Inhibition of enterotoxicogenic strains Bacillus cereus GT1 and Staphylococcus aureus S1 isolated from double white cream cheese

In this study three different food preservatives (sodium nitrate, sodium benzoate and sodium sorbate) were used to evaluate their effect on two enterotoxicogenic strains (Bacillus cereus GT1 and Staphylococcus aureus S1). A significant decrease in the viability and production of virulence factors was observed. Yet, obvious tolerance to increasing concentrations (from 1 to 6?g/l) of the three preservatives was recorded reflecting possible resistance mechanisms within the tested strains. The two strains were subjected to increasing doses of gamma radiation (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10?kGy). Obvious correlation was observed between the initial counts of bacterial spores contaminating the products and the required dose for their complete elimination. Whereas the eliminating dose of B. cereus GT1 strain was 10?kGy only 4?kGy was sufficient to suppress the growth and virulence of S. aureus S1, reflecting its sensitivity to low doses of gamma irradiation. Also, inhibition of the two strains by probiotic strain Bacillus pumilus G4 was studied both in situ (in cheese) and in vitro (in culture media). The viable cell population of B. cereus GT1 increased from 10⁶ to 2.9?×?10⁸?CFU/g within 60?h in controls but decreased from 2.1?×?10⁶ to 2.3?×?10³?CFU/g after treatment with the probiotic strain. No viable count was observed after 60?h of incubation. Whereas, the viable cell population of S. aureus S1 increased from 10⁶ to 2.5?×?10⁸?CFU/g within 60?h in controls but decreased from 1.5?×?10⁶ to 4.3?×?10²?CFU/g after treatment with the probiotic strain. No viable count was observed after 54?h of incubation.     

Palestine: RE action plan : Moving away from traditional energy resources

Renewable energy resources show great promise in Palestine. Solar, wind, biogas and geothermal energy resources are the main areas where research and pilot projects are being concentrated (2000–2005). More than 95% of Palestinians use solar energy for domestic water heating so renewable energy is something that many people in the country are already very aware. Consequently, use of renewable energy resources presents a strategic goal for the Palestinian energy authority in order to achieve some degree of economic independence. It aims to minimize the dependence on traditional energy resources that are too expensive and politically controlled. Awny Naim and Mohammad R Al-Agha, Palestinian Renewable Energy Society describe the current situation in the region.     

Rule-based detection of design patterns in program code

The process of understanding and reusing software is often time-consuming, especially in legacy code and open-source libraries. While some core code of open-source libraries may be well-documented, it is frequently the case that open-source libraries lack informative API documentation and reliable design information. As a result, the source code itself is often the sole reliable source of information for program understanding activities. In this article, we propose a reverse-engineering approach that can provide assistance during the process of understanding software through the automatic recovery of hidden design patterns in software libraries. Specifically, we use ontology formalism to represent the conceptual knowledge of the source code and semantic rules to capture the structures and behaviors of the design patterns in the libraries. Several software libraries were examined with this approach and the evaluation results show that effective and flexible detection of design patterns can be achieved without using hard-coded heuristics.     

A Scalable Privacy Preserving Scheme in Vehicular Network

Vehicles enlisted with computing, sensing and communicating devices can create vehicular networks, a subset of cooperative systems in heterogeneous environments, aiming at improving safety and entertainment in traffic. In vehicular networks, a vehicle＇s identity is associated to its owner＇s identity as a unique linkage. Therefore, it is of importance to protect privacy of vehicles from being possibly tracked. Obviously, the privacy protection must be scalable because of the high mobility and large population of vehicles. In this work, we take a non-trivial step towards protecting privacy of vehicles. As privacy draws public concerns, we firstly present privacy implications of operational challenges from the public policy perspective. Additionally, we envision vehicular networks as geographically partitioned subnetworks （cells）. Each subnetwork maintains a list of pseudonyms. Each pseudonym includes the cell＇s geographic id and a random number as host id. Before starting communication, vehicles need to request a pseudonym on demand from pseudonym server. In order to improve utilization of pseudonyms, we address a stochastic model with time-varying arrival and departure rates. Our main contribution includes： 1） proposing a scalable and effective algorithm to protect privacy; 2） providing analytical results of probability, variance and expected number of requests on pseudonym servers. The empirical results confirm the accuracy of our analytical predictions.     

Context-aware multimodal recommendations of multimedia data in cyber situational awareness

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The current proliferation of large amounts of multimedia data creates an unprecedented challenge for security analysts in the context of Cyber Situational...     

Correcting Image Distortion for Adaptive Cruise Control

One of the main drivers for intelligent transportation systems is safety.Adaptive cruise control,as a common solution for traffic safety,has extended from radars to cameras.Due to high mobility of vehicles and unevenness of roads,the picture quality of cameras has been great challenges for camera-based adaptive cruise control.In this paper,an image distortion correction algorithm is addressed.Our method is based on optical flow technology which is normally applied in motion estimation and video compression research.We are the first to attempt to adapt it in image distortion correction.Two optical flow approaches,the Lucas-Kanade method and the Horn-Schunck method,are selected and compared.The procedure of image distortion correction using the optical flow method has been tested by both synthetic test images and camera images.The experimental results show that the Lucas-Kanade method is more suitable in the correction of image distortion.     

Correcting Image Distortion for Adaptive Cruise Control

One of the main drivers for intelligent transportation systems is safety. Adaptive cruise control, as a common solution for traffic safety, has extended from radars to cameras. Due to high mobility of vehicles and unevenness of roads, the picture quality of cameras has been great challenges for camera-based adaptive cruise control. In this paper, an image distortion correction algorithm is addressed. Our method is based on optical flow technology which is normally applied in motion estimation and video compression research. We are the first to attempt to adapt it in image distortion correction. Two optical flow approaches, the Lucas-Kanade method and the Horn-Schunck method, are selected and compared. The procedure of image distortion correction using the optical flow method has been tested by both synthetic test images and camera images. The experimental results show that the Lucas-Kanade method is more suitable in the correction of image distortion.