A double random phase encoding approach for cancelable iris recognition

In a cancelable iris recognition technique, all enrollment patterns are masked using a transformation function, and the invertibility process for obtaining the original data should not be possible. A novel cancelable iris authentication approach in the encrypted domain is presented in this paper. The double random phase encoding (DRPE) algorithm in the Fractional Fourier Transform (FrFT) Domain is utilized to generate the optical masked IrisCodes. For the transmitter side, two encryption keys (RPM1 and RPM2) are utilized, while the second phase mask is proposed to be the right iris feature vector of the same user. As a result, mixing the feature vectors of the left and right iris patterns of the same subject to an encrypted IrisCode results in enhancing the privacy and preserving the system performance. This proposed system success is attributed to the fact that the iris authentication issue is transformed to a key authentication process. Experimental results conducted on CASIA-IrisV3-Interval dataset achieve a significant gain for both privacy and performance proving the superiority of the proposed approach.     

Evolving Horava cosmological horizons

Several sets of radially propagating null congruence generators are exploited in order to form 3-dimensional marginally trapped surfaces, referred to as black hole and cosmological apparent horizons in a Ho?ava universe. Based on this method, we deal with the characteristics of the 2-dimensional space-like spheres of symmetry and the peculiarities of having trapping horizons. Moreover, we apply this method in standard expanding and contracting FLRW cosmological models of a Ho?ava universe to investigate the conditions under which the extra parameters of the theory may lead to trapped/anti-trapped surfaces both in the future and in the past. We also include the cases of negative time, referred to as the finite past, and discuss the formation of anti-trapped surfaces inside the cosmological apparent horizons.     

以脉冲萃取柱利用三异辛胺从高浓度铀溶液中回收铀

利用三异辛胺(TOA)纯化Gattar小型试验工厂的高浓度铀溶液(洗脱液的铀浓度7 g·L^-1),研究了脉冲萃取柱的性能。利用实验室级脉冲萃取柱进行了实验室规模的溶剂萃取实验和后续实验。结果表明,在室温、pH=1和有机相与水相的比例(V_O/V_A)约为1.8：1时,加入二(2-乙基己基)磷酸(D2EHPA)使其与TOA的比例(V_D2EHPA/V_TOA)为2：3,可使萃取克服Cl-的抑制效应,提高效率。将结论用于考察试验工厂级萃取柱的流体力学和传质性能,结果表明用脉冲萃取柱萃取铀可以达到97%的萃取效率,具有可行性。     

Optical solitons and optical rogons of generalized resonant dispersive nonlinear Schrödinger's equation with power law nonlinearity

This paper obtains solitons and singular periodic solutions to the generalized resonant dispersive nonlinear Schrödinger’ equation with power law nonlinearity. There are several integration tools that are adopted to extract these solutions. They are simplest equation method, functional variable method, sine–cosine function method, tanh function method and the G′/G-expansion method. These integration techniques reveal bright and singular solitons as well as the corresponding singular periodic solutions to the nonlinear evolution equation. These solitons solutions are important in the nonlinear fiber optics community as well as in the study of rogue waves.     

Anti-HIV-1 and cytotoxicity of the alkaloids of Erythrina abyssinica Lam. growing in Sudan

Erythrina abyssinica Lam. is an important medicinal plant growing in Sudan; its seeds were investigated for the first time for their alkaloidal constituents and biological activity. The in vitro cytotoxicity of the crude alkaloidal fraction (CAF) against the cell lines HeLa, Hep-G2, HEP-2, HCT116, MCF-7 and HFB4 showed promising activity, with IC?? values of 13.8, 10.1, 8.16, 13.9, 11.4 and 12.2?μg?mL?1, respectively. Doxorubicin (positive control) showed in vitro cytotoxic activity with IC?? values 3.64, 4.57, 4.89, 3.74, 2.97 and 3.96?μg?mL?1, respectively. Bioassay-guided fractionation and isolation of the CAF led to the isolation of five Erythrina alkaloids, identified as erythraline, erysodine, erysotrine, 8-oxoerythraline and 11-methoxyerysodine. These were evaluated for their in vitro cytotoxic activity against Hep-G2 which resulted in IC?? values 17.60, 11.80, 15.80, 3.89 and 11.40?μg?mL?1, respectively. Furthermore, in vitro cytotoxic activity against HEP-2 was evaluated, which resulted in IC?? values 15.90, 19.90, 21.60, 18.50 and 11.50?μg?mL?1, respectively. The CAF caused a reduction in the viability of mock-infected MT-4 cells with a CC?? of 53?μM and a 50% protection of MT-4 cells against HIV-1 induced cytopathogeneticy with a EC?? of >53?μM, compared with EFV as a positive control, which had a CC?? of 45?μM and an EC?? of 0.003?μM. We concluded that the isolated alkaloids were responsible for the carcinogenic actions of the plant extract previously reported in the literature.     

Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of a Novel Series of Chalcones Incorporated Pyrazole Moiety as Anticancer and Antimicrobial Agents

A newly synthesized series of chalcone derivatives containing pyrazole rings were synthesized and evaluated for their cytotoxic activities in vitro against several human cancer cell lines. Most of the prepared compounds showed potential cytotoxicity against human breast cancer cell lines MCF-7, HEPG-2, and HCT-116. Also the compounds were evaluated as antimicrobial agents. The three compounds 3, 4, and 5 were proved to be better anticancer agents than the positive standard doxorubicin with IC50 values (4.7, 4.4, and 3.9???g/ml) against the same human cancer cell lines, whereas compounds 5 and 6 showed the most active antimicrobial compounds in comparison to the other chalcones.     

Fluorescence and Electrochemical Sensing of Pesticides Methomyl, Aldicarb and Prometryne by the Luminescent Europium-3-Carboxycoumarin Probe

This work describes the application of time resolved fluorescence in microtiterplates and electrochemical methods on glassy carbon electrode for investigating the interactions of europium-3-carboxycoumarin with pesticides aldicarb, methomyl and prometryne. Stern-volmer studies at different temperatures indicate that static quenching dominates for methomyl, aldicarb and prometryne. By using Lineweaver-Burk equation binding constants were determined at 303 K, 308 K and 313 K. A thermodynamic analysis showed that the reaction is spontaneous with ΔG being negative. The enthalpy ΔH and the entropy ΔS of reactions were all determined. A time-resolved (gated) luminescence-based method for determination of pesticides in microtiterplate format using the long-lived europium-3-carboxycoumarin has been developed. The limit of detection is 4.80, 5.06 and 8.01 μmol L⁻¹ for methomyl, prometryne and aldicarb, respectively. This is the lowest limit of detection achieved so far for luminescent lanthanide-based probes for pesticides. The interaction of the probe with the pesticides has been investigated using cyclic voltammetry (CV), differential pulse polarography (DPP), square wave voltammetry (SWV) and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) on a glassy carbon electrode in I = 0.1 mol L⁻¹ p-toluenesulfonate at 25 °C. The diffusion coefficients of the reduced species are calculated. The main properties of the electrode reaction occurring in a finite diffusion space are the quasireversible maximum and the splitting of the net SWV peak for Eu(III) ions in the ternary complex formed . It was observed that the increase of the cathodic peak currents using LSV is linear with the increase of pesticides concentration in the range 5 × 10⁻⁷ to 1 × 10⁻⁵ mol L⁻¹. The detection limit (DL) were about 1.01, 2.23 and 1.89 μmolL⁻¹ for aldicarb, methomyl and prometryne, respectively. In order to assess the analytical applicability of the method, the influence of various potentially interfering species was examined. Influence of interfering species on the recovery of 10 μmol L⁻¹ pesticides has been investigated.     

Dual-channel spectral subtraction algorithms based speech enhancement dedicated to a bilateral cochlear implant

In this paper, two speech enhancement algorithms (SEAs) based on spectral subtraction (SS) principle have been evaluated for bilateral cochlear implant (BCI) users. Specifically, dual-channel noise power spectral estimation algorithm using power spectral densities (PSD) and cross power spectral density (CPSD) of the observed signals was studied. The enhanced speech signals were obtained using either Dual Channel Non Linear Spectral Subtraction ‘DC-NLSS’ or Dual-Channel Multi-Band Spectral Subtraction ‘DC-MBSS’ algorithms. For performance evaluation, some objective speech assessment tests relying on Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) score and speech Itakura-Saito (IS) distortion measurement were performed to fix the optimal number of frequency band needed in DC-MBSS algorithm. In order to evaluate the speech intelligibility, subjective listening tests were assessed with 50 normal hearing listeners using a specific BCI simulator and with three deafened BCI patients. Experimental results, obtained using French Lafon database corrupted by an additive babble noise at different Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR), showed that DC-MBSS algorithm improves speech understanding better than DC-NLSS algorithm for single and multiple interfering noise sources.     

New measurements and reanalysis of 14N elastic scattering on 10B target

The angular distributions of elastic scattering of ¹⁴N ions on ¹⁰B targets have been measured at incident beam energies of 21.0 and 24.5 MeV. Angular distributions at higher energies 38–94.0 MeV (previously measured) were also included in the analysis. All data were analyzed within the framework of the optical model and the distorted waves Born approximation method. The observed rise in cross sections at large angles was interpreted as a possible contribution of the α-cluster exchange mechanism. Spectroscopic amplitudes SA₂ and SA₄ for the configuration ¹⁴N→ ¹⁰B +α were extracted. Their average values are 0.58±0.10 and 0.81±0.12 for SA₂ and SA₄, respectively, suggesting that the exchange mechanism is a major component of the elastic scattering for this system. The energy dependence of the depths for the real and imaginary potentials was found.