Laser-treated austenitic steel and nickel alloy for human implants

The recent research in biocompatible materials has been useful in replacing and supporting the fractured natural human bones/joints. Under some condition, negative reaction like release of ions from the bare metal toward the human body fluid leads to corrosion. In this proposed research paper, the biocompatibility of the laser surface-modified austenitic stainless steel (SS316L) and nickel-based superalloy (Inconel 718) was studied. The investigation on laser-modified surfaces is evaluated through electrochemical polarization analysis using simulated body fluid (SBF). The samples subjected to electrochemical polarization analysis were characterized by optical image analysis, SEM, EDS, and XRD analysis. It was inferred that laser surface-modified materials provided enhanced corrosion resistance and bare nickel alloy is more susceptible to corrosion by SBF.     

Extranasal Staphylococcus aureus colonization predisposes to bloodstream infections in patients on hemodialysis with noncuffed internal jugular vein catheters

Introduction: Staphylococcal infection of endogenous origin is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in patients who receive hemodialysis (HD). The risk of such infections in nasal carriers of the organism is well defined. Extranasal carriage of the organism at extranasal sites may pose similar risks. Methods: A total of 70 patients about to undergo internal jugular vein catheterization for HD were enrolled in this prospective observational study. Swab cultures were obtained from anterior nares, posterior pharynx, axillae, toe web spaces, and vascular access sites at baseline and 1 week later. A patient was defined as a persistent carrier when the same organism was grown in both samples. Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections were assessed by blood and catheter tip cultures over a 90‐day period. Findings: The mean age of the patients was 43.71 ± 16.2 years. Persistent S. aureus carriage at anterior nares, throat, axilla, toe web spaces, vascular access site, and all sites was documented in 27.9%, 11.4%, 40%, 32.9%, 4.3%, and 64.2% of patients, respectively. Fifteen patients developed S. aureus infections. Catheter related S. aureus infections (CRI) were more likely in persistent carriers than nonpersistent carriers with odds ratios (95% CI) of 10.2 (2.8–37.1), 8.6 (1.7–42.2), 17.3 (3.4–86.0), 3.0 (0.9–9.8), and 1.9 (0.2–22.4) for anterior nares, throat, axilla, toe web spaces, and vascular access site carriers, respectively. The probability of developing CRI in persistent S. aureus carriers was 55% compared to none in noncarriers at 90 days (P = 0.04). Discussion: Extranasal S. aureus carriage is as significant a risk factor as nasal carriage for staphylococcal infections in patients on HD through catheters. The study is limited by lack of molecular phenotyping.     

Substitution Effects on Rare-Earth Ions-Doped Nickel-Zinc Ferrite Nanoparticles

Rare-earth ions (RE³⁺)-doped Ni-Zn ferrite nanoparticles with a structural formula of Ni_0.5Zn_0.5Fe_1.8RE_0.2O₄ (RE³⁺ = Nd, Ce, La and Pr) were synthesized at room temperature by a sol-gel auto-combustion method. The structural and magnetic properties of Ni-Zn ferrite samples were carried out by XRD, vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and FT-IR spectroscopy. XRD pattern of Ni-Zn ferrite revealed that all the diffraction planes are in agreement with cubic spinel phase and the addition of Fe₂O₃ phase was also observed. In the case of RE ions-doped Ni-Zn ferrite in addition to the Fe₂O₃ phase, very low intensity peaks corresponding to some secondary phase are also present. The average crystallite sizes were found to be from 42 to 56 nm using the Scherer formula. The lattice constant (a) values are gradually decreased from 8.378 to 8.349 Å with different substitutions of RE³⁺ ions in the Ni-Zn ferrite samples. VSM analysis revealed that saturation magnetization values are decreased and coercivity values are increased with substitution of different RE³⁺ ions. FE-SEM images exhibits that particles are spherical in shape. FT-IR interpretation revealed that two main metal oxygen bands (564 and 411 cm^?1) are observed in all the substituted Ni-Zn ferrite samples.     

Context sensitive trust based geographic opportunistic routing in mobile ad hoc networks

Sādhanā - Position based opportunistic routing (POR) is a stateless, robust, and reliable geographic routing protocol in Mobile AdHoc NETwork (MANET). The opportunistic routing embraces...     

Automated detection of glioblastoma tumor in brain magnetic imaging using ANFIS classifier

This article proposes a novel and efficient methodology for the detection of Glioblastoma tumor in brain MRI images. The proposed method consists of the following stages as preprocessing, Non‐subsampled Contourlet transform (NSCT), feature extraction and Adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system classification. Euclidean direction algorithm is used to remove the impulse noise from the brain image during image acquisition process. NSCT decomposes the denoised brain image into approximation bands and high frequency bands. The features mean, standard deviation and energy are computed for the extracted coefficients and given to the input of the classifier. The classifier classifies the brain MRI image into normal or Glioblastoma tumor image based on the feature set. The proposed system achieves 99.8% sensitivity, 99.7% specificity, and 99.8% accuracy with respect to the ground truth images available in the dataset.     

A multisource energy harvesting utilizing highly efficient ferroelectric PMN-PT single crystal

This paper demonstrates a multi-source energy harvester that is able to utilize simultaneously both piezoelectric and pyroelectric effects in lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) single crystal. The paper presents a study of PMN-PT single crystal with a (67:33) composition grown in our laboratory via a vertical gradient freeze method without any flux. The performance of the piezoelectric and pyroelectric energy harvester using unimorph device structure was evaluated via modeling and experiment. The theoretical study was implemented based on a distributed parameter electromechanical model and the modelling procedure was approximated using finite element analysis to predict the electromechanical behavior of the harvester. The maximum power density at a resonance frequency of 50 Hz and optimum resistance of 2 MΩ was 16.7 nW/(g² cm³) under a 1 g acceleration of vibration. The measured values of electrical output parameters were in good agreement with theoretical and modelling results using MATLAB and COMSOL Multiphysics, respectively. By using the pyroelectric effect along with the piezoelectric effect, the output voltage of the energy harvester was found to be enhanced at the optimum resistance and specific frequency values. It was noticed that the output voltage was increased monotonically with temperature-difference (ΔT) and reaches up to 180 % of its original value under temperature difference of 1.7 °C at a frequency value of 49 Hz.     

Intrusion Detection Based on Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory with Attention Mechanism

With the recent developments in the Internet of Things (IoT), the amount of data collected has expanded tremendously, resulting in a higher demand for data storage, computational capacity, and real-time processing capabilities. Cloud computing has traditionally played an important role in establishing IoT. However, fog computing has recently emerged as a new field complementing cloud computing due to its enhanced mobility, location awareness, heterogeneity, scalability, low latency, and geographic distribution. However, IoT networks are vulnerable to unwanted assaults because of their open and shared nature. As a result, various fog computing-based security models that protect IoT networks have been developed. A distributed architecture based on an intrusion detection system (IDS) ensures that a dynamic, scalable IoT environment with the ability to disperse centralized tasks to local fog nodes and which successfully detects advanced malicious threats is available. In this study, we examined the time-related aspects of network traffic data. We presented an intrusion detection model based on a two-layered bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) with an attention mechanism for traffic data classification verified on the UNSW-NB15 benchmark dataset. We showed that the suggested model outperformed numerous leading-edge Network IDS that used machine learning models in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and F1 score.     

Correction on link relative based approach to CUSUM chart

Link relative-based approach was used in an article (see reference 1) to enhance the performance of the cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart. This technique involves the use of firstly, the link relative variable to convert the process observations in a relative to the mean form and secondly, optimal constants to define a new variable which is used as the plotting statistic of the link relative CUSUM chart. In this article, it is proven through simulation study that the optimal constants with fixed values, as reported in the aforementioned article, give different results. Instead, if the regression technique is used, then the same results will be obtained.     

Effect of carbide ceramics and coke on the properties of dispersion strengthened aluminium-silicon7-magnesium hybrid composites

In this study, aluminium-silicon7-magnesium alloy was reinforced with carbide ceramics (silicon carbide and boron carbide) and coke microparticles. The composite samples (S1, S2, and S3) with 4 %, 8 %, and 12 % by weight of silicon carbide and boron carbide microparticles and 8 % by weight of coke micro particles respectively, were prepared through the ultrasonic assisted melt-stir casting route. It was observed from the literature that only a few research works reported the cumulative effect of adding these micro-particulate reinforcements within aluminium-silicon7-magnesium alloy. The microstructural evaluation revealed uniform dispersion of particulate reinforcements. Area energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy scan results proved the presence of the reinforcement particles as heterogeneous phases at distinct zones. The samples undergone tensile tests failed under the brittle fracture mode. The ultimate tensile strength of the composites improved by about 27.4 %, the % elongation improved by about 6.8 %, and Vickers microhardness dropped 1.9 % to the maximum. Dimples were observed in the fracture morphology analysis and it was mainly due to the mixed ductility of the sample S2. An abrasive wear mechanism was observed in the worn-out sample S2. The wear rate decreased significantly with an increase in weight fraction of the reinforcements.