Entropy analysis of muscular near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) signals during exercise programme of type 2 diabetic patients: Quantitative assessment of muscle metabolic pattern

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a metabolic disorder that is widely rampant throughout the world population these days. The uncontrolled DM may lead to complications of eye, heart, kidney and nerves. The most common type of diabetes is the type 2 diabetes or insulin-resistant DM.     

A novel two-stage MBR denitrification process for the treatment of high strength pet food wastewater

A novel paradigm using pre-denitrification process is presented to optimize an existing system of two-stage MBRs treating high strength pet food wastewater. Successive reduction of organics in the 1st stage and almost complete nitrification in the 2nd stage generated effluent meeting stringent surface discharge criteria i.e. BOD5, TSS and NH4+ -N of < 10 mg/L at an overall HRT of 6.3 days. Pre-anoxic zone was created by a submerged coil in the path of influent to the 1st stage. Final effluent and the 1st stage mixed liquor were recirculated to the coil. With prevailing high denitrification rates, more than 94% of the recirculated nitrates were denitrified in less than 15 min of effective anoxic residence time. At a recycle ratio of 3:1, total nitrogen was reduced by 84%, aeration energy by 25% and the external alkalinity requirement by 65%, enhancing economical viability of the system.     

Optimal control of the magnetic bearings for a flywheel energy storage system

With the advances of high strength/light weight composite material, high performance magnetic bearings, and power electronics technology, flywheel energy storage systems (FESS) with magnetically assisted bearings are becoming an exciting alternative to traditional battery systems. One of the challenging problems for such systems is to stabilize the sensitive rotor due to disturbances and plant uncertainties. In this paper, an optimal control system is proposed by incorporating cross-coupling technology into the control architecture, so that the synchronization performance of the rotor in the radial direction can be improved. The control scheme is based on minimization of a new quadratic performance index in which the synchronization errors in the radial direction are embedded. Stability of the control scheme is investigated through Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) optimal control technique. It has been shown that with adequate control parameters the closed-loop stability can be guaranteed theoretically, and the resulting control system can provide satisfactory synchronization performance. Simulations on a compact and efficient FESS with integrated magnetic bearings demonstrate that the proposed approach is very effective to suppress the gyroscopic effort caused by the outside disturbances and model uncertainties.     

Structure and rheology of charge-free reverse micelles in aromatic liquid phenyloctane

Reverse micelles formulation requires an inclusion of water or other polar molecules in the binary mixture of ionic surfactant and oil and generally exhibit spheroid geometry with a small aggregation number. Here, we report structure and rheology of charge-free (nonionic) reverse micelles in surfactant/oil systems. We have systematically investigated intrinsic parameters for the shape, size, and internal cross section structure control of such micelles using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and the rheometry. We found that diglycerol monomyristate (C14G2) when added into an aromatic organic liquid phenyloctane, spontaneously self-assembles into spheroid micelles with maximum diameter ca. 6.7 nm. Decrease in surfactant chain length favors globular-to-rod type transition and micellar aggregation number (N(agg)) increases significantly. On the other hand, increase in surfactant weight fraction induces one-dimensional (1-D) micellar growth; N(agg) increases in parallel to the surfactant concentration. Reverse micelles shrink with the rise of temperature, which is close to the rod-to-sphere type transition. However, water causes a significant micellar growth; N(agg) increases drastically, which shows that water not only increase reverse micellar size but also increases the number of surfactant molecules per micelle. All these microstructure transitions could be understood in terms of the modification of the critical packing parameter (cpp). The SAXS results are very well supported by the geometrical model fittings and rheometry.     

An amphiphilic C60 penta-addition derivative as a new U-type molecular rectifier

Unimolecular rectification behavior of a known amphiphilic fullerene derivative, 1,4,11,15,30-pentakis(4-hydroxyphenyl)-2H-1,2,4,11,15,30-hexahydro-[60]fullerene, (4-HOC₆H₄)₅HC₆₀ (referred to here as the fullerene pentapod), is reported. The HOMO and LUMO energy levels of the pentapod were determined by density functional theory calculations (B3LYP/6-31G⁷). It was found that the HOMO of the donor moiety and the LUMO of the acceptor are in the same fullerene cage, quite unlike the fullerene derivatives so far reported as molecular rectifiers. The molecule formed a stable Langmuir-Blodgett film at the air–water interface. Characterization of the film indicated that it constitutes mostly a monolayer of molecules with the hydrophobic C₆₀ moiety pointing upwards. The LB film was transferred over Au(1 1 1) substrate and electrical conductivity of the film was measured by conducting atomic force microscopy. An asymmetric electrical rectification behavior was observed in the voltage range of ±1.0 V to ±2.0 V. Beyond a bias voltage of ±2.0 V, rectification ratio decreased steadily, until at ±2.5 V the current–voltage curve became symmetric. The observed electrical rectification behavior was ascribed to resonant electron tunneling between the Fermi level of the electrode and the molecular orbital levels of the fullerene pentapod. Charge transport in the preferred direction under a suitable applied bias was facilitated due to efficient electronic interactions of the molecular orbitals through a combined effect of homo- and peri-conjugation. This constitutes a new class of donor–acceptor system and a step forward in the field of molecular electronics.     

FFCAEs: An efficient feature fusion framework using cascaded autoencoders for the identification of gliomas

Intracranial tumors arise from constituents of the brain and its meninges. Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common adult primary intracranial neoplasm and is categorized as high-grade astrocytoma according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The survival rate for 5 and 10 years after diagnosis is under 10%, contributing to its grave prognosis. Early detection of GBM enables early intervention, prognostication, and treatment monitoring. Computer-aided diagnostics (CAD) is a computerized process that helps to differentiate between GBM and low-grade gliomas (LGG), using the perceptible analysis of magnetic resonance (MR) of the brain. This study proposes a framework consisting of a feature fusion algorithm with cascaded autoencoders (CAEs), referred to as FFCAEs. Here we utilized two CAEs and extracted the relevant features from multiple CAEs. Inspired by the existing work on fusion algorithms, the obtained features are then fused by using a novel fusion algorithm. Finally, the resultant fused features are classified with the Softmax classifier to arrive at an average classification accuracy of 96.7%, which is 2.45% more than the previously best-performing model. The method is shown to be efficacious thus, it can be useful as a utility program for doctors.     

Directed searching optimized mean-exposure based sub-image histogram equalization for grayscale image enhancement

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This paper presents a novel enhancement technique for low light grayscale images. The main goal of this work is to enhance the visual quality and improve the...     

Systemic Evaluation of Mechanism of Cytotoxicity in Human Colon Cancer HCT-116 Cells of Silver Nanoparticles Synthesized Using Marine Algae Ulva lactuca Extract

In the current study, biogenic silver nanoparticles (U-AgNPs) were synthesized using marine green macro-algal Ulva lactuca extract, and evaluated mechanism behind its anticancer activity against the Human colon cancer (HCT-116). The biogenic U-AgNPs were characterized using various physiochemical techniques. The TEM micrographs confirmed the spherical morphology of synthesized U-AgNPs, with a mean size of 8–14 nm. EDX spectrum as well as ICP-OES confirmed that AgNPs was nearly 90% purity for silver. FTIR Spectra analysis of U-AgNPs confirmed U. lactuca extract bioactive molecules presence over U-AgNPs surface as a stabilizing agent, thereby improving biocompatibility. The cytotoxicity study revealed the dose dependent cell death in colon cancer cells with no loss of viability in normal human colon epithelial cells. Furthermore, the fluorescence micrographs of nucleus staining assay revealed the DNA fragmentation and nucleus condensation of cancer cells treated with U-AgNPs, indicating an apoptosis-mediated cell death. The western bolt and RT-PCR analysis of U-AgNPs treated cancer cells showed the rise in proapoptotic markers (P53, Bax, and P21) and decline in anti-apoptotic markers (Bcl-2), thus confirming the p53-dependent apoptosis mediated cell death in HCT-116. Overall, our study concluded that novel biogenic U-AgNPs nanoparticles, synthesized using marine green macro-algal U. lactuca extract showed efficient anticancer activity against HCT-116 cell line and hence could work as potential therapeutic agent for targeted anti-cancer therapy.

     

Application of metamaterials for performance enhancement of planar antennas: A review

Metamaterials are assemblies of metallic and/or dielectric materials with properties that are not readily found in naturally existing materials. Hence, metamaterial structures are commonly loaded on/near the patch, embedded in the substrate, loaded/etched from the ground plane or placed as a superstrate layer for enhancing bandwidth and gain, and size miniaturization of conventional patch antennas. The demand for wide bandwidth, high gain, and compact antennas is highly contemplated in recent wireless communication research studies. Despite their lightweight, ease of fabrication, low profile, and simplicity for integration, patch antennas have performance limitations as result of their narrow bandwidth, lower gain, larger size, and lower power handling capacity. To address these problems, metamaterial‐based antennas have gained massive interest. There exist inadequate literatures about review of current state of extensive study reports on metamaterial application for patch antenna performance enhancement. Thus, this paper has reviewed and discussed latest research works on metamaterial applications for performance enhancement of planar patch antennas.