Suggestion systems: a usability-based evaluation model

Usability has been used to design and assess products and websites. This paper takes the concept of usability one step further and proposes a framework to assess suggestion systems. Thus taking the concept of usability one step further and applying it in the area of ideas management through suggestion system. The fundamental premise of the article is that a suggestion system designed, with usability in mind, will improve innovation among employees, and hence increase participation. This framework was then used to assess four suggestion systems in an oil and gas company in the middle-east. These systems were further assessed for employee perception of their usability and participation. After collecting data on these three different aspects conclusions are drawn. Out of the four systems analyzed, the most usable suggestion system had the highest participation rate and the least usable system attracted the fewest suggestions

Investigation of aldehyde oxidase and xanthine oxidoreductase in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

Molybdo-flavoenzymes (MFEs), aldehyde oxidase (AOX) and xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR) are involved in the oxidation of N-heterocyclic compounds and aldehydes, many of which are environmental pollutants, drugs and vitamins. This biotransformation generally generates more polar compounds that are more easily excreted, thus MFEs have been classed as detoxication enzymes. To date there has been scant study of the properties, substrate and inhibitor specificities of MFEs in non-mammalian vertebrate organisms. This investigation focuses on MFEs in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) as it belongs to a class of fish that host a single AOX (AOXβ) and one XOR. In this study the substrate specificity of rainbow trout liver AOX and XOR was investigated using HPLC and spectrophotometric assays. AOX in hepatic cytosol was found to be able to catalyse the oxidation of azanaphthalenes belonging to a group of compounds that are environmental pollutants such as phenanthridine, phthalazine and cinchonine. In addition, xenobiotic aromatic aldehydes (vanillin and dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde) and drugs such as allopurinol and pyrazinamide were substrates. Several endogenous vitamins including pyridoxal (vitamin B6), all-trans retinal (vitamin A) and N1-methylnicotinamide were also biotransformed by the rainbow trout AOX. In contrast to liver no AOX activity was detectable in kidney and gill tissue. XOR activity in rainbow trout liver was measurable with the endogenous purine xanthine, purine drug metabolites (1-methylxanthine and 6-thioxanthine) and N-heterocyclic drugs (allopurinol and pyrazinamide). Unlike mammalian XOR that can utilise both NAD+ and O2 as electron acceptors, trout XOR was exclusively NAD+-dependent with no activity being detected with O2. Eadie-Hofstee plots were using to determine the Km and Vmax of rainbow trout AOX and XOR with different substrates and it was found the Vmax of the rainbow trout enzymes were generally lower and Km generally higher than mammalian AOX and XOR. Inhibitors of mammalian AOX were tested to determine if they could interact with the piscine AOX. Environmental pollutants (17α-ethinyl estradiol and phenanthridine), an endogenous steroid (estradiol) and drugs (chlorpromazine and menadione) were found to be effective inhibitors and were classed as competitive, non-competitive and uncompetitive respectively using Lineweaver-Burk plots. The drug metabolite, oxipurinol, was a non-competitive inhibitor of rainbow trout XOR. In order to further characterise trout AOX protein purification was carried out. In contrast to mammalian AOX, the piscine enzyme was not thermotolerant at 55°C nor was it inhibited by benzamidine, thus heat treatment and affinity chromatography could not be used as a purification steps. Trout AOX was purified 210-fold using ammonium sulphate fractionation, together with ion exchange and gel filtration chromatography. The native molecular mass of the piscine AOX was 295 kDa, which is similar to mammalian AOXs. In conclusion this study yields new insight into groups of anthropogenic environmental pollutants, drugs and vitamins that are substrates and inhibitors of an ancestral vertebrate AOX. The toxicological relevance of these findings is discussed

Effect of diet supplemented with graded levels of garlic (Allium sativum L.) powder on growth performance, carcass characteristics, blood hematology, and biochemistry of broilers

Background: Recently, attention has been paid to using plants with medicinal efficacy as alternates to antibiotics and growth promoters. Garlic is a traditional plant used as a spice and herb in broilers. Aim: To investigate the effect of garlic powder on broiler performance, carcass characteristics, blood hematology, and biochemistry. Method: A total of 240 1-day-old broiler chicks (Cobb500) were purchased from a local hatchery and randomly distributed into four dietary treatments. Each treatment comprised 5 replicates with 12 chicks each. Garlic powder (Allium sativum) was supplemented as follows: 0.0%, 0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.3%. The diets were formulated to be approximately isocaloric and cover all nutrient requirements for broilers throughout two stages of growth periods: starter diets (1–21 days) and finisher diets (22–42 days). At the end of the experiment, one bird was chosen from each replicate to measure the carcass characteristics and blood was collected. Results: The findings showed that birds fed a diet supplemented by 0.3% garlic powder was significantly (p < 0.05) better in terms of body weight, body weight gain, and feed conversion ratio compared to those birds fed 0%, 0.1%, or 0.2% garlic powder. In addition, feeding 0.1% or 0.2% garlic powder significantly increased (p < 0.05) packed cell volume, total white blood cells, neutrophil, eosinophil, monocyte, and lymphocyte compared to the control group. Furthermore, garlic supplementation led to a decrease in alanine aminotransferase, total cholesterol, triglycerides, and low density lipoprotein compared to the control. At the same time, high density lipoprotein was significantly increased (p < 0.05) by garlic supplementation. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the supplementation of 0.3% garlic powder as a growth promoter leads to reducing the cost of production through improving growth performance and enhancing birds’ health

Hardware Implementation of ANFIS Controller for Gas-Particle Separations in Wet Scrubber System

Wet scrubber system has been used for the control of gas and particulate matter (PM) emissions from production industries. Due to non-linear characteristics, wet scrubbers are limited to the control of PM that is less than 5μm. In this study, an intelligent control technique based on Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) has been designed using MATLAB software. The ANFIS Controller has the advantage of solving nonlinearities in the proposed wet scrubber system by manipulating the scrubbing liquid droplet size for the effective control of particulate matter that is less than 5μm. From the simulation results, the controller was able to set PM concentration below the setpoint and provides smooth control response within short settling time. Hardware implementation of the ANFIS controller was performed using prototype wet scrubber system by considering Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller and MATLAB interface. The results show that the intelligent controller has achieved the desired objectives of controlling the PM concentration effectively by setting the value below the set point (20μg/m 3) which is the allowable PM concentration standard recommended by World Health Organization

Fuzzy based technique for microchip lead inspection using machine vision

This research develops a fuzzy based algorithm for microchip image lead Inspection. Leads are inspected for count, planarity, offset, pitch and span defects. Firstly, it utilizes fast preprocessing techniques and blobspsila features extraction methods to achieve high inspection rates. Using the features extracted, the algorithm first finds a proper thresholding value. It then applies fuzzy logic to make a decision on the status of the IC based on these features. The algorithm proposes a structured way for building the fuzzy systems as well as the associated set of inference rules

Image quality assessment of fast fourier transform domain watermarked images

Digital watermarking is the processing of embedding digital signature into the host media such as image, video, text, audio etc. During the watermarking process, images are subjected to variety of attacks such as noise in transmission channel, geometric attacks,compression, processing like filtering, etc, all this affect the visual quality of watermarked image. Thus, there is a need for image quality assessment of watermarked images in relation to the original images. Several measures of image metrics are available in the field of image processing however they are application based. This paper discusses watermarking in FFT domain and some of the image quality metric that can be applied. Experiments are conducted using the Full Reference (FR) images. We used Mean Square Error (MSE), Root Mean Square (RMS), Structural Similarity (SSIM), Image Fidelity Measure (IFM), Correlation Coefficient Index (CCI) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) as our quality assessment. Result shows that CCI, SSIM, and IFM are most appropriate for measuring quality of watermarking system

An attack proof intelligent digital watermarking based on safe region of fast fourier transform

Recent advancement in digital medium has created a need for secure transfer and transaction over the internet. The fact is that the current digital distribution and storage technologies are great threat to multimedia industries where unlimited number of perfect copies can be produce illegally. In this paper we discuss digital watermarking as a means of hiding owner’s copyright message in images. At the moment, the most critical issue faced by the watermarking system is determining the best place to hide watermark data. We propose a method, an attack proof intelligent system, in which Artificial Neural network is use to locate the Safe Region in the host image and the watermark is embedded based on the located Safe Region in Fast Fourier Transform domain. Experiment on a large set of natural images shows the robustness of the new scheme. The implementation results have shown that this watermarking algorithm has high level of imperceptibility and the watermark bit were all recovered correctly. Keywords: (Artificial Neural Network, Back Propagation algorithm, Fast Fourier Transform, FFT, Image watermarking, Safe Region,

Protective effect of garlic extract against maternal and foetal cerebellar damage induced by lead administration during pregnancy in rats

Background: In spite of its industrial usefulness and varied daily uses, lead (Pb) pollution is a widespread ecological problem that faces the humans in the 21th century. Pb was found to produces a wide range of toxic effects including neurotoxicity especially to the developing and young offspring. Recently, the utilisation of herbal plants has received a significant attention where there has been rising awareness in their therapeutic use; among these is the garlic. In light of the above, the current study is designed experimentally in female pregnant rats in order to investigate the beneficial role of garlic extract in the protection from the maternal and foetal cerebellar damage produced by administration of different doses of Pb during pregnancy. Materials and methods: Positively pregnant female rats were divided into five groups; one control group, two Pb-treated groups (exposed to 160 and 320 mg/kg b.w. of Pb, respectively) and two groups treated with both Pb and garlic (exposed to Pb as previous groups together with 250 mg/kg b.w./day of garlic extract). Treatments started from day 1 to day 20 of pregnancy, where the mother rats of different experimental groups were sacrificed to obtain the foetuses. Pb level in the maternal and foetal blood and cerebellum was estimated by spectrophotometry. Specimens of the cerebellum of different mother and foetal groups were processed to histological and immunohistochemical staining for microscopic examination. Results: The results showed that administration of Pb to pregnant rats resulted in a dose-dependent toxicity for both mothers and foetuses in the form of decrease in maternal weight gain, placental and foetal weights, brain weight and diminished foetal growth parameters, which were prominent in rat’s group treated with larger dose of Pb. In Pb-treated rats, Pb level in blood and cerebellum was high when compared with the control group. The histopathological examination of the cerebellum of treated dams and foetuses showed marked alterations mainly in the form of Purkinje cell degeneration and lack of development of foetal cerebellum. Co-treatment of garlic extract along with Pb resulted in a significant decrease in Pb levels as compared with those treated with Pb alone with improvement of the histopathological changes. Conclusions: This study was useful in evaluating the hazardous effects of uncontrolled use of Pb in general and in assessing the developmental and neurotoxicity of foetuses due to exposure during pregnancy in particular. Co-administration of garlic has beneficial effects in amelioration of Pb-induced neurotoxicity and reversing the histopathological changes of the cerebellum of mother rats and foetuses. (Folia Morphol 2018; 77, 1: 1–15

Structure of the flux lines lattice in NbSe2: Equilibrium state and influence of the magnetic history

We have performed small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) of the flux line lattice (FLL) in a Fe doped NbSe_2 sample which presents a large peak effect in the critical current. The scattered intensity and the width of the Bragg peaks of the equilibrium FLL indicate an ordered structure in the peak effect zone. The history dependence in the FLL structure has been studied using field cooled and zero field cooled procedures, and each state shows the same intensity of Bragg scattering and good orientational order. These results strongly suggest that the peak effect is unrelated to a bulk disordering transition, and confirm the role of a heterogeneous distribution of screening current.Comment: accepted in Phys. Rev.

A terminal selector prevents a Hox transcriptional switch to safeguard motor neuron identity throughout life

To become and remain functional, individual neuron types must select during development and maintain throughout life their distinct terminal identity features, such as expression of specific neurotransmitter receptors, ion channels and neuropeptides. Here, we report a molecular mechanism that enables cholinergic motor neurons (MNs) in the C. elegans ventral nerve cord to select and maintain their unique terminal identity. This mechanism relies on the dual function of the conserved terminal selector UNC-3 (Collier/Ebf). UNC-3 synergizes with LIN-39 (Scr/Dfd/Hox4-5) to directly co-activate multiple terminal identity traits specific to cholinergic MNs, but also antagonizes LIN-39's ability to activate terminal features of alternative neuronal identities. Loss of unc-3 causes a switch in the transcriptional targets of LIN-39, thereby alternative, not cholinergic MN-specific, terminal features become activated and locomotion defects occur. The strategy of a terminal selector preventing a transcriptional switch may constitute a general principle for safeguarding neuronal identity throughout life