This paper aims to enhance the capacitance of electroactive polymer (EAP)-based strain sensors. The enhancement in capacitance was achieved by using a free-standing stretchable polymer film while ...introducing conducting polymer to fabricate a hybrid dielectric film with controlled conductivity. In this work, styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS) rubber was used as the base material, and dodecyl benzene sulfonate anion (DBSA)-doped polyaniline (PANI) was used as filler to fabricate a hybrid composite conducting film. The maleic anhydride group of the SEBS Rubber and DBSA, the anion of the polyaniline dopant, make a very stable dispersion in Toluene and form a free-standing stretchable film by solution casting. DBSA-doped polyaniline increased the conductivity and dielectric constant of the dielectric film, resulting in a significant enhancement in the capacitance of the EAP-based strain sensor. The sensor presented in this article exhibits capacitance values ranging from 24.7 to 100 µF for strain levels ranging from 0 to 100%, and sensitivity was measured 3 at 100% strain level.
Peripheral Tubercular Neuritis Agarwal, Amit; Pandey, S.D.; Khare, Abhinav
The Journal of hand surgery (American ed.),
20/May , Letnik:
48, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Peripheral neuropathy can affect sensory, motor, or autonomic nerves and manifest with a variety of symptoms. Tuberculosis as a major infectious disease that often affects many organs of the body. ...However, primary involvement of peripheral nerves is unusual. Peripheral neuropathy in patients with tuberculosis often is associated with other comorbidities, such as immunocompromised states, diabetes mellitus, malnutrition, and some antitubercular medications. This report describes the rare finding of peripheral tubercular neuritis with caseating abscesses of right median and radial nerve in a healthy 24-year man.
Abstract
Ordinary light wave passing through a low symmetry crystal along an off optic -axis direction gets split into ordinary and extra-ordinary waves. If the beam size is large, the two polarized ...waves could overlap covering a large volume within the medium. It is realized that overlapping ordinary and extra-ordinary waves, result in creation of alternate polarization regions with different fluctuating crystalline fields inside a low - symmetry hydrated crystal. If suitable ions are doped in an experimental crystal, their optical absorption spectra could reflect the effect of alternate polarization fields and creation of ordinary light induced periodic polarization (OLIPP) effect inside a low symmetry hydrated crystal.
Synthesis and characterization of a novel and zwitterionic double squaraine dye (DSQ) with a unique D-A-A-D structure is being reported. Contrary to the conventional mono and bis-squaraine dyes with ...D-A-D and D-A-D-A molecular frameworks reported so far, DSQ dye demonstrated strong solvatochromism allowing for the multiple ion sensing using a single probe by judicious selection of the suitable solvent system. The DSQ dye exhibited a large solvatochromic shift of about 200 nm with color changes from the visible to NIR region with metal ion sensitivity. Utilization of a binary solvent consisted of dimethylformamide and acetonitrile (1:99, v/v), highly selective detection of Cu2+ ions with the linearity range from 50 μM to 1 nM and a detection limit of 6.5 × 10−10 M has been successfully demonstrated. Results of the Benesi–Hildebrand and Jobs plot analysis revealed that DSQ and Cu2+ ions interact in the 2:1 molecular stoichiometry with appreciably good association constant of 2.32 × 104 M−1. Considering the allowed limit of Cu2+ ions intake by human body as recommended by WHO to be 30 μM, the proposed dye can be conveniently used for the simple and naked eye colorimetric monitoring of the drinking water quality.
Previous research on solar box cookers focusing on the bulk usage of energy storage materials is a costly technique for performance enhancement. Bulk energy storage materials take much time to charge ...and, thus, result in a low rate of cooking at the start. Therefore, a hot box solar cooker has been developed and experimentally studied for thermal performance enhancement in a hilly region of Uttarakhand, India. A bed of phase change material (paraffin wax) filled with small capsule-shaped containers was prepared (detachable) and placed over the cooking tray of the tested cooker. These containers were vertically positioned over the bed to enhance the heat transfer rate inside the cooker to attain a fast-cooking response. Notably, the combined effect of extended geometry with PCM is an excellent method to increase the efficiency of a solar cooker. As per the author's knowledge, likely techniques have not been studied for a box cooker to achieve a fast-cooking rate in any hilly region up to date. The results of cooking tests show that the cooking plate attained a maximum temperature of about 150 °C. It is because of the combined effect of extended fins (vertical capsules) and PCM filled inside them. The results of the experimental study show that the thermal efficiency of the cooker was found to be about 45.7%, the cooking power was calculated about 54.71 W, the heat transfer coefficient was estimated about 311 W/m
°C, and the overall heat loss coefficient was computed about 5.71 W/m
°C. This modified cooker costs about $48.19, and the payback period is about 03 years and 11 months. Cooking trials also showed that the present SBC could cook almost all the dishes commonly cooked in Uttarakhand.
Abstract
We have carried out a long-term infrared and X-ray investigation of the colliding-wind binary WR 125 (WC7 + O9III). The source was monitored using AstroSat Soft X-ray Telescope and the Tata ...Institute of Fundamental Research Near Infrared Imaging Camera-II mounted at the back of 3.6 m Devasthal Optical Telescope. WR 125 appeared brighter in the near-infrared
K
-band during the years 2017–2021 which is attributed to another episode of dust formation similar to the one reported during the likely periastron passage at the beginning of the 1990s. This is further supported by enhanced emission observed in the W1 and W2 bands of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer from 2018–2019. By combining archival X-ray data sets with our new measurements, long-term variations have been noticed. The source reaches a lower emission state in 2020 June (close to the recent infrared maximum) which could be due to enhanced absorption of X-rays produced in the colliding-wind region by the WC stellar wind close to the periastron in an eccentric orbit. The time interval between the previous and latest X-ray low states may indicate an orbital period of 28–29 years, in fair agreement with the recurrence time of episodic dust production. We also discuss published radio measurements in the context of a common picture based on a long-period binary scenario. These results allow us to draw relevant guidelines for future multiwavelength observations of WR 125.
In today’s Internet era, group communications in multimedia applications are becoming more and more popular. The issues of controlling illegal access to multimedia contents require efficient and ...secure mechanisms for distribution of common key called scrambling key or group key. In order to provide secure delivery of multimedia contents in digital pay-TV systems, a large number of keying information messages are exchanged for group key/scrambling key updates in the traditional key distribution schemes. In this paper we propose a Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) based key distribution protocol which is highly secure and computationally efficient. The proposed protocol, 1) has drastically reduced the computational complexity of Group Manager (GM) and members for updating the keys, 2) has greatly increased the security by using an additional secret parameter at Group Manager and members areas, 3) can efficiently handle large and dynamically updating groups and, 4) can update the group key in one message, without updating member’s key. With our proposed key distribution scheme, only legal members can access the multimedia contents correctly and the illegal access can be prevented. The proposed scheme is applicable in Conditional Access System (CAS) of digital pay-TV systems without increasing storage and communication overheads on GM and members. The comparative analysis of our proposed scheme with existing schemes in terms of computational cost assures the effectiveness of our scheme. As a proof of concept, we implement our scheme to a decentralized architecture-based key management system and demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the computational complexity.
By combining the electronic structures obtained from first principles calculations with Boltzmann transport theory we have investigated the electronic, magnetic and transport properties of the ...Co2MnGe Heusler compound. The density of state plots, dispersion curves and the total energy of paramagnetic and ferromagnetic (FM) phases clearly show the half-metallic FM ground state for the compound, with an indirect band gap of about 400 meV in the minority spin channel. It has an integer value of the magnetic moment equal to 5 μ(B). In the FM phase a very large value (∼ 550 µV K(-1)) of the Seebeck coefficient (S) is obtained for down-spin electrons due to the existence of an almost flat conduction band along X in the Γ direction. The two-current model has been used to find the total S and the obtained value is about 10 µV K(-1). The calculated values of the Seebeck coefficient, resistivity and electronic thermal conductivity show nice agreement with the experimental results.
We present the photometric calibration of the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) which includes: optimum photometric and background apertures, effective area curves, colour transformations, ...conversion factors for count rates to flux and the photometric zero-points (which are accurate to better than 4 per cent) for each of the seven UVOT broad-band filters. The calibration was performed with observations of standard stars and standard star fields that represent a wide range of spectral star types. The calibration results include the position-dependent uniformity, and instrument response over the 1600–8000 Å operational range. Because the UVOT is a photon-counting instrument, we also discuss the effect of coincidence loss on the calibration results. We provide practical guidelines for using the calibration in UVOT data analysis. The results presented here supersede previous calibration results.
We present results based on follow-up observations of the Type II-plateau supernova (II-P SN) 2013ej at six epochs spanning a total duration of ∼37 d. The R
C-band linear polarimetric observations ...were carried out between the end of the plateau and the beginning of the nebular phase, as demarcated in the photometric light-curve. The contribution arising from interstellar polarization (ISP) was constrained using two approaches, namely based on observations of foreground stars lying within a 5-arcmin and a 10
$\deg$
radius of the SN location, and by investigating the extinction arising from the Milky Way and host galaxy in the direction of the SN. Our analysis revealed that in general the intrinsic polarization of the SN was higher than the polarization values for the foreground stars and exhibited an increasing trend during our observations. After correcting for the ISP of ∼0.6 per cent,the maximum intrinsic polarization of SN 2013ej was found to be 2.14 ± 0.57 per cent. Such a strong polarization has rarely been seen in II-P SNe. If this procedure is justified (i.e. the ‘polarization bias’ effect is indeed negligible) the polarization could be caused by the asymmetry of the inner ejecta of the SN, because the ISP towards the SN location is estimated to be, at most, 0.6 per cent.
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