Molecular memory with atomically smooth graphene contacts

We report the use of bilayer graphene as an atomically smooth contact for nanoscale devices. A two-terminal bucky-ball (C₆₀) based molecular memory is fabricated with bilayer graphene as a contact on the polycrystalline nickel electrode. Graphene provides an atomically smooth covering over an otherwise rough metal surface. The use of graphene additionally prohibits the electromigration of nickel into the C₆₀ layer. The devices exhibit a low-resistance state in the first sweep cycle and irreversibly switch to a high-resistance state at 0.8 to 1.2 V bias. In the subsequent cycles, the devices retain the high-resistance state, thus making it write-once read-many memory.     

Biosorption of copper(II) on prunus amygdalus shell: Characterization,biosorbent size analysis,kinetic, equilibrium and mechanistic studies

Deletion of Cu(II) from synthetic solution was investigated using ground Prunus Amygdalus shell (GPAS). FTIR revealed the probable functional groups for the binding of Cu(II). XRD revealed amorphous nature of the GPAS. SEM analysis furnished microscopic details of GPAS. GPAS size analysis was done using seven ASTM screens and three mean diameters, namely mass mean, volume mean and volume surface mean diameters. Kinetic study consisted of pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetics. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were used to elucidate the isotherm study of uptake of Cu(II) onto GPAS. Trend of Scatchard was used to verify the applicability of the Freundlich model, while D-R model helped to determine the nature of biosorption. A detailed analysis for rate controlling step was made. Various mean diameters were used to estimate the diffusion coefficient for the biosorption of Cu(II) onto GPAS.     

Numerical Simulations of Solid Circulation Characteristics in an Internally Circulating Elevated Fluidized Bed

A twin‐chamber internally circulating elevated fluidized bed (EFB) with one chamber elevated higher than the other within a single vessel is simulated using a two‐fluid model. Two EFB configurations termed as reaction chamber (RC)‐elevated and heat exchange chamber (HEC)‐elevated is evaluated. The effect of chamber elevation, variation of superficial velocities, and interchanging the two chambers are investigated and the results are quantified in terms of solid flux G_s. By increasing the RC gas velocity U_R at constant HEC velocity U_H, G_s is increased in both EFBs while an opposite behavior is observed by increasing U_H at constant U_R. Variation of the chamber elevation as well as interchanging the chambers also affects the performance of the two EFBs.     

Correction to: 2D and 3D image localization,compression and reconstruction using new hybrid moments

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing -     

Controlled Picard Method for Solving Nonlinear Fractional Reaction–Diffusion Models in Porous Catalysts

This paper discusses the diffusion and reaction behaviors of catalyst pellets in the fractional-order domain as well as the case of nth-order reactions. Two generic models are studied to calculate the concentration of reactant in a porous catalyst in the case of a spherical geometric pellet and a flat-plate particle with different examples. A controlled Picard analytical method is introduced to obtain an approximated solution for these systems in both linear and nonlinear cases. This method can cover a wider range of problems due to the extra auxiliary parameter, which enhances the convergence and is suitable for higher-order differential equations. Moreover, the exact solution in the linear fractional-order system is obtained using the Mittag–Leffler function where the conventional solution is a special case. For nonlinear models, the proposed method gives matched responses with the homotopy analysis method (HAM) solutions for different fractional orders. The effect of fractional-order parameter on the dimensionless concentration of the reactant in a porous catalyst is analyzed graphically for different cases of order reactions and Thiele moduli. Moreover, the proposed method has been applied numerically for different cases to predict and calculate the dual solutions of a nonlinear fractional model when the reaction order n?=??1.     

Adsorption characteristics of toxic chromium(VI) from aqueous media onto nanosized silver nanoparticles-treated activated carbon

The present study reports the use of nanomaterial, e.g. Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs), immobilized activated carbon as an effective solid adsorbent for removal of toxic chromium(VI) from water. Chromium(VI) uptake was found favorable in acidic media at pH ≤ 3. Based on Langmuir model, monolayer adsorption capacities of chromium(VI) found equal 93.5 mg/g. The results fitted well with pseudo second-order and Langmuir models. The mechanism of adsorption was explored using the intra-particle diffusion model and the liquid-film model. Chromatographic separation of chromium(VI) was achieved. The AC-AgNPs was successfully recycled for five successive adsorption–desorption cycles indicating its high reusability.     

Synthesis of Smart Core-shell Nanocomposites with Enhanced Photocatalytic Efficacy

ABSTRACT

This current research represents practical synthetic protocol for novel core-shell nanocomposites (CSNCs) containing titania. TiO₂/poly(anthranilic acid, m-aminobenzoic acid, and o-phenylenediamine) (TiO₂/PANA-m-ABA-o-PDA) CSNCs were fabricated applying 2:2:1 molar ratio of the appropriate monomers and varied loads of TiO₂ via polycondensation. The fabrication of the TiO₂/PANA-m-ABA- o-PDA CSNCs was affirmed using various characterizations. The bond between TiO₂ and PANA-m-ABA-o-PDA was detected in the FTIR spectra. The CSNC’s features are having core-shell structures with sizes 12–27 nm. Under irradiation, the CSNCs exhibit intensive photocatalysis efficacy toward methylene blue degradation. Acceptable explanations of the photocatalytic efficiency consequences were substantiated. The zeta potential of a particle (ζ), the polydispersity index (PDI), and y-intercept were anticipated via dynamic light scattering (DLS) of the terpolymer colloidal system. The procedure manipulates a facile, new, beneficial as well as cheap synthetic technique to fabricate innovative CSNC as a new potential formulation.     

Efficient and secure cipher scheme for multimedia contents

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The impact of confidentiality and privacy breaches are more pronounced when dealing with multimedia contents. One of the obvious techniques to counter these...     

Real-time occlusion tolerant detection of illegally parked vehicles

Illegally parked vehicle detection systems are considered crucial elements in the development of any video-surveillance based traffic-management system. The major challenges in this task lie in making the end solution real time, illumination invariant and occlusion tolerant. A two-stage application framework is presented which efficiently identifies vehicles parked illegally in restricted parking-zones. A real-time approach has been followed and an improved foreground segmentation method based on Segmentation History Images (SHI) is developed to identify stationary objects. A three step pixel based classification method is applied on the background segmentation output to segment adjacent moving pixels that become stationary for certain periods of time. The process then locks on to all identified stationary pixel patches, parts of which overlap with the regions of interest marked interactively a priori. The second stage of the process is applied subsequently to track all the stationary pixel patches detected during the first stage using an adaptive edge orientation based tracking method. Experimental results show that the tracking technique gives more than a 90% detection success rate, even if objects are partially occluded. The technique has been tested on the UK Home Office i-LIDS Parked Vehicle video sequences along with the University of Sussex Traffic Dataset and results are compared with other available state of the art methods.