Experimental investigation of Co and Fe-Doped CuO nanostructured electrode material for remarkable electrochemical performance

The current research work presents a facile and cost–effective co-precipitation method to prepare doped (Co & Fe) CuO and undoped CuO nanostructures without usage of any type of surfactant or capping agents. The structural analysis reveals monoclinic crystal structure of synthesized pure CuO and doped-CuO nanostructures. The effect of different morphologies on the performance of supercapacitors has been found in CV (cyclic voltammetry) and GCD (galvanic charge discharge) investigations. The specific capacitances have been obtained 156 (±5) Fg^?1, 168(±5) Fg^?1 and 186 (±5) Fg^?1 for CuO, Co-doped CuO and Fe-doped CuO electrodes, respectively at scan rate of 5 mVs^?1, while it is found to be 114 (±5) Fg^?1, 136 (±5) Fg^?1 and 170 (±5) Fg^?1 for CuO, Co–CuO and Fe–CuO, respectively at 0.5 Ag^-1 as calculated from the GCD. The super capacitive performance of the Fe–CuO nanorods is mainly attributed to the synergism that evolves between CuO and Fe metal ion. The Fe-doped CuO with its nanorods like morphology provides superior specific capacitance value and excellent cyclic stability among all studied nanostructured electrodes. Consequently, it motivates to the use of Fe-doped CuO nanostructures as electrode material in the next generation energy storage devices.     

Estimating confidence intervals for cost-effectiveness ratios: an example from a randomized trial

Cost-effectiveness ratios usually appear as point estimates without confidence intervals, since the numerator and denominator are both stochastic and one cannot estimate the variance of the estimator exactly. The recent literature, however, stresses the importance of presenting confidence intervals for cost-effectiveness ratios in the analysis of health care programmes. This paper compares the use of several methods to obtain confidence intervals for the cost-effectiveness of a randomized intervention to increase the use of Medicaid's Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) programme. Comparisons of the intervals show that methods that account for skewness in the distribution of the ratio estimator may be substantially preferable in practice to methods that assume the cost-effectiveness ratio estimator is normally distributed. We show that non-parametric bootstrap methods that are mathematically less complex but computationally more rigorous result in confidence intervals that are similar to the intervals from a parametric method that adjusts for skewness in the distribution of the ratio. The analyses also show that the modest sample sizes needed to detect statistically significant effects in a randomized trial may result in confidence intervals for estimates of cost-effectiveness that are much wider than the boundaries obtained from deterministic sensitivity analyses.     

A generalized scheme for mapping parallel algorithms

A generalized mapping strategy that uses a combination of graph theory, mathematical programming, and heuristics is proposed. The authors use the knowledge from the given algorithm and the architecture to guide the mapping. The approach begins with a graphical representation of the parallel algorithm (problem graph) and the parallel computer (host graph). Using these representations, the authors generate a new graphical representation (extended host graph) on which the problem graph is mapped. An accurate characterization of the communication overhead is used in the objective functions to evaluate the optimality of the mapping. An efficient mapping scheme is developed which uses two levels of optimization procedures. The objective functions include minimizing the communication overhead and minimizing the total execution time which includes both computation and communication times. The mapping scheme is tested by simulation and further confirmed by mapping a real world application onto actual distributed environments     

Assessment of sperm count in rural population of central India

26 clinician trainees' recollections of experiences in a diagnostic preschool program were analyzed in terms of strength and weaknesses of the program.     

Thermal analysis of polymer–water interactions and their relation to gas hydrate inhibition

Gas hydrates formed in oil production pipelines are crystalline solids where hydrocarbon gas molecules such as methane, propane, and their mixtures are trapped in a cagelike structure by hydrogen‐bonded water molecules to form undesirable plugs. Methanol and glycol are currently used to prevent these plugs via thermodynamic inhibition. Small amounts of water‐soluble polymers may provide an alternate approach for preventing gas hydrates. In this study, we expand the fundamental understanding of water–polymer systems with differential scanning calorimetry. Nonfreezable bound water was used to quantify polymer–water interactions and relate them to the chemical structure for a series of polymers, including acrylamides, cyclic lactams, and n‐vinyl amides. For good interactions, the water structure needs to be stabilized through hydrophobic interactions. An increased hydrophobicity of the pendant group also appears to favor polymer performance as a gas hydrate inhibitor. Good inhibitors, such as poly(diethyl acrylamide) and poly(N‐vinyl caprolactam), also show higher heat capacities, which indicate higher hydrophobicity, than poor performers such as polyzwitterions, in which hydrophilicity dominated. The phase behavior and thermodynamic properties of dilute polymer solutions were also evaluated through measurements of the heat of demixing and lower critical solution temperature. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 2642–2653, 2007     

Automated bank cheque verification using image processing and deep learning methods

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Automated bank cheque verification using image processing is an attempt to complement the present cheque truncation system, as well as to provide an alternate...     

Target based image fusion using multi-scale feature selection in three regions

Image captured by low dynamic range (LDR) camera fails to capture entire exposure level of scene, and instead only covers certain range of exposures. In order to cover entire exposure level in single image, bracketed exposure LDR images are combined. The range of exposures in different images results in information loss in certain regions. These regions need to be addressed and based on this motive a novel methodology of layer based fusion is proposed to generate high dynamic range image. High and low-frequency layers are formed by dividing each image based on pixel intensity variations. The regions are identified based on information loss section created in differently exposed images. High-frequency layers are combined using region based fusion with Dense SIFT which is used as activity level testing measure. Low-frequency layers are combined using weighted sum. Finally combined high and low-frequency layers are merged together on pixel to pixel basis to synthesize fused image. Objective analysis is performed to compare the quality of proposed method with state-of-the-art. The measures indicate superiority of the proposed method.

     

A compact dual band short ended metamaterial antenna with extended bandwidth

A compact dual‐band CPW–fed metamaterial inspired antenna using Composite Right/Left Handed (CRLH) resonant approach is presented in this article. The antenna is designed such that it can be operated in series resonant mode where resonance behavior is characterized by series LC parameters. Proposed antenna comprises two annular ring resonators connected with the signal patch intended to excite the higher order modes. This results extension of second band from 51.4% (f_c = 6.92 GHz) to 69.2% (f_c = 7.35 GHz). In addition to that proposed antenna shows compact nature with an electrical size of 0.14 λ₀ × 0.21 λ0 × 0.01 λ₀ at f₀ = 2.18 GHz. The antenna is operating over 2.14–2.23 GHz, 4.81–9.90 GHz with simulated peak gain of 0.66 and 4.44 dB, respectively. Simulated radiation efficiencies of proposed antenna are 69.8 and 94.1% throughout first and second band, respectively. To examine the resonance and radiation characteristics prototype is fabricated and measured. Observed experimental results are in good agreement with those simulated one. These characteristics makes this antenna is a good candidate for modern wireless communication systems such as Bluetooth, WLAN/Wi‐Fi band. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:435–441, 2016.     

Replication-Based Fault Tolerance for MPI Applications

As computational clusters increase in size, their mean time to failure reduces drastically. Typically, checkpointing is used to minimize the loss of computation. Most checkpointing techniques, however, require central storage for storing checkpoints. This results in a bottleneck and severely limits the scalability of checkpointing, while also proving to be too expensive for dedicated checkpointing networks and storage systems. We propose a scalable replication-based MPI checkpointing facility. Our reference implementation is based on LAM/MPI; however, it is directly applicable to any MPI implementation. We extend the existing state of fault-tolerant MPI with asynchronous replication, eliminating the need for central or network storage. We evaluate centralized storage, a Sun-X4500-based solution, an EMC storage area network (SAN), and the Ibrix commercial parallel file system and show that they are not scalable, particularly after 64 CPUs. We demonstrate the low overhead of our checkpointing and replication scheme with the NAS Parallel Benchmarks and the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark with tests up to 256 nodes while demonstrating that checkpointing and replication can be achieved with a much lower overhead than that provided by current techniques. Finally, we show that the monetary cost of our solution is as low as 25 percent of that of a typical SAN/parallel-file-system-equipped storage system.     

Comprehensive study of RF analysis of G/GO-based NEMS shunt switch

Microsystem Technologies - High isolation and low insertion loss are the key design parameters for the NEMS switch at high frequency. The comprehensive study of radio frequency (RF) performance...