Quantum Inspired Broadband Photonic Absorber: Potential Application as Solar Sail along with Mobility Analysis

Electromagnetic wideband absorption is still perceived as a critical and formidable challenge to address with an unambiguous photonic absorber. Subwavelength metamaterial (MM) unit cells with unique and controlled features have recently gained considerable interest. However, meta-atoms, generated using a quantum-inspired pattern distribution, are underwhelming in existing literature to design photonic absorbers and their potential application to manufacture solar sails is still quite uncommon. In this article, to create a flexible, polarization-insensitive, ultrathin, and broadband MM absorber, quantum interference pattern-inspired design is utilized. Herein, a novel approach to fabricating solar sails for the space exploration incorporates the proposed broadband photonic absorber rather than conventional reflectors. The quantum-inspired meta-absorber (QIMA) exhibits an absorption of over 91% for the visible domain, i.e., 380–800 nm under a conventional plane-polarized source. It is shown in the study that broadband absorbers are almost equivalent to excellent reflectors to design the solar sails in terms of the time-averaged force calculated by utilizing the Maxwell stress tensor method. Thus, the QIMA has the potential to be a viable alternative to reflectors in the design of futuristic solar sails for space exploration. The interference theory model is also utilized to assure the dependability of calculated data, and additionally, the standard AM1.5 solar spectrum is utilized to demonstrate the QIMA's solar-harvesting potentiality.     

Efficient Body-Transfer Wheelchair for Assisting Functionally ImpairedPeople

Functionally impaired people always have difficulty accomplishing activities of daily living. In this regard, tasks including toileting and bathing have a higher prevalence rate of injuries and greater risk of falling. In this study, a body-transfer wheelchair was developed to assist people in transferring from bed to wheelchair for bathing, and toileting. The body-transfer wheelchair is a semi-automatic wheelchair that has features such as a controlled leg and backrest, linkage commode slot, and height adjustment. The wheelchair consists of a seat and a main frame that can be detached to enable bathtub transfer. This mechanism lets the user stay on the seat while being transferred into the bathtub without any risk of falling. A linkage mechanism was developed as a part of the seat for ease of toileting. Kinematic and force analysis was conducted to calculate the force required for each actuator. It has been proved by the experimental results that the wheelchair can securely and comfortably transfer a patient from the bed to the toilet or bathtub. A survey has been conducted to evaluate the wheelchair prototype design idea. Two focus groups were chosen: one comprised of functionally impaired people, and the other comprised of caregivers. The results of the survey show that 60% of both functionally impaired people and caregivers would like to use the body-transfer wheelchair for toileting and bathing purpose. Additionally, on average 65% of both focus groups find it convenient to operate the body-transfer wheelchair independently.     

Determining malicious executable distinguishing attributes and low-complexity detection

Detection of rapidly evolving malware requires classification techniques that can effectively and efficiently detect zero-day attacks. Such detection is based on a robust model of benign behavior and deviations from that model are used to detect malicious behavior. In this paper we propose a low-complexity host-based technique that uses deviations in static file attributes to detect malicious executables. We first develop simple statistical models of static file attributes derived from the empirical data of thousands of benign executables. Deviations among the attribute models of benign and malware executables are then quantified using information-theoretic (Kullback-Leibler-based) divergence measures. This quantification reveals distinguishing attributes that are considerably divergent between benign and malware executables and therefore can be used for detection. We use the benign models of divergent attributes in cross-correlation and log-likelihood frameworks to classify malicious executables. Our results, using over 4,000 malicious file samples, indicate that the proposed detector provides reasonably high detection accuracy, while having significantly lower complexity than existing detectors.     

Designing genetic regulatory networks using fuzzy Petri nets approach

In this paper, we have successfully presented a fuzzy Petri net (FPN) model to design the genetic regulatory network. Based on the FPN model, an efficient algorithm is proposed to automatically reason about imprecise and fuzzy information. By using the reasoning algorithm for the FPN, we present an alternative approach that is more promising than the fuzzy logic. The proposed FPN approach offers more flexible reasoning capability because it is able to obtain results with fuzzy intervals rather than point values. In this paper, a novel model with a new concept of hidden fuzzy transition (HFT) to design the genetic regulatory network is developed. We have built the FPN model and classified the input data in terms of time point and obtained the output data, so the system can be viewed as the two-input and one output system. This method eliminates possible false predictions from the classical fuzzy model thereby allowing a wider search space for inferring regulatory relationship. The experimental results show the proposed approach is feasible and acceptable to design the genetic regulatory network and investigate the dynamical behaviors of gene network.     

Selective potentiometric determination of uric acid with uricase immobilized on ZnO nanowires

In this study, a potentiometric uric acid biosensor was fabricated by immobilization of uricase onto zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires. Zinc oxide nanowires with 80-150 nm in diameter and 900 nm to 1.5 μm in lengths were grown on the surface of a gold coated flexible plastic substrate. Uricase was electrostatically immobilized on the surface of well aligned ZnO nanowires resulting in a sensitive, selective, stable and reproducible uric acid biosensor. The potentiometric response of the ZnO sensor vs Ag/AgCl reference electrode was found to be linear over a relatively wide logarithmic concentration range (1-650 μM) suitable for human blood serum. By applying a Nafion^® membrane on the sensor the linear range could be extended to 1-1000 μM at the expense of an increased response time from 6.25 s to less than 9 s. On the other hand the membrane increased the sensor durability considerably. The sensor response was unaffected by normal concentrations of common interferents such as ascorbic acid, glucose, and urea.     

Selective determination of urea using urease immobilized on ZnO nanowires

Well-aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire arrays were fabricated on gold-coated plastic substrates using a low-temperature aqueous chemical growth (ACG) method. The ZnO nanowire arrays with 50–130 nm diameters and ∼1 μm in lengths were used in an enzyme-based urea sensor through immobilization of the enzyme urease that was found to be sensitive to urea concentrations from 0.1 mM to 100 mM. Two linear sensitivity regions were observed when the electrochemical responses (EMF) of the sensors were plotted vs. the logarithmic concentration range of urea from 0.1 mM to 100 mM. The proposed sensor showed a sensitivity of 52.8 mV/decade for 0.1–40 mM urea and a fast response time less than 4 s was achieved with good selectivity, reproducibility and negligible response to common interferents such as ascorbic acid and uric acid, glucose, K⁺ and Na⁺ ions.     

Efficient single-pass frequent pattern mining using a prefix-tree

The FP-growth algorithm using the FP-tree has been widely studied for frequent pattern mining because it can dramatically improve performance compared to the candidate generation-and-test paradigm of Apriori. However, it still requires two database scans, which are not consistent with efficient data stream processing. In this paper, we present a novel tree structure, called CP-tree (compact pattern tree), that captures database information with one scan (insertion phase) and provides the same mining performance as the FP-growth method (restructuring phase). The CP-tree introduces the concept of dynamic tree restructuring to produce a highly compact frequency-descending tree structure at runtime. An efficient tree restructuring method, called the branch sorting method, that restructures a prefix-tree branch-by-branch, is also proposed in this paper. Moreover, the CP-tree provides full functionality for interactive and incremental mining. Extensive experimental results show that the CP-tree is efficient for frequent pattern mining, interactive, and incremental mining with a single database scan.     

Numerical study of asymmetric laminar flow of micropolar fluids in a porous channel

A numerical study is presented for the two-dimensional flow of a micropolar fluid in a porous channel. The channel walls are of different permeability. The fluid motion is superimposed by the large injection at the two walls and is assumed to be steady, laminar and incompressible. The micropolar model due to Eringen is used to describe the working fluid. The governing equations of motion are reduced to a set of non-linear coupled ordinary differential equations (ODEs) in dimensionless form by using an extension of Berman’s similarity transformations. A numerical algorithm based on finite difference discretization is employed to solve these ODEs. The results obtained are further improved by Richardson’s extrapolation for higher order accuracy. Comparisons with the previously published work are performed and are found to be in a good agreement. It has been observed that the velocity and microrotation profiles change from the most asymmetric shape to the symmetric shape across the channel as the parameter R or the permeability parameter A are varied between their extreme values. The results indicate that larger the injection velocity at a wall relative to the other is, smaller will be the shear stress at it than that at the other. The position of viscous layer has been found to be more sensitive to the permeability parameter A than to the parameter R. The micropolar fluids reduce shear stress and increase couple stress at the walls as compared to the Newtonian fluids.     

On partial-information optimal singular control problem for mean-field stochastic differential equations driven by Teugels martingales measures

This paper is concerned with partial-information mixed optimal stochastic continuous–singular control problem for mean-field stochastic differential equation driven by Teugels martingales and an independent Brownian motion, where the Teugels martingales are a family of pairwise strongly orthonormal martingales associated with Lévy processes. The control variable has two components; the first being absolutely continuous, and the second singular. Partial-information necessary and sufficient conditions of optimal continuous–singular control for these mean-field models are investigated. As an illustration, this paper studies a partial-information linear quadratic control problem of mean-field type involving continuous–singular control.     

H∞ state estimation of generalised neural networks with interval time-varying delays

This paper focuses on studying the H_∞ state estimation of generalised neural networks with interval time-varying delays. The integral terms in the time derivative of the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional are handled by the Jensen’s inequality, reciprocally convex combination approach and a new Wirtinger-based double integral inequality. A delay-dependent criterion is derived under which the estimation error system is globally asymptotically stable with H_∞ performance. The proposed conditions are represented by linear matrix inequalities. Optimal H_∞ norm bounds are obtained easily by solving convex problems in terms of linear matrix inequalities. The advantage of employing the proposed inequalities is illustrated by numerical examples.