Recognition of Leaf Disease Using Hybrid Convolutional Neural Network by Applying Feature Reduction

Agriculture is crucial to the economic prosperity and development of India. Plant diseases can have a devastating influence towards food safety and a considerable loss in the production of agricultural products. Disease identification on the plant is essential for long-term agriculture sustainability. Manually monitoring plant diseases is difficult due to time limitations and the diversity of diseases. In the realm of agricultural inputs, automatic characterization of plant diseases is widely required. Based on performance out of all image-processing methods, is better suited for solving this task. This work investigates plant diseases in grapevines. Leaf blight, Black rot, stable, and Black measles are the four types of diseases found in grape plants. Several earlier research proposals using machine learning algorithms were created to detect one or two diseases in grape plant leaves; no one offers a complete detection of all four diseases. The photos are taken from the plant village dataset in order to use transfer learning to retrain the EfficientNet B7 deep architecture. Following the transfer learning, the collected features are down-sampled using a Logistic Regression technique. Finally, the most discriminant traits are identified with the highest constant accuracy of 98.7% using state-of-the-art classifiers after 92 epochs. Based on the simulation findings, an appropriate classifier for this application is also suggested. The proposed technique’s effectiveness is confirmed by a fair comparison to existing procedures.

Bacteriophages as Solid Tumor Theragnostic Agents

Cancer, especially the solid tumor sub-set, poses considerable challenges to modern medicine owing to the unique physiological characteristics and substantial variations in each tumor’s microenvironmental niche fingerprints. Though there are many treatment methods available to treat solid tumors, still a considerable loss of life happens, due to the limitation of treatment options and the outcomes of ineffective treatments. Cancer cells evolve with chemo- or radiation-treatment strategies and later show adaptive behavior, leading to failed treatment. These challenges demand tailored and individually apt personalized treatment methods. Bacteriophages (or phages) and phage-based theragnostic vectors are gaining attention in the field of modern cancer medicine, beyond their bactericidal ability. With the invention of the latest techniques to fine-tune phages, such as in the field of genetic engineering, synthetic assembly methods, phage display, and chemical modifications, noteworthy progress in phage vector research for safe cancer application has been realized, including use in pre-clinical studies. Herein, we discuss the distinct fingerprints of solid tumor physiology and the potential for bacteriophage vectors to exploit specific tumor features for improvised tumor theragnostic applications.

The Relationship between Drone Speed and the Number of Flights in RFID Tag Reading for Plant Inventory

Accurate inventory allows for more precise forecasting, including profit projections, easier monitoring, shorter outages, and fewer delivery interruptions. Moreover, the long hours of physical labor involved over such a broad area and the effect of inefficiencies could lead to less accurate inventory. Unreliable data and predictions, unannounced stoppages in operations, production delays and delivery, and a considerable loss of profit can all arise from inaccurate inventory. This paper extends our previous work with drones and RFID by evaluating: the number of flights needed to read all tags deployed in the field, the number of scans per pass, and the optimum drone speed for reading tags. The drone flight plan was divided into eight passes from southwest to northwest and back at a horizontal speed of 2.2, 1.7, and 1.1 m per second (m/s) at a vertically fixed altitude. The results showed that speed did not affect the number of new tags scanned (p-value > 0.05). Results showed that 90% of the tags were scanned in less than four trips (eight passes) at 1.7 m/s. Based on these results, the system can be used for large-scale nursery inventory and other industries that use RFID tags in outdoor environments. We presented two novel measurements on evaluating RFID reader efficiency by measuring how fast the reader can read and the shortest distance traveled by the RFID reader over tag.

Strength of eccentrically tensioned reinforced concrete structures with small eccentricities by normal sections

It is implemented the method of normal rectangular sections slab (shell) reinforced concrete elements strength calculating with flat eccentric tensile strength using the deformation m ethod. The results of the calculation are analyzed for the case of eccentric tension with small eccentricities with varying next parameters: the height of the cross section and the reinforcement coefficient. It is investigated the character of diagrams condition change of section “N – εc(1)” at gradual change of the stress-strain state from eccentric to the central tension. It is revealed that when the eccentricity of external forces decreases, the compressed zone of concrete decreases until its complete disappearance, and at rather small values of eccentricities of force application the balance between external and internal forces cannot be found by the method of current norms. An equilibrium is found between internal and external forces only at a two-digit diagram of the distribution of relative longitudinal deformations (in the case of a compressed zone). Variants of the given problem decision without considerable loss of calculations accuracy are offered, the most expedient of which is transition to algorithm of calculation by a method of limiting efforts. It was accepted as the basic in the previous building norms. The results of numerical calculations performed in the software complex “Lira-CAD” and the corresponding mathematical modeling confirmed the rationality and allowable accuracy of further calculations by this method.

The Physicochemical and sensory characteristics of Coppa with Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. Lactis (BB12) probiotic

Motivated by the growing demand for functional foods, probiotics added to food products is a reality in the market. Its application in fermented sausages is considered promising, as its processing does not use heat treatment and with that there is no considerable loss of these microorganisms. In this study, the application of microencapsulated Bifidobacterium animalis ssp. lactis (BB12) was carried out in coppa. Three treatments were developed, consisting of control (C) without probiotic, BB1 with the addition of probiotic and 0.02% curing salt, and BB2 with probiotic and 50% reduction in curing salt (0.01%). Subsequently, possible changes in the physicochemical and sensory characteristics were analyzed, as well as the viability of the culture in the fermented product. All samples were presented according to the Brazilian legislation for the attributes of moisture, protein, and lipids. Probiotics showed a positive influence on the stabilization of lipid oxidation and microencapsulated probiotics proved to be viable after the ripening period of 30 days in treatment BB2. There was no significant difference between the samples for sensory analysis, so it is possible to state that the addition of BB12 is an alternative to obtain a product with all the benefits of functional foods.

SuFEx-Click Approach for the Synthesis of Soluble Polymer-Bound MacMillan Catalysts for the Asymmetric Diels–Alder Reaction

Novel polymeric MacMillan catalysts were prepared from modified chiral imidazolidin-4-one monomers via sulfur(VI) fluoride exchange chemistry. The resulting polysulfates containing chiral imidazolidin-4-one units could be employed as polymeric organocatalysts for the asymmetric Diels–Alder reaction. With the use of these polysulfate catalysts, sufficient catalytic activity and enantioselectivity were obtained, which were similar to those obtained by monomeric catalysts in a homogeneous catalytic reaction. In addition, the polysulfate catalysts could be recovered and reused five times without a considerable loss of activity and selectivity.

Bleaching of bagasse-pulp using short TCF and ECF sequence

More than 70 % bleached chemical pulp is produced in India through elemental chlorine-free bleaching in which chlorine-based compounds like chlorine dioxide is a dominant chemical which generates chlorinated organic toxins harmful to the environment. Present studies demonstrate short sequence of bleaching combined with acid treatment, followed by pressurized oxygen delignification. It was found that efficiency of oxygen improved by adding hydrogen peroxide as an additive in oxygen delignification with subsequent treatment with ozone or chlorine dioxide as bleaching agents. It was observed that by using additive in ODL process, pulp can achieve 70±1 (%ISO) brightness. Reduction attains in kappa number 65–70 % as compared to 45–50 % in control oxygen delignification stage. Through AOpZ and AOpD bleaching sequences, full brightness achieved 84–85 (%ISO) without considerable loss in mechanical strength properties compared to DEpD sequence. A potential reduction in COD, color, and AOX was 28, 53.3, and 88 % respectively were observed in AOpZ short bleaching sequence compared to DEpD bleaching.

The Prevention and Reduction of the Bullwhip Effect by Electronic Data Interchange and Collaborative Forecasting

The bullwhip effect is a phenomenon of curious amplification of variations in demand as one moves away from the final customer. Popularized by Lee and al., (1997), the bullwhip effect has negative consequences on all actors in the supply chain because it generates considerable loss of profits: Too much stock, loss of sales, poor customer service, insufficient quality and multiple disruptions of flow and organization. To prevent and reduce the bullwhip effect, various tools are recommended. The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is among the most important given its impact on accelerating information sharing throughout the supply chain. This paper aims to shed light on the role of EDI, VMI (Vendor-managed inventory) and CPFR (collaborative planning forecasting and replenishment) in the prevention and reduction of the bullwhip effect in the supply chain.

Coping With Loss: Understanding Growth and Grief in Kashmiri Students

Youth in Kashmir experience considerable loss during their formative years as a result of ongoing exposure to severe sociopolitical conflict and devastating natural disasters. This study identified the losses experienced by 204 Kashmiri college students, their adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies, and the degree to which they experienced symptoms of complicated grief and posttraumatic growth. These predominantly Muslim students relied on their faith and spiritual practices to cope with their losses. Complicated grief symptoms were associated with the number of losses experienced, the severity of associated distress, and two types of coping (meaning focused and maladaptive). In addition, posttraumatic growth was explained by the number of losses and distress, as well as coping strategy (problem focused, meaning focused, or maladaptive). We discuss clinical implications and recommendations for future research.

Construction of Infectious Clones of Begomoviruses: Strategies, Techniques and Applications

Begomovirus has become a potential threat to the agriculture sector. It causes significant losses to several economically important crops. Given this considerable loss, the development of tools to study viral genomes and function is needed. Infectious clones approaches and applications have allowed the direct exploitation of virus genomes. Infectious clones of DNA viruses are the critical instrument for functional characterization of the notable and newly discovered virus. Understanding of structure and composition of viruses has contributed to the evolution of molecular plant pathology. Therefore, this review provides extensive guidelines on the strategy to construct infectious clones of Begomovirus. Also, this technique’s impacts and benefits in controlling and understanding the Begomovirus infection will be discussed.