Harnessing Convolutional Neural Networks for Histopathological Breast Cancer Classification.

Recent advancements in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have significantly supported the field of breast cancer discovery using medical imaging. An improvised DenseNet architecture for the classification of histo-pathological breast cancer images is explored in this work. Leveraging the effectiveness of DenseNet in capturing intricate patterns through dense connectivity, our improvised architecture aims achieve high accuracy and efficiency of classification. The model integrates novel features such as optimized bottleneck layers and attention mechanisms, contributing to improved feature extraction and classification capabilities. The improvised DenseNet produced a accuracy of 93.39% on the breakhis dataset. A summary of key findings and future research directions, emphasizing the need of custom CNN models in breast cancer detection is provided

Lime slurry stabilisation of an expansive soil

Lime slurry and lime pile techniques are viable choices for in-situ stabilisation of expansive soil deposits. This paper reports the results of a laboratory study on in-situ chemical stabilisation of an expansive soil that permeated lime slurry through an artificially desiccated expansive soil specimen. The soil was desiccated in the laboratory to induce shrinkage cracks in the compacted expansive soil. The shrinkage cracks greatly assisted migration of lime slurry in the expansive soil mass. The efficiency of lime slurry in chemically stabilising the desiccated expansive soil was investigated by comparing the physico-chemical properties and engineering properties of the treated soil with those of the natural soil specimen at two radial distances. Experimental results indicated that migration of lime slurry through the desiccated soil promoted strong lime modification and pozzolanic reactions in the soilmass. The strong soil-lime reactions rendered the soil less plastic, reduced the swell magnitude, and increased the unconfined compressive strength of the lime-slurry treated specimens. Laboratory results indicate that slurry application to soil deposits with shrinkage is effective, and that it may therefore be preferable to chemically stabilise soil deposits during the dry season

Influence of Osmotic Suction on the Soil-Water Characteristic Curves of Compacted Expansive Clay

Unsaturated clays are subject to osmotic suction gradients in geoenvironmental engineering applications and it therefore becomes important to understand the effect of these chemical concentration gradients on soil-water characteristic curves (SWCCs). This paper brings out the influence of induced osmotic suction gradient on the wetting SWCCs of compacted clay specimens inundated with sodium chloride solutions/distilled water at vertical stress of 6.25 kPa in oedometer cells. The experimental results illustrate that variations in initial osmotic suction difference induce different magnitudes of osmotic induced consolidation and osmotic consolidation strains thereby impacting the wetting SWCCs and equilibrium water contents of identically compacted clay specimens. Osmotic suction induced by chemical concentration gradients between reservoir salt solution and soil-water can be treated as an equivalent net stress component, (p(pi)) that decreases the swelling strains of unsaturated specimens from reduction in microstructural and macrostructural swelling components. The direction of osmotic flow affects the matric SWCCs. Unsaturated specimens experiencing osmotic induced consolidation and osmotic consolidation develop lower equilibrium water content than specimens experiencing osmotic swelling during the wetting path. The findings of the study illustrate the need to incorporate the influence of osmotic suction in determination of the matric SWCCs

Role of direction of salt migration on the swelling behaviour of compacted clays

Osmotic suction arises in clay soils due to the presence of dissolved salts in soil water. Variations in dissolved salt concentration of soil water impact the osmotic suction balance between soil water (of clay soil specimens) and external reservoir that gets adjusted through diffusion of salts and osmotic flow of water molecules. Available theoretical and experimental studies in literature mostly focus on the behaviour of clay samples reconstituted from slurries. Compacted clays differ from clay samples reconstituted from slurries as they are characterized by both matric suction and osmotic suction. Compacted clays are typically exposed to osmotic suction gradients in landfills and brine ponds where compacted clay liners are in contact with leachate/brine solutions. Upon exposure to solutions, diffusion of salts dissipate osmotic suction gradients, while, absorption of salt solutions in the partly saturated void spaces dissipate matric suction of the compacted clay specimens. The impact of dissipation of matric suction and osmotic suction gradients on the swelling behaviour of compacted expansive clays forms the focus of the present study. Experimental results illustrated that the direction of salt diffusion during dissipation of osmotic suction difference has a significant bearing on the swelling behaviour of compacted clay specimens

Swelling of compacted clay under osmotic gradients

Compacted clay liners in landfills and brine ponds are subject to chemical concentration gradients between the soil water in the clay and the reservoir solution. Soil water is the solution residing in soil pores that is chemically composed of water $(H_2O)$ molecules and dissolved salts molecules (ISSS, 1976). These differences in salt concentration generate an osmotic suction difference: osmotic suction refers to suction arising from the presence of dissolved salts in water (Lu & Likos, 2004). This suction difference is dissipated through the diffusion of salts and flow of H2O molecules (Barbour & Fredlund, 1989). Changes in the dissolved salts concentration of soil water from salt diffusion in response to osmotic suction difference will alter the swell magnitudes of expansive clays, which are strongly influenced by salt concentration (Bolt, 1956; Mesri & Olsen, 1971; Yong & Warkentin, 1975; Mitchell, 1993). Osmotic suction differences between soil water and reservoir solution may thus alter the wetting-induced volume change behaviour of compacted clays used as liners in landfills and brine impoundments

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Not AvailableTrichogramma pretiosum Riley is an important egg parasitoid on lepidopterans. Biological attributes of arrhenotokous and thelytokous T. pretiosum, was studied on Corcyra cephalonica under laboratory condition. The adult longevity in arrhenotokous and thelytokous T. pretiosum were 10.4 days and 10 days, respectively. The total female progeny produced during entire life span was 147.08 in thelytokous T. pretiosum and 90 in arrhenotokous T. pretiosum. The sex ratio of arrhenotokous T. pretiosum was 1:1 while for thelytokous it was 5:95 (M/F). The intrinsic rate of increase was 0.42 in arrhenotokous T. pretiosum and 0.48 in thelytokous T. pretiosum. These results revealed that in the net reproductive rate, weekly multiplication rate and the number of estimates in F2 generation are more in thelytokous T. pretiosum compared to arrhenotokous T. pretiosum. These results confirmed that biological attributes of arrhenotokous and thelytokous T. pretiosum are different. Thelytokous T. pretiosum have more practical implications in the field of biological control.Not Availabl

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Not AvailableStudies were carried out to assess biological attributes of arrhenotokous (sexual) and thelytokous (asexual) forms of Trichogramma pretiosum Riley under the laboratory conditions. Selected arrhenotokous and thelytokous T. pretiosum was used in studies of finding the per cent parasitism, per cent desiccation, sex ratio, per cent emergence and per cent male and female emergence on the five selected different sized containers under constant and variable number of host parasitoids release. The mean percent parasitization in arrhenotokous species varied from 24.2 - 47.8% from all five different sized containers under both constant and variable no of releases as compare to 45.3 - 62.2 % in the lytokous species. The mean number of days to adult emergence ranged from 10.05 to 10.3 under both constant and variable number of parasitoid release in both the species of Trichogramma pretiosum. In both forms of T. pretiosum the per cent desiccated eggs increased as the size of three containers increased.Not Availabl