A review on graphene-based materials as versatile cancer biomarker sensors

Early detection of cancer has multitude of advantages like early diagnosis, reduced risk, ease in the treatment and follow up of recurrence. New and developed techniques are always under research to control the spreading malignancy. Graphene is an emerging star in biomedical field as it exhibits exceptional thermal, electrical and optical properties. Here, we review application of graphene-based materials in developing biosensing devices for the detection of different cancer biomarkers at concentrations down to sub-toxic levels. Different analytical methodologies chosen for sensing have been undertaken and their performance and background have been discussed. The trend of use of these methodologies can also be perceived from the graphical data presented.     

Retracted: Localizing and extracting filament distributions from microscopy images

Detailed quantitative measurements of biological filament networks represent a crucial step in understanding architecture and structure of cells and tissues, which in turn explain important biological events such as wound healing and cancer metastases. Confocal microscope images of biological specimens marked for different structural proteins constitute an important source for observing and measuring meaningful parameters of biological networks. Unfortunately, current efforts at quantitative estimation of architecture and orientation of biological filament networks from microscopy images are predominantly limited to visual estimation and indirect experimental inference. Here we describe a new method for localizing and extracting filament distributions from 2D confocal microscopy images. The method combines a filter‐based detection of pixels likely to contain a filament with a constrained reverse diffusion‐based approach for localizing the filaments centrelines. We show with qualitative and quantitative experiments, using both simulated and real data, that the new method can provide more accurate centreline estimates of filament in comparison to other approaches currently available. In addition, we show the algorithm is more robust with respect to variations in the initial filter‐based filament detection step often used. We demonstrate the application of the method in extracting quantitative parameters from an experiment that seeks to quantify the effects of carbon nanotubes on actin cytoskeleton in live HeLa cells. We show that their presence can disrupt the overall actin cytoskeletal organization in such cells.     

Commutative operand alignment for interconnect optimization in behavioural synthesis

Exploiting operator commutativity is used in high-level synthesis for reducing interconnections. The standard heuristic is to apply a succession of pairwise operand interchanges. We present a new and general characterization of the problem in terms of graph labelling. An integer linear programming formulation that yields globally optimum results, is presented. Next, a heuristic algorithm and an optimal graph decomposition and labelling algorithm is presented. While the latter finds an optimal solution, in practice, the heuristic approach usually discovers an optimum considerably faster. Experimental results are also presented.     

Medium range forecasting of power system load (energy) demand

The most popular Box-Jenkins method, generally used for short-term forecasting, is modified to make it suitable for medium and long-range forecasting. The non-stationarity and seasonality have been identified and, after removing trends and/or seasonality, the series are tested for stationarity by various methods. The series have been fitted for different auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) models in the multiplicative modes. The parameter values have been determined from autocorrelation function (a.c.f.) and partial auto-correlation function (p.a.c.f.) cor-relograms and the whiteness of the residue has been checked. A forecast has been made for energy demand for one year with the help of this model and the result has been compared with actual demand.     

Correlation between optical emission spectra and the process parameters of a 915 MHz microwave plasma CVD reactor used for depositing polycrystalline diamond coatings

In this paper, the hydrogen and hydrogen-methane mixed plasma have been generated inside a 33 cm diameter quartz bell jar with a low power (9 KW) and lower frequency 915 MHz microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition system. The reactor is being used for growing polycrystalline diamond (PCD) over large area (100 mm). The generated plasma is diagnosed by in situ optical emission spectroscopy method with wave length ranging from 200 to 900 nm. The effects of microwave power, chamber pressure and gas concentration on plasma characteristics have been studied in this work. Within the optical range, Balmer H _α , H _β , C₂swan band and CH lines have been detected at the wavelengths of 655.95, 485.7, 515.82 and 430.17 nm, respectively. It has been observed that for hydrogen plasma, the amount of transition from hydrogen atom inner shell 3 to 2 (H _α ) is almost constant with increasing microwave (MW) power (from 2000 to 2800 W) and pressure (from 15 to 30 Torr) initially, after that it increases with further increase of MW power and pressure, whereas, the transition from 4 to 2 (H _β ) is slowly increased with increasing MW power and pressure. For hydrogen-methane plasma, intensities of C₂ swan band, i.e., the transitions from D³π _g to A³π _μ energy levels, are also increased with the increasing microwave power and reactor pressure. It has been observed that the radicals present in the plasma are affected by variation of different reactor parameters like pressure, MW power, CH₄ concentration, etc.     

A model for retrieval of surface spectral reflectance from satellite radiance measurements using realistic atmospheric aerosol profiles

Abstract

An effort has been made to retrieve surface spectral reflectance from satellite radiance measurements. For this purpose, a simple cubic equation with surface reflectance as one of its roots has been derived. Besides satellite measured radiance, the other required quantities in the equation are calculated by using the actual solution of radiative transfer equation by a discrete ordinate method, taking into account the inhomogeneous aerosol distribution. The method has been tested for internal consistency by numerical simulations using realistic aerosol profiles. Finally, it has been tested with a Landsat image, giving good agreement with ground observations.     

Design of industrial regulators using expert systems approach

The applicability of the expert system approach to the design of industrial regulators is demonstrated. A brief overview of an expert system, CONEX, has been presented first. The result of applying CONEX to solve two industrial regulation problems is then discussed. The designs obtained by CONEX have been compared with those obtained through ‘non-expert-system’ approach.