Effect of Pressure on the Superconducting Transition Temperature in Mercury-Based Cuprates

The pressure dependence of the transition temperature of the mercury-based cuprates is analyzed through a phenomenological model, based on the inverted parabolic relation between the critical temperature (T _c ) and the hole concentration per CuO₂ layer (n). It is found that another inverted parabolic relation between the pressure dependence of the superconducting transition temperature at the optimum hole concentration and the pressure fit the recent experimental results of the mercury-based superconductors. This relation leads to a universal relation that is obeyed not only by mercury-based cuprates but also by many other high T _c compounds. In contrast to earlier studies, the transition temperature at pressure p (T _c (p)) is always less than the transition temperature for the optimum hole concentration (T ^op _c (p)) in agreement with the experiment. The effect of the pressure-induced change in the hole concentration on the transition temperature is found to be small compared to the intrinsic effects.     

Optimisation of spray drying process parameters for low‐fat honey‐based milk powder with antioxidant activity

The purpose of this study was to optimise process parameters to prepare spray‐dried honey‐based milk powder containing functional properties of honey. Experimental design with temperature (180 to 200 °C), honey concentration (5–15%) and feed flow rate (8–10 rpm) as independent variables was studied to investigate the effect on product responses. Results showed that increasing the temperature resulted in powder with lower moisture, bulk density, antioxidant activity, total phenolic contents, total flavonoid contents and higher water solubility index. Increasing feed flow rate resulted in higher moisture, bulk density, antioxidant activity, reduced water solubility index, total phenolic content and total flavonoid content, whereas increasing honey concentration resulted in increase in antioxidant activity, total phenolic content and total flavonoid content. The moisture content, bulk density, water solubility index, DPPH scavenging activity, total phenolic content and total flavonoid content were 3.27%, 0.44 g cc^?1, 96.67 g g^?1, 17.45%, 2.54 GAE g^?1 powder and 1.40 RE g^?1 powder, respectively.     

Moisture adsorption isotherms of guar (Cyamposis tetragonoloba) grain and guar gum splits

Moisture adsorption isotherms of guar grain and guar gum splits were determined at 10, 20, 30 and 40 °C and 23-96% relative humidities using gravimetric method. The sorption data were fitted to six well-known sorption isotherm models (modified Chung-Pfost, modified Halsey, modified Henderson, modified Oswin, Chen-Clayton, and GAB models) using non-linear least square method. The GAB model was found the most satisfactory for representation of the equilibrium moisture content data for guar grain and guar gum splits. The equilibrium moisture content of guar gum splits was found to be significantly higher (p < 0.05) than that of guar grain. The isosteric heat of sorption was determined from the equilibrium moisture adsorption data using Clausius-Clapeyron type equation. Exponential relationship described well the dependence of isosteric heat of sorption on the equilibrium moisture content. The enthalpy-entropy compensation theory applied to sorption isotherms indicated enthalpy controlled sorption process.     

Heat Transfer from Confined Contaminated Bubbles to Power‐Law Liquids at Low to Moderate Reynolds and Prandtl Numbers

In this work combined effects of the wall confinement and the power‐law fluid viscosity on the heat transfer phenomena of contaminated bubbles are reported through numerical investigations. In order to delineate the effect of insoluble surfactants the spherical stagnant cap model is adopted. The solver is thoroughly validated by comparing the present results with their literature counterparts. Further, extensive new results are reported on the isotherm contours and average Nusselt numbers of confined contaminated bubbles in the range of conditions: Reynolds number, Re: 0.1 to 200; Prandtl number, Pr: 1 to 1000; power‐law index, n: 0.2 to 1.6 and stagnant cap angle, α: 0 to 180°. Briefly, results are indicative of the following observations. The temperature contours are increasingly sucked towards the rear end of the bubble with the increase in Reynolds number and/or with the increase in Prandtl number and/or with the decrease in power‐law index and/or with the decrease in stagnant cap angle. At Re ≤ 1 and Pr ≤ 10, the average Nusselt number is almost independent of power‐law indices and the stagnant cap angle. For Pe > 10, regardless of values of the confinement ratio and Reynolds number, for α ≥ 60 the average Nusselt number decreases with an increasing stagnant cap angle whereas for α < 60 the effect of contamination is found to be insignificant. The increase in the average Nusselt number with an increasing confinement ratio would occur only at moderate to large values of Reynolds and Prandtl numbers regardless of the values of the power‐law index provided that α ≥ 60°.     

Effect of sprouting on physicochemical,antioxidant and flavonoid profile of onion varieties

This study investigated the impact of sprouting in four Indian onion varieties (Punjab White, Punjab Naroya, PRO‐6 and Commercial). Results showed significant (P < 0.05) increase in protein, crude fibre, ascorbic acid content, total phenol content, total flavonoid content, antioxidant activity, anthocyanin content and significant (P < 0.05) decrease in total carbohydrate, energy value and hardness due to sprouting in all the four varieties. HPLC analysis revealed irregular pattern of increase and decrease in flavonoid components. There was no particular trend observed within analysed flavonols due to sprouting in all the four varieties except with the maximum increase in quercetin (219.3–287.4 mg kg^?1), kaempferol (13.8–17 mg kg^?1), myricetin (34.6–40.9 mg kg^?1), quercetin‐3?‐glucoside (2.9–4.1 mg kg^?1) and quercetin‐4?‐glucoside (83–87.1 mg kg^?1) in case of PRO‐6 variety only. The present research work implied sprouting to be beneficial in onion as nutritional and functional potential of all the four onion varieties was improved by sprouting.     

Recognizing 50 human action categories of web videos

Action recognition on large categories of unconstrained videos taken from the web is a very challenging problem compared to datasets like KTH (6 actions), IXMAS (13 actions), and Weizmann (10 actions). Challenges like camera motion, different viewpoints, large interclass variations, cluttered background, occlusions, bad illumination conditions, and poor quality of web videos cause the majority of the state-of-the-art action recognition approaches to fail. Also, an increased number of categories and the inclusion of actions with high confusion add to the challenges. In this paper, we propose using the scene context information obtained from moving and stationary pixels in the key frames, in conjunction with motion features, to solve the action recognition problem on a large (50 actions) dataset with videos from the web. We perform a combination of early and late fusion on multiple features to handle the very large number of categories. We demonstrate that scene context is a very important feature to perform action recognition on very large datasets. The proposed method does not require any kind of video stabilization, person detection, or tracking and pruning of features. Our approach gives good performance on a large number of action categories; it has been tested on the UCF50 dataset with 50 action categories, which is an extension of the UCF YouTube Action (UCF11) dataset containing 11 action categories. We also tested our approach on the KTH and HMDB51 datasets for comparison.     

Perceptual Organization Based Computational Model for Robust Segmentation of Moving Objects

The role of perceptual organization in motion analysis has heretofore been minimal. In this work we present a simple but powerful computational model and associated algorithms based on the use of perceptual organizational principles, such as temporal coherence (or common fate) and spatial proximity, for motion segmentation. The computational model does not use the traditional frame by frame motion analysis; rather it treats an image sequence as a single 3D spatio-temporal volume. It endeavors to find organizations in this volume of data over three levels—signal, primitive, and structural. The signal level is concerned with detecting individual image pixels that are probably part of a moving object. The primitive level groups these individual pixels into planar patches, which we call the temporal envelopes. Compositions of these temporal envelopes describe the spatio-temporal surfaces that result from object motion. At the structural level, we detect these compositions of temporal envelopes by utilizing the structure and organization among them. The algorithms employed to realize the computational model include 3D edge detection, Hough transformation, and graph based methods to group the temporal envelopes based on Gestalt principles. The significance of the Gestalt relationships between any two temporal envelopes is expressed in probabilistic terms. One of the attractive features of the adopted algorithm is that it does not require the detection of special 2D features or the tracking of these features across frames. We demonstrate that even with simple grouping strategies, we can easily handle drastic illumination changes, occlusion events, and multiple moving objects, without the use of training and specific object or illumination models. We present results on a large variety of motion sequences to demonstrate this robustness.     

Performance of multistage bus networks for a distributed sharedmemory multiprocessor

A multistage bus network (MEN) is proposed to overcome some of the shortcomings of the conventional multistage interconnection networks (MINs), single bus, and hierarchical bus interconnection networks. The MBN consists of multiple stages of buses connected in a manner similar to the MINs and has the same bandwidth at each stage. A switch in an MBN is similar to that in a MIN switch except that there is a single bus connection instead of a crossbar. MBNs support bidirectional routing and there exists a number of paths between any source and destination pair. The authors develop self routing techniques for the various paths, present an algorithm to route a request along the path with minimum distance, and analyze the probabilities of a packet taking different routes. Further, they derive a performance analysis of a synchronous packet-switched MBN in a distributed shared memory environment and compare the results with those of an equivalent bidirectional MIN (BMIN). Finally, they present the execution time of various applications on the MBN and the BMIN through an execution-driven simulation. They show that the MBN provides similar performance to a BMIN while offering simplicity in hardware and more fault-tolerance than a conventional MIN     

Synthesis and characterization of carbon nanoribbons and single crystal iron filled carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanoribbons and single crystal iron filled multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) have been synthesized by simple pyrolysis technique. SEM investigation shows that the material consist mainly carbon nanoribbons and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). X-ray diffraction (XRD), electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), electron energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), transmission electron miscroscopy (TEM) and highresolution transmission electron miscroscopy (HRTEM) studies reveal carbon nanotubes are filled with α-Fe. Closer inspection of HRTEM images indicated that the bcc structure α-Fe nanowires are monocrystalline and Fe (1 1 0) plane is indeed perpendicular to the G (0 0 2) plane, whereas orientation of (0 0 2) lattice planes of carbon nanoribbon is perpendicular to the axis of growth. Magnetic properties studied by superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) at 300 K and 10 K exhibited coercivity of 1037 Oe and 2023 Oe. The large coercitivity is strongly attributed to the small size monocrystalline single phase α-Fe, single domain nature of the encapsulated Fe crystal, magnetocrystalline shape anisotropy and ferromagnetic behaviour of localized states at the edges of the carbon nanoribbons.