Groundwater Level Simulation Using Soft Computing Methods with Emphasis on Major Meteorological Components

Water Resources Management - Precise estimation of groundwater level (GWL) might be of great importance for attaining sustainable development goals and integrated water resources management....     

An efficient compressed domain video indexing method

Video indexing is employed to represent the features of video sequences. Motion vectors derived from compressed video are preferred for video indexing because they can be accessed by partial decoding; thus, they are used extensively in various video analysis and indexing applications. In this study, we introduce an efficient compressed domain video indexing method and implement it on the H.264/AVC coded videos. The video retrieval experimental evaluations indicate that the video retrieval based on the proposed indexing method outperforms motion vector based video retrieval in 74 % of queries with little increase in computation time. Furthermore, we compared our method with a pixel level video indexing method which employs both temporal and spatial features. Experimental evaluation results indicate that our method outperforms the pixel level method both in performance and speed. Hence considering the speed and precision characteristics of indexing methods, the proposed method is an efficient indexing method which can be used in various video indexing and retrieval applications.     

An Efficient Active Contour Model Through Curvature Scale Space Filtering

Active contour models can be successfully used in multimedia database retrieval systems if they have good accuracy and high speed. The majority of existing active contour models do not lock on to interest objects very accurately and quickly especially in complex images. The behavior of the active contour is generally controlled by its internal and external energies. Internal energy is composed of two parts; the first part acts to shorten the active contour as it iterates towards the interest object, while the second part is the curvature of the active contour and forces smoothness of active contour during its movement towards interest object. In this paper, first a reformulated internal energy is proposed to improve the computation of curvature at point v _i by making use of the three points v _{i – 1}, v _i and v _{i + 1}. Second, an accurate and high speed active contour model, SAC is proposed based on reformulating internal energy by removing the curvature part and using Gaussian filtering with low scale of smoothing. The SAC model has only one parameter that affects the internal energy of active contour and as a result of using the Curvature Scale Space (CSS)¹ technique for smoothing, the SAC model is more independent of model parameter setting and the initial snake.     

Sulfonated Beet Pulp as Solid Catalyst in One-Step Esterification of Industrial Palm Fatty Acid Distillate

In this research a new heterogeneous catalyst has been prepared for biodiesel production. The catalyst was prepared by sulfonating industrial sugar waste. Unlike homogeneous catalysts, which require further purification and separation from the biodiesel production reaction media, this inexpensive synthetic catalyst does not need to go through an additional separation process. This advantage consequently minimizes the total application costs. The catalyst was prepared by partially carbonizing sugar beet pulp at 400 °C. The carbonization product was then sulfonated with concentrated H₂SO₄ vapor in order to produce a solid catalyst. The prepared catalyst was used in the esterification reaction between palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) and methanol. The effects of the temperature, methanol/PFAD ratio, reaction time and catalyst dosage on the efficiency of the production were individually investigated. The optimum biodiesel production occurred at 85 °C, a reaction time of 300 min, catalyst dosage of 3 g and methanol/PFAD ratio of 5:1 (mol/mol), lowering the acid value from 198 to 13.1 (mg KOH/g oil) or the equivalent, with a fatty acid methyl ester yield of around 92 %. The results suggest that the synthesized inexpensive catalyst is useful for biodiesel production from PFAD.     

Nanophotocatalysis using immobilized titanium dioxide nanoparticle: Degradation and mineralization of water containing organic pollutant: Case study of Butachlor

In this paper, the degradation and mineralization of Butachlor in aqueous solution by nanophotocatalysis using immobilized TiO₂ nanoparticles were investigated. Butachlor (N-butoxymethyl-2-chloro-2′,6′-diethylacetanilide) is a persistent organic pollutant in agricultural soil and watercourses. A simple and effective method was used for immobilization of titanium dioxide nanoparticles. UV-vis and Ion Chromatography (IC) analyses were employed to obtain the details of the photocatalytic degradation and mineralization of Butachlor. The effects of operational parameters such as H₂O₂, inorganic anions (NO₃⁻, Cl⁻ and SO₄²⁻) and pH were investigated. The lack of any absorbance in 254 nm was indicative of the complete degradation of aromatic intermediates. The mineralization of Butachlor was evaluated by monitoring of the formed inorganic anions (NO₃⁻ and Cl⁻). Butachlor is effectively degraded following first order kinetics model. Results show that the immobilized titanium dioxide nanoparticle photocatalysis is an effective method for treatment Butachlor from contaminated water.     

High yield gold nanoparticle‐based DNA isolation method for human papillomaviruses genotypes from cervical cancer tissue samples

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are commonly used in biosensors of various kinds. However, its application to extract DNA from cancer tissues has not been extensively studied. The purification of DNA from cancer tissues is an important step in diagnostic and therapeutic development. Almost, all cervical cancer cases are associated with high‐risk human papillomavirus (HR‐HPV) infection. Accurate viral diagnosis has so far relied on the extraction of adequate amounts of DNA from formalin‐fixed, paraffin‐embedded (FFPE) tissue samples. Till now, no specific and sensitive DNA purification method has been introduced for the extraction of HR‐HPV from FFPE tissue. Since the commercially available purification kits are not sensitive and specific enough for HR‐HPV DNA targets, in this study, a DNA purification method was designed based on AuNPs to purify sufficient amounts of HR‐HPV DNA from cervical cancer tissue samples. AuNPs were coated with a series of oligonucleotide probes to hybridize to specific DNA sequences of HR‐HPV genotypes. Results showed that 733 out of 800 copies of type‐specific HPV DNA were recovered with complete specificity, compared to 36 copies with a standard commercial kit (Qiagen FFPE). The high yield of DNA (91.6%) is the main advantage of the AuNPs‐probe purification method.Inspec keywords: cancer, biological tissues, microorganisms, gold, DNA, lab‐on‐a‐chip, gynaecology, purification, biochemistry, molecular biophysics, nanoparticles, nanomedicine, cellular biophysicsOther keywords: specific extraction method, cervical cancer tissue samples, high‐risk human papillomavirus infection, paraffin‐embedded tissue samples, specific DNA purification method, sensitive DNA purification method, FFPE tissue, HR‐HPV DNA targets, specific DNA sequences, HR‐HPV genotypes, type‐specific HPV DNA, AuNP‐probe purification method, gold nanoparticle‐based DNA isolation method, oligonucleotide, human papillomaviruse genotypes, clinical samples, Au     

Development of Drug Delivery Systems Based on Layered Hydroxides for Nanomedicine

Layered hydroxides (LHs) have recently fascinated researchers due to their wide application in various fields. These inorganic nanoparticles, with excellent features as nanocarriers in drug delivery systems, have the potential to play an important role in healthcare. Owing to their outstanding ion-exchange capacity, many organic pharmaceutical drugs have been intercalated into the interlayer galleries of LHs and, consequently, novel nanodrugs or smart drugs may revolutionize in the treatment of diseases. Layered hydroxides, as green nanoreservoirs with sustained drug release and cell targeting properties hold great promise of improving health and prolonging life.     

Synthesis of High‐Performance Pebax®‐1074/DD3R Mixed‐Matrix Membranes for CO2/CH4 Separation

This work deals with the incorporation of deca‐dodecasil 3 rhombohedral (DD3R) zeolite as an inorganic filler into the Pebax®‐1074‐based polymer matrix to enhance the performance of the pure polymeric membrane in CO₂/CH₄ separation. The membranes were fabricated with different concentrations of DD3R. Separation performances of the membranes were investigated at various feed pressures and temperatures. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis of the prepared membranes were performed. In the best case, selectivity for CO₂/CH₄ separation was improved, while the permeability decreased. Membranes with 1 and 5 wt % DD3R were located in the acceptable region beyond the Robeson plot (1991) for CO₂/CH₄ gas pairs.