Driver Distraction Identification with an Ensemble of Convolutional Neural Networks

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 1.25 million deaths yearly due to road traffic accidents worldwide and the number has been continuously increasing over the last few years. Nearly fifth of these accidents are caused by distracted drivers. Existing work of distracted driver detection is concerned with a small set of distractions (mostly, cell phone usage). Unreliable ad-hoc methods are often used.In this paper, we present the first publicly available dataset for driver distraction identification with more distraction postures than existing alternatives. In addition, we propose a reliable deep learning-based solution that achieves a 90% accuracy. The system consists of a genetically-weighted ensemble of convolutional neural networks, we show that a weighted ensemble of classifiers using a genetic algorithm yields in a better classification confidence. We also study the effect of different visual elements in distraction detection by means of face and hand localizations, and skin segmentation. Finally, we present a thinned version of our ensemble that could achieve 84.64% classification accuracy and operate in a real-time environment.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1706.0949

Application of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to the analysis of sulfate reducing bacterial community in an oily bench scale reactor

Advances in the field of genomics and meta-genomics have led to rapid and accurate strategies for the monitoring of microbial biodiversity and have revealed its potential for biotechnological applications. In this study, fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) as a culture-independent molecular approach using specific CY3-labelled oligonucleotide probes was used to study the dynamics of the sulfate reduction bacterial community (SRB) of the activated sludge from an oily wastewater treatment system. The relative abundance of members of the dominant bacteria in the oily water reactor was determined by FISH for 16S rRNA using EUB338 probes, for detecting general eubacteria, and SRB385 for targeting SRBs and major species of delta-proteobacteria sulfate reducers. The percentage of cells hybridizing with probe EUB338 for the dominant bacteria decreased from 25.85 to 6.25%, while with the SRB385 probe for SRB bacteria, it increased from 7.21 to 10.20% of total cells during the reactor process. These data show that SRB bacteria dominated the active microbial community in the system. It is interesting that delta-proteobacterial SRBs occupied a high percentage and took place in an oily biological system under aerobic conditions.Keywords: Sulfate reducing bacteria, fluorescence in situ hybridization, 16S rRNA oligonucleotide probes, microbial community, dynamic

Replacement of fish meal by a mixture of vegetal proteins and vegetal proteins combined with prebiotics in Gilt-head sea bream diets (Sparus aurata)

Three diets have been formulated to evaluate the effect of prebiotec (dry hydrolyzed intestinal mucosa) by supplementation in plant protein diets of gilt-head sea bream of 273g (average initial weight) for 60 days. The diets manufactured to be isonitrogenous (47% crude Protein, CP) and isolipidic (17% crude Lipid, CL) , two diets of them with total replacement of fish meal by a mixture of vegetable proteins, with and without prebiotec 0% Fish meal FM0 & 0% fish meal plus prebiotec FM0 + P. The third diet as the unique protein source 100% fish meal FM100. The growth, nutritional, biometric and histological parameters have been determined at the end of trial, fish reached weights 284, 303 and 407g in the FM0, FM0+P, and FM100 respectively. A statistical differences were observed between FM100 and other two (FM0 & FM0+P) diets in specific growth rate (SGR), Daily feeding rate (DFR), feed conversion ratio (FCR) and protein efficiency ratio (PER). Biometric indices show significant differences between FM100 and other two (FM0 & FM0+P) in condition factor (CF), viscerosomatic index (VSI), hepatosomatic index (HSI) and meat index (MI) as they were significantly decreasing by increasing FM replacement percent, also there were significant differences between FM100 and FM0 in Headless index (HI). The index of the non-edible parts (NEPI) was significantly higher in (FM0 & FM100) than FM100 while there were no significant differences between all diets in mesenteric fat index (MFI). Moreover, body composition was affected by the substitution with vegetable proteins, there was a decrease in water, protein and ash content and an increase of lipid and energy content from the start to the end of the trial. At the end of trial fat content was higher in the gilt-head sea bream fed FM100 diet followed by FM0+P and the least amount of fat was in gilt-head sea bream fed with feed FM0 when there were no significant differences in energy content in all groups. Protein and ash content also presents significant differences between the gilt-head sea bream that fed with feed FM0 and the gilt-head sea bream that fed other diets (FM0+P, FM100) where they were higher in FM0. The histological parameters of gut and liver not affected by different experimental diets. The morphological evaluation showed all fish in intermediate case except in FM0+P there was a severe fat accumulation within the hepatocytes. . The supplementation of prebiotec (dry hydrolyzed intestinal mucosa) was not useful contrary to the results of Tortosa, (2004) may be result to the parasite infections during the trial. The results of the current study showed that the immune role of the prebiotec was not enough to face the parasite infection and it is not recommended to use as a supplementation in vegetable meals in case of presence of parasites risk

Isolation of Thermoalkalophilic-?-amylase Producing Bacteria and Optimization of Potato Waste Water Medium for Enhancement of ?-amylase Production

Sixty one thermoalkalophilic bacteria were isolated from soil samples in Saudi Arabia’s southern region. Isolate TA-38, obtained from the Tanomah region, showed the best performance for enzyme production and was submitted for further study. It was identified as Bacillus axarquiensis based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing studies. The feasibility of using potato waste water as a simple and cheap medium for the production of ?-amylase was evaluated compared with starch broth medium. The production of ?-amylase in the potato waste water medium was only 13.8% less than that of the starch medium. Maximum enzyme production was achieved after 48 hours of cultivation at the beginning of the stationary phase at pH 10.0 and 50 0C. The appropriate addition of starch; nitrogen; phosphate; and calcium to potato waste water significantly enhanced the production of ?-amylase. The enzyme production reached a maximum of 64.5 Uml-1 with the potato wastewater adding with 0.5 % starch; 0.4 % yeast extract; 0.04% CaCl2-2H2O and 0.05 % KH2PO4.  The optimization of the potato waste water medium led to an approximately 4.02 fold increase in the production of ?-amylase compared to starch broth medium. Data indicated that the potato waste water contained substrates which could be used by bacterial isolate for the production of ?-amylase production and the developed procedure was cost effective since it requires only a slightly addition of nutrients to the medium. Keywords: Isolation; ?-amylase; 16S rRNA; Production; Potato waste water; Thermoalkaliphilic bacteria

Smart Palm: An IoT Framework for Red Palm Weevil Early Detection

Smart agriculture is an evolving trend in agriculture industry, where sensors are embedded into plants to collect vital data and help in decision making to ensure higher quality of crops and prevent pests, disease, and other possible threats. In Saudi Arabia, growing palms is the most important agricultural activity, and there is an increasing need to leverage smart agriculture technology to improve the production of dates and prevent diseases. One of the most critical diseases of palms if the red palm weevil, which is an insect that causes a lot of damage to palm trees and can devast large areas of palm trees. The most challenging problem is that the effect of the weevil is not visible by humans until the palm reaches an advanced infestation state. For this reason, there is a need to use advanced technology for early detection and prevention of infestation propagation. In this project, we have developed am IoT based smart palm monitoring prototype as a proof-of-concept that (1) allows to monitor palms remotely using smart agriculture sensors, (2) contribute to the early detection of red palm weevil. Users can use web/mobile application to interact with their palm farms and help them in getting early detection of possible infestations. We used Elm company IoT platform to interface between the sensor layer and the user layer. In addition, we have collected data using accelerometer sensors and we applied signal processing and statistical techniques to analyze collected data and determine a fingerprint of the infestation

Solvatochromism and potentiometic studies of some active nitroso- and nitroso-azo- compounds

The stability studies of biologically active 2,4-dinitrosoresorcinol, o-carboxy phenylazo-dinitrosoresorcinol, N,N`-bis-[4,4`-(1,3-diphenyltriazine)]-diacetamide, 2-amino-6-phenylazo-pyridin-3-ol, 2-amino-3-hydroxy-pyridin-6-ylazo)-benzoic acid, 4-(2-amino-3-hydroxy-pyridin-6-ylazo)-benzoic acid ethyl ester and N-[4-(2-amino-3-hydroxy-pyridin-6-ylazo)-phenyl]-acetamide compounds were studied. The dissociation constants were determined potentiometrically. The thermodynamic parameters of dissociation were evaluated. Regression analysis is applied for correlating the different parameters. The results help to assign the solute-solvent interactions and the solvatochromic potential of the investigated compounds. The electronic character of the substituent and the chemical nature of the solvent are major factors for the observed solvatochromism

Adsorption and inhibitive properties of Tryptophan on low alloy steel corrosion in acidic media

AbstractThe inhibition efficiency of Tryptophan (Trp) has been studied for the corrosion of low alloy steel ASTM A213 grade T22 in sulfamic (HSO3NH2) and hydrochloric (HCl) acid solutions.Corrosion inhibition was studied using electrochemical methods (electrochemical impedance spectroscopy; EIS and the new technique electrochemical frequency modulation; EFM) and weight loss measurements. The influence of inhibitor concentration, solution temperature, and immersion time on the corrosion resistance of low alloy steel (LAS) has been investigated. Trp proved to be a very good inhibitor for low alloy steel acid corrosion. EFM measurements showed that Trp is a mixed type inhibitor. Trp behaved better in 0.6M HCl than in 0.6M HSO3NH2. Moreover, it was found that the inhibition efficiency increased with increasing inhibitor concentration, while a decrease was detected with the rise of temperature and immersion time. The associated activation energy (Ea) has been determined. The values of Ea indicate that the type of adsorption of Trp on the steel surface in both acids belongs to physical adsorption. The adsorption process was tested using Temkin adsorption isotherm