A Light Weight Secure Communication Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Personal Communications - The majority of security systems for wireless sensor networks are based on symmetric encryption. The main open issue for these approaches concerns the...     

Structural and electrochemical impedance spectroscopic studies on reactive magnetron sputtered titanium oxynitride (TiON) thin films

Titanium oxynitride films were deposited onto commercially pure titanium substrates by direct current reactive magnetron sputtering method using Ti targets and an Ar–N₂–O₂ mixture discharge gas. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy survey spectra on the etched surfaces of TiON films exhibited the characteristic Ti 2p, N 1s, and O 1s peaks at the corresponding binding energies 454.5, 397.0, and 530.7 eV, respectively. The surface topography of these coatings was studied using atomic force microscopy. The characteristic Raman peaks at 200 and 641 cm⁻¹ for the TiN bonds and at 148, 398 ,and 518 cm⁻¹ for the TiO₂ bonds were observed from the Laser Raman spectrometer. The potentiodynamic polarization studies in simulated bodily fluid were performed and the results are reported in this article.     

Numerical and experimental investigation on the thermochemical gasification potential of Cocoa pod husk (Theobroma Cacoa) in an open-core gasifier

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Thermochemical conversion is a promising technology to generate producer gas (PG) from different types of agroforestry biomass residues. To use an...     

Timed activity studies for assessing the energy expenditure of women from an urban slum in south India

Time-disposition studies are necessary for computing energy requirements of populations. This study captures the rich information on the timed activity pattern of adult women from poor households engaged in home-based work. We studied 34 women beedimakers (cigarette makers), 21 tailors, and 34 homemakers. Data were collected by direct observation of the women's activities on a typical day. Time spent on related activities was pooled and classified as sleep, household work, child care, occupational work, and residual work. These were further categorized on the basis of our published work on the energy cost of women's activities and the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of occupational activities as sedentary, moderate, and heavy. Most of the household activities could be classified as moderate to heavy (> 2.2 times basal metabolic rate [BMR]). Childcare activities were distributed on a scale from sedentary to heavy, whereas occupational activities, such as beedimaking and tailoring, were sedentary (< 2.2 BMR). Homemakers spent significantly more time on moderate to heavy work (p < .05) than beedimakers and tailors. Women working for income spent only four to six hours on occupational work, which was possible because they reduced the time spent on heavy work (i.e., housework), and reduced the time on personal care. Still, more than 80% of women could not put in eight hours of paid work. Thus, women in the home-based sector constantly negotiate among time spent on heavy household work, child care, and occupational work in order to continue in the labor market.     

Analytical methods for RE-Co alloys

Total RE, Co and Fe in mischmetal and its cobalt alloys are determined by visual complexometric methods and instrumental x-ray fluorescence techniques. As Fe causes interference in the determinations of RE and Co and its own determination is affected by the presence of Co, it is removed by precipitation. The iron is determined from the precipitate and RE and Co from the filtrate. Accuracy of the method is checked by analysing synthetic mixtures of RE, Co and Fe. The individual REs in mischmetal are determined by x-ray fluorescence method. The analysis technique is based on comparison of the oxides of the test samples with standards (both in pressed pellet form) in the appropriate composition range. The total RE content of mischmetal determined through complexometric analysis is compared with the total RE determined through x-ray fluorescence.     

Enhancement of test data compression with multistage encoding

In this paper, we present two multistage compression techniques to reduce the test data volume in scan test applications. We have proposed two encoding schemes namely alternating frequency-directed equal-run-length (AFDER) coding and run-length based Huffman coding (RLHC). These encoding schemes together with the nine-coded compression technique enhance the test data compression ratio. In the first stage, the pre-generated test cubes with unspecified bits are encoded using the nine-coded compression scheme. Later, the proposed encoding schemes exploit the properties of compressed data to enhance the test data compression. This multistage compression is effective especially when the percentage of do not cares in a test set is very high. We also present the simple decoder architecture to decode the original data. The experimental results obtained from ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits confirm the average compression ratio of 74.2% and 77.5% with the proposed 9C-AFDER and 9C-RLHC schemes respectively.     

Selective hydrogenation of olefinic bonds in styrene-isoprene-styrene triblock copolymer by palladium acetate catalyst

Homogeneous catalytic hydrogenation of styrene-isoprene-styrene triblock copolymer (SIS) has been carried out selectively at the carbon-carbon double bond in the presence of palladium acetate catalyst under mild conditions. Degree of hydrogenation has been calculated with the help of infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic techniques. Almost 90 mol % complete hydrogenation has been achieved at 60°C under 1.4 MPa hydrogen pressure, 40 mg catalyst (for 2 g of polymer) in chloroform-acetone solution for 1 h. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Enhanced bioactivity of ZnO nanoparticles—an antimicrobial study

In this study, we investigate the antibacterial activity of ZnO nanoparticles with various particle sizes. ZnO was prepared by the base hydrolysis of zinc acetate in a 2-propanol medium and also by a precipitation method using Zn(NO₃)₂ and NaOH. The products were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Bacteriological tests such as minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and disk diffusion were performed in Luria-Bertani and nutrient agar media on solid agar plates and in liquid broth systems using different concentrations of ZnO by a standard microbial method for the first time. Our bacteriological study showed the enhanced biocidal activity of ZnO nanoparticles compared with bulk ZnO in repeated experiments. This demonstrated that the bactericidal efficacy of ZnO nanoparticles increases with decreasing particle size. It is proposed that both the abrasiveness and the surface oxygen species of ZnO nanoparticles promote the biocidal properties of ZnO nanoparticles.     

Tamilian Cryptography: An Efficient Hybrid Symmetric Key Encryption Algorithm

Wireless Personal Communications - Clustering analysis is one of the main research directions in data mining. At present, it has gone deep into all fields and made good progress. Aiming at the role...     

Effective offline handwritten text recognition model based on a sequence-to-sequence approach with CNN–RNN networks

Neural Computing and Applications - Automatic text recognition system might serve as an important factor in creating a paperless environment through digitizing and processing the existing paper...