Redefined SI Units and Their Implications

Metrology plays the key role as the engine of industrial revolution and growth of any country. It promotes global competence and confidence. With the advent of better quality products through metrological advancement, our industries can compete internationally and to overcome trade barriers/constraints and finally to achieve exports targets. This translates into growth of industries through rapid industrialization, economic growth and societal upliftment. The metrology requires continued and sustained efforts to cater the stakeholders’ demands for advancements in measurement technologies, standards and measurement techniques for more and more precise, reliable, reproducible and accurate measurements with improved measurement uncertainties. In this context, the recent revolutionary changes in redefinition of SI units based on fundamental constants were unanimously voted for adoption by world community during November 16, 2018, at Versailles, France, and implemented world over from May 20, 2019—the World Metrology Day. Therefore, it was considered appropriate to compile a brief status report and apprise the readers about these historical events. The present paper touches glimpse of some of these activities and describes the implications of these changes in our daily life.     

Distributed Dynamic Backhauling in Aerial Heterogeneous Networks

Wireless Personal Communications - A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a multi-hop network that gains the benefits of low deployment cost, fast access speed, expanded service coverage and large...     

Performance Evaluation of Inversion Mode and Junctionless Dual-Material Double-Surrounding Gate Si Nanotube MOSFET for 5-nm Gate Length

Semiconductors - In this work, drain current ID for 5-nm gate length with dual-material (DM) double-surrounding gate (DSG) inversion mode (IM) and junctionless (JL) silicon nanotube (SiNT) MOSFET...     

Acrylic-ester-polyol based novel two-component polyurethane clear coat: Evaluation of performance characteristics

In the current study, a combination of acrylic polyol (AP) and ester polyol (EP) were synthesized and reacted at variable ratios with hexamethylene diisocyanates and isophorone diisocyanates to prepare a transparent two-component polyurethane (PU) coating formulation. The formations of the polyol system, isocyanate system, and the PU systems were confirmed by ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Transparency of the coatings was examined using haze, and gloss measurement, which showed acrylic-ester-polyurethane (aePU-5 and aePU-6) have 91.5% and 91.8% transparency and gloss of 90.3 and 90.7 GU respectively. The thermal properties like T_g and the thermal stability of the coatings were verified using differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis respectively which was found to increase with increasing EP content and decreasing AP content which may be ascribed to improved compatibility of copolymers, and homogeneity in PU along with enhanced crosslinking density. The degree of adhesion of coating with the substrate was validated from lap-shear, and cross-cut tape test which showed improved performance at AP:EP ratio of 60:40. The coatings were found to exhibit resistance toward pencil hardness with aePU-5 and aePU-6 having the optimum resistance of 9H. The surface morphology and topography were observed under scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy, respectively. The outcome confirms the higher smoothness of the surfaces subjected to the increase in EP content. The PU system with 40 wt% AP content and 60 wt% EP designated as aePU-5 was found to exhibit optimum performance.     

Investigation on effects of system parameters on transmission depth in underwater wireless optical communication

Photonic Network Communications - Performance of underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) with different vertical water channel conditions is experimentally analyzed. Experiment has been...     

Study of physicochemical properties of flutamide-loaded Ocimum basilicum microspheres with ex vivo mucoadhesion and in vitro drug release

Drug which shows extensive first pass effect is difficult task that, needs to be solved by formulators in the pharmaceutical science. The low oral bioavailability (49%) of flutamide may be due to poor wettability, low aqueous solubility and extensive first pass effect. The aim of present investigation was to prepare flutamide loaded microspheres and incorporate it into suppositories for rectal delivery to avoid first pass effect and enhance residence time. Flutamide loaded mucoadhesive microspheres of Ocimum Basilicum mucilage (OBM) were prepared using spray drying and characterized by percent production yield, encapsulation efficiency, particle size, zeta potential, polydispersity index, DSC, SEM, XRPD, in vitro drug release and stability studies. Moreover, ex vivo mucoadhesion was investigated using falling liquid film technique to determine the adhesion of microspheres to sheep rectal mucosa. The microspheres had nearly spherical shape and size about 2.53?μm. The encapsulation efficiency and mucoadhesion of optimized formulation MBF10 were found to be 69.6?±?2.3% and 89.01?±?2.18%, respectively. Percent CDR of optimized flutamide loaded mucoadhesive microspheres was found to be 88.7?±?1.3 at 7?h. In conclusion, OBM microparticles based suppository could be used to deliver drug through rectal delivery.     

Synthesis and characterization of nanostructured CaSiO3 biomaterial

Here we report a successful preparation of nanostructured calcium silicate by wet chemical approach. The synthesized sample was characterized by various physico-chemical methods. Thermal stability was investigated using thermo-gravimetric and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA). Structural characterization of the sample was carried out by the X-ray diffraction technique (XRD) which confirmed its single phase hexagonal structure. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to study the nanostructure of the ceramics while homogeneous grain distribution was revealed by scanning electron microscopy studies (SEM). The elemental analysis data obtained from energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDAX) were in close agreement with the starting composition used for the synthesis. Superhydrophilic nature of CaSiO₃ was investigated at room temperature by sessile drop technique. Effect of porous nanosized CaSiO₃ on early adhesion and proliferation of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) and cord blood mesenchymal stem (CBMSCs) cells was measured in vitro. MTT cytotoxicity test and cell adhesion test showed that the material had good biocompatibility and promoted cell viability and cell proliferation. It has been stated that the cell viability and proliferation are significantly affected by time and concentration of CaSiO₃. These findings indicate that the CaSiO₃ ceramics has good biocompatibility and that it is promising as a biomaterial.     

Providing reliable and link stability‐based geocasting model in underwater environment

This paper presents a geocast technique for underwater sensor networks. The model named as Routing and Multicast Tree based Geocasting (RMTG) (TRACE'10, Bhopal, India, 2010; ICWET'10, Mumbai, India, 2010) has been designed for underwater sensor networks. In our previous work (TRACE'10, Bhopal, India, 2010; ICWET'10, Mumbai, India, 2010) we proposed only a theoretical model for underwater geocasting. The RMTG technique uses greedy forwarding and previous hop handshaking to route the packets towards the geocast region and further disseminates the data within the geocast region by creating a multicast shortest path tree. We also presented various link broken scenarios along with their solutions. The proposed model does not use the flooding technique to deliver the packets inside the geocast region that is used in most of the geocasting techniques. In this paper, we present the simulated RMTG model. The simulation results show that the proposed model provides an efficient distribution of data in the geocast region in terms of node mobility handling, packet delivery ratio and a better end‐to‐end latency. Most of the work on geocasting has been done for mobile and vehicular ad hoc networks; hence we present in this paper a novel simulated model for underwater environment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.