On the Calderón problem in periodic cylindrical domain with partial Dirichlet and Neumann data

We consider the Calderón problem in an infinite cylindrical domain, whose cross section is a bounded domain of the plane. We prove log–log stability in the determination of the isotropic periodic conductivity coefficient from partial Dirichlet data and partial Neumann boundary observations of the solution. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conductivity and dielectric relaxation in various polyvinyl alcohol/ammonium salt composites

We studied electrical conductivity and dielectric relaxation in polyvinyl alcohol/ammonium chloride and polyvinyl alcohol/ammonium acetate composite films. Infrared absorbance showed the presence of H-bonding interaction between the salt and the polymer. X-ray diffraction showed the reduction of the grain size of ordered regions in the polymer matrix after adding salt. Thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) showed water wt% content between 4.2 and 5.8%. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) showed the decrease of the glass transition due to retained water indicating its plasticizer effect. The ac conductivity studied in the frequency range from 10^?1 Hz to 1 MHz and the temperature range from 10 to 150°C is described by the universal law of Jonsher characterizing the charge transport in disordered materials. With NH₄Cl inclusion, the dc conductivity showed a higher value in the vicinity of 4% but with NH₄CH₃CO₂ the dc conductivity decreases monotonically by increasing the salt amount. By using the dielectric permittivity and dielectric modulus we detected three relaxation processes which we attributed to electrode/sample polarization, alpha relaxation and conductivity relaxation respectively.     

Adsorption equilibrium studies for O‐xylene vapour and modified clays system

Tunisian bentonites were used to prepare three modified clays: two organoclays by intercalating respectively didodecyldimethylammoniumbromide (DDMAC) and hexadecyltrimethylammoniumbromide (HDTMAC), and synthesis of NaX zeolite. The X‐ray diffraction, infrared and thermogravimetric analyses enabled us to differentiate between the structures obtained. Clay materials systems were used as adsorbent for the investigation of the adsorption isotherms and saturation capacity of O‐xylene, a toxic volatile organic compound, by gravimetric method at three different temperatures 20, 30, and 40 °C. The absolute values of the volatile organic compound adsorbed amounts in the intercalated clays (604 mg g^?1) were higher than for the zeolite (296 mg g^?1). The adsorption isotherms were analysed by the Freundlich and Langmuir equations. The latter was found to describe better the equilibrium adsorption data. Mass transfer coefficient of O‐xylene is evaluated using uptake curve method, and all values are in the order of 10^?2 s^?1. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reactive and adaptive monitoring to secure aggregation in wireless sensor networks

Data aggregation is considered as one of the fundamental distributed data processing procedures for saving the energy and minimizing the medium access layer contention in wireless sensor networks. However, sensor networks are likely to be deployed in an untrusted environment, which make them vulnerable against several attacks. A compromised node may forge arbitrary aggregation value and mislead the base station into trusting a false reading. Secure in-network aggregation can detect such manipulation. But, as long as such subversive activity is, reliable aggregation result can not be obtained. In contrast, the collection of individual sensor node values is robust and solves the problem of availability, but in an inefficient way. Our work seeks to bridge this gap in secure data collection. We propose a framework that enhances availability with efficiency close to that of in-network aggregation avoiding over-reliance on sensors. To achieve this, we design a scheme that is built on one core concept: no trust is supposed in any sensor. Therefore, we design a two hierarchical levels of monitoring to ensure the integrity and the accuracy of aggregate result, only when necessary, i.e. only when malicious activities are detected. Relying on this new type of monitoring mechanism, the framework has the ability to recover from aggregator failure without neglecting energy efficiency, providing thus much higher availability than other security protocols.     

Efforts in Bioprospecting Research: A Survey of Novel Anticancer Phytochemicals Reported in the Last Decade

Bioprospecting natural products to find prominent agents for medical application is an area of scientific endeavor that has produced many clinically used bioactive compounds, including anticancer agents. These compounds come from plants, microorganisms, and marine life. They are so-called secondary metabolites that are important for a species to survive in the hostile environment of its respective ecosystem. The kingdom of Plantae has been an important source of traditional medicine in the past and is also enormously used today as an exquisite reservoir for detecting novel bioactive compounds that are potent against hard-to-treat maladies such as cancer. Cancer therapies, especially chemotherapies, are fraught with many factors that are difficult to manage, such as drug resistance, adverse side effects, less selectivity, complexity, etc. Here, we report the results of an exploration of the databases of PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar for bioactive anticancer phytochemicals published between 2010 and 2020. Our report is restricted to new compounds with strong-to-moderate bioactivity potential for which mass spectroscopic structural data are available. Each of the phytochemicals reported in this review was assigned to chemical classes with peculiar anticancer properties. In our survey, we found anticancer phytochemicals that are reported to have selective toxicity against cancer cells, to sensitize MDR cancer cells, and to have multitarget effects in several signaling pathways. Surprisingly, many of these compounds have limited follow-up studies. Detailed investigations into the synthesis of more functional derivatives, chemical genetics, and the clinical relevance of these compounds are required to achieve safer chemotherapy.     

A Novel Screen-Printed and Carbon Paste Electrodes for Potentiometric Determination of Uranyl(II) Ion in Spiked Water Samples

Four new ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) based on poly-(1-4)-2-amino-2-deoxy-β-D-glucan (chitosan) ionophore were constructed for determination of uranyl ion (UO₂(II)) over wide concentration ranges. The linear concentration range for carbon paste electrodes (CPEs) was 1 × 10^–6–1 × 10^–2 mol/L with a detection limit of 1 × 10^–6 mol/L and that for the screen-printed electrode (SPEs) was 1 × 10^–5–1 × 10^–1 mol/L with a detection limit of 8 × 10^–6 mol/L. The slopes of the calibration graphs were 29.90 ± 0.40 and 29.10 ± 0.60 mV/decade for CPEs with dibutylphthalate (DBP) (electrode I) and o-nitrophenyloctylether (o-NPOE) (electrode II) as plasticizers, respectively. Also, the SPEs showed good potentiometric slopes of 29.70 ± 0.30 and 28.20 ± 1.20 mV/decade with DBP (electrode III) and o-NPOE (electrode IV), respectively. The electrodes showed stable and reproducible potential over a period of 54, 62, 101 and 115 days for electrodes I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The electrodes manifested advantages of low resistance, very fast response and, most importantly, good selectivities relative to a wide variety of other cations except Ce(III) ion which interfere seriously. The results obtained compared well with those obtained using atomic absorption spectrometry.     

The modular class of a regular Poisson manifold and the Reeb class of its symplectic foliation

We show that, for any regular Poisson manifold, there is an injective natural linear map from the first leafwise cohomology space into the first Poisson cohomology space which maps the Reeb class of the symplectic foliation to the modular class of the Poisson manifold. A Riemannian interpretation of the Reeb class will give some geometric criteria which enables one to tell whether the modular class vanishes or not. It also enables one to construct examples of unimodular Poisson manifolds and others which are not unimodular. Finally, we prove that the first leafwise cohomology space is an invariant of Morita equivalence. To cite this article: A. Abouqateb, M. Boucetta, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 337 (2003).     

Two Proposed Blind Equalizers Using Different Constellation Matched Error Functions for QAM Signals

Although Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) is effective to equalize non-minimum phase channels blindly, it suffers from residual intersymbol interference (ISI) and large Mean Square Error (MSE) when applied to higher order constellations (QAM). Methods based on cost function matched to the signal constellation namely alphabet matched algorithm (AMA) were previously reported and proves its superiority on CMA concerning the MSE. Thus dual mode algorithms between CMA and AMA were introduced. A hybrid technique combining CMA and AMA using a cosine square function as a constellation matched error (CME) was lately reported. In this paper two different CME functions are introduced. The MSE of the proposed algorithms are calculated using Matlab simulation under multipath slow fading channels for different signal to noise ratios (SNR) and different levels of QAM constellations. A comparison is established among them. Depicted results show the effectiveness of the two proposed CME functions. Hebat-Allah M. Mourad received her B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical communication engineering from Cairo University, Egypt, in 1983, 1987 and 1994 respectively. Since 1983, she has been with the Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, and is currently associate professor there. Her research interests include optical fiber communications, mobile and satellite communications.     

Link Adaptation Based on Explicit Channel Estimation for Throughput Maximization Over Rayleigh Fading Channels

Link Adaptation (LA) has been proposed in the literature as a means of increasing the throughput obtained by each user in wireless communication systems. Due to its significant simplicity, LA has even been adopted as the standard adaptive coding technique for the next generation mobile communication system known as EDGE. In this paper, we present a novel link adaptation technique, valid for use in the case of Rayleigh fading wireless channels. The new technique is based on the blind channel estimation algorithm usually used for combating inter-symbol interference (ISI). The algorithm is presented and its efficiency in providing the maximum available throughput is illustrated by means of computer simulations.     

Reactivity of molecular dioxygen towards a series of isostructural dichloroiron(III) complexes with tripodal tetraamine ligands: general access to mu-oxodiiron(III) complexes and effect of alpha-fluorination on the reaction kinetics

We have synthesized the mono, di-, and tri-alpha-fluoro ligands in the tris(2-pyridylmethyl)amine (TPA) series, namely, FTPA, F(2)TPA and F(3)TPA, respectively. Fluorination at the alpha-position of these nitrogen-containing tripods shifts the oxidation potential of the ligand by 45-70 mV per added fluorine atom. The crystal structures of the dichloroiron(II) complexes with FTPA and F(2)TPA reveal that the iron center lies in a distorted octahedral geometry comparable to that already found in TPAFeCl(2). All spectroscopic data indicate that the geometry is retained in solution. These three isostructural complexes all react with molecular dioxygen to yield stable mu-oxodiiron(III) complexes. Crystal structure analyses are reported for each of these three mu-oxo compounds. With TPA, a symmetrical structure is obtained for a dicationic compound with the tripod coordinated in the kappa(4)N coordination mode. With FTPA, the compound is a neutral mu-oxodiiron(III) complex with a kappa(3)N coordination mode of the ligand. Oxygenation of the F(2)TPA complex gave a neutral unsymmetrical compound, the structure of which is reminiscent of that already found with the trifluorinated ligand. On reduction, all mu-oxodiiron(III) complexes revert to the starting iron(II) species. The oxygenation reaction parallels the well-known formation of mu-oxo derivatives from dioxygen in the chemistry of porphyrins reported almost three decades ago. The striking feature of the series of iron(II) precursors is the effect of the ligand on the kinetics of oxygenation of the complexes. Whereas the parent complex undergoes 90 % conversion over 40 h, the monofluorinated ligand provides a complex that has fully reacted after 30 h, whereas the reaction time for the complex with the difluorinated ligand is only 10 h. Analysis of the spectroscopic data reveals that formation of the mu-oxo complexes proceeds in two distinct reversible kinetic steps with k(1) approximately 10 k(2). For TPAFeCl(2) and FTPAFeCl(2) only small variations in the k(1) and k(2) values are observed. By contrast, F(2)TPAFeCl(2) exhibits k(1) and k(2) values that are ten times higher. These differences in kinetics are interpreted in the light of structural and electronic effects, especially the Lewis acidity at the metal center. Our results suggest coordination of dioxygen as an initial step in the process leading to formation of mu-oxodiiron(III) compounds, by contrast with an unlikely outer-sphere reduction of dioxygen, which generally occurs at negative potentials.