1,3,4-Oxadiazole epoxy resin-based liquid crystalline thermosets and their cure kinetics

Liquid crystalline thermosets were synthesized based on a difunctional liquid–crystal (LC) epoxy resin monomer, namely 2,5-bis(4-glycidyloxyphenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole with various tetrafunctional crosslinkers such as diaminodiphenyl methane, diaminodiphenyl sulfone, and diaminodiphenyl ether. The epoxy monomer was characterized by infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Cure kinetics of a stoichiometric mixture of epoxy monomer and diaminodiphenyl methane was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for specimens cured under various cure conditions. The nematic LC texture for the cured specimen was identified by polarized microscopy and confirmed by X-ray diffractometry. Phase diagram of cure time versus transition temperature was constructed based on the DSC data for epoxy/DDM system. The diagram displayed the changes of melting transition, isotropic transition, and glass transition temperatures as curing proceeds.     

Investigation of SR method grown 0 0 1 directed KDP single crystal and its characterization by high-resolution X-ray diffractometry (HRXRD), laser damage threshold, dielectric, thermal analysis, optical and hardness studies

0 0 1 directed potassium dihydrogen orthophosphate (KDP) single crystal was grown by Sankaranarayanan–Ramasamy (SR) method. The 0 0 1 oriented seed crystals were mounted at the bottom of the platform and the size of the crystals were 10 mm diameter, 110 mm height. Two different growths were tried, in one the crystal diameter was the ampoule's inner diameter and in the other the crystal thickness was less than the ampoule diameter. In the first case only the top four pyramidal faces were existing whereas in the second case the top four pyramidal faces and four prismatic faces were existing through out the growth. The crystals were grown using same stoichiometric solution. The results of the two growths are discussed in this paper. The grown crystals were characterized by high-resolution X-ray diffractometry (HRXRD), laser damage threshold, dielectric, thermal analysis, UV–vis spectroscopy and microhardness studies. The HRXRD analysis indicates that the crystalline perfection is excellent without having any very low angle internal structural grain boundaries. Laser damage threshold value has been determined using Nd:glass laser operating at 1054 nm. The damage threshold for the KDP crystal is greater than 4.55 GW cm⁻². The dielectric constant was higher and the dielectric loss was less in SR method grown crystal as against conventional method grown crystal. In thermal analysis, the starting of decomposition nature is similar in SR method grown KDP crystal and conventional method grown crystal. The SR method grown KDP has higher transmittance and higher hardness value compared to conventional method grown crystals.     

Use of encapsulated bacteriophages to enhance farm to fork food safety

Bacteriophages have been successfully applied to control the growth of pathogens in foods and to reduce the colonization and shedding of pathogens by food animals. They are set to play a dominant role in food safety in the future. However, many food-processing operations and the microenvironments in food animals' guts inactivate phages and reduce their infectivity. Encapsulation technologies have been used successfully to protect phages against extreme environments, and have been shown to preserve their activity and enable their release in targeted environments. A number of encapsulation technologies have shown potential for use with bacteriophages. This review discusses the current state of knowledge about the use of encapsulation technologies with bacteriophages to control pathogens in foods and food animals.     

Performance analysis of fully depleted triple material surrounding gate (TMSG) SOI MOSFET

In this paper, analytical model for threshold voltage is derived for fully depleted Triple material Surrounding gate (TMSG) SOI MOSFET. Three gate material of different work functions are introduced in the SOI MOSFET structure to reduce the short channel effects. The two dimensional Poisson equation is solved and based on parabolic approximation method, the model for threshold voltage is developed. The threshold voltage is analyzed for device parameters such as gate length ratios, oxide thickness, silicon thickness, doping concentration. The results of the analytical model values are validated using MEDICI simulation.     

Design and optimization of concurrent tolerance in mechanical assemblies using bat algorithm

Concurrent designing of tolerance has become a vital concern in product and process development due to the relationship between quality, functionality and product cost. It is one of the well explored areas in combinatorial optimization. In this paper, a recently developed optimization algorithm, called Bat algorithm (BA), is used for optimizing the tolerance based on concurrent objectives to minimize the manufacturing cost, present worth of expected quality loss and quality loss. The mechanical assemblies such as Bevel gear assembly (A), Gear box assembly (B) and Suction union assembly (C) are considered to demonstrate the proposed algorithm. It is found that the BA has produced better results than other methods in initial generations for concurrent tolerance problems.     

Evolutionary collision-free optimal trajectory planning for intelligent robots

This paper presents optimization procedures based on evolutionary algorithms such as the elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) and differential evolution (DE) for solving the trajectory planning problem of intelligent robot manipulators with the prevalence of fixed, moving, and oscillating obstacles. The aim is the minimization of a combined objective function, with the constraints being actuator constraints, joint limits, and the obstacle avoidance constraint by considering dynamic equations of motion. Trajectories are defined by B-spline functions. This is a non-linear constrained optimization problem with six objective functions, 31 constraints, and 42 variables. The combined objective function is a weighted balance of transfer time, the mean average of actuator efforts and power, penalty for collision-free motion, singularity avoidance, joint jerks, and joint accelerations. The obstacles are present in the workspace of the robot. The distance between potentially colliding parts is expressed as obstacle avoidance. Further, the motion is represented using translational and rotational matrices. The proposed optimization techniques are explained by applying them to an industrial robot (PUMA 560 robot). Also, the results obtained from NSGA-II and DE are compared and analyzed. This is the first research work which considers all the decision criteria for the trajectory planning of industrial robots with obstacle avoidance. A comprehensive user-friendly general-purpose software package has been developed using VC++ to obtain the optimal solutions using the proposed DE algorithm.     

Ground state structures and properties of Si<Subscript>3</Subscript>H<Subscript>n</Subscript> (n = 1–6) clusters

The ground state structures and properties of Si ₃H_n (1 ≤n ≤ 6) clusters have been calculated using Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics with simulated annealing and steepest descent optimization methods. We have studied cohesive energy per particle and first excited electronic level gap of the clusters as a function of hydrogenation. Hydrogenation is done till all dangling bonds of silicon are saturated. Our results show that over coordination of hydrogen is favoured in Si3Hn clusters and the geometry of Si₃ cluster does not change due to hydrogenation. Cohesive energy per particle and first excited electronic level gap study of the clusters show that Si₃H₆ cluster is most stable and Si₃H₃ cluster is most unstable among the clusters considered here.     

A New Hybrid Cuckoo Search Algorithm for Biclustering of Microarray Gene-Expression Data

ABSTRACT

Biclustering in gene-expression data is a subset of the genes demonstrating consistent patterns over a subset of the conditions. Recently, the most of research in biclustering involving statistical and graph-theoretic approaches by adding or deleting rows and/or columns in the data matrix based on some constraints. This is an exhaustive search of the space, and hence the solutions may not be feasible. The proposed work finds the significant biclusters in large expression data using shuffled cuckoo search with Nelder–Mead (SCS-NM). The diversification and intensification of the search space are obtained through shuffling and simplex NM, respectively. The proposed work is tested on four benchmark datasets, and the results are compared with the swarm intelligence techniques and the various biclustering algorithms. The results show that there is significant improvement in the fitness value of proposed work SCS-NM. In addition, the work determines the biological relevance of the biclusters with Gene Ontology in terms of function, process and component.     

Effect of linker structure on surface density of aptamer monolayers and their corresponding protein binding efficiency

A systematic study is reported on the effect of linker size and its chemical composition toward ligand binding to a surface-immobilized aptamer, measured using surface plasmon resonance. The results, using thrombin as the model system, showed that as the number of thymidine (T) units in the linker increases from 0 to 20 in four separate increments (T(0), T(5), T(10), T(20)), the surface density of the aptamer decreased linearly from approximately 25 to 12 pmol x cm(-2). The decrease in aptamer surface density occurred due to the increased size of the linker molecules. In addition, thrombin binding capacity was shown to increase as the linker length increased from 0 to 5 thymidine nucleotides and then decreased as the number of thymidine residues increased to 20 due to a balance between two different effects. The initial increase was due to increased access of thrombin to the aptamer as the aptamer was moved away from the surface. For linkers greater in length than T(5), the overall decrease in binding capacity was primarily due to a decrease in the surface density. Incorporation of a hexa(ethylene glycol) moiety into the linker did not affect the surface density but increased the amount of thrombin bound. In addition, the attachment of the linker at the 3'- versus the 5'-end of the aptamer resulted in increased aptamer surface density. However, monolayers formed with equal surface densities showed similar amounts of thrombin binding irrespective of the point of attachment.     

Performance Analysis of Optad-NoC: A Novel Optimized Routing Algorithm and Intelligent Router for 3D Network-on-Chip

Wireless Personal Communications - Nowadays System-on-Chip (SoC) is an emerging technology in the world of Integrated Chip manufacturers. In SoC, many IP cores are integrated inside a chip. The...