A conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy study of ion beam mixing at Fe: Polyethylene interface

The effects of ion beam induced atomic mixing at the Fe-Polyethylene interface have been investigated by means of conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy [CEMS]. It is shown that the as deposited and ion beam mixed composites exhibit distinctly different features. In particular, the ion beam mixed composite shows that presence of Fe²⁺ state in polyethylene matrix along with the Fe?C austenite like phase.     

Temperature variation of piezoelectric moduli in oriented poly(γ-methyl L-glutamate)

The real and imaginary components of the complex piezoelectric strain constant, which relates the polarization to the applied stress, have been determined for elongated films of poly(γ-methyl L -glutamate) over the temperature range ?170°C to +170°C at a frequency of 20 Hz. The variation of the piezoelectric constant with temperature is similar for both α-helical and β-form molecular conformations. The sign of piezoelectric polarization is opposite for L and D polymers. A simple model, representing the piezoelectric crystallites as embedded in nonpiezoelectric amorphous regions, is proposed to account for the piezoelectric temperature dispersion curves.     

Provably secure dynamic identity-based three-factor password authentication scheme using extended chaotic maps

With the aim of guaranteeing secure communication through public networks, three-factor password authentication (TF-PWA) scheme plays a key role in many internet applications. Since in TF-PWA scheme, the communicating entities can mutually authenticate each other and generate a shared session key, which will be used for secure exchange of messages in succeeding communication among them. As a result, the TF-PWA schemes gain enormous consideration in recent years. More recently, due to light-weight features of the extended chaotic map, it is also extensively applied in designing of public key encryption, key agreement, image encryption, S-box, hash function, digital signature, password authentication, etc. The aim of this paper was to design a dynamic identity-based three-factor password authentication scheme using extended chaotic map (ECM-TF-PWA) in the random oracle model. The proposed scheme is provably secure based on the intractability assumption of chaotic map-based Diffie–Hellman problem. The informal security analysis gives the evidence that our scheme protects all attacks and provides functionality attributes that are needed in a three-factor authentication system. Besides, the performance discussion shows that our scheme performs better than others in respect of computation and communication cost.     

Simple theoretical model of shear viscosity in isotopic fluid mixtures

We propose a simple hybrid model for the shear viscosity of isotopic fluid mixtures by coupling the contribution of the Stokes–Einstein relation with the existing linear model of Roults's law for the shear viscosity. The calculated values of shear viscosity using this simple hybrid model are found to be in excellent agreement with the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results. The calculated value of the shear viscosity obtained from the theoretical model as well as the MD simulation increases with increasing mass ratio.     

Linear Gaussian affine term structure models with unobservable factors: Calibration and yield forecasting

This paper provides a significant numerical evidence for out-of-sample forecasting ability of linear Gaussian interest rate models with unobservable underlying factors. We calibrate one, two and three factor linear Gaussian models using the Kalman filter on two different bond yield data sets and compare their out-of-sample forecasting performance. One-step ahead as well as four-step ahead out-of-sample forecasts are analyzed based on the weekly data. When evaluating the one-step ahead forecasts, it is shown that a one factor model may be adequate when only the short-dated or only the long-dated yields are considered, but two and three factor models performs significantly better when the entire yield spectrum is considered. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the predictive ability of multi-factor models remains intact far ahead out-of-sample, with accurate predictions available up to one year after the last calibration for one data set and up to three months after the last calibration for the second, more volatile data set. The experimental data denotes two different periods with different yield volatilities, and the stability of model parameters after calibration in both the cases is deemed to be both significant and practically useful. When it comes to four-step ahead predictions, the quality of forecasts deteriorates for all models, as can be expected, but the advantage of using a multi-factor model as compared to a one factor model is still significant.     

Coumarinolignans with Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and NF-κB Inhibitory Activities from the Roots of Waltheria indica

Seven new coumarinolignans, walthindicins A–F (1a, 1b, 2–5, 7), along with five known analogs (6, 8–11), were isolated from the roots of Waltheria indica. The structures of the new compounds are determined by detailed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), circular dichroism (CD) with extensive computational support, and mass spectroscopic data interpretation. Compounds were tested for their antioxidant activity in Human Cervical Cancer cells (HeLa cells). Compounds 1a and 6 showed higher reactive oxygen species (ROS) inhibitory activity at 20 μg/mL when compared with other natural compound-based antioxidants such as ascorbic acid. Considering the role of ROS in nuclear-factor kappa B (NF-κB) activation, compounds 1a and 6 were evaluated for NF-κB inhibitory activity and showed a concentration-dependent inhibition in Human Embryonic Kidney 293 cells (Luc-HEK-293).     

Effect of Nd3+ concentration on CW and pulsed performance of fiber-coupled diode laser pumped Nd:YVO4 laser at 1064 nm

The effect of Nd³⁺ concentration on the CW and Q-switched laser performances at 1064 nm from Nd: YVO₄ has been studied under diode laser pumping in identical laser configuration. The Nd³⁺ concentrations used were 1, 2 and 3 at.% in YVO₄ crystals. Under the CW operations we have compared the thermal lensing effect, slope efficiencies and also the beam quality at the fourth-order degeneracy configuration. Q-switching was done with the help of an acousto-optic modulator and we have compared the pulses obtained from Nd: YVO₄ laser with different doping concentration. It was found that the 1 at.%-doped crystal is the best, offering highest optical-to-optical conversion efficiency (55%), lowest fractional heat load (24%), highest pulse energy (80 μJ) and shortest pulse width (20 ns). It was also found that there was not much difference in performances for 2 and 3 at.%-doped crystals both in CW and Q-switched configurations.