Investigation of Spontaneous Polarization and Phase Transition Phenomena in KH2PO4-Type Crystals by Green’s Function Approach

Journal of Low Temperature Physics - In this paper, the spontaneous polarization and the phase transition of order–disorder type H-bonded KH2PO4-type crystals are theoretically investigated....     

Prediction of epileptic seizures from spectral features of intracranial eeg recordings using deep learning approach

Epilepsy is a prevalent neurological disorder, which disturbs the lives of millions of people worldwide owing to the onset of abrupt seizures. The forecasting of seizures could help in protecting their lives by alerts or in clinical operations during epilepsy surgeries. The present paper addresses this problem by proposing a deep learning framework for prediction of epileptic seizures using intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings. This framework performs filtering and segmentation of iEEG signals into 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s duration segments. These segments are further resolved into eight distinct spectral bands corresponding to delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma sub-bands with frequency-domain transformation. Then, mean amplitude and band power features are extracted from each band, which are provided to convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory network (LSTM) algorithms for classification. The simulation results of the proposed CNN model exhibit higher performance with average accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, AUC and F1 score of 94.74%, 95.8%, 94.46%, 95.13% and 94.75% respectively for iEEG segments of 40s duration. Thus, the performance analysis and comparison with existing literature unveil that the proposed CNN model is an optimal approach for accurate and real-time prediction of epileptic seizures.

     

Carcass traits of Kheri lambs maintained on different system of feeding management

The study was conducted on 6-month-old finisher lambs of the Kheri breed raised under extensive range management (G1), grazing with ad libitum concentrate supplementation (G2) or intensive feeding (G3) to assess dressing yield, cutability of standard cuts, composition of the carcass and the efficiency of mutton production from the three defined systems. The weaning weight of the lambs in the three groups was similar while the finishing weight, total body weight gain in the experiment, average daily gain and the percent feed conversion efficiency were higher (P<0.01) in G2 and G3 than G1. The pre slaughter weight (PSW), empty live weight (ELW), hot carcass weight and hot carcass weight with edible offal was higher (P<0.01) in G2 and G3 fed on a high plane of nutrition than G1 raised under extensive range management. The dressing percent in terms of live weight (LW) and empty live weight (ELW) was also higher in G2 and G3 than G1. The loin eye area as an index of muscle growth was also higher in G2 and G3 than G1. Although the weights of standard cuts were generally higher in G2 and G3 due to higher PSW, as proportions of half carcass they were similar in the three groups, except the rack cut, which was higher in G2 and G3. The cut proportions pooled for the three groups averaged 33.2%, 12.3%, 13.3%, 24.9% and 16.3% of half carcass for leg, loin, rack, neck and shoulder and breast and fore shank, respectively. The depot fat (Caul and kidney fat) accretion was higher in G2 and G3 than G1. The composition of the half carcass indicated that lean percent was higher (P<0.01) in G1 and G2 than G3 while sub cutaneous and intra muscular fat content were generally higher (P<0.01) in G2 and G3 and KOH bone percent was higher (P<0.05) in G1 and G2 than G3. The results indicated that the growth performance was better, feed conversion efficiency, carcass yield and dressing percentage higher in lambs maintained under grazing with supplementation and intensive feeding than extensive range management. The carcass separable fat content was 8% under extensive range management while it was 12% and 16% in semi intensive and intensive system of feeding management indicating that the carcass was of acceptable quality. The loin eye area reflected the trends of pre slaughter weight and was higher in intensive and semi intensive than extensive range management.     

Development and characterization of triazine based dendrimers for delivery of antitumor agent

In the present study we developed the novel kind of triazine dendrimers by utilizing differential reactivity of the cyanuric chloride (triazine trichloride) which overcome the limitations associated with the others classes of dendrimers like toxicity, low yield, high synthesis cost etc. Triazine dendrimers were synthesized by divergent method using triazine trichloride as core and diethanolamine as branching unit to avoid the use of protecting group and functional group interconversion up to third generation. These hydroxyl terminated dendrimers were characterized by FTIR, 1HNMR, 13CNMR, ES mass spectroscopy, and by elemental analysis. The yield of pure G3 dendrimers was 63%. This novel dendrimers increases the aqueous solubility of hydrophobic drug Paclitaxel up to 0.562 mg/ml as well as showed control release behavior. Hemolytic and toxicology studies of this dendrimer in mice showed no adverse toxicity to the kidneys and the liver up to 200 mg/kg dose (i.p). Triazine being a hydrophobic compound, the core of this dendrimer is hydrophobic and supposed to easily incorporate the hydrophobic guest while presence of hydroxyl group on periphery increases its water solubility and reduces its toxicity; and thus it is useful in various fields like gene delivery, MRI contrasting agents, vaccines or as solubilization tool.     

Heat Transfer and Friction Characteristics of Perforated Fin with a Longitudinal Slot under Forced Convection

Extended surfaces are used in a variety of heat transfer applications owing to their ability in reducing the convection resistance by exposing a large surface area to the surrounding fluid. Surface modification in the form of perforations is a passive method of increasing the heat transfer rates with the additional benefit of weight reduction. This work deals with numerical investigation of heat transfer and friction from a perforated fin (with and without slot) subjected to forced convection. The perforated fin with slot has been found to have a maximum enhancement in heat transfer with the simultaneous increase in frictional losses versus that of a solid fin. Further, the perforated fin without slot has been able to transfer heat at a relatively higher rate with a considerable reduction in energy loss due to friction in comparison to a solid fin.     

A Numerical Study on the 2D Film Cooling of a Flat Surface

In this article, the results obtained from a detailed numerical investigation of 2D film cooling over a flat plate through single-slot injection are presented. The effects of mainstream Reynolds number, blowing ratio, density ratio, and injection angle on the effectiveness of film cooling were investigated in the present work. Numerical simulations were carried over a wide range of density ratio ranging from 1.1 to 5 at two mainstream Reynolds numbers (8 × 10⁴ and 1.5 × 10⁵), three blowing ratios (ranging from 1 to 3), and six injection angles (ranging from 15° to 90°). The results show that at lower injection angles of 15°–45°, maximum film-cooling effectiveness occurs at a particular value of velocity ratio which is found to be independent of mainstream Reynolds number, blowing ratio, and density ratio. Based on a combined effect analysis of blowing ratio, density ratio, and injection angle, a relation was obtained for velocity ratio that gives an optimum film-cooling effectiveness.     

Simultaneous growth of self-patterned carbon nanotube forests with dual height scales

In this study, we report on a unique, one-step fabrication technique enabling the simultaneous synthesis of vertically aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes (VA-MWCNTs) with dual height scales through alcohol catalyzed chemical vapor deposition (ACCVD). Regions of VA-MWCNTs with different heights were well separated from each other leading to a self-patterning on the surface. We devised a unique layer-by-layer process for application of catalyst and inhibitor precursors on oxidized Si (100) surfaces before the ACCVD step to achieve a hierarchical arrangement. Patterning could be controlled by adjusting the molarity and application sequence of precursors. Contact angle measurements on these self-patterned surfaces indicated that manipulation of these hierarchical arrays resulted in a wide range of hydrophobic behavior changing from that of a sticky rose petal to a lotus leaf.     

Energy release rate based approach for the wear of punches in precision blanking of high strength steel

Punch wear is a major issue in the blanking of high strength steel (HSS) sheets. To study wear physics, a blanking test with tight side clearances was implemented, and the results compared with numerical simulations with appropriately calibrated critical damage value. Based on observations of worn punches, wear angle was found to adequately represent changing geometry of the cutting edge. Using modified geometries, burr formation, stress-state at the punch and load–displacement curves are investigated. Punch wear and shear crack mechanics are found to strongly relate to the changes in the load–displacement curve, and the release rate of punching energy.     

Nanograins dependent dielectric constant, tunability, phase transition, impedance spectroscopy and leakage current of (Pb1 − xSrx)TiO3 thin films

Nanostructured (Pb_1 − xSr_x)TiO₃ (PST) (x = 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3) thin films have been prepared by chemical solution deposition process using spin coating technique. The solution as such was deposited on Pt/Ti/SiO₂/Si substrates and annealed at 650 °C/3h. Nanograins dependent dielectric properties of PST films show dielectric constant up to the higher frequency region, low losses, large tunability and phase transition at small temperature. The impedance data has been fitted by Cole-Cole model to study the effect of grain boundaries on the dielectric properties. The current-voltage characteristics have been measured to study leakage current in PST films and described by Poole-Frenkel emission model. It is suggested that the key carrier transport process in PST films is emission of electrons from a trap state near the metal-film interface into a continuum of states associated with each conductive dislocation. The activation energy value for carrier transport in PST films is obtained from temperature-dependent current-voltage characteristics.     

Throughput of cognitive radio networks with improved energy detector under security threats

Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) is subjected to some security threats such as primary user emulation (PUE) attack and spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack. In PUE attack, a malicious user (MU_PUE) transmits an emulated primary signal throughout the spectrum sensing interval to secondary users (SUs) to forestall them from accessing the primary user (PU) spectrum bands. In SSDF attack, malicious users (MU_SSDF) intentionally report false sensing decisions to the fusion center (FC) to influence the overall decision. While most of the existing literatures have studied the effects of these 2 types of attacks separately, the present paper evaluates the secondary network performance in terms of throughput under both the PUE and SSDF attacks with improved energy detectors (IEDs) where SU's spectrum access is hybrid, ie, either in overlay or in underlay mode. An analytical expression on throughput of SU under the simultaneous influence of both of these attacks is developed. Impact of several parameters such as IED parameter, attacker probabilities, and attacker strength on the throughput of SU is investigated. Performance of the present scheme is also compared with only PUE and only SSDF attacks. A simulation test bed is developed in MATLAB to validate our analytical results.