Structural Microstructural and Electrical Transport Studies of Ba(Fe0.25Eu0.25Nb0.5)O3

The complex multifunctional ceramic Ba(Fe0.25Eu0.25Nb0.5)O3 (BFEN) has been synthesized. The structural studies show two iso-structured phases related with BFN and BEN co-exists in the compound. The high dielectric constant and low dielectric loss of the compound below 575 K promises industrial applications. The activation energies obtained from the Arrhenius analysis of dc conductivity supports possible ferroelectric transition at elevated temperatures. Thus the desirable properties of two different compounds viz. multiferroic properties of BFN and high quality factor of BEN are successfully incorporated in a single compound. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3101

An investigation to measure the performance of commercial printing firms for conducting business-to-customer activities on the Web

This research was conducted to investigate the current status of commercial printing firms regarding the success of their performance using Web technology for conducting business-to-customer (B2C) activities. It was primarily based on Rogers\u27 innovation theory and Auger\u27s empirical study. The impact of the Web technology on the organizational performance was studied. The organizational performance was divided into three levels: financial performance (FP), non-financial performance (NFP), and overall performance (OP). The financial performance was measured by four financial indicators; whereas, the non-financial performance was measured by three non-financial indicators. The overall performance was then measured by adding the four financial performance and three non-financial performance indicators. The variables used in this study were: (a) financial performance, (b) non-financial performance, (c) overall performance, (d) size of company, (e) length of Web site operation, (f) number of business-to-customer activities, and (g) frequency of Web site modification. The associations between these variables were then measured using the Spearman correlation method. A total of 103 commercial printing firms in the midwest region of the United States were selected to participate in this study. Thirty-eight (36.89%) firms responded to questionnaires. It was found that conducting business-to-customer activities on the Web significantly and positively affected the non-financial performance. It did not, however, affect the financial and overall performances of commercial printing firms. Offering more services to customers on the Web played an important role in improving the organizational performance. A significant positive association was found between the number of B2C activities and the non-financial performance based on the Spearman correlation and Chi-Square results. In like manner, the frequency of Web site modification significantly and positively affected the non-financial performance, but did not affect the financial and overall performances of commercial printing firms. Results also indicated that the size of a company and the length of Web site operation have no significant effect on the organizational performance. It was suggested that commercial printing firms should conduct more B2C activities on the Web, and should modify the Web sites at least once a month in order to take the advantage of the Web technology

Manufacturing Quality Control with Autoencoder-Based Defect Localization and Unsupervised Class Selection

Manufacturing industries require efficient and voluminous production of high-quality finished goods. In the context of Industry 4.0, visual anomaly detection poses an optimistic solution for automatically controlling product quality with high precision. Automation based on computer vision poses a promising solution to prevent bottlenecks at the product quality checkpoint. We considered recent advancements in machine learning to improve visual defect localization, but challenges persist in obtaining a balanced feature set and database of the wide variety of defects occurring in the production line. This paper proposes a defect localizing autoencoder with unsupervised class selection by clustering with k-means the features extracted from a pre-trained VGG-16 network. The selected classes of defects are augmented with natural wild textures to simulate artificial defects. The study demonstrates the effectiveness of the defect localizing autoencoder with unsupervised class selection for improving defect detection in manufacturing industries. The proposed methodology shows promising results with precise and accurate localization of quality defects on melamine-faced boards for the furniture industry. Incorporating artificial defects into the training data shows significant potential for practical implementation in real-world quality control scenarios

Characterization of brown streak virus-resistant cassava

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) has become a major constraint to cassava production in East and Central Africa. The identification of new sources of CBSD resistance is essential to deploy CBSD mitigation strategies as the disease is progressing westwards to new geographical areas. A stringent infection method based on top cleft grafting combined with precise virus titer quantitation was utilized to screen fourteen cassava cultivars and elite breeding lines. When inoculated with mixed infections of Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) and Ugandan cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV), the scions of elite breeding lines KBH 2006/18 and KBH 2006/26 remained symptom-free during a 16-week period of virus graft inoculation, while susceptible varieties displayed typical CBSD infection symptoms at 4 weeks after grafting. The identified CBSD resistance was stable under the co-inoculation of CBSV, UCBSV with cassava geminiviruses (CGMs). Double grafting experiments revealed that transmission of CBSV and UCBSV to CBSD susceptible top scions was delayed when using intermediate scions of elite breeding lines KBH 2006/18 and KBH 2006/26. Nonetheless, comparison of virus systemic movement using scions from KBH2006/18 and a transgenic CBSD resistant 60444 line (60444-Hp9 line) showed that both CBSV and UCBSV move at undetectable levels through the stems. Further, protoplast-based assays of virus titers over time showed that the replication of CBSVs is inhibited in the resistant line KBH2006/18, suggesting that the identified CBSD resistance is at least partially based on inhibition of virus replication. Our molecular characterization of CBSD resistance in cassava offers a robust virus–host system to further investigate the molecular determinants of CBSD resistance

Lithographers\u27 opinions about waterless lithography

The purposes of this study were to identify the advantages and disadvantages of waterless litho in comparison with traditional litho, to solve the controversial issues, to forecast the growth of waterless litho, and to inform graphic arts professionals about it. The problem of this research was to identify and measure perceived controversial issues for using the waterless litho process. These controversial issues were related to the return on investment and operating costs involved, productivity, quality of images, eco-friendliness, and technical problems associated with waterless litho. Due to the fact that waterless litho was a developing technology and some controversial issues were present, there was a need to conduct structured research to verify its current status in the graphic arts industry. As a result, the research survey was conducted in the United States. The questionnaires were sent to the graphic arts professionals who used both waterless and traditional litho or used one of the processes and had knowledge about the other. For this research, the questionnaire was pre-tested followed by the pilot study. Later on, the final survey was conducted. The total population including the pilot study and the final survey was 83 graphic arts companies whose professionals agreed to participate in the study. Overall, a 32.53% return rate was received. It was found from data analysis that most of the respondents overall were satisfied with waterless litho in comparison with traditional litho. The waterless lithe process was ranked very high on the seven-point Likert scale for its quality products and environmental friendliness. The other aspects of waterless lithe such as costs, productivity, plate durability, technical skills needed, printing on recycled paper, and proof-matching can be considered as issues due to the participants scattered choices on the Likert scale. The waterless lithographers had common problems related to ink and plates. There was a strong voice from the lithographers for improving ink and plate technologies and for increasing competition in the waterless lithe supplier market. There had been a downward trend in the purchase of new waterless lithe presses since 1994, and 18.5% graphic arts professionals discontinued using waterless lithe. It was estimated based on the quantitative data that the people of the graphic arts industry located in the United States would lose more than seven million dollars per year, if there were 100 dedicated sheet-fed waterless lithe installations using analog negative-acting plates

What impedes the success of late mover IT clusters despite economically favorable environments? A case study of an Indian IT cluster

The Information Technology (IT) industry in India, is one of the major contributors to the country’s growth story. It is organized in a few strong and dominant clusters across the country. Recent research focuses on the emergence, growth and success of the seven big IT clusters that account for 96.55  of total software exports from the country. Unlike the six successful late mover clusters, there are several other late mover IT clusters that have not experienced similar growth. Why do some of the late mover IT clusters in India succeed while others fail to take off despite favorable economic conditions? This paper applies a case study method to answer this research question by examining a single cluster, using both primary and secondary data. The paper concludes with a new framework to explain how an IT cluster lacks the motivation to succeed when it has to gain traction alongside the competing dynamics of traditional businesses. We find this to be the case more so when traditional businesses are thriving and growing

Significance of Peripheral Blood Smear in Diagnosis of Blood Parasitic Infection

Bancroftian filariasis is a tropical and subtropical disease caused by Wuchereria bancrofti and transmitted by the Culex mosquitoes. It is conventionally diagnosed made by demonstrating microfilariae in the peripheral blood smear. Microfilariae and adult filarial worm have been incidentally detected in the blood. We here report an unusual case of Bancroftian microfilariasis in a 28-year-old male coming from endemic area with history of fever since 1 month. Patient had history of yellowish discoloration of skin and sclera

Weight subcloning: direct initialization of transformers using larger pretrained ones

Training large transformer models from scratch for a target task requires lots of data and is computationally demanding. The usual practice of transfer learning overcomes this challenge by initializing the model with weights of a pretrained model of the same size and specification to increase the convergence and training speed. However, what if no pretrained model of the required size is available? In this paper, we introduce a simple yet effective technique to transfer the knowledge of a pretrained model to smaller variants. Our approach called weight subcloning expedites the training of scaled-down transformers by initializing their weights from larger pretrained models. Weight subcloning involves an operation on the pretrained model to obtain the equivalent initialized scaled-down model. It consists of two key steps: first, we introduce neuron importance ranking to decrease the embedding dimension per layer in the pretrained model. Then, we remove blocks from the transformer model to match the number of layers in the scaled-down network. The result is a network ready to undergo training, which gains significant improvements in training speed compared to random initialization. For instance, we achieve 4x faster training for vision transformers in image classification and language models designed for next token prediction

Bacteriological analysis of bile in cholecystectomy patients

Background: Cholecystectomy is currently a frequently performed operation. The presence of gallstones within either the gallbladder or biliary tree is associated with the bacterial colonization of the bile. Acute cholangitis spans a continuous clinical spectrum and can progress from a local biliary infection to advanced disease with sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. Therefore, it is important to know the microbiological flora of the gallbladder before prophylactic antibiotics are given. Aims & objectives: To evaluate the microbiological profile of bile from gall bladder in patients undergoing cholecystectomy. To determine the appropriate antibiotic for preoperative prophylaxis in cholecystectomy patients based on the microbiological profile of bile.Methods: The study was a prospective study carried out in SSG Hospital. A total of 78 patients undergone cholecystectomy who met the inclusion criteria were included in the study. 3cc bile was aspirated from all patients, this collected bile from gallbladder before cholecystectomy was transported to the laboratory in sterile test-tube. The specimen was evaluated to find out whether it is sterile or has any bacteria present. The types of bacteria are determined and whether the amount of isolate is significant or not. And sensitivity to antibacterial agents against antibiotics was determined.Results: 19 patients showed positive bile culture in which Escherichia coli was the most common isolated bacteria (63.16% among positive bile culture and 15.38% among all patients) and bile was sterile in 59 patients (75.64%). Other organisms isolated were Pseudomonas (3.85%), Klebsiella (2.56%), coagulase negative Staphylococcus and Staphylococcus viridans (1.28%). Positive bile culture was a more common finding (50% of patients were bile culture positive) in patients with acute cholecystitis in this study. Post-operative wound infection is more common (15.79%) in group of patients with isolated organism from bile. There is a strong correlation between bile culture and wound culture (75%).  Conclusions: It was found that sensitivity to third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins was higher as compared to aminoglycoside in acute as well as chronic cholecystitis. In this study levofloxacin also shows good sensitivity against isolated organism from bile. Piperacilin and tazobactum also shows good sensitivity against isolated organism from bile and they are more effective against pseudomonas. The resistance to second-generation cephalosporins and aminoglycoside has increased. For preoperative prophylaxis third and fourth-generation cephalosporins and levofloxacin show better promise and may be used as the first line of preoperative prophylaxis in operations for acute and chronic cholecystitis undergoing cholecystectomy.

A Proteome-Level Investigation Into Plasmodiophora brassicae Resistance in Brassica napus Canola

Clubroot of Brassicaceae, an economically important soil borne disease, is caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae Woronin, an obligate, biotrophic protist. This disease poses a serious threat to canola and related crops in Canada and around the globe causing significant losses. The pathogen is continuously evolving and new pathotypes are emerging, which necessitates the development of novel resistant canola cultivars to manage the disease. Proteins play a crucial role in many biological functions and the identification of differentially abundant proteins (DAP) using proteomics is a suitable approach to understand plant–pathogen interactions to assist in the development of gene specific markers for developing clubroot resistant (CR) cultivars. In this study, P. brassicae pathotype 3 (P3H) was used to challenge CR and clubroot susceptible (CS) canola lines. Root samples were collected at three distinct stages of pathogenesis, 7−, 14−, and 21-days post inoculation (DPI), protein samples were isolated, digested with trypsin and subjected to liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis. A total of 937 proteins demonstrated a significant (q-value < 0.05) change in abundance in at least in one of the time points when compared between control and inoculated CR-parent, CR-progeny, CS-parent, CS-progeny and 784 proteins were significantly (q < 0.05) changed in abundance in at least in one of the time points when compared between the inoculated- CR and CS root proteomes of parent and progeny across the three time points tested. Functional annotation of differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) revealed several proteins related to calcium dependent signaling pathways. In addition, proteins related to reactive oxygen species (ROS) biochemistry, dehydrins, lignin, thaumatin, and phytohormones were identified. Among the DAPs, 73 putative proteins orthologous to CR proteins and quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with eight CR loci in different chromosomes including chromosomes A3 and A8 were identified. Proteins including BnaA02T0335400WE, BnaA03T0374600WE, BnaA03T0262200WE, and BnaA03T0464700WE are orthologous to identified CR loci with possible roles in mediating clubroot responses. In conclusion, these results have contributed to an improved understanding of the mechanisms involved in mediating response to P. brassicae in canola at the protein level