Asian Journal of Advanced Research and Reports

Banana is a climacteric fruit with a short shelf life. As a result, huge losses are incurred during handling in the value chain. The need to develop means of extending the shelf life and concomitantly maintaining the quality of the fruit after harvest has become very important. This study was conducted to determine the effects of two different edible waxing materials (beeswax and cassava starch) used as coatings on the quality and shelf life of Mysore banana. The study was conducted in the laboratory at the Department of Horticulture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology–Kumasi. The experiment was laid out in a simple completely randomized design (CRD) and replicated three (3) times with three treatments (beeswax, cassava starch and a control). Parameters studied were: fruit weight loss, firmness, peel colour, pulp-to-peel ratio, moisture content (MC), dry matter content (DMC), total titratable acidity (TTA), total soluble solids (TSS), pH, green life and shelf life. The results showed beeswax and cassava starch had no significant effect (P>0.01) on peel colour, fruit firmness, TTA, TSS, DMC, MC and green life. Beeswax, however, kept weight loss minimal, and reduced TSS and the pulp-to-peel ratio of the fruits during storage. We conclude that beeswax was the best treatment in terms of waxing Mysore banana fruits to maintained its quality and ultimately prolonged its shelf life by about four (4) days more than the control.

The potentials of natural coagulants (egg shell and fish scale) in the treatment of vegetable oil industrial wastewater were investigated. The coagulants were characterized to determine their chemical compositions, functional groups and morphology using proximate analysis method, Fourier Infra-red spectroscope (FTIR) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) respectively. The industrial wastewater was equally characterized to determine its heavy metal composition and physico-chemical properties. The effects of various process parameters such as pH, coagulants dosage, time and temperature were examined during the treatment of the waste water using the natural coagulants. The proximate analysis shows that Fish Scale Coagulant (FSC) contains more carbohydrate, 42.30% while Egg Shell Coagulant (ESC) has protein content of 39.65%. It was discovered that the coagulating properties of both FSC and ESC improve after extraction due to presence of isocyanates, isothiocyadilimides, azides, ketenes, aldehydes and ketone. The turbidity of the wastewater was very high (365NTU) above the WHO recommended value. The process variables have significant effects on the coagulation with best removal efficiency of 88.54% for ESC and 74.12% for FSC at pH of 4.0 (ESC) and pH of 7.0(FSC); 0.5 g/L (ESC) and 0.04 g/L (FSC) coagulant dosage and temperature of 40°C. Therefore, both coagulants are effective in treating vegetable oil effluent but egg shell coagulant was found to be a better coagulant. Further research on optimization, kinetics and thermodynamics of the coagulation process using ESC and FSC should be carried out.

EUROPA stamps are special stamps issued by European postal administrations and bears the official EUROPA logo, a PostEurop registered trademark under the aegis of PostEurop in which Europe is the central theme. EUROPA stamps underline cooperation in the posts domain, taking into account the promotion of thematic philately. They also build awareness of the common roots, culture and history of Europe, and its common goals. As such, EUROPA stamp issues are among the most collected and most popular stamps in the world. Europa Stamps 2016 are very special stamps with the “Think Green” theme aimed to create awareness and give a wakeup call - its time to protect our environment for the better future of the new generations, and to contribute to socio-economical development. In this paper, we propose an insight into the history of European preoccupations for natural heritage conservation and for environmental protection and bring into the discussion only the significant concerns in promoting ecological educational via thematic issues (in this case, Think green! issues). In this context, the main objective was to identify, index, and describe the main philatelic pieces - in particular first-day covers - issued in European countries (starting with Italy and ending with the Vatican), from the beginning of issuing.

In this paper, closed forms of the sum formulas Σn k=0 kxkW2 k and Σn k=1 kxkW2 -k for the squares of generalized Fibonacci numbers are presented. As special cases, we give sum formulas of Fibonacci, Lucas, Pell, Pell-Lucas, Jacobsthal, Jacobsthal-Lucas numbers. We present the proofs to indicate how these formulas, in general, were discovered. Of course, all the listed formulas may be proved by induction, but that method of proof gives no clue about their discovery. Our work generalize second order recurrence relations.

The paper presents an introduction to the Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) algorithm and methods for solving the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). Documenting, understanding and knowledge of concepts regarding the emergent behavior and intelligence swarms optimization, easily led on solving the Travelling Salesman Problem using a computational program, such as Mathematics Wolfram via Creative Demostration Projects (*.cdf) module.

The proposed application runs for a different number of ants, a different number of ants, a different number of leaders (elite ants), and a different pheromone evaporation index. As a result it can be stated that the execution time of the algorithm to solve the TSP is direct and strictly proportional to the number of ants, cities and elite ants considered, the increase of the execution time increasing significantly with the increase of the variables.