Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of Fine Particle Oxides Employing Wet Redox Mixtures

Interaction of electromagnetic radiation with a physical mixture of metal nitrates and amides/hydrazides is observed to initiate high-temperature reactions, useful for realizing several high-temperature ceramic materials. A judicious choice of such redox mixtures undergoes exothermic reactions when they couple with microwave radiation. The coupling of electromagnetic radiation with metal salts and amides/hydrazides depends on the dielectric properties of the individual components in the reaction mixture. The approach has been used to prepare γ-Fe₂O₃, Fe₃O₄, MgCr₂O₄, α-CaCr₂O₄, and La_0.7Ba_0.3MnO₃.     

Complementarity determining region residues aspartic acid at H55, serine at H95 and tyrosines at H97 and L96 play important roles in the B72.3 antibody-TAG72 antigen interaction

Structural analysis derived from the crystallographic studyof the chimeric B72.3 antibody illustrated some major atomicinteractions between complementarity determining region (CDR)residues. For example, hydrogen bonds are formed between H35/H95,L50/H97, H53/H55 and H96/L96 respectively. These CDR residuesmay play important roles in the B72.3–TAG72 (antibody-antigen)interaction either by direct interaction with the TAG72 antigenor by maintaining a CDR loop conformation through atomic interactionsbetween CDR residues. In order to confirm these assumptions,we altered these CDR residues by site-directed mutagenesis anddetermined binding affinities of these mutant chimeric antibodiesfor the TAG72 antigen in a solid-phase radioimmunoassay. Wefound that H55, H95, H97 and L96 are important CDR residuesfor the B72.3–TAG72 interaction. Single amino acid substitutionsof aspartic acid and serine by alanine at H55 of CDR2 and atH95 of CDR3 respectively and of tyrosine by phenylalanine atH97 and L96 of CDR3, significantly reduced the binding affinityfor the TAG72 antigen by 20-, 8-, 16- and 45-fold respectively.Therefore, this study reveals some of the requirements for maintainingthe integrity of the B72.3 antibody combining sites.     

Optimal Sensor Networks for Area Monitoring Using Rotating and Beam Sensors

We consider the problem of monitoring the Euclidean plane using rotating sensors with detection sectors and beam sensors. We assume that intruders can appear anywhere at any time and move arbitrarily fast, and may have full knowledge of the sensor network. We require that such intruders be detected within a finite amount of time. We give an optimal network for this problem consisting of a combination of rotating sensors of angle 0 and beam sensors that uses the minimum number of both types of sensors. We show a trade-off between the density of beam sensors needed and the angle of the detection sector of the rotating sensors. Secondly, we give a family of sensor networks using only rotating sensors for the same problem, that demonstrate a trade-off between the detection time and the density of rotating sensors used. We show that the density of rotating sensors required in this case can be significantly reduced by increasing the angle of detection sectors. Finally, we show that our results on the infinite plane can be used to derive sensor networks that monitor some finite regions using a density of sensors that is asymptotically the same, or close to that of the infinite plane case.     

Games to induce specified equilibria

Media access protocols in wireless networks require each contending node to wait for a backoff time, chosen randomly from a fixed range, before attempting to transmit on a shared channel. However, nodes acting in their own selfish interest may not follow the protocol. In this paper, a static version of the problem is modeled as a strategic game played by non-cooperating, rational players (the nodes). The objective is to design a game which exhibits a unique, a priori mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium. In the context of the media access problem, the equilibrium of the game would correspond to nodes choosing backoff times randomly from a given range of values, according to the given distribution. We consider natural variations of the problems concerning the number of actions available to the players and show that it is possible to design such a game when there are at least two players that each have the largest number of possible actions among all players. In contrast, we show that if there are exactly two players with different number of actions available to them, then it becomes impossible to design a strategic game with a unique such Nash equilibrium.     

Effects of Hall current and two temperatures in transversely isotropic magnetothermoelastic with and without energy dissipation due to ramp-type heat

The present article is concerned with the investigation of disturbances in a homogeneous transversely isotropic thermoelastic rotating medium with two temperatures, in the presence of the combined effects of Hall currents and magnetic field. The formulation is applied to the thermoelasticity theories developed by Green-Naghdi theories of type-II and type-III. Laplace and Fourier transform techniques are applied to solve the problem. The analytical expressions of displacements, stress components, temperature change, and current density components are obtained in the transformed domain. A numerical inversion technique has been applied to obtain the results in the physical domain. Numerical simulated results are depicted graphically to show the effect of Hall current and two temperatures on resulting quantities. Some special cases are also deduced from the present investigation.     

Metallic nanoparticle synthesised by biological route: safer candidate for diverse applications

Biological synthesis of nanoparticles (NPs) involves greater prospect; however, a detailed review is required for ecofriendly, faster and stable NP formulation in large scale for different commercial applications. The present article highlighted recent updates on biological route of single and bimetallic NP synthesis wherein the chemical reducing agents are eliminated and biological entities are utilised to convert metal ions to NPs. Application of the biological reducing agents ranging from bacteria to fungi and even natural plant extracts have emerged as eco‐friendly and cost‐effective routes for the synthesis of metal nanomaterials. Potential applications of such NPs, a wide range of analytical techniques used for characterisation and factors influencing the synthesis of NPs are focused. Further, elucidation of the mechanisms associated with the NP formation using microorganisms, as well as plant‐based materials are analysed which would be helpful for wide range of readers in the field of NP research for future selection and commercial implementation.Inspec keywords: nanoparticles, nanobiotechnology, nanofabrication, reviews, microorganisms, botanyOther keywords: metallic nanoparticle, biological synthesis, chemical reducing agents, biological reducing agents, bacteria, fungi, natural plant extracts, eco‐friendly synthesis, cost‐effective synthesis, microorganisms, plant‐based materials, review     

Distributed algorithms for barrier coverage using relocatable sensors

We study the barrier coverage problem using relocatable sensor nodes. We assume each sensor can sense an intruder or event inside its sensing range. Sensors are initially located at arbitrary positions on the barrier and can move along the barrier. The goal is to find final positions for sensors so that the entire barrier is covered. In recent years, the problem has been studied extensively in the centralized setting. In this paper, we study a barrier coverage problem in the distributed and discrete setting. We assume that we have n identical sensors located at grid positions on the barrier, and that each sensor repeatedly executes a Look-Compute-Move cycle: based on what it sees in its vicinity, it makes a decision on where to move, and moves to its next position. We make two strong but realistic restrictions on the capabilities of sensors: they have a constant visibility range and can move only a constant distance in every cycle. In this model, we give the first two distributed algorithms that achieve barrier coverage for a line segment barrier when there are enough nodes in the network to cover the entire barrier. Our algorithms are synchronous, and local in the sense that sensors make their decisions independently based only on what they see within their constant visibility range. One of our algorithms is oblivious whereas the other uses two bits of memory at each sensor to store the type of move made in the previous step. We show that our oblivious algorithm terminates within \(\varTheta (n^2)\) steps with the barrier fully covered, while the constant-memory algorithm is shown to take \(\varTheta (n)\) steps to terminate in the worst case. Since any algorithm in which a sensor can only move a constant distance in one step requires \(\varOmega (n)\) steps on some inputs, our second algorithm is asymptotically optimal.     

An efficient algorithm for mass detection and shape analysis of different masses present in digital mammograms

The present study introduces an efficient algorithm for automatic segmentation and detection of mass present in the mammograms. The problem of over and under-segmentation of low-contrast mammographic images has been solved by applying preprocessing on original mammograms. Subtraction operation performed between enhanced and enhanced inverted mammogram significantly highlights the suspicious mass region in mammograms. The segmentation accuracy of suspicious region has been improved by combining wavelet transform and fast fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm. The accuracy of mass segmentation has been quantified by means of Jaccard coefficients. Better sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under the curve (AUC) are observed with support vector machine using radial basis kernel function. The proposed algorithm is validated on Mini-Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) and Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM) datasets. Highest 91.76% sensitivity, 96.26% specificity, 95.46% accuracy, and 96.29% AUC on DDSM dataset and 94.63% sensitivity, 92.74% specificity, 92.02% accuracy, and 95.33% AUC on MIAS dataset are observed. Also, shape analysis of mass is performed by using moment invariant and Radon transform based features. The best results are obtained with Radon based features and achieved accuracies for round, oval, lobulated, and irregular shape of mass are 100%, 70%, 64%, and 96%, respectively.     

Lead‐Free Polycrystalline Ferroelectric Nanowires with Enhanced Curie Temperature

Ferroelectrics are important technological materials with wide‐ranging applications in electronics, communication, health, and energy. While lead‐based ferroelectrics have remained the predominant mainstay of industry for decades, environmentally friendly lead‐free alternatives are limited due to relatively low Curie temperatures (T _C) and/or high cost in many cases. Efforts have been made to enhance T _C through strain engineering, often involving energy‐intensive and expensive fabrication of thin epitaxial films on lattice‐mismatched substrates. Here, a relatively simple and scalable sol–gel synthesis route to fabricate polycrystalline (Ba_0.85Ca_0.15)(Zr_0.1Ti_0.9)O₃ nanowires within porous templates is presented, with an observed enhancement of T _C up to ≈300 °C as compared to ≈90 °C in the bulk. By combining experiments and theoretical calculations, this effect is attributed to the volume reduction in the template‐grown nanowires that modifies the balance between different structural instabilities. The results offer a cost‐effective solution‐based approach for strain‐tuning in a promising lead‐free ferroelectric system, thus widening their current applicability.