Natural dyes have become a viable alternative to expensive organic sensitizers because of their low cost of production, abundance in supply, and eco-friendliness. We evaluated 35 native plants containing anthocyanin pigments as potential sensitizers for DSSCs. Melastoma malabathricum (fruit pulp), Hibiscus rosa-sinensis (flower), and Codiaeum variegatum (leaves) showed the highest absorption peaks. Hence, these were used to determine anthocyanin content and stability based on the impacts of storage temperature. Melastoma malabathricum fruit pulp exhibited the highest anthocyanin content (8.43 mg/L) followed by H. rosa-sinensis and C. variegatum. Significantly greater stability of extracted anthocyanin pigment was shown when all three were stored at 4°C. The highest half-life periods for anthocyanin in M. malabathricum, H. rosa-sinensis, and C. variegatum were 541, 571, and 353 days at 4°C. These were rapidly decreased to 111, 220, and 254 days when stored at 25°C. The photovoltaic efficiency of M. malabathricum was1.16%, while the values for H. rosa-sinensis and C. variegatum were 0.16% and 1.08%, respectively. Hence, M. malabathricum fruit pulp extracts can be further evaluated as an alternative natural sensitizer for DSSCs.
Exotic Acacia were introduced to Brunei Darussalam in the 1990s for plantation forestry and land rehabilitation but are now regarded as invasive. We assessed the effects of Acacia on litter nutrient composition and soil physicochemical properties of Brunei’s coastal Kerangas (heath) forests. Soil and litter samples were collected from ten 20 x 20 m plots in Acacia-invaded Kerangas forests (IKF) and ten uninvaded (UKF) plots. Soil samples were analyzed for pH, gravimetric water content and nutrient concentrations whereas litter samples were analyzed for total nutrients only. We recorded significantly higher concentrations of litter total N and P in the IKF than the UKF plots. In contrast, no significant differences were detected in soil properties, except for topsoil available P and subsoil exchangeable Ca which were both lower in the IKF plots. A significant positive correlation was detected between litter N and topsoil N in the IKF plots. We suggest that the fairly recent timescale of Acacia invasion (< 25 years) of the IKF sites resulted in the lack of significant increase of soil nutrients. In conclusion, Acacia invasion into Brunei’s forests can potentially alter both leaf litter and soil physicochemical properties of Kerangas forests, in particular affecting nutrient availability. This alteration of ecosystem may further enhance the invasion success of Acacia, making restoration attempts more challenging.
— The difficulties to drive away the durian farm threatens animals such as wild boars, monkeys, foxes, and squirrels during nighttime often experienced by durian farmers. Therefore, the Pro Durian application is proposed that allows farmers to identify durian threats through a camera phone with an alert feature activation when the system detects an animal to drive away those animals. The application implements a deep learning algorithm of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-YOLO3in order to receive the best output results in identifying the different datasets of durian farm threats. The classification accuracies reached 80% in detecting the animal’s images. Keywords— Durian Farm, Recognition Image, TensorFlow lite, Android Studio, Convolution Neural Network
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