Leaf epidermal micromorphology and its implications in systematics of certain taxa of the fern family Pteridaceae from Northern Pakistan

The present study is insights into foliar epidermal anatomy for characterizing clades, and their utility in taxonomic segregation of certain species of Pteridaceae from Northern Pakistan. The leaf epidermal anatomy of 10 species of Pteridaceae representing four genera were examined using light and scanning electron microscope. A micromorphological matrix was constructed for eight qualitative and 12 quantitative characters. unweighted pair group method with arithmetic means and principal components analysis statistical analysis were performed to test the validity of foliar epidermal anatomical features as method of separating species and genera, and phylogenetic clusters among species are constructed using qualitative and quantitative traits. The qualitative characters described here are shape of epidermal cells, stomata, guard cell and subsidiary cells, anticlinal wall pattern, and trichomes types which is helpful in defining groups within Pteridaceae. In addition, the size of stomata, guard cells, subsidiary cells, stomatal pore epidermal cells, and trichomes are quantitatively analyzed. All species have hypostomatic leaves. Two types of stomata were observed in studied species, anomocytic and polocytic. Anomocytic stomata were observed in three genera namely: Adiantum, Onychium, and Chielanthes whereas Pteris can be discriminated from other genera by its polocytic stomata. On the basis of multivariate analysis present study does provides sufficient information on the taxonomic importance of foliar anatomy which validate its efficacy in species and genera discrimination. From result obtained here it is further possible to use leaf micromorphologic data in ferns phylogeny and providing basis for future taxonomic delimitation in other taxa.     

Telecentric confocal optics for aberration correction of acousto-optic tunable filters

A telecentric confocal optical arrangement is presented that greatly reduces the diffraction aberrations of the acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF). Analytical expressions for the aberrations were identified based on the fundamental properties of Bragg diffraction, and additional aberrations due to focusing through the AOTF were also included. The analysis was verified by use of a geometrical ray trace optical code, and an experimental AOTF system was analyzed. Considerable improvement in the potential spatial resolution is predicted with confocal optics, which could accommodate large pixel-limited image fields of greater than 10(6) pixels. When the image quality of the experimental system was assessed, the resolution was found to be improved by the confocal optics and was diffraction limited. Higher resolution could have been obtained with the use of larger optics to increase the throughput before being limited by the aberrations.     

Development of self-microemulsifying drug delivery system of mebendazole by spray drying technology: Characterization,in vitro and in vivo evaluation

In this study, a novel liquid self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) containing mebendazole was formulated and further developed into a solid form by a spray drying method using Aerosil 200 as the solid carrier. The optimum liquid SMEDDS consisted of Labrafil 2125 CS, Tween 20, and Maisine 35-1 as the oil phase, the surfactant, and the cosurfactant, respectively. The formulated SMEDDS was completely emulsified or dispersed within a minute. All formulations were dissolved within 1 h using 0.1 N HCl as dissolution medium, whereas pure drug was less significantly dissolved in this time period. The droplet size was found to be within 250 nm for solid forms of SMEDDS. Solid state characterization was performed by scanning electron micrograph, differential scanning calorimetry, and X-ray powder diffraction. After oral administration to Wistar rats, mebendazole in the solid SMEDDS resulted in the significant improvement in bioavailability compared with that of pure drug analyzed by RP-HPLC. The optimized formulation showed 24.87 folds increase in bioavailability as compared to pure drug and 8.39 folds increase in bioavailability in comparison to marketed tablet of mebendazole. The optimized batch has found to be 3.1726 years of shelf life. In conclusion, the solid SMEDDS is a promising solid dosage form for poorly water-soluble and low bioavailability drugs.     

Orientation Invariant Skeleton Feature (OISF): a new feature for Human Activity Recognition

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Human Activity Recognition is the process of identifying the activity of a person by analyzing continuous frames of a video. In many application areas, human...     

Big Data Knowledge Discovery as a Service: Recent Trends and Challenges

In remote area industrial systems, energy consumption monitoring is a crucial challenge. As the conventional monitoring methods lack an intelligent approach, the finest energy consumption monitoring is not possible. Hence, Internet of Things (IoT) based monitoring methods have been developed by recent industrial systems. Therefore, in this research, a novel cloud with IoT based energy monitoring technique is developed. The energy parameters of the Computer Numerical Control based milling machine has been gathered using IoT based Current Transducers , Voltage Transducers , and power sensors. The IoT device includes Zigbee or Bluetooth for managing communication between the machine and the monitoring system. Then the obtained data is stored in the cloud storage platform for large scale machine energy data in the windows platform. Later on, the obtained data from cloud storage is processed by the novel Normalized Recursive Least Kalman Filter for event detection processing. Moreover, the feature extraction has been done using the proposed Simplified Principal Component Analysis method. Furthermore, the energy utilization of the machine is monitored over various situations using the proposed novel Dynamic Self-evolving Reasoning based Fuzzy Neural algorithm. The Median Absolute Deviation is estimated for the conditional inference of the system. The software implementation of this work is done in MATLAB. The power consumption of the machine is validated under various cases. Besides, the proposed simulation outcomes are compared with various existing energy monitoring systems for verifying the significance of the developed method.

     

Structure and Properties of (Ba,Ca) TiO3 Ceramics Prepared Using (Ba,Ca)TiO3 Ceramics I, Crystallographic and Microstructural Studies

Ba_1–xCa_xTiO₃ powders have been prepared using a novel route involving solid-state reaction in a mixture of Ba_1–xCa_xCO₃ and TiO₂. The Ba_1–xCa_xCO₃ precursors used in this method were prepared by a chemical coprecipitation route to ensure a uniform supply of Ba and Ca ions during thermochemical reaction with TiO₂. The compositional homogeneity of Ba_1–xCa_xTiO₃ powder prepared by such a semiwet route is compared with those prepared by the conventional dry route, involving thermochemical reaction in a mixture of BaCO₃, CaCO₃, and TiO₂, using principles of X-ray line broadening. It is shown that the powders obtained by the semiwet route possess better compositional homogeneity, over a length scale of 1800 Å corresponding to the coherently scattering domain size, than those prepared by the conventional dry route. Microstructural studies have revealed grain sizes of the order of 1 μm and several micrometers, respectively, for ceramics prepared by the semiwet and conventional dry routes. The solid solubility limit of Ca in Ba_1–xCa_xTiO₃ ceramics fired at 1300°C is 16 mol% for samples prepared by the semiwet route while conventionally processed ceramics had a Ca solid Solubility limit of 12 mol% at the same temperature.     

A study of effectiveness of dynamic slicing in locating real faults

Dynamic slicing algorithms have been considered to aid in debugging for many years. However, as far as we know, no detailed studies on evaluating the benefits of using dynamic slicing for locating real faults present in programs have been carried out. In this paper we study the effectiveness of fault location using dynamic slicing for a set of real bugs reported in some widely used software programs. Our results show that of the 19 faults studied, 12 faults were captured by data slices, 7 required the use of full slices, and none of them required the use of relevant slices. Moreover, it was observed that dynamic slicing considerably reduced the subset of program statements that needed to be examined to locate faulty statements. Interestingly, we observed that all of the memory bugs in the faulty versions were captured by data slices. The dynamic slices that captured faulty code included 0.45 to 63.18% of statements that were executed at least once.

Intraspecific variation in seed morphology of tribe vicieae (Papilionoidae) using scanning electron microscopy techniques

Seed micromorphology of 12 species of tribe Vicieae (Papilionoidae) representing five genera were examined using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The different seed types were described, illustrated, compared, and their taxonomic importance is discussed. Seeds exhibit great diversity in ultrastructure and a variety of novel morphological features have been determined among and within genera of the tribe. Seeds were characterized by oval to round shape, ovate to oblong outline and striate to papillate ornamentation. Radiate and wavy cell pattern has been observed as a characteristic exomorphological feature. In Vicia sativa, testa cells superficially seem to form peltate hairs. As a result, seed micromorphology with few exceptions showed variation and its taxonomic value was significant in distinguishing taxa at species level. The disparity in shape and density of papillae or protuberances and alignment of testa cells, may possibly give further insight at intraspecific level within tribe. The findings also illustrated that the use of SEM in seed morphology can reveal hidden morphological affinities among species and showed potential in delimitation of Vicieae members generally at tribe, genus, and particularly at species level.