A Robust Continuous Time Fixed Lag Smoother for Nonlinear Uncertain Systems

This paper presents a robust fixed lag smoother for a class of nonlinear uncertain systems. A unified scheme, which combines a nonlinear robust estimator with a stable fixed lag smoother, is presented to improve the error covariance of the estimation. The robust fixed lag smoother is based on the use of Integral Quadratic Constraints and minimax LQG control. The state estimator uses a copy of the system nonlinearity in the estimator and combines an approximate model of the delayed states to produce a smoothed signal. In order to see the effectiveness of the method, it is applied to a quantum optical phase estimation problem. Results show significant improvement in the error covariance of the estimator using fixed lag smoother in the presence of nonlinear uncertainty.Comment: 8 pages, will be presented in 52nd Conference on Decision and Contro

Observable Gravity Waves from Supersymmetric Hybrid Inflation II

It is shown that a tensor-to-scalar ratio close to r = 0.03, which can be observed by Planck, is realized in supersymmetric hybrid inflation models with TeV-scale soft supersymmetry breaking terms. This extends our previous analysis, which also found r <~ 0.03 but employed intermediate scale soft terms. Other cosmological observables such as the scalar spectral index are in good agreement with the WMAP data.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Red Spectral Tilt and Observable Gravity Waves in Shifted Hybrid Inflation

We consider supersymmetric shifted hybrid inflation models with a red tilted scalar spectral index n_s in agreement with the WMAP 7-yr central value. If non-minimal supergravity corrections are included, these models can also support a tensor-to-scalar ratio as large as r = 0.02, which may be observable by the Planck Satellite. In contrast to the standard supersymmetric hybrid inflation scenario, topological defects produced via gauge symmetry breaking are inflated away in the shifted version of the theory.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, and 1 tabl

Social media usage in academic research

Recently researchers have used “conversation prism” and “social media prisma”, to consolidate social medias with respect to their use. Although both identified 25 types, having average five examples each, they did not identify contribution of each type in academic research. Moreover some of mentioned social services had been suspended or changed. In this paper we attempt to access each social media mentioned in conversation prism in order to first, identify services that are operational to date, services which have suspended and those which have changed during course of time. Second, we compare number of publications associated with each social media, in order to identify which social media has contributed most to academic research. Third, we attempt to find correlation between number of publications and development tools provided by respective social applications. Fourth, social medias are ranked with respect to number of times other social medias share content with respective social application. It was found that out of 168 social applications, 10% changed their service objective while 13% were suspended. Among all social application, AMAZON had highest i.e. 147,000 number of citations on Google scholar whereas 90.7% of total citations were contributed by top 30 social medias. For developers, 22 out of top 30 social medias provided developer options in form of either application programming interface (API) or software development kits (SDK) and Facebook was found to be most cross referred social media based on content sharing. Finally conclusion and future work of study is presented

Sigmoid volvulus in pregnancy and puerperium: a surgical and obstetric catastrophe Report of a case and review of the world literature

Sigmoid volvulus is a rare surgical complication occurring in pregnancy and puerperium. Only 84 cases of sigmoid volvulus in pregnancy have been reported in the English literature so far. We have reviewed the available literature on this subject and present another case recently managed at our institution. The available literature suggests that over the years, there has been an improvement in the maternal and fetal outcome for this critical condition, but delay in presentation and a further delay in diagnosis remain a challenge for the treating physicians. Our patient was a 30-week pregnant lady, who presented late with 6days history of abdominal pain, distension and absolute constipation. She had evidence of multi-organ dysfunction at presentation due to complicated sigmoid volvulus. She was resuscitated and surgical exploration revealed gangrenous large bowel. Bowel resection with diverting ileostomy was performed, but she succumbed to the septic shock due to late presentation. Acute surgical pathology may be overlooked in pregnant patients due to reluctance in radiological workup and a high index of suspicion is essential for enhanced outcome. There is a need to increase the awareness amongst the obstetricians and general practitioners. Early diagnosis and referral and timely surgical intervention could significantly improve the outcome of this surgical and obstetric catastrophe

Antibacterial and bioactive coatings based on electrophoretic deposition of chitosan/bioactive glas/lawsone on PEEK/bioactive glass layers

The electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is an attractive approach for development of Polyether ether ketone (PEEK) and 45S5 bio-active glass (BG®) composite coatings for biomedical applications. However, in order to establish the influence of the EPD parameters on the properties of the deposited coatings, a deeper investigation of the fundamental PEEK/BG co-EPD kinetics is required. Previous studies have reported hit and trial approach in order to optimize key EPD parameters, which is material and time consuming. Therefore, in this study, design of experiment approach was utilized to reach the optimized parameters economically. Accordingly, the PEEK/BG-EPD kinetics was established as a function of deposition time and voltage, accompanied by microscopic characterization of the deposited films. The experimental results showed that the deposition follows a linear growth law, in good agreement with the predictions of Hamaker’s law. The green coatings produced from the optimized set of parameters were sintered, in order to achieve substantial adhesion to the metallic substrate. Moreover, Chitosan/BG/Lawson composite was also deposited electrophoretically by optimized set of parameters on the sintered PEEK/BG composite coatings. Produced multilayer coatings attain multifunctional attributes; such as mechanical integrity and bioactivity from first layer, whereas, bioresorbable chitosan in top layer provided an effective platform to trigger the release of antibacterial drug (Lawson). The morphology of multilayer coatings was examined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), elemental and compositional analysis was performed qualitatively with energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and x-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was employed in order to identify the chemical structure of multilayer coatings. Moreover, wettability of the multilayer coatings was analyzed by static water contact angle measurements. Finally, in vitro bioactivity was assessed by immersing the multilayer coatings in simulated body fluid for 3, 7 and 14 days. The developed multilayer coatings were fairly homogenous, micro-porous and moderately hydrophobic. Furthermore, multilayer coatings were covered completely with apatite like layer after 3 days of immersion in SBF

N′-(2,4-Dinitro­phen­yl)acetohydrazide

In the title compound, C8H8N4O5, the nitro groups ortho and para to the hydrazone group are twisted by 10.0 (2) and 3.6 (2)°, respectively, relative to the aromatic ring. The structure exhibits an intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond between the hydrazide and ortho-nitro groups. There is a strong inter­molecular C=O⋯H—N hydrogen bond, giving rise to chains, and weaker ONO⋯NO2 [2.944 (2) Å] and C—H⋯O—N inter­actions linking the mol­ecules into a three-dimensional network