Bandwidth Enhancement of a Wide Slot Antenna Using Fractal Geometry for UWB Application with Multiple Notched Bands

Wireless Personal Communications - In this paper a combination of rectangular and elliptical fractal geometry is applied on a regular hexagonal wide slot antenna fabricated using a FR4 substrate to...     

A survey of stochastic ω-regular games

We summarize classical and recent results about two-player games played on graphs with ω-regular objectives. These games have applications in the verification and synthesis of reactive systems. Important distinctions are whether a graph game is turn-based or concurrent; deterministic or stochastic; zero-sum or not. We cluster known results and open problems according to these classifications.     

Steady boundary layer slip flow and heat transfer over a flat porous plate embedded in a porous media

A mathematical model is presented for analyzing the boundary layer forced convective flow and heat transfer of an incompressible fluid past a porous plate embedded in a Darcy porous medium. Velocity and thermal slips are considered instead of no-slip conditions at the boundary. The similarity solutions for the problem are obtained and the reduced nonlinear ordinary differential equations are solved numerically. In case of porous plate, fluid velocity increases whereas non-dimensional temperature decreases for increasing values of suction parameter but it increases with increasing blowing parameter. Our analysis reveals that the increase of velocity slip parameter reduces the momentum boundary layer thickness and also enhances the heat transfer from the plate. On the other hand, heat transfer decreases with thermal slip parameter.     

25th Anniversary Article: Interfacing Nanoparticles and Biology: New Strategies for Biomedicine

The exterior surface of nanoparticles (NPs) dictates the behavior of these systems with the outside world. Understanding the interactions of the NP surface functionality with biosystems enables the design and fabrication of effective platforms for therapeutics, diagnostics, and imaging agents. In this review, we highlight the role of chemistry in the engineering of nanomaterials, focusing on the fundamental role played by surface chemistry in controlling the interaction of NPs with proteins and cells.     

Strategy logic

We introduce strategy logic, a logic that treats strategies in two-player games as explicit first-order objects. The explicit treatment of strategies allows us to specify properties of nonzero-sum games in a simple and natural way. We show that the one-alternation fragment of strategy logic is strong enough to express the existence of Nash equilibria and secure equilibria, and subsumes other logics that were introduced to reason about games, such as ATL, ATL¹, and game logic. We show that strategy logic is decidable, by constructing tree automata that recognize sets of strategies. While for the general logic, our decision procedure is nonelementary, for the simple fragment that is used above we show that the complexity is polynomial in the size of the game graph and optimal in the size of the formula (ranging from polynomial to 2EXPTIME depending on the form of the formula).     

Synthesizing robust systems

Systems should not only be correct but also robust in the sense that they behave reasonably in unexpected situations. This article addresses synthesis of robust reactive systems from temporal specifications. Existing methods allow arbitrary behavior if assumptions in the specification are violated. To overcome this, we define two robustness notions, combine them, and show how to enforce them in synthesis. The first notion applies to safety properties: If safety assumptions are violated temporarily, we require that the system recovers to normal operation with as few errors as possible. The second notion requires that, if liveness assumptions are violated, as many guarantees as possible should be fulfilled nevertheless. We present a synthesis procedure achieving this for the important class of GR(1) specifications, and establish complexity bounds. We also present an implementation of a special case of robustness, and show experimental results.     

Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Energy Games with Special Weight Structures

Energy games belong to a class of turn-based two-player infinite-duration games played on a weighted directed graph. It is one of the rare and intriguing combinatorial problems that lie in NP∩co-NP, but are not known to be in P. The existence of polynomial-time algorithms has been a major open problem for decades and apart from pseudopolynomial algorithms there is no algorithm that solves any non-trivial subclass in polynomial time. In this paper, we give several results based on the weight structures of the graph. First, we identify a notion of penalty and present a polynomial-time algorithm when the penalty is large. Our algorithm is the first polynomial-time algorithm on a large class of weighted graphs. It includes several worst-case instances on which previous algorithms, such as value iteration and random facet algorithms, require at least sub-exponential time. Our main technique is developing the first non-trivial approximation algorithm and showing how to convert it to an exact algorithm. Moreover, we show that in a practical case in verification where weights are clustered around a constant number of values, the energy game problem can be solved in polynomial time. We also show that the problem is still as hard as in general when the clique-width is bounded or the graph is strongly ergodic, suggesting that restricting the graph structure does not necessarily help.     

Current trends in nano‐technological interventions on plant growth and development: a review

Nanomaterials, recently have found burgeoning attention in the field of agriculture, owing to the positive correlation between nanoparticle (NP) application and the enhanced nutritional status of the applied plants. A wide range of NPs, namely carbon‐based NPs, titanium dioxide NPs, silica NPs etc. has been found to influence plants in a positive way by increasing their nutrient uptake ratio, nutrient usage efficiency, among others. All these attributes have paved the way for possible improvement in plant growth, development, vigour etc. through the use of these NPs, mainly as nanofertiliser. In view of all these, it can also be concluded that in the global scenario of increased demand of food production and supply in the coming years, nanotechnology promises to play a critical role. In this review, an attempt has been made to consolidate all the positive trends with respect to application of NPs on plants, along with their probable mechanism of action, which may provide a comprehensive insight for researchers working in this field.Inspec keywords: reviews, nanoparticles, agriculture, nanotechnology, titanium compounds, crops, nanofabrication, fertilisers, food products, nanobiotechnologyOther keywords: nanotechnological interventions, plant growth, positive correlation, nanoparticle application, enhanced nutritional status, applied plants, carbon‐based NPs, titanium dioxide NPs, silica NPs, influence plants, nutrient uptake ratio, nutrient usage efficiency, positive trends     

SLIP EFFECT ON DIFFUSION OF CHEMICALLY REACTIVE SPECIES IN BOUNDARY LAYER FLOW OVER A VERTICAL STRETCHING SHEET WITH SUCTION OR BLOWING

In the present investigation, we study the effects of slip boundary condition on the diffusion of chemically reactive species in steady boundary layer flow of viscous incompressible fluid over a vertical stretching sheet with suction or blowing. The first-order chemical reaction is considered and wall concentration varies linearly along the sheet. The self-similar equations are obtained using similarity transformations and are solved numerically using shooting method. Our study reveals that due to the increase of diffusion parameter and blowing, the velocity increases, and it decreases with suction, Schmidt number, and reaction rate parameter. Importantly, for increase of slip parameter, the boundary layer thickness increases. In contrast, the concentration at a point increases only for increasing slip and blowing, while it decreases for increase of all other parameters.     

Efficient Pattern Generation for Small-Delay Defects Using Selection of Critical Faults

Testing for small-delay defects (SDDs) has become necessary as technology further scales. Existing tools and methodologies for generating SDD patterns suffer from: limited long-paths sensitization capability, overwhelming pattern volume, time-consuming pattern generation process, and vague evaluations of pattern quality. Such situation places patterns in a dilemma where the generation and application effort are huge yet the results cannot reflect the physical phenomena clearly enough for correct binning and diagnosis. In this paper, we focus on establishing a pattern generation flow that produces patterns of high application value. Firstly, critical faults are identified in order to generate high-quality original pattern repository with n-detect ATPG.A novelpattern evaluation and selection method that further minimizes pattern count while maintaining the SDD detection ability is then presented. Top-off ATPG is then performed to ensure meeting the target fault coverage. Along with the flow, multiple evaluation metrics are also proposed to measure the pattern’s efficiency on SDD coverage, unique SDD detection, detectable SDD size, long path distribution, etc. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed critical fault-based method improves long path sensitization efficiency by 2.5× without impairing its average delay and saves approximately 80 % CPU runtime compared with total fault-based method. Comparing with timing-aware ATPG, the generated pattern set detects equivalent or even more SDDs with significantly reduced pattern count.