An artificial hummingbird algorithm based localization with reduced number of reference nodes for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are widely used in recent years due to the advancements in wireless and sensor technologies. Many of these applications require to know the location information of nodes. This information is useful to understand the collected data and to act on them. Existing localization algorithms make use of a few reference nodes for estimating the locations of sensor nodes. But, the positioning and utilization of reference nodes increase the cost and complexity of the network. To reduce the dependency on reference nodes, in this paper, we have developed a novel optimization based localization method using only two reference nodes for the localization of the entire network. This is achieved by reference nodes identifying a few more nodes as reference nodes by the analysis of the connectivity information. The sensor nodes then use the reference nodes to identify their locations in a distributive manner using Artificial Hummingbird Algorithm (AHA). We have observed that the localization performance of the reported algorithm at a lower reference node ratio is comparable with other algorithms at higher reference node ratios.     

MXene-based composite electrodes for efficient electrochemical sensing of glucose by non-enzymatic method

A recently discovered 2D transition titanium metal carbides also called as MXenes (Ti₃C₂T_x)-based nanocomposite was prepared with Cu₂O through wet precipitation technique, and these materials were further developed as the electrode for sensing glucose by chronoamperometry technique. The prepared MXene-Cu₂O (Ti₃C₂T_x-Cu₂O) nanocomposite was characterized by XRD, FTIR, UV–Vis spectroscopy, FE-SEM, EDAX, and Raman spectroscopy. Morphological studies of the composites revealed that the micro-octahedral shape of Cu₂O is distributed on the surface of MXene with size larger than bare Cu₂O. Further, the prepared composite material was fabricated as a sensing probe, and the electrochemical activities were examined by cyclic voltammetric analysis (CV) and chronoamperometric (CA) methods. From the CV and CA investigation, the current response was higher for the composite than the bare material (Cu₂O & MXene) in the presence of glucose. The amperometric investigation of MXene-Cu₂O composite for the detection of glucose shows a broad linear range (0.01–30 mM) with a sensitivity of 11.061/μAmM cm^?2 and a detection limit of 2.83 μM. Further, the fabricated sensor exhibits good selectivity with interfering species like NaCl, fructose, sucrose, urea, ascorbic acid, lactose, short response time, stability, good reproducibility, and compatibility with human serum sample. From the investigation, the prepared MXene-Cu₂O composite is a good candidate for the direct detection of glucose molecules and is also well suitable for clinical diagnosis.     

Study on the design of ZnO/PANI composites and the mechanism of enhanced humidity sensing properties

ZnO/PANI composite humidity sensor was prepared by hydrothermal method. The first principles of density functional theory study the sensing mechanism. The calculation shows that the oxygen vacancy on ZnO surface is beneficial to the adsorption of water molecules. The {0 0 0‾1} crystal plane with the largest lattice oxygen number in ZnO has a strong adsorption capacity for water molecules, which is also conducive to improving the humidity sensitivity. PANI is easy to be combined on {0 1‾1 0} plane of ZnO, and it indirectly promotes the growth of {0 0 0‾1} plane, increasing the adsorption of water molecules and the proportion of H⁺ and H₃O⁺ ions. In addition, the N–H group in ZnO/PANI enhances the H⁺ conduction, which further improves the performance of the sensor. The results concluded that the proportion of lattice oxygen in humidity sensor is an important factor of humidity sensor sensitive detection.     

Development of a Chitosan/Nickel Phthalocyanine Composite Based Conductometric Micro-sensor for Methanol Detection

Thin-film composite of chitosan/nickel phthalocyanine (NiPc) was electrochemically deposited on the fingers of interdigitated gold electrodes, applying chronoamperometric polymerization technique. The presence of crystallized NiPc in the chitosan was confirmed by EDX and FTIR analysis. Acetone, ethanol, and methanol gas-sensing properties of the films prepared at optimum conditions were studied at atmospheric temperature, through differential measurements at an optimized frequency of 10 kHz, using a lock-in amplifier. The conductometric sensor presents the highest sensitivity of 60.2 μS.cm⁻¹(v/v) for methanol and 700 ppm as the limit of detection. For validation, the methanol content of a commercial rubbing alcohol was determined.     

Development of in-wheel sensor system for accurate measurement of wheel terrain interaction characteristics

Planetary rovers need high mobility on a rough terrain such as sandy soil, because such a terrain often impedes the rover mobility and causes significant wheel slip. Therefore, the accurate estimation of wheel soil interaction characteristics is an important issue. Recent studies related to wheel soil interaction mechanics have revealed that the classical wheel model has not adequately addressed the actual interaction characteristics observed through experiments. This article proposes an in-wheel sensor system equipped with two sensory devices on the wheel surface: force sensors that directly measure the force distribution between the wheel and soil and light sensors that accurately detect the wheel soil surface boundary line. This sensor design enables the accurate measurement of wheel terrain interaction characteristics such as wheel force distribution, wheel–soil contact angles, and wheel sinkage when the powered wheel runs on loose sand. In this article, the development of the in-wheel sensor system is introduced along with its system diagram and sensor modules. The usefulness of the in-wheel sensor system is then experimentally evaluated via a single wheel test bench. The experimental results confirm that explicit differences can be observed between the classical wheel model and practical data measured by the in-wheel sensor system.     

Electrochemical Sensing of Uric Acid Using Glassy Carbon Modified with Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes Dispersed in Polyethylenimine

This work reports the advantages of using glassy carbon electrodes modified with multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) dispersed in polyethylenimine (PEI). The presence of MWCNTs wrapped by PEI largely facilitated the strong adsorption of uric acid (UA) and allowed its highly sensitive and selective quantification even in the presence of high excess of ascorbic acid. The selected conditions for the electrochemical sensing were 5 s accumulation at ?0.300 V under stirring and quantification in a 0.050 M phosphate buffer solution pH 7.40 by differential pulse voltammetry adsorptive‐stripping after medium exchange. The platform allowed the successful application in the quantification of UA in urine.     

Monitoring the manufacturing process of glass fiber reinforced composites with carbon nanotube buckypaper sensor

Buckypapers are free-standing porous mats of entangled CNT ropes cohesively bounded by van der waals interactions, and can be used to monitor the manufacturing process of glass fiber reinforced composite. In this paper, the buckypaper (BP) was fabricated with monodispersion of multi-wall carbon nanotubes via spray-vacuum filtration, and its morphology and pore size distribution were characterized by scanning electron microscope and nitrogen adsorption/desorption. The resistance of the BP sensor was obtained using a four-point probe method, and the resistance changes could be related to phase changes of the resin matrix,. Experimental results show that the BP sensor embedded in the glass/epoxy composite laminates has indicated a relative resistance change from −2.9% to 226.5% during the manufacturing process. In addition, the temperature sensitivity of a pristine BP sensor and a BP sensor embedded in composite were also characterized. The results demonstrate that the effect of resin phase changes on the resistance changes of a BP sensor is greater than that of the temperature during composite manufacturing.     

O3 and SO2 sensing concept on extended surface of B12N12 nanocages modified by Nickel decoration: A comprehensive DFT study

Adsorption of SO₂ and O₃ molecules on pristine boron nitride (B₁₂N₁₂) and Ni-decorated B₁₂N₁₂ nano-cages has been systemically investigated through density functional theory (DFT) methods. Adsorption energies (thermodynamics), bond distances, charge analysis, dipole moments, orbital analysis and density of states are calculated by van der Waals DFT method (MPW1PW91) functional. The adsorption energies of O₃ and SO₂ on pristine B₁₂N₁₂ are about −143.8 and −14.0 kJ mol⁻¹, respectively. The interaction energies of O₃ and SO₂ with pristine B₁₂N₁₂ are indicative of chemisorption and physisorption, respectively. Ni-decorated B₁₂N₁₂ (Ni@BN) enhances adsorption of both O₃ and SO₂ species. The interaction energies for adsorption of SO₂ are about −166 and −277 kJ mol⁻¹ whereas the corresponding energies for O₃ are −362 and −396 kJ mol⁻¹ for configuration A and B, respectively. These observations show that functionalized B₁₂N₁₂ are highly sensitive toward SO₂ and O₃ molecules.     

Rapid separation and simultaneous quantitative determination of 13 constituents in Psoraleae Fructus by a single marker using high‐performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection

Psoraleae Fructus is one of the most popular traditional Chinese medicines. Coumarins, flavonoids, and meroterpenes are the main contributors to the biological activity of Psoraleae Fructus. In this study, a new method for the quality control of Psoraleae Fructus was developed, through the quantitative analysis of multicomponents by single marker with diode array detector. Thirteen components, including psoralenoside, isopsoralenoside, psoralen, isopsoralen, psoralidin, neobavaisoflavone, bavachin, corylin, isobavachalcone, corylifol A, bavachinin, bavachalcone, and bakuchiol were rapidly separated and identified within 12 min by the newly developed method. The feasibility and reliability of this method were corroborated. The method was also compared to the external standard method and detection by corona charged aerosol detector. The results of percent difference (%) and cos (θ) have shown that there were no significant differences observed between the quantitative analysis of multicomponents by single marker and external standard method analyses; psoralen and isopsoralen were undetectable with the corona charged aerosol detector due to their but the sensitivity for all the compounds except bakuchiol detected by corona charged aerosol detector are higher than those obtained by diode array detector. In addition, the newly method developed was applied to the quality evaluation of Chinese patent medicines containing Psoraleae Fructus.     

基于捕集柱阵列的制备型二维液相色谱纯化烟草中的4个组分

二维液相色谱(2D-LC)因具有较高的峰容量,在复杂样品的分离分析中获得了广泛的关注。然而,制备型2D-LC以纯化高纯单体为目标,在方法开发和设备构成等方面与分析型2D-LC有较大的不同,目前尚未得到充分的开发,在大规模的制备纯化中应用较少。本文以一套制备液相色谱模块为分离系统,以稀释泵、切换阀和捕集柱阵列为接口,构建了新型的制备型2D-LC系统,旨在规模化纯化多个活性成分。以烟叶中可以用作医药原料的烟碱、绿原酸、芦丁和茄尼醇等组分为目标物,考察了不同类型填料对样品的捕集效率、过载条件下的色谱保留行为等,优化了制备色谱条件。进而利用在线2D-LC系统实现了烟叶提取物的纯化,通过一次运行获得了4个高纯化合物。该系统具有中压色谱纯化成本低、系统在线运行自动化程度高、稳定性好及容易放大等优点。烟叶中活性化学成分的回收利用对促进烟草行业的发展及带动地方农业经济开发具有重大的意义。