INVITED REVIEW STABILITY OF COLLOIDAL DISPERSIONS

The stability of colloidal dispersions has traditionally attracted considerable attention in the chemical literature because of its origins in the physical chemistry of electrostatic and steric interactions between surfaces immersed in liquids. Moreover, progress in the physics and chemistry of stability phenomena has a direct impact on chemical engineering research, since stability of dispersions plays an important role in the rheology and transport properties of charged particles in liquids, separation processes (such as membrane filtration and solid/liquid separation), deposition and particulale fouling phenomena and numerous other processing operations. This paper presents a discussion of physical and chemical factors that affect colloidal stability and, in addition, presents an overview of the status of current research needs in this area. In addition to electrostatic and steric effects, some recent studies on the role of bulk motion of the supporting liquid on stability are also discussed. The emphasis throughout is on the stability of dilute dispersions, in which simultaneous interactions between more than two particles are negligible. Some major research needs in the above areas are also identified.     

Improving shape from focus using defocus cue.

The shape-from-focus (SFF) method uses a sequence of frames to estimate the structure of a 3-D object. Its accuracy depends on the step size by which the translational table is moved while capturing the images. Existing SFF algorithms use an ad hoc interpolation strategy to account for the error due to the finite step size. We propose an improved SFF method that uses relative defocus blur derived from actual image data to arrive at the final estimates of the structure of the object. A space-variant image restoration scheme is also proposed to obtain a focused image of the 3-D object. The reconstructed 3-D structure as well as the quality of the restored image are superior for the proposed method in comparison to traditional SFF.     

Analytic-Wavelet-Ridge-Based Detection of Dynamic Eccentricity in Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) Motors Functioning Under Dynamic Operating Conditions

A new method using the analytic wavelet transform of the stator-current signal is proposed for detecting dynamic eccentricity in brushless direct current (BLDC) motors operating under rapidly varying speed and load conditions. As wavelets are inherently suited for nonstationary signal analysis, this method does not require the use of any windows, nor is it dependent on any assumption of local stationarity as in the case of the short-time Fourier transform. The proposed technique uses analytic wavelets, which are smooth wavelets that possess both magnitude and phase information. This makes them particularly suitable for motor-fault diagnostics. Experimental results are provided to show that the proposed method works over a wide speed range of motor operation and provides an effective and robust way of detecting rotor faults such as dynamic eccentricity in BLDC motors     

System Call Monitoring Using Authenticated System Calls

System call monitoring is a technique for detecting and controlling compromised applications by checking at runtime that each system call conforms to a policy that specifies the program's normal behavior. Here, we introduce a new approach to implementing system call monitoring based on authenticated system calls. An authenticated system call is a system call augmented with extra arguments that specify the policy for that call, and a cryptographic message authentication code that guarantees the integrity of the policy and the system call arguments. This extra information is used by the kernel to verify the system call. The version of the application in which regular system calls have been replaced by authenticated calls is generated automatically by an installer program that reads the application binary, uses static analysis to generate policies, and then rewrites the binary with the authenticated calls. This paper presents the approach, describes a prototype implementation based on Linux and the Plto binary rewriting system, and gives experimental results suggesting that the approach is effective in protecting against compromised applications at modest cost.     

Current/Voltage-Based Detection of Faults in Gears Coupled to Electric Motors

Gears form a critical part of many electromechanical systems. Since gear faults cause vibrations, and vibration-based diagnostics are very reliable, this has traditionally been the most commonly used approach to detecting gear faults. However, it is expensive due to the use of high-priced accelerometers and sensor wiring. This paper proposes an alternative way of detecting faults in gears coupled to brushless dc motors by monitoring either the motor current or voltage. It will be shown that gear faults create unique spectral components in the voltage and current spectrums. The faults investigated include damage to gear teeth and loss of lubrication. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate that motor current/voltage signature analysis is a viable tool to detect these gear faults and is a cheaper alternative than vibration-based fault-detection scheme     

Thermal and optical properties of Ge5Bi18Se77 films

Amorphous films of Ge₅Bi₁₈Se₇₇ deposited by vacuum evaporation have been studied for their thermal and optical properties. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been used to perform the thermal analysis to estimate the activation energy for crystallization (E_c) and the order of crystallization (m) of this material. The high value of (E_c), 1.672 eV, indicates good stability of the amorphous phase. The optical constants of the as-deposited, amorphous and the thermally annealed crystalline films indicate semiconducting behavior and the band gap (E_g) determined from Tauc's plot are 0.92 eV and 0.8 eV for the amorphous and crystalline films, respectively. The value of the absorption coefficient () is of the order of 10⁴cm^-1 in the optical range for both amorphous and crystalline films. The studies on optical and thermal properties confirm the suitability of these firms in phase change optical recording.     

Quantitative analysis of error bounds in the recovery of depth from defocused images

Depth from defocus involves estimating the relative blur between a pair of defocused images of a scene captured with different lens settings. When a priori information about the scene is available, it is possible to estimate the depth even from a single image. However, experimental studies indicate that the depth estimate improves with multiple observations. We provide a mathematical underpinning to this evidence by deriving and comparing the theoretical bounds for the error in the estimate of blur corresponding to the case of a single image and for a pair of defocused images. A new theorem is proposed that proves that the Cramér-Rao bound on the variance of the error in the estimate of blur decreases with an increase in the number of observations. The difference in the bounds turns out to be a function of the relative blurring between the observations. Hence one can indeed get better estimates of depth from multiple defocused images compared with those using only a single image, provided that these images are differently blurred. Results on synthetic as well as real data are given to further validate the claim.     

Enhanced Combustion Characteristics of Bismuth Trioxide‐Aluminum Nanocomposites Prepared through Graphene Oxide Directed Self‐Assembly

We present a facile, spontaneous, and surfactant‐free method to controllably self‐assemble aluminum and bismuth trioxide nanoparticles through the introduction of graphene oxide as a self‐assembly directing agent. The self‐assembled nanocomposites demonstrate significant combustion performance improvements in comparison to randomly mixed aluminum and bismuth trioxide nanoparticles with enhanced pressure generation from 60 to 200 MPa, pressurization rate from 3 to 16 MPa μs⁻¹, burning rate from 1.15 to 1.55 km s⁻¹, and specific impulse from 41 to 71 s. The sensitivity of the self‐assembled aluminum and bismuth trioxide to electrostatic discharge was reduced by four orders of magnitude, without decreasing the combustion performance. Graphene oxide directed self‐assembly can be used to synthesize nanocomposites with diverse combustion properties and controlled ignition sensitivity, which lays the foundation for preparing multi‐functional, highly‐reactive, combustion systems in the future.     

Robust and computationally efficient superresolution algorithm

Superresolution is the process of combining information from multiple subpixel-shifted low-resolution images to form a high-resolution image. It works quite well under ideal conditions but deteriorates rapidly with inaccuracies in motion estimates. We model the original high-resolution image as a Markov random field (MRF) with a discontinuity adaptive regularizer. Given the low-resolution observations, an estimate of the superresolved image is obtained by using the iterated conditional modes (ICM) algorithm, which maximizes the local posterior conditional probability sequentially. The proposed method not only preserves edges but also lends robustness to errors in the estimates of motion and blur parameters. We derive theoretically the neighborhood structure for the posterior distribution in the presence of warping, blurring, and downsampling operations and use this to effectively reduce the overall computations. Results are given on synthetic as well as real data to validate our method.     

Measurements of benzo(a)pyrene in the city of Bombay for the evaluation of carcinogenic risk

Cigarette smoking, environmental chemicals and ionizing radiations are the three factors known to cause cancer in human beings. The relative importance of each of these is being constantly evaluated. There is an urgent need to monitor the environmental carcinogens on a large scale to assess the role of environmental chemicals in the incidence of cancer in human populations. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are released into the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel combustion and some of the PAH (e.g. benzo(a)pyrene) are recognised carcinogens. Measurement of benzo(a)pyrene in urban, suburban and rural regions of Bombay is carried out in order to evaluate the possible correlation with lung cancer incidence among different population groups. The variations in the concentration at the three sampling locations are discussed. The wide differences in the concentration at different locations seem to be very suitable for epidemiological investigations.