Direct injection diesel engine performance,emission, and combustion characteristics using diesel fuel,nonedible honne oil methyl ester,and blends with diesel fuel

Honne oil methyl ester (HOME) is produced from a nonedible vegetable oil, namely, honne oil, available abundantly in India. It has remained as an untapped new possible source of alternative fuel that can be used for diesel engines. The present research is aimed at investigating experimentally the performance, exhaust emission, and combustion characteristics of a direct injection diesel engine (single cylinder, water cooled) typically used in agricultural sector over the entire load range when fuelled with HOME and diesel fuel blends, HM20 (20% HOME + 80% diesel fuel)–HM100. The properties of these blends are found to be comparable with diesel fuel conforming to the American and European standards. The combustion parameters of HM20 are found to be slightly better than neat diesel (ND). For other blend ratios, these combustion parameters deviated compared with ND. The performance (brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake‐specific fuel consumption, and exhaust gas temperature) of HM20 is better than ND. For other blend ratios, BTE is inferior compared with ND. The emissions (CO and SO) of HM20–HM100, throughout the entire load range, are dropped significantly compared with ND. Unburned hydrocarbon emissions of HM20–HM40, throughout the entire load range, is slightly decreased, whereas for other blend ratios, it is increased compared with ND. NO_x emissions of HM20, throughout the entire load range, is slightly increased, whereas for other blend ratios, it is slightly decreased. The reductions in exhaust emissions together with increase in BTE made the blend HM20 a suitable alternative fuel for diesel fuel and thus could help in controlling air pollution. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SAD-IoT: Security Analysis of DDoS Attacks in IoT Networks

Wireless Personal Communications - Internet of Things is one of the most versatile technologies in existence today. It has taken over our day to day activities and thus has many applications that...     

Mild and Efficient Allylation of Aldehydes by using Copper Fluorapatite as Catalyst

A facile synthesis of homoallylic alcohols is achieved by the allylation of aldehydes with allylic metal reagents or allyl halides using copper fluorapatite (CuFAP) as catalyst under mild reaction conditions. A variety of aldehydes were converted to the corresponding homoallylic alchohols, demonstrating the versatility of the reaction.     

Iron‐Catalyzed Hydrosilylation of Esters

The first hydrosilylation of esters catalyzed by a well defined iron complex has been developed. Esters are converted to the corresponding alcohols at 100 °C, under solvent‐free conditions and visible light activation.     

Iris presentation attack detection based on best-k feature selection from YOLO inspired RoI

Neural Computing and Applications - Obfuscating an iris recognition system through forged iris samples has been a major security threat in iris-based authentication. Therefore, a detection...     

Synthesis,characterization, and in vitro drug release study of 3‐arm poly‐β‐alanine

Synthesis of three arms star‐shaped poly‐β‐alanine (3‐b‐ala) based on tri(prop‐2‐yn‐1‐yl) benzene‐1,3,5‐tricarboxylate (TBT) and azido terminated poly‐β‐alanine (N₃‐P‐ala) was performed using click reaction. TBT was synthesized by nucleophilic substitution reaction between propargyl alcohol and 1,3,5‐benzenetricarbonyltrichloride. For the first time, N₃‐P‐ala was synthesized through anionic polymerization of acrylamide using sodium azide as an initiator. TBT was characterized by FT‐IR and ¹HNMR. N₃‐p‐ala was characterized by FT‐IR, GPC, and ¹HNMR and 3‐b‐ala was characterized by FT‐IR, GPC, ¹HNMR, TGA, and XRD. The synthesized 3‐b‐ala was used for drug loading and releasing studies. Polymer loaded drug (3‐b‐ala‐D) hybrid was used in in vitro studies of drug (Diclofenac sodium) release in phosphate buffer solution (PBS) at 37 ± 0.5°C and pH 7.4. The drug loading and releasing studies were analyzed by UV‐visible spectrophotometer. 3‐b‐ala‐D was examined by AFM to analyze the surface morphology and roughness. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 42124.     

Optical,electrical, and electrochemical properties of graphene based water soluble polyaniline composites

Polyaniline (PANI) is one of the most common polymers known for its conducting properties. However, poor water solubility limits its applications. In this work, PANI has been functionalized with sulfonic acid groups to produce sulfonated PANI (SPANI) offering excellent solubility in water. To compensate for the decrease of electrical conductivity due to functionalization, SPANI was combined with reduced graphene oxide (RGO) to form SPANI/RGO composites with interesting optical, thermal, and electrical properties. The composites have been characterized using X‐ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy, UV–vis absorption spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, cyclic voltammetry, and four probe electrical conductivity measurement. The SPANI/RGO composites show increased thermal stability, reduced optical band gap and improved electrochemical properties compared with the pure polymer. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 42766.     

Conversion of plastic waste into CNTs using Ni/Mo/MgO catalyst—An optimization approach by mixture experiment

A combustion technique is used to study the synthesis of carbon nano tubes from waste plastic as a precursor and Ni/Mo/MgO as a catalyst. The catalytic activity of three components Ni, Mo, MgO is measured in terms of amount of carbon product obtained. Different proportions of metal ions are optimized using mixture experiment in Design expert software. D-optimal design technique is adopted due to nonsimplex region and presence of constraints in the mixture experiment. The activity of the components is observed to be interdependent and the component Ni is found to be more effective. The catalyst containing Ni_0.8Mo_0.1MgO_0.1 yields more carbon product. The structure of catalyst and CNTs are studied by using SEM, XRD, and Raman spectroscopy. SEM analysis shows the formation of longer CNTs with average diameter of 40–50 nm.     

CCRNet: a novel data-driven approach to improve cross-domain Iris recognition

In spite of the prominence and robustness of iris recognition systems, iris images acquisition using heterogeneous cameras/sensors, is the prime concern in deploying them for wide-scale applications. The textural qualities of iris samples (images) captured through distinct sensors substantially differ due to the differences in illumination and the underlying hardware that yields intra-class variation within the iris dataset. This paper examines three miscellaneous configurations of convolution and residual blocks to improve cross-domain iris recognition. Further, the finest architecture amongst three is identified by the Friedman test, where the statistical differences in proposed architectures are identified based on the outcomes of Nemeny and Bonferroni-Dunn tests. The quantitative performances of these architectures are perceived on several experiments simulated on two iris datasets; ND-CrossSensor-Iris-2013 and ND-iris-0405. The finest model is referred to as “Collaborative Convolutional Residual Network (CCRNet)” and is further examined on several experiments prepared in similar and cross-domains. Results depict that least two error rates reported by CCRNet are 1.06% and 1.21% that enhances the benchmark for the state of the arts. This is due to fast convergence and rapid weights updation achieved from convolution and residual connections, respectively. It helps in recognizing the micro-patterns existing within the iris region and results in better feature discrimination among large numbers of iris subjects.