Reckoner for health risk and insurance premium using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system

The paper demonstrates an efficient use of intelligent system for solving the classification problem in the sector of health insurance. A model based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is proposed to deal with the fuzziness in the real-life environments. This approach enables the interpretation of majority of health factors of an insurance seeker through a set of fuzzy rules to determine the degree of risk to an individual. A fuzzy neural network has been trained with fuzzy inputs like age, occupation, family size, smoking habits, drinking habits, diabetes history, heart disease and other relevant inputs of individual for risk calculation. The model gets importance in health insurance sector because risk determination is fuzzy in nature, and fuzzy calculations are done more accurately by machines rather than human beings especially for the problems which are repetitive in nature and have large number of vague parameters. The proposed model can help the insurance seeker to identify the degree of risk he is having if he is not taking health insurance. This serves a dual purpose of attracting the insurance seeker to acquire the insurance and facilitate generating business to insurance company. Indicative results are presented and discussed in detail in terms of accuracy and solution interpretability.     

A highly sensitive non-enzymatic ascorbate sensor based on copper nanoparticles bound to multi walled carbon nanotubes and polyaniline composite

A novel, stable and highly sensitive non-enzymatic ascorbic acid sensor was developed using copper nanoparticles (CuNPs), carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and polyaniline (PANI) composite electrodeposited on gold electrode. The modified Au electrode was characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), cyclic voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy. The linear sweep voltammetry peak current showed a linear dependence on the ascorbic acid concentration and a linear calibration curve was obtained in the range, 5–600 μM of ascorbic acid with a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.998. The sensors response time was less than 2 s and detection limit was 1.0 μM (at signal/noise = 3). When tested with serum, fruits and vegetables, the sensor exhibited high electrocatalytic activity, fast response and good selectivity against common interfering species, suggesting its potential to be developed as a non-enzymatic ascorbic acid sensor.     

Antioxidant properties of different fractions of tubers from Pueraria tuberosa Linn

Pueraria tuberosa Linn. (PT), Leguminosae, is a perennial climber, growing throughout tropical parts of India. In the Ayurvedic system of medicine, it is used as a drug of choice to manage pain, inflammation and other related diseases. The antioxidant potency of P. tuberosa was investigated for the first time. Total antioxidant capacity was determined using an ABTS^∗+ assay. Lipid peroxidation was assessed in terms of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances by using egg-yolk homogenates as lipid-rich media. Superoxide radical-scavenging was measured using riboflavin-light-nitro blue tetrazolium (NBT) assay. Hydroxyl radical trapping potential was determined by evaluating hydroxyl radical induced deoxyribose degradation using thiobarbituric acid method. In order to assess the metal chelation property, hydroxyl radical induced deoxyribose degradation was evaluated in the absence of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. Both hexane and methanol fractions inhibited lipid peroxidation and also chelated the iron, showing potent antioxidant property.     

Modelling of Evaporative Cooling of Porous Medium Filled with Evaporative Liquid

The cooling effect by evaporative liquid is modeled by considering that heat is transferred from the system to the surrounding due to evaporation of liquid through the pores present in the medium. The variation of cooling rate with cell size, volume fraction of pores and physical conditions has been analyzed. The model demonstrates that it increases with increase in thickness of the foam slab and with increase in velocity of air. It is also observed that cooling effect decreases with decrease in volume fraction of porosity and with increase in relative density, cell size, thermal conductivity and relative humidity.     

Inhibition of mild steel corrosion in presence of fatty acid imidazolines in hydrochloric acid

The corrosive behavior of mild steel in 1M HCl solutions containing selected imidazolines of fatty acids with C₇-C₁₇ was investigated using weight-loss method, potentiodynamic polarization technique and scanning elecron microscopy. The results obtained revealed that all the studied imidazolines are effective in reducing corrosion of mild steel in HCl media. The adsorption of the inhibitors on the mild steel surface obeys Langmuir’s adsorption isotherm. The thermodynamic parameters of adsorption deduced reveal a strong interaction and spontaneous adsorption of inhibitors on the mild steel surface. The influence of inhibitor concentration, solution temperature, immersion time and acid concentration on the corrosion of mild steel has also been investigated. Scanning electron microscopy(SEM) of mild steels samples is performed to show adsorption of inhibitors on metal surface. Potentiodynamic polarization data showed that the compounds studied are mixed type inhibitors in the acid solution. Original Russian Text ? M.A. Quaraishi, M.Z.A. Rafiquee, Nidhi Saxena, Sadaf Khan, 2008, published in Zashchita Metallov, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 99–106.     

A two-dimensional discrete fractional Fourier transform-based pansharpening scheme

In this paper, a new approach for fusion of multi-spectral (MS) and panchromatic (Pan) images based on 2D-discrete fractional Fourier transform (2D-DFRFT) is proposed. The proposed technique is closer in approach to the other filtering-based pansharpening schemes existing in the literature. In the proposed method histogram equalized Pan image is transformed using the 2D-DFRFT and further used to generate the pansharpened image using appropriate pansharpening rule. The angle parameters associated with the 2D-DFRFT provide additional degrees of freedom which are optimized by single-objective particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for finding better pansharpening results. Simulation results of the proposed technique carried out in MATLAB are presented for IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellite images and compared with existing fusion methods in terms of both visual perception and objective metrics such as Q-index (Q4), Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), relative dimensionless global error (ERGAS) and quality with-no reference (QNR). It is observed that the proposed pansharpening scheme provides improved spectral and spatial quality as compared with the existing schemes. The effects of aliasing and mis-registration errors on the proposed method are also investigated and compared with existing pansharpening methods. It is seen that the proposed method is robust against aliasing and mis-registration errors.