Graphical Selection of Sieve Mesh for Grain Sieves

A graphical method was established to obtain the accurate screen apertures of sieves used for separating grain seeds from foreign matter at maximum efficiency thereby facilitating the proper design of a cleaning system. The method depends upon the statistical analysis of the physical/mechanical properties of both grain seeds and foreign matter, taking into consideration that these properties such as the linear dimensions, may be considered as variables which follow the law of normal distribution

Design of a Continuous-Process Gari Frying Machine

A prototype gari frying machine, designed to faithfully simulate the traditional manual frying technique, was fabricated and tested. The prototype consists of a 1.7m long semi-circular frying trough of 57 cm diameter, and a gang of sixteen spring-loaded spatula-like paddles evenly spaced within the trough. Electric-motor driven and designed to oscillate through about 1800 at 40 reversals per minute, the paddles press the automatically/continuously metered gari mash against the hot trough when moving in one direction and then scrape the mash off, stir it and move it forward when moving in the opposite direction. The prototype produces a continuous flow of fried gari at 66 kg/hr. The prototype has a provision for manual operation when it produces 20 to 45 kg of gari per hour

Development of a Ridge Profile Weeder

The prototype weeder described in this paper consists of a ground-driven rotating horizontal short shaft which is connected by universal joints to two gangs of rotary hoe weeders. With the short shaft nearly at the bottom of a furrow between two ridges, the gangs of weeders lie on the sides of the two ridges. The universal joints make it possible to angle the weeder gangs with respect to the horizontal shaft to make the gangs conform to the profiles of the sides of the ridges facing the common furrow. The operator walks in the furrow and simply pushes the weedier along to weed one side each of two ridges. Thus the weeder can handle any crop planted on ridges, irrespective of the height of the plants. The shares on the gangs of the rotary hoe weeders are independently adjustable to facilitate reaching the surface of any ridge. Field tests show that this weeder is very effective in controlling young weeds where only light earthling up is required

Spark ignition of a turbulent shear-less fuel-air mixing layer

A planar methane-air mixing layer with equal velocity in the two streams has been used to examine the ignition probability and the non-premixed edge flame speed following spark ignition. The mixing layer has approximately homogeneous turbulent intensity and lengthscale. Mean local mixture fraction has also been measured for the whole flow field. The ignition and subsequent flame propagation were visualized with a high-speed camera and the flame's edges in the upstream, downstream and cross-stream directions have been identified. The average rate of flame evolution in these directions allowed an estimation of the average absolute flame speed. Ignition probability contour of the mixing layer takes a V-shape, which matches the shape of the lean and rich flammability limits with a little discrepancy in the rich side. By subtracting the uniform mean velocity resulted in estimates of the mean relative edge flame speed. This quantity was approximately 2.5SL, where SL is the laminar burning velocity of stoichiometric methane-air premixed flames. The results are consistent with DNS of turbulent edge flames.This work has been funded by the European Commission through project "TIMECOP-AE" (AST5-CT-2006-030828). Thanks to Mr. I.A. Bahena Ledezma for assistance with the experimental techniques. S.F. Ahmed wishes to thank Qatar University for the support.Scopu

Genospecies and virulence factors of Aeromonas species in different sources in a North African country

Introduction: Aeromonads of medical importance have been reported from numerous clinical, food, and water sources, but identification of genospecies and virulence factors of Aeromonas species from countries in North Africa and the Middle East are few.Methods: In total 99 Aeromonas species isolates from different sources (diarrheal children [n=23], nondiarrheal children [n=16], untreated drinking water from wells [n=32], and chicken carcasses [n=28]) in Tripoli, Libya, were included in the present investigation. Genus identification was confirmed by biochemical analysis, and genospecies were determined using a combination of 16S rDNA variable region and gyrB sequence analysis. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect genes encoding toxins from 52 of the isolates.Results: We identified 44 isolates (44%) as A. hydrophila (3 [3.0%] subspecies anaerogenes, 23 [23%] subspecies dhakensis, and 18 [18%] subspecies ranae); 27 isolates (27%) as A. veronii; 23 isolates (23%) as A. caviae; and 5 isolates (5.0%) as other genospecies. The genes encoding aerolysin (aer), cytolytic enterotoxin (act), and A. hydrophila isolate SSU enterotoxin (ast) were detected in 45 (87%), 4 (7.7%), and 9 (17%) of the 52 isolates tested, respectively. The gene encoding an extracellular lipase (alt) was not detected.Conclusion: The majority of aeromonads from Libya fall within three genospecies (i.e. A. hydrophila, A. veronii, and A. caviae), and genes coding for toxin production are common among them.Keywords: Aeromonas; genospecies; virulence factors; Liby

Bridging flavour violation and leptogenesis in SU(3) family models

We reconsider basic, in the sense of minimal field content, Pati-Salam x SU(3) family models which make use of the Type I see-saw mechanism to reproduce the observed mixing and mass spectrum in the neutrino sector. The goal of this is to achieve the observed baryon asymmetry through the thermal decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino and at the same time to be consistent with the expected experimental lepton flavour violation sensitivity. This kind of models have been previously considered but it was not possible to achieve a compatibility among all of the ingredients mentioned above. We describe then how different SU(3) messengers, the heavy fields that decouple and produce the right form of the Yukawa couplings together with the scalars breaking the SU(3) symmetry, can lead to different Yukawa couplings. This in turn implies different consequences for flavour violation couplings and conditions for realizing the right amount of baryon asymmetry through the decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino. Also a highlight of the present work is a new fit of the Yukawa textures traditionally embedded in SU(3) family models.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, Some typos correcte

Salivary androgens in adolescence and their value as a marker of puberty: results from the SCAMP cohort

Context: Salivary androgens represent non-invasive biomarkers of puberty that may have utility in clinical and population studies. Objective: To understand normal age-related variation in salivary sex steroids and demonstrate their correlation to pubertal development in young adolescents. Design, Setting, and participants: School-based cohort study of 1,495 adolescents at two time points for collecting saliva samples approximately two years apart. Outcome measures: The saliva samples were analyzed for five androgens (testosterone, androstenedione (A4), 17-hydroxyprogesterone (17-OHP), 11-ketotestosterone (11-KT) and 11β-hydroxyandrostenedione (11-OHA4)) using LC-MS/MS; in addition, salivary dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and oestradiol (OE2) were analyzed by ELISA. Pubertal staging was self-reported using the pubertal development scale (PDS). Results: In 1,236 saliva samples from 903 boys aged between 11-16 years, salivary androgens except DHEA exhibited an increasing trend with an advancing age (ANOVA, p<0.001), with salivary testosterone and A4 concentration showing the strongest correlation (r=0.55, p<0.001 and r=0.48, p<0.001, respectively). In a subgroup analysis of 155 and 63 saliva samples in boys and girls, respectively morning salivary testosterone concentrations showed the highest correlation with composite PDS scores and voice-breaking category from PDS self-report in boys (r=0.75, r=0.67, respectively). In girls, salivary DHEA and OE2 had negligible correlations with age or composite PDS scores. Conclusion: In boys aged 11-16 years, increase in salivary testosterone and A4 is associated with self-reported pubertal progress and represent valid non-invasive biomarkers of puberty in boys

A Robust Deep Model for Classification of Peptic Ulcer and Other Digestive Tract Disorders Using Endoscopic Images

Accurate patient disease classification and detection through deep-learning (DL) models are increasingly contributing to the area of biomedical imaging. The most frequent gastrointestinal (GI) tract ailments are peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. Conventional endoscopy is a painful and hectic procedure for the patient while Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) is a useful technology for diagnosing GI problems and doing painless gut imaging. However, there is still a challenge to investigate thousands of images captured during the WCE procedure accurately and efficiently because existing deep models are not scored with significant accuracy on WCE image analysis. So, to prevent emergency conditions among patients, we need an efficient and accurate DL model for real-time analysis. In this study, we propose a reliable and efficient approach for classifying GI tract abnormalities using WCE images by applying a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). For this purpose, we propose a custom CNN architecture named GI Disease-Detection Network (GIDD-Net) that is designed from scratch with relatively few parameters to detect GI tract disorders more accurately and efficiently at a low computational cost. Moreover, our model successfully distinguishes GI disorders by visualizing class activation patterns in the stomach bowls as a heat map. The Kvasir-Capsule image dataset has a significant class imbalance problem, we exploited a synthetic oversampling technique BORDERLINE SMOTE (BL-SMOTE) to evenly distribute the image among the classes to prevent the problem of class imbalance. The proposed model is evaluated against various metrics and achieved the following values for evaluation metrics: 98.9%, 99.8%, 98.9%, 98.9%, 98.8%, and 0.0474 for accuracy, AUC, F1-score, precision, recall, and loss, respectively. From the simulation results, it is noted that the proposed model outperforms other state-of-the-art models in all the evaluation metrics

Enhancing river health monitoring: Developing a reliable predictive model and mitigation plan

The escalating environmental harm inflicted upon rivers is an unavoidable outcome resulting from climatefluctuations and anthropogenic activities, leading to a catastrophic impact on water quality and thousands ofindividuals succumb to waterborne diseases. Consequently, the water quality monitoring stations have beenestablished worldwide. Regrettably, the real-time evaluation of Water Quality Index (WQI) is hindered by theintricate nature of off-site water quality parameters. Thus, there is a pressing need to create a precise and robustwater quality prediction model. The dynamic and non-linear characteristics of water quality parameters posesignificant challenges for conventional machine learning algorithms like multi-linear regression, as they struggleto capture these complexities. In this particular investigation, machine learning model called FeedforwardArtificial Neural Networks (FANNs) was employed to develop WQI prediction model of Batu Pahat River,Malaysia exclusively utilizing on-site parameters. The proposed method involves a consideration of whether toinclude or exclude parameters such as BOD and COD, which are not measured in real time and can be costly tomonitor as model inputs. Validation accuracy values of 99.53%, 97.99%, and 91.03% were achieved in threedifferent scenarios: the first scenario utilized the full input, the second scenario excluded BOD, and the thirdscenario excluded both BOD and COD. It was suggested that the model has better predictive power between inputvariables and output variables. Factor contributed to river pollution has been identified and mitigation plan forBatu Pahat river pollution has been proposed. This could provide an effective alternative to compute thepollution, better manage water resources and mitigate negative impacts of climate change of river ecosystems