The effect of garlic and ginger phytogenics on the shelf life and microbial contents of homemade soursop (Annona muricata L) fruit juice

The preservative effects of garlic and ginger was compared with that of sodium benzoate in assessing the shelf quality of locally prepared soursop juice. The soursop juice without treatment (T1) was used as the control while others in four replicates were separately treated with 50 mg/ml garlic (T2), 50 mg/ml ginger (T3), mixture garlic and ginger in equal proportion of 50 mg/ml each (T4) and 10 mg/ml (T5) sodium benzoate respectively. The microbial counts ranged from 3.0×104-1.27×106 cfu/ml juices with the untreated recording the highest concentration of contamination compared with the treated juices of which sodium benzoate had the least microbial contamination. The microorganisms consistent in all the treatments were Bacillus sp., Staphylococcus sp., Acetobacter sp., Klebsiella sp., Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida tropicalis while the distribution of Streptococcus sp., Klebsiella and Penicillium sp., and Proteus sp were sporadic. Marginal decreases in pH values were observed in the stored soursop juices across treatments. The results obtained showed that the treatment of freshly prepared soursop juices with sodium benzoate, and a mixture of garlic and ginger improved storage span and reduced health risks of infection and/or intoxication from their consumption. KEYWORD

Development Of An Electronic Fare Collection System Using Stationary Tap-Out Devices

The peculiar nature of emerging economies means that established technology must be developed with the constraints and limitations of these locations in view. This paper presents the development of an Electronic Fare Collection system using Contactless smart cards. Electronic fare collection system are commonly integrated with public transit networks such as the bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) services in major cities worldwide. However, in deploying such systems in an emerging economy like Nigeria, unique consideration has to be given with regards to power management, robustness and availability. The system developed consists of a mobile tap-in device connected to a bus, a stationary tap-out device to be situated at a specific bus stop and a web server on the cloud for coordination and off site monitoring. The stationary tap-out device used consists of a proximity card reader (or an RFID reader) connected to a computing unit linked with a display, outdoor power provision (source) and data transmission capability. A program was developed to capture data from randomly applied proximity cards (or RFID cards) and to transmit same periodically to a remote location for use by the system. The system developed is able to sustain itself for a long period of time from available power supply, it also proves robust enough from a software and hardware perspective. Lastly its availability is proven even when data transmission capability proves erratic

An improved Bank Credit Scoring Model A Naïve Bayesian Approach

Credit scoring is a decision tool used by organizations to grant or reject credit requests from their customers. Series of artificial intelligent and traditional approaches have been used to building credit scoring model and credit risk evaluation. Despite being ranked amongst the top 10 algorithm in Data mining, Naïve Bayesian algorithm has not been extensively used in building credit score cards. Using demographic and material indicators as input variables, this paper investigate the ability of Bayesian classifier towards building credit scoring model in banking sector

On Issues, Strategies and Solutions for Computer Security and Disaster Recovery in Online Start-ups

Vast majority of entrepreneurial ventures want an online and offline business model. Quite a good number would prefer their dealings occur strictly online. However, very few know what it takes to aim at achieving 99.999% availability, this is a key goal in deploying Computer and information technology (IT) solutions. In this present world of Information Technology there is an increase in threats faced by small medium businesses and enterprise on online platforms. More companies are vulnerable to attacks/threat such as DDOS, Malwares, Viruses, Ransomware etc. Entrepreneurial venture’s adoption of IT solutions with security in view, in addition to a disaster avoidance, mitigation and recovery plan or strategy can help in this respect. This paper suggests such issues to be considered and strategies to adopt in IT security and avoiding disaster and solutions to remedy disaster

DESIGN OF A DROWNING RESCUE ALERT SYSTEM

Dating back in time, drowning has been a significant ground for death worldwide; it accounts for the third cause of unplanned death globally, with about 1.2 million cases yearly. Characteristically it affects swimmers, accident victims, children and recreational seeking individuals. Although there have been various provisions put in place from drowning in some countries, it still accounts for the primary cause of unplanned death. Eradication rather than cure has been able to minimize the number of individuals who drown generally, except in developing nations, who lack adequate educational facilities and enforcement of safety measures on the dangers of drowning, thereby making the burden of drowning to escalate. The proposed drowning rescue system aims to curb deaths from drowning by observing the rise and fall of the heart rate and blood pressure of a swimmer or non-swimmer in water and if endangered, sends signals from the wearable device attached to the wrist of the victim who maybe undergoing a neardrowning experience to the receiver or rescuer who could be a lifeguard, parent or neighbour, in order to enable the rescuer render immediate help

Mitigating Threats in a Corporate Network with a Taintcheck-Enabled Honeypot

Conventional network security tools such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), anti-virus, antispyware and anti-malware integrated with firewalls generate a lot of false positives that make computer network system administration cumbersome. This paper proposes a novel mechanism comprising of taintcheck for dynamic analysis of buffer overflow attack using synthetic exploit and hybrid honeypot for scanning, detecting, identifying attackers and signature generation. In this framework, Noah’s attack detection is used as a template. Upon testing, the practicality of the proposed framework was found to be more effective than other conventional network security tools as it effectively and comprehensively mitigates against threats and reported zero-day attacks with fewer false positives

Integration of Iris Biometrics in Automated Teller Machines for Enhanced User Authentication

The ubiquitous Automatic Teller Machine that revolutionized the way monetary transactions are carried out the world over is currently riddled with several security challenges. Top on the list of these challenges are the thefts and frauds associated with the ever popular Personal Identification Number based automatic teller machines. A lot of suggestions and proposals have been made in recent times, on how to combat the menace of automatic teller machine frauds. Biometrics is one of the most promising tools that have the capacity to put the nefarious activities around automatic teller machines in check. This paper proposes a cheap and economic iris biometric based automatic teller machine, built around a microcontroller, iris scanner and a robust database. The designed and implemented prototype is capable of checkmating automatic teller machine fraud and it is also easy to implement in developing nations

Comparative analysis of routing techniques in chord overlay network

Overlay networks are not a new field or area of study. This domain of computing will someday drive P2P systems in various application areas such as block-chain, energy trading, video multicasting, and distributed file storage. This study highlights the two widely known methods of routing information employed in one of such overlay networks called chord. In this study, simulations of both routing modes (iterative and recursive) and their variations under no-churn (leaving and joining of nodes) and churn conditions was carried out. The routing parameter (successor list size) was varied for each of the routing techniques in a simulation study. The results obtained show that semi recursive routing gives a better routing performance under churn scenarios

Evaluation of the quality of an image encrytion scheme

Encryption systems have been developed for image viewing applications using the Hill Cipher algorithm. This study aims to evaluate the image encryption quality of the Hill Cipher algorithm. Several traditional metrics are used to evaluate the quality of the encryption scheme. Three of such metrics have been selected for this study. These include, the Colour Histogram, the Maximum Deviation (comparing the original image) and the Entropy Analysis of the encrypted image. Encryption quality results from all three schemes using a variety of images show that a plain Hill Cipher approach gives a good result for all kinds of images but is more suited for colour dense images

Wireless Sensor Network for Rainfall Measurement using a Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge Mechanism

Distributed wireless sensor networks are a new technology that can provide processed real-time field data from sensors that are physically distributed in the field. This study describes a wireless distributed sensor network that gives precision rainfall detection and measurement. Rain fall measurements can be done using a variety of means. One of such means is using a Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge Mechanism. In order to accomplish this, sensor nodes consisting of water level sensors and a wireless transceiver which transmits measured data is attached to the rain gauge. The measured data or signal from the rain gauge is transmitted to a receiver or collector point. The collector point is connected to a computer system (central station). Data retrieved is then displayed by the means of a GUI created customarily for it at the central station. The result of the research work shows a significant accuracy in the rain fall measurement recorded