On the uniformity of film thickness on rotating spherical substrates on a planar work holder

Curves for the uniformity in film thickness on spherical substrates are drawn for various geometries. The optimum source-to-substrate height for maximum uniformity of the film thickness is determined. These data are approximated to achieve uniform thickness on a large number of small planar substrates loaded on a large spherical substrate holder, the appropriate geometry being selected on the basis of the radius of curvature of the substrate holder.     

From Contracts to E-Contracts: Modeling and Enactment

Contracts are complex to understand, represent and process electronically. Usually, contracts involve various entities such as parties, activities and clauses. An e-contract is a contract modeled, specified, executed and enacted (controlled and monitored) by a software system (such as a workflow system). Workflows are used to automate business processes that govern adherence to the e-contracts. E-contracts can be mapped to inter-related workflows, which have to be specified carefully to satisfy the contract requirements. Most workflow models do not have the capabilities to handle complex inter/intra relationships among entities in e-contracts. An e-contract does not adhere to activity/task oriented workflow processes, thus generating a gap between a conceptual model of e-contract and workflow. In this paper, we describe conceptual modeling of e-contracts and present a business process model for e-contract enactment. The enactment of e-contracts necessitates dynamic generation and initiation of workflows during the e-contract execution, besides the static workflows. ER^EC business process model facilitates an integrated approach to e-contracts enactment. Our methodology is illustrated by means of a case study conducted using Financial Messaging Solution contract for banking transactions.     

PEEC: a channel-adaptive feedback-based error

Reliable transmission is a challenging task over wireless LANs since wireless links are known to be susceptible to errors. Although the current IEEE802.11 standard ARQ error control protocol performs relatively well over channels with very low bit error rates (BERs), this performance deteriorates rapidly as the BER increases. This paper investigates the problem of reliable transmission in a contention free wireless LAN and introduces a packet embedded error control (PEEC) protocol, which employs packet-embedded parity symbols instead of ARQ-based retransmission for error recovery. Specifically, depending on receiver feedback, PEEC adaptively estimates channel conditions and administers the transmission of (data and parity) symbols within a packet. This enables successful recovery of both new data and old unrecovered data from prior transmissions. In addition to theoretically analyzing PEEC, the performance of the proposed scheme is extensively analyzed over real channel traces collected on 802.11b WLANs. We compare PEEC performance with the performance of the IEEE802.il standard ARQ protocol as well as contemporary protocols such as enhanced ARQ and the hybrid ARQ/FEC. Our analysis and experimental simulations show that PEEC outperforms all three competing protocols over a wide range of actual 802.11b WLAN collected traces. Finally, the design and implementation of PEEC using an adaptive low-density-parity-check (A-LDPC) decoder is presented.     

Development and quality evaluation of cooked buffalo tripe rolls

Cooked buffalo tripe rolls (BTRs) were prepared from a combination of buffalo tripe (75%) and buffalo meat (25%) by using mincing (M-BTR) and blade tenderization (BT-BTR). They were stored at 4 ± 1 °C and studied for various physico-chemical, sensory and microbial qualities. Significantly (P < 0.01) higher pH, shear force value, diameter shrinkage and fat percentage were observed in M-BTR and BT-BTR than control product (100% minced buffalo meat). The product yield and drip loss percentage were significantly (P < 0.01) lower in BT-BTR, whereas drip loss percentage was significantly higher in M-BTR compared to controls and BT-BTR. No significant change was noticed in protein and moisture content between the different products. All physico-chemical parameters and sensory evaluation scores of M-BTR were comparable with control. Significant (P < 0.01) increases were noticed in pH, moisture content, thiobarbituric acid and tyrosine values with increasing storage period, whereas the extract release volume decreased significantly. All microbial counts and sensory evaluation scores were within the acceptable limits until 15 days of storage at 4 ± 1 °C in low-density polyethylene pouches stored aerobically.     

Preparation and characterization of a protein hydrolysate from an oilseed flour mixture

A novel protein hydrolysate was prepared from the mixture of oilseed flours (soybean, sesame and peanut) and determined physicochemical & functional properties along with comparison of individual oilseed flour hydrolysate of soybean. Mixed flour obtained from oilseed flours viz. soybean, sesame and peanut by using calculated amounts in the ratio of 1.1:1.7:0.7, respectively was used as a starting raw material having balanced amino acid profile. Protein hydrolysates were prepared from mixed flour and soybean flour by a double enzyme treatment method to a level of 40% degree of hydrolysis. The dried protein hydrolysate prepared from the mixed flour had 72% crude protein. This protein was characterized by gel filtration chromatography and SDS-PAGE. Comparison of the amino acid profile of the protein hydrolysate from mixed flours and soyabean flours showed a significant increase in the former one with respect to amino acid contents usually deficient of single oilseed flour hydrolysate. The product is creamish yellow in colour and had a solubility of >90% over a wide pH range of 2–10. The mixed flour protein hydrolysate showed better functional attributes such as foaming, as compared to that from soybean flour alone.     

Enhancement of nonlinear optical and thermal properties of polyurethanes by modifying the chromophores with fused heterocyclic and pyrimidine rings

This article describes the synthesis of substituted triazolo[3,4‐b]‐thiadiazole heterocycles based nonlinear optical (NLO) responsive chromophores. To enhance the NLO properties of the chromophores, the pyrimidine ring was introduced with an appropriate π‐bonding. With these chromophores, different series of polyurethanes were prepared by condensation with tolylene‐2,4‐diisocyanate and 3,3′‐dimethoxy‐4,4′‐biphenylene diisocyanate. The structure of the resulting chromophores and polyurethanes was confirmed using Fourier transform infrared, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, and Carbon Hydrogen Nitrogen (CHN) analyzer. The inherent viscosities (η_inh) of the polyurethanes measured by Ubbelohde viscometer were in the range of 0.2324–0.2760 dl/g. Thermal behavior of the polyurethanes was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. The molecular orientation in polyurethane films was induced by a corona poling, and this was ascertained using ultraviolet‐visible spectrophotometer and atomic force microscope. The thicknesses and refractive indices of thin films were determined by an Ellipsometer. Polyurethanes exhibited excellent solubility in most of the common organic solvents. The second harmonic generation (SHG) coefficients (d₃₃) of the poled polyurethanes ranged from 63.20 and 95.32 pm/V at 532 nm. None of the polyurethanes showed SHG decay below 100°C, and retained 95% of the signal even up to 500 h. The resulting enhanced NLO efficiency and longer temporal stability make these polyurethanes as promising candidates for photonic devices. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 59:500–509, 2019. © 2018 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Survey of data-selection methods in statistical machine translation

Statistical machine translation has seen significant improvements in quality over the past several years. The single biggest factor in this improvement has been the accumulation of ever larger stores of data. We now find ourselves, however, the victims of our own success, in that it has become increasingly difficult to train on such large sets of data, due to limitations in memory, processing power, and ultimately, speed (i.e. data-to-models takes an inordinate amount of time). Moreover, the training data has a wide quality spectrum. A variety of methods for data cleaning and data selection have been developed to address these issues. Each of these methods employs a search or filtering algorithm to select a subset of the data, given a defined set of feature functions. In this paper we provide a comparative overview of research in this area based on application scenario, feature functions and search method.     

Design of a Compressive Sensing Based Fall detection System for Elderly Using WSN

Wireless Personal Communications - Recent researches have pointed out that one third persons are aged 65 and above requires special health care. As the number of elderly person is increasing, home...     

Micromachining of biocompatible polymer substrate for cancer cell separation applications

Isolation of circulating tumor cells from human blood plays a significant role in diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The most effective way of isolating cells is the use of lab on-chip microfluidic devices. This paper presents the development of cyclic olefin polymer membrane with an array of micropores for separating circulating tumour cells using ultrashort laser ablation process. Initially, the substrate is tested for its cell viability. The laser Fluence is varied from 1–12 J/cm² and its observed that at a fluence of 2.5 J/cm² the desired diameter of 12 μm with ablation depth of 1 μm is obtained which is necessary for CTC separation. The treated and untreated structure is characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectrometer and it shows that the treated region shows no significant shift in the spectrum after femtosecond laser ablation.