FAMCroNA: Fault Analysis in Memristive Crossbars for Neuromorphic Applications

Journal of Electronic Testing - Resistive memories have drawn the attention of researchers due to their low power and single-cycle computation of vector-matrix multiplication (VMM), which is the...     

A Cooperative Strategy for Trustworthy Relay Selection in CR Network: A Game-Theoretic Solution

The non-symmetric type of game is Stackelberg, where one player or a specific set of players has the advantage of making moves ahead of the other players. These games are being used to aid administrative decisions in telecommunications and computational systems. Stackelberg games have increasingly been helpful in systems where security is a key decision consideration. The authors have suggested a cooperative and novel framework for selection of relays within Cognitive Radio (CR) System utilizing Stackelberg game-theoretic approach through this correspondence. The cooperation is based on the trustworthiness of the Secondary Users (SUs) while getting selected as a relay. Additionally, the strategy of the Secondary Transmitter (ST) is always to increase its own utility function by selecting the best available SU (as a relay) satisfying the rules of the Stackelberg game. The Nash equilibrium strategies for Secondary Relays (SR) have been analyzed in this paper at the suggested approach, as well as the Stackelberg competitive game with successive moves has been justified in the process. To our experience, no work on the trustworthy selection process of the relay to aid transmission of secondary users in the CR network using the game-theoretic method by Stackelberg has yet been published. Results obtained from simulation confirm that ST, as well as SR, gain more utilities if compared with the non-cooperative transmission scheme. Further, the relay which gets selected in this process even reduces the secondary outage loss in comparison to few non-game-theoretic approaches.

     

Child–smartphone interaction: relevance and positive and negative implications

Universal Access in the Information Society - An increasing number of children are now using smartphones, and the phenomenon is being studied keenly by computer scientists, pediatricians,...     

Design,simulation and performance analysis of MEMS based bio-sensors for the detection of cholera and diarrhea

Microsystem Technologies - This paper presents three types of the microchannel which is used for the detection of cholera and diarrhea. The three types of microchannels are namely cylindrical,...     

Characterizing starch structure in a gluten‐free pasta by using iodine vapor as a tool

The suitability of starch–iodine complex to highlight differences in chain mobility and crystallinity of starch in rice pasta was investigated. Two pasta samples were produced starting from the same rice flour (RF) and using a conventional extrusion process without (Process A) and with (Process B) a preliminary extrusion‐cooking step. Based on the absorption/scattering coefficient (K/S) spectra (obtained after equilibration above K₂SO₄ and exposure to iodine vapor), Pasta A showed a behavior similar to RF. Process B exhibited a greater iodine binding capacity suggesting greater starch chain mobility. Moreover, the extrusion‐cooking conditions seem to favor the loss of starch crystallinity and the formation of larger amorphous regions. The organization of starch polymers observed in Pasta B could account for its higher capacity to water absorption during cooking.     

Biosorption of hazardous textile dyes from aqueous solutions by hen feathers: Batch and column studies

The biosorption potential of hen feathers (HFs) to remove hazardous textile dyes, namely congo red (CR) and crystal violet (CV), from their aqueous solutions was investigated in batch and dynamic flow modes of operation. The effect of biosorption process parameters such as solution pH, initial dye concentration, temperature, feed flow rate and bed height was studied. Biosorption equilibrium data were well described by the Langmuir isotherm model. Kinetic studies at different temperatures showed that the rate of biosorption followed the pseudo second-order kinetics well. A thermodynamic study showed that biosorption of both CR and CV was spontaneous and endothermic. Breakthrough time increased with increase in bed height but decreased with increase in flow rate. The Thomas model showed good agreement with the dynamic flow experimental data. Overall, the results suggest the applicability of HFs as an efficient biosorbent for removal of carcinogenic textile dyes from aqueous media.     

Bio-reduction of Sulphur Dyes with Alkaline Pectinase

Sulphur dyes are invariably applied on cotton to produce deep shades at cheaper cost possessing all-round fastness properties except against chlorine. Being water insoluble, these dyes are reduced and solubilised with sodium sulphide at boil to develop affinity for cotton. Application of sulphide has generated global debate because of its eco-unfriendly technology of dyeing. In this work, attempts were made to substitute sodium sulphide with alkaline pectinase. Obtained results suggested the ability of the latter to cause effective reduction and solubilisation of sulphur dyes. Stability of reduction baths as well as colour fastness was also reported to be in line with those obtained using sodium sulphide.     

Proportional fairness in MAC layer channel access of IEEE 802.11s EDCA based wireless mesh networks

Fairness provisioning in IEEE 802.11s EDCA based Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) is a very challenging task due to relayed traffic and traffic load variation among mesh routers. Because of bursty traffic in general purpose community wireless mesh networks, proportional fairness is more suited than max–min fairness, where mesh routers and clients should get channel access proportional to their traffic load. However, proportional fairness is hard to achieve by solving optimization function because of non-linearity and non-concave property of the objective function. In this paper, a probabilistic approach is proposed to provide proportional fairness without solving global non-linear and non-concave optimization. Every mesh node use a load estimation strategy to estimate total traffic load that it needs to forward. The required channel share of a mesh node should be proportional to its traffic load, whereas, the total normalized channel share for all the contending mesh nodes should be kept less than unity to satisfy the clique constraint. The network architecture and contention property in WMN are explored to deduce the required channel share of mesh nodes. A probabilistic approach is used to tune the contention window based on the difference between actual channel share and required channel share, so that the node with more traffic load gets more channel share. A discrete time Markov Chain based modeling is used to deduce the overall network throughput for the proposed scheme. Simulation result shows that the proposed scheme works better than the standard IEEE 802.11s based EDCA MAC in terms of fairness and throughput.     

Iron ore grindability improvement by microwave pre-treatment

The influence of microwave pre-treatment on grindability of iron ore (Orissa, India) was investigated by grindability tests. SEM analysis characterized the micro-fractures in microwave treated sample. This may be due to the thermal stress cracking resulted from microwave energy pre-treatment. XRD analysis showed the crystalline content of the sample. It was found that the microwave treated iron ore has peak more than that of untreated ore, i.e. the crystallinity increased with the microwave exposure time. The calculation of HGGI indicated increase in the ease of grinding or decrease in grindability index of the microwave treated ore. Grindability test showed that the microwave treated iron ore grinds much more rapidly initially than the untreated ore. The results showed that the breakage function of both microwave untreated and treated iron ore is dependent of the particle size. The grindability increased significantly as a result of microwave pre-treatment with the specific rate of breakage (S_i) increasing by an average of 50%. It was concluded that microwave assisted grinding produced good results particularly for grinding characteristics.     

Dielectric Relaxation in CaO–Bi2O3–B2O3 Glasses

Glasses in the system CaO–Bi₂O₃–B₂O₃ (in molar ratio) have been prepared using melt-quenching route. Ion transport characteristics were investigated for this glass using electric modulus, ac conductivity and impedance measurements. The ac conductivity was rationalized using Almond–West power law. Dielectric relaxation has been analyzed based on the behavior of electric modulus behavior. The activation energy associated with the electrical relaxation determined from the electric modulus spectra was found to be 1.76 eV, close to that the activation energy for dc conductivity (1.71 eV) indicating that the same species took part in both the processes. The stretched exponent β (0.5–0.6) is invariant with temperature for the present glasses.