Salsa20 based lightweight security scheme for smart meter communication in smart grid

The traditional power gird is altering dramatically to a smart power grid with the escalating development of information and communication technology (ICT). Among thousands of electronic devices connected to the grid through communication network, smart meter (SM) is the core networking device. The consolidation of ICT to the electronic devices centered on SM open loophole for the adversaries to launch cyber-attack. Therefore, for protecting the network from the adversaries it is required to design lightweight security mechanism for SM, as conventional cryptography schemes poses extensive computational cost, processing delay and overhead which is not suitable to be used in SM. In this paper, we have proposed a security mechanism consolidating elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and Salsa20 stream cipher algorithm to ensure security of the network as well as addressing the problem of energy efficiency and lightweight security solution. We have numerically analyzed the performance of our proposed scheme in case of energy efficiency and processing time which reveals that the suggested mechanism is suitable to be used in SM as it consumes less power and requires less processing time to encrypt or decrypt

Development of a Quadruped Crawling Robot Prototype

Although wheeled robots are commonly used, it has limited ability to move to any terrains at ease. They suffer from difficulties when travelling over uneven and rough terrains. Legged robots have an advantage over the wheeled robots in that they are suited for such situations. The implementation of legged robots normally requires many motors to move every joint in a robot leg. Additional motor will increase the construction cost, robot weight, and the demand for power supply. Moreover, robot simulation becomes more complex. This research is related to the design and development of a cost effective quadruped autonomous robot. The robot can moves according to a unique pattern using three servo motors as its actuator in each of its leg. The design of the robot is firstly made with CAD program and then the structure of the body and the leg is analyzed in order to find a correct balance and to make sure the servo motors are capable to move the robot. A prototype of the quadruped robot is fabricated and tested thoroughly. Experimental studies are carried out to test its stability issues when the robot moves. The robot is capable of moving forward, backward, turn left and turn right by crawling its way. A microcontroller is used as the brain of the robot assisted by two analog distance sensor for better obstacle sensing. It uses a rechargeable battery as the power supply for the microcontroller. The servo motors on the other hand are powered by another rechargeable battery. At the end of this research, a working prototype has been developed

Time series analysis of electric energy consumption using autoregressive integrated moving average model and Holt Winters model

With the increasing demand of energy, the energy production is not that much sufficient and that’s why it has become an important issue to make accurate prediction of energy consumption for efficient management of energy. Hence appropriate demand side forecasting has a great economical worth. Objective of our paper is to render representations of a suitable time series forecasting model using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Holt Winters model for the energy consumption of Ohio/Kentucky and also predict the accuracy considering different periods (daily, weekly, monthly). We apply these two models and observe that Holt Winters model outperforms ARIMA model in each (daily, weekly and monthly observations) of the cases. We also make a comparison among few other existing analyses of time series forecasting and find out that the mean absolute percentage error (MASE) of Holt Winters model is least considering the monthly data

RF Based Remote Control for Electrical Appliances

This work presented here is to control electrical appliances through RF based remote system. From anywhere without any line of sight, RF based wireless remote control system can change the state of the electrical appliances either in off state or in on state. The controlling circuit is built around RF transmitter and RF Receiver modules which are operating at certain frequency along with a encoder and a decoder with few passive components. The four different channels at the encoder IC are used as input switches and the four channels at the decoder output are connected to the electrical devices through a relay. Here the transmission technique is amplitude shift keying (ASK) and the circuit is powered with 9 Volt. The main objective of this work is to control electrical appliances without line of sight requirement using the RF technology. It has many applications like we can control any independent electrical appliance such as T.V, room light, fan just from a remote. Operating them manually is a tedious job and become hectic sometimes. If one can control devices like fan, TV, lights and music system with a remote from a distance place just by pressing the button, life will become simpler. This will make our life more comfortable and easier

SIMULATION OF AN INPUT SHAPING SCHEME TECHNIQUE TO INVESTIGATE UNWANTED NOISE AND VIBRATION IN WIPER BLADE

Wiper system in automobile has a potential to generate noises. These noises can be categories into three types namely squeal, chattering and reversal noise. The squealnoise or squeaky noise appears at frequency 1000 Hz, the chattering noise appears at frequency 100 Hz and lastly is the reversal noise appears at 500 Hz. These noises lead to poor visibility and annoying sound to the driver and passengers, respectively. This paper describes a control technique that it is capable to reduce the unwanted noise and vibration level in automobile windshield wiper system. In this research, the derivation of two dimensional mathematical model of wiper system is produced using Newtonian approach and MATLAB/Simulink is used to simulate and analyze the vibration response of the wiper system in time domain and frequency domain. In this simulation, an input shaping scheme has been introduced as the control strategy. The simulation result has been verified by comparing with the result obtained using numerical approach analysis. The result shows that input shaping technique can reduce the vibration level to 25 to 30 percents compare the model with conventional scheme

Susceptibility of microorganism to selected medicinal plants in Bangladesh

ABSTRACTObjectiveTo analyze in-vitro antimicrobial activities of some ethno-pharmacologically significant medicinal plants (methanol extract) against the pathogenic microorganisms (Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans).MethodsThe disc diffusion method was applied for antibacterial test and the poisoned food technique was applied for antifungal test.ResultsThe methanol extract of Terminalia chebula (bark), Phyllanthus acidus (fruits), Sarcochlamys pulcherrima (leaves) and Abelmoschus esculentus (fruits) had significant in vitro antibacterial activity angainst the entire test samples in comparison to standard drug ciprofloxacin. Most of the plant extracts showed low activity against Gram negative bacteria while potential activity against Gram positive bacteria. The antifungal activities of methanol extracts of these plants and standard drug griseofulvin were determined against two pathogenic fungi, and Polygonum lapathifolium (leaves) and Cinnamomum tamala (leaves) showed maximum activity, while Erioglossum rubiginosum (leaves) showed no antifungal activity.ConclusionsFurther chemical and pharmacological investigations are required to identify and isolate chemical constituents responsible for these potential bioactivities and thus to determine their full spectrum of efficacy

Silica-coated magnetic palladium nanocatalyst for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling

A silica-coated magnetically separable Schiff-base palladium nanocatalyst was developed. Amorphous silica was used to encapsulate the magnetic Fe3O4 and an organic amine functionality was added to the silica surface. The amino group was treated with 1, 10- phenanthroline-2,9-dicarboxaldehyde to produce a Schiff-base, which was then treated with palladium to produce the silica coated magnetic Schiff-base palladium nanocatalyst. The palladium nanocatalyst was fully characterized using several spectroscopic techniques. The HR-SEM image of silica coated Fe3O4 revealed a globular shape with a diameter of 145 nm, along with this the average palladium nanoparticle size was 3.5 ± 0.6 nm. The successful functionalization and the appearances of the palladium species as a magnetic catalyst was confirmed by FT-IR and XRD analysis. The palladium nanocatalyst was successfully applied for the construction of CAC bonds via Suzuki- Miyaura reaction. With a variety of organoboronic acids, the catalyst displayed great performance for electron-poor and electron-rich aryl halides, resulting in excellent yields of the corresponding cross-coupling products. The magnetic catalyst was retrieved from the reaction vial using an external strong magnet, and it was reused seven times without a significant drop in the production of the corresponding biaryl product

Particle formation and micronization using non-conventional techniques- review

Due to growing concerns regarding health, safety and the environment, non-conventional methods for particle formation and micronization that are either solvent-less or use environmentally acceptable solvents such as carbon dioxide have come into favor. Supercritical CO2 (sc CO2) (T > 31.1 'C, P > 7.3 MPa) has been used in food and pharmaceutical industries to minimize the use of organic solvents, produce new food products, produce environmentally superior food products and to process and micronize (0.1–5mm) pharmaceuticals. Control of particle size increases the dissolution rate of drugs into the body. Techniques that use sc CO2 eliminate inherent drawbacks of conventional methods such as thermal or mechanical degradation of the product, poor control of the particle size and morphology, lack of brittleness of some polymers and low encapsulation efficiency. Severaltechniques have been reported for the particle formation and micronization using supercritical fluids that have been successfully scaled up for commercial use. Supercritical CO2 has also been used to develop applications for medicines, essential oils, vitamins, food grade polymers, catalysts and pigments. This review highlights the process mechanism of supercritical fluid based techniques as well as some applications on particle formation and micronization

Influence of tissue thermophysical characteristics and situ-cooling on the detection of breast cancer

This article presents a numerical simulation model using COMSOL software to study breast thermophysical properties. It analyzes tumor heat at different locations within the breast, records breast surface temperatures, investigates the effects of factors such as blood perfusion, size, depth, and thermal conductivity on breast size, and applies Pennes’ bioheat formula to illustrate thermal distribution on the breast skin surface. An analysis was conducted to examine how changes in tumor location depth, size, metabolism, blood flow, and heat conductivity affect breast skin surface temperature. The simulation model results showed that the highest variations in skin temperatures for breasts with tumors and without tumors can range from 2.58 °C to 0.274 °C. Further, large breast size with a large surface area consistently reduces the temperature variations on the skin and might have difficulty in yielding observable temperature contrast. For small breast sizes, however, heat from tumor sizes below 0.5 cm might be quite difficult to detect, while tumors located deep within the breast layers could not produce observable temperature variations. Motivated by the above interesting results, an emulation experiment was conducted to enhance the observable heat and temperature background contrast, using situ-cooling gel applied to silicon breasts, while the tumor source was emulated using LEDs. The experiment was used to evaluate the effectiveness of adding situ-cooling to the breast surface area, and to study the modulated effect of tumor size and depth. Experimental results showed that situ-cooling enhances thermal contrast in breast thermal images. For example, for a tumor location at a depth of 10 cm, a difference of 6 °C can still be achieved with situ-cooling gel applied, a feat that was not possible in the simulation model. Furthermore, changes in tumor size and location depth significantly impacted surface temperature distribution