On Fast and Accurate Detection of Unauthorized Wireless Access Points Using Clock Skews

We explore the use of clock skew of a wireless local area network access point (AP) as its fingerprint to detect unauthorized APs quickly and accurately. The main goal behind using clock skews is to overcome one of the major limitations of existing solutions—the inability to effectively detect Medium Access Control (MAC) address spoofing. We calculate the clock skew of an AP from the IEEE 802.11 Time Synchronization Function (TSF) time stamps sent out in the beacon/probe response frames. We use two different methods for this purpose—one based on linear programming and the other based on least-square fit. We supplement these methods with a heuristic for differentiating original packets from those sent by the fake APs. We collect TSF time stamp data from several APs in three different residential settings. Using our measurement data as well as data obtained from a large conference setting, we find that clock skews remain consistent over time for the same AP but vary significantly across APs. Furthermore, we improve the resolution of received time stamp of the frames and show that with this enhancement, our methodology can find clock skews very quickly, using 50-100 packets in most of the cases. We also discuss and quantify the impact of various external factors including temperature variation, virtualization, clock source selection, and NTP synchronization on clock skews. Our results indicate that the use of clock skews appears to be an efficient and robust method for detecting fake APs in wireless local area networks.     

Thermal Characterization of Metakaolin-Based Geopolymer

Thermal characterization of geopolymer powder was investigated at room and elevated temperatures. The physical, chemical and mass change with respect to various temperatures have been studied. The physical properties such as density, porosity, and particle size were analyzed in geopolymer powder. The chemical and phase compositions were determined by x-ray fluorescence. The surface images of solid blocks of geopolymer were examined at room and elevated temperatures using scanning electron microscopy. Thermal expansion, shrinkage, and mass loss behavior towards the elevated temperatures were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The endothermic peak arising in the DSC curve is due to evaporation of water, chemical, gases and weight loss.     

Capillary flow-driven blood plasma separation and on-chip analyte detection in microfluidic devices

We report a comprehensive review on the capillary flow-driven blood plasma separation and on-chip analyte detection in microfluidic devices. Blood plasma separation is the primary sample preparation step prior to most biochemical assays. Conventionally, centrifugation is used for the sample preparation process. There are numerous works reporting blood plasma separation in microfluidic devices which aim at miniaturizing the sample preparation procedure. Capillary-based blood plasma separation shows promise in actualizing point-of-care diagnostic devices for applications in resource-limited settings including military camps and rural areas. In this review, the devices have been categorized based on active and passive plasma separation techniques used for the separation of plasma from capillary-driven blood sample. A comparison between different techniques used for blood plasma separation is outlined. On-chip detection of analytes present in the separated plasma obtained using some of these reported devices is also presented and discussed.     

Study of Effective Graded Oxide Capacitance and Length Variation on Analog,RF and Power Performances of Dual Gate Underlap MOS-HEMT

Silicon - Comparative analysis of a Symmetric Heterojunction Underlap Double Gate (U-DG) GaN/AlGaN Metal Oxide Semiconductor High Electron Mobility Transistor (MOS-HEMT) on varying the effective...     

Multimodal neurological image fusion based on adaptive biological inspired neural model in nonsubsampled Shearlet domain

Multimodal medical image fusion (MMIF) has a significant role for a better visualization of the diagnostic statistics, those help the medical professionals in the precise diagnosis of several critical diseases. This paper presents an improved fusion framework that uses the entire features extracted by the nonsubsampled shearlet transform (NSST) and adaptive biologically inspired neural model. The proposed scheme retains the required information without losing the resolution of the disease morphology. In the proposed method, the adaptive neural model based on local visibility and log Gabor energy based rules are applied to low and high-frequency components, respectively. The better fusion results obtained by the proposed approach are confirmed by a large extent of simulations on the different MR-SPECT and CT-MR neurological images. Based on all these simulated results, it states that the proposed approach is superior than the other approaches as it produces better visually fused images with improved computational measures.     

Fabrication,characterization and comparison of DSSC using anatase TiO2 synthesized by various methods

In this study, anatase TiO₂ nanoparticles were synthesized by three techniques, namely, sol–gel, acid-base co-catalyst and room temperature colloidal methods. The synthesized materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, pore diameter, pore volume and surface area. The dye-sensitized solar cells were fabricated using the synthesized materials and characterized for incident photon to current conversion efficiency, photocurrent density to photo voltage measurement and electrochemical impedance analysis. Among the studied materials, TiO₂ synthesized by sol–gel method displayed highest photon to current conversion of 76.8% and a maximum solar cell efficiency of 7.85% with J_sc of 14.75 mA/cm², V_oc of 0.76 V and FF of 0.7. This is the first study to report a high power conversion efficiency of DSSC using a sol–gel synthesized titania and its comparison with other two synthesized materials. The high power conversion efficiency of the solar cell using TiO₂ synthesized by sol–gel method is attributed to its characteristic properties such high surface area, larger pore diameter and larger pore volume and highest dye loading capacity.     

A semi empirical approach for submicron GaN MESFET using an accurate velocity field relationship for high power applications

A semi empirical model has been proposed for sub-micron GaN MESFET's to calculate the I-V characteristics using an accurate velocity-field relationship obtained by fitting it with the Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The results so obtained are compared with the experimental results to validate our model and are also compared with the results obtained from the simple saturation model to present the influence of electron drift velocity modeling on the device parameters. The model has been extended to predict the microwave parameters such as transconductance and output conductance of the device.     

Expression,purification, and characterization of N-acetylglucosaminylphosphatidylinositol de-N-acetylase (ScGpi12), the enzyme that catalyses the second step of GPI biosynthesis in S. cerevisiae

ScGpi12 is a 304 amino residue long endoplasmic reticulum membrane protein, which participates in the de-N-acetylation of N-acetylglucosaminyl phosphatidylinositol to produce glucosaminyl phosphatidylinositol in the second step of GPI anchor biosynthesis pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. ScGpi12 was cloned in a pMAL-c2x vector and expressed heterologously in Rosetta-gami (DE3) strain of E. coli. Affinity purification of the protein yielded low amounts of the MBP-tagged enzyme, which was active. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first successful purification of full-length Gpi12 enzyme, without the accompanying GroEL that was seen in other studies. The presence of the tag did not greatly alter the activity of the enzyme. ScGpi12 was optimally active in the pH range of 6.5–8.5 and at 30 °C. It was not sensitive to treatment with EDTA but was stimulated by multiple divalent cations. The divalent cation did not alter the pH profile of the enzyme, suggesting no role of the divalent metal in creating a nucleophile for catalysis. Divalent cations did, however, enhance the turnover number of the enzyme for its substrate, suggesting that they are probably required for the production of a catalytically competent active site by bringing the active site residues within optimum distance of the substrate for catalysis.