Identification of dry and wet soil conditions using TRMM/TMI brightness temperatures and potential for drought monitoring

In this study we present a methodology for monitoring drought conditions directly from microwave brightness temperature observations. Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM)/TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) 10.7 GHz brightness temperatures were analysed along with TRMM merged rainfall products during June–August for 4 years to depict the spatial and temporal extent of dry and wet soil conditions. Comparison of brightness temperature anomalies with rainfall anomalies clearly shows the contrasting features of drought year 2002 and normal monsoon year 2001.     

Impact of variational assimilation of MODIS thermodynamic profiles in the simulation of western disturbance

The present study was carried out to examine the impact of temperature and humidity profiles from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the numerical simulation of western disturbance (WD) using the three-dimensional variational (3D-Var) assimilation technique in the nonhydrostatic version of the Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research (PSU–NCAR) fifth-generation Mesoscale Model (MM5). The WD that affected northwest India during 8–11 February 2007 was chosen for the numerical simulations. The results show that there are large differences between the initial meteorological fields from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) analysis (without satellite data; control experiment (CNT)) and the optimal initial conditions (with MODIS data; experiment (EXP)). The optimal initial condition showed that MM5 3D-Var had produced an analysis that fit the MODIS observations very well. The assimilation of the MODIS temperature and moisture profiles did not show much impact on the track of the WD but, more importantly, it showed evidence of impacting the rainfall intensity prediction by retarding the incorrect prediction of intense rainfall. The root mean square difference (RMSD) in predicted rainfall from EXP was lower than from CNT. The assimilation of MODIS data also showed a positive impact on the temperature prediction.     

Activity measurements of bivalent cations singly and in mixture with resin membrane electrodes in aquo-organic media

Cation exchange resin membranes were used as electrodes for activity measurements in aquo-propanolic media for bivalent ions, e.g., Ca, Mg, Cu, Zn, either singly or in a mixture of two. From the results it may be concluded that ion exchange resin membranes can be satisfactorily utilized for measurement of these ion in such media when present singly or in a mixture.     

Enhanced plasmonic behavior of bimetallic (Ag-Au) multilayered spheres

In this article we study the plasmonic behavior of some stable, highly biocompatible bimetallic metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) and double concentric nanoshell (DCN) structures. By simply switching the material of the inner structure from Au to Ag, the intensity of their surface plasmon resonance could be increased in the optical transparency region of the human tissues up to 20 and 60 percent for the MDM and DCN, respectively, while the biocompatibility is retained. The obtained results indicate that these novel structures could be highly suitable for surface enhanced Raman scattering and photothermal cancer therapy.     

Flexible and free-standing films containing cobalt-doped nanocrystalline zinc oxide dispersed in polyvinylidene fluoride matrix: synthesis and characterization

Polymer Bulletin - Synthesis of free-standing flexible Co-ZnO/PVDF composite films is realized by sol–gel technique. Modulation of the optical and microstructural properties of the above...     

A Voltage Phasor Based Fault-classification Method for Phasor Measurement Unit Only State Estimator Output

Abstract—This article presents a fault-classification method for transmission lines based on voltage phasors using classification and regression trees. The proposed method is intended to aid system operators in understanding the outputs of a phasor measurement unit only state estimator. Faults are classified into four categories when the estimator is positive sequence and into ten categories when the estimator is three phase. The fault data are generated in PowerWorld® (PowerWorld Corporation, Champaign, IL, USA) and DSA Tools® (Powertech Labs Inc., Surrey, British Columbia, Canada). The pre-fault state consists of a variety of operating conditions and loading angles of faulted lines. The fault condition comprises different fault types, fault locations, fault impedances, and fault incidence angles. Fault classification is done using MATLAB® (The MathWorks, Natick, Massachusetts, USA).The approach is successfully tested on the IEEE-118 bus system. The results demonstrate that the technique developed here is effective and robust, irrespective of the pre-fault and fault conditions.     

Very low-noise ENG amplifier system using CMOS technology.

In this paper, we describe the design and testing of a system for recording electroneurographic signals (ENG) from a multielectrode nerve cuff (MEC). This device, which is an extension of the conventional nerve signal recording cuff, enables ENG to be classified by action potential velocity. In addition to electrical measurements, we provide preliminary in vitro data obtained from frogs that demonstrate the validity of the technique for the first time. Since typical ENG signals are extremely small, on the order of 1 1 microV, very low-noise, high-gain amplifiers are required. The ten-channel system we describe was realized in a 0.8 microm CMOS technology and detailed measured results are presented. The overall gain is 10 000 and the total input-referred root mean square (rms) noise in a bandwidth 1 Hz-5 kHZ is 291 nV. The active area is 12 mm(2) and the power consumption is 24 mW from +/-2.5 V power supplies.     

Mechanical,electrical, and thermal expansion properties of carbon nanotube-based silver and silver-palladium alloy composites

The mechanical, electrical, and thermal expansion properties of carbon nanotube（CNT）-based silver and silver–palladium（10：1, w/w） alloy nanocomposites are reported. To tailor the properties of silver, CNTs were incorporated into a silver matrix by a modified molecular level-mixing process. CNTs interact weakly with silver because of their non-reactive nature and lack of mutual solubility. Therefore, palladium was utilized as an alloying element to improve interfacial adhesion. Comparative microstructural characterizations and property evaluations of the nanocomposites were performed. The structural characterizations revealed that decorated type-CNTs were dispersed, embedded, and anchored into the silver matrix. The experimental results indicated that the modification of the silver and silver–palladium nanocomposite with CNT resulted in increases in the hardness and Young＇s modulus along with concomitant decreases in the electrical conductivity and the coefficient of thermal expansion（CTE）. The hardness and Young＇s modulus of the nanocomposites were increased by 30%？40% whereas the CTE was decreased to 50%-60% of the CTE of silver. The significantly improved CTE and the mechanical properties of the CNT-reinforced silver and silver–palladium nanocomposites are correlated with the intriguing properties of CNTs and with good interfacial adhesion between the CNTs and silver as a result of the fabrication process and the contact action of palladium as an alloying element.     

Hybrid neural network model for reconstruction of occluded regions in multi-gait scenario

In real-time situations such as airports, railway stations, and shopping complexes, etc. people walk in a group, and such a group of walking persons termed as multi-gait (MG). In these situations, occlusion is a serious issue that affects gait recognition performance. This issue of occlusion of body regions affects the extraction of gait features for the correct recognition of an object. The objective of this article is to reconstruct occluded regions at the preprocessing stage, which can be used for human recognition in the MG scenario. The article is divided into two folds. Firstly, we segment five regions of interest such as ankle, knee, wrist, elbow, and shoulder. We propose a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based neural network (NN) called hybrid NN to solve this problem. The performance of the proposed model is validated on our constructed dataset (SMVDU-MG), considering two view directions i.e. lateral (left to right) and oblique (left to right diagonal). Experimental results show that the proposed model gives better performance compared to an artificial neural network and alternating least square (ALS) method based on mean square error (MSE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) as a performance measure function.

     

Two‐echelon manufacturer–retailer supply chain strategies with price,quality, and promotional effort sensitive demand

This study deals with the two‐layer supply chain model of one manufacturer and one retailer for a single commodity where market demand is assumed to be dependent on selling price, quality of the products, and promotional effort of the retailer. We investigate the behavior of the supply chain under centralized, manufacturer Stackelberg, conditional manufacturer Stackelberg, retailer Stackelberg, conditional retailer Stackelberg, and vertical Nash model structure. The nature of the above models provides great insights to a firm's manager for achieving optimal strategy in a competitive marketing system. Quite often, not all items produced in a firm are of perfect quality; some are perfect (conforming) quality and others are imperfect (nonconforming) quality. The nonconforming products are sold in a secondary shop or by other retailers. The procurement cost of finished products depends on the quality of the products due to more investment in advanced technology, better raw materials, and skilled labor, etc. The warranty policy for the products is also imposed to attract the customers to buy more. Here, both members (manufacturer and retailer) jointly share the cost of the warranty policy. The objective of this paper is to determine the optimal selling price and promotional effort of the retailer, while the optimal wholesale price and quality of the products are determined by the manufacturer so that the above strategies are maximized. Finally, numerical examples with sensitivity analysis of the key parameters are illustrated to investigate the proposed model.