PiSHi: click the images and I tell if you are a human

This paper introduces pictorial intelligent system for human identification (PiSHi), an image-based captcha which uses three human cognitive abilities to distinguish humans from machines. The first is the human ability to easily recognise the image’s upright orientation. The second is the human brain’s ability in recognising a picture’s content when it is only partially visible. And the third is the human ability in unconscious decision making when encountering pictorial challenges. This work models such complicated human patterns in problem solving for the first time. In order to extract these behavioural patterns and save them in a pattern database, we have implemented our own captcha and performed a series of experiments. PiSHi’s interface presents the user with a set of distorted pictures and asks her to click on the upright orientation of all the pictures in any preferred order. Next, it captures the user’s interaction patterns, compares them with the ones saved in the pattern database, and grants her a corresponding credit. Based on this credit, the user either passes or fails the test, and participates in updating the picture database. Our experiments indicate that human users can solve our proposed captcha effectively—with an accuracy of 99.44 %. Besides, our proposed system is secure against several types of attacks including random guessing and reverse image search engines. The results offer the possibility of utilising the identified human behavioural models in practical captchas.     

Infrared waveguide fabrications with an E-beam evaporated chalcogenide glass film

Chalcogenide glasses have a variety of unique optical properties due to the intrinsic structural flexibility and bonds metastability. They are desirable materials for many applications, such as infrared communication sensors, holographic grating, optical imaging, and ultrafast nonlinear optic devices. Here, we introduce a novel electron-beam evaporation process to deposit the good quality arsenic trisulfide (As₂S₃) films and then the As₂S₃ films were used to fabricate the As₂S₃ waveguides with three approaches. The first method is photoresist lift-off. Because of the restriction of thermal budget of photoresist, the As₂S₃ film must be deposited at the room temperature. The second one is the silicon dioxide lift-off process on sapphire substrates, in which the As₂S₃ film could be evaporated at a high temperature (>180 °C) for better film quality. The third one is the plasma etching process with a metal protective thin layer in the pattern development process.     

A collective and abridged lexical query for delineation of nanotechnology publications

In order to monitor articles/patents in nanotechnology, there is little agreement on a universal lexical query or even an explicit definition of nanotechnology. Here in the light of a proposed definition, a set of case studies has been conducted to remove keywords which are not exclusive to nanotechnology. This resulted in a collective and abridged lexical query (CALQ) for nanotechnology delineation. Through bibliometric quantification of already-proposed as well as the novel keywords, it was shown that all keywords included in CALQ have considerable exclusive retrieval and precision, while the removed keywords do not satisfy either of these numerical thresholds. This approach may also be applied for the future updating of CALQ.     

Unique Characteristics of Vertical Carbon Nanotube Field-effect Transistors on Silicon

Nano-Micro Letters - A vertical carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET) based on silicon (Si) substrate has been proposed and simulated using a semi-classical theory. A single-walled...     

Synthesis, characterization, and electrochemical properties of ultrafine β-Ni(OH)2 nanoparticles

Nickel hydroxide was deposited via cathodic electrodeposition from low-temperature 0.005 M NiCl₂ bath without using any surfactant or template. The cathodic current density was 1 mA cm⁻² and stainless steel was used as the cathode. The XRD pattern confirmed that the prepared sample has a pure brucite crystal phase of β-Ni(OH)₂ and the broadening of diffraction peaks showed that the particles size of the prepared β-Ni(OH)₂ is extremely small. Thermal behavior and composition of the prepared β-Ni(OH)₂ were investigated by DSC-TG and FT-IR analyses. Morphological characterization by SEM and TEM revealed that β-Ni(OH)₂ is composed of well dispersed ultrafine particles with size of about 5 nm. The electrochemical properties of the prepared nanoparticles were studied by means of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge tests in 1 M KOH. The prepared β-Ni(OH)₂ nanoparticles showed excellent capacitance behavior of 740 F g⁻¹ in the potential window of 0-0.55 V vs. Ag/AgCl. These results make the β-Ni(OH)₂ nanoparticles as a promising candidate for the supercapacitor electrodes.     

Gabapentin treatment of mood disorders: a preliminary study

OBJECTIVE: To determine if gabapentin is effective either as adjunctive treatment or as monotherapy for major affective disorders in a naturalistic setting. METHOD: All charts of patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for bipolar disorder or unipolar major depressive disorder treated with gabapentin in a private psychiatric practice were reviewed and clinical response was assessed retrospectively using the Clinical Global Impressions scale for Improvement (CGI-I). RESULTS: Gabapentin was moderately to markedly effective in 30% (15/50) of patients, with statistically nonsignificant differences between patients with bipolar disorder type I, bipolar disorder type II and NOS, and unipolar major depressive disorder. 70% reported side effects, mainly sedation, with 16% of the total sample discontinuing treatment due to adverse events. CONCLUSION: Gabapentin appears to be somewhat effective as add-on treatment in a subgroup of patients with mood disorders in a naturalistic setting. Prospective, controlled studies are required to clarify these pilot data.     

Stochastic economic analysis of FACTS devices on contingent transmission networks using hybrid biogeography-based optimization

Electrical Engineering - Flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) devices have advantages of enhancing AC system controllability and stability, increasing power transfer capability and relieving...     

Investigation of Size and Shape Dependencies of Phase Diagrams of the Ising Nanofilms and Nanotubes on the Honeycomb Lattice Using Cellular Automata Simulation Approach

Size and shape dependencies of phase diagrams of the Ising nanofilms and nanotubes on the honeycomb lattice are investigated by means of probabilistic cellular automata simulation based on Glauber algorithm. The values of reduced critical temperature, K _c = k _B T _c/J (where k _B and J are the Boltzmann constant and nearest-neighbor coupling, respectively), for both nanofilms and nanotubes, are obtained at the different sizes of the lattices and the dependency of K _c to the number of layers is studied. By increasing the number of layers K _c increases but for number of layer more than 8, the critical temperature increases very slowly. We have shown that between two isotropic nanotubes with the same number of spins, the ones with greater diameter (more spins on the edge) have larger critical temperature. For equal size of lattices, the obtained values of K _c for nanotube are greater than the nanofilm, but for large sizes, this difference disappears.     

A multi-period scheduling method for trading-off between skilled-workers allocation and outsource service usage in dynamic CMS

In this paper, a new method is proposed for short-term period scheduling of dynamic cellular manufacturing systems in a dual resource constrained environment. The aim of this method is to find best production strategy of in-house manufacturing using worker assignment (both temporary and skilled workers) and outsourcing, while part demands are uncertain and can be varied periodically. For this purpose, a multi-period scheduling model has been proposed which is flexible enough to use in real industries. To solve the proposed problem, a number of metaheuristics are developed including Branch and Bound; a hybrid Tabu Search and Simulated Annealing algorithms and a hybrid Ant Colony Optimization and Simulated Annealing algorithms. A Taguchi method (L₂₇ orthogonal optimisation) is used to estimate parameters of the proposed method in order to solve experiments derived from the literature. For evaluating the system imbalance in dynamic market demands, a new measuring index is developed. Our findings indicate that the uncertain market demands affects the part allocating which may induce workstation-load variations that yield to cell-load variation accordingly. To solve this problem, two methods are offered. The results show that promoting staff and using freezing technique are promising ways to reduce system imbalance while confronting with the mentioned condition. The outcomes also show the superiority of the proposed hybrid method in providing solutions with better quality.