Critical currents and high temperature superconductors

The experimental information on critical currents and epitaxial thin films of high temperature superconductors is summarized. Experiments carried out to measure critical currents across single grain boundaries are described. A variety of mechanisms responsible for limiting currents in films as well as across grain boundaries are presented and their predictions compared with experimental data

Defects in the Compound Bi2te3 Caused by Irradiation with Protons

Defects in single crystals of bismuth telluride caused by proton irradiatio

Local anesthetic agents along with hyaluronidase for inguinal hernia block provides excellent analgesia: a double blind study

Background: Inguinal hernia block is cost effective, but fear of intra-operative pain may hinder its widespread use. It is unknown whether hyaluronidase along with local anesthetic agent provides good analgesia for hernia block. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of hyaluronidase along with local anesthetic agents for inguinal hernia block in patients undergoing inguinal hernioplasty.Methods: 50 patients ASA grade I and II, age above 18 years, undergoing inguinal hernioplasty were randomized into two groups. Group A received inguinal hernia block with local anesthetic agents without hyaluronidase and Group B received inguinal hernia block with hyaluronidase and local anesthetic agents. Both groups received premedication 10 minutes before induction in the form of inj. Fentanyl, Midazolam, Ranitidine and OndansetronResults: In Group B, out of 25 patients only 4 patients required intraoperative analgesia while in group A 16 patients required intraoperative analgesia. Post operative pain was assessed for 24 hours using the pain rating scale. The mean duration of analgesia was significantly longer in group B (16.16±6.8780 hrs) compared to group A (7.32±2.5285 hrs); pain score was compared between the two groups. Group B had lower pain scores than group A which was statistically significant (P<0.05).Conclusion: It concludes that hyaluronidase with local anesthetic agent for inguinal hernia block provides excellent intraoperative analgesia and also prolongs the post operative analgesia

Development of Carbonaceous Chemistry for Computational Modeling (C3M) with Application of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) Analysis for Coal Gasification Kinetics in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modeling

In association with Department of Energy.s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), a software platform entitled Carbonaceous Chemistry for Computational Modeling (C3M) that can access a variety of kinetic processes and reaction mechanisms typically found in coal gasification, gas clean-up, and carbon capture processes, has been developed to overcome the limitations in terms of applicable operating conditions and fuel types. It interfaces with CFD software such as Multiphase Flow with Interphase Exchanges (MFIX) developed at NETL, ANSYS-FLUENT by ANSYS Inc., and BARRACUDA by CPFD Software and provides relevant parameters to simulate chemical kinetics and/or to replicate laboratory data. The reaction kinetics data in C3M are provided by one or more detailed reaction models such as PC Coal Lab (PCCL), Chemical Percolation Model for Coal Devolatilization (CPD), Solomon.s Functional-Group, Depolymerization, Vaporization, Cross-linking (FGDVC) model, or through experimental data generated at NETL. Algorithms were written to create this interface and to extract the kinetic information from all models. This functionality provides the CFD user with a framework to conduct virtual kinetic experiments to evaluate kinetic predictions as a function of fuel and sorbent type and/or operating conditions. The effort on the user.s part to search, analyze and to check the accuracy of the kinetics of interest is drastically reduced. Validity and compatibility of C3M kinetics were tested by implementing them in a (2-D) transport gasifier and in an industrial GE Texaco gasifier model (1-D). The predicted exit gas composition and trends of gas species matched very closely with the experimental and industrial data. To improve the kinetic database, a detailed coal/biomass derived soot literature review was completed. It was found that there is a gap in coal derived soot formation and gasification kinetics for high temperature and pressure operating conditions. In addition to the kinetic studies, uncertainty quantification (UQ) techniques were employed in the CFD models to study the variations of chemical reaction kinetics in a coal gasifier. The uncertainty in exit gas composition based on the variations in input parameters such as temperature, pressure, heating rate and coal feed composition were implemented. Changes in devolatilization product yields (such as mass fractions of CO, CO2, H2, tar, H2O, and CH4 along with total volatile yield) were used as response variables and were recorded and correlated based on distributions of input parameters such as temperature, pressure and heating rates. The correlations among the response variables and input parameters were investigated by computing a correlation matrix. The uncertainties in output responses were in close agreement with data reported in literature. This study strongly suggested the importance of considering uncertainties in chemical reaction kinetics in CFD modeling

The effects of irradiation with protons on the electrical properties and defect configurations of the compound Bi2Te3

Proton irradiation effects on electric properties and defect configurations of bismuth tellurid

Watermarking Based Image Authentication for Secure Color Image Retrieval in Large Scale Image Databases

An important facet of traditional retrieval models is that they retrieve images and videos and consider their content and context reliable. Nevertheless, this consideration is no longer valid since they can be faked for many reasons and at different degrees thanks to powerful multimedia manipulation software. Our goal is to investigate new ways detecting possible fake in social network platforms. In this paper, we propose an approach that assets identification faked images by combining standard content-based image retrieval (CBIR) techniques and watermarking. We have prepared the wartermarked image database of all images using LSB based watermarking. Using gabor features and trained KNN, user is able to retrieve the matching query image. The retrieved image is authenticated by extracting the watermark and matching it again with the test image

Evaluating XPath Expressions on Light Weight BitCube

XML has become a popular way of storing data and hence has also become a new standard for exchanging and representing data on internet. Many techniques have been proposed for indexing and retrieval of XML documents such as XTree, BitCube. In this paper a indexing structure known as Light Weight BitCube is proposed. LWBC is an extension to the earlier BitCube technique which overcomes the memory management problem of BitCube while maintaining the same query processing efficiency as that of BitCube. Many XPath expressions and BitCube operations are evaluated on this LWBC to show the query processing efficiency. The results are also compared with XQEngine, a well known XML Query Processing Engine. The results also show that, Light Weight BitCube manages memory much more efficiently than the BitCube, without compromising on the query processing time