Preparation of iodine containing quaternary amine methacrylate copolymers and their contact killing antimicrobial properties

A novel quaternary amine methacrylate monomer (QAMA) was synthesized by amination of dimethacrylate with piperazine followed by its quaternization using an alkyl iodide. Copolymerization of QAMA with 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate was carried out by free radical bulk polymerization technique at room temperature using ammonium persulfate and N,N,N′,N′‐tetramethyl ethylenediamine as a redox initiator. The monomer as well as copolymers was characterized by FTIR and ¹H NMR spectral studies. Thermal and physical characteristics of copolymers of varying compositions of QAMA were evaluated by thermogravimetric analysis, differential calorimetry, contact angle and scanning electron microscopy. The antibacterial activity of the synthesized quaternary amine dimethacrylate copolymers against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus was studied by zone of inhibition and colony count method. QAMA copolymers showed broad‐spectrum contact killing antibacterial properties without releasing any active agent as checked by iodide‐selective ion meter. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 1038–1044, 2006     

A free space frequency‐time‐domain technique for electromagnetic characterization of materials using reflection‐based measurement

In this report, a free space frequency‐time‐domain technique is presented for characterizing the electrical properties and thickness of the sample using multiple reflections and fabry‐perot resonance phenomenon. The retrieval of constitutive electromagnetic parameters of the sample has been carried out by comparing the measured reflection coefficient data from the sample at two different incident angles. The relative permittivity as well as relative permeability along with the thickness of different samples viz., beryllia, silicon, and plexiglass have been evaluated with high accuracy in the frequency range 1 to 15 GHz. The method is also experimentally validated by successfully reconstructing the unknown material properties of two different samples. The unique advantage of this method lies in non‐requirement of any prior knowledge of the sample's thickness for measuring the complex relative dielectric constant as well as relative permeability of the sample. To determine the electromagnetic properties of the sample, the sole knowledge of reflection coefficient data are needed. Moreover, the method does not involve any additional measurement for the reference calibration. The simple, cost‐effective proposed scheme is quite useful in many applications like accurate determination of signal strength in indoor wireless communication, through wall imaging, food industry, and so on.     

Liver disorder detection using variable- neighbor weighted fuzzy K nearest neighbor approach

The human liver disorder is a genetic problem due to the habituality of alcohol or effect by the virus. It can lead to liver failure or liver cancer, if not been detected in initial stage. The aim of the proposed method is to detect the liver disorder in initial stage using liver function test dataset. The problem with many real-world datasets including liver disease diagnosis data is class imbalanced. The word imbalance refers to the conditions that the number of observations belongs to one class having more or less than the other class(es). Traditional K- Nearest Neighbor (KNN) or Fuzzy KNN classifier does not work well on the imbalanced dataset because they treat the neighbor equally. The weighted variant of Fuzzy KNN assign a large weight for the neighbor belongs to the minority class data and relatively small weight for the neighbor belongs to the majority class to resolve the issues with data imbalance. In this paper, Variable- Neighbor Weighted Fuzzy K Nearest Neighbor Approach (Variable-NWFKNN) is proposed, which is an improved variant of Fuzzy-NWKNN. The proposed Variable-NWFKNN method is implemented on three real-world imbalance liver function test datasets BUPA, ILPD from UCI and MPRLPD. The Variable-NWFKNN is compared with existing NWKNN and Fuzzy-NWKKNN methods and found accuracy 73.91% (BUPA Dataset), 77.59% (ILPD Dataset) and 87.01% (MPRLPD Dataset). Further, TL_RUS method is used for preprocessing and it improved the accuracy as 78.46% (BUPA Dataset), 78.46% (ILPD Dataset) and 95.79% (MPRLPD Dataset).

     

Multi-objective Optimization Based Recursive Feature Elimination for Process Monitoring

Neural Processing Letters - Process monitoring helps to estimate the quality of the end products, equipment health parameters, and operational reliability of chemical processes. This is an area in...     

Entropy based spatial domain image watermarking and its performance analysis

Digital image watermarking technique based on LSB Substitution and Hill Cipher is presented and examined in this paper. For better imperceptibility watermark is inserted in the spatial domain. Further the watermark is implanted in the Cover Image block having the highest entropy value. To improve the security of the watermark hill cipher encryption is used. Both subjective and objective image quality assessment technique has been used to evaluate the imperceptibility of the proposed scheme.Further, the perceptual perfection of the watermarked pictures accomplished in the proposed framework has been contrasted and some state-of-art watermarking strategies. Test results demonstrates that the displayed method is robust against different image processing attacks like Salt and Peppers, Gaussian filter attack, Median filter attacks, etc.

     

Interactive sonification to assist children with autism during motor therapeutic interventions

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing - Interactive sonification is an effective tool used to guide individuals when practicing movements. Little research has shown the use of interactive sonification...     

高速公路施工区车辆强制换道耗时生存模型

为研究高速公路施工区车辆强制换道行为及其影响因素,采用生存分析中的半参数分析方法建立强制换道耗时的乘法风险率模型.通过无人机拍摄采集高速公路施工区的车辆换道耗时及其影响因素数据,最终确立换道耗时Cox比例风险模型,对换道耗时数据进行Cox回归建模分析.结果表明:近77%的换道车辆在10 s内完成换道;小型车和中型车经养护施工区的换道耗时未发现显著性差别;对于相同的换道耗时,平峰期的累积生存率明显低于高峰期和过渡时期,而高峰期的累积生存率最高.建立的强制换道耗时生存模型可有效的定量分析车型和交通时段对高速公路施工区车辆换道行为的影响,可为高速公路施工区交通管理控制及车辆换道行为建模及仿真奠定一定的理论基础.     

Dynamic effects during sinter forging of axi-symmetric hollow disc preforms

The present paper reports an investigation on the dynamic effects during sinter forging of axi-symmetric hollow disc preforms at room temperature. The preforms have been prepared by compacting the copper metal powder within the closed-cavity circular compaction dies and experiments have been conducted on computer-controlled hydraulic press to investigate the effect of die velocity, i.e. dynamic effects on various deformation characteristics, e.g. flow of material, densification during dry and lubricated interfacial friction conditions, bulging and strains at preform-free surfaces and die loads. The theoretical analysis for die pressure distribution, average die load and bulged profile by ‘upper bound’ approach has been presented. The identification of critical sinter-forging characteristics and their interrelationships are the cornerstones of present study. The effect of die velocity along with other deformation characteristics on die load and inertia energy dissipation has been investigated critically using ‘design of experiment’ technique and the important interactions have been displayed graphically using ‘response surface methodology’ technique. The study on dynamic effects revealed that die velocity is the most critical factor during sinter-forging operations, especially at higher die speeds and hence, inertia energy must be considered during its analysis. The experimental and theoretical results have been found in close agreement with each other and it is expected that the work will be highly useful for the assessment of various deformation characteristics during processing of sintered materials.     

The influence of chromium on mechanical properties of austempered ductile cast iron

An investigation was carried out to examine the influence of microstructure and chromium on the tensile properties and plane strain fracture toughness of austempered ductile cast iron (ADI). The investigation also examined the growth kinetics of ferrite in these alloys. Compact tension and round cylindrical tensile specimens were prepared from ductile cast iron with Cr as well as without Cr. These specimens were then given four different heat treatments to produce four different microstructures. Tensile tests and fracture toughness tests were carried out as per ASTM standards E-8 and E-399. The crack growth mechanism during fracture toughness tests was also determined. The test results indicate that yield strength, tensile strength, and fracture toughness of ADI increases with an increase in the volume fractions of ferrite, and the fracture toughness reaches a peak when the volume fractions of the ferrite are approximately 60% in these alloys. The Cr addition was found to reduce the fracture toughness of ADI at lower hardness levels (<40 HRC); at higher hardness levels (≥40 HRC), the effect of chromium on the fracture toughness was negligible. The crack growth mechanism was found to be a combination of quasi-cleavage and microvoid coalescences, and the crack trajectories connect the graphite nodules along the way.     

Oxidation behavior of 2.25Cr-1Mo steel with prior tempering at different temperatures

The oxidation behavior of a normalized 2.25Cr-1Mo steel tempered previously for 10 hr at different temperatures between 873 and 1023 K has been studied up to a maximum duration of 1000 hr in air at 773–973 K. The oxidation resistance of the steel was found to decrease significantly with the temperature of tempering. Tempering of this steel is reported to cause microstructural changes involving precipitation of Cr as carbides and a decrease in the effective (free) Cr contents, that could influence the oxidation resistance of the Cr-containing alloys. Relative compositions across the thickness of the oxide scales, as analyzed by SEM/EDX and SIMS, suggest that a less Cr-rich (and less protective) and thicker scale on the steel formed because previous tempering caused extensive depletion of free Cr.