Polyhydroxy propionate-co-hydroxy dodecanoate-co-hydroxy octadecanoate for in vitro cell culture

This study is novel to report the utilization of molasses for the production of polyhydroxy propionate-co-hydroxy dodecanoate-co-hydroxy octadecanoate from Pseudomonas sp. LDC-5 as prospective biomaterial. Thermal analysis revealed its potential for thermal permanence and melt processing. 3T3 fibroblasts were cultured on these different scaffolds and their proliferation was compared. Giemsa and acridine orange/ethidium bromide staining revealed that there was no distinct change in morphology. Polyhydroxyalkanoate:poly ethylene glycol blend was found to be the most promising for extracellular matrix secretion, a key thrust function of 3D culture. Lactate dehydrogenase assay indicated the membrane integrity. DNA fragmentation analysis showed that the scaffold did not damage DNA. Thus the prepared scaffold can serve as a promising biomaterial.     

Influence of Equimolar Concentration on Structural and Optical Properties of Binary Selenides Nanoparticles

Nanoparticles of PbSe, Cu₂Se, and CdSe are prepared for two equimolar concentrations (0.05 M and 0.1 M) by precipitation method at 130°C. The obtained nanoparticles were characterized by x-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and UV-visible analysis to study the structural, morphological, and optical properties and are discussed in detail.     

Three-dimensional porous amorphous SnO2 thin films as anodes for Li-ion batteries

Three-dimensional (3D) porous amorphous SnO₂ thin films were deposited on Ni foam substrates by Electrostatic Spray Deposition (ESD) technique as anodes for Li-ion batteries. These films display good capacity retention of 94.8% after 100 cycles at 0.5 C and rate capability of 362 mAh/g at 10 C. The improved performance originates from the fact that the 3D porous structure offers a “buffer zone” to accommodate the large volume change during cycling, and the foam-like substrate maximizes the contact area between electrode and electrolyte. The facile ESD method can be potentially extended to prepare other 3D porous functional materials.     

Hybrid Swarm Intelligence Based QoS Aware Clustering with Routing Protocol for WSN

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) started gaining attention due to its wide application in the fields of data collection and information processing. The recent advancements in multimedia sensors demand the Quality of Service (QoS) be maintained up to certain standards. The restrictions and requirements in QoS management completely depend upon the nature of target application. Some of the major QoS parameters in WSN are energy efficiency, network lifetime, delay and throughput. In this scenario, clustering and routing are considered as the most effective techniques to meet the demands of QoS. Since they are treated as NP (Non-deterministic Polynomial-time) hard problem, Swarm Intelligence (SI) techniques can be implemented. The current research work introduces a new QoS aware Clustering and Routing-based technique using Swarm Intelligence (QoSCRSI) algorithm. The proposed QoSCRSI technique performs two-level clustering and proficient routing. Initially, the fuzzy is hybridized with Glowworm Swarm Optimization (GSO)-based clustering (HFGSOC) technique for optimal selection of Cluster Heads (CHs). Here, Quantum Salp Swarm optimization Algorithm (QSSA)-based routing technique (QSSAR) is utilized to select the possible routes in the network. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed QoSCRSI technique, the authors conducted extensive simulation analysis with varying node counts. The experimental outcomes, obtained from the proposed QoSCRSI technique, apparently proved that the technique is better compared to other state-of-the-art techniques in terms of energy efficiency, network lifetime, overhead, throughput, and delay.     

Pulse plated zinc sulphide films and their characteristics

Zinc sulphide thin films were deposited by the pulse plating technique using AR grade Zinc sulphate and sodium thiosulphate precursors. The pH of the deposition bath was adjusted to 2. The duty cycle was varied in the range of 20–60%. Total deposition time was kept constant as 60 min in all the cases. X-ray diffraction studies indicated the formation of single phase cubic zinc sulphide films. After heat treatment the crystal structure transformed to hexagonal structure. Optical absorption measurements indicated a band gap values in the range of 3.6–4.0 eV as the duty cycle decreased. EDAX studies yielded a composition of the films deposited at 50% duty cycle is Zn = 48%, S = 52%. XPS studies indicated the formation of ZnS. The Zn 2p and S 3p peaks are observed. AFM studies indicated a rms value of surface roughness of 55 nm for the films deposited at a duty cycle of 60%.     

An approach to enhance the photocatalytic activity of ZnTiO3

ZnTiO₃ nanoparticles and Ag-Fe co-doped ZnTiO₃ nanoparticles were prepared using sol–gel method. The prepared samples were annealed at 700 °C and showed pure hexagonal ZnTiO₃. All the samples were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscope, energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, and UV analyses. The result showed that the hexagonal structure of Ag-Fe ZnTiO₃ is affected with the increase in Ag-Fe concentrations. The zinc titanate nanoparticles were used for determining the degradation of cationic dye. Photocatalytic activity of ZnTiO₃ nanoparticles was studied and compared with that of bare control. The results showed enhanced photocatalytic activity of the Ag-Fe co-doped ZnTiO₃ compared to pure ZnTiO₃, showing that the Ag-Fe co-doping deposition has a major function in enhancing the degradation capability of cationic dye.     

Energy Efficient QoS Aware Cluster Based Multihop Routing Protocol for WSN

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become a hot research area owing to the unique characteristics and applicability in diverse application areas. Clustering and routing techniques can be considered as an NP hard optimization problem, which can be addressed by metaheuristic optimization algorithms. With this motivation, this study presents a chaotic sandpiper optimization algorithm based clustering with groundwater flow optimization based routing technique (CSPOC-GFLR). The goal of the CSOC-GFLR technique is to cluster the sensor nodes in WSN and elect an optimal set of routes with an intention of achieving energy efficiency and maximizing network lifetime. The CSPOC algorithm is derived by incorporating the concepts of chaos theory to boost the global optimization capability of the SPOC algorithm. The CSPOC technique elects an optimum set of cluster heads (CH) whereas the other sensors are allocated to the nearer CH. Extensive experimentation portrayed the promising performance of the CSPOC-GFLR technique by achieving reduced energy utilization, improved lifetime, and prolonged stability over the existing techniques.     

Species classification of aquatic plants using PSVM and ANFIS

This work presents a method for plant species identification using the images of flowers. It focuses on the stable feature extraction of flowers such as color, texture and shape features in addition to fractal dimension. Color based segmentation using K-means clustering and active contour model is used to extract the color features. Texture segmentation using texture filter is used to segment the image and obtain texture features. Sobel, Prewitt and Robert operators are used to extract the boundary of image and to obtain the shape features. Classification of the plants is done using Proximal Support Vector Machine (PSVM) and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) classifiers.     

2D graphene supported nickel oxide nano-composite for fiber optic ethanol gas sensing,removal of azo dye,and biological activity

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Green synthesis of multifunctional metal oxide nanoparticles and its composites are widely evaluated for their efficacy in environmental and...     

A survey of keyword spotting techniques for printed document images

This paper attempts to provide a survey of the past researches on character based as keyword based approaches used for retrieving information from document images. This survey also provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of current techniques, relevancy lies between each technique and also the guidance in choosing the area that future work on document image retrieval could address.