Metal-insulator-semiconductor solar cell under gamma irradiation

The performance of a home made MIS–p-Si solar cell was experimentally studied under various gamma irradiation doses (up to 500 Mrad). The effect of radiation dose on the I−V and C−V characteristics was investigated in this work. The obtained results showed that all the output parameters of the cells under investigation were degraded with gamma radiation exposure. In addition, the effects of fabrication conditions (metal thickness and adding of antireflection coating) on the cell output parameters were also investigated.     

Neural Computation of the MoM Matrix Elements for Planar Configurations

In this paper a new artificial neural network (ANN) based model for the calculation of the method of moments (MoM) matrix elements is presented. Training sets that characterize the matrix elements are first constructed. These sets are then utilized to effectively train two radial basis function (RBF) neural networks to accurately estimate all the elements of the MoM matrix for any mesh used. The potential of the proposed approach is demonstrated in the case of a narrow microstrip line. The current distribution on the microstrip line produced by the trained RBF networks agrees very well with the exact distribution. In addition, the proposed ANN model is much faster than the conventional MoM procedure.     

Diazepam alters caffeine-induced effects on beta-endorphin levels in specific rat brain regions

The present study was conducted to evaluate the effects of caffeine and the benzodiazepine agonist diazepam, and a combination of both on beta-endorphin (beta-EN) levels in specific rat brain regions. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (150-200 g) adapted to a 12-hour light: 12-hour dark illumination cycle were used in this study. Caffeine (10 mg/kg), diazepam (2 mg/kg) or a combination of caffeine (10 mg/kg) and diazepam (2 mg/kg) were administered intraperitoneally to rats at 11:00 hr. Control animals were injected with saline. Animals were sacrificed by decapitation 1 h after injection, the brains were immediately removed; the cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus and midbrain were dissected and their B-EN levels measured by radioimmunoassay. Caffeine administration significantly increased B-EN levels in the cortex. Similarly, administration of diazepam alone resulted in a significant increase of B-EN levels in cortex. However, concurrent administration of diazepam and caffeine resulted in higher increase of B-EN levels in cortex. No significant changes in B-EN levels were detected in hippocampus and midbrain after administration of either caffeine or diazepam alone. On the other hand, when diazepam and caffeine were concurrently administered a significant increase of B-EN levels were observed in the midbrain. Moreover, administration of diazepam alone resulted in a significant increase of B-EN levels in hypothalamus. This increase was still observed following concurrent administration of diazepam and caffeine. These results clearly indicate that diazepam alters caffeine-induced effects on B-EN in specific rat brain regions.     

Characterization of Failure Mechanisms of Duplex and Graded Thermal Barrier Coatings Exposed to Thermal Shock Test

The beginning of failure of a (ZrO2-7%Y2O3)/(Ni-22%Co-17%Cr-12.5%Al-0.6%Y) duplex andgraded coating systems on lnconel 617 and IN738LC in burner rig tests has been characterized.The test conditions are 40 s heating up to 75O℃ substrate temperature followed by 80 s aircooling. Failure is considered at the appearance of the first bright spot during heating period.Stresses due to thermal expansion mismatch strains on cooling are the probable cause of life-limiting in this conditions of testing.     

Analysis of the stratified / nonstratified transitional boundary in horizontal and slightly inclined condensing flows

A mechanistic model has been developed for determining the stratified boundary for condensing flows in horizontal and slightly inclined tubes. Two formulations, a complete and a simplified version are considered for the equilibrium liquid level. Good agreement is found between the two formulations and generalized results were derived from the simplified version of the model. From these results, the effect of condensation is shown to be equivalent to adding a small upward inclination in adiabatic gas-liquid flow. The predicted transition line is compared with flow-regime data of different fluid properties, tube diameters, and inclinations. The predictions agreed reasonably well with the data.     

Deep learning controller for nonlinear system based on Lyapunov stability criterion

Neural Computing and Applications - For the current paper, the technique of feed-forward neural network deep learning controller (FFNNDLC) for the nonlinear systems is proposed. The FFNNDLC...     

An Efficient Medical Image Deep Fusion Model Based on Convolutional Neural Networks

Medical image fusion is considered the best method for obtaining one image with rich details for efficient medical diagnosis and therapy. Deep learning provides a high performance for several medical image analysis applications. This paper proposes a deep learning model for the medical image fusion process. This model depends on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The basic idea of the proposed model is to extract features from both CT and MR images. Then, an additional process is executed on the extracted features. After that, the fused feature map is reconstructed to obtain the resulting fused image. Finally, the quality of the resulting fused image is enhanced by various enhancement techniques such as Histogram Matching (HM), Histogram Equalization (HE), fuzzy technique, fuzzy type Π, and Contrast Limited Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). The performance of the proposed fusion-based CNN model is measured by various metrics of the fusion and enhancement quality. Different realistic datasets of different modalities and diseases are tested and implemented. Also, real datasets are tested in the simulation analysis.     

Dynamic S-Box Generation Using Novel Chaotic Map with Nonlinearity Tweaking

A substitution box (S-Box) is a crucial component of contemporary cryptosystems that provide data protection in block ciphers. At the moment, chaotic maps are being created and extensively used to generate these S-Boxes as a chaotic map assists in providing disorder and resistance to combat cryptanalytical attempts. In this paper, the construction of a dynamic S-Box using a cipher key is proposed using a novel chaotic map and an innovative tweaking approach. The projected chaotic map and the proposed tweak approach are presented for the first time and the use of parameters in their working makes both of these dynamic in nature. The tweak approach employs cubic polynomials while permuting the values of an initial S-Box to enhance its cryptographic fort. Values of the parameters are provided using the cipher key and a small variation in values of these parameters results in a completely different unique S-Box. Comparative analysis and exploration confirmed that the projected chaotic map exhibits a significant amount of chaotic complexity. The security assessment in terms of bijectivity, nonlinearity, bits independence, strict avalanche, linear approximation probability, and differential probability criteria are utilized to critically investigate the effectiveness of the proposed S-Box against several assaults. The proposed S-Box’s cryptographic performance is comparable to those of recently projected S-Boxes for its adaption in real-world security applications. The comparative scrutiny pacifies the genuine potential of the proposed S-Box in terms of its applicability for data security.     

Effect of heat treatment on the structural and optical properties of CuInTe2 thin films

The CuInTe2 thin films were prepared by thermal vacuum evaporation of the bulk compound. The structural and optical properties in the temperature range 300–47 K of thin films grown on glass substrates and annealed in vacuum were studied. The films were investigated by X-ray diffraction and electron microscope techniques. The calculated lattice constants for CuInTe₂ powder were found to bea=0.619 nm andc –1,234 nm. From the reflection and transmission data, the optical constants, refractive indexn, absorption index,k, and the absorption coefficient, , werw computed. The optical energy gap was determined for CuInTe₂ thin films heat treated at different temparatures for different periods of time. It was found thatE _g increases with both increasing temperature and time of annealing.