A TAXONOMY OF MIXED REALITY VISUAL DISPLAYS

The conventionally held view of a Virtual Reality (VR) environment is one in which the participant- observer is totally immersed in, and able to interact with, a completely synthetic world. Such a world may mimic the properties of some real-world environments, either existing or fictional; however, it can also exceed the bounds of physical reality by creating a world in which the physical laws ordinarily governing space, time, mechanics, material properties, etc. no longer hold. What may be overlooked in this view, however, is that the VR label is also frequently used in association with a variety of other environments, to which total immersion and complete synthesis do not necessarily pertain, but which fall somewhere along a virtuality continuum. In this paper we focus on a particular subclass of VR related technologies that involve the merging of real and virtual worlds, which we refer to generically as Mixed Reality (MR). Our objective is to formulate a taxonomy of the various ways in which the "virtual" and "real" aspects of MR environments can be realised. The perceived need to do this arises out of our own experiences with this class of environments, with respect to which parallel problems of inexact terminologies and unclear conceptual boundaries appear to exist among researchers n the field

Compositional differences in the phenolics compounds of muscadine and bunch grape wines

Wines contain a large array of phenolic compounds, belonging to non-flavonoids, flavonoids and phenolic-protein-polysaccharide complexes. Phenolics in wine are responsible for wine color, astringency, and bitterness. This study evaluates phenolic composition of commercial and experimental wines derived from bunch (Vitis vinifera) and muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia) grapes to determine compositional differences in phenolics. HPLC analysis of wines showed that majority of phenolic compounds eluted during the first 30 min. Of the red wines tested, Château Cabrieres Chateauneuf de Pape (Rhone) showed the simplest phenolics profile while Cabernet Sauvignon (Vitis vinifera-California) showed the most complex profile. The phenolics composition of red and white wines varied greatly. Some white wines from bunch grape were devoid of any phenolics. Among muscadine white wines, some contained large number of phenolic compounds while the others showed smaller number of phenolic compounds. These data suggested that both the red and white wines contained a complex mixture of phenolic compounds whose content and composition varied by brand suggesting that the wine processing technique greatly influences phenolics composition of wines than color of the wine. Muscadine red wines were quite distinct than that of the bunch grapes, indicating that grape chemistry has a greater influence on wine phenolic composition. Key Words: Grape, HPLC, phenolics, red and white wines. African Journal of Biotechnology Vo l.3(10) 2004: 523-52

Production of Extracellular Anti-leukaemic Enzyme Lasparaginase from Marine Actinomycetes by Solidstate and Submerged Fermentation: Purification and Characterisation

Purpose: The objective of this investigation was to isolate marine actinomycetes, screen them for Lasparaginase activity and characterise the enzyme.Methods: Marine actinomycetes were isolated from sediment samples obtained from Tamilnadu and Kerala in India. The isolates were identified as actinomycetes by microscopical and biochemical tests.Production of L-asparaginase was carried out in three different media, namely, solid-state media, Tryptone Glucose Yeast extract (TGY) broth and Tryptone Fructose Yeast extract (TFY) broth.. The enzyme was purified to near homogeneity by ammonium sulphate precipitation, dialysis, gel filtration on Sephadex G-100 column and SDS-PAGE.Results: Among 10 marine isolates subjected to preliminary screening, only isolates S3, S4 and K8 showed potential for L-asparaginase activity. All three marine soil isolates synthesized asparaginase with yield ranging from 24.6 to 49.2 IU/ml. Soil isolate S3 showed the highest productivity of 49.2 IU/ml with a protein content of 65 μg/ml and optimum activity at pH 7.5 and 50 ºC. The apparent Km value for the substrate was 25 μM. Mg2+ ion slightly stimulated activity while Cu2+, Zn2+ and EDTA were inhibitory.Conclusion: The study revealed that marine actinomycetes may be a potential source of high yield, high substrate specificity L-asparaginase, which is an anti-leukaemia agent

Filter-Based Product Search Engines With Dynamic Component Ranking

The use of faceted browsing is common on shopping and comparison websites. When dealing with problems of this kind, it is usual practise to apply a specified set of features in a certain order. This tactic suffers from two major flaws that undermine its effectiveness. First things first: before you do anything else, you need to make sure that you set aside a significant amount of time to compile an effective list. Second, if you have a certain number of aspects and all of the products that are relevant to your search are tagged with the same aspect, then that particular aspect is basically worthless. This article presents a method for doing online business that makes use of a dynamic facet ordering system. On the basis of measurements for specificity and dispersion of aspect value dispersion, the entirely automated system assigns ratings to the characteristics and facets that lead to a speedy drill-down for each and every prospective target product. In contrast to the methodologies that are currently in use, the framework takes into consideration the subtleties that are specific to e-commerce. These nuances include the need for several clicks, the grouping of facets according to the traits that they share, and the predominance of numerical facets. In a large-scale simulation and user survey, our approach performed much better than the baseline greedy strategy, the facet list prepared by domain experts, and the state-of-the-art entropy-based solution. These comparisons were made using the same data

ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ACTINOMYCETES FROM SOIL OF AD-DAWADMI, SAUDI ARABIA AND SCREENING THEIR ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITIES

Objective: To isolate and characterize novel actinomycetes and to evaluate their antibacterial activity against drug-resistant pathogenic bacteriaMethods: In the present study, 19 soil samples were collected from different localities of Ad-Dawadmi, Saudi Arabia. Actinomycetes were isolated from these samples using serial dilution and plating method on Actinomycetes isolation agar supplemented with nalidixic acid and actidione to inhibit bacteria and fungi. Crude extracts of potential actinomycetes were produced by submerged fermentation. The antimicrobial activity of crude extracts of actinomycetes was tested against different bacteria using the agar well diffusion method. Characterization of the isolates was done by morphological, physiological and biochemical methods.Results: A total of 9 (47%) isolates of actinomycetes were isolated from 19 different soil samples tested. Among them, 4 (44%) isolates confirmed as Streptomyces sp. showed potential antimicrobial activity against one or more test organisms. Crude extracts were made from these 4 actinomycetes isolates(DOM1, DOM3, DP3, DP4)and tested for their antibacterial activities against 4 different clinical bacterial strains (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus). Crude extract from DP3 isolate showed highest antibacterial activity against all the four test organisms (28 mm, 21 mm, 20 mm and 18 mm) respectively and DP4 showed lowest antibacterial activity against all the four test organisms (14 mm, 12 mm, 0 mm, 6 mm) respectively. The highest zone of inhibition was shown by DP3 against Staphylococcus aureus (28 mm) and Escherichia coli was resistant for DP4. Most of the Inhibition zones produced by crude extracts showed significant differences when compared with control, tested against test organisms (P<0.05). Inhibition zones produced by DP3 and DOM1 against Staphylococcus aureus were 28 mm and 23 mm, respectively which were strong active when compared with control Ciprofloxacin (18 mm).Conclusion: Further studies for purification of bioactive metabolites and molecular characterization analysis of isolated Streptomyces sp. are in progress which would be helpful in discovering novel compounds of commercial value

Improving the Energy Efficiency of Mobile Terminals Using Dynamic Multilevel Priority Packet Scheduling in Cooperative Communication

Cooperative communication is an efficient method for reducing the energy consumption of mobile terminal in wireless cellular network. However, it is hard to implement due to the lack of motivations for the Mobile terminals to cooperate. For this scenario as the benchmark case, where the information of the helping mobile terminals such as the channel and battery conditions is completely known by the source node terminal, the problem is formulated as a relay selection problem. Efficient algorithms based on dichotomous search and alternative optimizations are proposed to solve the problem for the cases of split and non-split data at the source MT, respectively. The cooperative communications scheme with pricing mechanism can decrease both the battery outages and communications for the mobile node, and can also increase the average battery level during the mobile terminals operation. In this paper, we state a Dynamic Multilevel Priority (DMP) packet scheduling scheme. In the proposed system, each node, except those which are at the last level of the virtual hierarchy in the zone based topology of Wireless sensor network , have three levels of priority queues. Real-time packets are placed in the highest-priority queue and can preempt data packets in other queues. Non-real-time packets are placed in other two queues based on a certain threshold of their estimated processing time. Leaf nodes will have two queues for real-time and non-real-time data packets since they do not receive data from other nodes and so this reduce end to- end delay. The performance of the proposed Dynamic multilevel priority packet scheduling scheme through simulations for real-time and non-real-time data packet. Simulation results shows that the DMP packet scheduling scheme outperforms conventional schemes interms of average data waiting time and end-to-end delay

EFFECT OF METHYL-Î’-CYCLODEXTRIN COMPLEXATION ON THE HYPOGLYCEMIC AND HYPOLIPIDEMIC EFFECTS OF KHELLIN: EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Objective: The present work tackled the development and evaluation of inclusion complex of khellin (KH) and methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD). In addition, it tested its possible hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects.Methods: Inclusion complexes of KH-MβCD in the presence of water-soluble polymer were prepared by freeze drying (FD), co-evaporation (EV) and kneading methods (KN). The selected ternary complex was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometry (FTIR), x-ray diffractometry (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and scanning electron microscopy [1]. Assessment of the hypoglycemic effect of the selected ternary complex versus the standard drug metformin was studied. Two different doses of the ternary complex were administered orally to streptozotocin (STZ)-induced type 2diabetic rats. Their hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects were evaluated by measuring the fasting blood glucose level (BGL), total cholesterol (TC) and triglycerides levels (TG) along the study period.Results: The FD complex showed the highest drug dissolution rate. All the performed characterization analysis confirmed the formation of a KH-MβCD inclusion complex. The in vivo study declared that both doses showed a marked hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects compared to metformin.Conclusion: In conclusion, this study points for the first time that the complexation of KH with MβCD could notably improve the dissolution rate and hence the bioavailability of KH. Moreover, this study demonstrated that this compound has a hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effect. Thus, it can be a promising natural supportive treatment in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).Â