Enhancement of boresight radiation for leaky wave antenna array

An array of half-width microstrip leaky-wave antennas (HW-MLWAs) of two uniform elements was designed to obtain maximum boresight radiation. Achieve this, two uniform of HW-MLWAs are placed at 180◦ and fed by a probe located at the center between the elements, two uniforms of HW-MLWAs, loaded terminated by 50Ω lumped element. Two beams from two branches individual merge to form the resultant directive beam. The simulation represents the susceptibility of the proposed array of uniform HW-MLWAs to the radiation broadside direction effectively. The predict bandwidth matched of the array is 582 MHz (4.18–4.76 GHz). The direction of its main beam in boresight happens over a wide 13%, relatively (4.18-4.76 GHz) band. The proposed peak gain at the boresight direction of the array is 9.91 dBi

Bioactivity of Samsum ant (Pachycondyla sennaarensis) venom against lipopolysaccharides through antioxidant and upregulation of Akt1 signaling in rats

BACKGROUND: This study aimed at investigating the oxidative stress ameliorating effect, lipids profile restoration, and the anti-inflammatory effect of Samsum Ant Venom (SAV) in induced endotoxemic male rats, injected with bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS). RESULTS: Results revealed that LPS significantly increased the oxidative stress indications in LPS-injected rats. A significant increase of both malondialdehyde (MDA), and advanced oxidative protein products (AOPP), as well as a significant suppression of glutathione were all detected. Treatment with 100 μg/kg dose of SAV significantly restored the oxidative stress normal indications and increased the total glutathione levels. Treatment of the LPS-rats with 100 μg/kg dose of SAV showed a clear anti-inflammatory function; as the histological architecture of the hepatic tissue was partially recovered, along with a valuable decrease in the leukocytes infiltrated the hepatic tissues. Treatment of some rat groups with 600 μg/kg dose of SAV after LPS injection induced a severe endotoxemia that resulted in very high mortality rates. SAV versus the effects of LPS on AKT1, Fas, TNF-α and IFN-γ mRNA expression. SAV was found to significantly lower Fas gene expression comparing to the LPS group and restore the level of IFN-γ mRNA expression to that of the control group. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, SAV, at the dose of 100 μg/kg body weight, maintained and restored the oxidative stability, the anti-inflammatory, and the hypolipidemic bioactivity in rats after induced disruption of these parameters by LPS injection. This improvement by SAV was mediated by upregulation of AKT1

Electronically controlled radiation pattern leaky wave antenna array for (C band) application

This paper provides an insight of a new, leaky-wave antenna (LWA) array. It holds the ability to digitally steer its beam at a fixed frequency by utilizing only two state of bias voltage. This is done with acceptable impedance matching while scanning and very little gain variation. Investigation is carried out on LWAs’ control radiation pattern in steps at a fixed frequency via PIN diodes switches. This study also presents a novel half-width microstrip LWA (HWMLWA) array. The antenna is made up of the following basic structures: two elements and reconfigurable control cell with each being comprised of two diodes and two triangle patches. A double gap capacitor in each unit cell is independently disconnected or connected via PIN diode switch to achieve fixed-frequency control radiation pattern. The reactance profile at the microstrip’s free edge and thus the main beam direction is changed once the control-cell states are changed. The main beam may be directed by the antenna between 61o and 19o at 4.2 GHz. C band achieved the measured peak gain of the antenna of 15 dBi at 4.2 GHz beam scanning range

Theoretical investigations of β-tricalcium

Beta-tri-calcium phosphate (β-TCP) materials have gained a great deal of research considerations in biomaterial area due to their excellent biocompatibility and identical chemical compositions to the natural teeth and bones. Therefore, the β-TCP compound can be used as coatings, cement and composites as well as biocompatible ceramics for medical and dental applications. Electronic and optical properties for β-TCP compound have been investigated using density functional theory (DFT). For the calculations, we used full potential linear augmented plane wave method (FPLAPW), within three types of approximations along with local density approximations (LDA), generalized gradient approximations (GGA) and Modified Becke-Johnson (mBJ) to get the effect of the exchange and correlation in our calculations to get an accurate results. The computed band gap values for (β-TCP) compound using LDA, GGA, and mBJ-GGA approximations are 5.5 eV, 5.9 eV and 6.8 eV respectively. This is also predicted that the chemical bonding in this compound is a kind of combination of covalent and ionic character that is in a line with the experimental findings. The optical parameter, static dielectric constant ε1(0) reaches the values of 3.23681 (eV) at 0 GPa for the β-TCP compound. The obtained results are of vital nature for rising the quality of the electronic and optical properties of this material, and provide more evidence to fabricate novel Beta-Tri-calcium phosphate biomaterials for medical and dental applications

A robust structure identification method for evolving fuzzy system

This paper proposes a robust structure identification method (RSIM) based on incremental partitioning learning. RSIM starts with an open region (initial domain) that covers all input samples. The initial region starts with one fuzzy rule without fuzzy terms and then evolves through incremental partitioning learning, which creates many subregions for system error minimization. The three major contributions of the proposed RSIM are as follows: It locates sufficient splitting points provided through a robust partitioning technique, determines the optimum trade-off between accuracy and complexity through a novel partition-selection technique, minimizes global error through global least square optimization. These contributions offer many remarkable advantages. First, RSIM provides a solution for the curse of dimensionality. Second, RSIM can also be applied to low-dimensional problems. Third, RSIM seeks to produce few rules with low number of conditions to improve system readability. Fourth, RSIM minimizes the number of fired rules. Therefore, RSIM can achieve low-level complexity systems. Three low-dimension and six high-dimension and real-life benchmarks are used to evaluate the performance of RSIM with state-of-the art methods. Although RSIM has high interpretability, the results prove that RSIM exhibits greater accuracy than other existing methods

Competing risks for reliability analysis using Cox’s model

Purpose – Cox’s model with Weibull distribution and Cox’s with exponential distribution are the most important models in reliability analysis. This paper seeks to show that, with a large sample size based on expectation maximization (EM) algorithm, both models give similar results. Design/methodology/approach – The parameters of the models have been estimated by method of maximum likelihood based on EM algorithm. The objective of this analysis is to fit the modification of Cox’s model with Weibull distribution and Cox’s with exponential distribution, examine its performance and compare their results with Crowder et al. Findings – A simulation study indicates that the parametric Cox’s model with Weibull distribution gives similar results to Cox’s with exponential distribution, especially for a large sample size. Also, the modification of the two models showed better results compared with Crowder et al., especially for the second causes of failure. Originality/value – A modification of the two competing risk models has mostly been applied in failure time data and simulation data. The results of the simulation study indicate that the Weibull and exponential are suitable for Cox’s model as they are easy to use and it can achieve even higher accuracy compared with other distribution models

Chemical and Physical Comparative Study of the Effect of Wet and Dry Beneficiation of Kankara Kaolin

Chemical and physical comparative effect of wet and dry beneficiation processes for purification of kaolin was studied. X-ray flourescence XRF and particle size analysis of kaolin clay before and after beneficiation were carried out. The Si/Al ratio of the raw kaolin which was 1.90 decreased by 1.6 and 17.9% after the wet and dry beneficiation processes respectively. The clay content of the raw clay which was 48 wt% was improved to 73 wt% after the dry beneficiation while the impurity content was reduced from 52 to 27wt%.http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v34i2.1

Hybrid multi-independent mmWave MNOs assessment utilising spectrum sharing paradigm for 5G networks

Spectrum sharing paradigm (SSP) has recently emerged as an attractive solution to provide capital expenditure (CapEx) and operating expenditure (OpEx) savings and to enhance spectrum utilization (SU). However, practical issues concerning the implementation of such paradigm are rarely addressed (e.g., mutual interference, fairness, and mmWave base station density). Therefore, in this paper, we proposed ultra-reliable and proportionally fair hybrid spectrum sharing access strategy that aims to address the aforementioned aspects as a function of coverage probability (CP), average rate distributions (ARD), and the number of mmWave base stations (mBSs). In this strategy, the spectrum is sliced into three parts (exclusive, semi-pooled, and fully pooled). A typical user that belongs to certain operator has the right to occupy a part of the spectrum available in the high and low frequencies (28 and 73 GHz) based on an adaptive multi-state mmWave cell selection scheme (AMMC-S) which associates the user with the tagged mBS that offers a highest SINR to maintain more reliable connection and enrich the user experience. Numerical results show that significant improvement in terms of ARD, CP, fairness among operators, and maintain an acceptable level of mBSs density

Energy-efficient user association mechanism enabling fully hybrid spectrum sharing among multiple 5G cellular operators

Spectrum sharing (SS) is a promising solution to enhance spectrum utilization in future cellular systems. Reducing the energy consumption in cellular networks has recently earned tremendous attention from diverse stakeholders (i.e., vendors, mobile network operators (MNOs), and government) to decrease the CO2 emissions and thus introducing an environment-friendly wireless communication. Therefore, in this paper, joint energy-efficient user association (UA) mechanism and fully hybrid spectrum sharing (EE-FHSS) approach is proposed considering the quality of experience QoE (i.e., data rate) as the main constraint. In this approach, the spectrum available in the high and low frequencies (28 and 73 GHz) is sliced into three portions (licensed, semi-shared, and fully-shared) aims to serve the users (UEs) that belong to four operators in an integrated and hybrid manner. The performance of the proposed QoE-Based EE UA-FHSS is compared with the well-known maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (max-SINR UA-FHSS). Numerical results show that remarkable enhancement in terms of EE for the four participating operators can be achieved while maintaining a high degree of QoE to the UEs