Video compression using spatiotemporal regularity flow.

We propose a new framework in wavelet video coding to improve the compression rate by exploiting the spatiotemporal regularity of the data. A sequence of images creates a spatiotemporal volume. This volume is said to be regular along the directions in which the pixels vary the least, hence the entropy is the lowest. The wavelet decomposition of regularized data results in a fewer number of significant coefficients, thus yielding a higher compression rate. The directions of regularity of an image sequence depend on both its motion content and spatial structure. We propose the representation of these directions by a 3-D vector field, which we refer to as the spatiotemporal regularity flow (SPREF). SPREF uses splines to approximate the directions of regularity. The compactness of the spline representation results in a low storage overhead for SPREF, which is a desired property in compression applications. Once SPREF directions are known, they can be converted into actual paths along which the data is regular. Directional decomposition of the data along these paths can be further improved by using a special class of wavelet basis called the 3-D orthonormal bandelet basis. SPREF -based video compression not only removes the temporal redundancy, but it also compensates for the spatial redundancy. Our experiments on several standard video sequences demonstrate that the proposed method results in higher compression rates as compared to the standard wavelet based compression.     

A study of neutron and gamma radiation effects on transmission of various types of glasses, optical coatings, cemented optics and fiber

A study of radiation effects on various types of glasses, dielectric optical coatings, cemented optics and fiber was undertaken with a view to select them for extreme radiation environments. Samples were exposed to different radiation doses in the Pakistan Research Reactor-I (PARR-I) for neutron and Cobalt 60 source for gamma irradiation. Transmissions were measured before and after irradiation. The dielectric coatings were subjected to additional tests (adhesion, abrasion and humidity, etc.) as per MIL-M-13508C and MIL-C-675C. All 15 glasses studied showed varying amounts of transmission loss as expected, with negligible degradation for three types. Recovery of transmissions with time/ageing was also studied, with more or less complete recovery with temperature annealing. A faster bleaching of darkened/brown glasses was achieved by using UV lamps or UV laser. The dielectric coatings (HR, AR) and one of the two commercial optical cements showed excellent resistance to neutrons and gamma radiations, and could be good candidates for the fabrication and utilization of optical components in extreme radiation environments. The data allowed several Chinese glasses to be studied for the first time.     

PMSS: A programmable memory system and scheduler for complex memory patterns

HPC industry demands more computing units on FPGAs, to enhance the performance by using task/data parallelism. FPGAs can provide its ultimate performance on certain kernels by customizing the hardware for the applications. However, applications are getting more complex, with multiple kernels and complex data arrangements, generating overhead while scheduling/managing system resources. Due to this reason all classes of multi threaded machines–minicomputer to supercomputer–require to have efficient hardware scheduler and memory manager that improves the effective bandwidth and latency of the DRAM main memory. This architecture could be a very competitive choice for supercomputing systems that meets the demand of parallelism for HPC benchmarks. In this article, we proposed a Programmable Memory System and Scheduler (PMSS), which provides high speed complex data access pattern to the multi threaded architecture. This proposed PMSS system is implemented and tested on a Xilinx ML505 evaluation FPGA board. The performance of the system is compared with a microprocessor based system that has been integrated with the Xilkernel operating system. Results show that the modified PMSS based multi-accelerator system consumes 50% less hardware resources, 32% less on-chip power and achieves approximately a 19x speedup compared to the MicroBlaze based system.     

Investigations on the Three Commercial Species of Rosaceae

Physico-chemical properties of the seed oils of three species of Rosaceae family, namely Prunus armeniaca (apricot), Prunus cerasifera (prune), and Prunus persica (peach) have been determined. Fatty acid composition of the oils and amino acids composition of seed cake proteins have also been determined and their utility in every day life has been discussed.     

Ferritin Protein Regulates the Degradation of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

Proteins implicated in iron homeostasis are assumed to be also involved in the cellular processing of iron oxide nanoparticles. In this work, the role of an endogenous iron storage protein—namely the ferritin—is examined in the remediation and biodegradation of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. Previous in vivo studies suggest the intracellular transfer of the iron ions released during the degradation of nanoparticles to endogenous protein cages within lysosomal compartments. Here, the capacity of ferritin cages to accommodate and store the degradation products of nanoparticles is investigated in vitro in the physiological acidic environment of the lysosomes. Moreover, it is questioned whether ferritin proteins can play an active role in the degradation of the nanoparticles. The magnetic, colloidal, and structural follow‐up of iron oxide nanoparticles and proteins in lysosome‐like medium confirms the efficient remediation of potentially harmful iron ions generated by nanoparticles within ferritins. The presence of ferritins, however, delays the degradation of particles due to a complex colloidal behavior of the mixture in acidic medium. This study exemplifies the important implications of intracellular proteins in processes of degradation and metabolization of iron oxide nanoparticles.     

Multi‐agent collaboration based on enhanced cognitive awareness: an architecture for agents' profiling on the semantic web

This paper applies cognitive models, inspired by cognitive science, with the aim to propose architectural and knowledge‐based requirements to structure ontological models for the cognitive profiling of agents. The proposed architecture aims to address the lack of flexibility that most agent‐based collaborations are affected by. The resulting agents, equipped with advanced cognitive profiling, have an increased cognitive awareness of themselves and are more capable of interacting with other agents in a multi‐agents based environment. In this research, cognitive awareness identifies the ability of the web agents to diagnose their processing limitations and to establish interactions with the external environment. The outcome is the enhanced flexibility, reusability and predictability of the agent behaviour; thus contributing towards minimizing human cognitive demands. The concept of cognitive profiling presented in this paper considers the semantic web as an action mediating space, where ontological models provide affordances for improving cognitive awareness through shared knowledge‐base. The conceptual model for the cognitive profile architecture is developed with Protégé Ontology editor to generate OWL Ontology and evaluated through a proof of concept. The results show that agents equipped with cognitive awareness can undertake complex tasks more dynamically.     

Synthesis and Physical Properties of Mn Doped ZnO Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor Nanostructures

Mn doped ZnO nanostructures have been prepared using low temperature simple, quick, and versatile synthesis approach. The structural, microstructural, and vibrational investigations reveal that as prepared nanostructures with low Mn doping concentration have single hexagonal phase and are grown along the preferred c-axis. The X-rays photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrates that the Mn ions are in mixed oxidation states for high doping concentration of Mn, while are in 2+ oxidation state for low concentration into ZnO lattice. The photoluminescence spectrum (PL) exhibits a significant red-shift of 22 nm in the optical band gap of doped ZnO and shows the improved luminescence properties, which makes it potential for its use in the photocatalyst, optoelectronics and solar cell nanodevices. Furthermore, the magnetic measurement of Mn doped ZnO nanostructures exhibits the ferromagnetism at room temperature.     

A Study of Web Services Projects in the Financial Services Industry

This study examines the significance of technological, methodological, and business factors in contributing to the success of initial Web Services projects. Focusing on four case studies from the financial services sector, the authors' findings suggest that a strong focus on business factors is associated with successful Web Services strategies.     

Effects of silver nanoparticles on thermal properties of DBSA-doped polyaniline/PVC blends

Dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid (DBSA)-doped polyaniline (PAND) has been synthesized by redoping (PANDR) and aqueous polymerization (PANDA) methods. Silver nanoparticles were incorporated into the PANDR/tetrahydrofuran solution (PANDS) and then mixed with poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC) solution to prepare PANDS/PVC nanocomposites. In the present study, effects of silver nanoparticles on thermal properties of PAND/PVC blends have been investigated by employing thermal gravimetric analysis and heat flow microcalorimetry techniques. From these results it has been observed that the thermal stability of blends have increased by increasing the concentration of PAND in blends and nanocomposites. Addition of silver nanoparticles has suppressed the dehydrochlorination process and evolution/degradation of DBSA in PANDS/PVC nanocomposites. Presence of silver nanoparticles in PAND/PVC nanocomposites has reduced the mobility of PANI chains which in turn inhibited the transfer of free radicals formed during degradation of PAND and PVC through inter-chain reactions; hence, degradation process has been slowed down and thermal stability has been improved. Embedment of silver nanoparticles has reduced thermal weight loss corresponding to polymer degradation step and attains lower heat flow level in inert atmosphere for nanocomposites in contrast to those with no nanoparticles, thereby further improving thermal stability of nanocomposites. The heats of oxidation measured for blends and nanocomposites were independent of PAND/PVC blends composition.     

Ear recognition with feed-forward artificial neural networks

Biometrics has become one of the most important techniques in recognizing a person’s identity. A person’s face, iris and fingerprint are mostly used in biometrics today. It has been established that there are no two ears exactly alike, even in the cases of identical twins. In this paper, we define a 7-element ear feature set and design and train a feed-forward artificial neural network to recognize a human ear. We train and test the network with 51 ear pictures from 51 different persons. Simulation experiments with various networks with various number of layers and number of neurons per layer and with and without noise are conducted. Results indicate that a 95 % ear recognition accuracy is achieved with a simple 3-layer feed-forward neural network with only a total of 18 neurons even in the presence of some noise. This design outstands previous work in simplicity and implementation cost.