Study of Cellular Activities in Response to Metal-Induced Apoptosis in Saccharomyces Cerevisiae using FTIR

Saccharomyces cerevisiae exhibits an apoptotic response upon exposure to toxic metals such as cadmium (Cd) and copper (Cu). Preliminary findings indicate that this response is dependent –to some extent- on the presence of a fermentable carbon source, glucose. To investigate this dependency we monitored the apoptotic response to both metals in the presence and absence of glucose and have shown that glucose is absolutely necessary in order to induce apoptosis in yeast at least during the exposure to metal. We have also looked at the biochemical changes that are taking place in yeast when treated with Cd using Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) Spectroscopy. Our results suggest that there are definitive changes in cellular activities that are discernable at 1660-1640cm-1 (amide I), 1540-1510cm-1 (amide II) and 1140-1080cm-1(DNA absorption bands)

Improving Quality of Life Using ICT, IoT and AI (HONET)

Autonomous robots can be assigned with various tasks such as moving payload, analyzing terrain, and capturing data in an environment. For an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) to execute such tasks the robot (Hussarion ROSbot) will require efficient algorithms and techniques to reference its current location. The robot is relative to surrounding obstacles in its predetermined path. The conducted research study explains the coordinated method used to successfully allow a robot to identify its position in the environment (Gazebo Simulation) and avoid obstructions with increasing velocity - contingent on nearby surroundings. The results show multiple robots individually tasked with distinct roles, while incorporating an obstacle avoidance function used to avoid both static and dynamic obstacles. Such results can be used in the applications of a high-capacity warehouse environments

Gun Control: The Gun Violence Epidemic in the U.S.

While holding almost half of all civilian-owned guns around the globe and yet only 4.4 percent of the world’s population, the United States of America is heavily centered around gun rights due to the 2nd amendment in the U.S. Constitution. But gun violence is on the rise as deaths due to gun violence are at its highest rate in nearly 40 years. Americans are divided amongst themselves when it comes to how we must approach this issue. In order to reduce gun violence in the U.S., both Republican and Democrat leaders must come together and make bipartisan moves to implement stricter gun control regulation at the federal level. This paper explores the level of urgency gun control regulation calls for as well as the many ways gun violence is tolerated. By using previous studies and a survey poll conducted by myself, statistical data will be used to support arguments for better gun control regulation at the federal level. These research sources include quantitative methods. Since gun violence is heavily credited to the gun purchasing system itself, federal changes must be made in the process to legally obtain a gun. From extending background check wait periods to instilling limitations on age and types of weapon purchased, the reduction of America’s high gun violence rates is certainly possible if Congress would pave a pathway and actively pass new gun control laws

Elasto-plastic Analysis of Plate With and Without Cut-outs

Plates and shells are important parts of several engineering applications. Therefore analysis and design of these elements are always of interest to the engineering community. Accurate and conservative assessments of the maximum load the structure can carry, along with the equilibrium path followed in elastic and inelastic range are of utmost importance to understand accurate behavior of structures. The elasto-plastic behavior of structural elements can be modelled following mathematical theory of plasticity involving various failure criteria like von Mises , Tresca criteria. The present study is made to investigate the effect of material nonlinearity on static behavior of plate with and without cutout. A finite element formulation for plate bending problem involving isotropic hardening material following von Mises criteria has been presented. The formulations have incorporated the shear deformation of the plate. The numerical approach has been formulated in incremental form and based on the tangent stiffness concept. The analysis has been carried out following modified Newton Raphson solution technique. The coding based on the formulation has been written in MATLAB environment. A non-layered and layered plate models have been adapted to understand the real elasto-plastic behavior of the plate. The complex nonlinear behavior was graphically traced through load deflection diagrams, plastic flow diagrams at different load factors and first yield and collapse loads. The same plate problems were analyzed by using commercial software ABAQUS and results were compared and found to be in good agreement. In ABAQUS analysis were performed by taking quadrilateral shell element S8R5 with through the thickness stress integration (with three integration points) and von Mises yield criterion. The effect of shape and size of cutout on the yield, collapse loads and plastic flow patterns have been included in the research

New contention resolution techniques for optical burst switching

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a technology positioned between wavelength routing and optical packet switching that does not require optical buffering or packet-level parsing, and it is more efficient than circuit switching when the sustained traffic volume does not consume a full wavelength. However, several critical issues still need to be solved such as contention resolution without optical buffering which is a key determinant of packet-loss with a significant impact on network performance. Deflection routing is an approach for resolving contention by routing a contending packet to an output port other than the intended output port. In OBS networks, when contention between two bursts cannot be resolved through deflection routing, one of the bursts will be dropped. However, this scheme doesn’t take advantage of all the available resources in resolving contentions. Due to this, the performance of existing deflection routing scheme is not satisfactory. In this thesis, we propose and evaluate three new strategies which aim at resolving contention. We propose a new approach called Backtrack on Deflection Failure, which provides a second chance to blocked bursts when deflection failure occurs. The bursts in this scheme, when blocked, will get an opportunity to backtrack to the previous node and may get routed through any deflection route available at the previous node. Two variants are proposed for handling the backtracking delay involved in this scheme namely: (a) Increase in Initial Offset and (b) Open-Loop Reservation. Furthermore, we propose a third scheme called Bidirectional Reservation on Burst Drop in which bandwidth reservation is made in both the forward and the backward directions simultaneously. This scheme comes into effect only when control bursts get dropped due to bandwidth unavailability. The retransmitted control bursts will have larger offset value and because of this, they will have lower blocking probability than the original bursts. The performance of our schemes and of those proposed in the literature is studied through simulation. The parameters considered in evaluating these schemes are blocking probability, average throughput, and overall link utilization. The results obtained show that our schemes perform significantly better than their standard counterparts

Urban Ecosystems: Preservation and Management of Urban Water Bodies

The sensitivity of our fore fathers towards the environment and its resources never made us feel the agony of water scarcity. They understood the value of water and tapped it through artificial water sources, which became sources of survival even when our cities were not located near any natural water body. However, as the cities developed and grew into larger metropolises, land value grew and land invariably became an asset. The first casualties of such widespread evelopment were the urban water bodies that got converted into cesspools of urban sewage, mosquito-breeding areas and slowly degraded. Incessant land filling of these water bodies, which once were pristine waters sustaining life gave more land to build upon. The following paper studies and elaborates the methodology adopted by the development agencies to restore and conserve these urban wetlands and water bodies under the technical guidance of experts from national / international organizations.Three case studies from the city of Hyderabad, India are discussed with a focus on understanding the present status of lakes and physical condition of their surroundings, strategies for fund mobilization, types of local involvement and community participation, ways of continuous monitoring and maintenance, etc. thereby creating a self-sustainable and integrated management plan

AI Based Optimization of Odometry Performance on Mobile Robots

Robots have become a large part of the modern world and have been used to navigate through complex environments, with various optimal speeds and pathing requirements. To improve this, we have developed an AI-based predictive pathing optimizer that takes in data regarding the requested route and implements optimal speeds. The algorithm will compare time lost to the time gained by moving at a higher velocity. This has been developed by implementing continual circular patterns onto a mobile robot, which allows for rapid analysis of both the accuracy and the speed of the cycle. This optimization is proposed to increase the navigational efficiency in terms of time and energy of robots navigating through semi-predictable environments. This technique has allowed us to substantially increase the speed and consistency of our robot’s navigation allowing for faster more efficient mobility. We plan to further develop our research towards multi-robot pathing with object placement in the path both known and unknown to the robot

Experimental implementation of bit commitment in the noisy-storage model

Fundamental primitives such as bit commitment and oblivious transfer serve as building blocks for many other two-party protocols. Hence, the secure implementation of such primitives are important in modern cryptography. In this work, we present a bit commitment protocol which is secure as long as the attacker's quantum memory device is imperfect. The latter assumption is known as the noisy-storage model. We experimentally executed this protocol by performing measurements on polarization-entangled photon pairs. Our work includes a full security analysis, accounting for all experimental error rates and finite size effects. This demonstrates the feasibility of two-party protocols in this model using real-world quantum devices. Finally, we provide a general analysis of our bit commitment protocol for a range of experimental parameters.Comment: 21 pages (7 main text +14 appendix), 6+3 figures. New version changed author's name from Huei Ying Nelly Ng to Nelly Huei Ying Ng, for consistency with other publication

Sensitivity of Optimal Decision Outcome to Consequence Assumptions in Value of Information Analysis

The 20th working conference of the IFIP Working Group 7.5 on Reliability and Optimization of Structural Systems (IFIP 2022) will be held at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, September 19-20, 2022.Value of information is directly related to the expected reduction in cost of con-sequences due to the availability of the inspection information. However, the estimation of con-sequence cost can be highly variable due to consequences that are difficult to quantify such as safety costs, reputational costs, regulatory costs, and impact on societal license for future business development. While the intangible costs are difficult to quantify with precision, the range of possible costs can be estimated from previous events and the other business cost estimates. Inclusion of this possible range for cost of consequences, instead of single value of best estimate, provides additional insight for decision-making using the value of information analysis. This study presents the approach for a buried natural gas transmission pipeline. The cost paradigm considers the failure consequence costs at a component level and system level for the transmission network, and impact of the uncertainty in the failure costs due to the scale of the system considered is presented. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the decision-outcomes with consideration of the cost uncertainty