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Background: In neuroimaging, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a cornerstone technique that allows clinicians to see fine aspects of brain architecture and pathology with unparalleled clarity. Ring-enhancing lesions (RELs) in the brain pose a particularly difficult diagnostic scenario among the many abnormalities found. Objectives: 1. To differentiate neoplastic from nonneoplastic brain lesions using conventional and advanced MR imaging techniques. 2. To study the characteristic imaging findings of various ring enhancing lesions on MRI. Material & Methods: Study Design: A prospective hospital-based observational study. Study area: Department of Radio Diagnosis, Subbaiah Institute of medical sciences, Shivamogga, Karnataka. Study Period: 1 year. Study population: All patients referred to the Department of Radio diagnosis with clinically suspected cerebral ring-enhancing lesions. Sample size: The study consisted of 60 subjects. Sampling method: Simple random technique. Results: Out of 60 patients evaluated, Seizures were the most common presenting complaint in 70% of cases. Headache (18%), fever (6.6%), vomiting (15%), ataxia (5%) and motor weakness (6%) were the other presenting complaints. Our findings were compared with the study conducted by ps mahato8 in which headache (57.5%) was the most common symptom followed by seizures (52.5%). CONCLUSION: From our study, it can be concluded thatMRI is the most sensitive modality in the characterization of intracranial ring-enhancing lesions. MRI being non-invasive and non-radiating is an ideal imaging modality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: "Stroke" is a generic term meaning sudden onset of a neurologic event and is also called cerebrovascular accident or "brain attack". It is one of the leading causes of death globally and is a significant cause of longterm disability. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides critical informationin acute stroke that can be used to confirm the diagnosis and direct both acute therapeutic interventions and long-term treatment decisions. MRI can identify regions of hemorrhage, active ischemia, and vessel occlusion. This has made SWI a powerful technique in the evaluation ofstroke patients. Materials and Methods: This is a Cross-sectional study was done in the Radiology Department, Subbaiah Institute of Medical Sciences over the period of 1 year. All clinically suspected patients with a neurological deficit (signs and symptoms like dysphasia/aphasia, hemiparalysis/hemiparesis, ataxia, convulsions) were referred by a neurologist, physicians for MRI brain in medical college and general hospital. Results: In this study, out of the 125patients, 115 patients (92%) had infarcts in the arterialterritory, and 10 patients (8%) had venous infarcts. Hemorrhage was detected in 42 patients (33.6%), of which 33 cases were arterialinfarcts and 9 were venous infarcts. Hemorrhage was seen in 27(35%) out of 77 male patients and 15 (31.2%) out of 48female patients. Hypointense blooming was not seen in 83 patients(66.4%) in this study. Occlusion in TOF-MRA was seen in 25(21.7%) patients out of 115 patients. Susceptibility vessel sign is seen in 20 patients out of 25 patients showing occlusion in TOF-MRA. Loss of flow void on T2 indicating thrombus in the vessel was seen in 5 patients. Conclusion Susceptibility weighted imaging is superior than conventional MR imaging in the detection of haemorrhagic transformation of infarct. SWI can also detect the thromboemboli in the vessels by susceptibility vessel sign. SWI indicates the need for doing perfusion MRI to detect penumbra in cases of DWI-SWI mismatch . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stenotrophomonas koreensis, was isolated from a textile effluent and employed to biologically degrade 98.8% of the recalcitrant toxic dye malachite green in 4 h in the absence of any supplements or media. Chromatographic and Spectroscopic analysis confirmed the degradation of the dye. According to Response Surface Methodology, the optimum conditions for biodegradation were pH 6, inoculum size 6 mL (initial concentration Log10CFU/mL = 6.2), and temperature 45 °C. More than 98% decolorization was achieved within 2.5 h of the addition of soymeal extract or peptone. One of the most promising features of this strain is that even in the presence of heavy metals, S. koreensis actively degraded the dye. The bacteria biodegraded malachite green following the first-order reaction kinetics. LC-MS analysis of the degradation product yielded several intermediates like Michler's ketone (m/z 269), 4-N,N-dimethylaminophenol (m/z 137), Benzophenone (m/z 182), N,N-dimethylaniline (m/z 121), 4-(N-methylamino)-benzophenone (m/z 211), 4-aminobenzaldehyde (m/z 121), anionic canonical form of 4-aminobenzaldehyde (m/z 120), 4-(N,N-dimethylamino)benzoic acid (m/z 165), 4-(N-methylamino) benzoic acid (m/z 152). The enzymes responsible for the malachite green degradation were tyrosinase, Malachite Green reductase, and NADH-DCIP reductase. The present work is the first to report the degradation of malachite green by S. koreensis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncontrolled breathing is the most critical and challenging situation for a healthcare person to patients. It may be due to simple cough/cold/critical disease to severe respiratory infection of the patients and resulting directly impacts the lungs and damages the alveoli which leads to shortness of breath and also impairs the oxygen exchange. The prolonged respiratory failure in such patients may cause death. In this condition, supportive care of the patients by medicine and a controlled oxygen supply is only the emergency treatment. In this paper, as a part of emergency support, the intelligent set-point modulated fuzzy PI-based model reference adaptive controller (SFPIMRAC) is delineated to control the oxygen supply to uncomforted breathing or respiratory infected patients. The effectiveness of the model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) is enhanced by assimilating the worthiness of fuzzy-based tuning and set-point modulation strategies. Since then, different conventional and intelligent controllers have attempted to regulate the supply of oxygen to respiratory distress patients. To overcome the limitations of previous techniques, researchers created the set-point modulated fuzzy PI-based model reference adaptive controller, which can react instantly to changes in oxygen demand in patients. Nonlinear mathematical formulations of the respiratory system and the exchange of oxygen with time delay are modeled and simulated for study. The efficacy of the proposed SFPIMRAC is tested, with transport delay and set-point variations in the devised respiratory model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at empirically examining the influence of Transcendent Customer Experience (TCE) on website patronage intentions both directly and indirectly (through two mediators, namely, attitude towards a website and attitude towards the product). In this regard, the study analyzed 120 responses collected from a large Indian university. Hypotheses testing using structural equation modeling with IBM SPSS Amos 21.0 revealed that no direct relationship exists between TCE and website patronage intentions, whereas a significant relationship exists between the two forms of attitudes (mediators). Similarly, indirect effect testing using PROCESS macro for IBM SPSS 22.0 revealed that TCE does not influence website patronage intentions when mediated only through the attitude towards the product. Full mediation as well as serial mediation effects were identified by the multiple-mediation analysis procedure. These findings led to a decent number of theoretical and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, researchers have focused on reducing the model size and number of computations (measured as “multiply-accumulate” or MAC operations) of DNNs. The energy consumption of a DNN depends on both the number of MAC operations and the energy efficiency of each MAC operation. The former can be estimated at design time; however, the latter depends on the intricate data reuse patterns and underlying hardware architecture. Hence, estimating it at design time is challenging. This article shows that the conventional approach to estimate the data reuse, viz. arithmetic intensity, does not always correctly estimate the degree of data reuse in DNNs since it gives equal importance to all the data types. We propose a novel model, termed “data type aware weighted arithmetic intensity” (DI), which accounts for the unequal importance of different data types in DNNs. We evaluate our model on 25 state-of-the-art DNNs on two GPUs. We show that our model accurately models data-reuse for all possible data reuse patterns for different types of convolution and different types of layers. We show that our model is a better indicator of the energy efficiency of DNNs. We also show its generality using the central limit theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic/environmental power dispatch goals were to determine the optimal power generation from thermal plants to satisfy the given demand while diminishing operational costs and also minimizing emissions due to burning of fossil fuels. In this paper, economic and environmental scheduling problems are mathematically formulated by considering various system constraints like the valve point loading effect, ramp rate constraints, plug-in electric vehicle charging constraints, and generator's capacity constraints. In this work, multiagent fuzzy reinforcement learning (MAFRL) is implemented for an effective elucidation for the economic/environmental power dispatch (EEPD) problem with multiple charging scenarios of plug-in electric vehicle and valve point loading of concern thermal power generators. Here, the EEPD is framed as a multiagent fuzzy reinforcement learning (MAFRL) tasks in which specific plug-in electric vehicles and power generating units act as multiple players for minimizing emissions due to fossil fuels and costs of power generation also satisfying charging constraints of plug-in electric vehicles and several thermal unit's constraints. To prove the superiority of multiagent fuzzy RL, two standard test functions containing five and fifteen thermal generating units integrated with multiple charging scenarios of plug-in electric vehicles have projected. Numerical consequences and assessment with a numerous current solution methodologies show the potentiality of multiagent fuzzy reinforcement learning method in solving the EEPD problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remarkable predictive performance of deep neural networks (DNNs) has led to their adoption in service domains of unprecedented scale and scope. However, the widespread adoption and growing commercialization of DNNs have underscored the importance of intellectual property (IP) protection. Devising techniques to ensure IP protection has become necessary due to the increasing trend of outsourcing the DNN computations on the untrusted accelerators in cloud-based services. The design methodologies and hyper-parameters of DNNs are crucial information, and leaking them may cause massive economic loss to the organization. Furthermore, the knowledge of DNN's architecture can increase the success probability of an adversarial attack where an adversary perturbs the inputs and alters the prediction. In this work, we devise a two-stage attack methodology "DeepPeep," which exploits the distinctive characteristics of design methodologies to reverse-engineer the architecture of building blocks in compact DNNs. We show the efficacy of "DeepPeep" on P100 and P4000 GPUs. Additionally, we propose intelligent design maneuvering strategies for thwarting IP theft through the DeepPeep attack and proposed "SecureMobileNetV1." Interestingly, compared to vanilla MobileNet-V1, secure MobileNet-V1 provides a significant reduction in inference latency (≈60%) and improvement in predictive performance (≈2%) with very low memory and computation overheads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims Prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) may vary across a country like India. Risk factors and disease-pathogenesis were also not fully elucidated. This study aimed to examine prevalence of GDM among pregnant women visiting antenatal clinic of a tertiary-care hospital of Kolkata, India; possible mechanism of disease pathogenesis and potency of associated parameters as disease biomarkers were also explored. Methods 735 pregnant women were screened for GDM according to DIPSI (Diabetes in Pregnancy Study Group India) guideline and risk-factors were analyzed. Case-control study was conducted with 114 GDM and 114 matched non-GDM control. Blood sample was collected before glucose load for complete blood count, measurement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and assessment of DNA damage. Results Prevalence of GDM was found to be 17.2%(127/735). Maternal age, diabetic family history and acanthosis nigricans seemed to be important risk factors. Total ROS, lymphocyte DNA damage (measured by comet-assay) and some inflammatory hematological parameters were significantly higher in GDM compared to control. ROS, comet-tail DNA%, WBC, neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and mean platelet volume (MPV) were established as independent determinants of disease condition after adjustment for pre-gestational body mass index. In receiver operating characteristic analysis, ROS>155.7 arbitrary fluorescent unit, NLR>2.12 and MPV>11.05 fL showed 82.5 & 98.2%, 71.9 & 84.2% and 71.9 & 82.5% sensitivity & specificity respectively in disease prediction. Conclusions Prevalence of GDM seemed to be high in Kolkata on Indian scenario. Oxidative-stress, related DNA-damage and inflammation seemed to have important contribution in pathogenesis of GDM independent of obesity. ROS, NLR and MPV with respective cut-off scores might be used as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for better management of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast tissue remodeling occurs throughout a women's life from pre-menstrual to post menopausal time, hence there is a high risk of DNA damage. Estrogen metabolite generates free radical that causes DNA damage leading to cancer cell formation. Moringa oleifera leaf extract contain rich amount of Polyphenolic and Flavonoids compound which trap the free radical and thereby prevent cancer cell progression. Moreover anti-gonadotrophic hormonal activity of the leaf extract slows down the proliferation rate of T47D cell line. Hence our aim of study mainly focused to develop an anticancer drug delivery system using M. oleifera leaf extract. Silver nanoparticle (AgNp) is formed by green synthesis method using M. oleifera leaf extract. Reducing sugar, Flavonoids, Polyphenolic compound, and NADPH dependent dehydrogenase present in M. oleifera leaf extract are responsible for reduction of the silver ion (Ag+) followed by formation of metallic silver (Ag0). The formation of spherical and rectangular shaped AgNp with average size of 50 nm is reflected with sharp SPR band near 420 nm and from SEM, TEM analysis. The nanoparticle mediated polyvinyl alcohol composite film (nano-rod) is prepared for delivery of the purified anti-neoplastic phyto-compound from leaf extract. The large surface area of AgNp permits its coordination with purified compound molecule by metal ligand bonding. Therefore it provide duel effect, it acts as carrier molecule for phyto-compound and also creates cytotoxicity effect on cancer cells. Single dose treatment on HeLa cell indicates that the composite film is more effective in killing the cancer cell than the purified anti-neoplastic phyto-compound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optical signals of serum albumin (SA) provide precious information for realizing its native functions, in addition to developing related biomedical applications. Herein, we report a new class of easy synthesizable and water-soluble compounds (BZ1–BZ5) based on different chlorine positions on 9-O-benzyl-substituted berberine scaffolds for the selective detection of bovine serum albumin (BSA) in CP buffer solution (10 mM, pH 7.2) based on two competing factors: hydrophobic interactions and steric repulsion. The frail emission intensities of these probes were enhanced upon the addition of BSA; exceptionally, a remarkable increase in emission intensity (140-fold) and remarkable lifetime and quantum yield increases make BZ4 an excellent fluorescence turn-on hydrophobic BSA sensor. Selectivity and co-existence studies involving other proteins, free tryptophan, etc. revealed that the microenvironment around the tryptophan moiety in BSA incites drastic spectral changes upon the introduction of BSA. Moreover, the most efficient lumino-probe, BZ4, can detect bovine serum albumin at a nanomolar level (LOD = 3.3 nM) with a broadened range of linearity and slight altering of the secondary structure of the protein. Our experimental results and docking simulation studies show that the probe BZ4 binds preferentially at "binding site II" of BSA. In addition, the binding and conformational alterations of BSA provoked by these analogues have been intensely investigated, and we fruitfully relate the binding results to the sensing outcome. The obtained results reveal how the different positioning of chlorine in benzyl-substituted berberine affects the hydrophobic sensing of BSA, making these probes a new category of BSA selective material with potential applications in proteome research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A highly responsive and selective patterning nanomaterial was developed based on 5-methyl-1,3,4-thiadiazole-2-thiol fabricated silver nanoparticles with the simplicity of colorimetric performance. The assay is a reliable tool for the selective detection of glutathione (GSH), which is known as "the mother of all antioxidants" as well as a principle detoxifier in the human detoxification system. The newly synthesised silver nanoparticles were characterised through various spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. The probe exhibits superb selectivity towards GSH in the presence of other bio-molecules. During the addition of GSH, the colour of the yellow probe gradually changes to pale red along with an appropriate absorption response. A fast, selective and sensorial sensing platform for ultra-trace detection of GSH with a lower statistical detection limit of 3.49 nM and a linearity range from 0.05 μM to 5 μM is established with the sensor. The probe is effectively exploited to detect GSH in some GSH-containing capsules as well as human urine samples and is recovered with almost 100% accuracy; thus, it is a feasible colorimetric GSH detector in real-time sample analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes the eco‐friendly, low‐cost and room‐temperature synthesis of gold nanoparticles from Musa balbisiana leaf extract, which acts as both reducing and stabilizing agent, and characterized by ultraviolet−visible (UV–vis) light spectroscopy, fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE‐SEM), analytical transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (EDAX) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) instruments. These nanoparticles showed an average diameter of 33.83 ± 3.39 nm, which was confirmed from the size distribution histogram. The bactericidal activity of these nanoparticles was confirmed using bacteria Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus at 1 and 2 nM minimum inhibitory concentrations, respectively. The interaction between nanoparticles and human serum albumin (HSA) was investigated, as this plays significant roles in biological systems. The nature of interaction, binding parameters and structural variation of HSA in the presence of these nanoparticles have been evaluated using several useful spectroscopic approaches such as UV–vis, FTIR, time‐resolved and steady‐state fluorescence, and circular dichroism in addition to the measurement of zeta potential. This interaction study revealed that static quenching occurs in this process with minimal alteration in the secondary structure, but the native structure of HSA remained unaltered. The binding constant and thermodynamic parameters of this interaction process were also evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unit commitment problem (UCP) aims at optimizing generation cost for meeting a given load demand under several operational constraints. We propose to use fuzzy reinforcement learning (RL) approach for efficient and reliable solution to the unit commitment problem. In particular, we cast UCP as a multiagent fuzzy reinforcement learning task wherein individual generators act as players for optimizing the cost to meet a given load over a twenty-four-hour period. Unit commitment task has been fuzzified, and the most optimal unit commitment solution is generated by employing RL on this fuzzy multigenerator setup. Our proposed multiagent RL framework does not assume any a priori task or system knowledge, and the generators gradually learn to produce most optimal output solely based on their collective generation. We look at the UCP as a sequential decision-making task with reward/penalty to reduce the collective generation cost of generators. To the best of our knowledge, ours is a first attempt at solving UCP by employing fuzzy reinforcement learning. We test our approach on a ten-generating-unit system with several equality and inequality constraints. Simulation results and comparisons against several recent UCP solution methods prove superiority and viability of our proposed multiagent fuzzy reinforcement learning technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a fuzzy Reinforcement learning (FRL) framework for an efficient solution to the Economic thermal power dispatch (ETPD) considering multiple fuel options along with valve point loading effect concerning with thermal power generating units. The objective of ETPD is optimizing operating cost for specified power demand meet and to satisfy the generation capacity limits of each unit. In the presented work, We cast the ETPD as a multi agent FRL (MAFRL) problem wherein individual thermal generators act as players for minimizing operational cost and also satisfying the generation limits of each units to obtain a specified power demand. To prove supremacy and validity of proposed multi agent fuzzy reinforcement learning technique, two benchmark test systems involving 10 and 40 units integrated using numerous fuel systems with valve point loading effect have been simulated. Simulation results and comparison against several other existing solution approaches showcases the efficacy of MAFRL technique in solving the ETPD problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was carried out to examine whether chronic exposure to smoke during daily household cooking with biomass fuel (BMF) elicits changes in airway cytology and expressions of Nrf2 (nuclear factor erythroid 2 [NF-E2]-related factor 2 [Nrf2]), Keap1 (Kelch-like erythroid-cell-derived protein with CNC homology [ECH]-associated protein 1), and NQO1 (NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1) proteins in the airways. For this, 282 BMF-using women (median age 34 year) and 236 age-matched women who cooked with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) were enrolled. Particulate matter with diameters of < 10 µm (PM10) and < 2.5 µm (PM2.5) were measured in indoor air with real-time laser photometer. Routine hematology, sputum cytology, Nrf2, Keap1, NQO1, and generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) along with the levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase were measured in both groups. PM10 and PM2.5 levels were significantly higher in BMF-using households compared to LPG. Compared with LPG users, BMF users had 32% more leukocytes in circulation and their sputa were 1.4-times more cellular with significant increase in absolute number of neutrophils, lymphocytes, eosinophils, and alveolar macrophages, suggesting airway inflammation. ROS generation was 1.5-times higher in blood neutrophils and 34% higher in sputum cells of BMF users while erythrocyte SOD was 31% lower and plasma catalase was relatively unchanged, suggesting oxidative stress. In BMF users, Keap1 expression was reduced, the percentage of AEC with nuclear expression of Nrf2 was two- to three-times more, and NQO1 level in sputum cell lysate was two-times higher than that of LPG users. In conclusion, cooking with BMF was associated with Nrf2 activation and elevated NQO1 protein level in the airways. The changes may be adaptive cellular response to counteract biomass smoke-elicited oxidative stress and inflammation-related tissue injury in the airways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-secondary educational attainment is an increasingly important prerequisite to many valued outcomes. This paper examines the association of racially-specific high school course of study with student’s postsecondary educational attainment using ELS 2002-2012 and a comprehensive measure of course intensity derived from students’ patterns of course-taking. Results support a partial presence of racially-specific association of high school course of study. We also find that only Asian-American and American Indian/Alaskan Native students in the middle course intensity and Asian-American students in high course intensity ranges are more likely to obtain at least a 4-year college degree than same-race students in the low course intensity group. However, the same pattern is not evident for White, African-American, multi-racial, and Hispanic students, indicating that they do not experience the same benefit from academically rigorous courses of study. Also, educational expectations do not mediate the relationships among race, course of study, and postsecondary educational trajectory differently for students of different racial groups, i.e., they do not play a larger role in mediating the relationship between course of study and postsecondary educational trajectory for White students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables us to monitor alterations in the thickness of the retinal layer as disease progresses in the human retina. However, subtle morphological changes in the retinal layers due to early disease progression often may not lead to detectable alterations in the thickness. OCT images encode depth-dependent backscattered intensity distribution arising due to the depth distributions of the refractive index from tissue microstructures. Here, such depth-resolved refractive index variations of different retinal layers were analyzed using multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis, a special class of multiresolution analysis tools. The analysis extracted and quantified microstructural multifractal information encoded in normal as well as diseased human retinal OCT images acquired in vivo. Interestingly, different layers of the retina exhibited different degrees of multifractality in a particular retina, and the individual layers displayed consistent multifractal trends in healthy retinas of different human subjects. In the retinal layers of diabetic macular edema (DME) subjects, the change in multifractality manifested prominently near the boundary of the DME as compared to the normal retinal layers. The demonstrated ability to quantify depth-resolved information on multifractality encoded in OCT images appears promising for the early diagnosis of diseases of the human eye, which may also prove useful for detecting other types of tissue abnormalities from OCT images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial variation of refractive index (RI) in connective tissues exhibits multifractality, which encodes useful morphological and ultrastructural information about the disease. We present a spectral Mueller matrix (MM)-based approach in combination with multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) to exclusively pick out the signature of the underlying connective tissue multifractality through the superficial epithelium layer. The method is based on inverse analysis on selected spectral scattering MM elements encoding the birefringence information on the anisotropic connective tissue. The light scattering spectra corresponding to the birefringence carrying MM elements are then subjected to the Born approximation-based Fourier domain preprocessing to extract ultrastructural RI fluctuations of anisotropic tissue. The extracted RI fluctuations are subsequently analyzed via MFDFA to yield the multifractal tissue parameters. The approach was experimentally validated on a simple tissue model comprising of TiO2 as scatterers of the superficial isotropic layer and rat tail collagen as an underlying anisotropic layer. Finally, the method enabled probing of precancer-related subtle alterations in underlying connective tissue ultrastructural multifractality from intact tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief, a new guidance law for the defense missile of nonmaneuverable aircraft is formulated based on dynamic game considerations. First, a simple differential game of protecting a static target in 2-D, involving simple motions for the attacker and defender, is introduced. The analysis is then extended to a moving noncooperative target in 2-D, in view of the fact that a nonmaneuverable aircraft would not be able to cooperate with the defender. A heuristic solution for the game is proposed and tested, and the results of the 2-D analysis are then extended to 3-D to formulate a new guidance law for the defense missile called the command to optimal interception point (COIP) guidance law. The validity of the new guidance law is checked using trajectory and envelope simulations, built with high-fidelity 6-DOF models using the computer-aided design of aerospace concepts in C++ framework. Performance comparisons are shown between the COIP guidance law and the recently proposed airborne command to line-of-sight (A-CLOS) guidance law. The results show that the performances of COIP and A-CLOS guidance laws are almost identical in a coplanar engagement scenario, but the COIP law has the additional advantage of working with only position information, without the knowledge of motion of the players. In addition, in a noncoplanar engagement case studied, the defense missile is shown to achieve intercept using the COIP guidance law, but fails when using the A-CLOS guidance law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deploying flare decoys against heat-seeking threats involves various parameters such as flare timing, flare ejection velocity, direction of ejection and the number of flares used. In this study, an attempt has been made to identify the key parameters among these that impact the performance of flares the most. For this, engagement studies involving six-degrees-of-freedom models for an air-to-air heat-seeking missile and a fighter aircraft were carried out using the CADAC++ simulation environment. The effect of flare parameters was studied using their impact on missile envelopes. Studies show that the effectiveness of the flare decoys is a strong function of the flare timing and the number of flares used. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The common complication associated with implants is microbial infection due to biofilm formation. Among bacterial infectionsStaphlyococcus aureusremains a major challenge. This threat posed by implant associated infection affects a large percentage of population. One of the strategies to combat this risk is to coat the implant surface with polymers loaded with antibiotics. The antibiotics release at implantation site will prevent microbial infection. We have synthesized polyether urethane membrane using biocompatible isocyanate. Synthesis of the polyether urethane membrane was confirmed through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis. The membranes were further characterized by X-ray diffraction, swelling study (in water, simulated body fluid, tetrahydrofuran), drug release study, and antibiotic assay. Information of swelling study is used for drug loading and explanation of drug release from the membranes. We have used antibiotics for drug release study as they find application to combat infections. From the results, it was observed that antibiotic-loaded implant coatings may find application for preventing implant infection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The cytotoxic marine metabolite harzialactone A has been synthesized stereoselectively starting from phenylacetaldehyde through three different routes. The key steps were: in the first approach Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation, in the second approach diastereoselective iodo carbonate preparation, and in the third approach Jacobsen's hydrolytic kinetic resolution. In all these three schemes the triol was successfully converted into the lactone by using highly chemoselective oxidation with TEMPO and (diacetoxyiodo) benzene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complexes of CoII with N,N'-bis-(3-carboxy-1-oxopropanyl)-1,2-ethylenediamine(L1), N,N'-bis-(3-carboxy-1-oxopropanyl)-1,2-phenylenediamine(L2), N,N'-bis-(2-carboxy-1-oxophenelenyl)-1,2-phenylenediamine(L3) and N,N'-bis-(3-carboxy-1-oxoprop-2-enyl)-1,2-phenylenediamine(L4) have been prepared and characterized by elemental analysis, vibrational spectra, magnetic susceptibility measurements, electronic spectra and thermal studies. Stability constants of the complexes have been evaluated potentiometrically. Vibrational spectra indicate coordination of amide and carboxylate oxygens of the ligands along with two water molecules giving a MO6 weak field octahedral chromophore. Electronic spectra support octahedral geometry around CoII. The [Co(L1)-(H2O)2] · 2H2O complex has the maximum activation energy and [Co(L3)(H2O)2] complex has the minimum activation energy. The order of stability constants of the CoII complexes with various ligands is due to their σ-donor abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]