Textural pattern classification for oral squamous cell carcinoma

Despite being an area of cancer with highest worldwide incidence, oral cancer yet remains to be widely researched. Studies on computer‐aided analysis of pathological slides of oral cancer contribute a lot to the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. Some researches in this direction have been carried out on oral submucous fibrosis. In this work an approach for analysing abnormality based on textural features present in squamous cell carcinoma histological slides have been considered. Histogram and grey‐level co‐occurrence matrix approaches for extraction of textural features from biopsy images with normal and malignant cells are used here. Further, we have used linear support vector machine classifier for automated diagnosis of the oral cancer, which gives 100% accuracy.     

Temperature Dependence of Static Fatigue of Optical Fibers Coated with a Uv-Curable Polyurethane Acrylate

The static fatigue of fused silica optical fibers coated with a uv-curable polyurethane acrylate was measured, in water, from 40° to 90°C in 10° C intervals. The usual log (time-to-failure) vs log (applied stress) plotting of the data gives a bilinear fit at all test temperatures examined. By assuming exponential temperature dependence for static fatigue parameters, empirical static fatigue equations are generated for the two straight-line segments. These equations are then used to generate a static fatigue design diagram at a given temperature. In view of the possible coating effects on static fatigue, these results should be cautiously applied to optical fibers coated with other polymers.     

On designing an unaided authentication service with threat detection and leakage control for defeating opportunistic adversaries

Unaided authentication services provide the flexibility to login without being dependent on any additional device. The power of recording attack resilient unaided authentication services (RARUAS) is undeniable as, in some aspects, they are even capable of offering better security than the biometric based authentication systems. However, high login complexity of these RARUAS makes them far from usable in practice. The adopted information leakage control strategies have often been identified as the primary cause behind such high login complexities. Though recent proposals havemade some significant efforts in designing a usable RARUAS by reducing its login complexity, most of them have failed to achieve the desired usability standard. In this paper, we have introduced a new notion of controlling the information leakage rate. By maintaining a good security standard, the introduced idea helps to reduce the login complexity of our proposed mechanism − named as Textual-Graphical Password-based Mechanism or TGPM, by a significant extent. Along with resisting the recording attack, TGPM also achieves a remarkable property of threat detection. To the best of our knowledge, TGPM is the first RARUAS, which can both prevent and detect the activities of the opportunistic recording attackers who can record the complete login activity of a genuine user for a few login sessions. Our study reveals that TGPM assures much higher session resiliency compared to the existing authentication services, having the same or even higher login complexities. Moreover, TGPM stores the password information in a distributed way and thus restricts the adversaries to learn the complete secret from a single compromised server. A thorough theoretical analysis has been performed to prove the strength of our proposal from both the security and usability perspectives. We have also conducted an experimental study to support the theoretical argument made on the usability standard of TGPM.     

Automated system for characterization and classification of malaria‐infected stages using light microscopic images of thin blood smears

In this paper, we propose a comprehensive image characterization cum classification framework for malaria‐infected stage detection using microscopic images of thin blood smears. The methodology mainly includes microscopic imaging of Leishman stained blood slides, noise reduction and illumination correction, erythrocyte segmentation, feature selection followed by machine classification. Amongst three‐image segmentation algorithms (namely, rule‐based, Chan–Vese‐based and marker‐controlled watershed methods), marker‐controlled watershed technique provides better boundary detection of erythrocytes specially in overlapping situations. Microscopic features at intensity, texture and morphology levels are extracted to discriminate infected and noninfected erythrocytes. In order to achieve subgroup of potential features, feature selection techniques, namely, F‐statistic and information gain criteria are considered here for ranking. Finally, five different classifiers, namely, Naive Bayes, multilayer perceptron neural network, logistic regression, classification and regression tree (CART), RBF neural network have been trained and tested by 888 erythrocytes (infected and noninfected) for each features’ subset. Performance evaluation of the proposed methodology shows that multilayer perceptron network provides higher accuracy for malaria‐infected erythrocytes recognition and infected stage classification. Results show that top 90 features ranked by F‐statistic (specificity: 98.64%, sensitivity: 100%, PPV: 99.73% and overall accuracy: 96.84%) and top 60 features ranked by information gain provides better results (specificity: 97.29%, sensitivity: 100%, PPV: 99.46% and overall accuracy: 96.73%) for malaria‐infected stage classification.     

Bearing and uplift capacities of under-reamed piles in soft clay underlaid by stiff clay using lower-bound finite element limit analysis

Ensuring a safe foundation design in soft clay is always a challenging task to engineers. In the present study, the effectiveness of under-reamed piles in soft clay underlaid by stiff clay is numerically studied using the lower-bound finite element limit analysis (LB FELA). The bearing and uplift capacities of under-reamed piles are estimated through non-dimensional factors N_cul and F_cul, respectively. These factors increased remarkably and marginally compared to N_cul and F_cul of the piles without bulbs when the bulb is placed in stiff and soft clay, respectively. For a given ratio of undrained cohesion of stiff to soft clay (c₂/c₁), the factors N_cul and F_cul moderately increased with the increase in the length-to-shaft-diameter ratio (L_u/D) and adhesion factors in soft clay (α_s1) and stiff clay (α_s2). The variation of radial stress along the pile–soil interface, distribution of axial force in the under-reamed piles, and state of plastic shear failure in the soil are also studied under axial compression and tension. The results of this study are expected to be useful for the estimation of the bearing and uplift capacities of under-reamed piles in uniform clay and soft clay underlaid by stiff clay.     

Assessment of Strength by Young's Modulus and Porosity: A Critical Evaluation

Literature data on strength, porosity, and Young's modulus at room temperature of reaction-bonded silicon nitride, sintered silicon nitride, and hot-pressed silicon nitride have been fitted into available and proposed strength-porosity relationships. In general, the Lewis method of iterative least-squares fitting in these relationships has been found to be better than conventional linearized least-squares fitting. Further a semiempirically proposed strength–Young's modulus relationship has been found to predict strength more precisely than the conventional strength-porosity relationship.     

ROLE OF CARROT ON SHELF STABILITY OF DAIRY DESSERT (RASOGOLLA) DURING REFRIGERATED STORAGE

ABSTRACT

Carotene‐enriched carrots (Daucus carota L. var. Chantenay) were evaluated for their inhibitory effects on acidity development and lipid oxidation in rasogolla during refrigerated storage. Rasogolla is mashed fresh cheese or cottage cheese boiled in rounded shape in concentrated sugar syrup. Six types of rasogolla samples containing carrot paste at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50% were prepared and stored in closed container at refrigerated condition for 20 days. Chemical changes were measured for acidity of syrup, pH of syrup, free fatty acid content and absorptivity of rasogolla samples, and sensory evaluation of rasogolla samples at days 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 of storage. The carrot pastes showed significant protection against lipid oxidation, acidity development and sensory quality maintenance in rasogolla. Higher levels of carrot pastes were more effective to increase shelf stability in rasogolla at different tested storage times. However, after day 10 of storage, carrot concentration showed negative result, i.e., enhancement of rate of lipid oxidation of rasogolla samples and its syrups along with visual color destruction. Also, excess quantity of carrot in rasogolla reduces the overall acceptance by the consumer. According to the overall result of shelf stability, it could be suggested that carrot concentration up to 30% should be used in rasogolla for long duration of storage, i.e., above 10 days.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Traditional dairy products such as Rasogolla are important, well balanced food, which contribute a number of nutrients in relation to our need for good nutrition and health. Rasogollas' projected demand is 6000 tonnes in 2009 ( Karunanithy et al. 2007 ). Carrot is a good source of carotene specially beta‐carotene and serve as a good source of natural antioxidant. Fortification of carrot in dairy product serves as functional or health food for people of all age group. It also imparts a safe and attractive color to the dairy product. Besides, it is also cost effective for the dairy industry, because carrot is much cheaper than milk or channa (a dairy product analogous to cottage cheese). Study on the role of carrot on shelf stability of rasogolla under refrigerated storage is an attempt to establish this new product in the dairy industry.

     

Formation of Silicon-Aluminum Spinel

Characterization of the intermediate cubic phase formed during the transformation of coprecipitated SiO₂-Al₂O₃ gel on heating was studied and X-ray diffraction methods are reviewed and criticized. Coprecipitated gels of different SiO₂/Al₂O₃ ratios were prepared; all showed a 980°C exotherm followed by crystallization of the cubic phase and liberation of SiO₂. Alkali extraction of SiO₂ showed two types present in the 980°-heated product. One variety is free amorphous SiO₂ and the other, chemically bonded to alumina in the crystalline cubic phase, was isolated and characterized as Si-Al spinel with the same composition as mullite. Thus, its formation from the gel of mullite composition shows the highest exotherm and the measured density agrees approximately with the theoretically calculated value.     

Effect of Moist Ammonia on the Strength of Polymer-Coated Optical Fibers

The tensile strength of polymer-coated fused silica optical fibers aged in a moist ammonia environment at 23°C was drastically reduced compared to that of fibers aged under ammonia-free high-humidity conditions. However, most of the strength lost on aging in ammonia was recoverable by ambient desorption of the ammonia, in analogy to the strength recovery which occurs when fibers aged in water are dried.