Modulation of Different States of Anxiety-Like Behavior by Chronic Stress.

Recent studies have identified putative cellular correlates of stress-induced amygdalar plasticity underlying anxiety-like behavior. Chronic immobilization stress (CIS), but not chronic unpredictable stress (CUS), has been reported to induce dendritic remodeling in the basolateral amygdala (BLA). The BLA is also important for consolidation of anxiety in the elevated plus-maze, which is manifested as increased open-arm avoidance on reexposure to the maze. The authors found that CIS, unlike CUS, facilitated anxiety-like behavior in the plus-maze, and this occluded further increase in anxiety when CIS rats were reexposed to the maze 72 hr after the first trial. However, both CUS and control rats exhibited consolidation between trials. Thus, consolidation of anxiety may share common cellular mechanisms that also underlie chronic stress-induced structural plasticity in the amygdala. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Room‐Temperature Micropillar Growth of Lithium–Titanate–Carbon Composite Structures by Self‐Biased Direct Current Magnetron Sputtering for Lithium Ion Microbatteries

Here, an unidentified type of micropillar growth is described at room temperature during conventional direct‐current magnetron sputtering (DC‐MS) deposition from a Li₄Ti₅O₁₂+graphite sputter target under negative substrate bias and high operating pressure. These fabricated carbon–Li₂O–TiO₂ microstructures consisting of various Li₄Ti₅O₁₂/Li₂TiO₃/Li_x TiO₂ crystalline phases are demonstrated as an anode material in Li‐ion microbatteries. The described micropillar fabrication method is a low‐cost, substrate independent, single‐step, room‐temperature vacuum process utilizing a mature industrial complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS)‐compatible technology. Furthermore, tentative consideration is given to the effects of selected deposition parameters and the growth process, as based on extensive physical and chemical characterization. Additional studies are, however, required to understand the exact processes and interactions that form the micropillars. If this facile method is further extended to other similar metal oxide–carbon systems, it could offer alternative low‐cost fabrication routes for microporous high‐surface area materials in electrochemistry and microelectronics.     

An integrated scheme for process planning and scheduling in FMS

Process planning and scheduling are the two important manufacturing functions involved in any shop floor activities. As functional integration is essential to realize the benefits of computer integrated manufacturing, a scheme for integration of process planning and scheduling has been introduced in this paper. The proposed scheme can be implemented in a company with existing process planning and scheduling departments when multiple process plans remain available on the shop floor. It consists of two main modules, introduced in detail in this paper. They are process plan selection module and scheduling module.     

Extraction of road surface from mobile LiDAR data of complex road environment

Three-dimensional (3D) data of roadways are frequently used for extraction of detailed roadway information which is essential for several planning and engineering applications. Recent past has seen rapid growth in utilization of mobile LiDAR system (MLS) to acquire volumetric 3D data of roadway for this purpose. MLS data are capable of capturing highly detailed road information, which is useful for road maintenance and road safety operations. The existing literature shows that road environment complexity, unevenness, and absence of raised curb limit the extraction of road information from MLS data. It must be noted that a large number of roads, especially in developing world, are characterized by these complexities and thus raise the need for a technique which can work in these road environments. Considering the above, this paper proposes a method to extract road information, where road boundary is not geometrically well-defined. The proposed method is constructed using unstructured MLS data as input and does not require any other additional data. The method is divided into three major steps, that is, MLS data structuring and ground filtering, road surface point extraction, and road boundary refinement. The first step filters ground points from input MLS data, while the second step identifies road surface points from among the ground points. The second step is designed using specific characteristics of a road, that is, topology, surface roughness, and variation of point density. Third step refines road boundary. Three test sites, quite complex with heterogeneous characteristics, were used for demonstration of the proposed method. Road surfaces of these three roadways were accurately extracted without being affected by on-road objects and absence of raised curb. Average accuracy measures like completeness, correctness, and quality were found to be 93.8%, 98.3%, and 92.3%, respectively, in three test sites. Further, road boundaries of extracted road surfaces of these three test sites were refined at average completeness, correctness, and quality of 95.6%, 97.9%, and 93.7%, respectively. The proposed method has shown satisfactory performance for complex roadways having road section with and without raised curb, and has potential to be employed for such road environments, which are not uncommon. Proposed method was implemented on GPU-based parallel computing framework, which significantly saved the run time in processing of MLS data of three test sites.     

A review on manufacturing flexibility

Flexibility has become one of the most useful and necessary tool in today’s competitive markets. Manufacturing flexibility is widely recognised as a critical component to achieving a competitive advantage in the market place. It is one of the most sought after properties for manufacturing enterprises and has aroused considerable interest among researchers and professionals. This paper presents a review of various issues related with manufacturing flexibility specifically concept, need, dimensions, measurement, relationship among various dimensions, implementation aspect in a company and management of manufacturing flexibility and its aim to contribute to the conceptual systemisation of the material.     

Ligand concentration and reaction time controlled successive substitution of chloro and η6-benzene of di-μ-chlorobis{η6-benzene)dichlororuthenium(II)} with selenated Schiff base: Formation of half sandwich Ru(II) complex highly active catalyst for oxidation of alcohols

Schiff base (L) synthesized by reacting 2-methylthiobenzeldehyde with 2-(phenylseleno)ethylamine on reaction with di-μ-chlorobis{η⁶-benzene)dichloro-ruthenium(II)}(a) forms two type of species: (i) [Ru(L)₂][PF₆]₂ (1) [L:a = 4:1 and reaction time ～8 h] and (ii) [Ru(η⁶-C₆H₆)(L)][PF₆]₂ (2) [L:a = 2:1 and reaction time ～1 h]. This is first example in which chloro as well benzene ring both are successively substituted by controlling metal:ligand ratio and duration of reaction. The geometry around Ru in complex 1 is distorted octahedral. The 2 has a pseudo-octahedral half sandwich “piano-stool” disposition of ligands around Ru. The Ru–Se distances are 2.4683(10)–2.5082(7) ?. The proton and carbon-13 NMR spectra of L and its both complexes 1 and 2 authenticate them. The 2 shows high catalytic activity for oxidation of primary and secondary alcohols both (TON upto 9.6 × 10⁴; TOF upto 4.80 × 10⁴ h^?1).     

Modelling of hybrid energy system—Part I: Problem formulation and model development

A well designed hybrid energy system can be cost effective, has a high reliability and can improve the quality of life in remote rural areas. The economic constraints can be met, if these systems are fundamentally well designed, use appropriate technology and make use effective dispatch control techniques. The first paper of this tri-series paper, presents the analysis and design of a mixed integer linear mathematical programming model (time series) to determine the optimal operation and cost optimization for a hybrid energy generation system consisting of a photovoltaic array, biomass (fuelwood), biogas, small/micro-hydro, a battery bank and a fossil fuel generator. The optimization is aimed at minimizing the cost function based on demand and potential constraints. Further, mathematical models of all other components of hybrid energy system are also developed. This is the generation mix of the remote rural of India; it may be applied to other rural areas also.     

Low-Bit-Rate VQ: A Projection Based Approach

In this paper, we present an image decompression scheme that emphasizes visual perception rather than objective signal integrity between the orginal and the reconstructed images. The decoding scheme is developed in the context of vector quantization (VQ). The technique includes a projection based image recovery algorithm as part of the decoding process. The quantized blocks are classified into edge and shade blocks. The edge blocks are filtered using optimized templates while the shade blocks are left unaltered. The method can be considered as a constrained smoothing of edges, which does not cause any degradation to the shade (background) regions in the decoded image. The result is a reconstruction that is subjectively better than a simple look-up table decoding.     

A two-stage algorithm for ground filtering of airborne laser scanning data

ABSTRACT

A two-stage algorithm is proposed in this article for ground filtering of airborne laser scanning (ALS) data. Input ALS data are initially preprocessed for outliers removal. The first stage removes the non-ground objects from preprocessed ALS data based on the geometrical reasoning, which is applied over piecewise local neighbourhoods around selected points. The second stage retrieved the ground points falsely recognized as non-ground in the first stage using geometrical similarity of ground points in their surroundings. The proposed algorithm was tested and validated comprehensively using complex and heterogeneous landscapes of selected 10 ALS data sets and additional 15 International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing data samples. The ground points were filtered out in these data sets and data samples at average total error and kappa coefficient of 3.66% and 89.15%, respectively. The proposed algorithm performs satisfactorily in the complex terrain cases such as mixed vegetation and houses on sloping terrain, low vegetation, complex objects, low and small objects, scene border, and discontinuity. The proposed algorithm is straightforward and, consequently, computationally efficient. Thus, it has potential for wider use in industry.     

Design and development of five-channel interference filter polychromator for SST-1 Thomson scattering system

Five-channel interference filter polychromator is designed and fabricated for measuring electron temperature and density from Thomson scattered spectrum of SST-1 tokamak plasma. The instrument is designed for measuring electron temperature in the range of 20 eV-3 keV and electron density of 10¹⁸-10¹⁹ m⁻³. Optical ray tracing software, Zemax is used for simulating and optimizing the optical design. Each polychromator is a stand-alone unit with field programmable gate array (FPGA) based controller unit for easy operation, monitoring of the temperature variation of the instrument and communicating to a central personal computer (PC). The control unit also protects the avalanche photo diode (APD) detectors from damage due to high current flow, sets the slow channel gain and switches on the biasing power supply. Characteristics of the present polychromator design are relatively high signal throughput and variable bandwidth selection of filters combined with a stable, low cost and relatively simple configuration. Filter selection, arrangement order of filters, statistical error analysis, mechanical and optical design and estimation of electron temperature and density are discussed in this article. The fabricated filter polychromator is tested for its image quality, optical alignment, and integrated performance.