IntroductionAccording to FAO, gherkin and cucumber have been cultivated in about 2.23 million hectares of farmlands around the globe, and about 78000 hectares of Iran agricultural fields have been devoted to gherkin and cucumber cultivation. However, large amounts of the cucumber seeds required in Iran have been imported from abroad. Fortunately, some Iranian agricultural companies have been focused on seed production recently. Therefore, there is an opportunity to develop seed production equipment such as seed extracting machines.There are two types of cucumber seed extractors: bulk seed extractor and single fruit extractor. The bulk seed extractor is suitable for extraction of large amounts of seed on the farm, while the single fruit extractor is suitable where seed production is limited to greenhouse seed-producing facilities which are mostly used for controlled pollination of the crop.Due to the high price of imported seed extractors, especially after increasing the price of foreign currencies, production of these machines within the country is economically rational; therefore, the aim of this research is to develop and evaluate a single fruit cucumber seed extractor for small and medium-size seed-producing greenhouses.Materials and MethodsThe cucumber seed extractor was designed semi-automatically. The criteria for designing the machine were as follows: 1- usage of the single fruit seed extraction method, 2- the possibility of simultaneous usage of two operators, 3- automatic discharge of the extracted seeds, 4- the possibility of the height variation of the machine, 5- the possibility of the emergency shutdown of the machine, 6- the possibility of the angular velocity variation of the machine helix.The working element of the machine was the rotating helix that can extract the fruit seeds and leave the fruit's outer skin mostly intact for easy disposal of fruit remains from the greenhouse. A 1 hp, 3 phase electric motor was used to drive the machine via the belt and pulley transmission system. For the smooth start and stop of the machine, and the possibility of angular velocity variation of the machine helixes, an electronic driver was used for the motor.To design the machine helix, the dimensions of the examined cucumber were measured first (i.e., cucumber length and diameter); then, according to the physical and mechanical properties of the fruit, the prime mover and transmission system of the machine was designed. Finally, the fabricated machine was evaluated using some mechanization criteria.Results and DiscussionSome of the results are as follows:The total torque required to drive the machine was 3.394Nm.The electric motor power should be higher than 0.284hp; furthermore, in order to have a wider angular velocity span for the rotating shaft, a 1hp electric motor was installed on the machine.The diameter of the rotating shaft was calculated to be 15mm.The seed extracting machine could be used instead of 15 workers of the manual seed extraction method.The rate of seed extraction using the machine was 30781 kg ha-1.The efficiency of seed extraction using the machine was similar to that of the manual method.The emergence percentage of seeds obtained by the machine was similar to that of the manual method.The amount of crop calculated from the concept of economical break-even point was 7 tons.ConclusionIn this study, an apparatus for mechanized extraction of cucumber seed was designed, fabricated and evaluated. The working element of the machine is the extractor helix that is rotated via the belt and pulley transmission system, which is activated using a 1 hp, 3 phase electric motor. For smooth start and stop of the motor, as well as the possibility of angular velocity variation of the machine helix, the motor was equipped with an electronic driver. Utilizing an emergency shutdown switch, the machine can be protected from unforeseen emergency situations. After using the machine for 6 months, it was recognized that strengthening the extractor helixes was necessary. According to the results of this study, using the machine led to 15 person reduction in the labor needs of the manual cucumber seed extraction method. Moreover, the amount of crop calculated from the economical break-even point was 7.7 tons.

Introduction: Iran is a frontier of pomegranate fruit production in the world (with almost 40 % of the world's production). However due to traditional processing operations is not ranked as the largest pomegranate exporter. Saveh ,Neyriz and Ferdows are the top pomegranate producing cities in Iran. Pomegranate is consumed as a fresh fruit as well as processed product as food additive, paste, syrup, jelly, pectin, jam, beverage, essence, vinegar and concentrate. Aril extraction is the first and essential postharvest operation for pomegranate processing. Arils are mostly extracted manually even in large scales for fresh and processed consumption. ….

Multi-label classification aims at assigning more than one label to each instance. Many real-world multi-label classification tasks are high dimensional, leading to reduced performance of traditional classifiers. Feature selection is a common approach to tackle this issue by choosing prominent features. Multi-label feature selection is an NP-hard approach, and so far, some swarm intelligence-based strategies and have been proposed to find a near optimal solution within a reasonable time. In this paper, a hybrid intelligence algorithm based on the binary algorithm of particle swarm optimization and a novel local search strategy has been proposed to select a set of prominent features. To this aim, features are divided into two categories based on the extension rate and the relationship between the output and the local search strategy to increase the convergence speed. The first group features have more similarity to class and less similarity to other features, and the second is redundant and less relevant features. Accordingly, a local operator is added to the particle swarm optimization algorithm to reduce redundant features and keep relevant ones among each solution. The aim of this operator leads to enhance the convergence speed of the proposed algorithm compared to other algorithms presented in this field. Evaluation of the proposed solution and the proposed statistical test shows that the proposed approach improves different classification criteria of multi-label classification and outperforms other methods in most cases. Also in cases where achieving higher accuracy is more important than time, it is more appropriate to use this method.

In this paper, extraction of starch and protein from potato during leaching in a batch extractor, using distilled water as the solvent, was investigated. The experiments were carried out by soaking bulk of infinite slab shape potato samples in distilled water in a temperature and agitation controlled batch extractor at the three temperatures of 30, 45 and 55oC. A mathematical model was developed for prediction of mass transfer during the leaching process, by defining a partition factor (K) as the ratio of the concentration on the surface of the body to that in the bulk of solution. Diffusion coefficients of the solutes and moisture were obtained by fitting the experimental data of solute loss and moisture gain to the first six terms of the series solution of the mathematical model by using a non-linear regression analysis. The diffusivity values for starch, protein and moisture were evaluated between 0.273´10-10 and 1.577´10-10 m2/s, with adjustment parameter R2 values in the range of 0.941 to 0.986 and mean relative error (MRE) values between 0.092 and 0.356, respectively. Results showed that the proposed model could be used for explaining the diffusion of solutes and moisture into the potatoes, during the leaching process, with acceptable degree of goodness.

The effects and influences of various operational parameters on the efficiency of mixer-settlers are thoroughly studied in this paper. One of the most important factors in designing a mixer-settler is to obtain an optimum operational extraction and overall efficiency. These two factors are dependent on various parameters such as impeller shape, size and speed of impeller, baffle size, residence time, volumetric flow rates and the ratio of heavy to light phases. In this paper, the effect of impeller speed and volumetric flowrates of two phases on efficiency are studied. Also, the effect of hold-up of each stage upon stage efficiency is studied.According to the above experiments and achieved results, it can be concluded that in general, an increase in impeller speed and solvent amount results in an increase in extraction efficiency. Also, when hold-up of the dispersed phase decreases, the stage efficiency usually increases up to a certain point.

This study aimed to measure the liquid−liquid equilibrium (LLE) data for a ternary (water–acetone– ethyl acetate) system to extract acetone. For this purpose, the experiments were conducted with a feed containing 80 wt. % water and 20 wt. % acetone in a T-shaped micromixer and then in a 0. 8 mm microtube. The operational variables, e. g., solvent-to-feed ratio (𝑆/𝐹, 0. 33-3. 00 v/v) and operating temperature (303. 15, 308. 15, 313. 15, and 318. 15 K), were calculated at 0. 1 MPa. According to the experimental results, the best selectivity (𝑆) and distribution coefficient (𝐷2) was achieved at 0. 50 v/v and 313. 15 K. Besides,the interaction parameters were obtained for the components by fitting UNIQUAC and NRTL models to experimental data. Both models exhibited high levels of accuracy, with standard deviations in the 0. 0002-0. 0346 range from experimental data. The results obtained from the UNIQUAC and NRTL models were consistent with the experimental data (root mean square deviations were 0. 0138 and 0. 0116 for the UNIQUAC and NRTL models, respectively).

Dear Editor, Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory disease of the pilosebaceous canal. It presents in the form of comedones, papules, pustules, nodules, or cysts, representing a common cause of facial scars. Many types of extractors have been used to extract the contents of acne lesions 1, 2. A disposable syringe is a good option but is not suitable for comedones smaller than 1. 0 to 1. 5 mm. Here, a disposable pipette that is economical and easily available is introduced as a better alternative to other acne extractors for all types of acne lesions...

Introduction: Nowadays, deep learning and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have become widespread tools in many biomedical engineering studies. CNN is an end-to-end tool, which makes the processing procedure integrated, but in some situations, this processing tool requires to be fused with machine learning methods to be more accurate. Methods: In this paper, a hybrid approach based on deep features extracted from wavelet CNNs (WCNNs) weighted layers and multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) was proposed to improve the recognition of emotional states from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. First, EEG signals were preprocessed and converted to Time-Frequency (T-F) color representation or scalogram using the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) method. Then, scalograms were fed into four popular pre-trained CNNs, AlexNet, ResNet-18, VGG-19, and Inception-v3 to fine-tune them. Then, the best feature layer from each one was used as input to the MSVM method to classify four quarters of the valence-arousal model. Finally, the subjectindependent leave-one-subject-out criterion was used to evaluate the proposed method on DEAP and MAHNOB-HCI databases. Results: Results showed that extracting deep features from the earlier convolutional layer of ResNet-18 (Res2a) and classifying using the MSVM increased the average accuracy, precision, and recall by about 20% and 12% for MAHNOB-HCI and DEAP databases, respectively. Also, combining scalograms from four regions of pre-frontal, frontal, parietal, and parietal-occipital and two regions of frontal and parietal achieved the higher average accuracy of 77. 47% and 87. 45% for MAHNOB-HCI and DEAP databases, respectively. Conclusion: Combining CNN and MSVM increased the recognition of emotion from EEG signals and the results were comparable to state-of-the art studies.