Low Velocity Impact and Mechanical Behaviour of Shot Blasted SiC Wire-Mesh and Silane-Treated Aloevera/Hemp/Flax-Reinforced SiC Whisker Modified Epoxy Resin Composites

Silicon - In this research the effect of adding silicon carbide nano whiskers (SiCw) into epoxy resin and the impact of reinforcing surface treated SiC wire-mesh (SiCwm) and woven...     

Multimodal of Ear and Face Biometric Recognition Using Adaptive Approach Runge–Kutta Threshold segmentation and Classifier with Score Level Fusion

Wireless Personal Communications - A multimodal biometric system uses more than one biometric methods of an individual to mitigate some of the drawbacks of a unimodal biometric system and improve...     

Leakage current,active power,and delay analysis of dynamic dual Vt CMOS circuits under P–V–T fluctuations

The leakage current, active power and delay characterizations of the dynamic dual V_t CMOS circuits in the presence of process, voltage, and temperature (P–V–T) fluctuations are analyzed based on multiple-parameter Monte Carlo method. It is demonstrated that failing to account for P–V–T fluctuations can result in significant reliability problems and inaccuracy in transistor-level performance estimation. It also indicates that under significant P–V–T fluctuations, dual V_t technique (DVT) is still highly effective to reduce the leakage current and active power for dynamic CMOS circuits, but it induces speed penalty. At last, the robustness of different dynamic CMOS circuits with DVT against the P–V–T fluctuations is discussed in detail.     

Automatic Moving Vehicle Detection and Classification Based on Artificial Neural Fuzzy Inference System

The main objective of this work is to automatically detect moving vehicles on the road. Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) classifier is adopted in this paper to classify moving vehicles on road. An input traffic video scenes are taken with vertical and horizontal positioned cameras. The proposed system contains six major steps such as preprocessing, vehicle detection, tracking, structural matching, feature extraction and classification. In this proposed method, preprocessing consists of color conversion and noise removal. Vehicle detection is performed by using background subtraction and Otsu thresholding algorithm. Kalman filter is used in the third step to track moving vehicles in successive frames. In the fourth step, Active Shape Modelling method is used to recover the 3D shape of the vehicle in order to find the boundaries of vehicle. In the fifth step, features of the detected vehicles are extracted by Harrish corner detector, log Gabor filter and these features are taken into account to classify the types of vehicle. Finally, ANFIS is proposed to classify the vehicles which is trained by updating the membership function. Experimentation results provides better accuracy rate and low mean error rate when compared with the state of art methods.     

Developing an Empirical Relationship to Predict the Influence of Process Parameters on Tensile Strength of Friction Stir Welded AA6061/0–10 wt% ZrB2 In Situ Composite

New families of aluminum matrix composites (AMCs) have been developed over the last decade in search of superior properties. Aluminum reinforced with ZrB₂ particles is one such family which has drawn the attention of researchers. Friction stir welding is a relatively new solid state welding which overcomes most of the defects associated with fusion welding of AMCs. An attempt has been made to friction stir weld AA6061/0?C10 wt% ZrB₂ in situ composite and to develop an empirical relationship to predict the tensile strength of butt joints. Four factors, five levels central composite rotatable design was used to minimize the number of experiments. The factors considered are tool rotational speed, welding speed, axial force and weight percentage of ZrB₂. The effect of these factors on tensile strength of the welded joints is analyzed using the developed empirical relationship. The predicted trends are discussed. It is observed that the factors independently influence the tensile strength over the entire range of parameters studied in this work.     

Green Synthesis of Endolichenic Fungi Functionalized Silver Nanoparticles: The Role in Antimicrobial,Anti-Cancer,and Mosquitocidal Activities

Green nanotechnology is currently a very crucial and indispensable technology for handling diverse problems regarding the living planet. The concoction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and biologically synthesized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) has opened new insights in cancer therapy. The current investigation caters to the concept of the involvement of a novel eco-friendly avenue to produce AgNPs employing the wild endolichenic fungus Talaromyces funiculosus. The synthesized Talaromyces funiculosus–AgNPs were evaluated with the aid of UV visible spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering (DLS), Fourier infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The synthesized Talaromyces funiculosus–AgNPs (TF-AgNPs) exhibited hemo-compatibility as evidenced by a hemolytic assay. Further, they were evaluated for their efficacy against foodborne pathogens Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus faecalis, Listeria innocua, and Micrococcus luteus and nosocomial Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Vibrio cholerae, and Bacillus subtilis bacterial strains. The synthesized TF-AgNPs displayed cytotoxicity in a dose-dependent manner against MDA-MB-231 breast carcinoma cells and eventually condensed the chromatin material observed through the Hoechst 33342 stain. Subsequent analysis using flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy provided the inference of a possible role of intracellular ROS (OH⁻, O⁻, H₂O₂, and O₂⁻) radicals in the destruction of mitochondria, DNA machinery, the nucleus, and overall damage of the cellular machinery of breast cancerous cells. The combined effect of predation by the cyclopoid copepod Mesocyclops aspericornis and TF-AgNPS for the larval management of dengue vectors were provided. A promising larval control was evident after the conjunction of both predatory organisms and bio-fabricated nanoparticles. Thus, this study provides a novel, cost-effective, extracellular approach of TF-AgNPs production with hemo-compatible, antioxidant, and antimicrobial efficacy against both human and foodborne pathogens with cytotoxicity (dose dependent) towards MDA-MB-231 breast carcinoma.     

Investigation on temperature-dependent structural,dielectric and impedance characteristics of Cu-doped CaFexTi1-xO3-δ nanotitanates

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - In recent days, the development of low-cost, sustainable, efficient electrode materials for energy storage applications is of great...     

Study of slip velocity and application of drift-flux model to slip velocity in a liquid–solid circulating fluidized bed

The increasing applications of liquid–solid circulating fluidized bed in chemical/biochemical industries require a better understanding of hydrodynamics of such system. This work aims to experimentally investigate the slip between the phases in a LSCFB. The variation of slip velocity with superficial liquid velocity, solids velocity, bed voidage and particle size and density is discussed. The apparent slip velocity of the phases is higher than the particle terminal velocity of a single particle. The R–Z equation developed based on the homogenous flow characteristics underpredicts the slip velocity in a LSCFB. The drift-flux model which considers the radial non-uniformity and slip between the phases was applied to the data of the present study. The predicted value by the model agreed with the apparent slip velocity well. The study also proposed an empirical correlation to predict the slip velocity. The empirical correlations aggress well with the experimental data.     

Development of mathematical models for prediction of weld bead geometry in cladding by flux cored arc welding

The mechanical and corrosion resistant properties of cladded components depend on the clad bead geometries, which in turn are controlled by the process parameters. Therefore it is essential to study the effect of process parameters on the bead geometry to enable effective control of these parameters. The above objective can easily be achieved by developing equations to predict the weld bead dimensions in terms of process parameters. Experiments were conducted to develop models, using a three factor, five level factorial design for 317L flux cored stainless steel wire with IS:2062 structural steel as base plate. The models so developed were checked for their adequacy. Confirmation experiments were also conducted and the results show that the models developed can predict the bead geometries and dilution with reasonable accuracy. It was observed from the investigation that the interactive effect of the process parameters on the bead geometry is significant and cannot be neglected.     

Transmission electron microscopic observations of membrane effects of antibiotic cecropin B on Escherichia coli

The pathway of cell membrane lysis by the peptide antibiotic cecropin B (CB), which contains both a hydrophobic and an amphipathic alpha-helix, was analysed by assessing the morphological changes of Escherichia coli following treatment with the peptide. Exposure of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-expressing E. coli to CB does not lead to an efflux of GFP. Moreover, transmission electron microscopic (TEM) examination of cecropin B-treated cells showed that severe swelling precedes cell death and that the outer membrane becomes distended away from the plasma membrane. Using immuno-gold staining and TEM of E. coli expressing the maltose-binding protein in the cytoplasm, it was apparent that the protein remains restricted to the cytoplasmic compartment. These observations suggest that CB causes gross disruption of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria. Circular dichroism measurements of CB in the presence of cell membrane-mimicking liposomes showed that CB forms secondary structure dependent on the ratio of [lipid]/[peptide]. These observations from this study are important for the future design of custom antimicrobial peptides.