Electronic and vibrational excitations in layered highT c superconductors

In the series of the layered highT _c superconductors (A)_1,2 B₂Ca _n−1Cu _n O_2n+3,4 (A=Tl or Bi;B=Ba or Sr), withn=number of consecutive Cu-O layers, the electron energy states of some of the Tl-based systems have been investigated. The electron and phonon dispersion curves have been obtained. The electronic states near the Fermi level are dominated by the hybridized Cu(d) and the O(p) orbitals. The dispersion curves are highly two-dimensional with very small dispersion alongc-axis. The number of bands is enhanced with increase in the number of the consecutive Cu-O planes (n). The present results agree with those obtained earlier for other superconducting phases. The phonons are overall dominated by the vibrations of the light mass oxygen atom modes both lying in or outside the Cu-O planes. The low-frequency phonons involve the motions of the heavier Tl, Ba atoms etc.     

The First Example of Saccharin‐Lithium Bromide Catalysis: Direct Synthesis of N‐Tosylimines from Alcohols

The first procedure to access N‐tosylimines directly from alcohols under mild and neutral conditions is reported. The protocol involves saccharin‐lithium bromide‐catalyzed oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes/ketones with chloramine‐T followed by their condensation with the in situ generated oxidation by‐product p‐toluenesulfonamide in the same reaction vessel to afford N‐tosylimines in 40–90% overall yields. The present work opens up a new and efficient synthetic route to N‐tosyimines directly from alcohols in a one‐pot procedure.     

Identification of pole-like structures from mobile lidar data of complex road environment

Pole-like structures (PLSs) located in road environment are important roadway assets. They play a vital role in road safety inspection and road planning. The use of light detection and ranging (lidar) based mobile mapping technology for mapping of PLSs is an important area of research as it holds the potential for automation. Point cloud data of rural, peri-urban, and urban road environment are used in this study, which pose special challenge in view of the complexity of terrain, unlike well-planned roads, which have been the subject of interest in existing literature for identification of PLSs. A new five-step method is proposed in this article. The first two steps, i.e. ground filtering and voxelization of filtered non-ground points, are used for data size reduction. Next three steps are used to extract PLSs from reduced data. The proposed method was tested on point cloud data of three test sites having different levels of complexities. PLSs including partially occluded pole, tilted pole, pole situated very close to other objects, and vertical pole attached to tilted pole were accurately identified. Average correctness and completeness, respectively of 92.6% and 94.9%, were achieved in three different complex test sites, i.e. urban, peri-urban, and rural sites, respectively. Computation complexity shows that our proposed method delivers fast and computationally efficient solution for identifying the PLSs from volumetric mobile lidar point cloud. Impact of PLSs on road safety and road planning is also addressed for these selected test sites.     

Emotion recognition model based on facial expressions

Face mining is characterized as the revelation of picture designs in a given congregation of pictures. It is an exertion that generally attracts upon information PC (Personal Computer) vision, picture handling, information mining, AI (Artificial Intelligence), database, and human-made reasoning. Facial acknowledgement breaks down and contemplates the examples from the images of the facial. Facial component extraction is a programmed acknowledgment of human faces by recognizing its highlights, for example, eyebrows, eyes, and lips. In this paper, we are assessing the execution of PCA (Priniciple Component Analysis), GMM (Gaussian Mixture Models), GLCM (Gray Level Co-Occurrence Matrix), and SVM (Support Vector Machines) to perceive seven distinctive outward appearances of two people, for example, angry, sad, happy, disgust, neutral, fear, and surprise in database. Our point is to talk about the best systems that work best for facial acknowledgement. The present investigation demonstrates the plausibility of outward appearance acknowledgement for viable applications like surveillance and human PC communication.

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Tent-Shaped Surface Morphologies of Silicon: Texturization by Metal Induced Etching

Silicon - Nano-metal/semiconductor junction dependent porosification of silicon has been studied here. The silicon nanostructures (SiNSs) have been textured on n- and p- type silicon wafers using...     

Impact of octenyl succinylated pearl millet (Pennisetum typhoides) starch addition as fat replacer on the rheological,textural and sensory characteristics of reduced‐fat yoghurt

The current study evaluated the impact of octenyl succinic anhydride (OSA)‐esterified pearl millet (Pennisetum typhoides) starch as a fat replacer (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0%) on various characteristics of reduced‐fat yoghurt (1.5% fat). Firmness, flow point, storage and loss modulus increased with increasing levels of the OSA starch. The Herschel–Bulkley model was best fit for elucidating their pseudoplastic behaviour. Syneresis decreased considerably, whereas sensory acceptability improved with increasing OSA starch level. Owing to this reduced syneresis, improved structural strength and sensory acceptability, OSA‐esterified pearl millet starch functions as a fat replacer in reduced‐fat yoghurt.     

Electrospray‐deposited nickel ferrite thin film electrode for hydrogen production in PV‐assisted water electrolysis system

Nanocrystalline Ni ferrite thin film was prepared by electrospray deposition technique and characterized by different analytical techniques at different annealing temperatures. All these films were studied by photovoltaic‐assisted water electrolysis system for solar to hydrogen production efficiency measurement. Highly dense and uniform surface morphology was observed in as‐deposited film, which changed into agglomerated nanocrystalline grains of irregular size and shape with change in annealing temperature. The X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy study showed that the as‐deposited film was a mixture of an oxyhydroxide form of iron and an Ni₂O₃ form of nickel, whereas it changed into ferrite phase with change in annealing temperature. The as‐deposited film was observed to be of amorphous phase, which changed to crystalline cubic spinel structure with change in annealing temperature. The solar to hydrogen production efficiency was found to increase in a film with an increase in annealing temperature. The film annealed at 500°C showed a high solar to hydrogen production efficiency (8.29%) with constant performance of up to initial 500 h. Thereafter, the performance slowly declined by 11% when up to 1000 h. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A kinetic model for the enzyme-catalyzed self-epoxidation of oleic acid

This paper reports a kinetic model for the selfepoxidation of oleic acid with toluene as solvent and Novozym 435 (a commercially available preparation of immobilized Candida antarctica lipase) as catalyst at 30°C. The effects of various parameters on the conversion and rates of reaction were studied. Both the initial rate and the progress curve data were used to fit an ordered bi-bi model. At low temperatures, the rate of epoxidation was faster than the rate of deactivation of the enzyme by hydrogen peroxide.     

A bi-objective task scheduling approach in fog computing using hybrid fireworks algorithm

The Journal of Supercomputing - With the rapid increase in the functionality of IoT applications, the services provided by edge/IoT devices have surged in the recent past. Fog computing is gaining...