Analytical Authentication of Butter Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy Coupled with Chemometrics

Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics was used to distinguish between butter samples and non-butter samples. Further, quantification of the content of margarine in adulterated butter samples was investigated. Fingerprinting region (1400-800 cm–1) was used to develop unsupervised pattern recognition (Principal Component Analysis, PCA), supervised modeling (Soft Independent Modelling by Class Analogy, SIMCA), classification (Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis, PLS-DA) and regression (Partial Least Squares Regression, PLS-R) models. PCA of the fingerprinting region shows a clustering of the two sample types. All samples were classified in their rightful class by SIMCA approach; however, nine adulterated samples (between 1% and 30% w/w of margarine) were classified as belonging both at the butter class and at the non-butter one. In the two-class PLS-DA model’s (R2 = 0.73, RMSEP, Root Mean Square Error of Prediction = 0.26% w/w) sensitivity was 71.4% and Positive Predictive Value (PPV) 100%. Its threshold was calculated at 7% w/w of margarine in adulterated butter samples. Finally, PLS-R model (R2 = 0.84, RMSEP = 16.54%) was developed. PLS-DA was a suitable classification tool and PLS-R a proper quantification approach. Results demonstrate that FT-IR spectroscopy combined with PLS-R can be used as a rapid, simple and safe method to identify pure butter samples from adulterated ones and to determine the grade of adulteration of margarine in butter samples.

Genetic Characterization of Barley Genotypes via Inter-Simple Sequence Repeat

In this study, polymerase chain reaction based Inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) from DNA fingerprinting techniques were used to investigate the genetic relationships among barley crossbreed genotypes in Turkey. It is important that selection based on the genetic base in breeding programs via ISSR, in terms of breeding time. 14 ISSR primers generated a total of 97 bands, of which 81 (83.35%) were polymorphic. The highest total resolution power (RP) value was obtained from the F2 (0.53) and M16 (0.51) primers. According to the ISSR result, the genetic similarity index changed between 0.64–095; Lane 3 with Line 6 genotypes were the closest, while Line 36 were the most distant ones. The ISSR markers were found to be promising for assessing genetic diversity in barley crossbreed genotypes.

A Non-Parametric Based Mapping Algorithm for Use in Audio Fingerprinting

Over the past few years, the online multimedia collection has grown at a fast pace. Several companies showed interest to study the different ways to organise the amount of audio information without the need of human intervention to generate metadata. In the past few years, many applications have emerged on the market which are capable of identifying a piece of music in a short time. Different audio effects and degradation make it much harder to identify the unknown piece. In this paper, an audio fingerprinting system which makes use of a non-parametric based algorithm is presented. Parametric analysis is also performed using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). The feature extraction methods employed are the Mel Spectrum Coefficients and the MPEG-7 basic descriptors. Bin numbers replaced the extracted feature coefficients during the non-parametric modelling. The results show that nonparametric analysis offer potential results as the ones mentioned in the literature.

Isolation and Identification of Diacylglycerol Acyltransferase Type- 2 (GAT2) Genes from Three Egyptian Olive Cultivars

Aim of this work was to study the genetic basis for oil accumulation in olive fruit via tracking DGAT2 (Diacylglycerol acyltransferase type-2) gene in three Egyptian Origen Olive cultivars namely Toffahi, Hamed and Maraki using molecular marker techniques and bioinformatics tools. Results illustrate that, firstly: specific genomic band of Maraki cultivars was identified as DGAT2 (Diacylglycerol acyltransferase type-2) and identical for this gene in Olea europaea with 100% of similarity. Secondly, differential genomic band of Maraki cultivars which produced from RAPD fingerprinting technique reflected predicted distinguished sequence which identified as DGAT2 (Diacylglycerol acyltransferase type-2) in Fragaria vesca subsp. Vesca with 76% of sequential similarity. Third and finally, specific genomic specific band of Hamed cultivars was identified as two fragments, 1- Olea europaea cultivar Koroneiki diacylglycerol acyltransferase type 2 mRNA, complete cds with two matches regions with 99% or 2- Predicted: Fragaria vesca subsp. vesca diacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 2-like (LOC101313050), mRNA with 86 % of similarity.

Adaptive WiFi Fingerprinting for Location Approximation

WiFi has become an essential technology that is widely used nowadays. It is famous due to its convenience to be used with mobile devices. This is especially true for Internet users worldwide that use WiFi connections. There are many location based services that are available nowadays which uses Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) signal fingerprinting. A common example that is gaining popularity in this era would be Foursquare. In this work, the WiFi signal would be used to estimate the user or client’s location. Similar to GPS, fingerprinting method needs a floor plan to increase the accuracy of location estimation. Still, the factor of inconsistent WiFi signal makes the estimation defer at different time intervals. Given so, an adaptive method is needed to obtain the most accurate signal at all times. WiFi signals are heavily distorted by external factors such as physical objects, radio frequency interference, electrical interference, and environmental factors to name a few. Due to these factors, this work uses a method of reducing the signal noise and estimation using the Nearest Neighbour based on past activities of the signal to increase the signal accuracy up to more than 80%. The repository yet increases the accuracy by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) pattern matching. The repository acts as the server cum support of the client side application decision. Numerous previous works has adapted the methods of collecting signal strengths in the repository over the years, but mostly were just static. In this work, proposed solutions on how the adaptive method is done to match the signal received to the data in the repository are highlighted. With the said approach, location estimation can be done more accurately. Adaptive update allows the latest location fingerprint to be stored in the repository. Furthermore, any redundant location fingerprints are removed and only the updated version of the fingerprint is stored in the repository. How the location estimation of the user can be predicted would be highlighted more in the proposed solution section. After some studies on previous works, it is found that the Artificial Neural Network is the most feasible method to deploy in updating the repository and making it adaptive. The Artificial Neural Network functions are to do the pattern matching of the WiFi signal to the existing data available in the repository.

Comparative Evaluation of Color-Based Video Signatures in the Presence of Various Distortion Types

The robustness of color-based signatures in the presence of a selection of representative distortions is investigated. Considered are five signatures that have been developed and evaluated within a new modular framework. Two signatures presented in this work are directly derived from histograms gathered from video frames. The other three signatures are based on temporal information by computing difference histograms between adjacent frames. In order to obtain objective and reproducible results, the evaluations are conducted based on several randomly assembled test sets. These test sets are extracted from a video repository that contains a wide range of broadcast content including documentaries, sports, news, movies, etc. Overall, the experimental results show the adequacy of color-histogram-based signatures for video fingerprinting applications and indicate which type of signature should be preferred in the presence of certain distortions.

Application of a Novel Audio Compression Scheme in Automatic Music Recommendation, Digital Rights Management and Audio Fingerprinting

Rapid progress in audio compression technology has contributed to the explosive growth of music available in digital form today. In a reversal of ideas, this work makes use of a recently proposed efficient audio compression scheme to develop three important applications in the context of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) for the effective manipulation of large music databases, namely automatic music recommendation (AMR), digital rights management (DRM) and audio finger-printing for song identification. The performance of these three applications has been evaluated with respect to a database of songs collected from a diverse set of genres.

GSM-Based Approach for Indoor Localization

Ability of accurate and reliable location estimation in indoor environment is the key issue in developing great number of context aware applications and Location Based Services (LBS). Today, the most viable solution for localization is the Received Signal Strength (RSS) fingerprinting based approach using wireless local area network (WLAN). This paper presents two RSS fingerprinting based approaches – first we employ widely used WLAN based positioning as a reference system and then investigate the possibility of using GSM signals for positioning. To compare them, we developed a positioning system in real world environment, where realistic RSS measurements were collected. Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network was used as the approximation function that maps RSS fingerprints and locations. Experimental results indicate advantage of WLAN based approach in the sense of lower localization error compared to GSM based approach, but GSM signal coverage by far outreaches WLAN coverage and for some LBS services requiring less precise accuracy our results indicate that GSM positioning can also be a viable solution.

An Advanced Approach Based on Artificial Neural Networks to Identify Environmental Bacteria

Environmental micro-organisms include a large number of taxa and some species that are generally considered nonpathogenic, but can represent a risk in certain conditions, especially for elderly people and immunocompromised individuals. Chemotaxonomic identification techniques are powerful tools for environmental micro-organisms, and cellular fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) content is a powerful fingerprinting identification technique. A system based on an unsupervised artificial neural network (ANN) was set up using the fatty acid profiles of standard bacterial strains, obtained by gas-chromatography, used as learning data. We analysed 45 certified strains belonging to Acinetobacter, Aeromonas, Alcaligenes, Aquaspirillum, Arthrobacter, Bacillus, Brevundimonas, Enterobacter, Flavobacterium, Micrococcus, Pseudomonas, Serratia, Shewanella and Vibrio genera. A set of 79 bacteria isolated from a drinking water line (AMGA, the major water supply system in Genoa) were used as an example for identification compared to standard MIDI method. The resulting ANN output map was found to be a very powerful tool to identify these fresh isolates.

Hybrid Modulation Technique for Fingerprinting

This paper addresses an efficient technique to embed and detect digital fingerprint code. Orthogonal modulation method is a straightforward and widely used approach for digital fingerprinting but shows several limitations in computational cost and signal efficiency. Coded modulation method can solve these limitations in theory. However it is difficult to perform well in practice if host signals are not available during tracing colluders, other kinds of attacks are applied, and the size of fingerprint code becomes large. In this paper, we propose a hybrid modulation method, in which the merits of or-thogonal modulation and coded modulation method are combined so that we can achieve low computational cost and high signal efficiency. To analyze the performance, we design a new fingerprint code based on GD-PBIBD theory and modulate this code into images by our method using spread-spectrum watermarking on frequency domain. The results show that the proposed method can efficiently handle large fingerprint code and trace colluders against averaging attacks.

Implementing an Adaptive Behavior for Spread Spectrum Watermarking Procedures

The advances in multimedia and networking technologies have created opportunities for Internet pirates, who can easily copy multimedia contents and illegally distribute them on the Internet, thus violating the legal rights of content owners. This paper describes how a simple and well-known watermarking procedure based on a spread spectrum method and a watermark recovery by correlation can be improved to effectively and adaptively protect MPEG-2 videos distributed on the Internet. In fact, the procedure, in its simplest form, is vulnerable to a variety of attacks. However, its security and robustness have been increased, and its behavior has been made adaptive with respect to the video terminals used to open the videos and the network transactions carried out to deliver them to buyers. In fact, such an adaptive behavior enables the proposed procedure to efficiently embed watermarks, and this characteristic makes the procedure well suited to be exploited in web contexts, where watermarks usually generated from fingerprinting codes have to be inserted into the distributed videos “on the fly", i.e. during the purchase web transactions.

A Robust Audio Fingerprinting Algorithm in MP3 Compressed Domain

In this paper, a new robust audio fingerprinting algorithm in MP3 compressed domain is proposed with high robustness to time scale modification (TSM). Instead of simply employing short-term information of the MP3 stream, the new algorithm extracts the long-term features in MP3 compressed domain by using the modulation frequency analysis. Our experiment has demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve a hit rate of above 95% in audio retrieval and resist the attack of 20% TSM. It has lower bit error rate (BER) performance compared to the other algorithms. The proposed algorithm can also be used in other compressed domains, such as AAC.