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Hierarchically nanostructured ZnO with enhanced photocatalytic activity
Hierarchical nanostructures of ZnO are integrated architectures comprising well-ordered nanoscale subunits and excellent photocatalytic properties. In this study, synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles using methods such as co-precipitation, hydrothermal, thermal decomposition, and electrochemical precipitation yielded microsphere, nanorod, pyramid, and nanopetal-like morphologies, respectively. The catalysts obtained were characterized using XRD, IR, SEM-EDX, UVDRS, TGA, PL, and Zeta potential analysis. The XRD spectra confirmed that all the different morphologies of ZnO have hexagonal wurtzite structures The photocatalytic activity of these nanostructures was determined using a dye degradation study on a model pollutant Methylene Blue (MB) under simulated visible light. The kinetic study of the dye degradation reveals that it obeys pseudo-first-order kinetics with a maximum rate constant of 0.01503 min-1. The nanorod structured ZnO particles prepared by the hydrothermal method showed the best catalytic activity. 2021 The Electrochemical Society ("ECS"). Published on behalf of ECS by IOP Publishing Limited. -
A Deep Learning Model for Information Loss Prevention from Multi-Page Digital Documents
World Wide Web has redefined almost all the business models in the past twenty-five to thirty years. IoT, Big Data, AI are some of the comparatively recent technologies which brought in a revolution in the digitization and management of data. Along with the revolution arose the need for data security and consumer privacy protection, primarily concerning financial institutions. The data breach of Equifax in 2017 and personal information leaks from Facebook in 2021 led to general skepticism among the customers of large corporations. The GLBA, 1999, also known as the Financial Modernization Act, was implemented by US federal law to enforce the financial institutions to protect their private information. Built upon the GLBA, guidelines are paved by FTC for all financial institutions of the United States of America, including TI companies. In this paper, an ANN-based content classification technique using MLP architecture in combination with n-gram TF-IDF feature descriptor is proposed to detect and protect the customers' sensitive information of a reputed TI company securing it's one of the digital image-document stores. The proposed technique is compared with other state-of-the-art strategies. Data samples from the digital document store of the company have been taken into consideration in the study, and the prediction accuracy metrics obtained are found to be substantially better and within the acceptable range defined by the organization's information security monitoring team. 2013 IEEE. -
Engagement Detection through Facial Emotional Recognition Using a Shallow Residual Convolutional Neural Networks
Online teaching and learning has recently turned out to be the order of the day, where majority of the learners undergo courses and trainings over the new environment. Learning through these platforms have created a requirement to understand if the learner is interested or not. Detecting engagement of the learners have sought increased attention to create learner centric models that can enhance the teaching and learning experience. The learner will over a period of time in the platform, tend to expose various emotions like engaged, bored, frustrated, confused, angry and other cues that can be classified as engaged or disengaged. This paper proposes in creating a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and enabling it with residual connections that can enhance the learning rate of the network and improve the classification on three Indian datasets that predominantly work on classroom engagement models. The proposed network performs well due to introduction of Residual learning that carries additional learning from the previous batch of layers into the next batch, Optimized Hyper Parametric (OHP) setting, increased dimensions of images for higher data abstraction and reduction of vanishing gradient problems resulting in managing overfitting issues. The Residual network introduced, consists of a shallow depth of 50 layers which has significantly produced an accuracy of 91.3% on ISED & iSAFE data while it achieves a 93.4% accuracy on the Daisee dataset. The average accuracy achieved by the classification network is 0.825 according to Cohens Kappa measure. 2020, Intelligent Engineering & System. All rights reserved. -
Psychological Problems Among Children Three Years After the Earthquake in Nepal
Background: Frequent disasters and weak mental health system pose a risk to psychological health in Nepal. In 2015, a massive earthquake of 7.6 magnitude occurred in Nepal, which caused large scale destruction to human life and property. Limited research in children after disasters in Nepal prevent health professionals from implementing new evidence-based trauma treatments. Aim: The study aimed to identify the long term emotional problems experienced by earthquake-affected children in Nepal. The role of gender, severity of exposure, socioeconomic status and type of family in relation to emotional problems were also examined in the selected group. Methods: A purposive sampling was used to select 454 children (4th and 5th standard) from two highly affected wards in Kathmandu Metropolitan City. Information about exposure to the earthquake was collected from children using the Level of Exposure Scale while the parents completed the Nepali version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ/ 4-17). Results: The effect of exposure to the earthquake was identified in the children even after three years. Boys had higher conduct, hyperactivity-inattention and peer problems while girls had high pro-social behaviour. Emotional problems were greater for those belonging to a lower socio-economic status. Among the variables, gender was a better predictor of emotional problems in earthquake-affected children. Conclusions: Emotional problems such as conduct problems, hyperactivity-inattention, peer problems are present in the earthquake-affected children in Kathmandu. Future researchers and clinicians need to monitor the children affected by the earthquake to recognise vulnerable groups and implement appropriate trauma-focused interventions. 2021, Indian Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. All rights reserved. -
Probiotic properties of bacillus subtilis isolated from dried anchovies (Stolephorus indicus) and evaluating its antimicrobial, antibiofilm and growth-enhancing potential in danio rerio
The study was aimed at isolating and characterising a potential probiotic bacterium from dried anchovies (Stolephorus indicus) and evaluating its antibacterial, antibiofilm and growth enhancing potential in Danio rerio. The isolate was identified as Bacillus subtilis using 16S rRNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis. Probiotic properties were characterised based on the ability of the isolated strain to survive in simulated gastric juice and trypsin. Isolated strain was further subjected to varying pH, temperature, different concentrations of organic solvents to evaluate its potential to tolerate stress. Biofilm inhibition against Vibrio harveyi (31.54.6%), Escherichia coli (28.84.2 %), Pseu-domonas aeruginosa (34.83.1%) and Staphylococcus aureus (34.43.75%) was noted. The study showed that the isolate improved the survival rate of Danio rerio against Vibrio harveyi and Escherichia coli. The weight (12.770.06) and length (11.4130.18) gain percentage was numerically (p> 0.05) improved in probiotic supplemented groups as compared to control. The use of probiotics from non-conventional sources can improve the diversity of the available probiotics for aquaculture practices. 2021 Ali L et al. -
Theorizing race, marginalization, and language in the digital media
Digitization of the communication medium has transformed the mute, marginalized audience into a heterogeneous and credible content producer. Drawing on this dynamics and operation of the digital media, it has urged the need to re-theorize marginalization and race. Hence, this paper critiques the digital-media tool, blogs, using a rhetoric-textual analysis method and critical discourse analysis method for the fictional text, Americanah. These methods employ the psychoanalyticalAlthusserian critique of Adichies fictional narrative, Americanah. In the psychoanalytical sense, blog-writing can qualify as a mechanism of sublimation in the post-modern world. In the Althusserian sense, blogs become persuasive mechanisms for a subjects interpellation into non-dominant ideology. Among the plethora of marginalized global communities, African-Americans are enormously embracing the virtual communication trends for socio-political motives. This paper theorizes the correlations between race-related blogging, psychoanalytic sublimation, and the socio-political repudiation of power structure by employing the literary text as material evidence. Accordingly, the literary study has concluded that digital-mediums (i.e., in this case, political blogs) can depose the power vested in the ideologicalstate-apparatuses and impose a high potential for expression of unrestrained, credible, and democratic voice of the marginalized. It also validates that blogs/blogging influences and moulds national/political/racial discourses by lending a liberated voice and context-independent perspective to the racially oppressed. 2021 Communication & Society. -
A hybrid level set based approach for surface water delineation using landsat-8 multispectral images
The detection and delineation of surface water is a crucial step in change detection studies on water bodies using satellite images. Single band methods, spectral index methods, classification using machine learning and spectral un-mixing methods are the widely used strategies for surface water mapping from multi-spectral images. Level set theory based algorithms have been successfully employed in image segmentation problems and are proven to be effective. This study presents a hybrid level set theory based segmentation algorithm which is a combination of edge based and region based approaches to detect and delineate surface water bodies in Landsat 8 images. Level set algorithms were applied in combination with Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) to further improve the delineation accuracy. Robustness of the proposed approach was established by successfully applying the algorithm to delineate water bodies of different sizes, ranging from 0.5 km2 to 298 km2 in surface area. The proposed algorithm was also compared with established machine learning based delineation methods and found to be faster than the algorithms those produced comparable delineation outputs. As the ground truth was not available for accuracy measurement, the output image of the proposed method was compared with the outputs of the machine learning algorithms using Pearsons correlation co-efficient, Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and Dice Similarity Index. The proposed algorithm was subsequently applied to multi-temporal Landsat data for water body change detection and analysis. 2021, International Association of Engineers. All rights reserved. -
A comparative study on the effect of HNT and nano-alumina particles on the mechanical properties of vacuum bag moulded glass-epoxy nanocomposites
In the present work, the mechanical properties of the Halloysite nanotube (HNT) and Nano-Alumina particle additions in glass-epoxy nanocomposites are investigated experimentally. The composite specimens for tensile, flexural, interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) and impact tests are prepared by vacuum bag moulding process and tested in accordance with the ASTM standards. HNT/Nano-Alumina particle contents are varied from 0 to 4 wt. %, while the weight fraction of glass fiber is kept constant at 60%. The strength values of the respective tests are obtained and compared graphically to study the effect of nanoparticle type and content on the mechanical properties. From the experimentation and subsequent result analysis, considerable improvements in the mechanical properties are observed with the addition of nanoparticles as compared to neat composites. The 3 wt.% addition of HNT in the nanocomposites resulted in increase in tensile strength, elastic modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, ILSS and impact energy values by 12.7%, 6.96%, 5.46%, 4.49%, 7.44% and 119.3% respectively in comparison with the same weight percentage of Nano-Alumina. HNT modified composites reveal an improvement in mechanical properties, hence qualifying it as a most promising cost-effective reinforcing filler for glass-epoxy composites. Further, the SEM micrographs of fractured surfaces are analyzed to study the failure mechanisms and fracture morphologies of higher loaded composites (4 wt.%) and understand the reason for decline in mechanical properties. 2021 Published by Semnan University Press. All rights reserved. -
Cipher Block Chaining Support Vector Machine for Secured Decentralized Cloud Enabled Intelligent IoT Architecture
The growth of internet era leads to a major transformation in a storage of data and accessing the applications. One such new trend that promises the endurance is the Cloud computing. Computing resources offered by the Cloud includes the servers, networks, storage, and applications, all as services. With the advent of Cloud, a single application is delivered as a metered service to numerous users, via an Application Programming Interface (API) accessible over the network. The services offered via the Cloud are such as the infrastructure, software, platform, database and web services. The main motivation of this application model is to provide computationally secure key generation to protect the data via encryption. This key generation in the cryptography process falls into three categories in this research work. In the first part, SVM based encryption service model is constructed for which the key generation is from the conventional encryption operation mode with some improvements. To make the process more complex, the optimization techniques are taken into account for the key generation in descendant two methods application model that acts computationally more secure specifically for Cloud environment. The results of security analysis confirm the effectiveness of the proposed application model withstands potentially against various attacks such as Chosen Cipher Attack, Chosen Plain text Attack indistinguishable attacks for files. In case of images, it resists well against statistical and differential attacks. Comparative Analysis shows evidence of the efficiency of the developed pioneering application model quality and strength compared with that of the existing services. 2013 IEEE. -
Establishing the effectiveness of intervention module on positive youth development among adolescent in India
Purpose: Positive Youth Development (PYD) originated in the west as a pragmatic approach to teaching youth skills and attributes to develop into healthy, productive, and engaged adults. This approach proposes that youth with more developmental resources experience increased academic success, better economic prospects, are more civically engaged, and experience optimal well-being and functioning in the long term. Over time, the need for administering evidence-based interventions was felt by practitioners, researchers, and policymakers. With this background and the absence of research in PYD in India, the present research was carried out to develop and test an intervention module for its effectiveness in bringing about a positive change among youth. Approach: The present research is quantitative in nature with pre-test post-test control group design. The PYD intervention program included activities, non-profit visits, community building exercises, and mentoring programs, creating self-actualizing youth. The paper deliberates on the findings of a six-month interventional program based on the Six Cs model of Learner (2005). Findings: The independent sample t-test was significant, for overall PYD, t (98) = 3.45, p <. 001. and on all the dimensions of PYD, indicating that intervention was effective as there are statistically significant differences among experimental and control groups. Value: The intervention was experientially positive for the students, valued, and commended by the school authorities. The paper recommends enhancing psychological intervention research in school settings, including multiple approaches to address holistic student development, facilitating peer relationships and mentoring, developing resources, and enhancing growth opportunities. 2021 RESTORATIVE JUSTICE FOR ALL. -
Design techniques in carry select adder using parallel prefix adder for improved switching energy
A new architecture of Carry select adder has been proposed with improved switching energy using parallel prefix adder. The conventional Carry select adder is the use of two Ripple Carry Adder (RCA) and a multiplexer. The findings in this work are the replacement of one RCA block by Brent Kung adder and the other RCA block by excess-1 converter. Simulation results show that the proposed Carry select adder is proved to have improved switching energy when compared with the other adders in 45nm CMOS process. 2021 Wydawnictwo SIGMA-NOT. All rights reserved. -
Cellular agriculture research progress and prospects: Insights from bibliometric analysis
World agriculture is facing a daunting task to feed the burgeoning population against multiple production and environmental threats. The alarming growth in population vis-vis current food production is expected to increase the global food insecurity levels. Inter alia, cellular agriculture an incipient technology is being considered as a potential alternative to cater for the growing demand for food and nutrition. The technology aims to develop edible agricultural products including meat with reduced environmental footprint against conventional farm production. In this context, an attempt has been made to review the progress of cellular agriculture research in four decades (19812020) through a bibliometric analysis and to suggest a roadmap for future research. The study sourced data from the Web of Science during October 2020. Using keywords, the database showed 212 searches pertaining to cellular agriculture from 135 journals worldwide. Of the journals, seven had at least five published articles and 33 had two articles each. Subsequently, the bibliographic coupling among the identified journals was carried out. It is found that the Journals: Appetite, Meat Science, and Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics had the largest circles corresponding to their respective number of publications coupled with notable linkages with other journals. Also, a detailed analysis was performed on categories, growth trend, keywords, institutions, regions and leading researchers of cellular agriculture. The findings indicate that the Appetite Journal followed by the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics had published a significant percentage of articles on cellular agriculture, and Environmental Science and Technology was identified as the highly cited journal. The USA, England and the Netherlands were identified as the progressive regions in cellular agriculture research. The bibliometric analysis points to sluggish progress in cellular agriculture research and production despite its potential benefits. Future research should focus on the cost-effectiveness of the technology, consumer willingness to buy, development of food safety protocols on its merit and regional policy governance coupled with popularising its paybacks in the context of ensuring food security. 2021 The Author(s) -
DAWM: Cost-Aware Asset Claim Analysis Approach on Big Data Analytic Computation Model for Cloud Data Centre
The heterogeneous resource-required application tasks increase the cloud service provider (CSP) energy cost and revenue by providing demand resources. Enhancing CSP profit and preserving energy cost is a challenging task. Most of the existing approaches consider task deadline violation rate rather than performance cost and server size ratio during profit estimation, which impacts CSP revenue and causes high service cost. To address this issue, we develop two algorithms for profit maximization and adequate service reliability. First, a belief propagation-influenced cost-aware asset scheduling approach is derived based on the data analytic weight measurement (DAWM) model for effective performance and server size optimization. Second, the multiobjective heuristic user service demand (MHUSD) approach is formulated based on the CPS profit estimation model and the user service demand (USD) model with dynamic acyclic graph (DAG) phenomena for adequate service reliability. The DAWM model classifies prominent servers to preserve the server resource usage and cost during an effective resource slicing process by considering each machine execution factor (remaining energy, energy and service cost, workload execution rate, service deadline violation rate, cloud server configuration (CSC), service requirement rate, and service level agreement violation (SLAV) penalty rate). The MHUSD algorithm measures the user demand service rate and cost based on the USD and CSP profit estimation models by considering service demand weight, tenant cost, and energy cost. The simulation results show that the proposed system has accomplished the average revenue gain of 35%, cost of 51%, and profit of 39% than the state-of-the-art approaches. 2021 M. S. Mekala et al. -
Affective geographies and the anthropocene: Reading shubhangi swarups latitudes of longing
This paper is a critical reading of the affective and emotional geographies imagined in the Islands plot-line of Shubhangi Swarups novel Latitudes of Longing (2018). The paper argues that Swarup presents the case of a rethinking environmental aesthetics that conveys a deeper sense of space, time, and place. By creating an ambient poetics to negotiate human and non-human interconnectedness, the paper demonstrates the strength of novelistic traditions and their potential to generate an idea of affect that is transcorporeal as one not located only in the site of the human body, instead, emanating from a more nuanced interconnectedness between the human and the non-human world. Informed by affective ecocriticism and Zayin Cabots multiple ontologies approach that generates ecologies of participation, the paper closely reads the Islands section to establish how literary illustrations provide an instance to widen the horizons of environmental engagement and generate a narrative imagination that encompasses a larger ecosystem cutting across geological spacetimes in the Anthropocene. Swarups use of fiction is critically used to generate an ecoaesthetics that leads to a more informed ethical action towards recognizing the interconnectedness of living and non-living forms that create sustainable ecologies. 2021 Journal of Dharma: Dharmaram Journal of Religions and Philosophies (DVK, Bangalore), ISSN: 0253-7222. -
Performance investigation of PID controller in trajectory control of two-link robotic manipulator in medical robots
Robot-assisted surgical procedures have gained much coverage in recent years and favored over manually conducted operations. The medical robots are comprised of manipulators arm that is the multi-degree of freedom positioning devices with a highly non-linear nature to perform various surgical tasks. Due to non-linear effects, robots offer a severe challenge to the control system. Therefore, the control techniques are required for controlling the robots that should be fast enough to accommodate the rapid changes in the system parameters. In this article, the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers performance has been investigated in trajectory control of the Two-Link Robotic Manipulator (TLRM) for reliable functioning of these robots. Tracking error and Control input factors have been used to investigate the PID controllers robustness in trajectory control of TLRM. Eulers-lagrange approach has been used for dynamic analysis of TLRM. This work has been accomplished in the MATLAB/ Simulink environment. 2021 Taru Publications. -
On ideal sumset labelled graphs
The sumset of two sets A and B of integers, denoted by A + B, is defined as (formula presented). Let X be a non-empty set of non-negative integers. A sumset labelling of a graph G is an injective function (Formula Presented) such that the induced function (Formula Presented) is defined by (Formula presented). In this paper, we introduce the notion of ideal sumset labelling of graph and discuss the admissibility of this labelling by certain graph classes and discuss some structural characterization of those graphs. 2021 Jincy P. Mathai, Sudev Naduvath, and Satheesh Sreedharan. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted use and distribution provided the original author and source are credited. -
Impedance, Electrical and Dielectric behaviour of Tin Oxide Nanoparticle doped with Graphite, Graphene Oxide and Reduced Graphene Oxide
Nanostructured materials have attained incredible interest in recent days due to their distinctive chemical, physical, mechanical, magnetic and optoelectronic properties. In the present study, metal nano particle (SnO2) was doped with graphite, graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) with various composition (1:100), (1:1) and (100:1) by weight ratio. The citrate-nitrate gel combustion method was used to prepare nanocrystalline SnO2 while GO and rGO were synthesized through modified Hummer's method. The preparation of SnO2-rGO composites was done using a one-step hydrothermal process. The electrical and structural behaviour of the composites of graphite, GO and rGO mixed with SnO2 were elucidated by the impedance analyzer in the frequency range from 10Hz to 1MHz. It is observed that the composite of SnO2 with graphite and reduced graphene oxide have similar broad characteristics while SnO2 mixed with GO is exhibiting different properties which could be attributed to the presence of oxygen functionaries. 2021 The Authors. Published by ESG. All Rights Reserved. -
Sustainable approach to life in water: Science and ethics of the oceans
Oceans have always remained a mystery to humankind. We owe the oceans the very air we breathe. Oceans are storehouses of nutrient rich food that can alleviate the hunger of many generations to come, offer rich minerals and medicines to cure many diseases, regulate the temperature of our planet, stabilize weather patterns, and provide livelihood for many in the fishing and tourism industry. But sadly they are overexploited and polluted to the core. The very fact that these mighty oceans have started showing the ill effects of anthropogenic activities itself is testimony to the tremendous greed of humanity. Among all the mighty oceans, the Arctic ocean is the most sensitive and vulnerable to these changes as it holds a pivotal position in maintaining life on Earth by different mechanisms. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 of the United Nations underlines the urgent need to conserve marine resources and give equal rights to people in all countries to enjoy these resources. The current review is an attempt to highlight the enormous number of ways in which oceans have helped humankind, the serious threats the oceans are facing now, and how best we can have a sustainable approach to halt the total crashing of our great ocean systems. 2021 Journal of Dharma: Dharmaram Journal of Religions and Philosophies (DVK, Bangalore). -
Marangoni convection flow of cntsal2o3water hybrid nanofluids with variable fluid properties
The current investigation reports the impact of amalgamations of carbon nanotubes and aluminum oxide in boosting the thermochemical properties of water as the base fluid. It is assumed that the viscosity of the base fluid varies with temperature exponentially and temperature varies linearly. The governing equations prevalent in the current problem accompanied by boundary conditions are transformed into a highly nonlinear system of ODEs by means of similarity trans-formations. The numerical result for the obtained mathematical model was acquired by using the bvp4c inbuilt function in MATLAB. The domain effects were analyzed through sketched graphs. It is further observed that the Nusselt number decreases with the rising value of the variable viscosity and the thermal conductivity parameters. 2021 Begell House, Inc. www.begellhouse.com. -
The politics of the representation of Christian women characters in select Hindi films
This research will attempt to understand the politics of the representation of Christian women characters in Hindi films, Julie, and Bobby from a postcolonial feminist lens. This paper studies the portrayal of Christian women characters as westernized and common in Hindi films. To prove this argument, a postcolonial feminist approach with the theories of Partha Chatterjees idea of the role of nationalism in the representation of the westernized and common women; Gopal Gurus argument of the exclusion of the minorities from the mainstream imagination of the nation, and Diana Dimitrovas discourse of Otherism will be used. This research implies that the minority Christian women characters as the lead heroines in Hindi films are typecasted into the roles of immoral, sexually alluring, and unchaste woman who through her association with the Hindu hero poses a threat to the purity of Hindu dharma and hence the majoritarian idea of Indianness. 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.