Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Picosecond spectroscopy under a confocal microscope is employed to study solvation dynamics of coumarin 153 (C153) inside a single giant lipid vesicle (1,2-dilauroyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, DLPC) of diameter 20 μm. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) indicates that the diffusion coefficient (D t) of the probe (coumarin153, C153) in the immobilized vesicle displays a wide distribution from ∼3 to 21 μm 2 s -1. The distribution of D t suggests that the microenvironment of the probe (C153) is highly heterogeneous and the local friction is different for probe molecules in different regions. The values of D t is significantly smaller than that for the same dye in bulk water (550 μm 2 s -1). This suggests that the probe is located in the interface or membrane region rather than in the water pool of the vesicle. The solvation time of C153 in different regions of the lipid vesicle varies between 750 to 1200 ps. This result clearly shows that a confocal microscope is able to resolve the spatial heterogeneity in local friction (i.e., D t) and solvation dynamics within a lipid vesicle. © 2012 American Chemical Society.

Department of Chemistry

World University root node

Langmuir

Solvation dynamics under a microscope: Single giant lipid vesicle

Electrochemical machining is one of the widely used non-traditional machining processes to machine complicated shapes for electrically conducting but difficult-to-machine materials such as superalloys, Ti-alloys, alloy steel, tool steel, stainless steel, etc. Use of optimal ECM process parameters can significantly reduce the ECM operating, tooling, and maintenance cost and will produce components of higher accuracy. This paper investigates the effect and parametric optimization of process parameters for Electrochemical machining of EN-31 steel using grey relation analysis. The process parameters considered are electrolyte concentration, feed rate and applied voltage and are optimized with considerations of multiple performance characteristics including material removal rate, overcut and cylindricity error. Analysis of variance is performed to get contribution of each parameter on the performance characteristics and it was observed that feed rate is the significant process parameter that affects the ECM robustness. The experimental results for the optimal setting show that there is considerable improvement in the process. The application of this technique converts the multi response variable to a single response Grey relational grade and, therefore, simplifies the optimization procedure. © (2012) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Applied Mechanics and Materials

Parametric optimization in electrochemical machining of EN-31 steel based on grey relation approach

This work reports the measured spray structure and droplet size distributions of ethanol-gasoline blends for a low-pressure, multi-hole, port fuel injector (PFI). This study presents previously unavailable data for this class of injectors which are widely used in automotive applications. Specifically, gasoline, ethanol and gasoline-ethanol blends containing 10%, 20% and 50% ethanol were studied using laser backlight imaging and particle/droplet image analysis (PDIA) techniques. The fuel mass injected, spray structure and tip penetrations, droplet size distributions and Sauter mean diameter were determined for the blends, at two different injection pressures. Results indicate that the gasoline and ethanol sprays have similar characteristics in terms of spray progression and droplet sizes in spite of the large difference in viscosity. It appears that the complex mode of atomization utilized in these injectors involving interaction of multiple fuel jets is fairly insensitive to the fuel viscosity over a range of values. This result has interesting ramifications for existing gasoline fuel systems which need to handle blends and even pure ethanol, which is one of the renewable fuels of the future. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fuel

Spray characterization of gasoline-ethanol blends from a multi-hole port fuel injector

Aim and Objective: To evaluate the effect of penile block vs caudal epidural on the quality of analgesia and surgical outcome following hypospadias repair. Background: Intraoperative penile engorgement because of caudal epidural may result in tension on surgical sutures and alter surgical outcome. Methods: Fifty-four ASA I and II children were randomly allocated to group P (penile block, 0.25\% bupivacaine, 0.5 mg center dot kg-1; n = 27) and group C (caudal epidural, 0.25\% bupivacaine, 0.5 ml center dot kg-1; n = 27), respectively. Quality of analgesia was assessed by visual analog scale (VAS) score recorded at 0, 0.5, 3, 6, 12, 24 h, and once a day for the next 4 days. Duration of analgesia was calculated from the institution of block to the first analgesic demand by child or VAS > 5. Total morphine consumption in the first 48 h and oral paracetamol consumption till 5th day were recorded. Children were regularly followed up in their respective outpatient clinic for early or late complications. Results: In group P, lower mean VAS scores were seen from 0.5 h after surgery till day 3 and analgesia lasted for significantly longer duration (82 min) when compared with caudal epidural, P < 0.001. Incidence of urethral fistula formation after primary hypospadias repair was 19.2\%, and all had received caudal epidural. An increase of 27\% in penile volume from baseline value was observed 10 min after caudal epidural placement, P < 0.05. Conclusion: Penile block provided better analgesia when compared with caudal epidural in children undergoing primary hypospadias repair. Postoperative urethral fistula formation was more likely in children who received caudal epidural.

PEDIATRIC ANESTHESIA

Surgical outcome in children undergoing hypospadias repair under caudal epidural vs penile block

Non-intrusive flow measurements are useful for the understanding of physical processes central to engine combustion and emission performance, such as fuel-air mixing. In the present work, a test rig with maximum optical access is designed and fabricated to study the incylinder flow due to reciprocating piston during compression using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), a technique for investigating turbulent flows. Very few investigations of the incylinder flow using the PIV-POD combination are reported in literature. The effects of the piston configuration and the piston position on the incylinder flow are investigated, for two piston configurations, viz., flat piston and spherical bowl, six piston positions, from the bottom dead centre (BDC) to 150° after BDC, in steps of 30°. PIV measurements are carried out in the vertical plane passing through ports at 600 rpm crank speed. The ensemble-averaged velocity fields obtained from PIV reveal a large scale rotation particularly in the early part of the compression stroke, i.e., from BDC to 90° after BDC (aBDC). In the later part of compression, the flow is observed to be directed towards the cylinder head. POD is applied to the measured instantaneous velocity to study the incylinder turbulent flow. The POD modes show the flow fluctuations due to the effect of turbulence and cycle-to-cycle variations. For the spherical bowl case at 150° aBDC, the share of the fluctuation kinetic energy in the second and higher POD modes is higher than that (a) at any other piston position (b) in the case of flat piston. Thus, the POD analysis of instantaneous velocity measured using PIV, indicates that a spherical bowl is a better choice in terms of turbulence production compared to a flat piston, for use in engines. Copyright © 2012 by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Modeling and Diagnostics for Advanced Engine Systems, COMODIA 2012

Diagnostics of incylinder flow during compression using PIV and analysis using proper orthogonal decomposition

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Journal of Infectious Diseases

Mycobacterium tuberculosis promotes regulatory T-Cell expansion via induction of programmed death-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1, CD274) on dendritic cells

Complex bands k(E) in a semiconductor crystal, along a general direction n, can be computed by casting Schrödingers equation as a generalized polynomial eigenvalue problem. When working with primitive lattice vectors, the order of this eigenvalue problem can grow large for arbitrary n. It is, however, possible to always choose a set of non-primitive lattice vectors such that the eigenvalue problem is restricted to be quadratic. The complex bands so obtained need to be unfolded onto the primitive Brillouin zone. In this paper, we present a unified method to unfold real and complex bands. Our method ensures that the measure associated with the projections of the non-primary wavefunction onto all candidate primary wavefunctions is invariant with respect to the energy E. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Department of Electrical Engineering

Fulltext

Journal of Physics Condensed Matter

Brillouin zone unfolding of complex bands in a nearest neighbour tight binding scheme

In this paper, the statistical properties of a change detection algorithm are considered. More specifically, we considered the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) algorithm. Analytical expressions for the probability distribution of detection delay and the time between false alarms are proposed, and the results are validated by simulations. The results can be used in examining the abrupt changes in a signal, and also in the design of active fault tolerant control systems. © 2012 IEEE.

Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control

Statistical properties of exponentially weighted moving average algorithm for change detection

In this paper, we present the combined character segmentation algorithm based on the active contour model and nonlinear diffusion techniques. The active contour model is used to perform segmentation of printed characters. The coherence enhancing diffusion technique is proposed to smooth out artifacts and background noises without destroying the edges. The performance of the two character segmentation methods: i) the combined ACM-FGM and CED algorithm, and ii) the ACM-FGM algorithm have been validated using a large scale printed documents in Hindi, Malayalam and Telugu text. The combined algorithm achieves an average segmentation accuracy of 89.08% whereas the ACM-FGM algorithm alone had an average accuracy of 52.63%. The whole character segmentation process time is lesser than that of the ACM-FGM algorithm alone. Experiments show that the combined algorithm provides promising results under scanned documents with different font-size and fond-style characters, and the different artifacts and background noises caused by the aging of the paper and diffusion. © 2012 IEEE.

2012 International Conference on Advances in Computing and Communications …

Performance study of active contour model based character segmentation with nonlinear diffusion

Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) technique obtained a significant attention in machining processes to reduce environmental loads caused by usage of conventional cutting fluids. Recently nanofluids are finding an extensive application in the field of mechanical engineering because of their superior lubrication and heat dissipation characteristics. This paper investigates the use of a nanofluid under MQL mode to improve grinding characteristics of Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Taguchi-s experimental design technique has been used in the present investigation and a second order model has been established to predict grinding forces and surface roughness. Different concentrations of water based Al2O3 nanofluids were applied in the grinding operation through MQL setup developed in house and the results have been compared with those of conventional coolant and pure water. Experimental results showed that grinding forces reduced significantly when nano cutting fluid was used even at low concentration of the nano particles and surface finish has been found to improve with higher concentration of the nano particles

World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Science Index 70, International Journal of Mechanical, Aerospace, Industrial, Mechatronic and Manufacturing Engineering