Positioning of Relay Stations in Wireless Sensor Networks

A sensor is a device which can detect or measure a physical property and which records, indicates, or otherwise responds to the signal received. A wireless sensor in a network can communicate with the sensors located within its transmission range. In this paper, the capacity enhancement problem by adding a relay station to the sensor network was studied which can result in efficient and scalable design. Major concerns of the wireless sensors addressed in this paper are reducing the number of hops a message needs to make from one sensor to a different sensor before it reaches the base station, restraining the number of relay stations necessary for covering the desired percentage of sensor nodes. In this paper, the positions for the relay stations are first selected in a specific pattern such that with this initial distribution, every sensor is in reach of at least one relay station. Then priorities are given to the relay stations based on two different methods. The relay stations with low priorities are removed from the list of positions for a relay station. In this way the positions for the relay stations are eliminated until the percentage of number of sensors covered by relay stations falls beyond some number which is varied in the experiments done

Revisiting Plummer Vinson Syndrome : a report of three cases and review

Plummer-Vinson or Paterson-Brown-Kelly syndrome (PVS) is characterised by a triad of cervical dysphagia, upper oesophageal web and iron deficiency anaemia. It is known to affect mostly white females, but cases have been reported from other ethnic groups in the literature. Exact data about epidemiology of the syndrome is not available, but the syndrome is extremely rare. It is considered as a premalignant condition associated with cancers of upper digestive tract. Herein we report three cases of Plummer Vinson syndrome in Indian women, who presented with significant and long standing dysphagia, sideropenia and post-cricoid webs. Their esophagograms revealed the presence of webs at pharyngoesophageal junction. All the three patients were treated with oesophageal dilation of webs along with iron supplementation. The patients were under regular follow-up for three years after treatment and found to be with normal blood counts with no signs of recurrence and malignancy.peer-reviewe

Detours admitting short paths

Finding shortest paths between two vertices in a weighted graph is a well explored problem and several efficient algorithms for solving it have been reported. We propose a new variation of this problem which we call the Detour Admitting Shortest Path Problem (DASPP).We present an efficient algorithm for solving DASPP. This is the first algorithm that constructs a shortest path such that each edge of the shortest path admits a detour with no more than k−hops. This algorithm has important applications in transportation networks. We also present implementation issues for the detour admitting shortest path algorithm

A Review Paper on Technical Data of Present HVDC Links in India

HVDC trend is increasing day by day due to its technical advantages over AC like long distance bulk power transmission, asynchronous integration of AC systems etc. One of the important applications of HVDC is bulk power wind energy transmission from offshore to onshore grid. This paper provides present complete individual technical data of HVDC links of both Bi-polar and Back-to-back transmissions projects commissioned in India. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.16044

CONTROLLED EVAPORATION DRIVEN SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATIONS OF ORDERED NANOPOROUS CERAMIC FILMS

This dissertation addresses the synthesis of oriented mesoporous ceramic films by evaporation induced self-assembly of surfactants and ceramic precursors in films dip coated from ethanol-rich sols. First, the kinetics of silica polycondensation in surfactant templated sol-gel films is studied both before and after deposition using infrared spectroscopy. These observations reveal an induction time (with minimal condensation rate) before curing begins in certain surfactant-templated silica films, which can be utilized to perform post-synthesis modification. This induction time is maximized at high humidity, and by long nonionic surfactant headgroups (rather than, for instance, a trimethylammonium headgroup). The second part of the dissertation addresses lattice Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of the effects of confinement on the 2D hexagonally close packed (HCP) phase formed by 60 vol% surfactant in a polar solvent. The effects of size and type of confining geometry (slit, cylindrical and spherical cavities) and of surface chemistry are simulated. The HCP mesophase orients orthogonal to chemically neutral surfaces which attract both head and tail of the surfactant equally. Novel mesophase geometries are simulated including radially oriented micelles, concentric helices, and concentric porous shells. Utilizing fundamental insights from the kinetics and MC studies, the third part of the dissertation describes the synthesis of silica films with orthogonally tilted HCP mesophase on chemically neutral surfaces. Crosslinking a random copolymer of polyethylene oxide (PEO)-polyproplyene oxide (PPO) on glass slides results in chemically neutral surfaces for the PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymer template (P123) used here. The orthogonal orientation of the HCP channels is confirmed using advanced x-ray scattering techniques and electron microscopy. The final part of the dissertation discusses applications of ceramic films with orthogonally tilted (ortho-) HCP mesophase. Silica membranes with ortho-HCP pores are prepared on porous alumina supports, and show permeability of ethanol orders of magnitude greater than films with parallel-oriented HCP channels. Size-selective filtration of gold nanoparticles confirms the absence of any nanoscale cracks in the membranes. For a second application, we prepare titania films with ortho-HCP mesopores. Careful crystallization of the films followed by spinning on an organic hole conducting polymer (P3HT) leads to active bulk heterojunction solar cells

Comprehensive Analyses of miRNA and DNA Methylation in 17beta-Estradiol Exposed Juvenile Rainbow Trout Skeletal Muscle

Reproductive development in female teleosts like rainbow trout starts with release of the sex steroid estrogen, necessary for synthesis of the egg yolk protein vitellogenin. Increase in estrogen secretion during these reproductive phases results in increased energy demands. Skeletal muscle serves as an immediate endogenous source to address energy demands during vitellogenesis and spawning due to which it undergoes rapid degradation resulting in water accumulation, poor fillet and low egg quality. An imbalance in protein turnover is observed not only because of rapid increase in degradative pathways but also due to decreased protein synthesis. These changes in protein metabolism in skeletal muscle were identified within 24 hours of E2 exposure and confirmed in both in vivo and in vitro models. Normally during adult myogenesis myogenic precursor cells proliferate and differentiate further to form a mature muscle fiber resulting in either hyperplasty or hypertrophy or both in fishes. Signaling pathways and MRFs need to function in coordination with epigenetic factors and non-coding RNAs to positively or negatively regulate muscle synthesis. Interestingly, estrogen also influences the expression of miRNA and in turn their target genes. However, the effects of estrogen regulating protein imbalance in rainbow trout skeletal muscle is not completely understood. Hence studies to understand the influence of estrogen were carried out using juvenile, sexually immature fish. Juvenile rainbow trout were treated with either estrogen or vehicle and their skeletal muscle collected after 24 hours and 72 hours of treatment to understand the role of miRNA and DNA methylation in regulation of myogenesis. Findings from the miRNA study revealed diluted effects of estrogen after 72 hours of treatment, hence further studies were carried out with samples from 24-hour post treatment.;miRNAs play a crucial role in regulation of gene expression along with epigenetics. These are small non-coding RNAs with length ranging from 21--23bp mostly functioning as post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression. Generally, they bind to the 3\u27 region of transcribed mRNA with a complementary region called seed sequence. These genes are called target genes of miRNA. A single miRNA can target more than one mRNA. Binding of miRNA to its target gene results in either translational repression or deadenylation or both. Deadenylation results in loss of RNA stability, which leads to its degradation. miRNAs express in tissue specific manner and those that express specifically in muscle are called myomiRNA. Various myomiRNA have been identified and studied for their functions. Estrogen influence the expression of miRNA and in turn their target genes. Therefore, rainbow trout skeletal muscle samples were sequenced for small RNAs to understand the effects of estrogen. Differentially expressed miRNA were identified in estrogen treated samples when compared to control. A total of 36 miRNAs were either upregulated or down regulated in E2 exposed skeletal muscle of which two were novel. Target genes of these differentially expressed miRNAs were identified followed by gene ontology enrichment. These target genes are involved in various biological and molecular functions including their role in signaling pathways, cell cycle, DNA methylation, signal transduction and transcription factor binding. Genes regulated by miRNAs were also involved specifically in proliferation and differentiation of myogenic precursor cells and degradative pathways. E2 induced expression of miR-17 and miR-20, which are important in regulation of cell cycle. Further gene expression analysis of myogeneic regulatory factor, Pax7 specific to MPCs confirms increase in their number with decreased expression of MyoD, specific to differentiation. Similarly, miR-23a revealed its role in maintenance of mitochondrial outer membrane permeability and post-transcriptional regulation of atrophic genes. Decreased expression of miR-23a with increase in permeability was supported by increased gene expressions including fbxo32, caspases 3a and 9 that are involved in atrophy and apoptosis respectively. Expression analysis of one of the novel genes, miR-nov-285, was performed to know its expression pattern in different tissues, highest expression was observed in testis. C-5 methylation of cytosine was one of the GO term that was enriched during the target gene analysis of this novel miRNA. Further regulation of Dnmt1 gene expression by this novel miRNA was confirmed by luciferase assay. All together these observations indicate that E2 influences differential expression of various miRNAs which in turn regulate gene expression contributing to muscle metabolism.;Reduced expression of MyoD was observed in our previous study and direct regulation of this differentiation factor was not observed by any of the differentially expressed miRNA. Since gene expression is also regulated transcriptionally by epigenetic mechanisms including DNA methylation, efforts were made to understand its role in reduced MyoD expression. Generally, DNA methylation reduces gene expression by directly blocking transcription factor binding or by recruiting other epigenetic contributors like histone deacetylases or histone methyltransferases. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Robotic cloth manipulation for clothing assistance task using Dynamic Movement Primitives

The need of robotic clothing assistance in the field of assistive robotics is growing, as it is one of the most basic and essential assistance activities in daily life of elderly and disabled people. In this study we are investigating the applicability of using Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMP) as a task parameterization model for performing clothing assistance task. Robotic cloth manipulation task deals with putting a clothing article on both the arms. Robot trajectory varies significantly for various postures and also there can be various failure scenarios while doing cooperative manipulation with non-rigid and highly deformable clothing article. We have performed experiments on soft mannequin instead of human. Result shows that DMPs are able to generalize movement trajectory for modified posture.3rd International Conference of Robotics Society of India (AIR \u2717: Advances in Robotics), June 28 - July 2, 2017, New Delhi, Indi

Bayesian Nonparametric Learning of Cloth Models for Real-time State Estimation

Robotic solutions to clothing assistance can significantly improve quality of life for the elderly and disabled. Real-time estimation of the human-cloth relationship is crucial for efficient learning of motor skills for robotic clothing assistance. The major challenge involved is cloth-state estimation due to inherent nonrigidity and occlusion. In this study, we present a novel framework for real-time estimation of the cloth state using a low-cost depth sensor, making it suitable for a feasible social implementation. The framework relies on the hypothesis that clothing articles are constrained to a low-dimensional latent manifold during clothing tasks. We propose the use of manifold relevance determination (MRD) to learn an offline cloth model that can be used to perform informed cloth-state estimation in real time. The cloth model is trained using observations from a motion capture system and depth sensor. MRD provides a principled probabilistic framework for inferring the accurate motion-capture state when only the noisy depth sensor feature state is available in real time. The experimental results demonstrate that our framework is capable of learning consistent task-specific latent features using few data samples and has the ability to generalize to unseen environmental settings. We further present several factors that affect the predictive performance of the learned cloth-state model

The study of antiphospholipid antibodies in recurrent pregnancy loss

Background: Around 15% of clinically recognised pregnancies in women less than 35 years old result in spontaneous miscarriage. However recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) is encountered in 5% of couples with two or more losses and in around 1–2% of couples with three or more losses. In view of the increasing burden of recurrent pregnancy loss in the society and in view of Anti-phospholipid syndrome being one of the undisputed treatable cause for recurrent pregnancy loss, this study aims to evaluate the significance of the antibody profiles of APS in relation to RPL in OBG dept of VIMS and RC.Methods: Patients coming to the Obstetric and Gynaecology department of Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Bangalore, from December 1st 2014 to June 30th 2016. A detailed history of patients was taken based on set questionnaires. Detailed general and gynaecological examination findings were taken. Routine blood investigations were sent along with investigations for aPLAs which included: - Lupus Anticoagulant (LA) - Anti Cardiolipin Antibody (ACA) - Anti β2 glycoprotein 1 (Anti-β2GP1Ab). Final results are statistically evaluated.Results: A total of 56 patients of recurrent miscarriage with two or more prior pregnancy losses were considered. Out of the 56 patients, 23 patients were excluded as per the exclusion criteria and 33 patients were included in the present study. The mean age of the study group was 24.63 years (Range: 20-32 years). Overall, seven patients (21.21%) were seen to have positive antiphospholipid antibody titers amongst the 33 patients, with repeat testing done after 12 weeks to confirm the positivity. Five patients (15.15%) were positive for ACA antibody. Four (12.12%) patients were positive for LA and B2GP1 each. Two patients (6.06%) were positive for both LA and ACA antibodies. Two patients (6.06%) were positive for LA and B2GP1 antibodies and two other (6.06%) patients were positive for ACA and Anti-β2GP1Ab. There was a statistically significant association noticed between ACA positivity and POG at 1st pregnancy loss. However, the overall association of APLA positivity and POG at pregnancy loss was not statistically significant.Conclusions: There was a significant difference of POG at first pregnancy loss in ACA positive patients as compared to the ACA negative patients. However, when all the APLA positive patients were considered the difference was not statistically significant