Experimental Studies on Abrasive Water Jet Cutting of Nano SiC Particles Filled Hybrid Basalt-Glass Fibre-Reinforced Epoxy Composites

Abrasive water jet machining (AWJM) is extensively beneficial in machining materials that are hard to cut. This investigation deals with AWJM of Nano SiC filled Epoxy reinforced with basalt-glass fiber hybrid composite. The composite is prepared by compression moulding technique. Experimental trails are performed to evaluate the impact of every process parameter on the responses i.e., surface roughness (Ra) and Material Removal Rate (MRR). The experiments are conducted by changing the standoff distance (SD), traverse speed (TS) and water pressure. The performance of the conducted experiment is analysed using a Swarm intelligence algorithm. Surface roughness and MRR are maximized by using the combination of optimum process parameter levels of 9.72 mm/min speed, 5.78 mm stand-off distance and 553 MPa jet pressure. Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) images are employed in detecting the morphology of machined surface and confirmed the presence of voids and fibre pull-out

Irrigation application efficiency and uniformity of water distribution using multi-outlet pipe and resource conservation technologies

Irrigation experiments were conducted during November to April under wheat crop in the winter season of 2012-13 and 2013-14 in the farmer’s field at Galibkhedi village located in Karnal District, Haryana State, India. In the study, collapsible multi-outlet pipe (MOP) along with single outlets pipe (SOP) was tested in farmer’s field under wheat cultivation. Irrigation was carried out in five treatments including tillage (T) with SOP and MOP; zero-tillage (ZT) with SOP and MOP, and furrow irrigation with raised bed (FIRB). Iso-time profile of waterfront spreading and advance indicated that irrigation water distribution was uniform under the plot irrigated using MOP as compared to plot irrigated using SOP. In addition, water distribution was uniform under zero tilled plots as compared to tilled plot. Results implied that MOP has several advantages over SOP in terms of application efficiency (AE) and uniformity of water distribution. Average application efficiency for the first study year was found to be in the order of ZT-MOP (82.41%) > FIRB (76.79%) > ZT-SOP (75.25%) > T-MOP (74.85%) > T-SOP (69.79%). Average application efficiency for the second study year was found to be in the same order as first year with some deviation in values. In the second year values of mean application efficiencies were ZT-MOP (82.58%) > FIRB (77.13%) > ZT-SOP (73.04%) > T-MOP (69.65%) > T-SOP (66.13%). Overall, this study concludes that irrigation under wheat crop using collapsible multi-outlet pipe (MOP) with zero tillage practices is a suitable option for surface irrigation that accomplishes uniform distribution of water with higher application efficiency

Ice Shapes on a Tail Rotor

Testing of a thermally-protected helicopter rotor in the Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) was completed. Data included inter-cycle and cold blade ice shapes. Accreted ice shapes were thoroughly documented, including tracing, scanning and photographing. This was the first time this scanning capability was used outside of NASA. This type of data has never been obtained for a rotorcraft before. This data will now be used to validate the latest generation of icing analysis tools

Automatic face mask detection system in public transportation in smart cities using IoT and deep learning

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is on a global scale and that wearing a face mask at work is the only effective way to avoid becoming infected with the virus. The pandemic made governments worldwide stay under lock-downs to prevent virus transmissions. Reports show that wearing face masks would reduce the risk of transmission. With the rise in population in cities, there is a greater need for efficient city management in today’s world for reducing the impact of COVID-19 disease. For smart cities to prosper, significant improvements to occur in public transportation, roads, businesses, houses, city streets, and other facets of city life will have to be developed. The current public bus transportation system, such as it is, should be expanded with artificial intelligence. The autonomous mask detection and alert system are needed to find whether the person is wearing a face mask or not. This article presents a novel IoT-based face mask detection system in public transportation, especially buses. This system would collect real-time data via facial recognition. The main objective of the paper is to detect the presence of face masks in real-time video stream by utilizing deep learning, machine learning, and image processing techniques. To achieve this objective, a hybrid deep and machine learning model was designed and implemented. The model was evaluated using a new dataset in addition to public datasets. The results showed that the transformation of Convolution Neural Network (CNN) classifier has better performance over the Deep Neural Network (DNN) classifier; it has almost complete face-identification capabilities with respect to people’s presence in the case where they are wearing masks, with an error rate of only 1.1%. Overall, compared with the standard models, AlexNet, Mobinet, and You Only Look Once (YOLO), the proposed model showed a better performance. Moreover, the experiments showed that the proposed model can detect faces and masks accurately with low inference time and memory, thus meeting the IoT limited resources

Evaluation of groundwater quality and its suitability for drinking and agricultural use in Thanjavur city, Tamil Nadu, India

As groundwater is a vital source of water for domestic and agricultural activities in Thanjavur city due to lack of surface water resources, groundwater quality and its suitability for drinking and agricultural usage were evaluated. In this study, 102 groundwater samples were collected from dug wells and bore wells during March 2008 and analyzed for pH, electrical conductivity, temperature, major ions, and nitrate. Results suggest that, in 90% of groundwater samples, sodium and chloride are predominant cation and anion, respectively, and NaCl and CaMgCl are major water types in the study area. The groundwater quality in the study site is impaired by surface contamination sources, mineral dissolution, ion exchange, and evaporation. Nitrate, chloride, and sulfate concentrations strongly express the impact of surface contamination sources such as agricultural and domestic activities, on groundwater quality, and 13% of samples have elevated nitrate content (>45 mg/l as NO3). PHREEQC code and Gibbs plots were employed to evaluate the contribution of mineral dissolution and suggest that mineral dissolution, especially carbonate minerals, regulates water chemistry.Groundwater suitability for drinking usage was evaluated by the World Health Organization and Indian standards and suggests that 34% of samples are not suitable for drinking. Integrated groundwater suitability map for drinking purposes was created using drinking water standards based on a concept that if the groundwater sample exceeds any one of the standards, it is not suitable for drinking. This map illustrates that wells in zones 1, 2, 3, and 4 are not fit for drinking purpose. Likewise, irrigational suitability of groundwater in the study region was evaluated, and results suggest that 20% samples are not fit for irrigation. Groundwater suitability map for irrigation was also produced based on salinity and sodium hazards and denotes that wells mostly situated in zones 2 and 3 are not suitable for irrigation. Both integrated suitability maps for drinking and irrigation usage provide overall scenario about the groundwater quality in the study area. Finally, the study concluded that groundwater quality is impaired by man-made activities, and proper management plan is necessary to protect valuable groundwater resources inThanjavur city

A novel CNN gap layer for growth prediction of palm tree plantlings

Monitoring palm tree seedlings and plantlings presents a formidable challenge because of the microscopic size of these organisms and the absence of distinguishing morphological characteristics. There is a demand for technical approaches that can provide restoration specialists with palm tree seedling monitoring systems that are high-resolution, quick, and environmentally friendly. It is possible that counting plantlings and identifying them down to the genus level will be an extremely time-consuming and challenging task. It has been demonstrated that convolutional neural networks, or CNNs, are effective in many aspects of image recognition; however, the performance of CNNs differs depending on the application. The performance of the existing CNN-based models for monitoring and predicting plantlings growth could be further improved. To achieve this, a novel Gap Layer modified CNN architecture (GL-CNN) has been proposed with an IoT effective monitoring system and UAV technology. The UAV is employed for capturing plantlings images and the IoT model is utilized for obtaining the ground truth information of the plantlings health. The proposed model is trained to predict the successful and poor seedling growth for a given set of palm tree plantling images. The proposed GL-CNN architecture is novel in terms of defined convolution layers and the gap layer designed for output classification. There are two 64×3 conv layers, two 128×3 conv layers, two 256×3 conv layers and one 512×3 conv layer for processing of input image. The output obtained from the gap layer is modulated using the ReLU classifier for determining the seedling classification. To evaluate the proposed system, a new dataset of palm tree plantlings was collected in real time using UAV technology. This dataset consists of images of palm tree plantlings. The evaluation results showed that the proposed GL-CNN model performed better than the existing CNN architectures with an average accuracy of 95.96%

Simultaneous endovascular repair of an iatrogenic carotid-jugular fistula and a large iliocaval fistula presenting with multiorgan failure: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Iliocaval fistulas can complicate an iliac artery aneurysm. The clinical presentation is classically a triad of hypotension, a pulsatile mass and heart failure. In this instance, following presentation with multiorgan failure, management included the immediate use of an endovascular stent graft on discovery of the fistula.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 62-year-old Caucasian man presented to our tertiary hospital for management of iatrogenic trauma due to the insertion of a central venous line into his right common carotid artery, causing transient ischemic attack. Our patient presented to a peripheral hospital with fever, nausea, vomiting, acute renal failure, acute hepatic dysfunction and congestive heart failure. A provisional diagnosis of sepsis of unknown origin was made. There was a 6.5 cm×6.5 cm right iliac artery aneurysm present on a non-contrast computed tomography scan. An unexpected intra-operative diagnosis of an iliocaval fistula was made following the successful angiographic removal of the central line to his right common carotid artery. Closure of the iliocaval fistula and repair of the iliac aneurysm using a three-piece endovascular aortic stent graft was then undertaken as part of the same procedure. This was an unexpected presentation of an iliocaval fistula.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our case demonstrates that endovascular repair of a large iliac artery aneurysm associated with a caval fistula is safe and effective and can be performed at the time of the diagnostic angiography. The presentation of an iliocaval fistula in this case was unusual which made the diagnosis difficult and unexpected at the time of surgery. The benefit of immediate repair, despite hemodynamic instability during anesthesia, is clear. Our patient had two coronary angiograms through his right femoral artery decades ago. Unusual iatrogenic causes of iliocaval fistulas secondary to previous coronary angiograms with wire and/or catheter manipulation should be considered in patients such as ours.</p

X-Linked thrombocytopenia causing mutations in WASP (L46P and A47D) impair T cell chemotaxis

BACKGROUND: Mutation in the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome Protein (WASP) causes Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS), X-linked thrombocytopenia (XLT) and X-linked congenital neutropenia (XLN). The majority of missense mutations causing WAS and XLT are found in the WH1 (WASP Homology) domain of WASP, known to mediate interaction with WIP (WASP Interacting Protein) and CIB1 (Calcium and Integrin Binding). RESULTS: We analyzed two WASP missense mutants (L46P and A47D) causing XLT for their effects on T cell chemotaxis. Both mutants, WASP(R)(L46P) and WASP(R)(A47D) (S1-WASP shRNA resistant) expressed well in Jurkat(WASP-KD) T cells (WASP knockdown), however expression of these two mutants did not rescue the chemotaxis defect of Jurkat(WASP-KD) T cells towards SDF-1α. In addition Jurkat(WASP-KD) T cells expressing these two WASP mutants were found to be defective in T cell polarization when stimulated with SDF-1α. WASP exists in a closed conformation in the presence of WIP, however both the mutants (WASP(R)(L46P) and WASP(R)(A47D)) were found to be in an open conformation as determined in the bi-molecular complementation assay. WASP protein undergoes proteolysis upon phosphorylation and this turnover of WASP is critical for T cell migration. Both the WASP mutants were found to be stable and have reduced tyrosine phosphorylation after stimulation with SDF-1α. CONCLUSION: Thus our data suggest that missense mutations WASP(R)(L46P) or WASP(R)(A47D) affect the activity of WASP in T cell chemotaxis probably by affecting the turnover of the protein. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12929-014-0091-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London