Small step for a big cause

My name is Jasna Jaffer. I am a second year Degree student studying in KMEA College, Aluva. I belong to Nettoor and is a part of Maradu Muncipality, Ernakulam. Near to our area is the International vegetable market and besides this market is situated the water treatment plants, post Office, agriculture training centres and soil testing centre. I am a student, social activist and a farmer. I have been honored with the School topper award, Best student of the School, Eastern bhoomika iconic women award for social activities, Best agriculture student of Maradu Municipality, Akshayasree award, Inpham award and also treceived the District level agriculture student award by state government

Effect of shape asymmetry on percolation of aligned and overlapping objects on lattices

We investigate the percolation transition of aligned, overlapping, non-symmetrical shapes on lattices. Using the recently proposed lattice version of excluded volume theory, we show that shape-asymmetry leads to some intriguing consequences regarding the percolation behavior of asymmetric shapes. We consider a prototypical asymmetric shape - rectangle - on a square lattice and show that for rectangles of width unity (sticks), the percolation threshold is a monotonically decreasing function of the stick length, whereas, for rectangles of width greater than two, it is a monotonically increasing function. Interestingly, for rectangles of width two, the percolation threshold is independent of its length. The limiting case of the length of the rectangles going to infinity shows that the limiting threshold value is finite and depends upon the width of the rectangle. Unlike the case of symmetrical shapes like squares, there seems to be no continuum percolation problem that corresponds to this limit. We show that similar results hold for other asymmetric shapes and lattices. The critical properties of the aligned and overlapping rectangles are evaluated using Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the threshold values given by the lattice-excluded volume theory are in good agreement with the simulation results, especially for larger rectangles. We verify the isotropy of the percolation threshold and also compare our results with models where rectangles of mixed orientation are allowed. Our simulation results show that alignment increases the percolation threshold. The calculation of critical exponents places the model in the standard percolation universality class. Our results show that shape-anisotropy of the aligned, overlapping percolating units has a marked influence on the percolation properties, especially when a subset of the dimensions of the percolation units are made to diverge.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, 3 table

Thermal studies of silverpoly (methylmethacrylate) nanocomposites

The novel nanocomposite material based on surface-modified silver nanoparticles (Np) with average diameter of 6 nm and poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) matrix was synthesized. The effect of silver loading on the thermal properties of PMMA was studied. The obtained transparent nanocomposites Ag/PMMA films were characterized by IR spectroscopy and thermal techniques (TGA, DSC). The chemical composition of the PMMA matrix is not changed in the presence of the metal nanoparticles, but the thermal stability of the nanocomposites was found to be better than thermal stability of the pure polymer. Also, Ag nanoparticles have pronounced effect on a glass transition temperature (Tg) of PMMA.Physical chemistry 2008 : 9th international conference on fundamental and applied aspects of physical chemistry; Belgrade (Serbia); 24-28 September 200

Reološko ponašanje termoplastičnih poli(estar-siloksana)

Two series of thermoplastic elastomers (TPES), based on poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) as the soft segment and poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) as the hard segment, were analyzed by dynamic mechanical spectroscopy. In the first TPES series the lengths of both hard and soft segments were varied while the mass ratio of the hard to soft segments was nearly constant (about 60 mass%). In the second series, the mass ratio of hard and soft segments was varied in the range from 60/40 to 40/60, with a constant length of soft PDMS segments. The influence of the structure and composition of TPESs on the rheological properties, such as complex dynamic viscosity, μ*, the storage, G', and loss, G', shear modulus as well as the microphase separation transition temperature, TMST, was examined. The obtained results showed that the storage modulus of the TPESs increased in a rubbery plateau region with increase in degree of crystallinity. The rheological measurements of TPESs also showed that a microphase reorganization occurred during the melting process. The microphase separation transition temperatures were in the range from 220 to 234°C. In the isotropic molten state, the complex dynamic viscosity increased with increasing both the content and length of hard PBT segments.Dve serije termoplastičnih elastomera (TPES) na bazi poli(dimetilsiloksana) kao mekog segmenta i poli(butilentereftalata) kao tvrdog segmenta su analizirane dinamičko-mehaničkom spektroskopijom. U prvoj TPES seriji varirane su dužine tvrdih i mekih segmenata dok je njihov maseni odnos bio skoro konstantan (oko 60 mas%). U drugoj seriji, odnos tvrdih i mekih segmenata je variran u opsegu od 60/40 do 40/60, dok je dužina mekih PDMS segmenata bila konstantna. Ispitan je uticaj strukture i sastava TPES kopolimera na reološka svojstva, kao što su kompleksni dinamički viskozitet, μ*, moduli sačuvane, G', i izgubljene energije, G', i temperatura mikrofaznog razdvajanja, TMST. Dobijeni rezultati su pokazali da su uzorci sa većim stepenom kristaliničnosti imali i veće module sačuvane energije u gumolikom platou. Reološka merenja su takođe pokazala da svi TPES uzorci ispoljavaju mikrofaznu reorganizaciju u procesu topljenja. Temperature mikrofaznog razdvajanja su bile u opsegu od 220 do 234°C. U izotropskom rastopu, kompleksni dinamički viskoziteti su rasli sa povećanjem sadržaja i dužine PBT segmenata

Synthesis and characterization of crosslinked polyurethanes

Two polyurethane samples, crosslinked with aliphatic hyperbranched polyester, were synthesized and examined in this work. The sample PUPDMS-EO was prepared using ethylene oxide-poly(dimethylsiloxane)-ethylene oxide as macrodiol, while the synthesis of PUPTMO was performed using poly(tetramethyleneoxide). The obtained results show that thermal stability of these networks can be improved by introducing the siloxane sequences. However, the sample PUPDMS-EO has at the same time much lower crosslinking density than PUPTMO.Physical chemistry 2008 : 9th international conference on fundamental and applied aspects of physical chemistry; Belgrade (Serbia); 24-28 September 200

Rheological and thermogravimetric analysis of unmodified and modified aliphatic hyperbranched polyester

The influence of the type of end groups on the rheological and thermal properties of aliphatic hyperbranched polyesters (AHBP) was investigated in this work. Unmodified, hydroxy-functional AHBP sample of third pseudo generation (AHBP- 3) and the same sample whose end –OH groups were modified with stearic acid (AHBP-3SA) were examined. The presence of the long alkyl chain ends, instead of the polar –OH groups, has reduced the possibility for H-bonding and value of the glass transition temperature. On the other side, by modification of the end –OH groups with stearic acid, thermal stability of AHBP has been improvedPhysical chemistry 2008 : 9th international conference on fundamental and applied aspects of physical chemistry; Belgrade (Serbia); 24-28 September 200

Application of Reconfigurable All-Optical Activation Unit based on Optical Injection into Bistable Fabry-P\'{e}rot Laser in Multilayer Perceptron Neural Networks

In this paper we theoretically investigate application of a bistable Fabry-P\'{e}rot semiconductor laser under optical-injection as all-optical activation unit for multilayer perceptron optical neural networks. The proposed device is programmed to provide reconfigurable sigmoid-like activation functions with adjustable thresholds and saturation points and benchmarked on machine learning image recognition problems. Due to the reconfigurability of the activation unit, the accuracy can be increased by up to 2% simply by adjusting the control parameter of the activation unit to suit the specific problem. For a simple two-layer perceptron neural network, we achieve inference accuracies of up to 95% and 85%, for the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, respectively

Assessment of Self-Care Practices among Type 2 Diabetic Patients in a Secondary Care Teaching Hospital

Background: Diabetes is one of the major health problems worldwide that can be effectively managed by good self-care activities like medication adherence, exercise, monitoring of blood glucose, foot care and diet. Objectives: The study assessed the self-care activities of diabetic patients using summary of diabetes self-care activities scale (SDSCA) and the variables (Age, gender, educational level, socioeconomic status (SES)) associated with it. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was undertaken in 400 Type 2 diabetic patients. Self-care practices of the patients were evaluated by using SDSCA and correlation with variables were determined statistically. Results: Among 400 diabetic patients about 215 (53.75%) had an average score of self-care. Self-care was poor in 184 (46%) subjects, and only 1 subject (0.25%) scored good. Blood sugar monitoring was the highest (100%) followed by medication adherence (92.75%) whereas inadequate levels of self-care were reported in foot care (1.5%), and physical activity (31.5%) domains. A significant positive correlation was found between self-care practices and socio-demographic variables such as age (r=0.298, p=0.000), income (r=0.490, p=0.000) occupation (r=0.433, p=0.000), education (r=0.582, p=0.000), and Socio-Economic status (r=0.599, p=0.000). Conclusion: The study revealed higher level of adherence to self-care activities in terms of blood sugar monitoring and medication taking behaviour in the current setting, but self-care in other domains such as foot care is critically low. Age, education and Socio-Economic status seems to affect the self-care practice by the patients. Keywords:  Diabetes, Diabetes self- care, Diabetic foot care, Summary of diabetes self-care activities (SDSCA) score