Investigation and mapping of toxic fumes produced by detonation of ANFO explosives in underground space

Post-blast fumes are hazardous and known to cause severe health related issues of workers. Further, these harmful gases have a significant impact on the surrounding environment. Thus, it is imperative to have an in-depth understanding of the real time detonation fume generation in underground space to avoid hazardous health risk of the worker. In this context, the mapping of toxic fume concentrations generated by the detonation of ANFO explosives in the actual field is a fascinating area of research that has a great environmental impact. This article examined the real-time analysis of toxic fumes generated by ammonium nitrate fuel oil (ANFO) explosives at various locations of a metalliferous underground mine. Furthermore, detonation parameters of various ANFO explosive compositions were also studied at the mining site. On-site blasting studies were performed with ANFO explosives, and post-detonation fume measurements enabled us to map the CO and NO_x concentrations in underground spaces. Toxic fumes like CO and NO_x were analyzed before and after each blasting operation at different intervals, and found within the allowed limit as per the Directorate General of Mines Safety guidelines. Additionally, an empirical correlation has been established to evaluate the maximum detonation velocity based on the alteration of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil composition.     

On the polymeric foams: modeling and properties

Polymeric foams are now widely used and researched. The physical properties of polymeric foam can be related to a set of independent structural parameters or variables of the foam. Study of these variables and correlation with commercial FE packages is essential for reliable and faster product development. Some aspects of foam behavior are widely studied while some are little less, like correlation of physical unloading behavior. For example, a lot of work in the area of phenomenological constitutive modeling of uniaxial loading was done, though research in areas of unloading–reloading and their correlation still demands more attention. Increasing number of OEMs and suppliers are moving to computer simulations in the design phase to assess their future products. Hence, different parameters within FE packages play a significant role and also affect the results. Appropriate use of these parameters will narrow down error band and automatically reduce the cycle time and development cost. This brief review is expected to set the perspective for major research work done so far in terms of FE modeling correlation and constitutive modeling of polymeric foam vis-a-vis to its properties.     

A BER Based Selection Combining Protocol for Adaptive Cooperative Cognitive Radios

This paper illustrates the performance of bit error rate based selection combining (BER-SC) protocol for adaptive cooperative cognitive radios. In the proposed framework, the unlicensed (i.e. secondary) system utilizes an adaptive mode of transmission to help the licensed (i.e. primary) system to achieve the desired quality of service in exchange for opportunistic spectrum access. The total transmission is divided in two phases. In Phase I, the primary transmitter (PT) broadcasts the data to the primary receiver (PR), which is overheard by the secondary transmitter (ST) and secondary receiver (SR). In Phase II, ST decodes the primary data and linearly combines its own data with the primary data. Using M-QAM the combined data is adaptively modulated, where M = 4, 16 or 64 depending on the received channel feedback, and relayed to PR and SR. At PR, BER-SC is employed to retrieve the primary data, and at SR interference cancellation is used to retrieve the secondary data. The analytical expressions are derived for the BER and the outage probability. The obtained results demonstrate the higher performance gains for both primary and secondary system by using adaptive mode of transmission at ST and BER-SC at PR.

     

Development of docetaxel nanocapsules for improving in vitro cytotoxicity and cellular uptake in MCF-7 cells

The aim of this study was to fabricate docetaxel loaded nanocapsules (DTX-NCs) with a high payload using Layer-by-Layer (LbL) technique by successive coating with alternate layers of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes. Developed nanocapsules (NCs) were characterized in terms of morphology, particle size distribution, zeta potential (ζ-potential), entrapment efficiency and in vitro release. The morphological characteristics of the NCs were assessed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) that revealed coating of polyelectrolytes around the surface of particles. The developed NCs successfully attained a submicron particle size while the ζ-potential of optimized NCs alternated between (+) 34.64?±?1.5 mV to (?) 33.25?±?2.1 mV with each coating step. The non-hemolytic potential of the NCs indicated the suitability of the developed formulation for intravenous administration. A comparative study indicated that the cytotoxicity of positively charged NCs (F4) was significant higher (p?in vitro on MCF-7 cells. Furthermore, cell uptake studies evidenced a higher uptake of positive NCs (≥1.2 fold) in comparison to negative NCs. In conclusion, formulated NCs are an ideal vehicle for passive targeting of drugs to tumor cells that may result in improved efficacy and reduced toxicity of encapsulated drug moiety.     

Face detection approach from video with the aid of KPCM and improved neural network classifier

In recent years, the detection of a human face from the video has become an interesting research topic due to the video surveillance and other security issues. Efficient face detection from the video has become an immense need as it can provide various identity measures in the field of defense and other security-related areas. In our proposed method we have developed an efficient method of face detection to index a particular face from different video shots. The proposed method can be divided into Different modules. In the first module, human face from the video is extracted using segmentation technique. In our proposed method, we have used Kernel-based Possibilistic C-Means for segmentation purpose. The second module in our method is the feature extraction process where shape, LBP, and some geometrical features are extracted. The various shape features like area, circularity, and eccentricity are extracted. Once the feature values are extracted we track the particular face using forward tracking process. After the tracking process, we employ the classification technique. The classifier we utilized here is the improved neural network where the weights factors are optimized using the modified cuckoo search algorithm. The performance is compared with some existing works in order to prove the efficiency of our proposed method.     

A compact asymmetric slot dual band antenna fed by CPW for PCS and UWB applications

A compact slot antenna with an overall dimension of 30 × 30 × 1.6 mm³ is proposed for dual band applications. The radiating element is a hexagonal shape patch which protrudes from a Co‐Planar Waveguide (CPW) feed into a step shape slot. The slot is basically rectangular in shape and is extended by inserting rectangular cuts of different sizes on the ground plane around it. The ultrawide impedance bandwidth is achieved using asymmetric feed line along with extended rectangular cuts around the slot. For realizing the second band for personal communication system applications (near 1.9 GHz), a metallic stub of quarter wave length is attached at the top of the slot. The measured impedance bandwidth (for S₁₁ < ?10 dB) is 110 MHz (1.86–1.97 GHz) for the first band and 9 GHz (3.0–12.0 GHz) for the second band. The antenna is further characterized by omnidirectional radiation patterns in the H‐plane, dumb‐bell shape radiation patterns in the E‐plane and a peak gain of 3–5 dBi over the ultrawideband. All the measured results are found to be in good agreement with the simulated results. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:243–254, 2015.