A QoS Aware Resource Placement Approach Inspired on the Behavior of the Social Spider Mating Strategy in the Cloud Environment

Wireless Personal Communications - The efficient management of resource sharing plays a crucial role in the cloud execution environment. The constraints such as heterogeneity and dynamic nature of...     

Drivers of change in groundwater resources: a case study of the Indian Punjab

Indian Punjab, a strategically important region from India’s national food security standpoint, is increasingly the focus of attention for academics and policymakers because of serious concerns about over-exploitation of its groundwater resources. Currently, policy makers and agricultural researchers/scientists in India are in a fix to prescribe an alternative, probably more sustainable, crop-mix to farmers that can save water while maintaining farm incomes. Using primary data from 120 farmers, this paper evaluates the current situation of groundwater resources in Punjab, and outlines the major socio-economic factors that have a significant association with the change in the groundwater depth in this region. General ANOVA regression results suggest that groundwater depth varied significantly with respect to agro-climatic regions, crop diversity, and farmer education. Crop diversity had an inverse relationship with groundwater depth whereas the association between farmer education and groundwater depth was non-linear although in the case of Gurdaspur, they showed a direct relationship. In the central zone of Indian Punjab, groundwater level on 92% of the farms had depleted by more than 0.60 m annually between 2000 and 2010, while the current state of groundwater resources in the other two regions was not so serious and are manageable for the time being. However, if the existing policy framework for groundwater resources in the state, which allows the state government to release 0.11 million more connections to farmers, putting much pressure not only on the groundwater resources but also burdening the state exchequer, continues, Punjab may end up losing all its groundwater resources for ever. Considering this alarming situation, one-fifth of the farmers surveyd agreed to delay the sowing of rice by another 2 weeks i.e. up to 30 June which could save the fast depleting groundwater resources in Punjab.     

Enzyme‐catalyzed regioselective synthesis of sugar esters and related compounds

In this review, a comprehensive and illustrative survey is made of the regioselective synthesis of esters of sugars and related compounds using lipases. The main emphasis has been given to the screening and use of commercially available lipases for the enzymatic esterification of neutral monosaccharides, disaccharides, sugar alcohols and their selected ether and ester derivatives. The effect of solvents and solubilizing agents in improving the yields of the resultant sugar fatty acid esters has been incorporated. Further, solvent‐free esterification with molten fatty acids, use of ionic liquids and microwave radiations for improvement in the methodology have also been discussed. Copyright © 2006 Society of Chemical Industry     

Live Detection of Face Using Machine Learning with Multi-feature Method

Wireless Personal Communications - Facial expression detection (FED) and extraction show the most important role in face recognition. This research proposed a new algorithm for automatic live FED...     

Deep Learning Based Object Detection Combined with Internet of Things for Remote Surveillance

Wireless Personal Communications - Object detection is the key process in any video surveillance application. In case of remote surveillance, it is a necessity to accurately detect the target and...     

A Study on Extraction and Characterization of Keratin Films and Nanofibers from Waste Wool Fiber

ABSTRACT

Fabrication and characterization of keratin films extracted from waste Merino wool fiber using two different methods and three different pH concentrations is the main focus of this study. Also, wool keratin (WK) loaded polymer surfaces were fabricated. The chemical, structural and morphological characteristics of keratin extracted from aqueous solutions were analyzed and compared for both methods. It is concluded that optimized results in this study could contribute in future research studies to select the parameters and methods to extract keratin films from recyclable wool fibers. Also, WK loaded nanofibrous films could be potential in filtration, air purification and tissue engineering.     

Detection of the potential pancreatic cancer marker MUC4 in serum using surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most lethal malignancies. It has a 5-year survival rate of only 6%, owing in part to the lack of a reliable tumor marker for early diagnosis. Recent research has shown that the mucin protein MUC4 is aberrantly expressed in pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell lines and tissues but is undetectable in normal pancreas and chronic pancreatitis. Thus, the level of MUC4 in patient sera has the potential to function as a diagnostic and prognostic marker for PC. However, the measurement of MUC4 in sera using conventional test platforms (e.g., enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and radioimmunoassay (RIA)) has been unsuccessful. This has prevented the assessment of the utility of this protein as a possible PC marker in sera. In addressing this obstacle, the work herein examines the potential to create a simple diagnostic test for MUC4 through the development of a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-based immunoassay, which was then used to demonstrate the first ever detection of MUC4 in cancer patient serum samples. Importantly, these measurements showed that sera from patients with PC produced a significantly higher SERS response for MUC4 compared to sera from healthy individuals and from patients with benign diseases. These results indicate that a SERS-based immunoassay can monitor MUC4 levels in patient sera, representing a much needed first step toward assessing the potential of this protein to serve as a serum marker for the early stage diagnosis of PC. This paper details these and other findings (i.e., the detection of the mucin protein CA19-9), which demonstrate that our SERS assay outperforms conventional assays (i.e., RIA and ELISA) with respect to limits of detection, readout time, and required sample volume.     

Fabrication and Characterization of Nonwoven Auxetic Polymer Stent

Synthetic biomaterials have better controlled physical and mechanical properties and can be used to tailor both soft and hard tissues. A tiny, expandable mesh tubes called stents keep blood vessels open and allow blood flow and treat blockage to improve quality of patient’s life. The main focus of this work is to (i) fabricate a polymeric sheet of melt electrospun polycaprolactone microfibers; (ii) tailor auxetic geometry by micromachining on polycaprolactone microfiber and polycaprolactone sheet; (iii) fabricate a cylindrical tube to make auxetic stents. Final results for mechanical characterization and performance analysis of auxetic polymer stents are discussed.     

Automatic Live Facial Expression Detection Using Genetic Algorithm with Haar Wavelet Features and SVM

Wireless Personal Communications - Facial expression detection (FED) and extraction show the most important role in face recognition. In this research, we proposed a new algorithm for automatic...