A differential staining technique for vertebrate histology.

A staining method is described for studying micro-anatomy of different vertebrate tissues in the light microscope. A staining sequence of celestin blue--erythrosin--orange G--fast green with mordanting in phosphomolybdic acid yields a satisfactory differentiation and fine colour contrast in various tissues. The efficacy of the method was tested on different avian and mammalian tissues.     

Membrane-based hybrid processes for high water recovery and selective inorganic pollutant separation

The removal of heavy metals (e.g. Pb(II), Cd(II), Cu(II), etc.) and oxyanions (e.g. nitrate, As(III, V), Cr(VI), etc.) is of immense interest for treatment of groundwater and other dilute aqueous systems. However, the presence of non-toxic components, such as hardness (Ca, Mg) and sulfate, can interfere with the separation of toxic species. For example, pressure-driven membrane processes, such as reverse osmosis (RO), have been limited for water treatment due to problems that these extraneous components cause with water recovery and ionic strength (osmotic pressure) of the retentate. In addition, nitrate rejection by RO is considerably lower than NaCl rejection, resulting in permeate concentrations that may be too high for groundwater recharging. Other separation systems that rely solely on sorption of toxic species (e.g. ion exchange resins) may not have sufficient selectivity for efficient use in the presence of competing ions. Hence, implementation of pressure-driven membrane separations and high capacity sorbents in hybrid processes shows much promise for remedying these difficulties. For example, selective separation of nitrate may be achieved by combining nanofiltration (NF) for sulfate removal, followed by RO or ion exchange for nitrate removal (see example 1). When small concentrations of toxic metals are present, the large retentate volumes of RO processes may be reduced by selective removal of toxic species with a high capacity sorbent, thus permitting disposal of a lower volume, non-toxic stream (see example 2). The use of microfiltration membrane-based sorbents containing multiple polymeric functional groups is a novel technique to achieve high metal sorption capacity under convective flow conditions. These sorbents are formed by the attachment of various polyamino acids (MW: 2500-10,000), such as polyaspartic acid (cation sorption), polyarginine (oxyanion sorption), and polycysteine (chelation exchange), directly on the membrane pore surfaces. Since these sorbents have also been found to have high selectivity over non-toxic metals, such as calcium, they are ideal candidates for hybrid processing with RO/NF.     

An intelligent EGWO-SCA-CS algorithm for PSS parameter tuning under system uncertainties

This paper proposes a novel hybrid technique called enhanced grey wolf optimization-sine cosine algorithm-cuckoo search (EGWO-SCA-CS) algorithm to improve the electrical power system stability. The proposed method comprises of a popular grey wolf optimization (GWO) in an enhanced and hybrid form. It embraces the well-balanced exploration and exploitation using the cuckoo search (CS) algorithm and enhanced search capability through the sine cosine algorithm (SCA) to elude the stuck to the local optima. The proposed technique is validated with the 23 benchmark functions and compared with state-of-the-art methods. The benchmark functions consist of unimodal, multimodal function from which the best suitability of the proposed technique can be identified. The robustness analysis also presented with the proposed method through boxplot, and a detailed statistical analysis is performed for a set of 30 individual runs. From the inferences gathered from the benchmark functions, the proposed technique is applied to the stability problem of a power system, which is heavily stressed with the nonlinear variation of the load and thereby operating conditions. The dynamics of power system components have been considered for the mathematical model of a multimachine system, and multiobjective function has been framed in tuning the optimal controller parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been assessed by considering two case studies, namely, (i) the optimal controller parameter tuning, and (ii) the coordination of oscillation damping devices in the power system stability enhancement. In the first case study, the power system stabilizer (PSS) is considered as a controller, and a self-clearing three-phase fault is considered as the system uncertainty. In contrast, static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) and PSS are considered as controllers to be coordinated, and perturbation in the system states as uncertainty in the second case study.     

Influence of Microstructure on the Mechanical Properties of a Pearlitic Steel

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - The effect of austenite grain size on microstructure and mechanical properties was studied for a pearlitic steel. The best combination of ultimate...     

Removal of lead from contaminated water bodies using sea nodule as an adsorbent

Adsorption of water soluble lead on polymetallic sea nodule has been studied in detail. Complete decontamination of lead is possible by appropriate sea nodule dosing. Adsorption is also dependent on pH and best adsorption is achieved at pH 6. Beyond pH 6, the desorption of lead from sea nodule surface is practically zero. Residual metal concentrations in the filtrate after adsorption is negligible. Both Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms may reasonably explain adsorption of lead on sea nodule. Chemically bound moisture plays a very crucial role in lead adsorption. Lead adsorptive capability of sea nodule is practically destroyed when calcined at a temperature of 900 degrees C. Lead loading capacity of sea nodule has been estimated at 440 mg of lead per gram of sea nodule. The performance of sea nodule as a lead adsorbent has been successfully tested over six simulated lead contaminated water systems. Lead loading capacity of sea nodule compares favorably with other adsorbents like activated carbon, ion exchange resin, anionic clay, granulated blast furnace slag and natural and treated zeolites.     

Solution of facility layout problems with pickup/drop-off locations using random search techniques

Due to non-polynomial hardness, the facility layout problem (FLP) becomes more critical when pickup/drop-off (P/D) locations are considered in the design of an open field layout under a manufacturing environment. This paper proposes an indigenous model of the facility layout problem based on random search techniques and its solution methodology using a genetic algorithm (GA), simulated annealing (SA) and a hybrid algorithm (HA). The paper illustrates the performance of different random search operating parameters in solving the facility layout problem considering P/D locations along the periphery of rectangular machine blocks. The preliminary experiments were carried out on three facility layout test problems having six, eight and ten machines in order to fix the different operating parameters such as crossover operator, crossover rate, initial temperature, temperature reduction factor, number of generations, population size, etc. The results of extensive preliminary experimentation were utilized to solve facility layout problems having 12 and 18 machines and, finally, were compared with the existing procedures in the literature. The experimental tables and related analysis performed via the solution methods by applying GA, SA and HA revealed that random-search-based modeling of FLP considering P/D and its solution as suggested in this paper is worth pursuing.     

Adsorption of Pb(II) from aqueous solution by Azadirachta indica (Neem) leaf powder

An adsorbent was developed from the mature leaves of the Neem (Azadirachta indica) tree for removing Pb(II) from water. Adsorption was carried out in a batch process with several different concentrations of Pb(II) by varying amount of adsorbent, pH, agitation time and temperature. The uptake of the metal was very fast initially, but gradually slowed down indicating penetration into the interior of the adsorbent particles. Both first-order and second-order kinetics were tested and it was found that the latter gave a better explanation. The experimental data closely followed both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The adsorbent had a considerably high Langmuir monolayer capacity of 300 mg/g. A small amount of the adsorbent (1.2 g/L) could remove as much as 93% of Pb(II) in 300 min from a solution of concentration 100mg/L at 300 K. The adsorption continuously increased in the pH range of 2.0-7.0, beyond which the adsorption could not be carried out due to the precipitation of the metal. The adsorption was exothermic at ambient temperature and the computation of the parameters, DeltaH, DeltaS and DeltaG, indicated the interactions to be thermodynamically favourable.     

New minimal-capacitor low-sensitivity RC-active synthesis procedure

A new low-sensitivity RC-active synthesis procedure is described which can be considered as an alternative to that of Antoniou in that the new method retains all the attractive features of his method. Further, this method uses the minimum number of capacitors which is frequently desirable for integrated circuits.     

Growth of compact arrays of optical quality single crystalline ZnO nanorods by low temperature method

We report the synthesis and optical properties of compact and aligned ZnO nanorod arrays (dia, ∼ 50–200 nm) grown on a glass substrate with varying seed particle density. The suspension of ZnO nanoparticles (size, ∼ 15 nm) of various concentrations are used as seed layer for the growth of nanorod arrays via selfassembly of ZnO from solution. We studied the effect of various growth parameters (such as seeding density, microstructure of the seed layer) as well as the growth time on the growth and alignment of the nanorods. We find that the growth, areal density and alignment of the nanorods depend on the density of seed particles which can be controlled. It is observed that there is a critical density of the seed particles at which nanorod arrays show maximum preferred orientation along [002] direction. The minimum and maximum radius of the aligned nanorods synthesized by this method lie in the range 50–220 nm which depend on the seeding density and time of growth. These nanorods have a bandgap of 3.3 eV as in the case of bulk crystals and show emission in the UV region of the spectrum (∼ 400 nm) due to excitonic recombination and defect related emission in the visible region.