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Facial emotion recognition (FER) represents a significant outcome of the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In today's digital era, the ability to decipher emotions from facial expressions has evolved into a fundamental mode of human interaction and communication. As a result, FER has penetrated diverse domains, including but not limited to medical diagnosis, customer feedback analysis, the automation of automobile driver systems, and the evaluation of student comprehension. Furthermore, it has matured into a captivating and dynamic research field, capturing the attention and curiosity of contemporary scholars and scientists. The primary objective of this paper is to provide an exhaustive review of FER systems. Its significance goes beyond offering a comprehensive resource; it also serves as a valuable guide for emerging researchers in the FER domain. Through a meticulous examination of existing FER systems and methodologies, this review equips them with essential insights and guidance for their future research pursuits. Moreover, this comprehensive review contributes to the expansion of their knowledge base, facilitating a profound understanding of this rapidly evolving field. In a world increasingly dependent on technology for communication and interaction, the study of FER holds a pivotal role in human‐computer interaction (HCI). It not only provides valuable insights but also unlocks a multitude of possibilities for future innovations and applications. As we continue to integrate AI and facial emotion recognition into our daily lives, the importance of comprehending and enhancing FER systems becomes increasingly evident. This paper serves as a stepping stone for researchers, nurturing their involvement in this exciting and ever‐evolving field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cerebral vasospasm (CV) is a significant complication following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH), and lacks a comprehensive molecular understanding. Given the temporal trajectory of intracranial aneurysm (IA) formation, its rupture, and development of CV, altered gene expression might be a molecular substrate that runs through these clinical events, influencing both disease inception and progression. Utilizing RNA-Seq, we analyzed tissue samples from ruptured IAs with and without vasospasm to identify the dysregulated genes. In addition, temporal gene expression analysis was conducted. We identified seven dysregulated genes in patients with ruptured IA with vasospasm when compared with those without vasospasm. We found 192 common genes when the samples of each clinical subset of patients with IA, that is, unruptured aneurysm, ruptured aneurysm without vasospasm, and ruptured aneurysm with vasospasm, were compared with control samples. Among these common genes, TNFSF13B, PLAUR, OSM, and LAMB3 displayed temporal expression (progressive increase) with the pathological progression of disease that is formation of aneurysm, its rupture, and consequently the development of vasospasm. We validated the temporal gene expression pattern of OSM at both the transcript and protein levels and OSM emerges as a crucial gene implicated in the pathological progression of disease. In addition, RSAD2 and ATP1A2 appear to be pivotal genes for CV development. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compare the transcriptome of aneurysmal tissue samples of aSAH patients with and without CV. The findings collectively provide new insights on the molecular basis of IA and CV and new leads for translational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple theoretical model is developed to study the effect of size and shape on the bandgap of semiconductor nanomaterials. It is found that bandgap increases by decreasing the size, which depends on the shape considered. The results obtained are compared with the available experimental data as well as with those based on earlier models. Different models predict similar trend of variations. However, such an excellent agreement with experimental data particularly in low size range using a simple model is never seen earlier. The model reduces the number of input parameters and includes more shapes as compared with earlier studies. This demonstrates the simplicity and wide applicability of the present model due to which it can be used to study the size and shape dependence of bandgap of different semiconductor nanomaterials of current interest in science and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phishing is a fraudulent tactic for attackers to obtain victims personal information, such as passwords, account details, credit card details, and other sensitive information. Existing anti-phishing detection methods using at the application layer and cannot be applied at the transport layer. A novel machine learning (ML) based phishing detection technique from transport layer security (TLS) 1.2 and TLS 1.3 encrypted traffic without decryption is proposed in this paper. Our proposed model detects phishing URLs at the transport layer and classifies them as legitimate or phishing. The features are extracted from TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 traffic, and phishing detection is performed using ML algorithms based on the extracted features. The datasets for legitimate and phishing sites are created using features derived from TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 traffic. According to the experimental results, the proposed model effectively detects phishing URLs in encrypted traffic. The proposed model achieves an accuracy of 93.63% for Random Forest (RF), 95.07% for XGBoost (XGB), and the highest accuracy of 95.40% for Light GBM (LGBM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theoretical model is developed to understand the effect of size and shape on Young's modulus of nanosolids. A sufficient amount of experimental data and theoretical formulations has been compiled from the earlier literature and is compared with the present findings. Applying the theory to different materials demonstrated that the results obtained using the present model are better than the earlier formulations in light of experimental data. The theory reduces the number of input parameters and increases the number of shapes compared with the earlier models. Due to its simplicity and applicability, it may be used to understand the effect of size and shape on the Young's modulus of nanomaterials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dual-band 2 × 1 multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity for both satellite (in K-band) and 5 G applications is proposed. Initially, the SIW cavity consisting of metallic vias on all four sides is implemented. For MIMO configuration, this cavity is divided into two smaller SIW cavities using a row of metallic vias and excited using the coaxial feed. By etching an asymmetric cross-slot (AXS) with tuned dimensions on top of the SIW cavity, a dualsense of circular polarisation (CP) in both frequency bands is obtained. The fabricated prototype of the proposed SIW antenna shows impedance bandwidth (IBW) of 15.36% (22.60–26.36 GHz; BandI) and 4.64% (29.04–30.42 GHz; BandII). The completely overlapping axial-ratio bandwidth (ARBW) with IBW of 15.16% (22.62–26.33 GHz) and 3.10% (29.20–30.12 GHz) with a peak gain of 12.47 and 7.71 dBi is obtained in BandI and Band II, respectively. The proposed antenna shows front-to-back ratio (FBR) of more than 20 dB in both resonating frequency bands. The measured results of the proposed MIMO antenna agree well with the simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beryllium, the 44th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, is found ubiquitously in environmental matrices, including air, soil, and water, as well as in a variety of food items such as grains, fruits, and vegetables. The typical concentration of Be in air is reported to be ~0.05 ng/m3, whereas in soil, its concentration varies from ~2 to 5 ppm. The prevalence of Be in soil leads to its presence in water as well as in plants, and various human activities such as burning of coal, petrol, diesel, mining, and other industrial activities may further increase the concentration of beryllium in environment and associated matrices. It needs to be mentioned that the typical concentration of Be in food items is of the order of few ppb, whereas in drinking water, the typical values are reported to be <1 ppb or so. Based on the literature survey including some of the most recent studies, the present paper provides summary on concentration of Be in air, soil, and other relevant matrices as concise and consolidated reports on beryllium are scarce. In addition, related information like Be in drinking water along with available guidelines is also provided. Information on the prevalence of other isotopes of beryllium, i.e., 7Be4 and 10Be4, which are radioactive and are produced by cosmic rays in atmosphere, is also included in the present paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identification of a person on the basis of different characteristics is a prevailing area of research. Both behavioral biometrics and physical biometrics are used as measures to recognize a person's identity. Physical biometrics includes fingerprints and IRIS patterns; whereas behavioral biometrics includes some sort of pattern in human activities like handwriting. Handwriting, like other biometrics, is one of the best attributes for implicitly identifying a person. Every person has a different style of handwriting. Gender prediction on the basis of handwriting styles in different Indian and non-Indian scripts offers a vast area for research and is an effective strategy for biometrics. This paper's major goal is to give an in-depth analysis of gender prediction using handwriting in non-Indic and Indic scripts. The intention is to provide a variety of feature extraction methods, datasets available, and a taxonomy of conventional and machine learning-based tools for gender prediction on the basis of handwriting. This article discusses the context, survey protocol, methodology, and various datasets used by the various researchers. The compiled study used for feature extraction and classification methods, along with a critical analysis of the work done, is also elaborated in this manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a four-carbon neurotransmitter and plays a major role in an increasing feed intake and nutrient utilization in aquatic animal. GABA used as a feed additive to determine its effect on Labeo rohita fingerlings growth, haemato-immunological status, antioxidant enzymes activity and expression of ghrelin and IGF-I gene. A 60-day experiment was conducted to test five isonitrogenous (CP 35%), isolipidic (CL 6%) and isoenergetic (383 kcal/100 g) diets with varying level of GABA viz., 0 (control), 25 (T1), 50 (T2), 75 (T3) and 100 (T4) mg/kg of GABA respectively. The 225 fingerlings with 15 fish/tank (ave.b.w. = 6.05 ± 0.20 g) were randomly distributed in five treatments with having three triplicate each following a CRD. The T3 group had significant (p < 0.05) higher WG%, SGR and PER than T2, T4, T1 and control treatment groups. However, opposite trend was observed in case of FCR. Similarly, the T3 group showed the significantly higher blood Hb, RBC, PCV, total protein, albumin and globulin content as compared to control and other treatment groups. However, WBC, A/G ratio, glucose, cortisol and whole-body composition did not affected. In comparison to the control and T1, T2 and T4 treatment groups, the SOD and catalase activity in the liver and gills were considerably reduced in the T3 group. The T3 treatment group was shown to have the highest levels of ghrelin and IGF-I mRNA expression in the brain and liver, respectively. According to second-order polynomial regression analysis, the highest SGR and expression of IGF-I were determined between 65 and 72 mg/kg inclusion level of GABA. The diet containing 68 mg/kg GABA level is therefore determined to be the best inclusion for promoting maximal growth and feed utilization in L. rohita fingerlings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plunging jet aerators are considered energetically attractive devices for oxygenation because of their good mixing characteristics and ease of construction and operation. In this mechanism of plunging jet aeration, the air-water interfacial area is increased by a free-falling jet impinging on the surface of a water pool. In this study, experimental data from various configurations of plunging hollow jet aerators are explored in formulating the correlations for predicting the values of volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient (KLa) with the jet variables (discharge, jet thickness, jet velocity, jet length, depth of water pool, pipe outlet diameter, number of jets). Nonlinear regression modeling equations derived from dimensional and nondimensional data sets are compared with the neuro-fuzzy (ANFIS), support vector regression (SVM), artificial neural network (ANN), M5 tree (M5), and random forests (RF) methods. SVM models calibrated with both types of data sets provided better results when tested on the unseen data sets. Regression equations are also useful and give acceptable results. The SVM models and regression equations are further checked for effectiveness on the data set of past study on plunging hollow jets. The nondimensional form of the regression equation derived in the current study fits reasonably well when tested on the oxygenation data from previous work as compared to the other regression models. The sensitivity of the jet variables is also tested, which showed jet velocity and jet thickness as major contributing factors in oxygenating the aeration pools. An aeration device adds oxygen to water and wastewater during treatment to ensure that microorganisms have enough oxygen to oxidize organic pollutants. Aeration requirements for aeration tanks vary greatly depending on the organic load, and one or more hollow jet aerators can be fitted to accommodate the fluctuating load. Hollow jet aerators are well suited to use in packaged wastewater treatment plants. The annular opening of these aerators can be adjusted accordingly based on the varying load. High-velocity thinner jets are better for quickly renewing air-water films and generating shear and turbulence in the receiving pool, but wastewater should be well screened before aeration to avoid clogging of the small annular opening. The results of this study on the capacity of plunging hollow jet aerators of different configurations/arrangements at varying operating conditions were reflected by the dimensional as well as nondimensional relationships between oxygen transfer rate and jet equipment parameters. Implementing these relationships on previous jet aeration data indicates that the equations are accurate enough to be used to situations similar to those in this investigation. Without any prior experimental effort, these equations can be used to estimate the oxygen transfer expected in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW)‐based circularly polarized (CP) self‐diplexing antenna is proposed and discussed. The proposed antenna makes use of an elliptical slot in the metallic ground plane which is excited with the help of two separate microstrip feed lines, placed face‐to‐face with each other. This arrangement produces two different frequencies, centered around 21.70 and 27.10 GHz when separately excited by port‐1 and port‐2, respectively. The CP operation in both frequency bands can be brought by rotating the elliptical slot, which gives 3 dB axial‐ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of 3.01% and 6.62% in lower and upper‐frequency bands, respectively. A unidirectional radiation pattern and a peak gain of 7.70 and 9.84 dBic are obtained in lower and upper‐frequency bands, respectively. The radiation efficiency of more than 80% in both the operating frequency bands has been achieved. The behavior of the cavity modes is explained using an equivalent circuit model. The proposed antenna has been fabricated and the measured results are experimentally verified with the simulated ones. The attractive features such as low profile and low weight make the proposed SIW antenna suitable for satellite and millimeter‐wave 5G applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal and hydrogen) are means by which corporations and government hope to mitigate the effect of climate change. However, literature is rife with examples of renewable energy projects not being able to deliver as promised, with difficulties like energy transportation, energy output and subpar financial outcomes. Yet, the sector has experienced exponential growth in recent years, with new projects being continually sanctioned. This paper aims to utilize the method of text mining and topic modeling to probe why this growth occurs. Additionally, we will use these data analytic methods to rank, understand, and discuss contributing factors to this growth, by analysing a collection of 100 peer reviewed scientific articles which specifically discuss "renewable energy project success". The papers selected encompass policy, economics, technology and engineering. Our results indicated that "softer" non-financial factors were more prevalent growth factors, but that financial considerations were not far behind. This paper aims to determine and rank success and growth factors in renewable energy projects worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study assessed the toxic effect of super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) on haemato-immunological responses, antioxidant capacity, oxidative stress, and metabolic enzyme activities in Labeo rohita fingerlings, as well as the possible ameliorative effect of dietary vitamin E. The experiment was conducted for 30 days (15-day exposure and recovery each) under static bioassay. The LC50 concentration of SPIONs was estimated by 96-h exposure which was 3253.20 mg/L. The fishes were distributed in two groups and exposed to three levels 1/50th, 1/25th, and 1/10th of SPION-LC50 concentration. Group 1: fed with control diet and referred to as CS0, CS/50, CS/25, and CS/10, while group 2: fed vitamin E supplemented diet and referred to as ES0, ES/50, ES/25, and ES/10. Significant alterations were observed in haemato-immunological responses, malondialdehyde (MDA), and oxidative and metabolic enzymes activity even after supplementation of vitamin E. The exposure to SPIONs altered haemato-immunological parameters, MDA accumulation, and tissue enzyme activity, i.e., superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione s-transferases (GST), xanthine oxidase (XO), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) in a dose-dependent manner. However, they relapsed to the level of control in S/50 exposed group at the end of the recovery period. The dietary vitamin E shows significant toxicity mitigating effect during the recovery period. Thus, SPIONs can be used up to a concentration of 65.06 mg/L in the culture water of Labeo rohita and its toxicity at higher doses can be partially ameliorated by feeding of vitamin E (at 250 mg/kg feed) for 15 days during post exposure period. Highlights: • The toxicity of SPIONs increased with increasing concentration of nanoparticle. • The lethal concentration (LC50) of SPIONs was 3253.20 mg/L. • At the end of the recovery period, dietary supplementation of vitamin E ameliorate toxic effect of SPIONs. • The physiological change caused due to the toxic effect of 65.04 mg/L SPIONs can be completely recovered in 15 days by dietary supplementation of vitamin E at 250 mg/kg in L. rohita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of Internet, images and videos are the most vulnerable media that can be exploited by criminals to manipulate for hiding the evidence of the crime. This is now easier with the advent of powerful and easily available manipulation tools over the Internet and thus poses a huge threat to the authenticity of images and videos. There is no guarantee that the evidences in the form of images and videos are from an authentic source and also without manipulation and hence cannot be considered as strong evidence in the court of law. Also, it is difficult to detect such forgeries with the conventional forgery detection tools. Although many researchers have proposed advance forensic tools, to detect forgeries done using various manipulation tools, there has always been a race between researchers to develop more efficient forgery detection tools and the forgers to come up with more powerful manipulation techniques. Thus, it is a challenging task for researchers to develop h a generic tool to detect different types of forgeries efficiently. This paper provides the detailed, comprehensive and systematic survey of current trends in the field of image and video forensics, the applications of image/video forensics and the existing datasets. With an in-depth literature review and comparative study, the survey also provides the future directions for researchers, pointing out the challenges in the field of image and video forensics, which are the focus of attention in the future, thus providing ideas for researchers to conduct future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cattle identification is required for any type of record system to calving records or performance records, and it has many applications in various fields such as livestock management, insurance claims in banks, health department, and veterinary department. This article presents a systematic review of cattle identification techniques based on current vision technology. This article also assesses the techniques and tools based on their experimental evaluation. Different databases have been scrutinized to evaluate the performance of techniques used to identify the cattle, and the system's performance achieved in terms of recognition accuracy through the various techniques is summarized in this article. All the potential advantages of cattle identification systems have been tried to explore in this article. Also, the authors identified the need to develop an efficient technique for cattle identification system. This article also directs toward future research in this very respective field. Research in this area is marginal, and still more research is required to be undertaken, particularly in the case of cattle identification based on muzzle points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical analysis of size and shape dependence properties of different type of nanomaterials is presented using a simple theory of equation of state (EOS) and bulk modulus. It is observed that compression behavior of nanomaterials depends on size and shape in addition to the applied pressure. To confirm the situation we have considered different type of nanomaterials. The model predictions are compared with the available experimental data. A good agreement between theory and experiments demonstrate the validity of model proposed for nanomaterials. Some results have also been reported in absence of experimental data to help the researcher engaged in the experimental studies of nanomaterials. Due to the simplicity and applicability of the model, it may be used to understand other properties of nanomaterials under varying physical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) primarily targets respiratory cells, but emerging evidence shows neurological involvement, with the virus directly affecting neurons and glia. SARS-CoV-2 entry into a target cell requires co-expression of ACE2 (Angiotensin-converting enzyme-2) and TMPRSS2 (Trans membrane serine protease-2). Relevant literature on human neurological tissue is sparse and mostly focused on the olfactory areas. This prompted our study to map brain-wide expression of these entry proteins and assess age-related changes. The normal brain tissue samples were collected from cerebral cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia, thalamus, hypothalamus, brain stem and cerebellum; and were divided into two groups - up to 40 years (n = 10) and above 40 years (n = 10). ACE2 and TMPRSS2 gene expression analysis was done using qRT-PCR and protein co-expression was seen by immunofluorescence. The ACE2 and TMPRSS2 gene expression was observed to be highest in hypothalamus and thalamus regions, respectively. Immunoreactivity for both ACE-2 and TMPRSS2 was observed in all examined brain regions, confirming the presence of these viral entry receptors. Co-localisation was maximum in hypothalamus. Our study did not find any trend related to different age groups. The expression of both these viral entry receptors suggests that normal human brain is susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, perhaps which could be related to the cognitive and neurological impairment that occur in patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender classification system is an automated, challenging, and efficacious system due to the analogous vision of males and females with handwriting. Gender classification is a binary problem that is based on physiological and behavioral biometric traits. It is widely used for forensic-based investigations, autopsy determination, suspected areas, and questioned documents. The proposed study has been considered for the behavioral biometric trait, i.e., handwriting in the Gurumukhi script. The novelty of this study can be seen from the three perspectives, i.e., hybridization of feature extraction techniques, principal component analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction, and hybridization of classification techniques. Zoning, Diagonal, Transition, and Peak Extent-based feature extractions were implemented followed by their hybridization. The classification techniques such as Decision Trees, Random Forest, and Extreme Gradient Boosting classifiers were experienced with the hybridized approach using a majority voting scheme. Also, the comparison and critical analysis of gender classification accuracy with CPU elapsed time has also been presented before and after implementing PCA. There are many novel ideas for the researchers such as gender classification through online handwriting, prediction of age, personality, state, nationality, and stress prediction through handwriting, and further gender classification problem can be enhanced to third or trans-gender too using handwriting as a biometric modality. The system can be implemented with many other Indic scripts and presenting novel track in the handwriting-based researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: We report cases of methanol induced toxic optic neuropathy with their clinical and MRI brain findings. Methods: Prospective study of four consecutive cases presented between July to December 2021 at emergency department of Patna Medical College, Patna, India. Visual acuity and MRI brain findings noted in each case. Results: All the patients were males and chronic drinkers with history of consuming adulterated alcohol. All presented with altered consciousness, metabolic acidosis and almost complete painless visual loss bilaterally. MRI brain showed bilateral T2W hyperintansity in putamen and blooming on GRE suggestive of bilateral putaminal hemorrhagic necrosis. None of the patient had improvement after Intravenous methyprednisolone. Conclusion: Alcohol related toxic optic neuropathy is a serious disorder causing bilateral, almost complete visual loss. Typical MRI brain findings could point towards diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chitosan is a polysaccharide made up of β1,4-linked D-glucosamine (GlcN) and N-acetyl-GlcN. In this study, we evaluated the possible caloric restriction mimetic effect of dietary chitosan on systemic redox status, inflammatory biomarkers and lipid profile in plasma and erythrocyte samples of D-galactose induced mimetically aged rats . We found a significant increase (p< 0.05) in the reactive oxygen species , protein carbonyl, fasting glucose, body weight, cholesterol, triglyceride, inflammatory markers -IL-6 & TNF-alpha in an accelerated senescent rat model. There was also a significant decrease (p< 0.05) in glutathione, advanced glycation end product in senescent rats. Chitosan treatment increased Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Potential, glutathione, plasma membrane reduced system in accelerated senescent model of rats. .Our finding suggests that Chitosan has properties similar to a caloric restriction mimetic and can effectively maintain the redox homeostasis during the aging process in rat erythrocytes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offline handwritten character recognition is a part of the arduous area of research in the domain of document analysis and recognition. In order to enhance the recognition results of offline handwritten Gurumukhi characters, the authors have applied hybrid features and adaptive boosting approach in this paper. On feature extraction stage, zoning, diagonal, centroid, and peak extent-based features have been taken into account for extracting the meaningful information about each character. On the classification stage, three classifiers, namely decision tree, random forest, and convolution neural network classifier, are used. For experimental work, the authors have collected 14,000 pre-segmented samples of Gurumukhi characters (35-class problem) written by 400 writers where they have used 70% data as training set and remaining 30% data as testing set. The authors have also explored fivefold cross-validation technique for experimental work. The AdaBoost approach along with the fivefold cross-validation strategy outstands the existing techniques in the relevant field with the recognition accuracy of 96.3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aeration by plunging water jets is an effective and economical method of transferring oxygen into the receiving pool of water. A dispersion of air bubbles occurs underneath the pool surface as a high-velocity liquid jet plunges on the water surface after being ejected from a particular fall height. The present study aims to investigate the impact of jet velocity, jet length, water depth and jet thickness of plunging hollow jets in oxygenating the water in the aeration tank. Empirical correlations are proposed for the determination of volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient based on jet velocities and jet kinetic powers. Moreover, the oxygen transfer capacity of single hollow jet, double hollow jet and a dual jet (combined hollow and solid) is tested by keeping a nearly constant jet flow area through the jet openings. The observations recorded from the experimental analysis lead to the development of predictive relationships for estimating the values of volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient in terms of basic jet variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Handwritten word recognition is undoubtedly a challenging task due to various writing styles of individuals. So, lots of efforts are put to recognize handwritten words using efficient classifiers based on extracted features that rely on the visual appearance of the handwritten text. Due to numerous real-time applications, handwritten word recognition is an important research area which is seeking a lot of attention from researchers for the last 10 years. In this article, the authors have proposed a holistic approach and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) technique to recognize offline handwritten Gurumukhi words. In this direction, four state-of-the-art features like zoning, diagonal, intersection & open-end points and peak extent features have been considered to extract discriminant features from the handwritten word digital images. The proposed approach is evaluated on a public benchmark dataset of Gurumukhi script that comprises 40,000 samples of handwritten words. Based on extracted features, the words are classified into one of the 100 classes based on XGBoost technique. Effectiveness of the system is assessed based on several evaluation parameters like CPU elapsed time, accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score and area under curve (AUC). XGBoost technique attained the best results of accuracy (91.66%), recall (91.66%), precision (91.39%), F1-score (91.14%) and AUC (95.66%) using zoning features based on 90% data as the training set and remaining 10% data as the testing set. The comparison of the proposed approach with the existing approaches has also been done which reveals the significance of the XGBoost technique comparatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient feature detection algorithm and image classification is a very crucial task in computer vision system. There are various state-of-the-art feature detectors and descriptors available for an object recognition task. In this paper, the authors have compared the performance of Shi-Tomasi corner detector with SIFT and SURF feature descriptors and evaluate the performance of Shi-Tomasi in combination with SIFT and SURF feature descriptors. To make the computations faster, authors have reduced the size of features computed in all cases by applying locality preserving projection methodology. Features extracted using these algorithms are further classified with various classifiers like K-NN, decision tree and random forest. For experimental work, a public dataset, namely Caltech-101 image dataset, is considered in this paper. This dataset comprises of 101 object classes. These classes have further contained many images. Using a combination of Shi-Tomasi, SIFT and SURF features, the authors have achieved a recognition accuracy of 85.9%, 80.8% and 74.8% with random forest, decision tree and K-NN classifier, respectively. In this paper, the authors have also computed true positive rate, false positive rate and area under curve in all cases. Finally, the authors have applied the adaptive boosting methodology to improve the recognition accuracy. Authors have reported improved recognition accuracy of 86.4% using adaptive boosting with random forest classifier and a combination of Shi-Tomasi, SIFT and SURF features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a highly compact dual-band elliptical wide-slot (EWS) antenna with high bandwidth dimension ratio (BDR) having one inverted L-slot for WLAN and WiMAX applications. Initially, the broadband characteristic of 4.4–9.3 GHz is obtained by using an EWS in the ground plane. To include 3.5 GHz WiMAX wireless standard, a parasitic elliptical patch is embedded in the centre of the elliptical wide-slot. With an increase in semi-major axis length of the parasitic patch, the overlapping capacitance between the microstrip-line and the parasitic patch increases, thereby showing a broadband characteristic ranging from 3.59 to 7.08 GHz and BDR of 1423. An inverted L-shaped slot is etched in the ground plane to generate a frequency band around 2.4 GHz, integrating the 2.4 GHz WLAN and 2.5 GHz WiMAX wireless standards. The measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth due to mirrored L-shaped slot is 440 MHz (2.34–2.78 GHz) with BDR of 923. As a result, the EWS with parasitic patch and mirrored L-shaped slot together gives an overall size of 0.132 λ L × 0.14 λ L where λ L is the lowest free-space wavelength corresponding to the operating frequency of 2.34 GHz. The measured peak gain of lower and upper-frequency bands is 6.95 and 6.82 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Development of structural concrete at low molarities 4 M and 6 M of NaOH. • The effect of different curing conditions on compressive strength is assessed. • Effect of composition on mechanical and durability properties is assessed. • The study results indicate the possibility of multi-parameter optimization. The present study explores the application of low molarity geopolymer concrete for structural applications. In this context, 35 compositions with 4 M and 6 M NaOH concentrations have been developed to yield compressive strength ranging from 10 to 40 MPa. The flow values at low water to binder (w/b) ratio are shown to be influenced by molarity of NaOH while it remains range bound at higher w/b ratio. The effect of curing conditions reveals low reactivity rate under ambient conditions with significant enhancements at elevated curing conditions. Three compositions with compressive strength of 30 ± 2 MPa have been further investigated for tensile strength, elastic modulus, plastic strain, sorptivity and chloride migration. The results reveal that despite similar compressive strength, the mix compositions have significant impact on the fresh and hardened properties indicating possibility of multiparameter optimization. The development of low molarity geopolymer concrete with possibility to optimize other structural/durability parameters in addition to compressive strength would enhance sustainability, economy and structural performance of geopolymer concrete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experiment was carried to determine the plasma fenbendazole (FBZ) concentration and physio‐metabolic responses in juveniles of Labeo rohita (90 ± 4 g) after oral administration of single doses at 10, 20 and 50 mg, 20 mg FBZ/kg b.wt. in multiple times on 1st, 3rd and 7th day. The blood samples were collected at 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 30, 48, 72, 96 and 120 hr, after single‐dose administration, and regularly (upto 15 day) in multiple dose. Plasma FBZ concentration was determined up to the limit of detection (LoD) of 0.09 µg/ml by HPLC. There was no parent drug detected in plasma for administration of 10 mg FBZ/kg b.wt. The drug attained the peak concentration (Cmax) 1.85 and 3.09 µg/ml in plasma at 4 hr (Tmax) after administration of 20 and 50mg FBZ/kg b.wt. respectively. Plasma FBZ was detectable up to 96 and 120 hr with concentration 0.09 ± 0.007 and 0.098 ± 0.006 µg/ml, respectively, after single‐dose administration of 20 and 50mg/kg b.wt. In case of multiple‐dose administration, the maximum concentration of FBZ was 1.01 ± 0.03 µg/ml on 7th day that was less than to the single dose at 50 mg/kg b.wt. However, FBZ was detected up to 11 day after multiple doses. The study revealed that the hepatic antioxidant enzymes activities like superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione‐S‐transferase were significantly affected by increasing FBZ in single and multiple doses. The results of the present study could reveal that single‐ or multiple‐oral administration of FBZ at 20 mg/kg b.wt. in feed as antihelminthic drug in L. rohita could be considered as the safe dose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The study was conducted in the Department of Forensic Medicine, MMIMSR, Mullana to analyse the various demographic variables of the subjects who died due to hanging, manual strangulation, ligature strangulation and had undergone postmortem examination. Methods: Out of 363 medico-legal deaths autopsied at MMIMSR, Mullana, details were collected from those medico-legal deaths identified to be due to compression of neck. Results: Out of 363 medico-legal autopsies, 77 cases were of death due to neck compression. Combined injuries of all neck structures were seen in 8.7% cases of strangulation and 4.3% of throttling. Study comprised of 74.1% males & 25.9% females with maximum deaths in age group of 20-30 years in hanging and 73.9% males and 26.1% females in strangulation. Rope was ligature material of choice in hanging and strangulation. Frequency of hyoid bone fracture was maximum in strangulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a simple design of a compact wideband microstrip-line fed antenna having two rotated elliptical wide-slots (EWSs). Here, both the elliptical wide-slots are placed perpendicular to each other which shows the measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth (RLBW) of about 7.78 GHz (4.94–12.72 GHz; 88.11%). The circular polarization (CP) is achieved by varying either the semi-major axis of any of the elliptical wide-slot or angle between the EWSs. The proposed antenna radiates left-handed circularly polarized (LHCP) and shows the measured axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of about 2.05 GHz (5.4–7.45 GHz; 31.91%) which falls completely inside the operating frequency band and hence relevant for wireless applications including an upper-frequency band of WLAN, WiMAX and several standards of IEEE 802.11 including a/h/j/n/ac/ax. The proposed antenna also achieves a high bandwidth dimension ratio (BDR) of about 1062 which along with the ARBW is the highest among the recently reported antenna structures. A peak gain of about 4.39 dBi is reported within the entire operating band while the overall size of the antenna is only 18 × 17 mm 2 (or 0.29 λ o × 0.28 λ o ; where λ o is the wavelength corresponding to the lowest operating frequency, i.e., 4.94 GHz). The performance of the proposed antenna in terms of RLBW, ARBW, gain, and efficiency are validated experimentally which are in concordance with the simulated results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Document forgery is quite common nowadays due to the availability of cost-effective scanners and printers. Important documents like certificates, passport, identification cards, etc., are protected using watermarks or signatures. These are made secured with a protective printing mechanism with extrinsic fingerprints. Therefore, it is easy to authenticate such documents. Other documents required a passive approach for their authentication. These approaches look for document inconsistencies for chances of modification. Some of these attempt to detect and fix the source of the printed document. This paper proposes a classifier-based model to identify the source printer and classify the questioned document in one of the printer classes. A novel approach of utilizing Speeded Up Robust Features and Oriented Fast Rotated and BRIEF feature descriptors is proposed for printer attribution. Naive Bayes, k-NN, random forest and different combinations of these classifiers have been experimented for classification. The proposed model can efficiently classify the questioned documents to their respective printer class. An accuracy of 86.5% has been achieved using a combination of Naive Bayes, k-NN, random forest classifiers with a simple majority voting scheme and adaptive boosting methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biometric identification system based on single and multiple modalities has been an evolving concept for solving criminal issues, security and privacy maintenance and for checking the authentication of an individual. The writer identification system is a type of biometric identification in which handwriting of an individual is taken as a biometric identifier. It is a system in which the writer can be identified based on his handwritten text. These systems employ machine learning and pattern recognition algorithms for the generation of a framework. In this paper, the authors have presented a novel system for the writer identification based upon the pre-segmented characters of Devanagari script and also presenting comprehensive state-of-the-art work. The experiment is performed on the corpus consisting of five copies of each character of Devanagari script written by 100 different writers, selected randomly at the public places and consisting of total 24,500 samples of Devanagari characters. Four feature extraction methodologies such as zoning, diagonal, transition and peak extent-based features and classification methods such as k-NN and linear SVM are used with identification accuracy of 91.53% when using zoning, transition and peak extent-based features with a linear SVM classifier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proline and its derivatives constitute the important organic entities as organocatalyst, ACE inhibitors, bioactive molecules/intermediates to bioactive molecules as well as components of various natural products e.g. Kainic acid, (-)-domoic acid, etc. Due to its wide range of utility extensive studies have been made for the synthesis of 2, 3, 4 or 5 substituted prolines. One pot synthesis of 2,4,5-substituted prolines through 1,3-dipolar addition of various amino acids with homochiral acrylate has also been carried out successfully. Herein we wish to report the 1,3-dipolar addition of Schiff bases, where chiral auxiliary has been introduced in the Schiff bases and 1,3dipolar addition with methyl acrylate leading to the synthesis of 2(S),4(S),5(R)-substituted prolines has been achieved successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a novel printed wide‐slot antenna for wideband applications is presented. The designed antenna consists of four merged elliptical wide‐slots (EWSs) of different dimensions in the ground plane. An open‐ended microstrip line having a characteristic impedance of 50 Ω is used to excite the EWS. Each EWS corresponds to the different frequency of operation and hence when merged together give a wideband response. The fabricated prototype of the designed antenna shows the 10 dB return loss bandwidth (RLBW) of about 157.72% ranging from 2.21 to 18.7 GHz. The peak gain varies from 0.1 to 6.5 dB within the RLBW is reported. An almost constant group delay, low variation (<−40 dB) in the transfer function S21 and linear phase variation for both side by side and face to face orientations of the designed antenna shows its applicability for wideband applications. The electrical dimensions of about 0.176λL× 0.162λL (where λL is the lowest operating wavelength) give rise to the bandwidth dimension ratio of about 5505 which is highest among the antenna structures reported in the literature. The measured results are found in good concordance with the results obtained from numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Document forgery has increased enormously due to the progression of information technology and image processing software. Critical documents are protected using watermarks or signatures, i.e., active approach. Other documents need passive approach for document forensics. Most of the passive techniques aim to detect and fix the source of the printed document. Other techniques look for the irregularities present in the document. This paper aims to fix the document source printer using passive approach. Hand-crafted features based on key printer noise features (KPNF), speeded up robust features (SURF) and oriented FAST rotated and BRIEF (ORB) are used. Then, feature-based classifiers are implemented using K-NN, decision tree, random forest and majority voting. The document classifier proposed model can efficiently classify the questioned documents to their respective printer class. Further, adaptive boosting and bootstrap aggregating methodologies are used for the improvement in classification accuracy. The proposed model has achieved the best accuracy of 95.1% using a combination of KPNF + ORB + SURF with random forest classifier and adaptive boosting methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although epidemiologic studies have suggested a possible association between occupational exposures to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and the risk of development of multiple myeloma, definitive evidence in support of this association is lacking. In the present study, we employed the Vk*Myc mouse model of multiple myeloma to assess the impact of TCDD exposure on multiple myeloma pathogenesis. TCDD induced splenomegaly and multiple peripheral blood abnormalities, including anemia and high serum IgG levels. In addition, TCDD triggered bone lytic lesions, as well as renal tubular casts, a phenomenon associated with human myeloma kidney disease. Even in wild-type C57BL/6 mice, TCDD increased serum IgG levels, induced anemia, and increased plasma cell presence in the spleen and bone marrow, hallmarks of benign monoclonal gammopathy. Lastly, TCDD induced AKT activation and the DNA damage response, key pathogenic events in myeloma pathogenesis, in animal spleen and/or bone marrow. These data indicate that TCDD accelerates monoclonal gammopathy development and promotes progression to multiple myeloma in genetically-predisposed mice. This work offers the first direct experimental evidence establishing TCDD as an environmental risk factor for monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance and multiple myeloma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term handwriting recognition is used to describe the capability of a computer system to transform human handwriting into machine processable text. Handwriting recognition has many applications in various fields such as bank-cheque processing, postal-address interpretation, document archiving, mail sorting and form processing in administration, insurance offices. A collection of different scripts is employed in writing languages throughout the world. Many researchers have done work for handwriting recognition of various non-Indic and Indic scripts from the most recent couple of years. But, only a limited number of systems are offered for word recognition for these scripts. This paper presents an extensive systematic survey of word recognition techniques. This survey of word recognition is classified broadly based on different scripts in which a word is written. Experimental evaluation of word recognition tools/techniques is presented in this paper. Different databases have been surveyed to evaluate the performance of techniques used to recognize words, and the achieved recognition accuracies have been reported. The efforts in two directions (non-Indic and Indic scripts) are reflected in this paper. We increased awareness of the potential benefits of word recognition techniques and identify the need to develop an efficient word recognition technique. Recommendations are also provided for future research. It is also observed that the research in this area is quietly thin and still more research is to be done, particularly in the case of word recognition of printed/handwritten documents in Indic scripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents two design improvements over conventional microstrip antenna in terms of multiband operation, gain and cross-polarisation (XP) level. The first design (Type-I) consists of a microstrip line on one side and an elliptical slot (ES) on the other side of the substrate. The second design (Type-II) consists of a parasitic elliptical patch inside the ES in addition to the first design. A theoretical analysis using an equivalent circuit model is performed for both antenna designs for estimating the dimensions of each part of the proposed structures. It is found that the size of the wide ES determines the lower operating frequency, whereas coupling between the parasitic patch and microstrip line decides the multiband operation. Experimental results show that the Type-I antenna resonates in three frequency bands at 2.49, 3.7, and 9.76 GHz with peak gain and XP level of 8.66 and 44.43 dB, respectively. With proper selection of the dimensions of the parasitic patch, the Type-II antenna generates five frequency bands at 1.87, 6.42, 10.76, 12.67, and 13.66 GHz. An exceptionally high gain of 16.79 dB with an XP level of 36.15 dB is reported in Type-II antenna. The theoretical and simulation results show a good agreement with the measured results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biometrics authentication is considered as most secure and reliable method to recognise and identify person's identity. Researchers put efforts to find efficient ways to secure and classify the solutions to biometric problems. In this category, fingerprint recognition (FPR) is most widely used biometric trait for person identification/verification. The present work focuses an FPR technique, which uses the grey‐level difference method, discrete wavelet transforms and edge histogram descriptor for fingerprint representation and matching. Wavelet shrinkage used for noise removal in the image. Ridge flow estimation is calculated using the gradient approach. SVM and Hamming distance similarity measures are used for recognition. The experiment result has been tested on the standard 2000–2004 fingerprint verification competition dataset and the accuracy of proposed algorithm was reported to be well above 98%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple theoretical model is developed to study the properties of nanomaterials under varying conditions of size, shape, pressure and temperature. The model is also applicable for their bulk counterparts. We have considered MgO and Mg2SiO4 minerals as examples. The model has been used to study the equation of state, elastic properties and thermal expansion under different conditions of size, shape, pressure and temperature, in addition to the bulk properties. The results obtained are compared with the available experimental data. A good agreement between model predictions and experimental data supports the validity of the model developed. It is realized that such a simple model which unifies the behaviour of nano and bulk material under different conditions is the first attempt in theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) functionalized with different biomolecules find extensive application in therapy, clinical diagnosis and biomedical imaging. Herein, two derivatives of TAT peptide with sequences YGRKKRRQRRR and YGRKKRRQRRR-(β-ala) 3 -Cys-amide were conjugated with tannic acid capped gold nanoparticles which acted as a carrier for cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) into the bacterial cells. The interaction of YGRKKRRQRRR peptide with AuNPs was non-covalent in nature whereas YGRKKRRQRRR-(β-ala) 3 -Cys-amide interacted covalently with the AuNPs due to presence of thiol group in cysteine which bind strongly to gold nanoparticles surface. Further, tannic acid functionalised AuNPs conjugated CPPs constructs were duly characterized using critical flocculation essay test, UV–visible and TEM. FITC was tagged over AuNPs-CPPs in order to study the intracellular distribution using confocal microscopy. The confocal results revealed that nanoconjugates (AuNP-CPPs) of 5 nm diameter exhibited strong fluorescent signal in Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial strains. The present method can also be used for the killing of bacterial cells using photo-thermal therapy and therefore can be highly useful for targeting multi-drug resistant bacteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increase in the resistance of bacterial strains toward marketed antibiotics formulations has generated a demand to carry out research on the development of new antimicrobial agents. Among the various bacterial toxic components, use of silver nanoparticles as antimicrobial agents is intriguing owing to their high potential activity against the growth of numerous microbes. Moreover, novel and more efficient agents can also be generated by precisely engineering the silver nanoparticles (AgNps) with other optimum antibacterial agents e.g. antimicrobial peptides. In this connection the present study involves the synthesis and detailed characterization of silver nanoparticles capped with building blocks of peptides i.e. amino acids under same reaction conditions. Among all the studied synthesized nanoparticles, histidine capped AgNps showed the most efficient antimicrobial behavior and subsequent studies displayed that histidine-AgNps were also able to significantly reduce the growth of antibiotic resistant strains such as Klebsiella pneumonia , Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus . Moreover, the combination of gentamicin and histidine-AgNps showed high synergic effect against bacterial strains. In a nutshell, this report gives a new direction for the development of highly effective antimicrobial agents entails amino acids and water dispersible silver nanoparticles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The present study aimed to evaluate radiation exposure to staff performing coronary flow reserve (CFR) measurement using 13N-ammonia. Materials and Methods: The radiation exposure rate during the administration of 13N-ammonia for the rest and stress part of the study was noted using an ionization chamber-based calibrated survey monitor. The radiation exposure to persons involved in dispensing radioactivity (D1), administering radioactivity (D2) and monitoring the patient during pharmacological stress (D3) were measured using an energy compensated Si-diode personal pocket dosimeter. Results: The average dose received by individuals with dosimeters D1, D2, and D3 was 1.28 ± 0.79 μSv, 1.56 ± 0.51 μSv, and 0.88 ± 0.97 μSv per injection, respectively, during the rest of study and 1.56 ± 0.96 μSv, 2.64 ± 1.22 μSv, and 2.2 ± 1.7 μSv per injection, respectively, during stress study. The average exposure rate during the administration of 13N-ammonia at 0.5 m and 1.5 m from the injection site was found to be 259 μSv/h and 53.4 μSv/h, respectively, during the rest study and 301 μSv/h and 67.25 μSv/h, respectively, during stress study. Conclusion: The exposure to the staff performing CFR study with 13N-ammonia was well within prescribed limits by the International Commission on Radiological Protection 103. The CFR measurement with 13N-ammonia positron emission tomography/computed tomography can be included in routine workups of cardiac patients without the fear of radiation exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitrogen pollution in water bodies has become a pressing environmental and public health issue worldwide, demanding the implementation of effective nitrogen removal strategies. This research paper delves into the performance evaluation of hybrid constructed wetlands (HCWs) as a sustainable and innovative approach for nitrogen removal, employing a comprehensive year‐long dataset gathered from a practical setup. The study collected data under diverse operating conditions to investigate the effectiveness of HCWs in removing nitrogen. Results revealed that HCWs achieved nitrogen removal efficiencies ranging from 28% to 65%, influenced by temperature and hydraulic retention time. Optimal removal occurred at an average temperature of 28°C and a 4‐day hydraulic retention time. Notably, performance declined during colder periods, with temperatures below 15°C. The study also aims to predict nitrogen removal by three modeling techniques, that is, artificial neural networks (ANNs), support vector machines Pearson VII kernel function (SVM PUK), and multiple linear regression (MLR). Prediction has been done considering temperature (TEMP), hydraulic loading rate (HLR), initial concentration of chemical oxygen demand (COD) (CODin), initial concentration of total nitrogen (TNin), initial concentration of total phosphorous (TPin), and initial concentration of turbidity (TBin) as input parameters, whereas reduction of total nitrogen (RED TN) is regarded as output parameter. The performance of the soft computing techniques has been compared in terms of coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE). The analysis revealed that the performance of the SVM (PUK) model (R2: 0.572, RMSE: 0.0359, MAE: 0.0294) for the prediction of TN reduction is superior followed by MLR (R2: 0.562, RMSE: 0.0365, MAE: 0.0294) and ANN (R2: 0.597, RMSE: 0.0377, MAE: 0.0301). The present study concludes that the treated effluent by the HCWs, using water hyacinth and water lettuce, is of fair quality, thus having potential application for the treatment of rice mill wastewater in warmer climates. Further, machine learning approaches employed in estimating the total nitrogen reduction by HCWs technology have shown promising applicability and utilization in such studies. Practitioner Points: Hybrid constructed wetlands (HCWs) are effective in removing nitrogen from wastewater.The performance of HCWs in nitrogen removal can vary due to physical, chemical, and biological processes.The performance of the HCWs highly depends on temperature and hydraulic retention time.Artificial neural networks (ANNs) and support vector machines (SVMs) provided better predictions of nitrogen removal with high accuracy and low root mean square error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber-attacks on the internet are not a new phenomenon. Hackers are always looking for ways to breach the security of the internet. Good researchers continuously develop solutions to the problems of breaches in security. Human interaction proofs are also one of the most affordable solutions to problems. The completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart (CAPTCHA) has a wide range of applications, including website authentication, preventing bogus email registration, preventing bogus online polls, preventing bogus ticket booking, and so on. CAPTCHAs come in various formats, but text-based schemes are the most common. Unfortunately, these text-based CAPTCHAs are available in foreign languages and have a high success rate. The usability of these foreign language-based schemes for native people is also very low. These days, Hindi CAPTCHAs are available, but before using them, we must test the security of these schemes. In this study, ten different coloured CAPTCHAs are broken using the k-nearest neighbours, the support vector machine, and the random forest classifiers. The breaking rate for two-colour schemes is 90%, while the breaking rate for multi-colour schemes is 93%. The solving time for the support vector machine and the random forest classifier ranges from 0.06 s to 0.09 s and 0.1 to 0.2 s in the case of two-colour schemes. For multi-colour schemes, it ranges from 0.06 s to 0.09 s and 0.09 s to 0.2 s for the support vector machine and random forest classifier, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, we report the antimicrobial efficacy of sodium benzoate-functionalized silver nanoparticles synthesized via a simple method and its potential prospects as food preservatives. Sodium benzoate (SB) is a commonly known food preservative and is capable of reducing the silver salt to silver nanoparticles in high yield under facile conditions. The functionalization of SB imparts enough stability to the nanoparticles to remain dispersed in aqueous solution for long time, without the need of any other additional stabilizing agent. The nanoparticles were characterized using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), atomic force microscopy (AFM), zeta potential, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), proton nuclear magnetic resonance (H-NMR) and UV-visible spectroscopy. In order to explore its role as food preservative, the antimicrobial activity of sodium benzoate-capped silver nanoparticles (SB-SNPs) was tested against various food-borne pathogenic bacteria and the results clearly indicated that the synthesized nanoparticles were highly active against the food pathogen strains even at very low concentrations as compared to sodium benzoate alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple model is proposed to study the size and shape dependence of melting and superheating of nanomaterials. The size dependence of melting temperature of free standing spherical nanosolids viz. Ag, Au, Al and Zn nanowire as well as embedded nanoparticles Pb and Ag is reported. The formulation is used to study the effect of shape on melting temperature during reduction of size. The different shapes of nanomaterials viz. film, icosahedral, wire, spherical, hexahedral, octahedral and tetrahedral are considered. The size and shape dependence of surface atoms, total number of atoms and their ratio is computed. The results obtained are compared with the available experimental data and discussed in the light of recent investigations. A good agreement between model predictions and experimental data supports the validity of the formulation developed. It is concluded that in addition to the size, the shape of nanomaterials also plays an important role during the behaviour of nanomaterials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on “Derivation of general order kinetics equation using probability theoryby Longjam Lovedy Singh” regarding its limitations are described. It has been found that the value ofηorα(ratio ofAn/Am) need not be ≤1 and the use ofα(N−n) for estimating empty trap population will lead to wrong estimation of the concentration/population of empty traps,i.e., Nforα > 1 even whenn = 0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lead (Pb) goggles used by radiation workers while performing fluoroscopy-guided diagnostic and interventional procedures reduce the doses to eye lenses substantially. In majority of the cases, the dosimeter intended to measure eye lens doses is worn close to the eyes but outside the lead (Pb) goggles. In such situations, additional reduction factors are required to approximate the actual doses which eye lens might have received. However, the value of the dose reduction factor (DRF) for a given energy may vary due to the dependence on the methodology of measurement, that is, whether the dose is estimated free-in-air or on a phantom. Due to this reason, the DRFs quoted by suppliers or manufactures cannot be implemented directly for dose estimation. Free-in-air as well as on phantom studies for the measurement of DRFs for lead (Pb) goggles having equivalent thickness of 0.75 mm were performed using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL)-based dosimeters. Measurements were carried out for photon energies having relevance in interventional cardiology (IC) and radiology (IR), and other facilities where eye lens monitoring might be important. It has been found that the DRFs differ substantially for irradiations done free-in-air and on the phantom. The results showed that for X-ray energies relevant to IC/IR procedures, the DRF values were found in the range of ~60-90 and 7-15 for free-in-air and on phantom measurements, respectively. Similarly, the DRF values for N-80 as well as 241Am photons were found to be ~15 and ~3.50 for free-in-air and on phantom measurements, respectively. The difference in the DRF values for free-in-air and on phantom measurements would arise due to the presence of backscattering associated with the phantom studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we have demonstrated a novel sensing strategy for an organophosphorus pesticide namely, malathion, employing unmodified gold nanoparticles, aptamer and a positively charged, water-soluble polyelectrolyte Polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride (PDDA). The PDDA when associated with the aptamer prevents the aggregation of the gold-nanoparticles while no such inhibition is observed when the aptamer specific pesticide is added to the solution, thereby changing the color of the solution from red to blue. This type of biosensor is quite simple and straightforward and can be completed in a few minutes without the need of any expensive equipment or trained personnel. The proposed method was linear in the concentration range of 0.5–1000 pM with 0.06 pM as the limit of detection. Moreover, the proposed assay selectively recognized malathion in the presence of other interfering substances and thus, can be applied to real samples for the rapid screening of malathion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]