Whey protein based electrosprayed nanospheres for encapsulation and controlled release of bioactive compounds from Tinospora cordifolia extract

The synergistic effects of bioactive compounds of Tinospora cordifolia have insulin mimicking and hypoglycemic activity, however, low bioavailability and poor stability limits its potential. In the present study, an appropriate delivery system was developed for the controlled release of its anti-diabetic activity. The bioactive compounds such as palmatine, berberine and palmatoside had better binding energy as observed in docking studies compared to that of the commercial active compounds. However, as these biocompounds from Tinospora cordifolia are associated with low stability and poor bioavailability, these compounds were encapsulated in a core-shell matrix of whey protein isolate. The bioactive compounds had highest antidiabetic activity in chloroform extract with an IC₅₀ concentration of 11.34 mg/ml. An increase in 28.12% activity was observed in nanoemulsion form with an average size of 82.68 ± 4.37 nm. The bioactive compounds were further encapsulated by electrospray technique for increased stability. The particles had an encapsulation efficiency of 91.2 ± 3.27% with an average particle size of 187 ± 2.71 nm. The kinetic study revealed the complete release of bioactive compounds after 24 h of incubation in buffer solution. This formulation can be further explored as novel nutraceutical delivery system with minimal side effects as compared to their synthetic counterparts. Considering the potential application of this developed technology, further upscaling as well as in-vivo experimentation on small as well as large animals should be performed.     

Modern Template Design and Biological Evaluation of Cephradine-loaded Magnesium Calcium Silicate Nanocomposites as an Inhibitor for Nosocomial Bacteria in Biomedical Applications

Silicon - Magnesium calcium silicate nanostructures (MCSNS) loaded with (0.0, 0.6, 0.9, and 1.2 wt%) of Cephradine-drug consisting of mesoporous particles were functionally prepared by sol-gel...     

Improved authentication and computation of medical data transmission in the secure IoT using hyperelliptic curve cryptography

The Journal of Supercomputing - Data transmission is a great challenge in any network environment. However, medical data collected from IoT devices need to be transmitted at high speed to ensure...     

Automatic construction of quadrilateral network of curves from triangular meshes

The aim of this study is to propose a method for building quadrilateral network of curves automatically from a huge number of triangular meshes. The curve net can be served as the framework of automatic surface reconstruction. The proposed method mainly includes three stages: mesh simplification, quadrangulation and curve net generation. Mesh simplification is employed to reduce the number of meshes in accordance with a quadratic error metric for each vertex. Additional post-processing criteria are also employed to improve the shape of the reduced meshes. For quadrangulation, a front composed of a sequence of edges is introduced. An algorithm is proposed to combine each pair of triangles along the front. A new front is then formed and quadrangulation is continued until all triangles are combined or converted. For curve net generation, each edge of quadrilateral meshes is projected onto the triangular meshes to acquire a set of slicing points first. A constrained curve fitting is then employed to convert all sets of slicing points into B-spline curves, with appropriate continuity conditions across adjacent curves. Several examples have been presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method and its application in automatic surface reconstruction.     

Vacuum preloading combined electroosmotic strengthening of ultra-soft soil

To assess the effectiveness of vacuum preloading combined electroosmotic strengthening of ultra-soft soil and study the mechanism of the process, a comprehensive experimental investigation was performed. A laboratory test cell was designed and applied to evaluate the vacuum preloading combined electroosmosis. Several factors were taken into consideration, including the directions of the electroosmotic current and water induced by vacuum preloading and the replenishment of groundwater from the surrounding area. The results indicate that electroosmosis together with vacuum preloading improve the soil strength greatly, with an increase of approximately 60%, and reduce the water content of the soil on the basis of consolidation of vacuum preloading, howeve~ further settlement is not obvious with only 1.7 mm. The reinforcement effect of vacuum preloading combined electroosmosis is better than that of electroosmosis after vacuum preloading. Elemental analysis using X-ray fluorescence proves that the soil strengthening during electroosmotic period in this work is mainly caused by electroosmosis-induced electrochemical reactions, the concentrations of Al2O3 in the VPCEO region increase by 2.2%, 1.5%, and 0.9% at the anode, the midpoint between the electrodes, and the cathode, respectively.     

Flexural strengthening of concrete beams with CFRP laminates bonded into slits

Near surface mounted (NSM) strengthening technique using carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminate strips was applied for doubling the load carrying capacity of concrete beams failing in bending. This objective was attained and the deformational capacity of the strengthened beams was similar to the corresponding reference beams. The NSM technique has provided a significant increment of the load at serviceability limit state, as well as, the stiffness after concrete cracking. The maximum strain in the CFRP laminates has attained values between 62% and 91% of its ultimate strain. A numerical strategy was developed to simulate the deformational behaviour of RC beams strengthened by NSM technique. Not only the load carrying capacity of the tested beams was well predicted, but also the corresponding deflection.     

Fabrication and characterization of direct patterning ferroelectric Sr0.9Bi2.1Ta2O9 thin films by photosensitive sol–gel solution

Photosensitive ferroelectric Sr_0.9Bi_2.1Ta₂O₉ (SBT) precursor solutions were synthesized using strontium ethoxide chelated with ethylacetoacetone, tetramethylheptanedionato bismuth and tantalum ethoxide chelated with ethylacetoacetone. SBT thin films with 200 nm thickness were prepared on Pt/TiO₂/SiO₂/Si substrates using the spin coating method. As UV light exposure time to the SBT thin film increased, the intensity of the UV absorption peak of the metal β-diketonate decreased due to metal–oxygen–metal bond formation, which led to decreased solubility of SBT thin film. The solubility difference enabled direct patterning of thin films that had ferroelectric properties. The ferroelectric properties of the UV irradiated SBT thin films were superior to those of the non-UV irradiated films. Pr/Ps and 2 Pr values (at 3 V) of SBT thin films improved approximately 8% and 5%, respectively, with UV irradiation.     

Are major economies on track to achieve their pledges for 2020? An assessment of domestic climate and energy policies

Many of the major greenhouse gas emitting countries have planned and/or implemented domestic mitigation policies, such as carbon taxes, feed-in tariffs, or standards. This study analyses whether the most effective national climate and energy policies are sufficient to stay on track for meeting the emission reduction proposals (pledges) that countries made for 2020. The analysis shows that domestic policies of India, China and Russia are projected to lead to lower emission levels than the pledged levels. Australia's and the EU's nationally legally binding policy framework is likely to deliver their unconditional pledges, but not the conditional ones. The situation is rather unclear for Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Indonesia. We project that policies of Canada and the USA will reduce 2020 emission levels, but additional policies are probably needed to deliver their pledges in full. The analysis also shows that countries are implementing policies or targets in various areas to a varying degree: all major countries have set renewable energy targets; many have recently implemented efficiency standards for cars, and new emission trading systems are emerging.     

Load frequency control of an autonomous hybrid power system by quasi-oppositional harmony search algorithm

This paper deals with a novel quasi-oppositional harmony search algorithm (QOHSA) based design of load frequency controller for an autonomous hybrid power system model (HPSM) consisting of multiple power generating units and energy storage units. QOHSA is a novel improved version of music inspired harmony search algorithm for obtaining the best solution vectors and faster convergence rate. In this paper, the efficacy of the proposed QOHSA is adjudged for optimized load frequency control (LFC) of an autonomous HPSM. The studied HPSM consists of renewable/non-renewable energy based generating units such as wind turbine generator, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal power generator, diesel engine generator, fuel cell with aqua-electrolyzer while energy storage units consists of battery energy storage system, flywheel energy storage system and ultra-capacitor. Gains of the conventional controllers such as integral (I) controller, proportional–integral (PI) controller and proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller (installed as frequency controller one at a time in the proposed HPSM) is optimized using QOHSA to mitigate any frequency deviation owing to sudden generation/load change. In order to corroborate the efficacy of QOHSA, performance of QOHSA to design optimal LFC is compared with that of other well-established technique such as teaching learning based optimization algorithm (TLBOA). The comparative performances of the HPSM under the action of QOHSA/TLBOA based optimized conventional controllers (I or PI or PID) are investigated and compared in the present work. It is found that the QOHSA tuned frequency controllers improves the overall dynamic response in terms of settling time, overshoot and undershoot in the profile of frequency deviation and power deviation of the studied HPSM.     

Krill herd algorithm for optimal location of distributed generator in radial distribution system

Distributed generator (DG) is recognized as a viable solution for controlling line losses, bus voltage, voltage stability, etc. and represents a new era for distribution systems. This paper focuses on developing an approach for placement of DG in order to minimize the active power loss and energy loss of distribution lines while maintaining bus voltage and voltage stability index within specified limits of a given power system. The optimization is carried out on the basis of optimal location and optimal size of DG. This paper developed a new, efficient and novel krill herd algorithm (KHA) method for solving the optimal DG allocation problem of distribution networks. To test the feasibility and effectiveness, the proposed KH algorithm is tested on standard 33-bus, 69-bus and 118-bus radial distribution networks. The simulation results indicate that installing DG in the optimal location can significantly reduce the power loss of distributed power system. Moreover, the numerical results, compared with other stochastic search algorithms like genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), combined GA and PSO (GA/PSO) and loss sensitivity factor simulated annealing (LSFSA), show that KHA could find better quality solutions.