Nonminimal state space approach to multivariable ramp metering control of motorway bottlenecks

The paper discusses the automatic control of motorway traffic flows utilising ramp metering, i.e. traffic lights on the on-ramp entrances. A multivariable ramp metering system is developed, based on the nonminimal state space (NMSS) approach to control system design using adaptive proportional-integral-plus, linear quadratic (PIP–LQ) optimal controllers. The controller is evaluated on a nonlinear statistical traffic model (STM) simulation of the Amsterdam motorway ring road near the Coen Tunnel

Genotype and environment interaction and stability analysis for seed yield in yellow mung bean (Vigna radiata L.)

Nine yellow seeded mung (Vigna radiata L.) genotypes were evaluated along with three checks for their yield performance during three years (2007, 2010 and 2011). Pooled analysis of variance and stability analysis were performed. The genotypic (G) × environment (E) interaction and both variance due to genotypes and environment were significant. The portioning of G × E interaction into linear and non-linear components indicated that both predictable and unpredictable components shared the interaction. On the basis of stability parameters, the top yielding genotypes such as BGS-9 (605.444 Kg/Ha), Sel-4 (519.778 Kg/Ha) and China mung (567.000 Kg/Ha) exhibited high mean yield. Based on stability parameters the genotypes YM-5 (459.889 Kg/Ha), YM-8 (451.333 Kg/Ha) exhibited low mean performance along with regression value nearer to unity (bi=1) and non significant deviation from regression (S2 di=0) indicating the high stability and wider adaptability across the three environments. The genotypes BGS-9 (605.444 Kg/Ha) and Sel-4 (519.778 Kg/Ha) exhibited high mean value and bi values (bi>1) and non significant deviation (S2 di < 0) value indicating adapted for high performance environments (These genotypes are sensitive to environments and give maximum yield when inputs are not limited)

Knowledge Attitude and Practice on Sexual Health Education among Teachers of Intellectually Challenged Children in Villupuram District

Sexual health education has always been a controversial topic. Parents of intellectually challenged children experience fear about other people that they might take advantage of their child, thus special educators have greater role in assisting children with intellectual disability in their growth and development, and sexuality is part of that growth. Special educators need to start early to educate the intellectually challenged children about sexuality-related issues and continue the conversation well into their teen years. Sexual health education helps children with an intellectual disability recognize if someone is trying to take advantage of them so they can recognize inappropriate sexual advances early on, better protect themselves from exploitation and be able to report incidents of suspected sexual abuse. Hence, all the special educators should be aware about sexual health education. Against this background, the present study is aimed at measuring the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Sexual Health Education among teachers of intellectually challenged children in Villupuram District. Having adopted descriptive research design, a total of 32 special educators were selected from 93 special educators using Simple Random Sampling Method (Lottery Method) for the study. A tool on KAP on Sexual Health Education prepared by Venkat Lakshmi and Navyas was applied by the authors to measure the KAP on Sexual Health Education. Salient findings and Suggestions pertaining to the study will be discussed in the full paper. Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Sexual Health Education, Teachers of Intellectually Challenged Children, Role of Teachers

The RESPONSE OF SUGARCANE GENOTYPES SUBJECTED TO SALINITY STRESS AT DIFFERENT GROWTH PHASES: RESPONSE OF SUGARCANE GENOTYPES SUBJECTED TO SALINITY STRESS AT DIFFERENT GROWTH PHASES: Abstract, Introduction,materials & Methods, Resultls & Discussion, Conclusion.

 A few commercial sugarcane genotypes were subjected to salinity stress at various growth phases of sugarcane to ascertain the critical growth stage for salinity stress and to assess the response of the genotypes. All the data were recorded and analysed during maturity phase. The salt treatments drastically reduced SPAD chlorophyll, chlorophyll fluorescence, RWC, stalk height, weight and other yield parameters in a few genotypes during T2 (salt treatment given during formative phase) & T5 (salt treatment given throughout crop cycle) but a few genotypes which are tolerant towards salt stress gave better results comparing other genotypes. The ions like sodium, potassium and chloride were analysed in the juice which showed higher elevation in the genotype Co 97010. Among the genotypes, Co 85019 and Co 99004 recorded significantly prime compared to rest of the genotypes. Treatment throughout the growth phases (T5) followed by stress at formative phase (T2) were found to be critical for growth, physiological and yield responses in all the genotypes

Seed priming technology in spice crops: A review

Seed priming is one of the important method of seed treatment is the process of controlled hydration of seeds. At the time to a level that permits the pre-germinative metabolic activity, but that prevents actual emergence of the radicle is also known as pre germination seed treatment method. Seed priming is useful for increase the speed of seed germination and uniformity of germination particularly under adverse conditions like temperature, moisture and salinity. Seeds are soaked in different solutions like various inorganic salts, sugars and polyethylene glycol (PEG) a chemically inert, high molecular weight compounds, etc. After seed priming increase in hydrolytic enzyme activity especially a-amylase, strong increase of super oxide dismutase, catalase activities and expression of certain proteins related to water stress and heat shock. During germination the primed seeds contain higher scavenging of ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species). This reviews reported the primed spices seeds or rhizomes contain abiotic stress tolerant capacities, increase the antioxidant enzyme activities like peroxidase, catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), lipoxygenase (LOX) and phenyl alanine ammonia lyase (PAL), break the seed dormancy, increase the germination percentage and early growth. This studies gives an overview about the seed priming in spice crops with relevant case studies

On Improving Reliability of SRAM-Based Physically Unclonable Functions

Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) have been touted for their inherent resistance to invasive attacks and low cost in providing a hardware root of trust for various security applications. SRAM PUFs in particular are popular in industry for key/ID generation. Due to intrinsic process variations, SRAM cells, ideally, tend to have the same start-up behavior. SRAM PUFs exploit this start-up behavior. Unfortunately, not all SRAM cells exhibit reliable start-up behavior due to noise susceptibility. Hence, design enhancements are needed for improving reliability. Some of the proposed enhancements in literature include fuzzy extraction, error-correcting codes and voting mechanisms. All enhancements involve a trade-off between area/power/performance overhead and PUF reliability. This paper presents a design enhancement technique for reliability that improves upon previous solutions. We present simulation results to quantify improvement in SRAM PUF reliability and efficiency. The proposed technique is shown to generate a 128-bit key in ≤0.2 μ\u27\u3eμμ s at an area estimate of 4538 μ\u27\u3eμμ m 2\u27\u3e22 with error rate as low as 10−6\u27\u3e10−610−6 for intrinsic error probability of 15%

A comparative study of thyroid stimulating hormone among lean and obese women with polycystic ovarian syndrome

Background: The polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is an abnormality of young women of reproductive age. Between 20-50% of women with PCOS are normal weight or thin, and the pathophysiology of the disorder in these women may be related to a hypothalamic-pituitary defect that results in increased release of LH. PCOS and Thyroid disorders share certain common characteristics, risk factors, and pathophysiological abnormalities. In this study we have compared the serum TSH levels in obese and non-obese PCOS women to detect if there is a significant difference in the occurrence of hypothyroidism based on the BMI.Methods: Non-pregnant women attending the gynecological OPD diagnosed with PCOS as per Rotterdam criteria were included. Serum TSH was done in all women diagnosed as PCOS and based on their BMI women were either included in obese or non-obese group using Asian cut-off for BMI and the values compared.Results: In the present study 152 women were included. Women with low BMI and normal BMI were grouped as lean PCOS or non-obese PCOS and the overweight and obese women together were grouped as obese PCOS. The total number in the lean group was 28 and 124 in the obese group. Raised serum TSH levels were observed in 23.02%(35) women out of which 17.14%(6) belonged to the non-obese group and the remaining 82.85%(29) to the obese group. Among the 152 women thyroid enlargement was seen in 1.3%(2). Both women had raised serum TSH levels and both belonged to the obese group.Conclusions: The results of our study seem to indicate that thyroid dysfunction in PCOS women developed irrespective of presence or absence of obesity

Back to the future: A fully automatic method for robust age progression

It has been shown that significant age difference between a probe and gallery face image can decrease the matching accuracy. If the face images can be normalized in age, there can be a huge impact on the face verification accuracy and thus many novel applications such as matching driver's license, passport and visa images with the real person's images can be effectively implemented. Face progression can address this issue by generating a face image for a specific age. Many researchers have attempted to address this problem focusing on predicting older faces from a younger face. In this paper, we propose a novel method for robust and automatic face progression in totally unconstrained conditions. Our method takes into account that faces belonging to the same age-groups share age patterns such as wrinkles while faces across different age-groups share some common patterns such as expressions and skin colors. Given training images of K different age-groups the proposed method learns to recover K low-rank age and one low-rank common components. These extracted components from the learning phase are used to progress an input face to younger as well as older ages in bidirectional fashion. Using standard datasets, we demonstrate that the proposed progression method outperforms state-of-the-art age progression methods and also improves matching accuracy in a face verification protocol that includes age progression

Gelatin sponge mimicking left atrial clot in rheumatic mitral stenosis

SummaryWe report the case of a 23-year-old female who underwent balloon mitral valvotomy for severe symptomatic mitral stenosis. Following septal puncture, the patient developed cardiac tamponade, which warranted sternotomy to suture the rent in the inferior vena cava–right atrial junction. The postoperative echocardiogram revealed nonhomogenous irregular opacities within the left atrium suggesting the possibility of thrombus formation. As the patient was in sinus rhythm and peri-procedural activated clotting time was in therapeutic range, clot formation was unlikely. A review of operative notes revealed placement of absorbable hemostatic gelatin sponge within the pericardium, which was mimicking left atrial clot. This potential pitfall has to be recognized in echocardiograms, as it will avoid inappropriate anticoagulant therapy

Effect of CuO, MoO3 and ZnO nanomaterial coated absorbers for clean water production

Solar energy is one of the most powerful sources for many sustainable applications. Recently, efficient water distillation has attracted significant attention. The fresh water productivity depends on how efficiently the system harvests the incoming solar energy and converts it into useful heat. In the present work, nano-coated absorber plates (NCAPs) were examined in the single slope solar still (SSSS) for clean water production. The NCAPs were CuO, MoO3 and ZnO, respectively. The CuO-NCAP was fabricated with the thermal evaporation method while the radio-frequency Magnetron Sputtering technique was used to fabricate the MoO3 and ZnO NCAPs. The attained particle size of the CuO, MoO3 and ZnO are 30–34 nm, 25–30 nm and 30–35 nm, respectively. The sphere (CuO), plate (MoO3), and wedge (ZnO) like morphologies are identified with field emission-scanning electron microscope. All the NCAPs and reference solar still were tested under the same environmental conditions. The climatic parameters (solar influx, ambient temperature and wind) and SSSS's temperatures including water temperature (Tw), internal air temperature (Tint-air), inner cover (Tic), outer cover (Toc), and absorber plate temperature (TNCAP) were measured at 30 min intervals with the help of Type-J thermocouples. Herein, we present an evaporative heat transfer (hew), efficiency, and cost analysis of the SSSS with CuO, MoO3 and ZnO-NCAPs. Three different feed waters fetched from the surface well water, hill side well water and hill side pond water were used in this work for evaporation. The result reveals that the evaporation of conventional single slope solar still, CuO, MoO3 and ZnO NCAPs were 2.1 l/m2 day, 2.9 l/m2 day, 2.7 l/m2 day and 2.6 l/m2 day, respectively