Formulation and Characterization of Novel Nanostructured Lipid Carriers with Photoprotective Properties Made from Carnauba Wax,Beeswax, Pumpkin Seed Oil,and UV Filters

Pumpkin seed oil (PSO) with carnauba wax and beeswax was used to develop nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) loaded with a UV filter, Uvinul® A Plus B. The aims of the study were to optimize the concentration of PSO to develop a stable NLC formulation, determine storage stability of the NLC with and without PSO, and the synergistic effect of PSO-NLC with UV filter for photoprotective properties. The physical properties of NLC were optimized based on the mean particle size, polydispersity index, and storage stability. The optimized NLC consisted 10% lipid phase (3.5% carnauba wax, 3.5% beeswax, and 3.0% PSO) and 90% aqueous phase. After optimization, Uvinul® A Plus B was added in the optimized PSO-NLC to produce a photoprotective formulation. Uvinul® A Plus B consisted of both UVA (Diethylamino Hydroxybenzoyl Hexyl Benzoate) and UVB (Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate) filters. The NLC produced with PSO and Uvinul® A Plus B had mean particle size of 135 ± 2 nm and showed good physical stability under storage time. Besides that, the NLC produced also proven to have positive effect in enhancing the entrapment efficiency and drug loading, which were 82.86 ± 0.15% and 55.41 ± 0.04%, respectively, and showed sun protection factor value of 16.61 ± 3.45. The results indicated the presence of synergistic effect among the PSO-NLC with Uvinul® A Plus B.     

Optimisation of cogeneration system and fuel inventory with automated targeting model

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Industrial wastes can be used as alternative fuel sources for the substitution of fossil fuel if they contain good calorific values. Through...     

Estimating wall deflections in deep excavations using Bayesian neural networks

In this study, a neural network algorithm has been used to model the soil-structure interaction behavior of deep excavations in clays. The hybrid evolutionary Bayesian back-propagation (EBBP) neural network was used in this study and utilizes the genetic algorithms and gradient descent method to determine the optimal parameters within a Bayesian framework to regularize the complexity of learning and to statistically reflect the uncertainty in data. The EBBP analysis was carried out on an extensive database of braced excavation performance from finite element analyses. Additional parametric studies indicate that the model gives logical and consistent trends. Back-analyses of some instrumented case histories from the literature also indicate that the trained neural network model gives reasonable predictions in comparison to the actual measured values. The trained model can serve as a simple and reliable prediction tool to enable estimates of maximum wall deflection for preliminary design of braced excavations in clay. The model is able to take into consideration various factors such as the wall stiffness, support stiffness, the in-situ stress state, non-homogeneous soil conditions, and the variation of soil properties with depth. An added advantage of this approach is that it provides meaningful error bars for the model predictions.     

FixMyStreet Brussels: Socio-Demographic Inequality in Crowdsourced Civic Participation

FixMyStreet (FMS) is a web-based civic participation platform that allows inhabitants to report environmental defects like potholes and damaged pavements to the government. In this paper, we examine the use of FMS in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Analyzing a total of 30,041 reports since its inception in 2013, we demonstrate how civic participation on FMS varies between the ethnically diverse districts in Brussels. We compare FMS use to a range of sociodemographic indicators derived from official city statistics as well as geotagged social media data from Twitter. Our statistical analysis revealed several significant differences between the districts that suggested that crowdsourced civic participation platforms tend to marginalize low-income and ethnically diverse communities. In this respect, our findings provide timely evidence to inform the design of more inclusive crowdsourced, civic participation platforms in the future.     

A comparative study of different control strategies for indoor air humidity

There has been a rising concern in controlling the high indoor humidity of hot and humid countries. When an air-conditioned space experiences only part of its design heat load, its humidity tends to rise as a result of the air-conditioning system trying to control the indoor temperature by reducing its cooling capacity. In this study, the part-load dehumidification performances of three temperature control strategies are compared, namely, chilled water flow control, bypass air control and the variable air volume control. Coil simulations are employed to study the part-load performance of these control strategies. The coil model has been validated with experimental data to within ±6.5%. The relative humidity of a space depends of factors such as design sensible heat factor of the space, temperature control strategy employed and load condition experienced by the space. Simulation results have indicated that chilled water control strategy results in the highest indoor humidity throughout the range of conditions studied while variable air volume system provides highly effective dehumidification performance of the cooling coil. Bypass air control appears to be a good option for adoption as it is able to provide an acceptable humidity over a wide range of load conditions without having to affect the air movement within the space.     

Panorama of boron nitride nanostructures via lamp ablation

A diverse range of remarkable boron nitride (BN) nanostructures subsuming nano-horns, nano-rods, nano-platelets, and clusters of hollow nanospheres (nano-onions, arguably of greatest applied and fundamental interest) have been produced exclusively from crystalline BN precursor powder via lamp ablation. The procedure is safe, devoid of toxic reagents, simple, rapid and scalable—generating some genres of nanoparticles that had previously proved elusive. Product structure and composition were unambiguously assessed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy.

     

Comparative study on different annealing methods and choice of solvent in organic field effect transistors based on Poly(3-hexylthiophene)

A simple approach to study the effect of processing on the charge carrier mobility in an organic field effect transistor (OFET) based on regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (RR P3HT) is investigated in this paper. It is found that different processing conditions can induce different degrees of hysteresis, which is well correlated with the charge mobility where lower hysteresis represents higher stability and hence higher charge mobility. Solvent annealing tends to create large nano-scale pinholes in P3HT which degrade the mobility.