Highly-efficient technique for automatic segmentation of X-ray bone images based on fuzzy logic and an edge detection technique

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - Development of medical image segmentation techniques has become one of the most important challenges in many applications that employ...     

Integration of millimeter-wave and optical link for duplex transmission of hierarchically modulated signal over a single carrier and fiber for future 5G communication systems

Telecommunication Systems - Integration of optical and millimeter-wave systems provide a promising solution for future giga-bits per second wireless communication systems. We have proposed and...     

Specific substitutions at amino acid 256 of the sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ transport ATPase mediate resistance to thapsigargin in thapsigargin-resistant hamster cells

High levels of resistance to thapsigargin (TG), a specific inhibitor of intracellular Ca2+ transport ATPases (SERCAs), can be developed in culture by stepwise exposure of mammalian cells to increasing concentrations of TG. We have identified, in two independently selected TG-resistant hamster cell lines of different lineages, mutant forms of SERCA. In the TG-resistant Chinese hamster lung fibroblast cell line DC-3F/TG, a T --> C change at nucleotide 766 introduces a Phe256 --> Leu alteration within the first cytosolic loop of the SERCA. In contrast, in the TG-resistant Syrian hamster smooth muscle cell line DDT/TG 4 microM, a T --> C change at nucleotide 767 introduces a Phe256 --> Ser mutation at that position. When these specific mutations are introduced into a wild-type full-length avian SERCA1 cDNA, transfection experiments reveal that Ca2+ transport function and ATP hydrolytic activity are not altered by such mutations. However, a 4-5-fold resistance to TG inhibition of Ca2+ transport function occurs upon the introduction of either the Phe256 --> Leu or the Phe256 --> Ser mutation into wild-type SERCA1. These specific mutations also render the hydrolytic activity of the ATPase resistant to inhibition by TG. Our results not only implicate amino acid 256 in TG-SERCA interactions, but also demonstrate that specific mutations within SERCA can mediate resistance to TG.     

Rapid synthesis of thermally stable hydroxyapaptite

We have optimized the wet precipitation synthesis of hydroxyapaptite to obtain thermally stable powder in the short time span of 3 min. Exposure of the reaction mixture to 1000 W microwave for 3 min furnished hydroxyapatite, which was thermally stable at temperatures up to 1200 °C. Powders were analyzed for phase purity using X-ray crystallography; chemical composition was studied using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy while particle morphology was analyzed using scanning electron microscopy.     

Wastewater treatment by adsorption with electrochemical regeneration using graphite-based adsorbents

An innovative technology for wastewater treatment using adsorption and electrochemical regeneration has been developed at the University of Manchester. The process uses a low capacity graphitic adsorbent material (a graphite intercalation compound, Nyex^TM 1000) which can be regenerated electrochemically. In this study, we investigate the characteristics of a new, partially porous adsorbent material, Nyex^TM 2000 which offers increased surface area in comparison with Nyex^TM 1000. Nyex^TM 2000 was found to have an adsorption capacity of almost three times that of Nyex^TM 1000. The electrical conductivity of a Nyex^TM 2000 was found to be double that of Nyex^TM 1000, enabling improvements in the electrochemical regeneration characteristics. The removal of an anionic azo dye, acid violet 17, from aqueous solution using Nyex^TM 1000 and 2000 was investigated under various operating conditions. The adsorption of acid violet 17 on Nyex^TM 2000 was found to be comparatively fast with 75 % of the equilibrium capacity being achieved within 5 min. The parameters affecting the regeneration efficiency including the charge passed, current density, treatment time, adsorbent bed thickness, and pH were investigated. An electrochemical regeneration efficiency of around 100 % was achieved for a fully loaded Nyex^TM 2000 in a sequential batch electrochemical cell with a regeneration time of 60 min and a charge passed of 100 C g⁻¹ at a current density of 14 mA cm⁻². The charge required for electrochemical regeneration was found to be approximately equal to theoretical charge required for complete oxidation of the adsorbed acid violet 17, making process design relatively simple. Nyex^TM 2000 was found to be an economic adsorbent with relatively small electrical energy consumption required (31 J mg⁻¹ of acid violet 17 treated, compared to 52 J mg⁻¹ of acid violet 17 for Nyex^TM 1000). Multiple adsorption/regeneration cycles presented no loss in adsorptive capacity and material loses over five adsorption/regeneration cycles.     

Reservoir Inflow Prediction by Ensembling Wavelet and Bootstrap Techniques to Multiple Linear Regression Model

In this study, a new hybrid model, bootstrap multiple linear regression (BMLR) is suggested to investigate the potential of bootstrap resampling technique for daily reservoir inflow prediction. The proposed model compares with three other models: Multiple linear regression (MLR), wavelet multiple linear regression (WMLR) and wavelet bootstrap multiple linear regression (WBMLR). River stage data of monsoon season (1st July 2010 to 30 September 2010) from three gauging stations of Chenab river basin are used. In wavelet transformation, input vectors are decomposed using discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) into discrete wavelet components (DWCs). Then suitable DWCs are used to provide input to MLR model to develop WMLR model. Bootstrap technique coupled with MLR model to build up BMLR model. While WBMLR model is the conjunction of suitable DWCs and bootstrap technique to MLR model. Performance indices namely root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSC), and persistence index (CP) are used in study to evaluate the performance of model. Results showed that hybrid model BMLR produce significantly better results on performance indices than other models MLR, WMLR and WBMLR.

     

Ignition and Growth Modeling of Shock Initiation of Different Particle Size Formulations of PBXC03 Explosive

The change in shock sensitivity of explosives having various explosive grain sizes is discussed. Along with other parameters, explosive grain size is one of the key parameters controlling the macroscopic behavior of shocked pressed explosives. Ignition and growth reactive flow modeling is performed for the shock initiation experiments carried out by using the in situ manganin piezoresistive pressure gauge technique to investigate the influences of the octahydro-1,3,5,7–tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX) particle size on the shock initiation and the subsequent detonation growth process for the three explosive formulations of pressed PBXC03 (87% HMX, 7% 1,3,5-trichloro-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (TATB), 6% Viton by weight). All of the formulation studied had the same density but different explosive grain sizes. A set of ignition and growth parameters was obtained for all three formulations. Only the coefficient G₁ of the first growth term in the reaction rate equation was varied with the grain size; all other parameters were kept the same for all formulations. It was found that G₁ decreases almost linearly with HMX particle size for PBXC03. However, the equation of state (EOS) for solid explosive had to be adjusted to fit the experimental data. Both experimental and numerical simulation results show that the shock sensitivity of PBXC03 decreases with increasing HMX particle size for the sustained pressure pulses (around 4 GPa) as obtained in the experiment. This result is in accordance with the results reported elsewhere in literature. For future work, a better approach may be to find standard solid Grüneisen EOS and product Jones-Wilkins-Lee (JWL) EOS for each formulation for the best fit to the experimental data.     

Single-component and three-component fuel cells

Single-component and three-component fuel cell devices have been studied using mixed ionic and electronic conductor. The three-component fuel cell means a conventional fuel cell which is the configuration consists of anode, electrolyte and cathode; while the single-component fuel cell uses only one component that can function as the electrodes and electrolyte simultaneously. The single-component fuel cell showed the same or even better performance compared to conventional three-component fuel cell. A maximum power density of 700 mW cm⁻² has been achieved by the single-component fuel cell at 550 °C.     

Input Selection of Wavelet-Coupled Neural Network Models for Rainfall-Runoff Modelling

Water Resources Management - The use of wavelet-coupled data-driven models is increasing in the field of hydrological modelling. However, wavelet-coupled artificial neural network (ANN) models...     

A CMOS multi-gain transconductance amplifier and its applications

Transconductance amplifier (g_m) based circuits are attractive due to their inherent programmability features. Single output g_m’s are often replaced by multi-output g_m’s to reduce the number of active devices for a given application. However, this usually results in losing the circuit programmability features. This work shows that this problem can be circumvented through adopting a new programmable multi-gain g_m. The advantages of the proposed multi-gain g_m are demonstrated using two filter design examples. They show that the proposed multi-gain g_m reduces the number of active devices by two-third compared with their single output g_m based counterparts while maintaining their versatile programmability characteristics. Experimental results obtained from a 0.18 μm CMOS process for one of the applications are provided.