(SoE) School of Engineering

Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.

Shiv Nadar University

Micro-expression has emerged as a promising modality in affective computing due to its high objectivity in emotion detection. Despite the higher recognition accuracy provided by the deep learning models, there are still significant scope for improvements in micro-expression recognition techniques. The presence of micro-expressions in small-local regions of the face, as well as the limited size of available databases, continue to limit the accuracy in recognizing micro-expressions. In this work, we propose a facial micro-expression recognition model using 3D residual attention network named MERANet to tackle such challenges. The proposed model takes advantage of spatial-temporal attention and channel attention together, to learn deeper fine-grained subtle features for classification of emotions. Further, the proposed model encompasses both spatial and temporal information simultaneously using the 3D kernels and residual connections. Moreover, the channel features and spatio-temporal features are re-calibrated using the channel and spatio-temporal attentions, respectively in each residual module. Our attention mechanism enables the model to learn to focus on different facial areas of interest. The experiments are conducted on benchmark facial micro-expression datasets. A superior performance is observed as compared to the state-of-the-art for facial micro-expression recognition on benchmark data.

World University root node

Computer Science and Engineering

ICVGIP

MERANet: Facial Micro-Expression Recognition using 3D Residual Attention Network

Photoconductive Antennas (PCA) are widely used for terahertz (THz) generation and detection. These PCAs build the basis for future 6G communication as they provide a high data rate and broad bandwidth. In this work, interdigitated photoconductive antenna (IPCA) has been designed and optimized for better performance in terms of THz radiation. The proposed IPCA is made of LT-GaAs substrate material deposited on SI-GaAs. Silver material has been assumed for the IPCA electrode structure. Moreover, the dependence of IPCA on the incident laser parameters such as its wavelength (λ&nbsp;=&nbsp;800, 1060, and 1550 nm) and pulse duration (100–500 fs) has been investigated theoretically for different teeth widths (We&nbsp;=&nbsp;500, 100, 50, and 20 nm). The performance of the IPCA with various parameters such as average carrier density, conductance, total photocurrent, THz radiated power, and electric field strength, has been analyzed. The results show maximum THz electric field strength of 20.85 V/m for a photo-generated current of 1.887 A and enormous bandwidth beyond 14.9 THz with 20 nm teeth-width-based IPCA when illuminated with 100 fs 800 nm laser pulses. The proposed IPCA structure provides enhanced THz radiation compared to conventional PCA. This investigation helps the researchers to develop and integrate IPCA for future wireless communications as well as for a variety of applications, such as time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), medical imaging, sensing, and security-related applications.

Electrical Engineering

Microwave and Optical Technology Letters

6G and beyond: Investigation of broadband terahertz interdigitated photoconductive antenna by exploiting laser parameters

Chemical Engineering

I&EC Research

Effect of Inlet Contactors of Splitting Distributors for Parallel Microchannels

River sand is used as fine aggregate in concrete and cement mortar. The rapid expansion in construction activity witnessed in the country over the last decade has led to an incessant demand for river sand. Hence river sand is being excessively mined at the riverbeds and is leading to fast depletion of the precious natural resource. This presses the need for exploration of alternative materials which can be adopted as fine aggregate by construction industry to build concrete and masonry buildings. One possible candidate is coal bottom ash. Coal-based thermal power plants produce tonnes of coal bottom ash along with fly ash during power generation. Coal bottom ash is coarse particles settled at the bottom of cooling towers. The coarse nature of coal bottom ash particles can be harnessed and explored. The present study focuses on utilization of coal bottom ash as fine aggregate in cement mortars. River sand is fully and partially replaced by coal bottom ash. Five different proportions of river sand being replaced with coal bottom ash are adopted, namely 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100%. Performance of replacement of river sand with coal bottom ash is assessed in terms of particle size distribution (PSD) curves, workability and mechanical properties. Sieve analysis and mortar flow table test are conducted to assess the PSD curves and workability. Compression tests are conducted on cement mortar cubes (with different proportion of coal bottom ash) to determine compressive strength. Further, compression test is conducted on cement mortar cylinders in a displacement-controlled universal testing machine (UTM) to obtain the stress–strain curve and modulus of elasticity. The study found that river sand replaced with up to 50% coal bottom ash exhibited satisfactory performance as fine aggregate in cement mortar.

Civil Engineering

Sustainable Cities and Resilience

Replacement of River Sand with Coal Bottom Ash as Fine Aggregate in Cement Mortar

Mining location based social networks to understand the citizen’s check-in patterns JO &nbsp;- Computing Analyzing and understanding the movement patterns of the citizen’s with in a city, plays an important role in urban and transportation planning. Though many recent research papers focused on mining LBSN services data and performed in-depth analysis of users’ mobility patterns and their impact on their social inter-connections and friends. This paper focuses on understanding the Citizen’s movement patterns of socially interconnected users in friendship networks, by analyzing their spatial-temporal footprints/check-ins. The aim of this paper is to find the impact of structural patterns hidden in the nodes of a friendship network and external environment changes on the check-in patterns of the users. First, we classify each spatial check-in event based on its cause into either self reinforcing behavior or social influence or external stimulus. Then we mine the collective behavior of the all the users during some special events.

Fulltext

Computing

Mining location based social networks to understand the citizen’s check-in patterns

The treatment of domestic sewage using a moving bed hybrid <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/bioreactor">bioreactor</a> (MBHBR) was investigated by varying the concentrations of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/chemical-oxygen-demand">chemical oxygen demand</a> (COD) (156&nbsp;±&nbsp;14-1141&nbsp;±&nbsp;78 mg/L), ammonia (NH3-N) (2&nbsp;±&nbsp;0.08-48.24&nbsp;±&nbsp;0.93 mg/L), phosphorus (PO4-P) (97&nbsp;±&nbsp;3.2-281&nbsp;±&nbsp;2.65 mg/L), and hydraulic retention times (HRTs). Initially, the reactor was operated at start-up mode (COD: 156&nbsp;±&nbsp;14 mg/L), and gradually the COD concentrations were increased from phase-I (257&nbsp;±&nbsp;24 mg/L) to phase-V (1141&nbsp;±&nbsp;78 mg/L) by reducing the HRTs from 48 to 3 h. A significant improvement in COD removal, maximum up to 96%, was observed at a concentration of 858&nbsp;±&nbsp;51 mg/L (phase-IV), then a sudden drop up to 81% was observed at a higher concentration of 1141&nbsp;±&nbsp;78 mg/L (phase-V). Due to the increase in COD concentrations, average NH3-N removal was dropped from 85 to 32% from phase-I to Phase-V, respectively. In addition, the stability of MBHBR was studied to understand its performance in shut-down and shock loading phases. The co-treatment of sewage and leachate was also performed in MBHBR (COD: 864-881 mg/L and HRT: 6 h), which showed a COD removal of 77%–80% and NH3-N removal of 60%–94%. Proteobacteria was identified as a predominant species in MBHBR, which played a significant role in the co-treatment of sewage and leachate. The maximum biodegradation rate (<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msub is="true"><mrow is="true"><mi is="true">r</mi></mrow><mrow is="true"><mi mathvariant="normal" is="true">max</mi></mrow></msub></math>) and half-saturation constant (<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><msub is="true"><mrow is="true"><mi is="true">K</mi></mrow><mrow is="true"><mi mathvariant="normal" is="true">s</mi></mrow></msub></math>) were estimated as 13.3 mg/L h and 361.8 mg/L, respectively.

Environmental Technology & Innovation

<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352186421006465">Treatment of domestic sewage and leachate using a moving bed hybrid bioreactor</a>

Mechanical Engineering

Procedia CIRP

A dynamic job rotation scheduling conceptual framework by a human representing digital twin

Phubbing is defined as ignoring people with whom you have a face-to-face relationship to attend to smartphones. The phenomenon of phubbing particularly affects the teenage and young segments of the population. The main problem lies in the impact it has on individuals’ social relationship. A lack of validated instruments to diagnose this phenomenon has been observed amongst the Spanish-speaking youth. The objective pursued with this research was to analyse the structural validity and reliability of the Spanish scale in a sample of 454 Peruvian university students. A reliability study was carried out following Cronbach and McDonald, complemented with an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The results show good reliability and validity values. Finally, some aspects associated with users’ profiles in relation to the scale were discussed too. A need exists to have adapted instruments which permit to measure emerging social threats such as phubbing, so that risk profiles can be identified and for us to be able to act in time. Most of the students surveyed regularly engaged in phubbing, and a significant percentage of them had personal and social problems because of this, including lack of sleep hours or arguments with friends and relatives, to quote but two. &nbsp;

NAER

<a href="https://naerjournal.ua.es/article/view/v10n2-1">Scale for Measuring Phubbing in Peruvian University Students: Adaptation, Validation and Results of Its Application</a>

The crop diseases can’t detected accurately by only analysing separate disease basis. Only with the help of making comprehensive analysis framework, users can get the predictions of most expected diseases. In this research, IOT and machine learning based technique capable of processing acquisition, analysis and detection of crop health information in the same platform is introduced. The proposed system supports distinguished services by monitoring crop and also managed its data, devices and models. This system also supports data sharing and communication with the help of IOT using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and maintains high communication standards even in bad communication environment. Therefore, IOT and machine learning ensures the high accuracy of disease prediction in crop. The proposed integrated system is capable of detecting health of crop through analysis of multi-spectral images captured through the IOT associated UAV. The various machine learning is also applied to test the performance of our system and compared with the existing disease detection methods.&nbsp;

Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research

Detecting Crop Health using Machine Learning Techniques in Smart Agriculture System

Worldwide, solid waste disposal is a serious problem rising day by day with the increase in population. Open dumping and incineration is a common practice for municipal solid waste disposal in India and other developing countries. This practice raises the acute pollution problem as well as a health risk. There is an urgent need for sustainable techniques to address this problem to generate a minimal impact on the environment. There are many sustainable methods for solid waste management, viz., sanitary landfilling, composting, vermicomposting, anaerobic digestions, and ethanol production. Among all the microbes and biological agents are playing a very important role. This chapter presents a detailed review of solid waste management and sustainable solution to this problem with the help of microbes and biological agent.

Environmental and Agricultural Microbiology: Applications for Sustainability

<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119525899.ch18">Role of Microbes and Microbial Consortium in Solid Waste Management</a>