Chemical Composition of Variety 'Nante' Hybrid Carrots Cultivated in Latvia

carrot is one of the important root vegetable crops, and it is highly nutritious as it contains appreciable amount of vitamins, minerals and β-carotene. The major objective of current research was to evaluate the chemical composition of carrot variety 'Nante' hybrids in general and to select the best samples for fresh-cut salad production. The research was accomplished on fresh in Latvia cultivated carrots harvested in Zemgale region in the first part of October, 2011 and immediately used for experiments. Late-bearing variety 'Nante' hybrid carrots were used for analysis: 'Nante/Berlikum', 'Nante/Maestro', 'Nante/Forto', 'Nante/Bolero' and 'Nante/Champion'. The quality parameters as moisture, soluble solid, firmness, b-carotene, carotenoid, color, polyphenols, total phenolic compounds and total antioxidant capacity were analyzed using standard methods. For fresh-cut salad production as more applicable could be recommended hybrids 'Nante/Forto' and 'Nante/Berlikum' - mainly because it-s higher nutritive value, as higher total phenolic compounds, polyphenols and pronounced antioxidant capacity.

Analysis of a Double Pipe Heat Exchanger Performance by Use of Porous Baffles and Nanofluids

The present work is a numerical simulation of nanofluids flow in a double pipe heat exchanger provided with porous baffles. The hot nanofluid flows in the inner cylinder, whereas the cold nanofluid circulates in the annular gap. The Darcy- Brinkman-Forchheimer model is adopted to describe the flow in the porous regions, and the governing equations with the appropriate boundary conditions are solved by the finite volume method. The results reveal that the addition of metallic nanoparticles enhances the rate of heat transfer in comparison to conventional fluids but this augmentation is accompanied by an increase in pressure drop. The highest heat exchanger performances are obtained when nanoparticles are added only to the cold fluid.

The Effect of Seed Inoculation (Pseudomonas putida+Bacillus lentus) and Different Levels of Fertilizers on Yield and Yield Components of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Cultivars

In order to study of The Effect of seed inoculation with Pseudomonas putida+Bacillus lentus on yield and yield components of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars, an experiment was carried out as factorial based on Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) in Agricultural Research Station of Shahrood University of Technology. Results showed that inoculation with Pseudomonas putida+Bacillus lentus promoted seed germination. Also, inoculation with Pseudomonas putida+Bacillus lentus significantly affected grain yield, Number of spikes per m2, Number of grain per spike and 1000-seed weight and There was not statistically significant difference between Chamran and Pishtaz cultivars . Finally, the dosages of chemical fertilizers currently applied in commercial wheat field in Iran (Shahrood region) could be reduced through proper combination of Pseudomonas putida+Bacillus lentus inoculation plus fertilization.

Image Segment Matching Using Affine- Invariant Regions

In this paper, a method for matching image segments using triangle-based (geometrical) regions is proposed. Triangular regions are formed from triples of vertex points obtained from a keypoint detector (SIFT). However, triangle regions are subject to noise and distortion around the edges and vertices (especially acute angles). Therefore, these triangles are expanded into parallelogramshaped regions. The extracted image segments inherit an important triangle property; the invariance to affine distortion. Given two images, matching corresponding regions is conducted by computing the relative affine matrix, rectifying one of the regions w.r.t. the other one, then calculating the similarity between the reference and rectified region. The experimental tests show the efficiency and robustness of the proposed algorithm against geometrical distortion.

Automatic Map Simplification for Visualization on Mobile Devices

The visualization of geographic information on mobile devices has become popular as the widespread use of mobile Internet. The mobility of these devices brings about much convenience to people-s life. By the add-on location-based services of the devices, people can have an access to timely information relevant to their tasks. However, visual analysis of geographic data on mobile devices presents several challenges due to the small display and restricted computing resources. These limitations on the screen size and resources may impair the usability aspects of the visualization applications. In this paper, a variable-scale visualization method is proposed to handle the challenge of small mobile display. By merging multiple scales of information into a single image, the viewer is able to focus on the interesting region, while having a good grasp of the surrounding context. This is essentially visualizing the map through a fisheye lens. However, the fisheye lens induces undesirable geometric distortion in the peripheral, which renders the information meaningless. The proposed solution is to apply map generalization that removes excessive information around the peripheral and an automatic smoothing process to correct the distortion while keeping the local topology consistent. The proposed method is applied on both artificial and real geographical data for evaluation.

Regional Security Issue: Central Asian Countries and NATO Cooperation (On the Example of Kazakhstan)

Kazakhstan attaches the great importance to cooperation with European countries within the framework of multilateral security organizations such as NATO. Cooperation of Kazakhstan with the NATO is a prominent aspect of strengthening of regional security of republic. It covers a wide spectrum of areas, such as reform of sector of defense and security, military operative compatibility of armed forces of NATO member-countries and Kazakhstan, civil emergency planning and scientific cooperation. The cooperation between Kazakhstan and NATO is based on the mutual interests of neighboring republics in the region so that the existing forms of cooperation between Kazakhstan and NATO will not be negatively perceived both in Asia as well as among CIS countries. Kazakhstan tailors its participation in the PfP programme through an annual Individual Partnership Programme, selecting those activities that will help achieve the goals it has set in the IPAP. Level of cooperation within the limits of PfP essentially differs on each republic. Cooperation with Kazakhstan progressed most of all since has been signed IPAP from the NATO

Electronic Voting System using Mobile Terminal

Electronic voting (E-voting) using an internet has been recently performed in some nations and regions. There is no spatial restriction which a voter directly has to visit the polling place, but an e-voting using an internet has to go together the computer in which the internet connection is possible. Also, this voting requires an access code for the e-voting through the beforehand report of a voter. To minimize these disadvantages, we propose a method in which a voter, who has the wireless certificate issued in advance, uses its own cellular phone for an e-voting without the special registration for a vote. Our proposal allows a voter to cast his vote in a simple and convenient way without the limit of time and location, thereby increasing the voting rate, and also ensuring confidentiality and anonymity.

An Investigation of the Cu-Ni Compound Cathode Materials Affecting on Transient Recovery Voltage

The purpose of this research was to analyze and compare the instability of a contact surface between Copper and Nickel an alloy cathode in vacuum, the different ratio of Copper and Copper were conducted at 1%, 2% and 4% by using the cathode spot model. The transient recovery voltage is predicted. The cathode spot region is recognized as the collisionless space charge sheath connected with singly ionized collisional plasma. It was found that the transient voltage is decreased with increasing the percentage of an amount of Nickel in cathode materials.

Combustion Characteristics of Syngas and Natural Gas in Micro-pilot Ignited Dual-fuel Engine

The objective of this study is to investigate the combustion in a pilot-ignited supercharged dual-fuel engine, fueled with different types of gaseous fuels under various equivalence ratios. It is found that if certain operating conditions are maintained, conventional dual-fuel engine combustion mode can be transformed to the combustion mode with the two-stage heat release. This mode of combustion was called the PREMIER (PREmixed Mixture Ignition in the End-gas Region) combustion. During PREMIER combustion, initially, the combustion progresses as the premixed flame propagation and then, due to the mixture autoignition in the end-gas region, ahead of the propagating flame front, the transition occurs with the rapid increase in the heat release rate.

Multiple Sequence Alignment Using Optimization Algorithms

Proteins or genes that have similar sequences are likely to perform the same function. One of the most widely used techniques for sequence comparison is sequence alignment. Sequence alignment allows mismatches and insertion/deletion, which represents biological mutations. Sequence alignment is usually performed only on two sequences. Multiple sequence alignment, is a natural extension of two-sequence alignment. In multiple sequence alignment, the emphasis is to find optimal alignment for a group of sequences. Several applicable techniques were observed in this research, from traditional method such as dynamic programming to the extend of widely used stochastic optimization method such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Simulated Annealing. A framework with combination of Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing is presented to solve Multiple Sequence Alignment problem. The Genetic Algorithm phase will try to find new region of solution while Simulated Annealing can be considered as an alignment improver for any near optimal solution produced by GAs.

Study of Remote Sensing and Satellite Images Ability in Preparing Agricultural Land Use Map (ALUM)

In this research the Preparation of Land use map of scanner LISS III satellite data, belonging to the IRS in the Aghche region in Isfahan province, is studied carefully. For this purpose, the IRS satellite images of August 2008 and various land preparation uses in region including rangelands, irrigation farming, dry farming, gardens and urban areas were separated and identified. Therefore, the GPS and Erdas Imaging software were used and three methods of Maximum Likelihood, Mahalanobis Distance and Minimum Distance were analyzed. In each of these methods, matrix error and Kappa index were calculated and accuracy of each method, based on percentages: 53.13, 56.64 and 48.44, were obtained respectively. Considering the low accuracy of these methods in separation of land preparation use, the visual interpretation of the map was used. Finally, regional visits of 150 points were noted at random and no error was observed. It shows that the map prepared by visual interpretation is in high accuracy. Although the probable errors due to visual interpretation and geometric correction might happen but the desired accuracy of the map which is more than 85 percent is reliable.

Increase of Heat Index over Bangladesh: Impact of Climate Change

Heat Index describes the combined effect of temperature and humidity on human body. This combined effect is causing a serious threat to the health of people because of the changing climate. With climate change, climate variability and thus the occurrence of heat waves is likely to increase. Evidence is emerging from the analysis of long-term climate records of an increase in the frequency and duration of extreme temperature events in all over Bangladesh particularly during summer. Summer season has prolonged while winters have become short in Bangladesh. Summers have become hotter and thus affecting the lives of the people engaged in outdoor activities during scorching sun hours. In 2003 around 62 people died due to heat wave across the country. In this paper Bangladesh is divided in four regions and heat index has been calculated from 1960 to 2010 in these regions of the country. The aim of this paper is to identify the spots most vulnerable to heat strokes and heat waves due to high heat index. The results show upward trend of heat index in almost all the regions of Bangladesh. The highest increase in heat index value has been observed in areas of South-west region and North-west Region. The highest change in average heat index has been found in Jessore by almost 5.50C.

Increasing Fishery Economic Added Value through Post Fishing Program: Cold Storage Program

The purpose of this paper is to guide the effort in improving the economic added value of Indonesian fisheries product through post fishing program, which is cold storage program. Indonesia's fisheries potential has been acknowledged by the world. FAO (2009) stated that Indonesia is one of the tenth highest producers of fishery products in the world. Based on BPS (Statistics Indonesia data), the national fisheries production in 2011 reached 5.714 million tons, which 93.55% came from marine fisheries and 6.45% from open waters. Indonesian territory consist of 2/3 of Indonesian waters, has given enormous benefits for Indonesia, especially fishermen. To improve the economic level of fishermen requires efforts to develop fisheries business unit. On of the efforts is by improving the quality of products which are marketed in the regional and international levels. It is certainly need the support of the existence of various fishery facilities (infrastructure to superstructure), one of which is cold storage. Given the many benefits of cold storage as a means of processing of fishery resources, Indonesia Maritime Security Coordinating Board (IMSCB) as one of the maritime institutions for maritime security and safety, has a program to empower the coastal community through encourages the development of cold storage in the middle and lower fishery business unit. The development of cold storage facilities which able to run its maximum role requires synergistic efforts of various parties.

Human Facial Expression Recognition using MANFIS Model

Facial expression analysis plays a significant role for human computer interaction. Automatic analysis of human facial expression is still a challenging problem with many applications. In this paper, we propose neuro-fuzzy based automatic facial expression recognition system to recognize the human facial expressions like happy, fear, sad, angry, disgust and surprise. Initially facial image is segmented into three regions from which the uniform Local Binary Pattern (LBP) texture features distributions are extracted and represented as a histogram descriptor. The facial expressions are recognized using Multiple Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (MANFIS). The proposed system designed and tested with JAFFE face database. The proposed model reports 94.29% of classification accuracy.

Optimal Design of Two-Channel Recursive Parallelogram Quadrature Mirror Filter Banks

This paper deals with the optimal design of two-channel recursive parallelogram quadrature mirror filter (PQMF) banks. The analysis and synthesis filters of the PQMF bank are composed of two-dimensional (2-D) recursive digital all-pass filters (DAFs) with nonsymmetric half-plane (NSHP) support region. The design problem can be facilitated by using the 2-D doubly complementary half-band (DC-HB) property possessed by the analysis and synthesis filters. For finding the coefficients of the 2-D recursive NSHP DAFs, we appropriately formulate the design problem to result in an optimization problem that can be solved by using a weighted least-squares (WLS) algorithm in the minimax (L∞) optimal sense. The designed 2-D recursive PQMF bank achieves perfect magnitude response and possesses satisfactory phase response without requiring extra phase equalizer. Simulation results are also provided for illustration and comparison.

Verification of K-ω SST Turbulence Model for Supersonic Internal Flows

In this work, we try to find the best setting of Computational Fluid Dynamic solver available for the problems in the field of supersonic internal flows. We used the supersonic air-toair ejector to represent the typical problem in focus. There are multiple oblique shock waves, shear layers, boundary layers and normal shock interacting in the supersonic ejector making this device typical in field of supersonic inner flows. Modeling of shocks in general is demanding on the physical model of fluid, because ordinary conservation equation does not conform to real conditions in the near-shock region as found in many works. From these reasons, we decided to take special care about solver setting in this article by means of experimental approach of color Schlieren pictures and pneumatic measurement. Fast pressure transducers were used to measure unsteady static pressure in regimes with normal shock in mixing chamber. Physical behavior of ejector in several regimes is discussed. Best choice of eddy-viscosity setting is discussed on the theoretical base. The final verification of the k-ω SST is done on the base of comparison between experiment and numerical results.

A 25-year Monitoring of the Air Pollution Depicted by Plane Tree Species in Tehran

Tehran, one of the heavily-populated capitals, is severely suffering from increasing air pollution. To show a documented trend of such pollutants during last years, plane tree species (Platanus orientalis) were suited to be studied as indicators, for the species have been planted throughout the city many years ago. Two areas (Saadatabad and Narmak districts) allotting different contents of crowed and highly-traffic routs but the same ecological characteristics were selected. Twelve sample individuals were cored twice perpendicularly in each area. Tree-rings of each core were measured by a binocular microscope and separated annually for the last 25 years. Two heavy metals including Cd and Pb accompanied by a mineral element (Ca) were analyzed using Hatch method. Treerings analysis of the two areas showed different groups in term of physiologically ability as the growths were plunged during the last 10 years in Saadatabad district and showed a slight decrease in the same period for another studying area. In direct contrast to decreasing growth trend in Saadatabad, all three mentioned elements increased sharply during last 25 years in the same area. When it came to Narmak district, the trend was completely different with Saadatabad. There were some fluctuations in absorbing trace elements like tree-rings widths were, yet calcium showed an upward trend all the last 25 years. The results of the study proved the possibility of using tree species of each region to monitor its air pollution trends of the past, hence to depict a pollution assessment of a populated city for last years and then to make appropriate decisions for the future as it is well-known what the trend is. On the other hand, risen values of calcium (as the stress-indicator element) accompanied by increased trace elements suggests non-sustainable state of the trees.

Evaluation of Geosynthetic Forces in GRSRW under Dynamic Condition

Geosynthetics have proved to be suitable for reinforced soil retaining walls. Based on the increasing uses of geosynthetic reinforced soil systems in the regions, which bear frequent earthquakes, the study of dynamic behavior of structures seems necessary. Determining the reinforcement forces is; therefore, one of the most important and main points of discussions in designing retaining walls, by which we prevent from conservative planning. Thus, this paper intended to investigate the effects of such parameters as wall height, acceleration type, vertical spacing of reinforcement, type of reinforcement and soil type on forces and deformation through numerical modeling of the geosynthetic reinforced soil retaining walls (GRSRW) under dynamic loading with finite difference method by using FLAC. The findings indicate rather positive results with each parameter.

Synthetic Transmit Aperture Method in Medical Ultrasonic Imaging

The work describes the use of a synthetic transmit aperture (STA) with a single element transmitting and all elements receiving in medical ultrasound imaging. STA technique is a novel approach to today-s commercial systems, where an image is acquired sequentially one image line at a time that puts a strict limit on the frame rate and the amount of data needed for high image quality. The STA imaging allows to acquire data simultaneously from all directions over a number of emissions, and the full image can be reconstructed. In experiments a 32-element linear transducer array with 0.48 mm inter-element spacing was used. Single element transmission aperture was used to generate a spherical wave covering the full image region. The 2D ultrasound images of wire phantom are presented obtained using the STA and commercial ultrasound scanner Antares to demonstrate the benefits of the SA imaging.

The Necessity of Optimized Management on Surface Water Sources of Zayanderood Basin

One of the efficient factors in comprehensive development of an area is to provide water sources and on the other hand the appropriate management of them. Population growth and nourishment security for such a population necessitate the achievement of constant development besides the reforming of traditional management in order to increase the profit of sources; In this case, the constant exploitation of sources for the next generations will be considered in this program. The achievement of this development without the consideration and possibility of water development will be too difficult. Zayanderood basin with 41500 areas in square kilometers contains 7 sub-basins and 20 units of hydrologic. In this basin area, from the entire environment descending, just a small part will enter into the river currents and the rest will be out of efficient usage by various ways. The most important surface current of this basin is Zayanderood River with 403 kilometers length which is originated from east slopes of Zagros mount and after draining of this basin area it will enter into Gaavkhooni pond. The existence of various sources and consumptions of water in Zayanderood basin, water transfer of the other basin areas into this basin, of course the contradiction between the upper and lower beneficiaries, the existence of worthwhile natural ecosystems such as Gaavkhooni swamp in this basin area and finally, the drought condition and lack of water in this area all necessitate the existence of comprehensive management of water sources in this central basin area of Iran as this method is a kind of management which considers the development and the management of water sources as an equilibrant way to increase the economical and social benefits. In this study, it is tried to survey the network of surface water sources of basin in upper and lower sections; at the most, according to the difficulties and deficiencies of an efficient management of water sources in this basin area, besides the difficulties of water draining and the destructive phenomenon of flood-water, the appropriate guidelines according to the region conditions are presented in order to prevent the deviation of water in upper sections and development of regions in lower sections of Zayanderood dam.