Wave propagation in functionally graded nanocomposites reinforced with carbon nanotubes based on second-order shear deformation theory

In the present article, as a first endeavor, the wave propagation in functionally graded nanocomposites reinforced with carbon nanotubes is investigated on the basis of second-order shear deformation theory. Four different types of functionally graded nanocomposites are presented. An analytical method is used to find the circular frequencies and phase velocities. To show the accuracy of the present methodology, our results for the free vibration are compared with the results of functionally graded plates available in the literature. The influences of different parameters are also investigated on the circular frequencies and phase velocities.     

Hybrid Probabilistic Risk Assessment Using Fuzzy FTA and Fuzzy AHP in a Process Industry

Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention - There are many available techniques which are widely used for failure probability analysis. Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a well-known method to identify...     

Fabrication of biopolymer based nanocomposite wound dressing: evaluation of wound healing properties and wound microbial load

The aim of this study is to introduce natural‐based polymers, chitosan and starch, to design a remedial nanocomposite, comprising of cerium oxide nanoparticles and silver nanoparticles, to investigate their effects in accelerating wound healing and in wound microbial load. Cerium oxide nanoparticles synthesized in starch solution added to the colloidal dispersion of synthesized silver nanoparticles in chitosan to make a three‐component nanomaterial. Mice were anaesthetized and two parallel full‐thickness round wounds were excised under aseptic conditions with the help of sterile dermal biopsy punch. Furthermore, effects of silver‐chitosan and silver‐cerium‐chitosan nanocomposite had evaluated on rate of wound closure and collagen density and on microbial load of wound in full‐thickness model. Results showed that both silver chitosan and silver‐cerium‐chitosan had significant impact on acceleration of wound closure and collagen content and on reduction of wound microbial load in comparison with control group, which was, received no treatments. However, the silver‐cerium‐chitosan nanocomposite is more potent than silver‐chitosan group and control group in wound closure. The wound healing effects of silver‐cerium‐chitosan nanocomposite are due to unique features of its three components and this nanocomposite promises impressive remedies for clinical application.Inspec keywords: wounds, nanocomposites, nanomedicine, nanoparticles, proteins, cerium, silver, polymers, colloids, patient treatmentOther keywords: biopolymer‐based nanocomposite wound dressing, wound healing properties, wound microbial load, natural‐based polymers, chitosan, remedial nanocomposite, cerium oxide nanoparticles, nanoceria, silver nanoparticles, starch solution, three‐component nanomaterial, synthesised silver nanoparticles, ketamine intraperitoneal injection, silver‐cerium‐chitosan nanocomposite, wound closure, collagen density, wound healing effects, wound care, aseptic conditions, sterile dermal biopsy punch, Ag‐Ce     

Low temperature annealing of metals with electrical wind force effects

Conventional annealing is a slow, high temperature process that involves heating atoms uniformly, i.e., in both defective and crystalline regions. This study explores an electrical alternative for energy efficiency,where moderate current density is used to generate electron wind force that produces the same outcome as the thermal annealing process. We demonstrate this on a zirconium alloy using in-situ electron back scattered diffraction(EBSD) inside a scanning electron microscope(SEM) and juxtaposing the results with that from thermal annealing. Contrary to common belief that resistive heating is the dominant factor, we show that 5 × 10~4 A/cm~2 current density can anneal the material in less than 15 min at only135?C. The resulting microstructure is essentially the same as that obtained with 600?C processing for360 min. We propose that unlike temperature, the electron wind force specifically targets the defective regions, which leads to unprecedented time and energy efficiency. This hypothesis was investigated with molecular dynamics simulation that implements mechanical equivalent of electron wind force to provide the atomistic insights on defect annihilation and grain growth.     

Biosynthesis of SeNPs by Mycobacterium bovis and their enhancing effect on the immune response against HBs antigens: an in vivo study

Conventional hepatitis B vaccine contains alum but is less effective to induce Th1 response. Selenium nanoparticles and Bacillus Calmette–Guerin were reported as immune modulators. In this study, SeNPs were extracted from Mycobacterium bovis and characterised. SeNPs were mixed with HBs‐Ag and administered to the mice to investigate he immune response pattern. With an addition of Se ions at a sub‐inhibitory concentration to the Sauton medium broth after 24 h, SeNPs were extracted from M. bovis and characterised by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, atomic forcemicroscopy, energy dispersive X‐ray spectrum, transmission electron microscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. Furthermore, female inbred BALB/c mice were injected subcutaneously on the first, 14th, 28th day with 100 and 200 µg doses of that SeNPs supplemented with HBs‐Ag vaccine. Later, the total antibody, isotypes of Immunoglobulin G1, Interlukin 4, and interferon‐γ were measured by enzye‐linked immunosorbent assay. The size of the SeNPs was <150 nm. Level of total antibody and immunoglobulin G2a increased significantly in the group that received 200 µg/ml nano selenium extracted from M. bovis. SeNPs in dose of 200 µg coated with organic materials of M. bovis could induce an influential immune response in relation to the conventional HBs‐Ag vaccine.Inspec keywords: selenium, nanoparticles, nanofabrication, microorganisms, Fourier transform spectra, infrared spectra, light scattering, atomic force microscopy, X‐ray chemical analysis, transmission electron microscopy, thermal analysis, nanomedicineOther keywords: biosynthesis, selenium nanoparticles, Mycobacterium bovis, enhnced immune response, HBs antigens, Bacillus Calmette‐Guerin, immune modulators, biogenic SeNPs, immune response pattern, Sauton medium broth, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, atomic force microscopy, energy dispersive X‐ray spectrum, transmission electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, female inbred BALB/c mice, antibody, IgG1 isotype, IgG2a isotype, IL₄ isotype, interferon‐γ, enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay, bacterium, time 24 h, time 14 day, time 28 day, Se     

Tracking and Analysis of Pedestrian’s Behavior in Public Places

Crowd management becomes a global concern due to increased population in urban areas. Better management of pedestrians leads to improved use of public places. Behavior of pedestrian’s is a major factor of crowd management in public places. There are multiple applications available in this area but the challenge is open due to complexity of crowd and depends on the environment. In this paper, we have proposed a new method for pedestrian’s behavior detection. Kalman filter has been used to detect pedestrian’s using movement based approach. Next, we have performed occlusion detection and removal using region shrinking method to isolate occluded humans. Human verification is performed on each human silhouette and wavelet analysis and particle gradient motion are extracted for each silhouettes. Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO) has been utilized to optimize feature set and then behavior classification has been performed using the Extreme Gradient (XG) Boost classifier. Performance has been evaluated using pedestrian’s data from avenue and UBI-Fight datasets, where both have different environment. The mean achieved accuracies are 91.3% and 85.14% over the Avenue and UBI-Fight datasets, respectively. These results are more accurate as compared to other existing methods.     

Royal Crown Shaped Polarization Insensitive Perfect Metamaterial Absorber for C-, X-, and Ku-Band Applications

This study proposed a new royal crown-shaped polarisation insensitive double negative triple band microwave range electromagnetic metamaterial absorber (MA). The primary purpose of this study is to utilise the exotic characteristics of this perfect metamaterial absorber (PMA) for microwave wireless communications. The fundamental unit cell of the proposed MA consists of two pentagonal-shaped resonators and two inverse C-shaped metallic components surrounded by a split ring resonator (SRR). The bottom thin copper deposit and upper metallic resonator surface are disjoined by an FR-4 dielectric substrate with 1.6 mm thickness. The CST MW studio, a high-frequency electromagnetic simulator has been deployed for numerical simulation of the unit cell in the frequency range of 4 to 14 GHz. In the TE mode, the offered MA structure demonstrated three different absorption peaks at 6.85 GHz (C-band), 8.87 GHz (X-band), and 12.03 GHz (Ku-band), with 96.82%, 99.24%, and 99.43% absorptivity, respectively. The electric field, magnetic field, and surface current distribution were analysed using Maxwell’s-Curl equations, whereas the angle sensitivity was investigated to comprehend the absorption mechanism of the proposed absorber. The numerical results were verified using the Ansys HFSS (high-frequency structure simulator) and ADS (advanced design system) for equivalent circuit models. Moreover, the proposed MA is polarisation and incident angle independent. Hence, the application of this MA can be extended to a great extent, including airborne radar applications, defence, and stealth-coating technology.     

Enhancing level set brain tumor segmentation using fuzzy shape prior information and deep learning

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain tumor segmentation is a crucial task for clinical treatment. However, it is challenging owing to variations in type, size, and location of tumors. In addition, anatomical variation in individuals, intensity non-uniformity, and noises adversely affect brain tumor segmentation. To address these challenges, an automatic region-based brain tumor segmentation approach is presented in this paper which combines fuzzy shape prior term and deep learning. We define a new energy function in which an Adaptively Regularized Kernel-Based Fuzzy C-Means (ARKFCM) Clustering algorithm is utilized for inferring the shape of the tumor to be embedded into the level set method. In this way, some shortcomings of traditional level set methods such as contour leakage and shrinkage have been eliminated. Moreover, a fully automated method is achieved by using U-Net to obtain the initial contour, reducing sensitivity to initial contour selection. The proposed method is validated on the BraTS 2017 benchmark dataset for brain tumor segmentation. Average values of Dice, Jaccard, Sensitivity and specificity are 0.93 ± 0.03, 0.86 ± 0.06, 0.95 ± 0.04, and 0.99 ± 0.003, respectively. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method outperforms the other state-of-the-art methods in brain tumor segmentation.     

Microfluidic inverse phase ELISA via manipulation of magnetic beads

We report a new technique for conducting immuno-diagnostics on a microfluidic platform. Rather than handling fluid reagents against a stationary solid phase, the platform manipulates analyte-coated magnetic beads through stationary plugs of fluid reagents to detect an antigenic analyte. These isolated but accessible plugs are pre-encapsulated in a microchannel by capillary force. We call this platform microfluidic inverse phase enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (μIPELISA). μIPELISA has distinctive advantages in the family of microfluidic immunoassay. In particular, it avoids pumping and valving fluid reagents during assaying, thus leading to a lab-on-a-chip format that is free of instrumentation for fluid actuation and control. We use μIPELISA to detect digoxigenin-labeled DNA segments amplified from E. coli O157:H7 by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and compare its detection capability with that of microplate ELISA. For 0.259 ng μl⁻¹ of digoxigenin-labeled amplicon, μIPELISA is as responsive as the microplate ELISA. Also, we simultaneously conduct μIPELISA in two parallel microchannels.