films was calculated as 1.77 and 1.68, respectively. The higher refractive index of Gaq3 was attributed to the higher molecular packing density of Gaq3 compared to that of Alq3. A larger dielectric constant for Gaq3 was noticed, indicating the presence of a higher density of states and space charge accumulation in the Gaq3 films compared to those of Alq3. We assigned the presence of direct allowed transition to energy gaps of 2.80 eV and 2.86 eV for the Gaq3 and Alq3 films, respectively. These differences are thought to be caused by the effects of central metal cations of Ga³⁺ and Al³⁺ on their molecular quinolinate ligands.     

An FPGA implementation of HW/SW codesign architecture for H.263 video coding

In this paper, we present an efficient HW/SW codesign architecture for H.263 video encoder and its FPGA implementation. Each module of the encoder is investigated to find which approach between HW and SW is better to achieve real-time processing speed as well as flexibility. The hardware portions include the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), inverse DCT (IDCT), quantization (Q) and inverse quantization (IQ). Remaining parts were realized in software executed by the NIOS II softcore processor. This paper also introduces efficient design methods for HW and SW modules. In hardware, an efficient architecture for the 2-D DCT/IDCT is suggested to reduce the chip size. A NIOS II Custom instruction logic is used to implement Q/IQ. Software optimization technique is also explored by using the fast block-matching algorithm for motion estimation (ME). The whole design is described in VHDL language, verified in simulations and implemented in Stratix II EP2S60 FPGA. Finally, the encoder has been tested on the Altera NIOS II development board and can work up to 120 MHz. Implementation results show that when HW/SW codesign is used, a 15.8-16.5 times improvement in coding speed is obtained compared to the software based solution.     

A pretreatment to improve the quality metrics performance for encoding H264/AVC

The study of the human visual system is very interesting to quantify the quality of an image or to predict perceived information. The contrast sensitivity function is one of the main ways to incorporate the human visual system properties in an imaging system. It characterizes its sensitivity to spatial frequencies. In this paper, we are interested in establishing a pretreatment for existing metrics with full reference (“peak signal‐to‐noise ratio”, “digital video quality”) for the H.264/MPEG‐4 (Motion Picture Expert Group) advanced video coding standard. We realize in our algorithm the FFT transformation to apply the contrast sensitivity function. Our method is applicable to any size of image and video sequence by increasing its size at powers of two. This increase is achieved by adding “mirror image.” We evaluate the performance of the proposed pretreatment by using subjective “LIVE” video databases. The performance metrics, that is, Pearson (PLCC), Spearman correlation coefficients (SROCC) and root mean square prediction error (RMSE) indicate that the proposed method gives a good performance in H264 codec distortions.     

An improved Backstepping technique using sliding mode control for transient stability enhancement and voltage regulation of SMIB power system

The problem of transient stability and voltage regulation for a single machine infinite bus (SMIB) system is addressed in this paper. An improved Backstepping design method for transient stability enhancement and voltage regulation of power systems is discussed beginning with the classical Backstepping to designing the nonlinear excitation control of synchronous generator. Then a more refined version of this technique will be suggested incorporating the sliding mode control to enhance voltage regulation and transient stability. The proposed method is based on a standard third-order model of a synchronous generator connected to the grid (SMIB system). It is basically implemented on the excitation side of the synchronous generator and compared to the classical Backstepping controller as well as the conventional controllers which are the automatic voltage regulator and the power system stabiliser. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed method which ameliorates to a great extent the transient stability compared to the other methods.