Characterization of UHF RFID tags fabricated directly on convex surfaces by pad printing

The possibility of pad printing in RFID tag antenna manufacturing is investigated. Passive UHF RFID tags were printed on flat and on convex surfaces with two different polymer thick-film silver inks. The effect of the ink and substrate material properties on tag antenna performance was examined. The goal was to provide information which is needed in adapting the pad-printing technique in RFID tag manufacture. The results show that pad printing is suitable for tag manufacturing on flat and on convex surfaces. The curvature of the substrate did not significantly affect the tag performance. It was more important to take into consideration other substrate properties, ink characteristics, morphology, and printing parameters. The best practice is to take these matters into consideration in the initial tag design process to ensure proper tag performance at the desired frequency.     

Magneto-transport properties of Fe-doped LSMO manganites

Magneto-transport measurements have been performed on La_0.67Sr_0.33Mn_1−xFe_xO₃ (x = 0.0, 0.05 and 0.07) manganites synthesized by solid state route. The overall nature of AC susceptibility is found to be frequency independent. With the substitution of Mn by Fe, the transport properties dramatically change suppressing the double-exchange interaction. This in turn weakens the ferromagnetism and consequently decreases the paramagnetic to ferromagnetic transition temperature (T_c). However, DC electrical resistivity of the samples show board hump at metal-insulator transition temperature (T_MI) in contrary with sharp transition at T_c and T_MI < T_c indicating decoupling of electrical and magnetic properties. Resistivity behavior of these samples can be well explained by the consideration of bond percolation model which is basically developed from effective approximation method.     

Comprehensive studies on polyethylenimine filled polypropylene and its potential application in carbon dioxide sequestration

Polypropylene (PP) was blended with branched polyethylenimine (PEI) with the aim to prepare blends having CO₂ adsorption property. The CO₂ adsorption properties will be conferred due to the presence of variety of amine functionality in PEI. PEI contains primary, secondary as well as tertiary amine groups. Before testing CO₂ adsorption, PP–PEI blends were characterized using variety of techniques, for example, differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, dynamic mechanical analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and polarized light optical microscopy. In this work, we have studied in detail both compatibilized as well as noncompatibilized blends of PP and PEI. The compatibilization was achieved via addition of maleic anhydride grafted PP. Finally, all the compatibilized as well as noncompatibilized blends were studied for CO₂ adsorption. The compatibilized blends showed better thermal, mechanical as well as CO₂ adsorption properties as compared to the noncompatibilized blends. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 59:2092–2102, 2019. © 2019 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Prenatal exposure to the fluoride containing psychiatric drug fluoxetine and anti-oxidative alterations in the neonatal rat brain

Fluoride is a key ingredient of many psychiatric drugs like fluoxetine (Prozac^®, Fluoxetine^®). Pregnant women frequently use this drug as they suffer from depression and anxiety disorders during this period. Fluoxetine is able to reach the fetus through the placenta and passes to the newborn through milk. In the present study, female Wistar rats were treated with 5, 10, and 20 mg/L fluoxetine (containing 94% fluorides) from pregnancy day 10 to day 20. After delivery, the levels of the enzymatic antioxidants in the brain of their offspring at postnatal day 2 were measured. The results showed that, in all fluoxetine exposed groups compared with the control group, there was a significant decrease (P < 0.01) in the glutathione, catalase, glutathione S-transferases and potassium and a non- significant increase (P > 0.05) in the activity of malondialdehyde and creatine kinase. The results suggest that fluoxetine may be a developmental neurotoxicant due to presence of fluoride hence must be used carefully during pregnancy.     

The effect of seasonal variation on automated land cover mapping from multispectral airborne laser scanning data

Multispectral airborne laser scanning (MS-ALS) sensors are a new promising source of data for automated mapping methods. Finding an optimal time for data acquisition is important in all mapping applications based on remotely sensed datasets. In this study, three MS-ALS datasets acquired at different times of the growing season were compared for automated land cover mapping and road detection in a suburban area. In addition, changes in the intensity were studied. An object-based random forest classification was carried out using reference points. The overall accuracy of the land cover classification was 93.9% (May dataset), 96.4% (June) and 95.9% (August). The use of the May dataset acquired under leafless conditions resulted in more complete roads than the other datasets acquired when trees were in leaf. It was concluded that all datasets used in the study are applicable for suburban land cover mapping, however small differences in accuracies between land cover classes exist.     

Finite‐time posture stabilization of the unicycle mobile robot using only position information: A discrete‐time sliding mode approach

The posture stabilization of a unicycle mobile robot is useful in executing parking and docking maneuvers. It becomes more advantageous to guarantee the posture stabilization in finite time for a battery operated robot, especially in an application involving multiple robots. This paper addresses the posture stabilization of the unicycle mobile robot in finite time, especially when only the position information is available. We adopt the reaching law approach and design a discrete‐time sliding mode (DSM) controller by finitely discretizing the chained form of the unicycle, using the notion of multirate input sampling. Finite‐time stabilization of the equilibria is achieved by using multirate piecewise continuous inputs. Furthermore, the control inputs are realized using multirate output‐feedback (MROF) technique, wherein the states are estimated using the knowledge of the past fast output samples and immediate past control inputs. The proposed MROF‐DSM strategy avoids undesirable chatter in the system response owing to the nonswitching‐type controller and guarantees the stabilization in finite time. Simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.     

Brain tumor segmentation and classification via adaptive CLFAHE with hybrid classification

This article exploits a new brain tumor classification model that includes five steps like (a) denoising, (b) skull stripping, (c) segmentation, (d) feature extraction and (e) classification. Initially, the image is subjected under the denoising process, where the noise removal procedure is carried out by employing the entropy-based trilateral filter. Then, the denoised image is applied to the skull stripping process via Otsu thresholding and morphology segmentation. Subsequently, the next step is the segmentation, where the image is segmented by deploying the adaptive CLFAHE (contrast limited fuzzy adaptive histogram equalization) technique. Once the segmentation is completed, gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) based features are extracted. Finally, the extracted features are processed under hybrid classification model to attain enhanced classification rate. Here, hybrid classification hybrids two classifiers namely deep belief network (DBN) and Bayesian regularization classifier. The vital contribution of this research work exists in the optimal selection of hidden neurons in the DBN. Along with this, the membership function (bounding limits) of fuzzy logic is optimally selected. For this, a new lion exploration based whale optimization (LE-WO) algorithm is proposed in this article that hybrids the concept of (lion algorithm) LA and (whale optimization algorithm) WOA. Finally, the performance of proposed LE-WO is compared over the other methods in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, negative predictive value (NPV), F1 _ score and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC), False positive rate (FPR), False negative rate (FNR) and false discovery rate (FDR) and proves the betterments of proposed work. From the outcomes, the accuracy measure of proposed model at 60th population size is 1.98%, 1.81%, 1.32%, 3.46% and 0.75% better than PSO, FF, GWO, WOA and LA, respectively. Similarly, in 80th population size, the performance of the implemented model is 4.47%, 5.04%, 3.96%, 6.29% and 1.37% superior to PSO, FF, GWO, WOA and LA, respectively. Thus, the betterment of the adopted scheme is validated in an effective manner.     

Conditionals,Counterfactuals, and Rational Reasoning: An Experimental Study on Basic Principles

We present a unified approach for investigating rational reasoning about basic argument forms involving indicative conditionals, counterfactuals, and basic quantified statements within coherence-based probability logic. After introducing the rationality framework, we present an interactive view on the relation between normative and empirical work. Then, we report a new experiment which shows that people interpret indicative conditionals and counterfactuals by coherent conditional probability assertions and negate conditionals by negating their consequents. The data support the conditional probability interpretation of conditionals and the narrow-scope reading of the negation of conditionals. Finally, we argue that coherent conditional probabilities are important for probabilistic analyses of conditionals, nonmonotonic reasoning, quantified statements, and paradoxes.     

Bacterial pathogen incidences in sludge from Swedish sewage treatment plants

This study surveyed the presence of bacterial pathogens in eight Swedish sewage treatment plants (STPs), with four different treatment methods, focusing on detection of zoonotic bacteria in raw and treated sludge. Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter coli and jejuni, Escherichia coli O157 and indicator bacteria were investigated. Samplings were performed from July 2000 to June 2002, resulting in 64 raw sludge samples and 69 treated sludge samples. The samples from raw sludge (67%) and treated sludge (55%) were positive for Salmonella; 49 different serotypes were detected. Restriction enzyme analysis and pulsed field gel electrophoresis of Salmonella serotypes indicated that Salmonella persists in STPs and that there is a continuous supply of new strains. There are differences in treatment methods concerning the reduction of pathogens and indicator bacteria. If spread on arable land, sludge increases the environmental load of pathogens; this increases the risk for spreading diseases to people and animals.