ICD in perspective: Putting social responsibility into practice

The Industry Council for Development (ICD) is an Industry Non Governmental Organisation established in 1990; it aims to contribute to improving public health through partnership projects on food safety and nutrition. This paper presents ICD’s activities in the past years and explains the reasons why the food industry should have a vested interest in supporting training and education of health professionals in food safety.     

Multi-User MIMO Mobile CDMA Uplink System Employing Turbo Coding and Joint Detection Through a Multipath Rayleigh Fading Channel

In this paper, a generalized multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system that can be fitted to the uplink of a wireless communication system is considered for the general case of multi-user. At the transmitter, the information bits are Turbo coded, then interleaved and passed through a serial-to-parallel converter. The channel is assumed bad urban suffering from multipath Rayleigh fading resulting in inter-symbol and multiple access interferences (ISI and MAI). At the front-end of the receiver, a number of receiving antennas are used followed by a joint multi-user estimator based on the Minimum Mean Square Error Block Linear Equalizer (MMSE-BLE).Computer simulations demonstrate a significant performance improvement in both single user and multi-user cases.This paper depends in parts on that presented at the 11th European Wireless Conference, Cyprus, Nicosia, pp. 187–192, April 2005. Yasmine A. Fahmy was born in Guiza, Egypt, on June 4, 1976. She received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Communication and Electronics engineering from Cairo University, Egypt on 1999, 2001 and 2005 respectively. She is presently an assistant professor at Cairo University, Egypt. Her current field of interest is wireless communication and channel estimation. Hebat-Allah M. Mourad received her B.Sc., M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical communication engineering from Cairo University, Egypt, in 1983, 1987 and 1994 respectively. Since 1983, she has been with the Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, and is currently associate professor there. Her research interests include optical fiber communications, mobile and satellite communications. Emad K. Al-Hussaini received his B.Sc degree in Electrical Communication Engineering from Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1964 and his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees from Cairo University, Giza, Egypt, in 1974 and 1977, respectively. From 1964 to 1970, he was with the General Egyptian Aeroorganization. Since 1970, he has been with the Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, and is currently professor there. He was a research fellow at Imperial College, London, UK, and at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, in the academic years 1976/1977 and 1981/1982, respectively. In 1990, he received the Egyptian national encouragement award for outstanding engineering research. He has written several papers for technical international journals and conferences. His research interests include signal processing, fading channel communication, modulation, and cellular mobile radio systems. Dr Al-Hussaini is a senior member of IEEE. He is listed in Marquis Whos Who in the World and in the IBC (International Biographical Center, Cambridge) for outstanding people of the 20th century.     

Spatiotemporal evolution of the El Biar landslide (Algiers): new field observation data constrained by ground-penetrating radar investigations

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - A better understanding of the spatiotemporal evolution of landslides in urban zones is a key factor in assessing the risk of future slides...     

Performance evaluation and tuning of an IEEE 802.11 audio video multicast collision prevention mechanism

Wireless Networks - Since the introduction of the original IEEE 802.11 medium access mechanism, the definition of the multicast access mechanism has been the subject of numerous amendments and...     

Serine Protease Inhibitors as Good Predictors of Meat Tenderness: Which Are They and What Are Their Functions?

Since years, serine proteases and their inhibitors were an enigma to meat scientists. They were indeed considered to be extracellular and to play no role in postmortem muscle proteolysis. In the 1990's, we observed that protease inhibitors levels in muscles are a better predictor of meat tenderness than their target enzymes. From a practical point of view, we therefore choose to look for serine protease inhibitors rather than their target enzymes, i.e. serine proteases and the purpose of this report was to overview the findings obtained. Fractionation of a muscle crude extract by gel filtration revealed three major trypsin inhibitory fractions designed as F1 (Mr:50–70 kDa), F2 (Mr:40–60 kDa) and F3 (Mr:10–15kD) which were analyzed separately. Besides antithrombin III, an heparin dependent thrombin inhibitor, F1 and F2 comprised a large set of closely related trypsin inhibitors encoded by at least 8 genes bovSERPINA3-1 to A3-8 and able to inhibit also strongly initiator and effector caspases. They all belong to the serpin superfamily, known to form covalent complexes with their target enzymes, were located within muscle cells and found in all tissues and fluids examined irrespective of the animal species. Potential biological functions in living and postmortem muscle were proposed for all of them. In contrast to F1 and F2 which have been more extensively investigated only preliminary findings were provided for F3. Taken together, these results tend to ascertain the onset of apoptosis in postmortem muscle. However, the exact mechanisms driving the cell towards apoptosis and how apoptosis, an energy dependent process, can be completed postmortem remain still unclear.     

Achievement in hydrogen storage on adsorbents with high surface-to-bulk ratio – Prospects for Si-containing matrices

In hydrogen storage, the concept of the reversible capture still remains a major issue to be addressed. The advances in chemical storage provide useful data that demonstrate that purely physical adsorption offer promising prospects, even though the hydrogen uptakes barely attain 11 wt%. The emerging nanotubes, fullerenes, metal-organic frameworks are sophisticated structures that display weak affinity toward hydrogen, and require complex synthesis procedures. Adsorption rather consists of a gas condensation at low temperatures and/or high pressures. That is why the present review is devoted to the most recent achievements in developing novel microporous materials with emphasis on silicon-based structures, aluminosilicates and related materials. Their large availability and low production costs open promising prospects. On aluminosilicates, low Si:Al ratio, high porosity and specific surface area, along with alkali or alkaline-earth exchangeable cations are essential requirements for effective hydrogen adsorption even at room temperature.     

Alginate@Layered Silicate Composite Beads: Dye Elimination,Box–Behnken Design Optimization and Antibacterial Property

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - The discharge of industrial waste comprising organic pollutants into aquatic environment induces numerous health risks. Crosslinked...     

Quartz Ore Beneficiation by Reverse Flotation for Silicon Production

Silicon - In this work the reverse flotation as beneficiation process for high-purity silica valorization from Draissa quartz deposits (Algeria) is studied as a potential raw material for...     

Biomarkers of meat tenderness: Present knowledge and perspectives in regards to our current understanding of the mechanisms involved

Biomarkers of the meat quality are of prime importance for meat industry, which has to satisfy consumers' expectations and, for them, meat tenderness is and will remain the primary and most important quality attribute. The tenderization of meat starts immediately after animal death with the onset of apoptosis followed by a cooperative action of endogenous proteolytic systems. Before consideration of the biomarkers identified so far, we present here some new features on the apoptotic process. Among them, the most important is the recent discovery of a complex family of serpins capable to inhibit, in a pseudo-irreversible manner, caspases, the major enzymes responsible of cell dismantling during apoptosis. The biomarkers so far identified have been then sorted and grouped according to their common biological functions. All of them refer to a series of biological pathways including glycolytic and oxidative energy production, cell detoxification, protease inhibition and production of Heat Shock Proteins. Some unusual biomarkers are also presented: annexins, galectins and peroxiredoxins. On this basis, a detailed analysis of these metabolic pathways allowed us to identify some domains of interest for future investigations. It was thus emphasized that mitochondria, an important organelle in the production of energy from carbohydrates, lipids and proteins are a central element in the initiation and development of apoptosis. It was therefore stressed forward that, in fact, very little is known about the postmortem fate of these organelles and their multiple associated activities. Other topics discussed here would provide avenues for the future in the context of identifying reliable predictors of the ultimate meat tenderness.