An Analytical Approach for Design of Microstrip Patch (MsP)

A reliable configuration of electromagnetic interactions for antenna design can yield an effective Microstrip patch (MsP) antenna. During its design, the antenna arrays involve issues with parameters (i.e., space, dimension, shape) adjustment. This problem can be tackled with an analytical approach which can help to bring better idea to design the antenna aaray. However, the realistic designs of antenna array are quite expensive while extracting computational accuracy. Thus, to have low cost computational accuracy various meta-heuristic (generic algorithm, partical swarm optimizarion) approaches are used and are considered as effective one in handling the pattern synthesis problems. Howeever, the use of meta-heuristic approaches demands thousands of functions to analyze the antenna design. This manuscript introduces an analytical approach for MsP antenna desing using MATLAB that brings optimization in handling the side lobes and optimizing the reflection as well as radiation responses. The outcomes of the design were analyzed with respect to reflection, radiation coefficients, side lobes and found effective at 10GHz as per computational cost is concern

Heavy landings of juveniles of Indian scad, Decapterus russelli at Munambam Fisheries Harbour

Among the carangid fishes, the Indian scad, Decapterus russelli is an important pelagic fish and a major commercial species contributing to the marine fisheries of Kerala. The fish is locally called “kozhuchala” and it forms a regular fishery. The species is often caught as by-catch in shrimp trawl nets having cod-end mesh sizes ranging from 15 mm to 20 mm that is operated in the depth range of 55- 90 m almost throughout the year. They are consumed fresh as well as sun dried form

Phytochemical Screening and Antimicrobial Activity of the Plant Extracts of Mimosa pudica L. Against Selected Microbes

Mimosa pudica L. is a creeping annual or perennial herb. It has been identified as Lajjalu in Ayurveda and has been found to have antiasthmatic, aphrodisiac, analgesic and antidepressant. In the present study the active phytocomponents of Mimosa pudica were revealed using phytochemical analysis. The antimicrobial activity of Mimosa was studied using well diffusion method. The activity was tested against Aspergillus fumigatus, Citrobacter divergens and Klebsiella pneumonia at different concentrations of 50, 100 and 200μg/disc and the results have been illustrated

Eye of horus – Erratum revealed a prescription survey

Background: The aim of this study was to survey the quality and the content of prescription of practitioners and also assess the legibility of alphabet, and short form of the drug.Methods: A survey of all prescription received by the patients that were written by general practitioners, consulting physicians and dentists in and around Virajpet and Madikeri (south Coorg) was included.The prescriptions were photocopied and returned back to the patients. The prescription was scored and analyzed by a qualified medical investigator.Results: A total of 171 prescription samples were collected. In most prescriptions, one or more aspects of patient’s personal details were missing. Concerned doctor’s details also lacked in most cases. 40.3% of the prescriptions were obtained wherein short form of the drug was used for prescribing drug. Legibility of alphabet was also evaluated and the most confusing letter noted in our study was letter “C”; followed by A, T, S, O, G, and D in this study the letter Rx was written in 7% of the prescription and in 19% prescription it was replaced by word “Adv” and 74% of prescription without symbol of Rx.Conclusions: The present data shows most prescriptions in the study was inadequate and important details were lacking, legibility of prescription was poor in rating

Method validation and monitoring of emamectin benzoate in mature banana fruit with peel and pulp through Liquid chromatography-Mass spectrometry/ Mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)

Emamectin benzoate has been frequently used in the banana ecosystem to combat the damage of pseudostem weevil. Therefore, the present study was conducted to validate the method, to assess harvest time residues and monitor emamectin benzoate residues in mature banana peel and pulp samples through LC-MS/MS. The validated method was used to determine emamectin benzoate residue in market banana samples. The study used Waters Alliance LC and Acquity TQD with an electrospray ionization interface in the positive ion mode. An isocratic flow of 0.1% formic acid (HCOOH) in water and 0.1% HCOOH in acetonitrile (CH3CN) was utilised for separation. CH3CN was utilised to extract emamectin benzoate residue from the samples, and a dispersive solid-phase extraction technique was used for subsequent cleanup. Linearity tests were performed with standard solutions containing 0.01 to 0.1 g mL-1, with three replicates for each concentration. For mature banana peel & pulp and mature banana pulp matrices, satisfactory recoveries of 79.85 to 95.09% and 89.20 to 100.94%, respectively and high precision relative standard deviations of 0.56 to 2.34% and 2.33 to 6.88%, respectively were obtained. For mature banana (peel and pulp, pulp alone) fruits, the lower detection and quantification limits were (0.003, 0.008), and (0.002, 0.007). The validated approach was utilised to analyse mature banana fruit samples obtained from emamectin benzoate treated fields and banana samples purchased from the local market.  Results showed satisfactory validation of parameters like linearity, the limit of detection and quantification, and recovery for determining emamectin benzoate residues in banana fruit

4,8-Dimethyl­pyrano[2,3-a]carbazol-2(11H)-one

The mol­ecule of the title compound, C17H13NO2, is nearly planar, the r.m.s. deviation for all non-H atoms excluding the two methyl C atoms being 0.089 Å. Inter­molecular N—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds are found in the crystal structure. C—H⋯π inter­actions are also found. The H atoms of the methyl group attached to the benzene ring are disordered equally over two positions

Phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activity of leaf extracts of Crossandra infundibuliformis (L.) nees on common bacterial and fungal pathogens

Abstract The medicinally active substances were isolated from leaves of Crossandra infundibuliformis by Soxhlet extractor and identified by phytochemical tests. The soxhlet extraction in powdered form was performed using aqueou

Cycle-based Cluster Variational Method for Direct and Inverse Inference

We elaborate on the idea that loop corrections to belief propagation could be dealt with in a systematic way on pairwise Markov random fields, by using the elements of a cycle basis to define region in a generalized belief propagation setting. The region graph is specified in such a way as to avoid dual loops as much as possible, by discarding redundant Lagrange multipliers, in order to facilitate the convergence, while avoiding instabilities associated to minimal factor graph construction. We end up with a two-level algorithm, where a belief propagation algorithm is run alternatively at the level of each cycle and at the inter-region level. The inverse problem of finding the couplings of a Markov random field from empirical covariances can be addressed region wise. It turns out that this can be done efficiently in particular in the Ising context, where fixed point equations can be derived along with a one-parameter log likelihood function to minimize. Numerical experiments confirm the effectiveness of these considerations both for the direct and inverse MRF inference.Comment: 47 pages, 16 figure

A QoS-Based Wireless Multimedia Sensor Cluster Protocol

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) provide a wireless network infrastructure for sensed data transport in environments where wired or satellite technologies cannot be used. Because the embedded hardware of the sensor nodes has been improved very much in the last years and the number of real deployments is increasing considerably, they have become a reliable option for the transmission of any type of sensed data, from few sensed measures to multimedia data. This paper proposes a new protocol that uses an ad hoc cluster based architecture which is able to adapt the logical sensor network topology to the delivered multimedia stream features, guaranteeing the quality of the communications. The proposed protocol uses the quality of service (QoS) parameters, such as bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss, of each type of multimedia stream as a basis for the sensor clusters creation and organization inside the WSN, providing end-to-end QoS for each multimedia stream. We present real experiments that show the performance of the protocol for several video and audio cases when it is runningThis work has been partially supported by the "Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion," through the "Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008-2011" in the "Subprograma de Proyectos de Investigacion Fundamental," Project TEC2011-27516. This work has also been partially supported by the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Next Generation Networks and Applications Group (NetGNA), Portugal, by the Government of Russian Federation, Grant 074-U01, and by National Funding from the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the PEst-OE/EEI/LA0008/2013 Project.Díaz Santos, JR.; Lloret, J.; Jimenez, JM.; Rodrigues, JJPC. (2014). A QoS-Based Wireless Multimedia Sensor Cluster Protocol. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks. 2014:1-17. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/480372S1172014Bri, D., Garcia, M., Lloret, J., & Dini, P. (2009). 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S., & Villalba, L. J. G. (2012). A distributed QoS mechanism for ad hoc network. International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 11(1), 25. doi:10.1504/ijahuc.2012.049282Çevik, T., & Zaim, A. H. (2013). A Multichannel Cross-Layer Architecture for Multimedia Sensor Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 9(3), 457045. doi:10.1155/2013/457045Li, Z., Bi, J., & Chen, S. (2013). Traffic Prediction-Based Fast Rerouting Algorithm for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 9(5), 176293. doi:10.1155/2013/176293Lloret, J., Palau, C., Boronat, F., & Tomas, J. (2008). Improving networks using group-based topologies. Computer Communications, 31(14), 3438-3450. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2008.05.030Lloret, J., Garcia, M., Tomás, J., & Boronat, F. (2008). GBP-WAHSN: A Group-Based Protocol for Large Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks. 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IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 7(1), 32-48. doi:10.1109/comst.2005.1423333Abbasi, A. A., & Younis, M. (2007). A survey on clustering algorithms for wireless sensor networks. Computer Communications, 30(14-15), 2826-2841. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2007.05.024Boyinbode, O., Le, H., & Takizawa, M. (2011). A survey on clustering algorithms for wireless sensor networks. International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 1(2/3), 130. doi:10.1504/ijssc.2011.040339Ramachandran, L., Kapoor, M., Sarkar, A., & Aggarwal, A. (2000). Clustering algorithms for wireless ad hoc networks. Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Discrete algorithms and methods for mobile computing and communications - DIALM ’00. doi:10.1145/345848.345860Chatterjee, M., Das, S. K., & Turgut, D. (2002). Cluster Computing, 5(2), 193-204. doi:10.1023/a:1013941929408Huang, Y.-M., Hsieh, M.-Y., & Wang, M.-S. (2007). 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Machine Learning Framework to Identify Individuals at Risk of Rapid Progression of Coronary Atherosclerosis: From the PARADIGM Registry.

Background Rapid coronary plaque progression (RPP) is associated with incident cardiovascular events. To date, no method exists for the identification of individuals at risk of RPP at a single point in time. This study integrated coronary computed tomography angiography-determined qualitative and quantitative plaque features within a machine learning (ML) framework to determine its performance for predicting RPP. Methods and Results Qualitative and quantitative coronary computed tomography angiography plaque characterization was performed in 1083 patients who underwent serial coronary computed tomography angiography from the PARADIGM (Progression of Atherosclerotic Plaque Determined by Computed Tomographic Angiography Imaging) registry. RPP was defined as an annual progression of percentage atheroma volume ≥1.0%. We employed the following ML models: model 1, clinical variables; model 2, model 1 plus qualitative plaque features; model 3, model 2 plus quantitative plaque features. ML models were compared with the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk score, Duke coronary artery disease score, and a logistic regression statistical model. 224 patients (21%) were identified as RPP. Feature selection in ML identifies that quantitative computed tomography variables were higher-ranking features, followed by qualitative computed tomography variables and clinical/laboratory variables. ML model 3 exhibited the highest discriminatory performance to identify individuals who would experience RPP when compared with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk score, the other ML models, and the statistical model (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in ML model 3, 0.83 [95% CI 0.78-0.89], versus atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk score, 0.60 [0.52-0.67]; Duke coronary artery disease score, 0.74 [0.68-0.79]; ML model 1, 0.62 [0.55-0.69]; ML model 2, 0.73 [0.67-0.80]; all P<0.001; statistical model, 0.81 [0.75-0.87], P=0.128). Conclusions Based on a ML framework, quantitative atherosclerosis characterization has been shown to be the most important feature when compared with clinical, laboratory, and qualitative measures in identifying patients at risk of RPP