The influence of phospholipid concentration in protein-containing lubricants on the wear of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene in artificial hip joints

There is considerable interest in the wear of polyethylene and the resulting wear-debris-induced osteolysis in artificial hip joints. Proteins play an important role as boundary lubricants in vivo in the pseudosynovial fluid, and these are reproduced in in vitro tests through the use of bovine serum. Little is known, however, about the effect of phospholipid concentrations within proteinaceous solutions on the wear of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). The effects of protein-containing lubricants with 0.05, 0.5 and 5 per cent (w/v) phosphatidyl choline concentrations on the wear of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) were compared with 25 per cent (v/v) bovine serum which had 0.01 per cent (w/v) lipid; the effects were compared in a hip joint simulator with smooth (n = 4) and scratched (n = 3) femoral heads. The control bovine serum lubricant produced UHWMPE wear of 55 and 115 mm3/10(6) cycles on the smooth and rough heads respectively. The increased phospholipid concentration significantly reduced the wear rate. At the higher concentration (5% w/v phosphatidyl choline) the average wear was reduced to less than 2 mm3/10(6) cycles. Even with the relatively low concentrations of 0.05% w/v phosphatidyl choline the wear was reduced by at least threefold compared with the bovine serum tests for both the smooth and rough femoral heads. There may be considerable differences in the phospholipid concentrations in patients' synovial fluid and this is highly likely to produce considerable variation in wear rates. In vitro, differences in the phospholipid concentration of lubricants may also cause variation in wear rates between different simulator tests.     

Influence of gelatin and bovine serum lubricants on ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene wear debris generated in in vitro simulations

Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) wear debris induced osteolysis has a major role in the late aseptic loosening and ultimate failure of total hip replacements (THR). Clinically relevant in vitro simulations of wear are essential to predict the osteolytic potential of bearing surfaces in artificial hip joints. Newborn calf or bovine serum has been accepted as a boundary lubricant for such in vitro tests, but its biological stability has been questioned. This study compared the wear factors, number of wear particles and levels of microbial contamination produced in bovine serum and a gelatin-based lubricant. The wear factors produced by the two lubricants were not significantly different, however the wear debris morphology produced was substantially different. The bovine serum became contaminated with micro-organisms within 28 h, whereas the protein-based lubricant remained uncontaminated. The results showed that bovine serum was not a stable boundary lubricant. They also showed that although the wear factors for the two solutions were not significantly different, the protein-based lubricant was not a suitable alternative to bovine serum because the wear debris produced was not clinically relevant.     

CL-AGKA: certificateless authenticated group key agreement protocol for mobile networks

Wireless Networks - Wireless group communication has gained much popularity recently due to the increase in portable, lightweight devices. These devices are capable of performing group...     

Green synthesis of copper sulfide (CuS) nanostructures for heterojunction diode applications

Copper sulfide (CuS) rod shaped nanostructures with an average length 8 to 10 nm are synthesized through green chemical route using biodegradable starch as a capping agent under a nitrogen environment. Owing to the presence of a large number of glucose units linked by glycosidic bonds, starch can cap copper sulfide (CuS) nanoparticles. The preparation of CuS under nitrogen atmosphere produces fine quality CuS nanostructures by minimizing oxidation. XRD pattern reveals pure hexagonal covellite type CuS nanostructure with prime diffraction planes along (101), (102), (103), (006), (008), and (110) directions. The lattice parameters estimated as a?=?3.790 Å and c?=?16.51 Å. HRTEM studies show a well distribution of CuS nanorods. It shows prominent d-value of 0.28 nm corresponding to (103) hexagonal plane of CuS. The optical absorption extended up to 364 nm which is fairly blue shifted over bulk owing to the quantum confinement brought by starch. The photoluminescence emission is observed at 525 nm. The I–V measurements in planar geometry exhibit the linearity that reveals the ohmic behavior of carrier transport in CuS nanostructures. CuS nanostructures have been successfully used as effective p-type layer to fabricate sandwiched heterojunction devices with zinc chalcogenides (ZnO/ZnS and ZnS/ZnO) core/shell nanocomposites. The p-CuS/n-(zinc chalcogenides) heterojunction devices show good diode characteristics with an increase of ideality factor that may be attributed to surface defects and inhomogeneity in the barrier height. The photodetector also exhibits promising characteristics in terms of responsivity and quantum efficiency which are significant corresponding to material properties.

     

A policy based framework for quality of service management in software defined networks

Growth in multimedia traffic over the Internet increases congestion in the network architecture. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a novel paradigm that solves the congestion problem and allows the network to be dynamic, intelligent, and it centrally controls the network devices. SDN has many advantages in comparison to traditional networks, such as separation of forwarding and control plane from devices, global centralized control, management of network traffic. We design a policy-based framework to enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) of multimedia traffic flows in a potential SDN environment. We phrase a max-flow-min-cost routing problem to determine the routing paths and presented a heuristic method to route the traffic flows in the network in polynomial time. The framework monitors the QoS parameters of traffic flows and identifies policy violations due to link congestion in the network. The introduced approach dynamically implements policy rules to SDN switches upon detection of policy violations and reroutes the traffic flows. The results illustrate that the framework achieves a reduction in end-to-end delay, average jitter, and QoS violated flows by 24%, 37%, and 25%, respectively, as compared to the Delay Minimization method. Furthermore, the proposed approach has achieved better results when compared to SDN without policy-based framework and reduced end-to-end delay, average jitter, and QoS violated flows by 51%, 62%, and 28%, respectively.

     

Load Balancing Technique for Congestion Control Multipath Routing Protocol in MANETs

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes that can communicate without a central controller or fixed infrastructure. Due to node mobility, designing a routing protocol to provide an efficient and suitable method to route the data with less energy consumption, packet drop and to prolong the network lifetime has become a challenging issue in MANETs. In MANETs, reducing energy consumption and packet loss involves congestion control and load balancing techniques. Thus, this paper introduces an efficient routing technique called the multipath load balancing technique for congestion control (MLBCC) in MANETs to efficiently balance the load among multiple paths by reducing the congestion. MLBCC introduces a congestion control mechanism and a load balancing mechanism during the data transmission process. The congestion control mechanism detects the congestion by using an arrival rate and an outgoing rate at a particular time interval T. The load balancing mechanism selects a gateway node by using the link cost and the path cost to efficiently distribute the load by selecting the most desirable paths. For an efficient flow of distribution, a node availability degree standard deviation parameter is introduced. Simulation results of MLBCC show the performance improvements in terms of the control overhead, packet delivery ratio, average delay and packet drop ratio in comparison with Fibonacci sequence multipath load balancing, stable backbone-based multipath routing protocol and ad hoc on demand multipath distance vector routing. In addition, the results show that MLBCC efficiently balances the load of the nodes in the network.

     

Energy and exergy analysis of photovoltaic/thermal integrated with a solar greenhouse

In this paper, an attempt has been made to validate the thermal model with experimental results of a typical day August, 25, 2006 for clear weather condition of New Delhi. An energy and exergy analysis for the prediction of performance of a photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collector integrated with a greenhouse at I.I.T, Delhi, India has been carried out. The analysis is based on quasi-steady state condition. Experiments have been conducted extensively during period from June 2006 to May 2007, for annual performance. Numerical computation has been carried out for a typical day only for validation. It is observed that the theoretical value of solar cell, tedlar back surface and greenhouse room air temperatures is approximately equivalent to the experimental values. The predicted and measured values of solar cell, tedlar back surface and greenhouse air temperatures have been verified in terms of root mean square of percent deviation (7.05–17.58%) as well as correlation coefficient (0.95–0.97) and both exhibit fair agreement. Exergy analysis calculations of the PV/T integrated greenhouse system show an exergy efficiency level of approximately 4%.     

Corrosion of novel rail steels in 3.5 % NaCl solution

Eutectoid steels, which are traditionally used as rails in railway systems, are prone to corrosion, especially in coastal environments. In order to minimize this problem, four new rail steel compositions, with different combinations of microalloying elements Cu, Cr, Ni and Si, were designed and processed as per the thermomechanical schedule for normal rail steel processing in industry. Corrosion behavior of the rail steels were studied by weight loss measurement after immersion test and Tafel polarization in freely aerated 3.5 % NaCl. The rust obtained after immersion test were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Corrosion rate obtained weight loss measurement was similar for all the rail steels. γ-FeOOH (lepidocrocite) and δ-FeOOH were identified as the major rust phases from the FTIR spectra of the rail steels. The relative absorption intensities of these rust phases were similar for all the rail steels. Corrosion rates calculated from Tafel polarization tests were similar for all the rail steels. The corresponding free corrosion potentials were also similar for all the rail steels. The zero corrosion potential obtained from Tafel polarization of Cu-Mo, Cr-Mn, Cu-Ni, Cr-Cu-Ni and Cr-Cu-Ni-Si rail steels was more noble compared to C-Mn and Cu-Si rail steels indicating better corrosion resistance of these alloys. The importance of conducting alternate wetting and drying test has been emphasized.     

Structural,Mechanical and Dielectric Properties of Microwave-Assisted High-Energy Ball Milling Synthesis of Hydroxyapatite

Abstract

In the present work, the effect of high-energy ball milling (HEBM) of starting precursors of hydroxyapatite (Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆(OH)₂)/HA system on the processing temperature, morphological, mechanical, and electrical properties are highlighted. Calcination and sintering of HA system were carried out in microwave furnace. XRD study confirmed the evolution of HA phase and EDX analysis confirmed Ca/P ratio ～1.65. Grain size of HA samples, synthesized by using microwave-assisted HEBM technique was found to be in the order of 54–75?nm. Enhanced dielectric and mechanical properties were obtained in HA samples.     

High performance 14-bit pipelined redundant signed digit ADC

A novel architecture of a pipelined redundant-signed-digit analog to digital converter(RSD-ADC) is presented featuring a high signal to noise ratio(SNR), spurious free dynamic range(SFDR) and signal to noise plus distortion(SNDR) with efficient background correction logic. The proposed ADC architecture shows high accuracy with a high speed circuit and efficient utilization of the hardware. This paper demonstrates the functionality of the digital correction logic of 14-bit pipelined ADC at each 1.5 bit/stage. This prototype of ADC architecture accounts for capacitor mismatch, comparator offset and finite Op-Amp gain error in the MDAC(residue amplification circuit) stages. With the proposed architecture of ADC, SNDR obtained is 85.89 dB, SNR is 85.9 dB and SFDR obtained is 102.8 dB at the sample rate of 100 MHz. This novel architecture of digital correction logic is transparent to the overall system, which is demonstrated by using 14-bit pipelined ADC. After a latency of 14 clocks, digital output will be available at every clock pulse. To describe the circuit behavior of the ADC, VHDL and MATLAB programs are used. The proposed architecture is also capable of reducing the digital hardware. Silicon area is also the complexity of the design.