Silver nanoparticles as an efficient,heterogeneous and recyclable catalyst for synthesis of β-enaminones

A simple and efficient protocol has been developed for synthesis of β-enaminones and β-enamino esters catalyzed by silver nanoparticles as a novel, heterogeneous, moisture stable and recyclable catalyst under mild reaction conditions. The reaction was optimized with respect to various parameters such as catalyst screening, catalyst loading, different solvents and temperature. The silver nanoparticle exhibited excellent activity and the methodology is applicable to diverse substrates providing good to excellent yields of desired products. The catalyst was recycled for three consecutive cycles without any significant loss in activity.     

Adaptive fuzzy logic load frequency control of multi-area power system

Based on indirect adaptive fuzzy control technique, a new load frequency control (LFC) scheme for multi-area power system is proposed. The power systems under study have the characterization of unknown parameters. Local load frequency controller is designed using the frequency and tie-line power deviations of each area. In the controller design, the approximation capabilities of fuzzy systems are employed to identify the unknown functions, formulate suitable adaptive control law and updating algorithms for the controller parameters. It is proved that the proposed controller ensures the boundedness of all variables of the closed-loop system and the tracking error. Moreover, in the proposed controller an auxiliary control signal is introduced to attenuate the effect of fuzzy approximation error and to mitigate the effect of external disturbance on the tracking performance. Simulation results of a three-area power system are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed LFC and show its superiority over a classical PID controller.     

Comparison of performances of several FACTS devices using Cuckoo search algorithm optimized 2DOF controllers in multi-area AGC

This paper presents automatic generation control (AGC) of three unequal area thermal systems with single reheat turbine and appropriate generation rate constraints (GRC) in each area. A two degree of freedom (2DOF) controller called 2DOF-integral plus double derivative (2DOF-IDD) is proposed for the first time in AGC as secondary controller. Secondary controller gains and other parameters are optimized simultaneously using a more recent evolutionary computational technique called Cuckoo Search algorithm (CS). The system dynamic responses for various 2DOF controllers such as 2DOF-PI, 2DOF-PID, and 2DOF-DD are compared. Investigations reveal that responses with 2DOF-IDD are better than others. Performance of several FACTS devices such as Static synchronous series compensator (SSSC), Thyristor controlled series capacitor (TCSC), Thyristor controlled phase shifter (TCPS), and Interline power flow controller (IPFC) in presence of 2DOF-IDD controller are compared and found that the dynamic responses with IPFC are better than others. For the first time in AGC, a case study is performed with placement of IPFC and observed that IPFC present in all three areas of the system performs better. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the CS optimized 2DOF-IDD controller parameters obtained in presence of IPFC in all three areas at nominal condition of loading and size of step load perturbation (SLP) are robust and need not be reset with wide changes in system loading and SLP. Also, the comparison of convergence curve of various algorithms reveals that CS algorithm converges much faster than others.     

Automatic classification with concatenation of deep and handcrafted features of histological images for breast carcinoma diagnosis

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The second leading cause of death from cancer among women is breast cancer. In order to prevent avoidable deaths, early detection is extremely necessary....     

A study on fuzzy clustering for magnetic resonance brain image segmentation using soft computing approaches

This paper presents a novel idea of intracranial segmentation of magnetic resonance (MR) brain image using pixel intensity values by optimum boundary point detection (OBPD) method. The newly proposed (OBPD) method consists of three steps. Firstly, the brain only portion is extracted from the whole MR brain image. The brain only portion mainly contains three regions–gray matter (GM), white matter (WM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). We need two boundary points to divide the brain pixels into three regions on the basis of their intensity. Secondly, the optimum boundary points are obtained using the newly proposed hybrid GA–BFO algorithm to compute final cluster centres of FCM method. For a comparison, other soft computing techniques GA, PSO and BFO are also used. Finally, FCM algorithm is executed only once to obtain the membership matrix. The brain image is then segmented using this final membership matrix. The key to our success is that we have proposed a technique where the final cluster centres for FCM are obtained using OBPD method. In addition, reformulated objective function for optimization is used. Initial values of boundary points are constrained to be in a range determined from the brain dataset. The boundary points violating imposed constraints are repaired. This method is validated by using simulated T1-weighted MR brain images from IBSR database with manual segmentation results. Further, we have used MR brain images from the Brainweb database with additional noise levels to validate the robustness of our proposed method. It is observed that our proposed method significantly improves segmentation results as compared to other methods.     

Toward secure software-defined networks against distributed denial of service attack

The Journal of Supercomputing - The newly emerged software-defined networking (SDN) paradigm provides a flexible network management by decoupling the network control logic from the data plane,...     

Application of modular multilevel converter for AGC in an interconnected power system

This article demonstrates the maiden application of a new Modular Multi level Converter based Series Compensation (MMCS) technique for multi area Automatic Generation Control (AGC) interconnected system. Primarily MMCS has been modeled in state space form and proposes an appropriate location in AGC to obtain the better dynamic responses in frequency, tie-line power and individual generating power; further to quench the oscillation for sudden changes in load. The system has been studied the operation of MMCS and investigated with Generation Rate Constraints (GRC) of reheat turbines used in system. Further, selection of suitable integral and proportional–integral controller gain has been investigated with Integral Square Error (ISE) technique and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique for step load perturbation (SLP) in area-1 with performance index as its objective function by making control parameters as variables. System with MMCS is compared with out MMCS and observed performance has been increased and results are explored.     

Load frequency control of power system under deregulated environment using optimal firefly algorithm

In this paper, a novel Firefly Algorithm (FA) optimized hybrid fuzzy PID controller with derivative Filter (PIDF) is proposed for Load Frequency Control (LFC) of multi area multi source system under deregulated environment by considering the physical constraints such as Generation Rate Constraint (GRC) and Governor Dead Band (GDB) nonlinearity. As the effectiveness of FA depends on algorithm control parameters such as randomization, attractiveness, absorption coefficient and number of fireflies are systematically investigated, the control parameters of FA are tuned by carrying out multiple runs of algorithm for each control parameter variation then the best FA control parameters are suggested. Additionally, the superiority of the FA is demonstrated by comparing the results with tuned Genetic Algorithm (GA). To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, time domain simulations are carried out considering different contracted scenarios and the comparative results are presented. Further, sensitivity analysis is performed by varying the system parameters and operating load conditions. It is observed from the simulation results that the designed controllers are robust and the optimum gains of proposed controller need not be reset even if the system is subjected to wide variation in loading condition and system parameters. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is evaluated under random step load disturbance.     

Process modelling of dimethyl ether production from Victorian brown coal—Integrating coal drying,gasification and synthesis processes

Power plants using Victorian brown coal operate at low efficiency. Being reactive and spontaneously combustible, dried brown coals cannot be exported either. Synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) is one option for the production of liquid fuel, an exportable product for power generation and transportation. This paper presents a steady-state process model for DME production using brown coal including drying, gasification and DME synthesis. The yield of the DME was a maximum for H₂ to CO molar ratio of 1.41 and 0.81 at the gasifier outlet and the DME reactor inlet respectively. A process efficiency of 32% and CO₂ emission of 2.91 kg/kg of DME was obtained. Improved yield of DME is achieved when CO₂ is removed from the fuel gas prior to feeding to the synthesis reactor. Integration of waste heat and design of appropriate catalyst for gasification and DME synthesis can result in further improvements in the process.     

Semitransparent,thin metal grid-based hybrid electrodes for polymer solar cells

A conducting polymer/thin Au grid hybrid electrode was investigated to replace an indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode in polymer solar cells (PSCs). Semitransparent, thin Au films were combined with transparent conducting PEDOT:PTS films (70 nm thickness, ~90% of transmission), to form Au grid/conducting polymer hybrid electrodes. The mixed self-assembled monolayers coated on the Au grids and glass substrate provided uniform and adherent coating of conducting polymer on the monolayer, achieving a low contact resistance of 0.6 Ω mm. This resulted in a robust PEDOT:PTS/Au grid hybrid structure.Theoretical calculation showed the dependence of figure of merits (FM) on the filling ratio (=grid width/(grid spacing+grid width)) and Au thickness. In addition, grid spacing had an effect on the surface morphology of the conducting polymer; decreasing the grid spacing produced more flat surface of the overlayers, leading to enhanced performance of PSCs. The fabricated PSCs based on these hybrid electrodes showed that the best efficiency of 3.54%, comparable to that of devices based on an ITO electrode, was obtained at the filling ratio of 0.5 for 15 nm-thick Au electrodes, which was different from that predicted from the theoretical calculation, probably due to the grid spacing effects on the charge collection efficiency.