Determination and Validation of Average Value of National Standard of DC Voltage Using Different Methods at CSIR-NPLI

The aim of this paper is to evaluate and validate the average value of national or secondary standard of DC voltage, using four different methods; comparison, substitution, difference and ratio method. In the paper the custom made automation program developed to control the whole measurement process is discussed as well. The automation system has been developed in the view of achieving maximal quality of metrological performance i.e. minimum measurement uncertainty and maximum reliability. It is found that measurement automation provides reliable and efficient way for the calibration of Zener based standard of DC voltage.     

ZnO thin films,surface embedded with biologically derived Ag/Au nanoparticles,for efficient photoelectrochemical splitting of water

ZnO thin films, showing nano-ridges at the surface and the top layer embedded with metal (Ag/Au) nanoparticles (MNP), were obtained by sol-gel synthesis, using zinc acetate dihydrate [(CH₃.COO)₂Zn.2H₂O] as precursor. The method involved prior synthesis of Ag and Au nanoparticles via biological reduction of AgNO₃ and HAuCl₄, respectively, using algae Spirulina platensis. The XRD analysis indicated dominant evolution of wurtzite ZnO phase. Low-angle shift in peaks, seen with nanoparticles embedded films, indicated partial diffusion of metals into ZnO lattice. Band gap energy was least affected and lied in the expected range. AFM and SEM analysis revealed the surface topography and morphology, while EDX analysis confirmed the elemental stoichiometry and existence of Ag/Au nanoparticles in samples. Significant gain in photoelectrochemical current using MNP embedded films is largely accountable to the improvement in electrical conductance and the role played by metal nanoparticles in charge-carrier separation, collection and transport.     

A triple-mode hexa-standard reconfigurable TI cross-coupled ΣΔ modulator

Hardware reconfigurability is an attractive solution for modern multi-standard wireless systems. This paper analyses the performance and implementation of an efficient triple-mode hexa-standard reconfigurable sigma-delta (∑?) modulator designed for six different wireless communication standards. Enhanced noise-shaping characteristics and increased digitisation rate, obtained by time-interleaved cross-coupling of ∑? paths, have been utilised for the modulator design. Power/hardware efficiency and the capability to acclimate the requirements of wide hexa-standard specifications are achieved by introducing an advanced noise-shaping structure, the dual-extended architecture. Simulation results of the proposed architecture using Hspice shows that the proposed modulator obtains a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 83.4/80.2/67.8/61.5/60.8/51.03 dB for hexa-standards, i.e. GSM????????/Bluetooth/GPS/WCDMA/WLAN/WiMAX standards with significantly less hardware and low operating frequency. The proposed architecture is implemented in 45 nm CMOS process using a 1 V supply and 0.7 V input range with a power consumption of 1.93 mW. Both architectural- and transistor-level simulation results prove the effectiveness and feasibility of this architecture to accomplish multi-standard cellular communication characteristics.     

Bioactivity of gelatin coated magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles: in vitro evaluation

Current research explores formation of bone like apatite on gelatin coated magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (GIOPs) to evaluate the bioactivity of the material. The GIOPs were soaked in simulated body fluid (SBF) and the apatite formation on the surface was investigated in regular interval of time. Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) and x-ray diffraction spectroscopic (XRD) analyses were done to investigate the chemical changes and field emission-scanning electron microscopic (FE-SEM) analysis was done to investigate the morphological changes occurring on the surface of the GIOPs after soaking in different time intervals. The kinetic studies of the apatite growth in SBF suggest that initially calcium and phosphorous ions were deposited to the surface of the GIOPs from the SBF leading to formation of amorphous Ca/P particles. Later, after 9 days of the incubation the amorphous particles were fused to form needle and blade like crystalline structures of bone like apatite.     

Distributed and robust parameter estimation of IIR systems using incremental particle swarm optimization

In recent years because of substantial use of wireless sensor network the distributed estimation has attracted the attention of many researchers. Two popular learning algorithms: incremental least mean square (ILMS) and diffusion least mean square (DLMS) have been reported for distributed estimation using the data collected from sensor nodes. But these algorithms, being derivative based, have a tendency of providing local minima solution particularly for minimization of multimodal cost function. Hence for problems like distributed parameters estimation of IIR systems, alternative distributed algorithms are required to be developed. Keeping this in view the present paper proposes two population based incremental particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithms for estimation of parameters of noisy IIR systems. But the proposed IPSO algorithms provide poor performance when the measured data is contaminated with outliers in the training samples. To alleviate this problem the paper has proposed a robust distributed algorithm (RDIPSO) for IIR system identification task. The simulation results of benchmark IIR systems demonstrate that the proposed algorithms provide excellent identification performance in all cases even when the training samples are contaminated with outliers.     

Software effort estimation using ensemble of hybrid search-based algorithms based on metaheuristic algorithms

Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering - Software effort estimation is an essential task for software organizations to allocate resources efficiently during the development of software and...     

Efficient prediction of stock market indices using adaptive bacterial foraging optimization (ABFO) and BFO based techniques

The present paper introduces the use of BFO and ABFO techniques to develop an efficient forecasting model for prediction of various stock indices. The structure used in these forecasting models is a simple linear combiner. The connecting weights of the adaptive linear combiner based models are optimized using ABFO and BFO by minimizing its mean square error (MSE). The short and long term prediction performance of these models are evaluated with test data and the results obtained are compared with those obtained from the genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) based models. It is in general observed that the new models are computationally more efficient, prediction wise more accurate and show faster convergence compared to other evolutionary computing models such as GA and PSO based models.     

Oxidative Decolorization of Reactive Dye Solution Using Fly Ash as Catalyst

This paper deals with the potential of coal fly ash as a heterogeneous catalyst in peroxidative decolorization of aqueous solution of several reactive drimarene dyes using hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The effects of various parameters (source of fly ash, fly ash loading, temperature, pH, initial concentration of dye and hydrogen peroxide, and deactivation of catalytic effect of fly ash) were studied. The rate of decolorization is zero order with respect to concentration of dye in the range of 50–200 mg∕L and first order with respect to concentration of H2O2 in the range of 375–2,500 mg∕L. It was found that at 333 K and pH 2.0, only 2% (weight/volume) fly ash loading can completely decolorize 100 mg∕L dye solution within 180–1,770 s for an initial H2O2 concentration of 1,500 mg∕L, depending on the source of fly ash and dye used. But maximum 25% decolorization was noticed after 3 h duration of reaction without fly ash. The negligible homogeneous catalytic action of trace amount of metals like Fe, Mn, and Cu leached from the fly matrix confirmed the sole heterogeneous catalytic nature of fly ash particles in decolorization reactions. The deactivation of fly ash was found to be <30% in nine repeated uses. Adsorption dynamics and mechanism of dyes onto fly ash also were studied in the absence of H2O2.