New sinusoidal oscillator configurations using operational transresistance amplifier

The objective of this brief is to introduce four new structures of electronically tunable sinusoidal oscillators (SOs) designed using operational transresistance amplifier (OTRA). Each of the proposed SO consists of forward path derived from a generic structure along with one/two OTRA-based resistive gain stages or differentiator in its feedback path. All the proposed SOs enjoy independent tuning of the frequency of oscillation (FO) through resistors without affecting the condition of oscillation (CO). Further, all topologies are found to exhibit low f_o sensitivities at all frequencies with respect to circuit parameters, and the second topology is capable of achieving very low frequencies (VLFs) using less RC component spread and provides linear tuning too. The fourth circuit provides quadrature output. The proposed SOs have been successfully implemented and verified in 180-nm CMOS technology node using ADE (analog design environment) tool Cadence Virtuoso. Both prelayout and postlayout simulation results have been included. To assess the oscillator prefabrication performances, Monte Carlo and process-voltage-temperature (PVT) analyses have been performed. The total harmonic distortion (THD) is observed to be less than 3.5%.     

In vitro cellular response and hydrothermal aging of two-step sintered Nb2O5 doped ceria stabilized zirconia ceramics

Niobia (1 mol. %) doped Ceria Stabilized Zirconia (NbCSZ) powders were synthesized using a co-precipitation method. The synthesized powders were uniaxially compacted and sintered in air. The two-step sintering method was adopted to sinter the samples, and the sintering schedule was optimized based on density, grain size, the phase present, and the hardness of the sintered sample. It was observed that the two-step sintering method effectively suppressed the grain growth of NbCSZ samples and helped in achieving a finer grain size of 1.57 μm along with the hardness of 1195 HV10 and optimum fracture toughness value 6.20 MPa m^1/2. The Low-Temperature Degradation (LTD) behavior of the sintered samples was estimated through an accelerated hydrothermal aging test, which revealed that the samples are highly resistant to LTD and shown no phase change even after 150 h of study. Moreover, the cytocompatibility of the NbCSZ was tested by culturing MG63 cells on the samples for 7 days. The NbCSZ was found to be highly biocompatible as evident from cell viability and metabolic activity assay.     

Effect of hydrogen enrichment on performance,combustion, and emission of a methanol fueled SI engine

The study of potentially high rated alternative fuel (Methanol) for the IC engines is an exciting topic in the recent research advancement. However, the study of combination of methanol and hydrogen is considered to address both economic and environmental needs. Hydrogen with best combustion characteristics will compensate for the drawbacks of methanol as a fuel. In the present investigation hydrogen enrichment to methanol has shown a significant enhancement in performance and combustion; the overall emission has reduced substantially. The experiments for a different set of trials, including hydrogen enrichment ranging between 5% and 20% with 2.5% increment, the engine is operated with wide-open throttle (WOT) condition for different speeds. The increase in enrichment of hydrogen has shown a rise in BTE, BP, and a reduced BSEC value. The percentage increase in BTE is between 20 and 30%, and an increase in hydrogen beyond 12.5% would affect the volumetric efficiency, and thus performance declines after that. The exhaust emissions have a huge impact on hydrogen enrichment; CO, HC, and CO₂ emission are reduced by 30–40%; however, an increase in cylinder temperature due to rapid combustion slightly increases the NO_x emission. Thus hydrogen enriched methanol operating at higher compression ratio can improve the overall engine characteristics significantly.     

Novel Approach for Mobile Based App Development Incorporating MAAF

Wireless Personal Communications - Increased dominance of mobile applications (henceforth, app) over conventional software applications is quite apparent; however, there is a lack of structured...     

Magnetic separation studies on ferruginous chromite fine to enhance Cr:Fe ratio

The Cr:Fe ratio (chromium-to-iron mass ratio) of chromite affects the production of chrome-based ferroalloys. Although the lit-erature contains numerous reports related to the magnetic separation of di...     

A mathematical model and solution methods for rail freight transportation planning in an Indian food grain supply chain

This paper addresses the rail transportation of food grains undertaken by Food Corporation of India (FCI) to meet the requirements of the food security programme called Public Distribution System (PDS). The research focuses on improving the allocation of railway rakes transporting food grains to a set of storage warehouses. A penalty factor based approach is adopted to represent the considerations in transportation planning and three penalty factors such as rake penalty factor, weekly penalty factor and capacity utilization penalty factor are introduced for the purpose. The single source - multiple destination problem is formulated and solved using exact method to minimize the sum of these three penalty factor values, termed total penalty. Further, a heuristic named optimum rake allocation algorithm is developed and tested using a set of 35 problem instances. The proposed heuristic is found to be highly efficient in terms of solution quality and computation time. A case study of FCI Kerala Region is also carried out to validate the formulated model and the proposed heuristic. The work provides valuable insights into the practical issues encountered in rail freight transportation planning and proposes an effective solution methodology to address them.     

A new controller for boost dc–dc converters based on a novel sliding surface

ABSTRACT

In this paper, two control schemes for boost converters affected by uncertainties in input voltage and load are proposed. The boost converter dynamics is redefined in terms of new state variables to facilitate the use of a disturbance observer that can estimate matched and unmatched disturbances. A sliding surface, which is new in the context of boost converters, is proposed to enable tracking and regulation of output voltage without requiring measurement of input voltage and load current. The stability of the overall system including the disturbance observer, the sliding variable and the output is proved. The performance of the schemes is assessed for regulation of output voltage and tracking of reference voltage by simulation as well as experimentation in which various types of uncertainties and various types of reference voltages are considered.     

The Yeast ATF1 Acetyltransferase Efficiently Acetylates Insect Pheromone Alcohols: Implications for the Biological Production of Moth Pheromones

Many moth pheromones are composed of mixtures of acetates of long‐chain (≥10 carbon) fatty alcohols. Moth pheromone precursors such as fatty acids and fatty alcohols can be produced in yeast by the heterologous expression of genes involved in insect pheromone production. Acetyltransferases that subsequently catalyze the formation of acetates by transfer of the acetate unit from acetyl‐CoA to a fatty alcohol have been postulated in pheromone biosynthesis. However, so far no fatty alcohol acetyltransferases responsible for the production of straight chain alkyl acetate pheromone components in insects have been identified. In search for a non‐insect acetyltransferase alternative, we expressed a plant‐derived diacylglycerol acetyltransferase (EaDAcT) (EC 2.3.1.20) cloned from the seed of the burning bush (Euonymus alatus) in a yeast system. EaDAcT transformed various fatty alcohol insect pheromone precursors into acetates but we also found high background acetylation activities. Only one enzyme in yeast was shown to be responsible for the majority of that background activity, the acetyltransferase ATF1 (EC 2.3.1.84). We further investigated the usefulness of ATF1 for the conversion of moth pheromone alcohols into acetates in comparison with EaDAcT. Overexpression of ATF1 revealed that it was capable of acetylating these fatty alcohols with chain lengths from 10 to 18 carbons with up to 27‐ and 10‐fold higher in vivo and in vitro efficiency, respectively, compared to EaDAcT. The ATF1 enzyme thus has the potential to serve as the missing enzyme in the reconstruction of the biosynthetic pathway of insect acetate pheromones from precursor fatty acids in yeast.     

Regularized nonnegative shared subspace learning

Joint modeling of related data sources has the potential to improve various data mining tasks such as transfer learning, multitask clustering, information retrieval etc. However, diversity among various data sources might outweigh the advantages of the joint modeling, and thus may result in performance degradations. To this end, we propose a regularized shared subspace learning framework, which can exploit the mutual strengths of related data sources while being immune to the effects of the variabilities of each source. This is achieved by further imposing a mutual orthogonality constraint on the constituent subspaces which segregates the common patterns from the source specific patterns, and thus, avoids performance degradations. Our approach is rooted in nonnegative matrix factorization and extends it further to enable joint analysis of related data sources. Experiments performed using three real world data sets for both retrieval and clustering applications demonstrate the benefits of regularization and validate the effectiveness of the model. Our proposed solution provides a formal framework appropriate for jointly analyzing related data sources and therefore, it is applicable to a wider context in data mining.