Optimized mobility management protocol for the IoT based WBAN with an enhanced security

Wireless Networks - Today, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is widely used for general purposes. With the propagation of the Internet of Things (IoT), security issues arise wherever the healthcare...     

Improving hydrophobicity of polyurethane by PTFE incorporation

A simple and facile method was established of incorporating polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) on to polyurethane (PU) to improve hydrophobicity of PU by incorporating low levels of fluorine at a molecular level. Nanocomposites were made by preparing PU in the presence of PTFE using seeded miniemulsion polymerization method. The resulting PTFE/PU nanocomposites were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometry, differential scanning calorimetric, and thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA). FTIR and TEM indicated changes observed in their structure, size and morphology. The water contact angle of PTFE/PU nanocomposite films increased with increasing amount of PTFE and more on blending with silica nanoparticles but a slight decrease in thermal stabilities of SiO₂/PTFE/PU nanocomposites were noticed. The hydrophobicity imparted by PTFE to PU surface was found to be at its best for 1 : 2 PTFE/PU latex film. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 42779.     

Optical studies of ZnO/Ag nanojunctions

Ag/ZnO nano-hetero-junctions were synthesized by an electrochemical route. The optical absorption spectroscopy and photoluminescence studies reveal the reaction mechanism at the junction. Optical absorption spectra indicate presence of well-defined ZnO excitonic feature along with the Ag surface plasmon absorption feature at 400 nm. Moreover, ZnO green photoluminescence appears on junction formation with Ag. Detailed analysis of emission and excitation processes indicate that efficient charge transfer is taking place from ZnO to Ag. Ag is also responsible for creation of levels in the HOMO-LUMO gap of ZnO. This finding may be of relevance so far as p-type doping in ZnO is concerned.     

Adsorptive removal of phthalate ester (Di-ethyl phthalate) from aqueous phase by activated carbon: a kinetic study

Adsorptive studies were carried out on Di-ethyl phthalate (DEP) removal from aqueous phase onto activated carbon. Batch sorption studies were performed and the results revealed that activated carbon demonstrated ability to adsorb DEP. Influence of varying experimental conditions such as DEP concentration, pH of aqueous solution, and dosage of adsorbent were investigated on the adsorption process. Sorption interaction of DEP onto activated carbon obeyed the pseudo second order rate equation. Experimental data showed good fit with both the Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherm models. DEP sorption was found to be dependent on the aqueous phase pH and the uptake was observed to be greater at acidic pH.     

Passivation of n‐type emitter and p‐type base in solar cells via oxygen terminated silicon nanoparticles

Various measurements and experiments are performed to establish the mechanism of passivation on emitter and base of conventionally manufactured solar cell with p‐type base. The surface coatings on the emitter are removed. The bare surface is then coated with silicon (Si) nanoparticles (NPs) with oxygen termination. It shows an increase in the cell efficiency up to 14% over bare surface of solar cell. The NPs show enhancement in light scattering from the surface, but shows an increase in the recombination lifetime indicating an improved passivation. When back contact is partially removed, the coating on bare back side ( p‐type) of the solar cell also improves the cell efficiency. This is also attributable to the increased recombination lifetime from the measurements. Same NPs are seen to degrade the surface of n and p‐type Si wafers. This apparently contradictory behaviour is explained by studying and comparing the emitter (n‐type) surface of the solar cell with that of n‐type Si wafer and the back surface ( p‐type) with that of p‐type Si wafer. The emitter surface is distinctly different from the n‐type wafer because of the shallow p–n junction causing the surface depletion. Back surface has aluminium (Al) metal trace, which plays an important role in forming complexes with the oxygen‐terminated Si NPs (Si–O NPs). With these studies, it is observed that increase in the efficiency can potentially reduce the thermal budget in solar cell preparation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CdO–CdS nanocomposites with enhanced photocatalytic activity for hydrogen generation from water

Nanocomposites of CdO–CdS have been prepared in ethylene glycol water mixture followed by heating at 300 °C. TEM and XRD studies confirmed the atomic scale mixing of CdO and CdS nanoparticles, leading to the formation of CdSO₃ phase at the interfacial region between CdO and CdS. Photocatalytic studies for hydrogen generation from water show an enhanced activity for CdO–CdS composites compared to individual components namely CdO or CdS nanoparticles. Based on optical absorption, surface area measurements, steady state and time resolved fluorescence studies, it is established that, enhanced absorption in the visible region, higher surface area and increase in lifetime of the charge carriers are responsible for the observed increase in hydrogen yield from water when composite sample was used as the photocatalyst compared to individual components. The composite sample when combined with Pt as co-catalyst exhibit a large increase in the photocatalytic activity.     

Sparse multilinear Laplacian discriminant analysis for gait recognition

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Distinct and unique ways of walking have attracted the attention of researchers for identification of different individuals. The Gait; the walking video sequence...     

The present status of subsiding land vulnerable to roof collapse in the Jharia Coalfield,India, as obtained from shorter temporal baseline C-band DInSAR by smaller spatial subset unwrapped phase profiling

In this paper, we identified recently subsiding areas in Jharia Coalfield, Jharkhand, India from the shorter temporal baseline Radarsat-2 C-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data pairs of 2012. Although shorter wavelength C-band differential InSAR (DInSAR) is more sensitive to slow deformation and better suited for higher precision land subsidence measurement, the dynamic and adverse land cover in mining areas and resulting temporal decorrelation problem poses a serious problem for DInSAR observation in mining areas. We used smaller temporal baseline data pairs and adopted InSAR coherence-guided incremental filtering with smaller moving windows to highlight the deformation fringes over temporal decorrelation noise. We identified the deformation fringes and validated them based on ground information to prepare the land subsidence map of the coalfield in 2012. Several new, previously unreported subsidence areas were detected in the present study with a total subsiding area of 6.9 km². The recent incidence of roof collapse on 15 November 2014 at Angar Patra village in Katras region of the coalfield where 45 houses collapsed and 10 people were injured is situated in a highly subsiding vulnerable area as obtained from the present study. Due to spatial discontinuities of InSAR coherence, DInSAR phase unwrapping for the entire study area in one go did not appear feasible. To avoid this problem, we performed DInSAR processing in smaller spatial subsets and unwrapping of the subset interferograms by a ‘minimum cost flow’ algorithm. Subsequently, we plotted unwrapped phase profiles across the deformation fringes and retrieved the maximum deformation phase with respect to background phase and translated them into radar line of sight (LOS) displacement rates. For obtaining the average subsidence rates, we adopted InSAR coherence-weighted LOS displacement rates taking into account the contribution of each data pair as a function of DInSAR phase quality of the fringe areas. Ground-based subsidence measurements by precision levelling were conducted in four test sites that had been undergoing active underground mining during the observation period. We compared space-borne DInSAR-based subsidence rates obtained by the adopted technique with precision levelling measurements. Overall, the results are found to agree well. In the four test sites with gentle to flat topography, land subsidence occurs at slow to moderate rates due to compression of in-filled material (resulting from sand stowing in underground mining), without any evidence of roof collapse. In such cases, the horizontal displacement component is less significant, and overall surface displacement occurs essentially in the vertical direction. However, we assessed the nature of subtle horizontal strain to infer relative shrinkage or dilation of the land surface which could be additive or subtractive to vertical displacement in DInSAR-based LOS displacement.     

Controlled release PVC membranes: Influence of phthalate plasticizers on their tensile properties and performance

The design of controlled release polymer dispensers (CRPD) for effective release of the active ingredients at desired rates requires a careful study and generation of data on several properties of the polymer membranes. Presence of optimum tensile properties is one of the prerequisites for the CRPD in deciding their suitability for application in the fields. Polyvinylchloride (PVC) membranes containing di n-alkyl phthalate (alkyl= methyl, ethyl, butyl&octyl) with concentrations ranging from 10–30% with an increment of 2.5% were prepared. The tensile strength and percent elongation of these membranes as a function of concentration of the phthalate plasticizers, their size and aging period were performed. An increase in the tensile strength with increasing phthalate content was noticed up to 17.5% phthalate. Then followed a decrease with further increase of phthalate content. In contrast, the percent elongation was observed to increase constantly with increased concentration of the plasticizer. The ambiguous increase in the tensile strength up to 17.5% plasticized films is attributed to the antiplasticization effect of the plasticizer. The properties showed a linear behavior with respect to the size of the alkyl chain length and also the period of aging. The membranes with 17.5% and 20% were found to have optimum tensile properties and good property retention with aging for their application in controlled release of agrochemicals.