A low profile dual band resonant cavity antenna

A low profile dual band resonant cavity antenna that incorporates double sided partially reflective surface (PRS) with complementary layers is presented here. The PRS is formed by printing periodic array of complementary metallic square loops on the opposite sides of the dielectric material. The PRS has been used as a superstrate, placed above the radiating microstrip patch. This PRS acts as a dual band matching section between the microstrip patch and free space, hence resulting in dual resonance. The proposed structure has been analyzed using equivalent circuit model. Parametric analysis of the sensitive structural parameters has also been discussed. To validate the design, the simulation analysis and experimental results obtained from a prototype operating at 8.9 and 9.4 GHz are presented. The measured gain at the two frequencies is 10.2 and 8.5 dBi, respectively. The overall size of the antenna is 1.78λ × 1.78λ × 0.09 λ with λ corresponding to 8.9 GHz.     

α-Zirconium phosphate supported metal–salen complex: synthesis,characterization and catalytic activity for cyclohexane oxidation

Metal–salen intercalated α-zirconium phosphate, abbreviated as {α-ZrP·M(Salen), where M = Fe(III) and Mn(II)} was synthesized insitu by the flexible ligand method. The structure of resulting compounds was characterized by BET surface area, powder X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and UV–visible spectroscopy. The catalytic activity of α-ZrP·M(Salen) was tested for the oxidation of cyclohexane using dry tert-butylhydroperoxide as an oxidant. In the oxidation reaction, cyclohexane was oxidized to cyclohexanol (A), cyclohexanone (K) and some unidentified products. It was found that the reactivity of α-ZrP·Fe(Salen) is greater than α-ZrP·Mn(Salen) in the oxidation reaction. Influence of various reaction parameters viz. reaction temperature, catalyst concentration, substrate to oxidant molar ratio was studied using α-ZrP·Fe(Salen) catalyst to obtain maximum conversion (29.30%) of cyclohexane. The catalyst was reused for five cycles without significant loss of catalytic activity.     

Optimal Design of Pipe Networks Accounting for Future Demands and Phased Expansion using Integrated Dynamic Programming and Differential Evolution Approach

The water distribution network (WDN) design comprises determining optimal pipe sizes to achieve minimum cost pipe network to meet the required demands and performance levels. However, with time, the water demand for any region changes due to population, migration, and lifestyles, so interventions need to be made to the existing WDNs. Therefore, the capacity expansion problem consists of determining the suitable interventions at various stages such that the required demands are met at minimum cost. The present study proposed a novel methodology for planning such interventions based on Dynamic Programming (DP) formulation and presented a combined Self-Adaptive Differential Evolution and DP (SADE-DP) methodology for solving the WDN expansion problems considering life cycle costs. The methodology is applied and tested on three benchmark WDNs, namely New York Tunnel (NYT), Two loop (TL), and Blacksburg (BLA) networks, and also for a real case study of the Badlapur WDN in Maharashtra, India. The proposed model solutions are validated by comparing them with other WDN expansion methods taken from the literature. The results indicate that the proposed SADE-DP approach is computationally efficient and provides cost-effective solutions by meeting desired performance levels at various stages, and can serve as a potential alternative for solving real-world WDN expansion problems.

     

Structural aspects and nature of swelling medium as equilibrium swelling determinants of acrylamide and cellulosic‐based smart hydrogels

Hydroxypropylcellulose (HPC)‐based interpenetrating networks (IPN) with acrylamide (AAm) were synthesized in aqueous medium by simultaneous γ‐ray initiation in the presence of N,N‐methylenebisacrylamide (N,N‐MBAAm). The effect of the synthetic reaction conditions was evaluated for optimum network yield and networks of cellulose and some of its derivatives were obtained with AAm by using these conditions. FTIR, elemental analysis, and scanning electron micrography (SEM) for various structural aspects have characterized networks. Apart from kinetics of IPN formation, this article discusses swelling response of these novel hydrogels in different swelling media. Swelling behavior was studied as a function of synthetic reaction conditions, structure of cellulosics used, and nature of swelling medium (water, 0.5N NaOH, 0.5N HCl, and 5% NaCl). Equilibrium swelling was observed to depend on both structural and environmental factors. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 85: 1161–1169, 2002     

Square‐Root Cubature‐Quadrature Kalman Filter

In this paper, an on‐going work introducing square‐root extension of cubature‐quadrature based Kalman filter is reported. The proposed method is named square‐root cubature‐quadrature Kalman filter (SR‐CQKF). Unlike ordinary cubature‐quadrature Kalman filter (CQKF), the proposed method propagates and updates square‐root of the error covariance without performing Cholesky decomposition at each step. Moreover SR‐CQKF ensures positive semi‐definiteness of the state covariance matrix. With the help of two examples we show the superior performance of SR‐CQKF compared to EKF and square root cubature Kalman filter.     

Efficient facial expression recognition using histogram of oriented gradients in wavelet domain

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Facial expression recognition plays a significant role in human behavior detection. In this study, we present an efficient and fast facial expression recognition...     

A sensitive voltammetric sensor based on synergistic effect of graphene–polyaniline hybrid film for quantification of calcium antagonist lercanidipine

A chemically modified sensor based on the synergistic effect of graphene and polyaniline for electrochemical sensing of calcium antagonist lercanidipine (LCP) has been developed. Scanning electron microscopy, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, square‐wave voltammetry, and cyclic voltammetry were utilized to characterize the morphology and electroanalytical performance of the fabricated sensor. Under optimized conditions, reduction peak current was linear over the wide concentration range from 5 to 125 ng mL^?1 with correlation coefficient of 0.9998. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification were found to be 1.94 and 5.89 ng mL^?1. The developed sensor also exhibited good reproducibility and long‐term stability. In addition, the proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of LCP in pharmaceutical formulation which is proved by recovery studies. Graphene–polyaniline composites are expected to be promising material for biosensing applications because of the ease of fabrication, excellent electrochemical performance, and high electroactive surface area. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40959.     

Integration of moment invariants and uniform local binary patterns for human activity recognition in video sequences

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this study, we present a method for human activity recognition in video sequences. Human activities are often described by a holistic feature vector...