Automated Visual Surveillance in Realistic Scenarios

In this article, we present Knight, an automated surveillance system deployed in a variety of real-world scenarios ranging from railway security to law enforcement. We also discuss the challenges of developing surveillance systems, present some solutions implemented in Knight that overcome these challenges, and evaluate Knight's performance in unconstrained environments     

Investigation on Physicomechanical,Thermal, and Morphological of Dipodal Silane-Modified Walnut Shell Powder-Filled Polyurethane Green Composites and Their Application for Removal of Heavy Metal Ions from Water

Dipodal silane-modified walnut shell powder polyurethane green composites have been prepared with different weight fractions of walnut shell powder viz., 0, 3, 6, and 10?wt% with surface-modified dipodal silane. The properties of dipodal silane-modified walnut shell powder-filled polyurethane green composites was investigated by tensile testing, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and scanning electron microscopy. The polyurethane/dipodal silane-modified walnut shell powder has been fabricated based on 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and γ-glycidoxypropyl trimethoxysilane. The green composites were analyzed by ultraviolet–visible in two different water solutions with Ni²⁺ and Pd²⁺ ions concentrations.     

Preparation and Characterization of Carvacrol Loaded Polyhydroxybutyrate Nanoparticles by Nanoprecipitation and Dialysis Methods

In this investigation, preparation of carvacrol loaded polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) nanoparticles was performed by nanoprecipitation and dialysis methods. PHB particles were obtained by nanoprecipitation method without and with low concentration of Tween 80 or pluronic as surfactant. Nano‐ and micro‐sized particles were formed with trimodal distribution and large aggregates. Size and distribution of nanoparticles were decreased when concentration of Tween 80 was increased to 1% (v/v) in water as polar phase. PHB nanoparticles had narrow size (157 nm) with monomodal distribution. Nanoparticles, which were prepared by dialysis method had 140 nm in diameter with monomodal distribution. Carvacrol was used as a lipophilic drug and entrapped in optimized nanoparticles formulation by nanoprecipitation and dialysis methods. Entrapment efficacy was 21% and 11%, respectively. Morphology of PHB nanoparticles was spherical. The results of kinetic release study showed that carvacrol was released for at least 3 days. Release kinetic parameters showed a simple Fickian diffusion behavior for both formulations. Carvacrol loaded PHB nanoparticles had good dispersion into the agar medium and antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli. This study describes the 1st work on loading of carvacrol into the PHB nanoparticles by nanoprecipitation and dialysis methods.     

Parallel differential evolution with self-adapting control parameters and generalized opposition-based learning for solving high-dimensional optimization problems

Solving high-dimensional global optimization problems is a time-consuming task because of the high complexity of the problems. To reduce the computational time for high-dimensional problems, this paper presents a parallel differential evolution (DE) based on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The proposed approach is called GOjDE, which employs self-adapting control parameters and generalized opposition-based learning (GOBL). The adapting parameters strategy is helpful to avoid manually adjusting the control parameters, and GOBL is beneficial for improving the quality of candidate solutions. Simulation experiments are conducted on a set of recently proposed high-dimensional benchmark problems with dimensions of 100, 200, 500 and 1,000. Simulation results demonstrate that GjODE is better than, or at least comparable to, six other algorithms, and employing GPU can effectively reduce computational time. The obtained maximum speedup is up to 75.