Search

The aerodynamic efficiency of any flying object depends largely on the shape of its wing. Albatross, the largest flying bird in terms of the aerodynamic efficiency, is researching the wing structure of birds. The wing of a flange is first modelled and comparable with other influenced wing types as well as to the conventional geometric shapes which includes the delta, elliptical and rectangular wing types. These studies will help to understand the effect of wing shape on aerodynamic efficiency of the UAVs. Airfoil and flight speed analyses are carried out under the same terms, taking into account the same aspect ratio (AR), span of the wing and its area. There is now growing need for UAVs with different military and civil capabilities for a fixed-wing aircraft. The novel ideas and concepts for developing the Unmanned Aerial Systems is gaining a lot of attention on the current era of development includes the autonomous missions, such as maritime and spatial exploration. It is important to note this will help to provide the pathways for production of an efficient drone with high aerodynamic efficiency.

Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a major public health problem in the South Asian countries including India. Pigs serve as a relevant sentinel model, the surveillance of which could predict a potential JE outbreak in human population nearby. However, existing serological detection methods like Enzyme-Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ELISA), virus neutralization test (VNT) and Haemagglutination Inhibition (HI) require elaborative laboratory facilities which are invariably not available in field conditions. Recognizing the lacunae, attempts were made to develop recombinant antigen (rNS1) based latex agglutination test (LAT) as a rapid on-site test using covalent coupling method. Four different formats were evaluated using different coupling buffers, blocking buffers and reaction conditions. The format in which borate buffer at alkaline pH (8.5) was used for coupling of antigen with carboxylated beads followed by blocking with skimmed milk powder was found to be the best amongst all. Developed latex based test was used for screening of 207 pig serum samples for JE which revealed relative diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of 80.2% and 95.2%, respectively in comparison with indirect IgG ELISA. Hence, the present study demonstrated that covalently coupled recombinant antigen based LAT could be used as a reliable screening test for surveillance of JE in pigs under field conditions.

Fraud in the food supply system will be exacerbated by shortages caused by climate change and COVID-19's impact. The dried herbs market exemplifies complex supply chains attractive to criminals seeking financial gain. Real-time remote testing is achievable through development of globally accessible chemometric models for portable near infrared devices, deployed throughout supply chains. This study describes building of models for detection of oregano adulteration, on portable near infrared devices, and comparison to a laboratory-based Fourier-Transform Infrared spectroscopy method. 33/34 portable devices were able to correctly classify 5 out of 6 samples successfully with all adulterated samples being correctly classified following the use of appropriate transferability pre-processing routines. The devices native setup shows limited ability to perform a true screening of oregano using the setup offered. However modifications to the setup could in the future offer a solution that facilitates fit-for-purpose real time detection of adulterated samples within the supply chain. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.]

Over the years, due to the increasing deterioration of environmental problems, combined economic and environmental power dispatch has become one of the active research areas in the power system operation and control. This paper proposes a new multi-objective squirrel search algorithm to solve the combined economic and environmental power dispatch problem. The proposed multi-objective squirrel search algorithm integrates squirrel search algorithm along with Pareto-dominance principle to generate non-dominated solutions. It uses an external elitist depository mechanism with crowding distance sorting to maintain the distribution diversity of Pareto-optimal solutions as the evolution proceeds. In addition, a fuzzy decision-making strategy is used to select the best compromised solution from the obtained Pareto frontiers. The combined economic and environmental power dispatch problem is also solved by squirrel search algorithm based weighted sum approach, which transfers both the fuel cost and emission objectives into a single-objective function. The performances of multi-objective squirrel search algorithm are tested on three test systems with diverse complexities. The simulation results and comparisons with the other state-of-the-art heuristic algorithms confirm that the proposed multi-objective squirrel search algorithm for combined economic and environmental power dispatching can obtain a better trade-off between fuel cost and emission objectives.

Thermodynamic properties of a DNA hairpin are investigated employing non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo simulation. We model the DNA hairpin as a polymer on a two dimensional square lattice. We Consider bond fluctuation model with each bead occupying four-sites. The system exhibits a transition from a closed loop phase to a open phase. This can be induced by increasing temperature and is called melting. We investigate the effect of force on melting transition by calculating free energy. We report results on force–temperature phase diagram. From free energy curves we observe that the phase transition is discontinuous. We also present results on average energy, average extension and heat capacity as a function of temperature.

We consider in this paper, a few important issues in non-equilibrium work fluctuations and their relations to equilibrium free energies. First we show that Jarzynski identity can be viewed as a cumulant expansion of work. For a switching process which is nearly quasistatic the work distribution is sharply peaked and Gaussian. We show analytically that dissipation given by average work minus reversible work $W_R$, decreases when the process becomes more and more quasistatic. Eventually, in the quasistatic reversible limit, the dissipation vanishes. However estimate of $p$ - the probability of violation of the second law given by the integral of the tail of the work distribution from $-\infty$ to $W_R$, increases and takes a value of $0.5$ in the quasistatic limit. We show this analytically employing Gaussian integrals given by error functions and Callen-Welton theorem that relates fluctuations to dissipation in process that is nearly quasistatic. Then we carry out Monte Carlo simulation of non-equilibrium processes in a liquid crystal system in the presence of an electric field and present results on reversible work, dissipation, probability of violation of the second law and distribution of work, Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures

Extreme ultraviolet multilayer coatings consist of periodic or aperiodic stack of two or more material layers in the nanometric scale. They are fundamental in a very wide range of applications: in atto-physics they allow manipulation of high order harmonics by compressing ultrafast pulses in the atto-second regime; in the free electron laser beamlines they can be used to select the proper harmonics while rejecting unwanted ones; in space experiments they are employed in astrophysical instrumentation dedicated to space weather studies for the observation of solar disk and coronal plasmas; in microelectronics industry they are used as coatings of mirrors and projection masks in extreme ultraviolet lithographic apparatus for integrated circuit production. The more and more sophisticated level of such experiments and apparatus required the realization of multilayers with very strict requirements; in particular high control of reflecting curve shape and phase, and stability with respect to deposition process can be achieved only by deposition of aperiodic structure. Optimization of such structures usually requires a quite complex mathematical approach; an innovative software tool to perform such designs is presented.

The determination of egg freshness as a fundamental aspect directly related to consumers’ perception of food product quality is a major target of the egg industry. An artificial olfactory system (AOS) based on common metal oxide sensors is presented here as an interesting tool to carry out, in a simple and rapid way, the freshness assessment of industrial egg products. Contemporaneously, the correlation between AOS responses and the correspondent chemical (lactic and succinic acids) and microbiological (total viable mesophilic bacteria and Enterobacteriaceae counts) parameters, which are legal references to attest the quality of the egg products, has been demonstrated.