Green synthesis of gold nanoparticles: Its effect on cocoon and silk traits of mulberry silkworm (Bombyx mori L.)

In the present century the small particles are unique phenomenon which can be developed by bottom-up and top-down processes. These small particles may be considered as nanoparticles which help to build up a technology called nanotechnology. Nanomaterials are those materials which possess the length scales below 100 nm and quite often they make a comparison with a human hair, which is about 80,000 nm wide. We have introduced this technology, specially the green synthesis of gold (Au) nanoparticles in silkworm (Bombyx mori L.). The gold nanoparticles clearly indicate that they have a tremendous effect on enhancement of silk proteins and thus the enhancement of the cocoon weight in silkworms. Gold nanoparticles were prepared from onion, Allium cepa L. The extracted green gold nanomaterials from A. cepa were confirmed by UV-Vis spectrophotometer, XRD, FTIR, SEM, TEM and AFM. The function of green gold nanomaterials extracted from A. cepa was tested on silkworm physiology. We have used UV for judgment of the nature of particles and spectrum peak wavelength showed an absorption peak at 535 nm and indicated the wavelength of the surface plasmon resonance in gold nanoparticles (Au NPs). In blank solutions no such absorption peak was observed at 535 nm. Moreover, the gold (Au) XRD spectrum is supposed to and does demonstrate (111), (200), (220), and (311) peaks in the assortment of superimpose on the background. The process includes the (002) trace graphite peaks, where the (111) peak appears to be exceptionally sharp and strong which helps to propose that it is gold in nature. The FTIR shows that the examined particles are gold in nature. In SEM where electrons interact with atoms in the sample, producing various signals that can be detected and that hold information about the sample's surface topography and composition. The electron beam in SEM is generally scanned in a raster scan pattern, and therefore the beam's position is combined and detects the signal to produce an image. SEM can attain a resolution better than 1 nanometer size. The transmission electron microscope helps to accelerate the electrons as a source of elucidation. The AFM measurement is made in three dimensions process and thus it may be measured as horizontal to X-Y plane. Therefore, decree (magnification) measured at Z–direction, which is normally higher than X-Y. The said repulsive force is major one in AFM. Thus the tip and sample may considered to be the specific force in AFM which may measured at Z–direction. The effect of green gold nanoparticles on mulberry silkworm (Bombyx mori L) can exaggerated the silkworm physiological function. Larvae at 50, 100, 200, and 300 ppm doses were studied right from 1st stage to 5th instar stage. Gold nano treatment resulted in significant alterations in the percentage of fibroin and sericin proteins in the 5th instar as compared to that of control. At a 300 ppm dose of green nano gold the percentage of fibroin was 78.07, while sericin decreased from 39.46 (control) to 21.92. It was observed that the green gold nanomaterials have the ability to not only alter the fibroin protein but also enhance the cocoon and silk traits. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of extra foliation of mulberry leaves with G-GNPs extracted from A. cepa on larval duration, mature silk gland weight, pupal weight, cocoon weight, cocoon shell weight, fibroin and sericins contents, etc. Moreover, the enhanced production of fibroin will explore a new venture in bioengineering and also in biomedical field.     

Modeling flow properties of fine dry powders using particle morphological properties and its effects on geometry of fly ash evacuation hoppers

This paper results from an ongoing effort to correlate the physical properties of powders at a fundamental level with their bulk behavior. Cohesion and unconfined yield stress are the measure of inter-particle forces of attraction in the bulk powder. The existing model for cohesion does not include important bulk properties, such as particle size distribution, tapped density, and prevailing applied stress. In the present paper, flow properties of 25 bulk solids (different cement and fly ash samples) have been evaluated using a ring shear tester and the products have been characterized according to their flowabilities. Models for cohesion and unconfined yield strength have been developed in this study by taking into account the effects of particle size distribution, tapped bulk density and pre-shear stress. The newly developed models have provided good fit to the experimental data. The effect of these flow properties on the design of hoppers have been investigated for fly ash samples collected from seven consecutive electrostatic precipitator (ESP) hoppers of a coal fired thermal power station. The results show that fly ash from the rear end ESP hopper would require higher amount of opening size compared to the first or second field of ESP to ensure proper mass flow condition is achieved at all the ESP hoppers.     

Crystal structure and photocatalytic properties of titanate nanotubes prepared by chemical processing and subsequent annealing

Anatase TiO₂ nanoparticles were synthesized from sol–gel processing, and they were used as a precursor for titanate nanotubes (TNT) formation. TNT were synthesized under reflux heating of anatase TiO₂ in concentrated NaOH solution followed by repeated washing with distilled water and 0.1 M HCl. The nanotubular structure was preserved till 450 °C, above which nanorod formation started. The as-synthesized nanotubes were found to have mixed crystal structure of anatase and Na _x H_2?x Ti₃O₇·nH₂O (where 0 < x <  2), contrary to what has been reported before. The XRD peaks of titanate were slightly shifted to higher angles upon calcination along with prominent anatase peaks. Complete transformation to nanorods occurred at 600 °C and crystal structure was transformed to Na₂Ti₆O₁₃ and anatase. Sodium presence in TNT was confirmed by EDX, and Na–O and H–O–H along with Ti–OH vibrations were found by FTIR. Ti–OH/H–O–H vibrations were less prominent for samples calcined at 500 °C and above, which confirms structural water loss is associated with morphological change. The as-synthesized TNTs had a specific surface area of 157 m² g^?1, and it decreased by increasing calcination temperature. TNTs were applied to methylene blue aqueous solution to observe their decolorization capability under UV irradiation. The as-synthesized TNTs showed enhanced photocatalytic decolorization as compared to anatase titania nanoparticles due to presence of Ti–OH groups and higher specific surface area. The photocatalytic activity reduced when TNTs were annealed at high temperatures. The changes in the photocatalytic activity are related to the existence of hydroxyl groups in the structure, decrease in specific surface area of annealed nanotubes, change in morphology from nanotubes to nanorods, and bandgap shift to visible light when TNTs were calcined at higher temperatures.     

Interpretation of Association Behavior and Molecular Interactions in Binary Mixtures from Thermoacoustics and Molecular Compression Data

Density and acoustic velocity were measured for binary liquid mixtures of formamide, N-methylacetamide (NMA), dimethylformamide (DMF), and dimethylacetamide (DMA) with acetonitrile at atmospheric pressure and 293.15 K, 298.15 K, 303.15 K, 308.15 K, or 313.15 K over the concentration range 0.12 to 0.97. Models assuming association and nonassociation of the components of the mixtures were used to predict the behavior of the studied liquids, which would typically show weak interactions. The measured properties were fitted to the Redlich–Kister polynomial to estimate the binary coefficients and standard errors. The data were used to study the molecular interactions in the binary mixtures. Furthermore, the McAllister multibody interaction model was used to correlate the properties of the binary liquid mixtures. Testing of the nonassociation and association models for the different systems showed that, compared with the nonassociation model theoretical results, the association model theoretical results were more consistent with the experimental results.     

Mathematical Programming Embeddings of Logic

Can theorem proving in mathematical logic be addressed by classical mathematical techniques like the calculus of variations? The answer is surprisingly in the affirmative, and this approach has yielded rich dividends from the dual perspective of better understanding of the mathematical structure of deduction and in improving the efficiency of algorithms for deductive reasoning. Most of these results have been for the case of propositional and probabilistic logics. In the case of predicate logic, there have been successes in adapting mathematical programming schemes to realize new algorithms for theorem proving using partial instantiation techniques. A structural understanding of mathematical programming embeddings of predicate logic would require tools from topology because of the need to deal with infinite-dimensional embeddings. This paper describes the first steps in this direction. General compactness theorems are proved for the embeddings, and some specialized results are obtained in the case of Horn logic.     

A Framework for Proof Systems

Linear logic can be used as a meta-logic to specify a range of object-level proof systems. In particular, we show that by providing different polarizations within a focused proof system for linear logic, one can account for natural deduction (normal and non-normal), sequent proofs (with and without cut), and tableaux proofs. Armed with just a few, simple variations to the linear logic encodings, more proof systems can be accommodated, including proof system using generalized elimination and generalized introduction rules. In general, most of these proof systems are developed for both classical and intuitionistic logics. By using simple results about linear logic, we can also give simple and modular proofs of the soundness and relative completeness of all the proof systems we consider.     

MPI + MPI: a new hybrid approach to parallel programming with MPI plus shared memory

Hybrid parallel programming with the message passing interface (MPI) for internode communication in conjunction with a shared-memory programming model to manage intranode parallelism has become a dominant approach to scalable parallel programming. While this model provides a great deal of flexibility and performance potential, it saddles programmers with the complexity of utilizing two parallel programming systems in the same application. We introduce an MPI-integrated shared-memory programming model that is incorporated into MPI through a small extension to the one-sided communication interface. We discuss the integration of this interface with the MPI 3.0 one-sided semantics and describe solutions for providing portable and efficient data sharing, atomic operations, and memory consistency. We describe an implementation of the new interface in the MPICH2 and Open MPI implementations and demonstrate an average performance improvement of 40 % to the communication component of a five-point stencil solver.     

Optimal artificial neural network architecture selection for performance prediction of compact heat exchanger with the EBaLM-OTR technique

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been used in the past to predict the performance of printed circuit heat exchangers (PCHE) with satisfactory accuracy. Typically published literature has focused on optimizing ANN using a training dataset to train the network and a testing dataset to evaluate it. Although this may produce outputs that agree with experimental results, there is a risk of over-training or over-learning the network rather than generalizing it, which should be the ultimate goal. An over-trained network is able to produce good results with the training dataset but fails when new datasets with subtle changes are introduced. In this paper we present EBaLM-OTR (error back propagation and Levenberg-Marquardt algorithms for over training resilience) technique, which is based on a previously discussed method of selecting neural network architecture that uses a separate validation set to evaluate different network architectures based on mean square error (MSE), and standard deviation of MSE. The method uses k-fold cross validation. Therefore in order to select the optimal architecture for the problem, the dataset is divided into three parts which are used to train, validate and test each network architecture. Then each architecture is evaluated according to their generalization capability and capability to conform to original data. The method proved to be a comprehensive tool in identifying the weaknesses and advantages of different network architectures. The method also highlighted the fact that the architecture with the lowest training error is not always the most generalized and therefore not the optimal. Using the method the testing error achieved was in the order of magnitude of within 10⁻⁵-10⁻³. It was also show that the absolute error achieved by EBaLM-OTR was an order of magnitude better than the lowest error achieved by EBaLM-THP.     

In-house development of co-fireable thick film silver conductor for LTCC applications

The rapidly growing wireless industry needs new high performance materials to build low loss, high density, and thermally stable integrated packages. Applications include automotive safety, control, global positioning system (GPS) mapping and entertainment, multifunctional portable phones, video and data transmission through wireless local area network (WLAN) etc. Recently, low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) technology is referred as a key approach for smart packaging. Although its use has been initiated in the telecommunication field due to the excellent dielectric properties of the LTCC tapes, its application areas have been diversified recently. In the present work, the attempt has been made towards the development of thick film silver conductor composition compatible with available LTCC tapes (DuPont DP-951AX). The physical, microstructural, and electrical properties of the pastes prepared with different compositions are presented in this paper.     

The effect of mechanical stress on permeability of concrete: A review

The presence of aggressive fluids and their transport is by far the most important factor controlling the durability of cement based composites. In structural concrete, the application of mechanical stress leads to cracking, which in turn affects the transport properties adversely, but very little is known of this influence. The paper highlights the vast discrepancy between experimentally determined permeability data, which appear to be largely artifacts of disparate test procedures. In particular, it is not clear if an equilibrium was attained in the fluid flow and further, whether the flow measurements were made in the presence of the applied stress, which together make it very difficult to compare experimental data. Nevertheless it is clear that stress induced cracking leads to a surge in fluid flow and there exists a threshold value for both the applied stress and the resultant crack width associated with fluid permeability in concrete.