Silver nanorods induced oxidative stress and chromosomal aberrations in the Allium cepa model

The production of different size and shape silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) has increased considerably in recent years due to several commercial and biological applications. Here, rod‐shaped AgNPs (SNRs) were prepared using the microwave‐assisted method and characterised by ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy analysis. The present study aims to investigate the cyto–genotoxic effect of various concentrations (5, 10, and 15 µM) of SNRs using Allium cepa model. As a result, concentration‐dependent cyto–genotoxic effect of SNRs was observed through a decrease in the mitotic index, and an increase in the chromosomal aberrations such as chromosome break, disturbed metaphase, and anaphase bridge. To check the impact of Ag⁺ ions, 15 µM silver nitrate (AgNO₃) was prepared and tested in all the assays. Furthermore, cell viability and different reactive oxygen species assays were performed to test the cytotoxicity evaluation of SNRs. The authors found that in all the tested assays, SNRs at high concentrations (15 µM) and AgNO₃ (15 µM) were observed to cause maximal damage to the roots. Therefore, the current study implies that the cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of SNRs were dependent on the concentration of SNRs.Inspec keywords: ultraviolet spectra, biomedical materials, silver, cellular biophysics, nanorods, toxicology, visible spectra, nanoparticles, nanofabrication, transmission electron microscopy, nanomedicine, aberrations, microwave materials processingOther keywords: biological applications, rod‐shaped AgNPs, microwave‐assisted method, ultraviolet‐visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, chromosomal aberrations, chromosome break, silver nitrate, reactive oxygen species assays, cytotoxicity, genotoxicity, silver nanorods, oxidative stress, shape silver nanoparticles, concentration‐dependent cyto‐genotoxic effect, Allium cepa model, mitotic index, disturbed metaphase, anaphase bridge, cell viability, cytotoxicity evaluation, Ag     

Visualization research with large displays [analysis ofcommunication networks and services]

We describe our research at AT&T Infolab on using large displays to interactively analyze and visualize AT&T's communication networks and services     

The convexity of loss rate in an Erland loss system and sojourn inan Erlang delay system with respect to arrival and service rates

The Erlang loss system is a system in which customers arriving in a Poisson stream of arrival rate λ are served by a group of n servers, with a mean service time of 1/μ. Arrivals that find all servers busy are blocked and cleared from the system. The Erlang delay system is a system in which customers who find all servers busy wait in a queue until served by the first available server. Proofs of joint-convexity results in the Erlang delay system and Erlang loss system are presented, using induction on the number of servers and making use of the relation between the Erlang B and the Erlang C functions. The approach leads to a straightforward algebraic analysis of the properties of the performance measures of interest and avoids cumbersome manipulations     

Radiation grafting of hydrophilic monomers onto plasticized poly(vinyl chloride) sheets

Medical grade poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) sheets were surface modified by grafting a combination of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) and N-vinyl pyrrolidone (NVP) or NVP alone using gamma radiation in an effort to retard the migration of the plasticizer from the PVC matrix. Presence of cupric ions at a concentration of 0.005m was found to be optimal in not only preventing the homopolymerization of the monomers but also producing the highest graft yield at all monomer concentrations used for grafting. The grafted PVC was characterized for its water absorption properties. Surface morphology of the grafted surface was examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). PVC sheets grafted on both sides as well as on one side were characterized for their physical and mechanical properties in order to assess their suitability in biomedical applications. While the tensile strength and percentage elongation values of PVC sheets grafted on both sides showed a downward trend with increasing graft yield, these properties were not drastically affected by surface modification on one side only at graft yields pertinent to prevent the migration of the plasticizer. Measurement of Shore A hardness and optical transparency of the migration resistant sheetings showed that such properties were not seriously affected by surface modification thus rendering them suitable for their intended applications.     

Assurance of system service level robustness in complex supply chain networks

Despite studies that consider service level rates of individual factories in a supply chain system, the interactions between connected factories and the impact of these interactions on the overall supply chain service level rate have been rarely studied. Moreover, due to uncertainties induced by various sources such as transportation delay and manufacturing processes variability, ensuring the robustness of system service level rate while considering these uncertainties in individual factories is a highly complex task. This paper studies uncertainty effect introduced by factory service level rates on the robustness of overall supply chain network performance, and presents a novel robust design optimization methodology to derive designs of factory service level rates in order to satisfy the service level rate requirement of the system and ensure its robustness. A case study with a multi-level multiple factories supply chain network is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology.     

Impact of volume fraction and fluid layer thickness on heat transfer effectiveness of water-based nanofluids

The heat transfer effectiveness of nanofluids is adversely affected by the delay in convection onset. The lesser effectiveness, when compared to that of base fluid, is observed in a range of nanofluid layer thickness. The heat transfer coefficient of water–Al₂O₃ nanofluid can be enhanced by sustaining the equilibrium between Rayleigh number, temperature, particle volume fraction, and enclosure aspect ratio. In this paper, the specific correlation of fluid layer thickness and the onset of convection, which can significantly dominate the heat transfer characteristics of nanofluids are investigated using the concept of critical Rayleigh number. The water layer thickness for convection onset is first experimentally assessed for different real-life heat flux densities. It is then performed for Al₂O₃–water nanofluid for varying volume fractions. With the increase in volume fraction even though thermal conductivity increases, the overall heat transfer enhancement of the nanofluid is reduced. Temperature involved (heat flux density), the volume fraction of the nanofluid used, nanofluid layer thickness (space availability for the cooling system), and mass of the nanoparticle influence heat transfer enhancement. A higher volume fraction may not always result in enhancement of heat transfer as far as nanofluids are concerned.     

Intelligent Intrusion Detection System for Industrial Internet of Things Environment

Rapid increase in the large quantity of industrial data, Industry 4.0/5.0 poses several challenging issues such as heterogeneous data generation, data sensing and collection, real-time data processing, and high request arrival rates. The classical intrusion detection system (IDS) is not a practical solution to the Industry 4.0 environment owing to the resource limitations and complexity. To resolve these issues, this paper designs a new Chaotic Cuckoo Search Optimization Algorithm (CCSOA) with optimal wavelet kernel extreme learning machine (OWKELM) named CCSOA-OWKELM technique for IDS on the Industry 4.0 platform. The CCSOA-OWKELM technique focuses on the design of feature selection with classification approach to achieve minimum computation complexity and maximum detection accuracy. The CCSOA-OWKELM technique involves the design of CCSOA based feature selection technique, which incorporates the concepts of chaotic maps with CSOA. Besides, the OWKELM technique is applied for the intrusion detection and classification process. In addition, the OWKELM technique is derived by the hyperparameter tuning of the WKELM technique by the use of sunflower optimization (SFO) algorithm. The utilization of CCSOA for feature subset selection and SFO algorithm based hyperparameter tuning leads to better performance. In order to guarantee the supreme performance of the CCSOA-OWKELM technique, a wide range of experiments take place on two benchmark datasets and the experimental outcomes demonstrate the promising performance of the CCSOA-OWKELM technique over the recent state of art techniques.     

Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) Synchronization and Peak Average Power Ratio (PAPR) Minimization for Energy Efficient Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) for 5G Wireless Communication

Wireless Personal Communications - In the recent past, the Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) plays significant role in mobile technology for energy efficient wireless 5G communication. The Non...     

A genetic algorithm for the design space exploration of datapaths during high-level synthesis

High-level synthesis is comprised of interdependent tasks such as scheduling, allocation, and module selection. For today's very large-scale integration (VLSI) designs, the cost of solving the combined scheduling, allocation, and module selection problem by exhaustive search is prohibitive. However, to meet design objectives, an extensive design space exploration is often critical to obtaining superior designs. We present a framework for efficient design space exploration during high-level synthesis of datapaths for data-dominated applications. The framework uses a genetic algorithm (GA) to concurrently perform scheduling and allocation with the aim of finding schedules and module combinations that lead to superior designs while considering user-specified latency and area constraints. The GA uses a multichromosome representation to encode datapath schedules and module allocations and efficient heuristics to minimize functional and storage area costs, while minimizing circuit latencies. The framework provides the flexibility to perform resource-constrained scheduling, time-constrained scheduling, or a combination of the two, using a simple and fast list-scheduling technique. A graded penalty function is used as an objective function in evaluating the quality of designs to enable the GA to quickly reach areas of the search space where designs meeting user specified criteria are most likely to be found. Since GAs are population-based search heuristics, a unique feature of our framework is its ability to offer a large number of alternative datapath designs, all of which meet design specifications but differ in module, register, and interconnect configurations. Many experiments on well-known benchmarks show the effectiveness of our approach.