This paper presents comprehensive analysis and investigation for 1550nm and 1310nm ring optical modulators employing an electro-optic polymer infiltrated silicon-plasmonic hybrid phase shifter. The paper falls into two parts which introduce a theoretical modeling framework and performance assessment of these advanced modulators, respectively. In this part, analytical expressions are derived to characterize the coupling effect in the hybrid phase shifter, transmission function of the modulator, and modulator performance parameters. The results can be used as a guideline to design compact and wideband optical modulators using plasmonic technology

Free water surface constructed wetlands (FSCWs) can be used to complement conventional waste water treatment but removal efficiencies are often limited by a high ratio of water volume to biofilm surface area (i.e. high water depth). Floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) consist of floating matrices which can enhance the surface area available for the development of fixed microbial biofilms and provide a platform for plant growth (which can remove pollutants by uptake).  In this study the potential of FTWs for ammoniacal nitrogen (AN) removal was evaluated using experimental mesocosms operated under steady-state flow conditions with ten different treatments (two water depths, two levels of FTW mat coverage, two different plant densities and

This study focused on determining the markers of Macrophage migration inhibitor (MIF), as well as the N-telopeptides of type I bone collagen (NTX), and some other parameters (alkaline phosphatase (ALP), vitamin D (Vit D), calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P), and magnesium (Mg), and their correlation with other parameters in osteoporosis. One hundred ten subjects were involved in the current study. There were two groups of patients: group I (30) women with severe osteoporosis and group II (30) women with mild osteoporosis. For comparison, 50 apparently healthy individuals were included as a control. Serum levels of MIF, and NTX were significantly higher in groups I and II as compared to the control group, which indicate that these two parameters

Background: Rituximab is a chimeric IgG1 kappa immunoglobulin that has been genetically modified to incorporate human constant region sequences together with murine light- and heavy-chain variable region sequences. People use it to treat rheumatoid arthritis and certain malignancies. Objective: The study aimed to assess the potential association between the serum levels of Factor I, CD59, interleukins (IL)-6, and interferon-gamma (IFN)-γ and the response to Rituximab treatment in Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the rheumatology center at Baghdad Teaching Hospital. Ninety adult patients who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and are receiving  Rituximab intravenous i

The direct electron transfer behavior of hemoglobin that is immobilized onto screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE) modified with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and chitosan (CS) was studied in this work. Cyclic voltametry and spectrophotometry were used to characterize the hemoglobin (Hb) bioconjunction with AgNPs and CS. Results of the modified electrode showed quasi-reversible redox peaks with a formal potential of (-0.245 V) versus Ag/AgCl in 0.1 M phosphate buffer solution (PBS), pH7, at a scan rate of 0.1 Vs-1. The charge transfer coefficient (α) was 0.48 and the apparent electron transfer rate constant (Ks) was 0.47 s-1. The electrode was used as a hydrogen peroxide biosensor with a linear response over 3 to 240 µM and a detection li

Abstract

Much attention has been paid for the use of robot arm in various applications. Therefore, the optimal path finding has a significant role to upgrade and guide the arm movement. The essential function of path planning is to create a path that satisfies the aims of motion including, averting obstacles collision, reducing time interval, decreasing the path traveling cost and satisfying the kinematics constraints. In this paper, the free Cartesian space map of 2-DOF arm is constructed to attain the joints variable at each point without collision. The D*algorithm and Euclidean distance are applied to obtain the exact and estimated distances to the goal respectively. The modified Particle Swarm Optimization al

A new modified differential evolution algorithm DE-BEA, is proposed to improve the reliability of the standard DE/current-to-rand/1/bin by implementing a new mutation scheme inspired by the bacterial evolutionary algorithm (BEA). The crossover and the selection schemes of the DE method are also modified to fit the new DE-BEA mechanism. The new scheme diversifies the population by applying to all the individuals a segment based scheme that generates multiple copies (clones) from each individual one-by-one and applies the BEA segment-wise mechanism. These new steps are embedded in the DE/current-to-rand/bin scheme. The performance of the new algorithm has been compared with several DE variants over eighteen benchmark functions including sever

Homomorphic encryption became popular and powerful cryptographic primitive for various cloud computing applications. In the recent decades several developments has been made. Few schemes based on coding theory have been proposed but none of them support unlimited operations with security.   We propose a modified Reed-Muller Code based symmetric key fully homomorphic encryption to improve its security by using message expansion technique. Message expansion with prepended random fixed length string provides one-to-many mapping between message and codeword, thus one-to many mapping between plaintext and ciphertext. The proposed scheme supports both (MOD 2) additive and multiplication operations unlimitedly.   We make an effort to prove