Antibiofilm formation and anti‐adhesive (to HEp‐2 cells) effects of rosemary water extract against some food‐related pathogens

The present work aimed to determine the bioactive compounds in two rosemary water extracts (RWE1 and RWE2) and to assess their antimicrobial, anti‐adhesive and antibiofilm potentials against the food‐related Bacillus and Pseudomonas species at concentrations; 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 mg mL^?1. Phenolic compounds and isoflavones in the RWEs were determined using HPLC. The concentrations of most bioactive compounds of RWE1 (benzoic, ellagic, gallic and rosmarinic acids, daidzein and genistein) were higher than that of RWE2. The MIC₉₀ of RWE1 and RWE2 against all tested bacteria was 12 and 16 mg mL^?1, respectively. The anti‐adhesive and antibiofilm doses were higher than MIC₉₀. RWE1 and RWE2 showed potential reduction in the bacterial cell adhesion to HEp‐2 cells – 17.5–64.7 and 12.2–52.9%, respectively. In conclusion, this study emphasises the effective use of RWE as a natural anti‐adhesive and antibiofilm agent against Bacillus and Pseudomonas, without difficult extraction procedure.     

Evaluation of coupled partial models in structural engineering using graph theory and sensitivity analysis

The process of analysis and design in structural engineering requires the consideration of different partial models of loading, structural material, structural elements and analysis type, among others. All of these, need an adequate modelling as individuals and as coupled sets to catch a behaviour of interest. This paper proposes an innovative algorithm to facilitate quantitative measures to evaluate coupled partial models in structural engineering. Adapting graph theory and utilising variance based sensitivity analysis enable evaluation and drawing conclusions regarding the combinations of partial models in an engineering system. The algorithm is applied in bridge engineering, analysing bridge behaviour considering dynamic loading, creep and shrinkage material models and further considering geometric nonlinear effects.     

Synthesis of some novel antioxidant and anticorrosive additives for Egyptian gasoline motor oils

2‐Methyl‐benzo[d][1,3]oxazin‐4‐one ( 1 ) was used as a key intermediate for the synthesis of different benzoxazinone and quinazolinone derivatives. In order to evaluate the applicability of the synthesised benzoxazinones and quinazolinones as antioxidant additives for lube oil, these antioxidant additives decomposed the alkyl peroxide radicals and/or alkyl hydrogen peroxides to produce esters, ketone and hydroxy compounds rather than carboxylic acids. The compounds that showed antioxidant efficiency were tested as corrosion inhibitors using three types of metals: Cu, Al and Fe. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of mutagenic and antimutagenic activities of oligorutin and oligoesculin

Rutin and esculin have been polymerised by laccase. Five fractions with M(w)ˉ between 2127.42 and 8331.85g/mol for oligorutins, and between 688.12 and 6973g/mol for oligoesculins, were obtained. Fourier transformed infrared analysis showed that oligorutins were formed through C-C, C-O and CO linkages, while oligoesculins were obtained through C-C linkages. Monomers, their oligomers and their metabolites exhibited no mutagenic effect. Oligorutins and oligoesculins were more efficient in reducing the mutagenicity of methyl methanesulphonate, by, respectively, 69% and 64.8% in the presence of Salmonella typhimurium TA104, and 79.7% and 68.9% in the presence of S. typhimurium TA102, than were their monomers. The same oligomers revealed greater significant inhibitory effect of 2-aminoanthracene mutagenicity (respectively 82.4% and 79.3% in the presence of S. typhimurium TA104, and 89.2% and 82.9% in the presence of S. typhimurium TA102), than their monomers. Our results strongly suggest the enhancement of the tested monomer antimutagenicity after polymerisation.     

Super-Resolution Based on Curvelet Transform and Sparse Representation

Super-resolution techniques are used to reconstruct an image with a high resolution from one or more low-resolution image(s). In this paper, we proposed a single image super-resolution algorithm. It uses the nonlocal mean filter as a prior step to produce a denoised image. The proposed algorithm is based on curvelet transform. It converts the denoised image into low and high frequencies (sub-bands). Then we applied a multi-dimensional interpolation called Lancozos interpolation over both sub-bands. In parallel, we applied sparse representation with over complete dictionary for the denoised image. The proposed algorithm then combines the dictionary learning in the sparse representation and the interpolated sub-bands using inverse curvelet transform to have an image with a higher resolution. The experimental results of the proposed super-resolution algorithm show superior performance and obviously better-recovering images with enhanced edges. The comparison study shows that the proposed super-resolution algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art. The mean absolute error is 0.021 ± 0.008 and the structural similarity index measure is 0.89 ± 0.08.     

Robust hybrid watermarking techniques for different color imaging systems

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Digital watermarking is an efficient and promising mechanism for protecting the copyright of the transmitted multimedia information. Thus, this paper presents...