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Recent advances in the use of animal-sourced gelatine as natural polymers for food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical applications
No full textGelatine is used as an excipient for various pharmaceutical dosage forms, such as capsule shells (both hard and soft), tablets, suspensions, emulsions and injections (e.g. plasma expanders). It is also broadly used in various industries such as food and cosmetics. Gelatine is a biopolymer obtained from discarded or unused materials of bovine, porcine, ovine, poultry and marine industrial farms. The discarded materials can be the skin, tendons, cartilages, bones and connective tissues. Gelatine sourced from animals is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce. The potential needs of gelatine cannot be overemphasised. Rising demands, health concerns and religious issues have heightened the need for alternative sources of gelatine. This review presents the various industrial uses of gelatine and the latest developments in producing gelatine from various sources
Denoising module for wood texture images
No full textThe need for an effective automatic wood species identification system is becoming critical in the timber industry with the intention to sustain and improve productivity and quality of the timber products in furniture industry and housing industry. The first stage in an automatic wood recognition system is the image acquisition process where wood images are captured and stored in the database. Good quality wood images must be obtained during the acquisition process in order to guarantee effective results. One of the main issues in identifying wood species effectively is the blurred images of wood texture captured during the image acquisition process. To cater the above-mentioned problem, wood image denoising process is crucial for the timber industry. An image denoising module is proposed to improve the image representation of the wood texture by using the expectation–maximization (EM) adaption algorithm. Then, image quality assessment techniques are applied to evaluate the quality of the denoised wood images. Finally, the performance of the proposed denoising technique is compared to several denoising techniques at various noise levels. In this research, 52 wood species are used where the size of each wood image is 768 × 576 pixels with 256 gray levels at 300 dpi resolution. Experimental results tabulate the mean and standard deviation of the image quality assessment values for each technique at various noise levels. It can be seen that the proposed method EM adaption filter gives the best peak signal-to-noise ratio performance compared to other techniques. In conclusion, the proposed EM adaptation method gives the best performance in denoising the wood texture images at various noise levels compared to other techniques, such as homomorphic filtering, direct inverse filter, Wiener filter, constrained least squares, Lucy–Richardson algorithm, and EM filter
Investigating the power of goodness-of-fit tests for multinomial logistic regression
No full textGoodness-of-fit tests are important to assess if the model fits the data. In this paper we investigate the Type I error and power of two goodness-of-fit tests for multinomial logistic regression via a simulation study. The GoF test using partitioning strategy (clustering) in the covariate space, (Formula presented.) was compared with another test, Cg which was based on grouping of predicted probabilities. The power of both tests was investigated when the quadratic term or an interaction term were omitted from the model. The proposed test (Formula presented.) shows good Type I error and ample power except for models with highly skewed covariate distribution. The proposed test (Formula presented.) also has good power in detecting omission of continuous interaction term.The application on a real dataset was performed to illustrate the use of goodness-of-fit test for multinomial logistic regression in practice using R
Promoter effect of microbes in slope eco-engineering: Effects on plant growth, soil quality and erosion rate at different vegetation densities
No full textSlope revegetation is claimed to be accelerated with the right choice of plants and effective planting techniques for the root establishment. In addition, microorganisms also promote plant growth via nutrient intensification and soil-root enhancement, hence may alleviate soil surface erosion. Thus, this study is aimed to identify the effects of microbial application on plant growth, soil properties and soil erosion rate at different vegetation densities. Six experimental plots were set up at the Guthrie Corridor Expressway, Selangor, Malaysia, with different amount of microbial application and vegetation density. Dense vegetation cover with microbial application (DM) plot exhibited the highest soil microbes abundance and fungal/bacteria (F/B) ratio after 24 months of observation. Meanwhile, photosynthetic rate and root length density of Lantana camara in the DM plot revealed the highest rate, followed by Melastoma malabathricum and Bauhinia purpurea. Moreover, the soil of DM plot had also increased in CEC, total N, and respiration rate, reflecting the soil quality. Consequently, erosion rate of DM plot exhibited the 52.6% of total decrement from the initial experiment. Thus, microbes are proven to be relatively good promoters for the improvement of plant growth performance, the soil quality and alleviate the soil erosion of the slope
Plagioneurin B, a potent isolated compound induces apoptotic signalling pathways and cell cycle arrest in ovarian cancer cells
No full textPlagioneurin B belongs to acetogenin group has well-established class of compounds. Acetogenin group has attracted worldwide attention in the past few years due their biological abilities as inhibitors for several types of tumour cells. Plagioneurin B was isolated via conventional chromatography and tested for thorough mechanistic apoptosis activity on human ovarian cancer cells (CAOV-3). Its structure was also docked at several possible targets using Autodock tools software. Our findings showed that plagioneurin B successfully inhibits the growth of CAOV-3 cells at IC 50 of 0.62 µM. The existence of apoptotic bodies, cell membrane blebbing and chromatin condensation indicated the hallmark of apoptosis. Increase of Annexin V-FITC bound to phosphatidylserine confirmed the apoptosis induction in the cells. The apoptosis event was triggered through the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways via activation of caspases 8 and 9, respectively. Stimulation of caspase 3 and the presence of DNA ladder suggested downstream apoptotic signalling were initiated. Further confirmation of apoptosis was conducted at the molecular levels where up-regulation in Bax, as well as down-regulation of Bcl-2, Hsp-70 and survivin were observed. Plagioneurin B was also seen to arrest CAOV-3 cells cycle at the G2/M phase. Docking simulation of plagioneurin B with CD95 demonstrated that the high binding affinity and hydrogen bonds formation may explain the capability of plagioneurin B to trigger apoptosis. This study is therefore importance in finding the effective compound that may offer an alternative drug for ovarian cancer treatment
Structural and transport phenomena of urocanate-based proton carrier in sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) membrane composite
No full textProton transport is one of crucial phenomena in electrolytic part highly considered to overcome a limit in fuel cell efficiency improvement. Proton conducting organic electrolyte was modeled and simulated at atomistic level of calculation by doping of butyl urocanate (C4U), a composite material with imidazole substructure, with sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK) amorphous membrane at various working temperature. Molecular dynamics simulations were used to investigate structural and dynamics characteristic of C4U in the membrane comparing with the SPEEK-hydronium membrane model as a control. From simulations, thermal effect on water and proton carriers cluster surrounding the sulfonate groups was explored. At higher temperature, the more transport dynamics of C4U ions in SPEEK membranes were found than that of hydronium ions in the control system. Likewise, phase separation of hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts was taken into consideration here. A critical role of the enhancing proton conductivity by increasing the diffusion coefficient at temperature beyond C4U melting point in composite polymer membrane was emphasized
Dimensionality in Language Learners’ Personal Epistemologies
No full textThis study aimed to examine dimensionality in language learners' epistemic beliefs. To achieve this, a survey was conducted using a newly-developed research instrument-"Language Learners' Epistemic Beliefs" (LLEB) questionnaire. Based on a review of literature, it was proposed that language learners' epistemic beliefs would cluster in three dimensions: (1) the nature of knowledge, (2) the authority to knowledge, and (3) the process of gaining linguistic knowledge. The data for this study were collected from 23 students majoring in languages and linguistics in a large Malaysian public university. Exploratory factor analysis of the data uncovered five latent dimensions in the students' personal epistemologies. They were named "Authority to knowledge", "Nature of knowledge", "Concentration", "Hard work", and "Effort". These findings did not refute the proposed conceptualization of language learners' personal epistemologies as measured by the LLEB questionnaire. However, they revealed that discipline-specific epistemologies may have more complex structures. For example, an important finding was that the beliefs pertaining to the process of learning, which are considered as 'peripheral' to the function of personal epistemologies by some researchers, occupied a distinct and prominent position in the language learners' personal epistemologies
The Persian soccer spectator behaviour inventory (PSSBI): Development and psychometric properties of the PSSBI using structural equation modelling (SEM)
No full textPsychometric instruments assessing spectator motives for attending professional sports have mostly been validated in a Western context. The present study describes the development of the Persian Soccer Spectator Behaviour Inventory (PSSBI). The 21-item PSSBI was completed by 1385 Iranian spectators. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that the 21 items loaded on four factors: Promotional Incentives, Game Attractiveness, Schedule Considerations, and Economic Considerations. These factors demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and explained 65.48% of the total variance. It is concluded that the resulting 20-item PSSBI is a viable tool for assessing football fans’ motives for attending professional football matches in Iran
Investigation of Shear Wave Velocity by Using Multi-Channel Analysis of Surface Wave Method for Microzonation Map Development and Its Application to Industrial Frame Structures
No full textThe present study focuses on determining soil dynamic property, specifically the shear wave velocity at the top 30 m, to establish seismic microzonation maps and to evaluate the effect of soil flexibility on the frame structures of industrial building design in terms of drift. The model of industrial building steel frame was built on the basis of a 3D model using the SAP2000 software. The applications of spring stiffness for rigid footing spring constraints include average shear wave velocity to define the shallow foundation of the structure. The flexible- and fixed-base models were developed to evaluate the structural performance
Compression Header Analyzer Intrusion Detection System (CHA - IDS) for 6LoWPAN Communication Protocol
No full textPrior 6LoWPAN intrusion detection system (IDS) utilized several features to detect various malicious activities. However, these IDS methods only detect specific attack but fails when the attacks are combined. In this paper, we propose an IDS known as compression header analyzer intrusion detection system (CHA-IDS) that analyzes 6LoWPAN compression header data to mitigate the individual and combination routing attacks. CHA-IDS is a multi-agent system framework that capture and manage raw data for data collection, analysis, and system actions. The proposed CHA-IDS utilize best first and greedy stepwise with correlation-based feature selection to determine only significant features needed for the intrusion detection. These features are then tested using six machine learning algorithms to find the best classification method that able to distinguish between an attack and non-attack and then from the best classification method, we devise a rule to be implemented in Tmote Sky. To ensure the reliability of our proposed method, we evaluate the CHA-IDS with three types of combination attacks known as hello flood, sinkhole, and wormhole. We also compare our results in term of accuracy of detection, energy overhead, and memory consumption with the prior 6LoWPAN-IDS implementation such as SVELTE and Pongle's IDS. The results show that CHA-IDS performs better than the aforementioned methods with 99% true positive rate and consumed low energy overhead and memory that fit in constrained device such Tmote Sky