Effect of Fe-doping on the structural and optical properties of ZnO thin films prepared by spray pyrolysis

Fe-doped ZnO thin films have been prepared by spray pyrolysis on glass substrates and the influence of Fe-doping concentration on the structural and optical properties of the films has been studied.The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis shows that Fe doping has a significant effect on crystalline quality,grain size and strain in the thin films.The best crystalline structure is obtained for 3 at%Fe doping as observed from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and XRD.However,lower or higher Fe-doping degrades the crystalline quality in turn.Moreover,UV spectroscopy demonstrates the influence of Fe-incorporation on visible range transmittance of ZnO where the best transmittance is obtained for 3 at%doping.The results have been illustrated simultaneously focusing previous results obtained from literature.     

Single‐cell protein production through microbial conversion of lignocellulosic residue (wheat bran) for animal feed

Agricultural residue (wheat bran) rich in carbohydrates was utilized in the fermentation process to produce microbial biomass. Single‐cell biomass consists of the dried cells of microorganisms, which are used as protein supplements in human food and in animal feed. In the present study, two different microorganisms (Candida utilis and Rhizopus oligosporus) were studied for biomass production. To enhance the nutritional contents of wheat bran, a number of different fermentation parameters (effect of inoculum size, age of inoculum, incubation period, moisture to substrate ratio and incubation temperature) were optimized. Maximum yield was obtained at an inoculum size of 10% (v/w), with the age of the inoculum being a 48 h old culture. A fermentation period of 48 h was found to give the maximum protein yield and viable counts of yeast cells and mould hyphae. The microorganisms showed good growth at 30 °C. After complete optimization of the fermentation parameters, a batch of wheat bran was fermented with C. utilis and R. oligosporus under the optimized conditions, resulting in a maximum crude protein yield of 41.02% compared with the 4.21% crude protein of the non‐fermented wheat bran. Copyright © 2015 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling     

Antioxidant activity of ginger extract in sunflower oil

The antioxidant activity of dichloromethane extract from ginger was evaluated during 6 months of storage of refined sunflower oil at 25 and 45 °C. Free fatty acid (FFA) content, peroxide value (POV) and iodine value (IV) were used as criteria to assess ginger extract as an antioxidant. After 6 months of storage at 45 °C, sunflower oil containing 1600 and 2400 ppm ginger extract showed lower FFA contents (0.083 and 0.080%) and POVs (24.5 and 24.0 meq kg^?1) than the control sample (FFA contents 0.380%, POV 198.0 meq kg^?1). Sunflower oil containing 200 ppm butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) showed FFA contents of 0.089 and 0.072% and POVs of 26.5 and 24.7 meq kg^?1 respectively after 6 months of storage at 45 °C. Similarly, after 6 months of storage at 45 °C, IVs of sunflower oil containing 1600 and 2400 ppm ginger extract were 80 and 92 respectively, higher than that of the control sample (53). However, IVs of sunflower oil treated with 200 ppm BHA and BHT were 94 and 96 respectively after 6 months of storage at 45 °C. These results illustrate that ginger extract at various concentrations exhibited very strong antioxidant activity, almost equal to that of synthetic antioxidants (BHA and BHT). Ginger extract also showed good thermal stability and exhibited 85.2% inhibition of peroxidation of linoleic acid when heated at 185 °C for 120 min. Therefore the use of ginger extract in foods is recommended as a natural antioxidant to suppress lipid oxidation. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Exploring the value of project management: Linking Project Management Performance and Project Success

The literature on Project Management (PM) shows that, in spite of advancement in PM processes, tools and systems, project success has not significantly improved. This problem raises questions about the value and effectiveness of PM and PM systems. This paper reports a research study which tests the relationship between PM performance and project success drawing from empirical data on PM professionals working in UAE project-based organisations.     

Efficient detection of counterfeit products in large-scale RFID systems using batch authentication protocols

RFID technology facilitates processing of product information, making it a promising technology for anti-counterfeiting. However, in large-scale RFID applications, such as supply chain, retail industry, pharmaceutical industry, total tag estimation and tag authentication are two major research issues. Though there are per-tag authentication protocols and probabilistic approaches for total tag estimation in RFID systems, the RFID authentication protocols are mainly per-tag-based where the reader authenticates one tag at each time. For a batch of tags, current RFID systems have to identify them and then authenticate each tag sequentially, one at a time. This increases the protocol execution time due to the large volume of authentication data. In this paper, we propose to detect counterfeit tags in large-scale system using efficient batch authentication protocol. We propose FSA-based protocol, FTest, to meet the requirements of prompt and reliable batch authentication in large-scale RFID applications. FTest can determine the validity of a batch of tags with minimal execution time which is a major goal of large-scale RFID systems. FTest can reduce protocol execution time by ensuring that the percentage of potential counterfeit products is under the user-defined threshold. The experimental result demonstrates that FTest performs significantly better than the existing counterfeit detection approaches, for example, existing authentication techniques.     

Synroc technology: Perspectives and current status (Review)

Dr Eric (Lou) Vance spent 32 years at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), where he was dedicated to the development of Synroc technology, a waste treatment solution for intractable nuclear wastes. The original form of Synroc, a multiphase ceramic wasteform based on stable and leach resistant titanate minerals, was invented by Australian scientists in the late 1970s. This formulation was directed toward the immobilization of PUREX wastes from the reprocessing of nuclear fuels. Synroc at ANSTO under the scientific leadership of Dr Vance since evolved beyond these original titanate ceramics into a waste treatment technology platform. This platform can be applied to produce glass, glass-ceramic and ceramic wasteforms and offers distinct advantages in terms of waste loading and suppressing volatile losses. The platform therefore provides an opportunity to treat those waste streams that are problematic for glass matrices alone or existing vitrification process technologies. Such wastes include, for example, actinide-bearing wastes, those that contain large proportions of refractory elements, those with significant fission product or corrosive volatile emissions and those wastes resulting from radiopharmaceutical production. The implementation of the latter will see the industrialization of Synroc technology via a first-of-a-kind Synroc Waste Treatment Facility that is currently under construction at ANSTO. This paper will review Synroc technology, particularly noting the substantial and essential contributions from the late Dr Vance. The review will also provide some perspective on the development of the technology for nuclear waste immobilization and describe the significant recent advancements at ANSTO.     

Characterization of polystyrene‐b‐poly(ethylene oxide) diblock copolymer and investigation of its micellization behavior in water

The recent studies deal with a diblock copolymer, polystyrene–poly(ethylene oxide). Infrared spectroscopy, proton resonance spectroscopy (¹H‐NMR), and laser light scattering techniques have been used to characterize the polymer. It has been concluded that the sample investigated is diblock copolymer polystyrene–poly(ethylene oxide) having molecular mass 1.656 × 10⁴ g/mol and blocks ratio 1 : 2. The micellization behavior is explored through ¹H‐NMR, laser light scattering, light absorption, surface tension, and conductance and viscosity measurements. The results conclude that the critical micelles concentration of copolymer is 0.0951 g/dL at 25°C. It has been observed that the surface tension of solution decreases with the temperature and its impact is maxima in dilute concentration region. In addition, new methodologies have been introduced to get accurate critical micelles concentration and critical micelles temperature. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., J Appl Polym Sci, 2010     

Incremental learning framework for real‐world fraud detection environment

For detecting malicious bidding activities in e‐auctions, this study develops a chunk‐based incremental learning framework that can operate in real‐world auction settings. The self‐adaptive framework first classifies incoming bidder chunks to counter fraud in each auction and take necessary actions. The fraud classifier is then adjusted with confident bidders' labels validated via bidder verification and one‐class classification. Based on real fraud data produced from commercial auctions, we conduct an extensive experimental study wherein the classifier is adapted incrementally using only relevant bidding data while evaluating the subsequent adjusted models' detection and misclassification rates. We also compare our classifier with static learning and learning without data relevancy.     

Advances in the display quality of dye-doped polymer-dispersed liquid crystal films by addition of disc-shaped multidirectional light-control film

Typically, the addition of a dye is considered to increase the contrast ratio (CR) of a polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) display; however, with the addition of a small amount of dye, the contrast ratio (CR) unexpectedly decreased as compare to the CR of a normal white PDLC display, attributed to various reasons. In this study, an additional multidirectional light scattering polymer film is developed over a conventional dye-doped polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (DPDLC) film to enhance the CR. For this, a disc-shape (DS) pattern on PN393 film is coated. This structure is believed to enhance the scattering properties of DPDLC displays via multiple-directional scattering nature of DS pattern film. Fabrications of such devices are simple and have advantageous of its low-cost production. This optimal designed disc-shaped light-scattering (DSS) film resulted in the enhancement of the CR of the DPDLCs.