Applicability of Wireless Sensor Networks in Precision Agriculture: A Review

Wireless Personal Communications - Data security is currently become a serious concern in wireless communication system for both the users and providers. Without a secure medium, the data...     

Escherichia coli,Salmonella spp., and Staphylococcus aureus susceptibility to antimicrobials of human and veterinary importance in poultry sector of India

In India, little attention has been paid on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the context of developing “One Health” approach. Hence, utilizing multi-disciplinary approach, we assess the AMR level and dynamics/pattern of multi-drug resistance (MDR) in Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., and Staphylococcus aureus circulating over the different stages of poultry in India. A total of 342 isolates including E. coli (n = 143), Salmonella spp. (n = 104), and S. aureus (n = 95) were recovered from fecal (n = 80) and cecal (n = 80) samples of chicken, collected across the different poultry-retail shops and poultry-farms located at urban and rural areas of Rajasthan, India, respectively. High rates of AMR to drugs that are critically/highly important both in human and veterinary medicine were observed among all the isolates. Upward trends in AMR prevalence was observed in poultry-retail shops than in poultry-farms. Notably, >90% of all the isolates were MDR, of particular, pattern/prevalence of MDR was substantially varied across the poultry-farms vs. poultry-retail shops. Our results indicate AMR including MDR to be common in E. coli, Salmonella spp., and S. aureus distributed frequently in poultry. The study encourages the formulation of national policy, programmes and further research with a “One Health” approach that can benefits to the human/animal and the environment.     

Length–weight relationships of five catfish species (Siluriformes) from the Ganga River,India

Knowledge of the length–weight relationships (LWRs) of fish is an important tool to understand fish body form, growth pattern, stock management and their conservation. The present study focused on investigating the length–weight relationships for five catfish species, Pachypterus atherinoides (Bloch, 1794), belonging to family Horabagridae; Batasio batasio (Hamilton, 1822) family Bagridae; Bagarius yarrelli (Sykes, 1839), family Gogangra viridescens (Hamilton, 1822); and Sisor rhabdophorus (Hamilton, 1822) belonging to family Sisoridae. Specimens were collected from the middle stretch of the Ganga River in India from November 2016 to May 2018. A total of 174 specimens of five fish species were collected, and their total lengths were measured to the nearest centimetre and the body weight to the nearest gram. The value of the parameter slope (b) of LWRs of the five species ranged from 2.86 (B. yarrelli) to 3.16 (G. viridescens), with a mean value of 2.99. The results of the present study documented the new maximum total length (TL) for P. atherinoides and S. rhabdophorus. The present study also provides the first reference regarding LWRs for S. rhabdophorus.     

Active,passive and transpassive dissolution of a nickel base super alloy in concentrated acid mixture solution

The electrochemical and corrosion behaviour of a nickel base super alloy (C-263) has been investigated in the deaerated binary and ternary solution mixture of concentrated phosphoric acid, acetic acid, sulphuric acid, nitric acid or water using potentiostatic technique at 35°C. The possibilities of electropolishing of this alloy in these solution mixtures have been also explored. The alloy showed distinct active, passive and transpassive behaviour in the experimental solutions. The alloy remained active and turned passive in the negative potential region. Transpassive dissolution of the alloy is observed and electropolishing is achieved in this region. The best electropolishing is obtained in 50% H₃PO₄ + 40% CH₃COOH + 10% H₂SO₄. Higher content of water in the electrolytic solution is not useful for electropolishing of the alloy The experimental results also suggest that a current plateau in the transpassive potential region is not a sufficient condition to achieve electropolishing.     

Electric field assisted solid-state interfacial joining of TaC-HfC ceramics without filler

The application of ultra-high-temperature ceramics (UHTCs) demands effective ways of joining in overcoming the problems associated with the fabrication of complex-shaped components. In this study, we choose to investigate a new method of rapidly joining pre-sintered TaC and HfC ceramics without any filler material using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique. A well-bonded TaC–HfC interface was observed with no apparent cracking and porosity at the joint. The joining mechanisms were predominantly driven by solid-state diffusion and localized plastic deformation. The nanomechanical properties of the TaC-HfC joint are better than the HfC while comparable to that of the TaC. High-load indentation (up to 200 N) results suggest that the TaC–HfC interface is stronger than the parent UHTCs with no crack propagating at the interface. Upon comparison with the parent UHTCs, the damaged area and the average crack length at the interface, reduced up to ~94% and ~56%, respectively. This study shows that the SPS technique can also apply to joining other UHTCs without any filler, resulting in the new field of developing complex components for the thermal protection system (TPS).     

Glycated proteome: From reaction to intervention

Glycation, a nonenzymatic reaction between reducing sugars and proteins, is a proteome wide phenomenon, predominantly observed in diabetes due to hyperglycemia. Glycated proteome of plasma, kidney, lens, and brain are implicated in the pathogenesis of various diseases, including diabetic complications, neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and aging. This review discusses the strategies to characterize protein glycation, its functional implications in different diseases, and intervention strategies to protect the deleterious effects of protein glycation.     

The high-conductance state of cortical networks

We studied the dynamics of large networks of spiking neurons with conductance-based (nonlinear) synapses and compared them to networks with current-based (linear) synapses. For systems with sparse and inhibition-dominated recurrent connectivity, weak external inputs induced asynchronous irregular firing at low rates. Membrane potentials fluctuated a few millivolts below threshold, and membrane conductances were increased by a factor 2 to 5 with respect to the resting state. This combination of parameters characterizes the ongoing spiking activity typically recorded in the cortex in vivo. Many aspects of the asynchronous irregular state in conductance-based networks could be sufficiently well characterized with a simple numerical mean field approach. In particular, it correctly predicted an intriguing property of conductance-based networks that does not appear to be shared by current-based models: they exhibit states of low-rate asynchronous irregular activity that persist for some period of time even in the absence of external inputs and without cortical pacemakers. Simulations of larger networks (up to 350,000 neurons) demonstrated that the survival time of self-sustained activity increases exponentially with network size.     

The synthesis of pixelated metamaterial cross polarizer using binary wind driven optimization algorithm

Microsystem Technologies - In this paper synthesis of two wideband Metamaterial Cross Polarizer (MCPs) is proposed. The synthesis of proposed MCPs is done by using Binary Wind Driven Optimization...     

REVISE: A Tool for Measuring and Mitigating Bias in Visual Datasets

International Journal of Computer Vision - Machine learning models are known to perpetuate and even amplify the biases present in the data. However, these data biases frequently do not become...