Evaluate the Efficiency of Gamma Irradiation and Chitosan on Shelf-Life of Strawberries Fruits

Chitosan play an important role as an antifungal against Botrytis cinerea and the effect was a concentration dependent. The obtained results of in vitro experiment demonstrated that chitosan (4%) decreased radial growth of B. cinereato 2 %. Invivo the severity of infection reduced from 59.8 and 100.0 to 9.7, 33.8 and 40.1 in first, second and third week's storage periods at 13C, respectively. Also, chitosan coating (4%) significantly caused an increase in fruit firmness whereas TSS was decreased with an increase by increasing in storage time. However,Vitamin C gave fluctuated results by increasing storage time. Gamma irradiation at 2.5 KGy reduced severity (%) of infected fruits from 55.5, 100 and 100 to 31.7, 45.9 and 49.9 and in healthy fruits severity (%) reduced from 48.9, 100 and 100 to 23.3, 25.1 and 29.1 in different storage periods 1, 2 and 3 weeks, respectively. Similarly, chitosan as well as gamma irradiation combination induced a significant increase of peroxidase enzyme (POD) activity. Induced changes in surface morphology and damage of cell structure caused by using chitosan shown by scanning electron microscopy. Also, gamma irradiation causes changes in hyphea structure and in surface morphology but combination of gamma irradiation with chitosan was more effective in altering fungus morphology and cell structure damage and no spore forming. This providing the efficiency of combination on reducing disease severity (%) of strawberry

Urinary tract infection in renal transplant recipients

Introduction: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the commonest bacterial infection occurring in renal transplant recipients, and it is associated with significant morbidity. This study aimed to assess the characteristics of all UTI episodes diagnosed in renal transplant patients who attended regularly for follow up in the nephrology department of National Heart Center, Tripoli, Libya. Methods: Data were collected by retrospective review of patients' medical records. UTI was defined as a urine culture containing more than 105 colonies/ml and pyuria (10 leukocytes /HPF). Results: Out of a total of 112 kidney transplant patients, UTI was diagnosed in 33 patients (29.5%). The mean age of affected patients was 43±20 years with a range of 20-63 years. Most of the episodes (72%) occurred during the first 3 months after transplantation, and 60.6% of affected patients had more than one episode of infection. A larger proportion of females were affected than males (40.8% versus 20.6% respectively, P=0.02). No significant difference was detected in the proportion of affected patients whether the donor was live-unrelated or live-related (32.3% versus 28.4% respectively, P=0.43). The commonest causative microorganism was E. coli (38.7%), followed by klebsiella (25.8%), Staphylococcus (25.8%), and others (9.7%). The commonest drug used for treatment was ciprofloxacin (51.6%), followed by amoxicillin-clavulinic acid (22.6%), meropenem (12.9%), and others (12.9%). Conclusion: The prevalence of UTI in our cohort of patients is similar to that reported by others. The commonest causative agent was E. coli, and ciprofloxacin was the most commonly used drug. Keywords: Kidney transplant recipients; Libya; Urinary tract infection

Preparation of Waste Paper Fibrous Cement and Studying of Some Physical Properties

Waste paper is available in environment from different sources, such as office, newspaper and markets. Waste papers are the abundant source of cellulose and may be used as landfill. Using of these wastes in building materials has two benefits, the first one has reduced the environmental pollution and the second improves the physical properties of concrete and building bricks (or blocks). Addition of waste paper cellulose to concrete at certain percentage improve its thermal insulation properties and affect its density to produce lightweight and insulating building materials. The material which produces by using waste paper is called papercrete. It is a mixture of waste paper pulp, sand, cement and water by replacing the cement by waste paper pulp at a certain percentage. Also fibrous cement could be produced by mixing of waste paper pulp with cement and water. In the current work the waste paper was processed to obtain the raw materials of papercrete and fibrous cement. The processing method includes a sequence of processes which are shredding, soaking, mixing, dewatering and drying. In the dewatering process, a wet pulp was obtained and it can be used as it is in the mixtures of papercrete or fibrous cement. A dry pulp also could be used. It is observed that one kilogram of office paper and that of newspaper produces 3.24 kg and 3.26 kg of wet paper pulp respectively. The dry pulp, which is produced during the drying process is 0.954 kg and 0.949 kg for 1 kg of office paper and newspaper respectively. Design of mix proportion, test of water absorption, apparent porosity and drying curve of samples with different percentage of paper pulp were investigated in the present work. Keywords: wastepaper, papercrete, fibrous cement, porosity, water absorption, bulk densit

Analysis of Generalized Inverted Exponential Distribution under Adaptive Type-I Progressive Hybrid Censored Competing Risks Data

The estimation of the unknown parameters of generalized inverted exponential distribution under adaptive type-I progressive hybrid censored scheme (AT-I PHCS) with competing risks data will be discussed. The reason why AT-I PHCS has exceeded other failure censored types; Time censored types enable analysts to accomplish their trials and experiments in a shorter time and with higher efficiency. In this regards, we obtain the maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters and the asymptotic confidence intervals for the unknown parameters. Further, Bayes estimates of the parameters which obtained based on squared error and LINEX loss functions under the assumptions of independent gamma priors of the scale parameters. For Bayesian estimation, we take advantage of Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques to derive Bayesian estimators and the credible intervals. Finally, two data sets with Monte Carlo simulation study and a real data set are analyzed for illustrative purposes

Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) and Reaction Modelling Study 6 of Bio-oil Catalytic Hydrodeoxygenation in Microreactors

A Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model was derived and validated, in order to, investigate the hydrodeoxygenation 9 reaction of 4-propylguaiacol, which is a lignin-derived compound present in bio-oil. A 2-D packed bed microreactor was 10 simulated using pre-sulphided NiMo/Al2O3 solid catalyst in isothermal operation. A pseudo-homogeneous model was first 11 created to validate the experimental results from literature. Various operational parameters were investigated and validated 12 with the experimental data, such as temperature, pressure and liquid flow rate; and it was found that the CFD findings were 13 in very good agreement with the results from literature. The model was then upgraded to that of a detailed multiphase 14 configuration; and phenomena such as internal and external mass transfer limitations were investigated, as well as, reactant 15 concentrations on the rate of 4-propylguaiacol. Both models agreed with the experimental data, and therefore confirm their 16 ability for applications related to the prediction of the behaviour of bio-oil compounds hydrodeoxygenation

Randomized ancillary qubit overcomes detector-control and intercept-resend hacking of quantum key distribution

Practical implementations of quantum key distribution (QKD) have been shown to be subject to various detector side-channel attacks that compromise the promised unconditional security. Most notable is a general class of attacks adopting the use of faked-state photons as in the detector-control and, more broadly, the intercept-resend attacks. In this paper, we present a simple scheme to overcome such class of attacks: A legitimate user, Bob, uses a polarization randomizer at his gateway to distort an ancillary polarization of a phase-encoded photon in a bidirectional QKD configuration. Passing through the randomizer once on the way to his partner, Alice, and again in the opposite direction, the polarization qubit of the genuine photon is immune to randomization. However, the polarization state of a photon from an intruder, Eve, to Bob is randomized and hence directed to a detector in a different path, whereupon it triggers an alert. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that, using commercial off-the-shelf detectors, it can be made impossible for Eve to avoid triggering the alert, no matter what faked-state of light she uses.Comment: Quantum encryption, bidirectional quantum key distribution, detector control, intercept and resend attacks, faked state photon