Abstract: Copper based composites reinforced with WC and Ti
particles were prepared using planetary ball-mill. The experiment
was designed by using Taguchi technique and milling was carried out
in an air for several hours. The powder was characterized before and
after milling using the SEM, TEM and X-ray for microstructure and
for possible new phases. Microstructures show that milled particles
size and reduction in particle size depend on many parameters. The
distance d between planes of atoms estimated from X-ray powder
diffraction data and TEM image. X-ray diffraction patterns of the
milled powder did not show clearly any new peak or energy shift, but
the TEM images show a significant change in crystalline structure of
corporate on titanium in the composites.
Abstract: Free Hemoglobin promotes the accumulation of
hydroxyl radicals by the heme iron, which can react with endogenous
hydrogen peroxide to produce free radicals which may cause severe
oxidative cell damage. Haptoglobin binds to Hemoglobin strongly
and Haptoglobin-Hemoglobin binding is irreversible. Peroxidase
activity of Haptoglobin(2-2)-Hemoglobin complex was assayed by
following increase of absorption of produced tetraguaiacol as the
second substrate of Haptoglobin-Hemoglobin complex at 470 nm and
42°C by UV-Vis spectrophotometer. The results have shown that
peroxidase activity of Haptoglobin(2-2)-Hemoglobin complex is
modulated via homotropic effect of hydrogen peroxide as allostric
substrate. On the other hand antioxidant property of Haptoglobin(2-
2)-Hemoglobin was increased via heterotropic effect of the two drugs
(especially ampicillin) on peroxidase activity of the complex. Both
drugs also have mild effect on quality of homotropic property of
peroxidase activity of Haptoglobin(2-2)-Hemoglobin complex.
Therefore, in vitro studies show that the two drugs may help Hp-Hb
complex to remove hydrogen peroxide from serum at pathologic
temperature ature (42 C).
Abstract: Automatic currency note recognition invariably
depends on the currency note characteristics of a particular country
and the extraction of features directly affects the recognition ability.
Sri Lanka has not been involved in any kind of research or
implementation of this kind. The proposed system “SLCRec" comes
up with a solution focusing on minimizing false rejection of notes.
Sri Lankan currency notes undergo severe changes in image quality
in usage. Hence a special linear transformation function is adapted to
wipe out noise patterns from backgrounds without affecting the
notes- characteristic images and re-appear images of interest. The
transformation maps the original gray scale range into a smaller
range of 0 to 125. Applying Edge detection after the transformation
provided better robustness for noise and fair representation of edges
for new and old damaged notes. A three layer back propagation
neural network is presented with the number of edges detected in row
order of the notes and classification is accepted in four classes of
interest which are 100, 500, 1000 and 2000 rupee notes. The
experiments showed good classification results and proved that the
proposed methodology has the capability of separating classes
properly in varying image conditions.
Abstract: Neonatal lupus erythematous (NLE) is a rare disease marked by clinical characteristic and specific maternal autoantibody. Many cutaneous, cardiac, liver, and hematological manifestations could happen with affect of one organ or multiple. In this case, both babies were premature, low birth weight (LBW), small for gestational age (SGA) and born through caesarean section from a systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) mother. In the first case, we found a baby girl with dyspnea and grunting. Chest X ray showed respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) great I and echocardiography showed small atrial septal defect (ASD) and ventricular septal defect (VSD). She also developed anemia, thrombocytopenia, elevated C-reactive protein, hypoalbuminemia, increasing coagulation factors, hyperbilirubinemia, and positive blood culture of Klebsiella pneumonia. Anti-Ro/SSA and Anti-nRNP/sm were positive. Intravenous fluid, antibiotic, transfusion of blood, thrombocyte concentrate, and fresh frozen plasma were given. The second baby, male presented with necrotic tissue on the left ear and skin rashes, erythematous macula, athropic scarring, hyperpigmentation on all of his body with various size and facial haemorrhage. He also suffered from thrombocytopenia, mild elevated transaminase enzyme, hyperbilirubinemia, anti-Ro/SSA was positive. Intravenous fluid, methyprednisolone, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), blood, and thrombocyte concentrate transfution were given. Two cases of neonatal lupus erythematous had been presented. Diagnosis based on clinical presentation and maternal auto antibody on neonate. Organ involvement in NLE can occur as single or multiple manifestations.
Abstract: Potatoes are a good source of carotenoids, which are lipophilic compounds synthesized in plastids from isoprenoids. The aim of this research was to determine the content of carotenoids in relationship with the colour of organically and conventionally cultivated potato genotypes before and after period of storage. In cooperation with the State Priekuli Plant Breeding Institute (Latvia), six potato genotypes were studied: 'Agrie dzeltenie', 'Prelma', 'Imanta', 'S-03135-10', 'S-99108-8' and 'S-01063-5'. All the genotypes were cultivated under three different conditions: organically and conventionally (two conditions). The content of carotenoids was determined by using spectrophotometer and the colour – L*a*b* system. The results of current research show that after the period of storage, carotenoid amount has increased and in conventionally cultivated potatoes it varies from 228.514 to 552.434 μg 100 g-1 while in organically cultivated potato genotypes – from 45.485 to 662.699 μg 100 g-1 FW. Colour of potato flesh was changing during storage.
Abstract: This paper deals with efficient computation of
probability coefficients which offers computational simplicity as
compared to spectral coefficients. It eliminates the need of inner
product evaluations in determination of signature of a combinational
circuit realizing given Boolean function. The method for computation
of probability coefficients using transform matrix, fast transform
method and using BDD is given. Theoretical relations for achievable
computational advantage in terms of required additions in computing
all 2n probability coefficients of n variable function have been
developed. It is shown that for n ≥ 5, only 50% additions are needed
to compute all probability coefficients as compared to spectral
coefficients. The fault detection techniques based on spectral
signature can be used with probability signature also to offer
computational advantage.
Abstract: The article presents test results on the changes
occurring in sewage sludge during the process of its storage. Tests
were conducted on mechanically dehydrated sewage sludge derived
from large municipal sewage treatment plants equipped with
biological sewage treatment systems. In testing presented in the paper
the focus was on the basic fuel properties of sewage sludge: moisture
content, heat of combustion, carbon share. In the first part of the
article the overview of the issues concerning the sewage sludge
management is presented and the genesis of tests is explained.
Further in the paper, selected results of conducted tests are discussed.
Changes in tested parameters were determined in the period of a 10-
month sewage storage.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose effective system for digital music retrieval. We divided proposed system into Client and Server. Client part consists of pre-processing and Content-based feature extraction stages. In pre-processing stage, we minimized Time code Gap that is occurred among same music contents. As content-based feature, first-order differentiated MFCC were used. These presented approximately envelop of music feature sequences. Server part included Music Server and Music Matching stage. Extracted features from 1,000 digital music files were stored in Music Server. In Music Matching stage, we found retrieval result through similarity measure by DTW. In experiment, we used 450 queries. These were made by mixing different compression standards and sound qualities from 50 digital music files. Retrieval accurate indicated 97% and retrieval time was average 15ms in every single query. Out experiment proved that proposed system is effective in retrieve digital music and robust at various user environments of web.
Abstract: This paper aims at to develop a robust optimization methodology for the mechatronic modules of machine tools by considering all important characteristics from all structural and control domains in one single process. The relationship between these two domains is strongly coupled. In order to reduce the disturbance caused by parameters in either one, the mechanical and controller design domains need to be integrated. Therefore, the concurrent integrated design method Design For Control (DFC), will be employed in this paper. In this connect, it is not only applied to achieve minimal power consumption but also enhance structural performance and system response at same time. To investigate the method for integrated optimization, a mechatronic feed drive system of the machine tools is used as a design platform. Pro/Engineer and AnSys are first used to build the 3D model to analyze and design structure parameters such as elastic deformation, nature frequency and component size, based on their effects and sensitivities to the structure. In addition, the robust controller,based on Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT), will be applied to determine proper control parameters for the controller. Therefore, overall physical properties of the machine tool will be obtained in the initial stage. Finally, the technology of design for control will be carried out to modify the structural and control parameters to achieve overall system performance. Hence, the corresponding productivity is expected to be greatly improved.
Abstract: We present a dual-band (Cellular & PCS) dual-path
zero-IF receiver for CDMA2000 diversity, monitoring and
simultaneous-GPS. The secondary path is a SAW-less diversity
CDMA receiver which can be also used for advanced features like
monitoring when supported with an additional external VCO. A GPS
receiver is integrated with its dedicated VCO allowing simultaneous
positioning during a cellular call. The circuit is implemented in a
0.25μm 40GHz-fT BiCMOS process and uses a HVQFN 56-pin
package. It consumes a maximum 300mW from a 2.8V supply in
dual-modes. The chip area is 12.8mm2.
Abstract: Image retrieval is a topic where scientific interest is currently high. The important steps associated with image retrieval system are the extraction of discriminative features and a feasible similarity metric for retrieving the database images that are similar in content with the search image. Gabor filtering is a widely adopted technique for feature extraction from the texture images. The recently proposed sparsity promoting l1-norm minimization technique finds the sparsest solution of an under-determined system of linear equations. In the present paper, the l1-norm minimization technique as a similarity metric is used in image retrieval. It is demonstrated through simulation results that the l1-norm minimization technique provides a promising alternative to existing similarity metrics. In particular, the cases where the l1-norm minimization technique works better than the Euclidean distance metric are singled out.
Abstract: In this paper, we present an innovative scheme of
blindly extracting message bits from an image distorted by an attack.
Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to nonlinearly classify the
bits of the embedded message. Traditionally, a hard decoder is used
with the assumption that the underlying modeling of the Discrete
Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients does not appreciably change.
In case of an attack, the distribution of the image coefficients is
heavily altered. The distribution of the sufficient statistics at the
receiving end corresponding to the antipodal signals overlap and a
simple hard decoder fails to classify them properly. We are
considering message retrieval of antipodal signal as a binary
classification problem. Machine learning techniques like SVM is
used to retrieve the message, when certain specific class of attacks is
most probable. In order to validate SVM based decoding scheme, we
have taken Gaussian noise as a test case. We generate a data set using
125 images and 25 different keys. Polynomial kernel of SVM has
achieved 100 percent accuracy on test data.
Abstract: Image compression is one of the most important
applications Digital Image Processing. Advanced medical imaging
requires storage of large quantities of digitized clinical data. Due to
the constrained bandwidth and storage capacity, however, a medical
image must be compressed before transmission and storage. There
are two types of compression methods, lossless and lossy. In Lossless
compression method the original image is retrieved without any
distortion. In lossy compression method, the reconstructed images
contain some distortion. Direct Cosine Transform (DCT) and Fractal
Image Compression (FIC) are types of lossy compression methods.
This work shows that lossy compression methods can be chosen for
medical image compression without significant degradation of the
image quality. In this work DCT and Fractal Compression using
Partitioned Iterated Function Systems (PIFS) are applied on different
modalities of images like CT Scan, Ultrasound, Angiogram, X-ray
and mammogram. Approximately 20 images are considered in each
modality and the average values of compression ratio and Peak
Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) are computed and studied. The quality
of the reconstructed image is arrived by the PSNR values. Based on
the results it can be concluded that the DCT has higher PSNR values
and FIC has higher compression ratio. Hence in medical image
compression, DCT can be used wherever picture quality is preferred
and FIC is used wherever compression of images for storage and
transmission is the priority, without loosing picture quality
diagnostically.
Abstract: Steganography meaning covered writing. Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files [1]. In other words, it is the Secret communication by hiding the existence of message. In this paper, we will refer to cover image, to indicate the images that do not yet contain a secret message, while we will refer to stego images, to indicate an image with an embedded secret message. Moreover, we will refer to the secret message as stego-message or hidden message. In this paper, we proposed a technique called RGB intensity based steganography model as RGB model is the technique used in this field to hide the data. The methods used here are based on the manipulation of the least significant bits of pixel values [3][4] or the rearrangement of colors to create least significant bit or parity bit patterns, which correspond to the message being hidden. The proposed technique attempts to overcome the problem of the sequential fashion and the use of stego-key to select the pixels.
Abstract: Now a days, a significant part of commercial and governmental organisations like museums, cultural organizations, libraries, commercial enterprises, etc. invest intensively in new technologies for image digitization, digital libraries, image archiving and retrieval. Hence image authorization, authentication and security has become prime need. In this paper, we present a semi-fragile watermarking scheme for color images. The method converts the host image into YIQ color space followed by application of orthogonal dual domains of DCT and DWT transforms. The DCT helps to separate relevant from irrelevant image content to generate silent image features. DWT has excellent spatial localisation to help aid in spatial tamper characterisation. Thus image adaptive watermark is generated based of image features which allows the sharp detection of microscopic changes to locate modifications in the image. Further, the scheme utilises the multipurpose watermark consisting of soft authenticator watermark and chrominance watermark. Which has been proved fragile to some predefined processing like intentinal fabrication of the image or forgery and robust to other incidental attacks caused in the communication channel.
Abstract: In this paper, Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) based model for non-instantaneous Weibull distribution deteriorating items with power demand pattern is presented. In this model, the holding cost per unit of the item per unit time is assumed to be an increasing linear function of time spent in storage. Here the retailer is allowed a trade-credit offer by the supplier to buy more items. Also in this model, shortages are allowed and partially backlogged. The backlogging rate is dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment. This model aids in minimizing the total inventory cost by finding the optimal time interval and finding the optimal order quantity. The optimal solution of the model is illustrated with the help of numerical examples. Finally sensitivity analysis and graphical representations are given to demonstrate the model.
Abstract: This paper presents a silicon controller rectifier (SCR)
based ESD protection circuit for IC. The proposed ESD protection
circuit has low trigger voltage and high holding voltage compared with
conventional SCR ESD protection circuit. Electrical characteristics of
the proposed ESD protection circuit are simulated and analyzed using
TCAD simulator. The proposed ESD protection circuit verified
effective low voltage ESD characteristics with low trigger voltage and
high holding voltage.
Abstract: For about two decades scientists have been
developing techniques for enhancing the quality of medical images
using Fourier transform, DWT (Discrete wavelet transform),PDE
model etc., Gabor wavelet on hexagonal sampled grid of the images
is proposed in this work. This method has optimal approximation
theoretic performances, for a good quality image. The computational
cost is considerably low when compared to similar processing in the
rectangular domain. As X-ray images contain light scattered pixels,
instead of unique sigma, the parameter sigma of 0.5 to 3 is found to
satisfy most of the image interpolation requirements in terms of high
Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) , lower Mean Squared Error
(MSE) and better image quality by adopting windowing technique.
Abstract: A multilayer self organizing neural neural network
(MLSONN) architecture for binary object extraction, guided by a beta
activation function and characterized by backpropagation of errors
estimated from the linear indices of fuzziness of the network output
states, is discussed. Since the MLSONN architecture is designed to
operate in a single point fixed/uniform thresholding scenario, it does
not take into cognizance the heterogeneity of image information in
the extraction process. The performance of the MLSONN architecture
with representative values of the threshold parameters of the beta
activation function employed is also studied. A three layer bidirectional
self organizing neural network (BDSONN) architecture
comprising fully connected neurons, for the extraction of objects from
a noisy background and capable of incorporating the underlying image
context heterogeneity through variable and adaptive thresholding,
is proposed in this article. The input layer of the network architecture
represents the fuzzy membership information of the image scene to
be extracted. The second layer (the intermediate layer) and the final
layer (the output layer) of the network architecture deal with the self
supervised object extraction task by bi-directional propagation of the
network states. Each layer except the output layer is connected to the
next layer following a neighborhood based topology. The output layer
neurons are in turn, connected to the intermediate layer following
similar topology, thus forming a counter-propagating architecture
with the intermediate layer. The novelty of the proposed architecture
is that the assignment/updating of the inter-layer connection weights
are done using the relative fuzzy membership values at the constituent
neurons in the different network layers. Another interesting feature
of the network lies in the fact that the processing capabilities of
the intermediate and the output layer neurons are guided by a beta
activation function, which uses image context sensitive adaptive
thresholding arising out of the fuzzy cardinality estimates of the
different network neighborhood fuzzy subsets, rather than resorting to
fixed and single point thresholding. An application of the proposed
architecture for object extraction is demonstrated using a synthetic
and a real life image. The extraction efficiency of the proposed
network architecture is evaluated by a proposed system transfer index
characteristic of the network.
Abstract: Multimedia security is an incredibly significant area of concern. The paper aims to discuss a robust image watermarking scheme, which can withstand geometric attacks. The source image is initially moment normalized in order to make it withstand geometric attacks. The moment normalized image is wavelet transformed. The first level wavelet transformed image is segmented into blocks if size 8x8. The product of mean and standard and standard deviation of each block is computed. The second level wavelet transformed image is divided into 8x8 blocks. The product of block mean and the standard deviation are computed. The difference between products in the two levels forms the watermark. The watermark is inserted by modulating the coefficients of the mid frequencies. The modulated image is inverse wavelet transformed and inverse moment normalized to generate the watermarked image. The watermarked image is now ready for transmission. The proposed scheme can be used to validate identification cards and financial instruments. The performance of this scheme has been evaluated using a set of parameters. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this scheme.