Strength and elongation of spray formed Al-Si-Pb alloys

The strength and elongation to fracture of spray deposited Al-Si-Pb alloys were studied as a function of lead content, silicon content, and distance from the centre to periphery of the deposit. It is found that the ultimate tensile strength, proof stress and elongation to fracture decrease, linearly and exponentially, with the increase in lead content and porosity of the deposit, respectively. Both the strengths and elongation to fracture linearly increase with increasing distance from the centre to periphery of the deposit. The ultimate tensile strength and proof stress are higher at a higher silicon content and they have a linear relationship with the hardness of the deposit.     

Design and Fabrication of Micro Strip Patch Antenna for Cognitive Radio Applications

Wireless Personal Communications - A micro strip patch antenna (MPA) is fabricated to increase the bandwidth. The communication systems want antennas with high directivity, high signal strength and...     

Classification of electroencephalogram signal for the detection of epilepsy using Innovative Genetic Programming

Epilepsy, sometimes called seizure disorder, is a neurological condition that justifies itself as a susceptibility to seizures. A seizure is a sudden burst of rhythmic discharges of electrical activity in the brain that causes an alteration in behaviour, sensation, or consciousness. It is essential to have a method for automatic detection of seizures, as these seizures are arbitrary and unpredictable. A profound study of the electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings is required for the accurate detection of these epileptic seizures. In this study, an Innovative Genetic Programming framework is proposed for classification of EEG signals into seizure and nonseizure. An empirical mode decomposition technique is used for the feature extraction followed by genetic programming for the classification. Moreover, a method for intron deletion, hybrid crossover, and mutation operation is proposed, which are responsible for the increase in classification accuracy and a decrease in time complexity. This suggests that the Innovative Genetic Programming classifier has a potential for accurately predicting the seizures in an EEG signal and hints on the possibility of building a real‐time seizure detection system.     

3D finger tracking and recognition image processing for real-time music playing with depth sensors

In this research, we propose a state-of-the-art 3D finger gesture tracking and recognition method. We use the depth sensors for both hands in real time music playing. In line with the development of 3D depth cameras, we implemented a set of 3D gesture-based instruments, such as Virtual Cello and Virtual Piano, which need precise finger tracking in 3D space. For hands tracking, model-based tracking for left hand and appearance-based tracking for right hand techniques are proposed. To detect finger gestures, our approaches consist number of systematic steps as reducing noise in depth map and geometrical processing for Virtual Cello. For Virtual Piano, we introduce the Neural Network (NN) method to detect special hand gestures. It has Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) structure with back propagation training. Literature has few examples using touch screen as medium, with fixed-coordinates, and 2D–gestures to control MIDI input. The end users should no longer carry anything on their hands. We use Senz3D and Leap Motion due to a few technical benefits. Senz3D and Leap Motion use a closer distance to hands, thus detailed finger gestures can be precisely identified. In the past years, we announced a set of virtual musical instruments and the MINE Virtual Band. Our research work is tested on lab environment and professional theatrical stage. More information and demonstrations of the proposed method can be accessed at: http://video.minelab.tw/DETS/VMIB/.     

Preparation and characterisation of atorvastatin and curcumin‐loaded chitosan nanoformulations for oral delivery in atherosclerosis

Atorvastatin known to be a potential inhibitor of HMG‐CoA reductase involved in the synthesis of cholesterol. It is touted as miracle drug due to its profound effect in decreasing the low‐density lipoproteins in blood. Unfortunately, the high dosage used poses side‐effects relatively in comparison to other statins. On the other hand, curcumin has a diverse therapeutic potential in health and disease. However, the poor aqueous solubility and low bioavailability hinders the therapeutic potential of it when administrated orally. Therefore, it was thought to minimise the frequency of atorvastatin doses to avoid the possibility of drug resistance and also to overcome the limitations of curcumin for desirable therapeutic effects by using nanocarriers in drug delivery. In this investigation, synergistic effect of atorvastatin and curcumin nanocarriers was encapsulated by chitosan polymer. The chitosan nanocarriers prepared by ionic gelation method were characterised for their particle size, zeta potential, and other parameters. The drug‐loaded nanocarriers exhibited good encapsulation efficiency (74.25%) and showed a slow and sustained release of atorvastatin and curcumin 60.36 and 61.44%, respectively, in a span of 48 h. The drug‐loaded nanocarriers found to be haemocompatible and qualified for drug delivery in atherosclerosis.Inspec keywords: nanomedicine, drug delivery systems, diseases, cardiovascular system, enzymes, nanofabricationOther keywords: atorvastatin chitosan nanoformulation, curcumin‐loaded chitosan nanoformulation, oral delivery, atherosclerosis, potential inhibitor, HMG‐CoA reductase, cholesterol synthesis, miracle drug, low‐density lipoproteins, blood, diverse therapeutic potential, poor aqueous solubility, low bioavailability, drug resistance, nanocarriers, ionic gelation method, particle size, zeta potential, encapsulation efficiency     

Novel quantum inspired binary neural network algorithm

Sādhanā - In this paper, a quantum based binary neural network algorithm is proposed, named as novel quantum binary neural network algorithm (NQ-BNN). It forms a neural network structure...     

Modified N–P Interpolation Theory for Closed Loop Pole Placement

Khargonekar and Tannenbaum have shown how to modify the Nevanlinna‐Pick (N–P) interpolation theory to design an internally stable and robust controller. In this paper, we present a new modification of the N‐P theory so that closed‐loop poles can be placed inside a circular region in the left half of the complex plane, in addition to the control system design being robust and internally stable. This ensures a minimum damping of the closed‐loop system. Numerical examples illustrate the theory.     

Real-time 3D human objects rendering based on multiple camera details

Multimedia Tools and Applications - 3D model construction techniques using RGB-D information have been gaining a great attention of the researchers around the world in recent decades. The RGB-D...     

Synthesis and characterization of D-2PA-Pd(II)@SBA-15 catalyst via “click chemistry”: highly active catalyst for Suzuki coupling reactions

Copper catalysed cycloaddition reaction between azide and terminal alkyne, called as “click reaction”, was found to be modular approach for the synthesis of facile, highly efficient and recoverable D-2PA-Pd(II)@SBA-15 catalyst. In efforts to synthesize the catalyst, the cycloaddition reaction between azido-functionalized mesoporous SBA-15 and N,N-dimethyl-2-propynylamine (D-2PA) has been carried out, followed by the complexation with PdCl₂. To analyze physiochemical properties of synthesized materials, various characterization techniques such as CHN elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction, solid state ¹³C and ²⁹Si NMR spectra, FT-IR, XPS, SEM, TEM and N₂ sorption analysis, TGA and DTA, UV–Vis spectroscopy have been carried out. The synthesized catalyst, D-2PA-Pd(II)@SBA-15, exhibited excellent catalytic activities with good product yield and high TON towards Suzuki coupling reaction of various aryl halides with phenylboronic acid. The effect of solvent, base and temperature on coupling reactions has also been described. The developed protocol offers recyclability of catalyst for multiple (four) times without any appreciable loss in stability and catalytic reactivity.     

An Efficient Resource Allocation Mechanism for LTE–GEPON Converged Networks

Optical–wireless convergence is becoming popular as one of the most efficient access network designs that provides quality of service (QoS) guaranteed, uninterrupted, and ubiquitous access to end users. The integration of passive optical networks (PONs) with next-generation wireless access networks is not only a promising integration option but also a cost-effective way of backhauling the next generation wireless access networks. The QoS performance of the PON–wireless converged network can be improved by taking the advantages of the features in both network segments for bandwidth resources management. In this paper, we propose a novel resource allocation mechanism for long term evolution–Gigabit Ethernet PON (LTE–GEPON) converged networks that improves the QoS performance of the converged network. The proposed resource allocation mechanism takes the advantage of the ability to forecast near future packet arrivals in the converged networks. Moreover, it also strategically leverages the inherited features and the frame structures of both the LTE network and GEPON, to manage the available bandwidth resources more efficiently. Using extensive simulations, we show that our proposed resource allocation mechanism improves the delay and jitter performance in the converged network while guarantying the QoS for various next generation broadband services provisioned for both wireless and wired end users. Moreover, we also analyze the dependency between different parameters and the performance of our proposed resource allocations scheme.