The effect of magnetic and optic field in water electrolysis

Hydrogen production via water electrolysis was studied under the effect of magnetic and optical field. A diode solid state laser at blue, green and red were utilized as optical field source. Magnetic bar was employed as external magnetic field. The green laser has shown a greatest effect in hydrogen production due to its non-absorbance properties in the water. Thus its intensity of electrical field is high enough to dissociation of hydronium and hydroxide ions during orientation toward polarization of water. The potential to break the autoprotolysis and generate the auto-ionization is the mechanism of optical field to reveal the hydrogen production in water electrolysis. The magnetic field effect is more dominant to enhance the hydrogen production. The diamagnetic property of water has repelled the present of magnetic in water. Consequently the water splitting occurs due to the repulsive force induced by the external magnetic field. The magnetic distributed more homogenous in the water to involve more density of water molecule. As a result hydrogen production due to magnetic field is higher in comparison to optical field. However the combination both fields have generated superior effect whereby the hydrogen yields nine times higher in comparison to conventional water electrolysis.     

Realization of high transparent conductive vanadium-doped zinc oxide thin films onto flexible PEN substrates by RF-magnetron sputtering using nanopowders targets

RF-magnetron sputtering has been carried out at room temperature to deposit vanadium-doped zinc oxide (VZO) nanostructured thin films onto flexible PEN substrates. The sputtering targets of compacted VZO nanopowder have been prepared using a rapid and inexpensive Sol-Gel synthesis followed by a supercritical drying process. Structural and morphological study of VZO particles in the targets has been carried out via X-ray diffraction and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The nanostructured thin films have been characterized to analyze the structural, morphological, electrical and optical properties as a function of vanadium content from 0 to 4 at.%. Structural characterization of VZO thin films revealed that the deposited thin films have been grown preferentially along (002) and exhibit the hexagonal wurtzite structure. The cross-sectional and microstructural analysis performed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) confirms the columnar growth of nanostructures. The deposited thin films exhibit transparent behavior with transmission >70% in the visible region. It has been observed that nanostructured thin films with vanadium content of 2% have demonstrated the lowest resistivity (6.71 × 10^?4 Ω cm) with Hall mobility of 10.62 cm² V^?1 s^?1. The deposited vanadium doped nanostructured thin films would have potential applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices.     

An energy-efficient cuckoo search algorithm for virtual machine placement in cloud computing data centers

The Journal of Supercomputing - The advent of virtualization technology has created a huge potential application for cloud computing. In virtualization, a large hardware resource is often broken...     

ZnO quantum dot based thin films as promising electron transport layer: Influence of surface-to-volume ratio on the photoelectric properties

ZnO quantum dots (QDs) with average particle size of 4.4 nm were prepared using a low temperature processing solvothermal route. ZnO QD based thin films were then prepared from the ZnO QD based solution using spin coating technique and annealed at 250, 350 and 450 °C. The average grain size and energy band gap of ZnO were respectively increased and decreased from 5.5 to 22.9 nm and 3.37 to 3.27 eV upon increasing the annealing temperature up to 450 °C. The photoluminescence analysis showed that the as-coated ZnO film and ZnO film annealed at 250 °C have high density of oxygen vacancies; these defects were reduced upon increasing the temperature to 350 and 450 °C. The photoelectric properties of the films were strongly affected by the grain size and the defects present in the films. The photo-to-dark current ratio (PDCR) was decreased from 3723 to 371%, whereas the responsivity was increased from 1.25 to 218 mA/W with the increase of temperature to 450 °C. As-coated and 250 °C-annealed films exhibited better photoresponse than others in terms of PDCR, rise time and fall time due to their larger surface-to-volume ratio, making them promising candidate as electron transport layer in perovskite solar cells.     

A reappraisal of mouth-to-mouth ventilation during bystander-initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a statement for Healthcare Professionals from the Ventilation Working Group of the Basic Life Support and Pediatric Life Support Subcommittees, American Heart Association

There is growing recognition that race and socioeconomic variables in health research demand greater attention. The investigators compared racial differences in health definition, health value, and health-promoting behavior of 62 pairs (N = 124) of Black and White college women matched on age, body mass index, and socioeconomic status. Both groups of women had similar definitions of health, valued health to the same extent, and reported similar levels of self-actualization, health responsibility, exercise, and stress management. Black women, relative to White women, practiced fewer nutrition behaviors and had less interpersonal support. Interventions to reduce health risk associated with nutrition practices of Black women are warranted and further research is needed to explore the influence of the social structure of educational institutions on interpersonal relationships and other health behaviors. When socioeconomic status is taken into consideration, Black and White college women demonstrated more commonalities in health behavior than differences.     

Guanine oxidation signal enhancement in single strand DNA with polyacrylonitrile/polyaniline (PAN/PAni) hybrid nanofibers

Pure polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and polyacrylonitrile/polyaniline (PAN/PAni) hybrid nanofibers (NFs) were produced via electrospinning and used to monitor guanine oxidation in single strand DNA (ssDNA) by electrochemical methods. Two different methodologies were conducted. First, pre‐synthesized PAni was added into electrospinning PAN solution and electrospun into composite PAN/PAni nanofibrous structure on cylindrical pencil graphite (PGE) surface. In the second route, PAN NFs were electrospun on a PGE surfaces and polymerization of PAni was conducted on the surfaces of the as‐spun PAN NFs. NFs were kept at ?18 °C in a refrigerator for several days. ssDNA was immobilized on the prepared NFs and guanine oxidation signals were observed for each system. The results revealed that use of PAN NFs enhanced signal intensity from 0.92 µA (PGE) to 1.04 µA (PAN NFs). Addition of PAni to PAN increased signal intensity to 1.23 µA. When the PAN NF surfaces were coated with PAni, signal enhancement continued to increase up to 4.19 µA for fourth day and decreased again when PAni‐coated NFs were kept at ?18 °C in the refrigerator. Since the prepared system is fast and cheap, it is promising for application in DNA biosensor devices. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 45567.     

Oscillatory structure–property correlation in azelate polyols and thermoplastic polyurethanes

Azelate polyols of 2000 g mol^?1 have been successfully prepared via esterification of renewable azelaic acid with linear diols containing different number of CH₂ repeating units. Structure–property correlation of the azelate polyols had been evaluated in thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs). TPUs based on azelate polyols of longer chained linear diols with >4 CH₂ repeat units retained higher degrees of crystallinity associated with the polyol soft segment. The ratio of hydrogen bonded urethane in the hard segment to free urethane phase mixed with the soft segment in the TPUs showed a complex oscillating dependence with increased number of CH₂ repeating unit in the linear diols of azelate polyols. Correspondingly, static and dynamic properties of TPUs also showed the oscillatory dependence, whereby dynamic properties maximized with odd number of CH₂ repeating unit and material strength maximized with even number of CH₂ repeating unit. The results therefore can be used as guide to select appropriate azelate polyols to target specific TPU performance. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 46258.     

The effects of a theory‐based summary writing tool on students' summary writing

This paper focuses on the design and evaluation of a theory‐based computer‐assisted summary writing learning environment called Summary Writing‐PAL (SW‐PAL). The SW‐PAL was developed based on four aspects: summarizing strategies, learning theories, prior knowledge, and cognitive load. A quasi‐experiment that involved 58 undergraduates majoring in Computer Science was conducted to examine the effectiveness of SW‐PAL in writing summaries. Two intact classes were selected with 28 and 30 students in control and experimental groups, respectively. The conventional teaching approach was employed in the control group, whereas the SW‐PAL was introduced to the experimental group. Pretest and posttest were administrated to both groups. The findings indicated that SW‐PAL improved students' summary writing performance. A significant variance was noted between intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load among students with varying levels of English proficiency in the experimental group, signifying that the SW‐PAL is more suitable for students with lower language proficiency.     

Compact ultra‐wideband slot antenna with three notched‐band characteristics

A very compact ultra‐wideband (UWB) slot antenna with three L‐shaped slots for notched‐band characteristics is presented in this article. The antenna is designed and fabricated using a new stepped slot with different size, integrated in the ground plane, and excited by a 50 Ω microstrip transmission line. The stepped slot is used to minimize the dimensions of the antenna and to achieve an impedance bandwidth between 2.65 and 11.05 GHz with voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) less than 2. The length of the stepped slot is equal to a quarter wavelength to create a resonance in the desired frequency. Three L‐shaped slots with various sizes are etched in the ground plane to reject three frequency bands in C‐band (3.7‐4.2 GHz), WLAN (5.15‐5.825 GHz), and X‐band (7.25‐7.75 GHz), respectively. The notched‐band frequency can be controlled by changing the length of the L‐shaped slot. The proposed antenna has a very small size (20.25 × 8 × 1.27 mm³) compared with previous works. The measured and simulated results show a good agreement in terms of radiation pattern and impedance matching.     

Human facial expression recognition using curvelet feature extraction and normalized mutual information feature selection

To recognize expressions accurately, facial expression systems require robust feature extraction and feature selection methods. In this paper, a normalized mutual information based feature selection technique is proposed for FER systems. The technique is derived from an existing method, that is, the max-relevance and min-redundancy (mRMR) method. We, however, propose to normalize the mutual information used in this method so that the domination of the relevance or of the redundancy can be eliminated. For feature extraction, curvelet transform is used. After the feature extraction and selection the feature space is reduced by employing linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Finally, hidden Markov model (HMM) is used to recognize the expressions. The proposed FER system (CNF-FER) is validated using four publicly available standard datasets. For each dataset, 10-fold cross validation scheme is utilized. CNF-FER outperformed the existing well-known statistical and state-of-the-art methods by achieving a weighted average recognition rate of 99 % across all the datasets.