Phenomenal Effect of Stable (Ti,Mo)C Nano-Sized Precipitates in Retarding the Recrystallization and Grain Growth in High-Strength Ferritic Steel

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - The present study demonstrates remarkable retardation of recrystallization and grain growth during sub-critical annealing of 60 pct cold-rolled ferritic...     

Indian Science Reports: a web-based scientometric portal for mapping Indian research competencies at overall and institutional levels

Scientometrics - The article presents an introduction to a newly created scientometric portal called Indian Science Reports, available at www.indianscience.net . The portal is designed to fulfil...     

Retracted: Development of a Highly Sensitive Wearable Tactile Sensor on Fabric by Using Conductive Inks Based on Electrical Contact Resistance (ECR) Change Mechanism

A wearable tactile device, based on the electrical contact resistance (ECR) between the two fabric substrates, is developed in this work for continuous health monitoring. Microscale pillar structures are formed over top and bottom fabric substrates by screen-printing technique with conductive inks followed by the face-to-face assembly of top and bottom parts. The contact areas between the substrates increase after the application of an external force, resulting the increment of charge carrier conduction and reduction in ECR value. To enhance the sensitivity, the device is optimized with two different conductive inks (i.e., silver and graphene inks) to create pillar shaped microstructures resulting a higher sensitivity due to the variation in ECR. This wearable tactile sensor's practical applications also are investigated in monitoring human wrist pulses with wireless module and smartphone, showing its capability in faster response and high sensitivity for internet-of-thing and medical applications.     

Antibacterial activities of polyethylene glycol, tween 80 and sodium dodecyl sulphate coated silver nanoparticles in normal and multi-drug resistant bacteria

Antibacterial activity of silver nanoparticles coated with different functionalizing agents i.e., polyethylene glycol, tween 80 and sodium dodecyl sulphate were evaluated on both normal and multi-drug resistant strains of bacteria. Under the same reaction conditions, these functionalizing agents were added separately to coat silver nanoparticles. Among these, polyethylene glycol coated nanoparticles were most effective in killing all the bacterial strains which includes Escherichia coli DH5a, Bacillus subtilis, Micrococcus luteus, Staphylococcus aureus and multi-drug resistant clinical isolates of Shigella spp. (flexneri, boydii, sohnea) and Vibrio cholerae. The minimum inhibitory concentration of polyethylene glycol coated silver nanoparticles was also less compared to the other two sets of nanoparticles. Consistence with that polyethylene glycol coated nanoparticles produced more intracellular reactive oxygen species in bacteria. Moreover, when human cell lines MCF7 and Chang Liver were incubated in presence of these nanoparticles for 18 h with same concentrations as used for bacteria, no toxicity was observed. But significant increase in cell killing was observed with longer incubation time. Thus our present investigation implicates the potential therapeutic use of silver nanoparticles as antibacterial agent particularly the polyethylene glycol coated one.     

Antimicrobial properties of uncapped silver nanoparticles synthesized by DC arc thermal plasma technique

We, herein, report the antimicrobial properties of uncapped silver nanoparticles for a Gram positive model organism, Bacillus subtilis. Uncapped silver nanoparticles have been prepared using less-explored DC arc thermal plasma technique by considering its large scale generation capability. It is observed that the resultant nanoparticles show size as well as optical property dependent antimicrobial effect.     

Rhodium nanoparticles intercalated into montmorillonite for hydrogenation of aromatic compounds in the presence of thiophene

Rhodium metal nanoparticles intercalated into montmorillonite (Rh-MMT) have been prepared and used for the hydrogenation of benzene and other aromatic compounds. Rh-MMT was characterized by PXRD, TEM and ICP-AES. The crystallite size of the rhodium particles was 6.9 nm using PXRD and the particle size by TEM was 25.6 ± 2.5 nm. Benzene hydrogenation was carried out at different substrate/catalyst mass ratios, temperature and pressure to optimize the reaction conditions. The benzene is completely hydrogenated with 100% selectivity to cyclohexane at 453 K and 6.2 MPa. The catalyst was poisoned by thiophene, and benzene hydrogenation decreased with increasing thiophene concentration. Hydrogenation of toluene, o,m,p-xylenes, naphthalene and anthracene were also carried out at the optimized reaction conditions.     

Developing a Closed-Loop Water Conservation System at Micro Level Through Circular Economy Approach

Water Resources Management - A closed loop system for micro-level conservation of fresh water at household user point has been developed in this work in a comprehensive circular economy (CE)...     

Design of Three bit ADC and DAC Using Spatial Wave-function Switched SWSFETs

The spatial wave-function switched field effect transistor (SWSFET) has two or three low band-gap quantum well channels inside the substrate of the semiconductor. The applied voltage at the gate region of the SWSFET, switches the charge carrier concentration in different channels from the source to the drain region. The switching of the electron wave function in different channels can be explained by the device model of the SWSFET. A circuit model of a SWSFET is developed in the Berkeley Short Channel IGFET Model (BSIM) 4.0.0. The design of a three bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) using SWSFET is explained in this work. Advanced circuit design using fewer SWSFETs will reduce the device count in future analog and digital circuit design.