Membrane Synthesized from Microemulsion‐Derived Ilmenite Nano Powders Used for Removal of Red Dye from Textile Industry

In this work, the high‐quality ilmenite (FeTiO₃) membranes were grown on the clay‐Al₂O₃ support tube from microemulsion‐derived FeTiO₃ powders by dip‐coating method. FeTiO₃ powders were synthesized by reverse microemulsion method, using cyclohexane, Tween‐80, Brij 30, Triton X‐100, and n‐butanol at different composition. The membranes as well as powders were finally characterized by removal of red dye from a simulated wastewater of textile industry in same conditions. The membrane separation process demonstrates the removal of dye coupled with permeation of water simultaneously, and the overall process may have great potential for wide industrial application.     

An integrated approach to map certain palaeochannels of South India using remote sensing,geophysics, and sedimentological techniques

Palaeochannels are important sources of groundwater, economic minerals, and placer deposits. They are also good repositories of palaeoclimate data. To exploit such resources, the first essential step would be to identify and map palaeochannels. This article presents a study in which multi-sensor (optical, thermal, and microwave) image data and satellite-derived digital elevation models (DEM)s of the northern coastal region of Tamilnadu state, south India, were analysed visually and digitally to recognize exposed and buried palaeochannels. Image-enhancement techniques such as linear contrast enhancement of optical data and fusion of microwave and optical image data brought out more information about the palaeochannels. Hill-shading techniques applied to the satellite-derived DEM, further added to the information content on the existence of the palaeochannels. The existence of the newly identified palaeochannels was verified by ground-based techniques such as field checks, sedimentological analysis, and electrical resistivity surveys. The presence of well sorted and rounded grains in the sediment samples and high apparent electrical resistivity values for the thick sandy subsurface strata in these locations confirmed the existence of palaeochannels which were interpreted from the images.     

Mixing characteristics in microchannels with biomimetic superhydrophobic (Lotus leaf replica) walls

We demonstrate here the mixing characteristics in microchannels with a biomimetic superhydrophobic (lotus leaf replica) wall. The lotus leaf replica is fabricated using a frugal, yet efficient, double-step soft lithography method. In microchannels with a lotus leaf replica wall, the unidirectional laminar flow pertaining to the low hydrodynamics regime changes into an erratic flow field beyond a critical flow rate. We show here that such lotus leaf replica-induced erratic flow, even for low Reynolds number, can be used for enhanced mixing at the microscale. The enhancement in the mixing is quantified by the reduction in the mixing length in the microchannels with the biomimetic lotus leaf replica wall as compared to identical microchannels with flat walls. We believe that the simple cost-effective methodology for enhancing mixing in microchannels, as demonstrated here, can be integrated into lab-on-a-chip devices, which may be beneficial for applications requiring microscale mixing like DNA sequencing, enzyme reaction, and medical diagnostics.     

Activity recognition system using inbuilt sensors of smart mobile phone and minimizing feature vectors

Mobile phone is becoming a very popular tool due to having various user friendly applications with all flexible options. It is highly popular for its light weight, wearable and comfortable uses. Many extrinsic habitat of human being can be monitored by the help of inbuilt sensors and its application software. This has appealing use for healthcare applications using exploitation of Ambient Intelligence for daily activity monitoring system. Here, a standard dataset of UCI HAR (University of California, Irvine, Human Activity Recognition, http://archive.ics.uci.edu) is used for analysis purpose. Naive Bayes Classifier is used for recognition of runtime activities minimizing dimension of large feature vectors. Threshold based condition box is designed by us and finally these two results are compared with that of another classifier HF-SVM (Hardware Friendly-Support Vector Machine) of previous related work.     

A Seasonal Study Reveals the Occurrence of Exotic Rotifers,the River Antigua,Veracruz, Close to the Gulf of Mexico

Zooplankton studies in Mexican rivers are few despite the fact that Mexico has >200 rivers. We present data on the seasonal diversity of rotifers during 2013–2014 from the river La Antigua, near Veracruz. We collected samples from 15 stations along a horizontal gradient of ~5 km, from the upper reaches to about 2 km from the sea. The physico‐chemical variables analysed were temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, nitrates, phosphates, Secchi depth and salinity. From each site, 80 L of water was filtered with a 50‐μm plankton net. Rotifers were identified and quantified using a Sedgewick Rafter cell. The river is shallow (maximum depth 2.5 m during the rainy season). Our observations indicated that the phytoplankton community was dominated by diatoms; the chlorophyll a concentrations ranged from 0.55 to 26.1 μg L^?1 over the study period. We found >125 rotifer species belonging to 21 families, mostly from the Lecanidae, Brachionidae, Notommatidae and Lepadellidae. The density of rotifers was low, <40 ind. L^?1, but species diversity (Shannon–Wiener) ranged, except for a onetime minimum of 0.25, from 2.0 to 4.0 for most part of the year. We also encountered Notholca cf. liepetterseni , an endemic species to Europe and Lecane yatseni , endemic to Asia. Other new records included Lecane rhytida and Ptygura melicerta . The importance of long‐term studies in rivers is emphasized. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Microbiota-Immune Interactions in Ulcerative Colitis and Colitis Associated Cancer and Emerging Microbiota-Based Therapies

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic autoimmune disorder affecting the colonic mucosa. UC is a subtype of inflammatory bowel disease along with Crohn’s disease and presents with varying extraintestinal manifestations. No single etiology for UC has been found, but a combination of genetic and environmental factors is suspected. Research has focused on the role of intestinal dysbiosis in the pathogenesis of UC, including the effects of dysbiosis on the integrity of the colonic mucosal barrier, priming and regulation of the host immune system, chronic inflammation, and progression to tumorigenesis. Characterization of key microbial taxa and their implications in the pathogenesis of UC and colitis-associated cancer (CAC) may present opportunities for modulating intestinal inflammation through microbial-targeted therapies. In this review, we discuss the microbiota-immune crosstalk in UC and CAC, as well as the evolution of microbiota-based therapies.     

Planktonic indicators of water quality: A case study in the Amacuzac River Basin (State of Morelos,Mexico)

Planktonic organisms are good indicators of water quality but are rarely used in Mexican riverine studies in spite of the high level of contamination in these lotic waters. In this study, we focused on the plankton of the river Amacuzac in Mexico and a large saline waterbody, Lake Tequisquitengo, which is located in the Amacuzac river basin. We collected samples at three sites in the River Amacuzac and one at Lake Tequisquitengo from May 2015 to March–April of 2016. We analysed the physicochemical variables, coliform bacteria, and biological oxygen demand levels. We also quantified phytoplankton and zooplankton. Our results indicate that the study sites are mesotrophic with high densities of diatoms and cyanobacteria. Among the zooplankton, the dominant organisms were rotifers. The constancy of planktonic taxa was high in the lake but low in the river. The Descy index ranged from 2.9 to 4.5 in the river and from 4.0 to 5.0 in the lake. The saprobic index shows that the system is β‐mesosaprobic. The species diversity was higher in the river than in the lake. Our study shows that plankton can efficiently be used to evaluate the water quality in rivers and lakes.     

DDR zeolite membrane reactor for enhanced HI decomposition in IS thermochemical process

The third section of closed loop Iodine Sulphur (IS) thermochemical cycle, dealing with HI_x processing, suffers from low equilibrium decomposition of HI to hydrogen with a conversion value of only ～22% at 700 K. Here, we report a significant enhancement in conversion of HI into hydrogen (up to ～95%) using a zeolite membrane reactor for the first time. The all silica DDR (deca dodecasil rhombohedral) zeolite membrane with dense, interlocked structure was synthesized on the seeded clay alumina substrate by sonication mediated hydrothermal process. The synthesized membranes along with seed crystals were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Corrosion studies were carried out by exposing the membrane samples to simulated HI decomposition reaction environment (at 450 °C) for different durations of time upto 200 h. The FESEM, EDX and XRD analyses indicated that no significant changes occurred in the morphology, composition and structure of the membranes. Iodine adsorption on to the membrane surface was observed which got increased with the exposure duration as confirmed by secondary ion mass spectrometry studies. A packed bed membrane reactor (PBMR) assembly was fabricated with integration of in-house synthesized zeolite membrane and Pt-alumina catalyst for carrying out HI decomposition studies. The tube side was chosen as reaction zone and the shell side as the permeation zone. The HI decomposition experiments were carried out for different values of temperature and feed flow rates. DDR zeolite based PBMR was found to enhance the single-pass conversion of HI up to ～95%. The results indicate that for achieving optimal performance of PBMR, it should be operated with space velocities of 0.2–0.3 s^?1 and temperature in the range of 650 K–700 K with permeate side vacuum of 0.12 kg/cm². It is believed that the in-house developed zeolite PBMR shall be a potential technology augmentation in making the IS thermochemical cycle energy efficient.