Quasi‐Continuous Wave Near‐Infrared Excitation of Upconversion Nanoparticles for Optogenetic Manipulation of C. elegans

Optogenetics is an emerging powerful tool to investigate workings of the nervous system. However, the use of low tissue penetrating visible light limits its therapeutic potential. Employing deep penetrating near‐infrared (NIR) light for optogenetics would be beneficial but it cannot be used directly. This issue can be tackled with upconversion nanoparticles (UCNs) acting as nanotransducers emitting at shorter wavelengths extending to the UV range upon NIR light excitation. Although attractive, implementation of such NIR‐optogenetics is hindered by the low UCN emission intensity that necessitates high NIR excitation intensities, resulting in overheating issues. A novel quasi‐continuous wave (quasi‐CW) excitation approach is developed that significantly enhances multiphoton emissions from UCNs, and for the first time NIR light‐triggered optogenetic manipulations are implemented in vitro and in C. elegans. The approach developed here enables the activation of channelrhodopsin‐2 with a significantly lower excitation power and UCN concentration along with negligible phototoxicity as seen with CW excitation, paving the way for therapeutic optogenetics.     

Fault Detection and Diagnosis of Cyber-Physical System Using the Computer Vision and Image Processing

Wireless Personal Communications - This paper investigates the performance of an energy-harvesting (EH) relay network, where multiple sources communicate with a destination via multiple EH...     

Performance analysis of spiral and serpentine tube solar collector with carbon nanotube nanofluids under natural flow method

This study communicates the performance analysis of spiral and serpentine tube solar collector with carbon nanotube nanofluids under natural flow method. Experiments were carried out at three different mass flow rates namely 3, 5, and 7 kg/hour while the concentration of nanoparticles was varied from 0.05% and 0.1%, respectively. Experiments were carried out under the same condition of ambient parameters for validation. Results show that the maximum exit water temperature was found to be about 75°C with a maximum concentration of 0.1% under a minimum flow rate of 3 kg/hour during the peak intensity. Similarly, the improvement in temperature of the water is found to be 6% under peak intensity and decreased to about 4.3% and 4.2% for the flow rates of 5 and 7 kg/hour, respectively     

Synthesis, Characterization, and Evaluation of Mesoporous MCM-41-supported Molybdenum Hydrotreating Catalysts

Mesoporous MCM-41 material with high surface area and narrow pore size distribution was synthesized and used as a support for Mo, CoMo, and NiMo catalysts. The molybdenum loading was varied from 2-14 wt% on MCM-41. On 10 wt% Mo/MCM-41, the promoter Co or Ni concentration was varied from 1-5 wt%. All the catalyst samples were characterized by surface area, low temperature oxygen chemisorption, x-ray diffraction (XRD), and temperature programmed reduction methods. Characterization results show that Mo is well dispersed on MCM-41 up to 10 wt%. The catalytic activities were evaluated for thiophene hydrodesulphurization (HDS), cyclohexene hydrogenation (HYD), and furan hydrodeoxygenation (HDO). All three catalytic functionalities vary in a similar manner to that of oxygen chemisorption as a function of Mo loading, indicating that there is a correlation between oxygen uptake and catalytic sites. The activities of these catalysts were compared with γ-Al₂O₃- and amorphous SiO₂-supported catalysts. It was found that MCM-41-supported Mo catalysts displayed superior activities.     

Raman Spectroscopy of the Charge Transfer Complex (TTF)x C60 Br8

We report Raman studies on powder samples of the charge transfer complex (TTF)_x C₆₀Br₈ at room temperature. The phonons show considerable softening with respect to the frequencies observed in the Raman spectrum of solid C₆₀ Brg. The strongest mode at 1464 cm^-1 in C₆₀Br₈ is red shifted to a doublet with peaks at 1414 and 1421 cm^-1, implying an average phonon softening Δω of -47 cm^-1. A comparison with the phonon softening of the corresponding A_g(2) mode in alkali-doped C₆₀ (Δω ~ - 36 cm^-1 for A₆C₆₀, A = K, Rb or Cs) suggests that 8 electrons are transferred per C₆₀Br₈ molecule in the charge transfer complex. The mode at 503 cm_--1 in C₆₀Br₈ is shifted upwards, similar to that in A₆ C₆₀ compounds.     

Thermal properties of silicate esters

Fourteen dimethyldialkoxysilanes are prepared by reacting dimethyldichlorosilane with corresponding alcohols in the liquid phase. Their physicochemical properties are determined by standard methods and their tentative empirical formulae are elucidated. The thermal conductivity values of dimethyldialkoxysilanes are determined using a two slab guarded hot plate apparatus over a temperature range of 30–190°C. The thermal conductivity values of dimethyldialkoxysilanes calculated from empirical equations are found to vary from -14% to +19%. Because thermal conductivity is an important parameter in heat transfer calculations, and to minimise the deviation of the values, new equations involving easily measurable ultrasonic parameters have been formulated. The proposed equations have been tested for the series of dimethyldialkoxysilanes, tetraalkoxysilanes and polydimethylsiloxanes. The thermal conductivity values computed from the proposed equations are comparable with experimental thermal conductivity values. Further, an equation involving the calculation of thermal conductivity values at varying temperatures is also proposed.     

Blockchain Assisted Disease Identification of COVID-19 Patients with the Help of IDA-DNN Classifier

Wireless Personal Communications - Globally, millions of people were affected by the Corona-virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) causing loads of deaths. Most COVID-19 affected people recover in a few...     

First differential of temperature dependent ultrasonic parameters as an effective tool for identifying precipitation reactions in a slow heat-treated 8090 Al–Li alloy

Ultrasonic velocities and attenuation measurements have been carried out to characterise the fine scale precipitation events in a slow heat-treated 8090 Al–Li alloy. The alloy was subjected to a slow heating (at the rate of 10 K h⁻¹) to the temperature of 463 K, before and after solution annealing at 803 K for 1 h. The changes in bulk modulus, Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio have been obtained from the ultrasonic velocity data. The variation in hardness and density has been found to be consistent with the changes in velocities and elastic constant. The ultrasonic on-line measurements from 300 to 623 K reveal clearly all the four transitions, including the formation of GP zones at 368 K, formation of δ′ at 470 K, dissolution of δ′ at 532 K and the formation of equilibrium S′ and δ phases at 590 K. The first differential of temperature dependent ultrasonic parameters is found to be particularly effective in clearly diagnosing all the fine scale precipitation/dissolution events. Differentiation between the precipitation and dissolution type reactions is also possible from careful analysis of the first differential plots.     

E2IA-HWSN: Energy Efficient Dual Intelligent Agents based Data Gathering and Emergency Event Delivery in Heterogeneous WSN Enabled IoT

Heterogeneous sensors are equipped with a limited battery source that is concerned with network lifetime problems. However, this problem can be tackled with the effective design of WSN-IoT by clustering and sleep scheduling mechanisms. This paper addresses this issue by presenting novel ideas involved in the WSN operations such as grid construction, cluster head selection, sleep scheduling, and data gathering by intelligent Agents (iAgents). An energy-efficient dual iAgents based Heterogeneous WSN (E2IA-HWSN) is proposed. iAgents are used in this paper to automatically collect the sensed data from IoT sensors. In this E2IA-HWSN, a 3?×?3 grid is built and each cell is sub-divided into four in which cluster heads (CH) are selected in each sub-division, followed by ring partitioning for selecting a CH present at the center. Multi-Objective Harris Hawks optimization (MO-HHO) algorithm is used to select CH and supernode, here to minimize the energy consumption of CH, the supernode takes responsibility to assign sleep schedules to devices. The scheduling slots are assigned only after a sensor reaches below the energy threshold. For scheduling, the Bayes rule-based Markov model (BR-MM) is applied with the determination of residual energy and sensed packet counts. Generator de Bits Pseudo Aleatorios (GBPA) eliminates redundant data in CH and then inter-cluster routing is performed in case of emergency events. If not, then the CH waits for the arrival of iagents, the trajectory of iAgents is dynamically predicted with Deep Policy Gradient (DDPG). The implementation is carried out in NS3.26 and the results show betterment to the well-known methods.

     

Experimental investigation on pyramid solar still with single and double collector cover—Comparative study

Sun radiation is the heat energy source for solar still. That should be utilized maximum for increasing the evaporative rate at the top surface of the brine. The pyramid shape solar still (PSSS) can receive solar input radiation from all four directions. In this research, the top layer of conventional pyramid shape solar still (CPSSS) is covered with air‐packed cover and analysed the effect in the modified still after air packed in between the two glasses, finally, that result is compared with the CPSSS. The air inside the two glasses will be receiving maximum radiation and retain in it. It can be used as top side insulation and which can ensure the maximum insulation for heat energy inside the PSSS. The CPSSS and air‐packed pyramid shape solar still (APPSSS) were fabricated and experimented. The experiments were conducted at an ambient condition of the Chennai, Tamil Nadu (12.9416°N, 80.2362°E). The CPSSS gives good yield at evening when an increase in wind velocity. The APPSSS gives a lower performance as compared to the CPSSS due to the air‐packed cover.