Characterization of an Acetobacter Strain Isolated from Iranian Peach that Tolerates High Temperatures and Ethanol Concentrations

Vinegar is a precious food additive and complement as well as effective preservative against food spoilage. Recently traditional vinegar production has been improved using various natural substrates and fruits such as grape, palm, cherry, coconut, date, sugarcane, rice and balsam. These neoclassical fermentations resulted in several vinegar types with different tastes, fragrances and nutritional values because of applying various acetic acid bacteria as starters. Acetic acid bacteria include genera Acetobacter, Gluconacetobacter and Gluconobacter according to latest edition of Bergy-s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology that classifies genera on the basis of their 16s RNA differences. Acetobacter spp as the main vinegar starters belong to family Acetobacteraceae that are gram negative obligate aerobes, chemoorganotrophic bacilli that are oxidase negative and oxidize ethanol to acetic acid. In this research we isolated and identified a native Acetobacter strain with high acetic acid productivity and tolerance against high ethanol concentrations from Iranian peach as a summer delicious fruit that is very susceptible to food spoilage and decay. We used selective and specific laboratorial culture media such as Standard GYC, Frateur and Carr medium. Also we used a new industrial culture medium and a miniature fermentor with a new aeration system innovated by Pars Yeema Biotechnologists Co., Isfahan Science and Technology Town (ISTT), Isfahan, Iran. The isolated strain was successfully cultivated in modified Carr media with 2.5% and 5% ethanol simultaneously in high temperatures, 34 - 40º C after 96 hours of incubation period. We showed that the increase of ethanol concentration resulted in rising of strain sensitivity to high temperature. In conclusion we isolated and characterized a new Acetobacter strain from Iranian peach that could be considered as a potential strain for production of a new vinegar type, peach vinegar, with a delicious taste and advantageous nutritional value in food biotechnology and industrial microbiology.

Speaker Identification by Joint Statistical Characterization in the Log Gabor Wavelet Domain

Real world Speaker Identification (SI) application differs from ideal or laboratory conditions causing perturbations that leads to a mismatch between the training and testing environment and degrade the performance drastically. Many strategies have been adopted to cope with acoustical degradation; wavelet based Bayesian marginal model is one of them. But Bayesian marginal models cannot model the inter-scale statistical dependencies of different wavelet scales. Simple nonlinear estimators for wavelet based denoising assume that the wavelet coefficients in different scales are independent in nature. However wavelet coefficients have significant inter-scale dependency. This paper enhances this inter-scale dependency property by a Circularly Symmetric Probability Density Function (CS-PDF) related to the family of Spherically Invariant Random Processes (SIRPs) in Log Gabor Wavelet (LGW) domain and corresponding joint shrinkage estimator is derived by Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) estimator. A framework is proposed based on these to denoise speech signal for automatic speaker identification problems. The robustness of the proposed framework is tested for Text Independent Speaker Identification application on 100 speakers of POLYCOST and 100 speakers of YOHO speech database in three different noise environments. Experimental results show that the proposed estimator yields a higher improvement in identification accuracy compared to other estimators on popular Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based speaker model and Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) features.

Application of Staining Intensity Correlation Analysis to Visualize Protein Colocalizationat a Cellular Level

Mutations of the telomeric copy of the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene cause spinal muscular atrophy. A deletion of the Eef1a2 gene leads to lower motor neuron degeneration in wasted mice. Indirect evidences have been shown that the eEF1A protein family may interact with SMN, and our previous study showed that abnormalities of neuromuscular junctions in wasted mice were similar to those of Smn mutant mice. To determine potential colocalization between SMN and tissue-specific translation elongation factor 1A2 (eEF1A2), an immunochemical analysis of HeLa cells transfected with the plasmid pcDNA3.1(+)C-hEEF1A2- myc and a new quantitative test of colocalization by intensity correlation analysis (ICA) was used to explore the association of SMN and eEF1A2. Here the results showed that eEF1A2 redistributed from the cytoplasm to the nucleus in response to serum and epidermal growth factor. In the cytoplasm, compelling evidence showed that staining for myc-tagged eEF1A2 varied in synchrony with that for SMN, consistent with the formation of a SMN-eEF1A2 complex in the cytoplasm of HeLa cells. These findings suggest that eEF1A2 may colocalize with SMN in the cytoplasm and may be a component of the SMN complex. However, the limitation of the ICA method is an inability to resolve colocalization in components of small organelles such as the nucleus.

Geometric Operators in Decision Making with Minimization of Regret

We study different types of aggregation operators and the decision making process with minimization of regret. We analyze the original work developed by Savage and the recent work developed by Yager that generalizes the MMR method creating a parameterized family of minimal regret methods by using the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator. We suggest a new method that uses different types of geometric operators such as the weighted geometric mean or the ordered weighted geometric operator (OWG) to generalize the MMR method obtaining a new parameterized family of minimal regret methods. The main result obtained in this method is that it allows to aggregate negative numbers in the OWG operator. Finally, we give an illustrative example.

Evaluation of Alloying Additions on the Microstructure and IMC Formation of Sn-Ag-Cu Solder on Cu and Ni (P) Substrates

Studies have shown that the SnAgCu solder family has been widely used as a replacement for conventional Sn-Pb solders. An attractive approach is by introducing alloying additives (rare earth elements (RE), Zn, Co, Fe, Ni, Sb) into the SnAgCu solder, which helps in refining the microstructure also improving the mechanical and wetting properties of the solder. The present work focuses on the effect of additions of 0.5% Ce and Fe into Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder, in attempt to reduce the intermetallic compound (IMC) growth and reflow properties of the solder on Cu and Ni (P) surface finish, as well as effects thermal aging on the formation of intermetallic compound (IMC) on different surface finish. Excessive intermetallic compound growth may effect the interface and solder joint due to the brittle nature of the intermetallic compounds. Thus, by introducing alloying elements, IMC layer thickness can be decrease, resulting in better joint and solder reliability.

Factors Related to the Satisfaction of Car Consumers

The objective of this research was to study the factors related to the satisfaction of consumers who purchased a Toyota SUV Fortuner. This paper was a survey data which collected 400 samples from 65 car dealerships. The survey was conducted mainly in Bangkok, Thailand. The statistics utilized in this paper included percentage, mean, standard deviation and Pearson Product-Moment. The findings revealed that the majority of respondent were male with an undergraduate degree, married and live together. The average income of the respondents was between 20,001 - 30,000 baht. Most of them worked for private companies. Most of them had a family with the average of 4 members. The hypotheses testing revealed that the factors of marketing mix in terms of product (ability, gas mileage, and safety) were related to overall satisfaction at the medium level. However, the findings also revealed that the factors of marketing mix in terms of product (image), price, and promotion, and service center were related to the overall satisfaction at the low level.

Applications of Stable Distributions in Time Series Analysis, Computer Sciences and Financial Markets

In this paper, first we introduce the stable distribution, stable process and theirs characteristics. The a -stable distribution family has received great interest in the last decade due to its success in modeling data, which are too impulsive to be accommodated by the Gaussian distribution. In the second part, we propose major applications of alpha stable distribution in telecommunication, computer science such as network delays and signal processing and financial markets. At the end, we focus on using stable distribution to estimate measure of risk in stock markets and show simulated data with statistical softwares.

Chronic Consumer States Influencing Compulsive Consumption

Consumer behaviour analysis represents an important field of study in marketing. Particularly strategy development for marketing and communications will be more focused and effective when marketers have an understanding of the motivations, behaviour and psychology of consumers. While materialism has been found to be one of the important elements in consumer behaviour, compulsive consumption represents another aspect that has recently attracted more attention. This is because of the growing prevalence of dysfunctional buying that has raised concern in consumer societies. Present studies and analyses on origins and motivations of compulsive buying have mainly focused on either individual factors or groups of related factors and hence a need for a holistic view exists. This paper provides a comprehensive perspective on compulsive consumption and establishes relevant propositions keeping the family life cycle stages as a reference for the incidence of chronic consumer states and their influence on compulsive consumption.

Molecular Characterization of Free Radicals Decomposing Genes on Plant Developmental Stages

Biochemical and molecular analysis of some antioxidant enzyme genes revealed different level of gene expression on oilseed (Brassica napus). For molecular and biochemical analysis, leaf tissues were harvested from plants at eight different developmental stages, from young to senescence. The levels of total protein and chlorophyll were increased during maturity stages of plant, while these were decreased during the last stages of plant growth. Structural analysis (nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequence, and phylogenic tree) of a complementary DNA revealed a high level of similarity for a family of Catalase genes. The expression of the gene encoded by different Catalase isoforms was assessed during different plant growth phase. No significant difference between samples was observed, when Catalase activity was statistically analyzed at different developmental stages. EST analysis exhibited different transcripts levels for a number of other relevant antioxidant genes (different isoforms of SOD and glutathione). The high level of transcription of these genes at senescence stages was indicated that these genes are senescenceinduced genes.

Domestic Tourist Behaviours of the Tourism Place in Bangkok and Greater Area

This research aims to study the preferable tourism and the elements of choosing tourist destination from domestic tourist in Bangkok and the nearby areas in Thailand.The data were collected by using 1249 set of questionnaires, in mid-August 2012. The result illustrates that religious destinations are the most preferable places for the tourist. The average expense per travel is approximately 47 USD a time. Travellers travel based on the advertisement in the television and internet and their decisions is based on the reputation of the destinations. The result on a place dimension demonstrates the neatness and well managed location play a crucial role on tourist destination. Gender, age, marriage status and their origins are affecting their spending and travelling behaviour. The researcher reckon that providing the area of arcade, selling the souvenir and promoting tourism among a young professional group would be an important key follow the income distribution policy, including managing the destination to welcome the family group, which the result is to identified as the highest spending.

Javanese Adolescents- Future Orientation and Support for its Effort: An Indigenous Psychological Analysis

This study aimed to explore future life orientation and support that needed to accomplish it. A total of 258 participants are Javanese high school student. The age of the sample ranges from 14 to 18 years old. Participants were asked about their future aspiration, their reason of choosing them as important goals in their life, and support that they need to accomplished their goals using open ended questionnaire. The responses were categorized through content analysis into four main categories. They are: (1) Self Fulfillment (72.1%) (2) Parents and Family (16.7%) (3) Altruism (8.1%) (4) Social and Economy Status (3.1%). Meanwhile, the categories for support that they needed are shown as follows: (1) Affection Support (64.7%) (2) Spiritual support (17.4%) (3) Material Support (10.9%) (4) Guidance Support (7.0%). The research found that affection support always gets the highest number in every future orientation categories. It can be concluded that although Javanese adolescents have different future orientation, they basically need affection support.

A Distinguish Attack on COSvd Cipher

The COSvd Ciphers has been proposed by Filiol and others (2004). It is a strengthened version of COS stream cipher family denoted COSvd that has been adopted for at least one commercial standard. We propose a distinguish attack on this version, and prove that, it is distinguishable from a random stream. In the COSvd Cipher used one S-Box (10×8) on the final part of cipher. We focus on S-Box and use weakness this S-Box for distinguish attack. In addition, found a leak on HNLL that the sub s-boxes don-t select uniformly. We use this property for an Improve distinguish attack.

Role of Direct and Secondary Traumatic Experience on Later Functioning

Trauma in early life is widely regarded as a cause for adult mental health problems. This study explores the role of secondary trauma on later functioning in a sample of 359 university students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes in the United States. Participants were initially divided into four groups based on 1) having directly experienced trauma (assaultive violence), 2) having directly experienced trauma and secondary traumatization through the unanticipated death of a close friend or family member or witnessing of an injury or shocking even), 3) having no experience of direct trauma but having experienced indirect trauma (secondary trauma), or 4) reporting no exposure. Participants completed a battery of measures on concepts associated with psychological functioning which included measures of psychological well-being, problem solving, coping and resiliency. Findings discuss differences in psychological functioning and resilience based on participants who experienced secondary traumatization and assaultive violence versus secondary traumatization alone.

Genome-Wide Analysis of BES1/BZR1 Gene Family in Five Plant Species

Brassinosteroids (BRs) regulate cell elongation, vascular differentiation, senescence, and stress responses. BRs signal through the BES1/BZR1 family of transcription factors, which regulate hundreds of target genes involved in this pathway. In this research a comprehensive genome-wide analysis was carried out in BES1/BZR1 gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana, Cucumis sativus, Vitis vinifera, Glycin max and Brachypodium distachyon. Specifications of the desired sequences, dot plot and hydropathy plot were analyzed in the protein and genome sequences of five plant species. The maximum amino acid length was attributed to protein sequence Brdic3g with 374aa and the minimum amino acid length was attributed to protein sequence Gm7g with 163aa. The maximum Instability index was attributed to protein sequence AT1G19350 equal with 79.99 and the minimum Instability index was attributed to protein sequence Gm5g equal with 33.22. Aliphatic index of these protein sequences ranged from 47.82 to 78.79 in Arabidopsis thaliana, 49.91 to 57.50 in Vitis vinifera, 55.09 to 82.43 in Glycin max, 54.09 to 54.28 in Brachypodium distachyon 55.36 to 56.83 in Cucumis sativus. Overall, data obtained from our investigation contributes a better understanding of the complexity of the BES1/BZR1 gene family and provides the first step towards directing future experimental designs to perform systematic analysis of the functions of the BES1/BZR1 gene family.

An Analysis of Abortion Laws and Sex Selective Abortion in India: A Case Study of Rajasthan

A son in every Hindu society pays his own father the debt and he owes him for his own life whereas a girl child is treated as a burden mainly in case of first child. Even today in India we have many societies which does not welcome girl child. Although there is an increase in overall sex ratio, there is a continuous decline in child sex ratio. This paper focuses on issues of sex selective abortion in Rajasthan based on secondary data. It is found that 90.0 percentages of women in Rajasthan wants at least one son. Around 34.3 percentages of women wants more sons than daughters and only 1.5 percentages of women wants more daughters than sons. It is very common among the rich and educated people.

Effect of the Internet on Social Capital

Internet access is a vital part of the modern world and an important tool in the education of our children. It is present in schools, homes and even shopping malls. Mastering the use of the internet is likely to be an important skill for those entering the job markets of the future. An internet user can be anyone he or she wants to be in an online chat room, or play thrilling and challenging games against other players from all corners of the globe. It seems at present time (or near future) for many people relationships in the real world may be neglected as those in the virtual world increase in importance. Internet is provided a fast mode of transportation caused freedom from family bonds and mixing with different cultures and new communities. This research is an attempt to study effect of Internet on Social capital. For this purpose a survey technique on the sample size amounted 168 students of Payame Noor University of Kermanshah city in country of Iran were considered. Degree of social capital is moderate. With the help of the Multi-variable Regression, variables of Iranian message attractive, Interest to internet with effect of positive and variable Creating a cordial atmosphere with negative effect be significant.

A Family of Zero Stable Block Integrator for the Solutions of Ordinary Differential Equations

In this paper, linear multistep technique using power series as the basis function is used to develop the block methods which are suitable for generating direct solution of the special second order ordinary differential equations with associated initial or boundary conditions. The continuous hybrid formulations enable us to differentiate and evaluate at some grids and off – grid points to obtain two different four discrete schemes, each of order (5,5,5,5)T, which were used in block form for parallel or sequential solutions of the problems. The computational burden and computer time wastage involved in the usual reduction of second order problem into system of first order equations are avoided by this approach. Furthermore, a stability analysis and efficiency of the block methods are tested on linear and non-linear ordinary differential equations and the results obtained compared favorably with the exact solution.

Structural Characterization of Piscine Globin Superfamily Proteins

Globin superfamily proteins including myoglobin and hemoglobin, have welcome new members recently, namely, cytoglobin, neuroglobin and globin X, though their physiological functions are still to be addressed. Fish are the excellent models for the study of these globins, but their characteristics have not yet been discussed to date. In the present study, attempts have been made to characterize their structural uniqueness by making use of proteomics approach. This is the first comparative study on the characterization of globin superfamily proteins from fish.

Determinants of Aggression among Young Adolescents

Aggression is a multi- factorial concept and multilevel in nature. The Young Adolescent is being influenced by family, school and community. This paper is aimed to determine the following: aggression level among young adolescents, difference of level of aggression on school and year levels and to determine the correlates of aggression. There were 142 high school students from two different national highs schools (Region 3 and National Capital Region).Convenience sampling was use in this study. The following measures were used namely: Aggression Scale, Parental Support Fighting Scale, Positive Behavior Scale and Exposure to Violence and Trauma questionnaire. There was no significant difference in aggression level among different year level and schools. The findings of the study suggested that high level of community violence and having low parental support for non-aggressive behavior contribute to the prediction of aggression.