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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the physicochemical properties, fatty acids, tocopherols, and polyphenols of Algerian argan oil.

The argan oil was extracted from the kernel by an organic solvent, the n‐hexane. Several methods and techniques (spectrophotometric, titrimetric, refractometric, and chomrtographic (CPG/high‐performance liquid chromatographic – HPLC) were used to characterise to argan oil.

The argan oil was yellow oil with faintly marked smell and flavour. The physicochemical analysis showed that the oil was pure, fresh, not siccative and rich in C₁₈ medium chain unsaturated fatty acids, particularly the oleic acid. A HPLC and gaseous phase chromatography methods were developed for the quali‐quantitative analysis of α‐tocopherol and fatty acids composition, respectively.

This highlight shows that the composition of argan oil is oleic‐linoleic type rich in α‐tocopherol (20 mg/kg). The phenolic fraction known for its antioxidant properties ranges from 30 to 50 mg/kg. The argan oil is mainly rich in antioxidant compounds such as phenolic compounds and α‐tocopherol. Argan oil is rich in unsaturated fatty acids, tocopherol and phenolic compounds.

Considering its rich composition in antioxidant compounds and essential fatty acid, argan oil has been used for a long time as a food and for body care, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and some cancers diseases. A deep knowledge of the chemical composition of argan oil will certainly show that is has a high‐nutritional potentiality and is claimed to have favourable medicinal and cosmetic properties.

No such research has been carried out on the argan oil extracted from Argania spinosa (L.) of Algeria. The present work was undertaken to study the physicochemical and nutritional properties of the argan oil.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of prickly pear (Opuntia ficus indica (OFI)) nopalitos on body weight, food consumption, arterial blood pressure, glucidic homeostasis, cholesterol metabolic pathway and tissues redox status in type 2 diabetic (T2D) rats fed a high-fat diet (HFD).

Rats were fed by a HFD containing 30 per cent sheep fat for 10 weeks, after which they were rendered diabetic by an injection of a low dose of streptozotocin (STZ) (35 mg/kg). The diabetic rats were then divided into two groups. The first group consumed the HFD supplemented with 5 per cent (g/100 g diet) of freeze-dried OFI nopalitos (HFD-OFI), and the second group received the HFD without supplementation (HFD).

OFI nopalitos treatment decreased significantly arterial diastolic (−20%; p = 0.0001) and systolic (−16%; p = 0.0001) pressures, glycemia (−14%; p = 0.03), insulinemia (−50%; p = 0.04), glycated hemoglobin (−49%; p = 0.003), homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance (−67%; p = 0.03), cholesterolemia (−31%; p = 0.003), very-low and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (−38%; p = 0.002 and −63% p = 0.0002, respectively); thiobarbituric acid reactive substances and lipid hydroperoxide contents, respectively, in liver (−26% p = 0.02, −20% p = 0.02), adipose tissue (−30% p = 0.002, −25% p = 0.001), muscle (−29% p = 0.003, −25% p = 0.008) and kidney (lipid hydroperoxides only (−28%; p = 0.001) but increased high-density lipoprotein (HDL₂) cholesteryl esters (+61%; p = 0.0001), serum lecithin: cholesterol acyltransferase activity (+21%; p = 0.006) and antioxidant enzymes activities (superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase) of some tissues (liver, adipose tissue, muscle and kidney).

Freeze-dried OFI nopalitos improves arterial blood pressure, glycemic control, metabolic pathway of cholesterol and redox status in T2D rats.

Many synchronization approaches are based on low-level time capturing, causing a tight integration with the Media Access Control (MAC) layer. Alternatively, this study aims to present a hybrid approach combining both receiver–receiver and sender–receiver schemes to reduce the variation of two-way message exchange durations, in heavy-load networks. To achieve network-wide synchronization, a variant of Prim’s algorithm (Cormen et al., 2009) is used to build a spanning tree, guaranteeing the minimum number of ancestors and limited error propagation. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is very competitive with a set of the most-cited synchronization protocols. In addition, a new synchronization simulator SynSim was developed using C++ language

To achieve network-wide synchronization, a variant of Prim's algorithm (Cormen et al., 2009) is used to build a spanning tree, guaranteeing the minimum number of ancestors and limited error propagation.

Simulation results show that the proposed approach is very competitive with a set of the most-cited synchronization protocols. In addition, a new synchronization simulator SynSim was developed using in C++ language.

It can be concluded from the experiments that MDSP is suitable for WSNs especially if MAC layer timestamping is not possible. So, the mean delays synchronization protocol (MSDP) is suitable to achieve time synchronization in single-hop and multi-hop networks without the MAC layer timestamping in large wireless sensor network (WSN) deployments.

A future enhancement of MDSP could be switching between the traditional timestamping and the new proposed timestamping based on a given threshold, which is the number of nodes in the neighborhood and the load of the network. It will be also interesting to test it in a prototype. The proposed solution can be used in practice to implement the Time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol in a WSN. In addition, the proposed simulator can be used in a computer network synchronization protocols course.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study’s contribution is original. In addition, the authors implemented a new synchronization simulator