An accurate multi-modal biometric identification system for person identification via fusion of face and finger print

World Wide Web - Internet of things (IoT) have entirely revolutionized the industry. However, the cyber-security of IoT enabled cyber-physical systems is still one of the main challenges. The...     

Design and fabrication of electro‐conductive polymer nanocomposites with mechanical and thermal resistance

The commencement of the industrial revolution paved the way for the fabrication of flexible polymers with high‐strength metalloceramics as novel materials of all kinds. Fabricating metal–ceramic/polymer conductive composites is one such dimension followed for the present research work making use of the properties of the three components. Electroless deposition, for permanent metallic coating, was performed to coat Al₂O₃ with metallic Cu followed by the inclusion of the Cu–Al₂O₃ filler into a poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) matrix. X‐ray diffraction and energy‐dispersive X‐ray studies predicted a prominent growth of metallic Cu crystallites onto Al₂O₃ with an increased average size and variation in elemental composition, respectively, when compared to pristine Al₂O₃. Morphological behaviour via scanning electron microscopy also envisioned uniform Cu coating onto Al₂O₃ and a homogeneous dispersion throughout the polymer matrix. When incorporated into PVC, electrical conductivity analysis highlighted a distinct variation in composite phases from insulating (7.14 × 10^?16 S cm^?1) to semiconducting behaviour (8.33 × 10^?5 S cm^?1) as a function of Cu–Al₂O₃ filler. Mechanical behaviour (tensile strength, Young's modulus and elongation at break) and thermal properties of the prepared composites also indicated a substantial improvement in material strength with Cu–Al₂O₃ incorporation. The enhanced electrical conductivity along with improved thermomechanical status with significant filler–matrix interaction permits the potential usage of such novel composites in a range of state‐of‐the‐art semiconducting electronic devices. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry     

Biosorption of copper(II) on prunus amygdalus shell: Characterization,biosorbent size analysis,kinetic, equilibrium and mechanistic studies

Deletion of Cu(II) from synthetic solution was investigated using ground Prunus Amygdalus shell (GPAS). FTIR revealed the probable functional groups for the binding of Cu(II). XRD revealed amorphous nature of the GPAS. SEM analysis furnished microscopic details of GPAS. GPAS size analysis was done using seven ASTM screens and three mean diameters, namely mass mean, volume mean and volume surface mean diameters. Kinetic study consisted of pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetics. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were used to elucidate the isotherm study of uptake of Cu(II) onto GPAS. Trend of Scatchard was used to verify the applicability of the Freundlich model, while D-R model helped to determine the nature of biosorption. A detailed analysis for rate controlling step was made. Various mean diameters were used to estimate the diffusion coefficient for the biosorption of Cu(II) onto GPAS.     

Accumulation of heavy metals in edible parts of vegetables irrigated with waste water and their daily intake to adults and children,District Mardan,Pakistan

Green vegetable crops irrigated with wastewater are highly contaminated with heavy metals and are the main source of human exposure to the contaminants. In this study accumulation of eight heavy metals (Cu, Ni, Zn, Cr, Fe, Mn, Co and Pb) in green vegetables like Allium cepa, Allium sativum, Solanum lycopersicum and Solanum melongena, irrigated with wastewater in Mardan are studied using Atomic Absorption spectrophotometer. The studied metals in vegetable grown on wastewater irrigated soil were significantly higher than those of tube well water irrigated soil and WHO/FAO permissible limits (P < 0.05). The most heavily contaminated vegetable was wastewater irrigated A. cepa, where the accumulation of Mn (28.05 mg kg^?1) in the edible parts was 50-fold greater than A. cepa irrigated with tube well water irrigated soil. It may be concluded that both adults and children consuming these vegetables grown in wastewater irrigated soil ingest significant amount of these metals and thus can cause serious health problems.     

CsPbI3 nanorods as the interfacial layer for high-performance,all-solution-processed self-powered photodetectors

Heterojunction is regarded as a crucial step toward realizing high-performance devices,particularly,forming gradient energy band between heterojunctions benefits self-powered photodetectors.There-fore,in this paper,the synthesis of CsPbI3 nanorods(NRs)and its application as the interfacial layer in high-performance,all-solution-processed self-powered photodetectors are presented.For the bilayer photodetector ITO/ZnO(100 nm)/PbS-TBAI(150 nm)/Au,a responsivity of 3.6 A/W with a specific detec-tivity of 9.8×1012 Jones was obtained under 0.1 mW/cm2 white light illumination at zero bias(i.e.in self-powered mode).Meanwhile,the photocurrent was enhanced to an On/Off current ratio of 10s at zero bias with an open circuit voltage of 0.53 V for trilayer photodetector ITO/ZnO(100 nm)/PbS-TBAI(150 nm)/CsPbI3(250 nm)/Au,in which the CsPbI3 NRs layer works as the interfacial layer.As a result,a specific detectivity of 4.5×1013 Jones with a responsivity of 11.12 A/W was obtained under 0.1 mW/cm2 white light illumination,as well as the rising/decaying time of 0.57 s/0.41 s with excellent stability and reproducibility upto four weeks in air.The enhanced-performance is ascribed to the mis-match bandgap between PbS-TBAI/CsPbI3 interface,which can suppress the carrier recombination and provide efficient transport passages for charge carriers.Thus,it provides a feasible and efficient method for high-performance photodetectors.     

Intelligent Cloud Based Load Balancing System Empowered with Fuzzy Logic

Cloud computing is seeking attention as a new computing paradigm to handle operations more efficiently and cost-effectively. Cloud computing uses dynamic resource provisioning and de-provisioning in a virtualized environment. The load on the cloud data centers is growing day by day due to the rapid growth in cloud computing demand. Elasticity in cloud computing is one of the fundamental properties, and elastic load balancing automatically distributes incoming load to multiple virtual machines. This work is aimed to introduce efficient resource provisioning and de-provisioning for better load balancing. In this article, a model is proposed in which the fuzzy logic approach is used for load balancing to avoid underload and overload of resources. A Simulator in Matlab is used to test the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed model. The simulation results have shown that our proposed intelligent cloud-based load balancing system empowered with fuzzy logic is better than previously published approaches.     

Synthesis,in vitro characterization,and anti-tumor effects of novel polystyrene-poly(amide-ether-ester-imide) co-polymeric micelles for delivery of docetaxel in breast cancer in Balb/C mice

Objective: The goal of the present work was to make novel co-polymeric micellar carriers for the delivery of docetaxel (DTX).

Significance: Co-polymeric micelles can not only solubilize DTX and eliminate the need for toxic surfactants to dissolve it, but also cause passive targeting of the drug to the tumor and reduce its toxic side effects.

Methods: Poly(styrene-maleic acid) (SMA) was conjugated to poly (amide-ether-ester-imide)-poly ethylene glycol (PAEEI-PEG). Copolymer synthesis was proven by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and ¹H-nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H-NMR). The SMA-PAEEI-PEG micelles loaded with DTX were prepared and their critical micelle concentration (CMC), zeta potential, particle size, entrapment efficiency, and their release efficiency were studied. MCF-7 and MDA-MB231 breast cancer cells were used to evaluate the cellular uptake and cytotoxicity of the micelles. The antitumor activity of the DTX-loaded nanomicelles was measured in Balb/c mice.

Results: The FTIR and HNMR spectroscopy confirmed successful conjugation of SMA and PAEEI-PEG. The drug loading efficiency was in the range of 34.01–72.75% and drug release lasted for 120?h. The CMC value of the micelles was affected by the SMA/PAEEI-PEG ratio and was in the range of 29.85–14.28?µg/ml. The DTX-loaded micelles showed five times more cytotoxicity than the free drug. The DTX loaded micelles were more effective in tumor growth suppression in vivo and the animals showed an enhanced rate of survival.

Conclusion: The results show that the SMA-PAEEI-PEG micelles of DTX could potentially provide a suitable parenteral formulation with more stability, higher cytotoxicity, and improved antitumor activity.     

Decentralized robust output feedback control for control affine nonlinear interconnected systems

In this paper, a scheme for decentralized robust control for control affine nonlinear interconnected systems using linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) is presented. Based on the Lyapunov theory, sufficient conditions for closed-loop stability of a nonlinear system, reference input tracking, and disturbance attenuation over its operating-range are obtained. Then, achieving these sufficient conditions are formulated as local LMI optimization problems. By solving the appropriately defined local problems, provided the obtained sufficient conditions are satisfied, the closed-loop stability, input tracking, and disturbance attenuation over the operating-range of the system are guaranteed. The designed controller is linear whose implementation is straightforward. An example is given to illustrate the proposed methodology.