Liquid-Metal Synthesized Ultrathin SnS Layers for High-Performance Broadband Photodetectors

Atomically thin materials face an ongoing challenge of scalability, hampering practical deployment despite their fascinating properties. Tin monosulfide (SnS), a low-cost, naturally abundant layered material with a tunable bandgap, displays properties of superior carrier mobility and large absorption coefficient at atomic thicknesses, making it attractive for electronics and optoelectronics. However, the lack of successful synthesis techniques to prepare large-area and stoichiometric atomically thin SnS layers (mainly due to the strong interlayer interactions) has prevented exploration of these properties for versatile applications. Here, SnS layers are printed with thicknesses varying from a single unit cell (0.8 nm) to multiple stacked unit cells (≈1.8 nm) synthesized from metallic liquid tin, with lateral dimensions on the millimeter scale. It is reveal that these large-area SnS layers exhibit a broadband spectral response ranging from deep-ultraviolet (UV) to near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths (i.e., 280–850 nm) with fast photodetection capabilities. For single-unit-cell-thick layered SnS, the photodetectors show upto three orders of magnitude higher responsivity (927 A W⁻¹) than commercial photodetectors at a room-temperature operating wavelength of 660 nm. This study opens a new pathway to synthesize reproduceable nanosheets of large lateral sizes for broadband, high-performance photodetectors. It also provides important technological implications for scalable applications in integrated optoelectronic circuits, sensing, and biomedical imaging.     

Non-unified Compact Residual-Distribution Methods for Scalar Advection–Diffusion Problems

This paper solves the advection–diffusion equation by treating both advection and diffusion residuals in a separate (non-unified) manner. An alternative residual distribution (RD) method combined with the Galerkin method is proposed to solve the advection–diffusion problem. This Flux-Difference RD method maintains a compact-stencil and the whole process of solving advection–diffusion does not require additional equations to be solved. A general mathematical analysis reveals that the new RD method is linearity preserving on arbitrary grids for the steady-state advection–diffusion equation. The numerical results show that the flux difference RD method preserves second-order accuracy on various unstructured grids including highly randomized anisotropic grids on both the linear and nonlinear scalar advection–diffusion cases.     

A systematic review of text stemming techniques

Stemming is a program that matches the morphological variants of the word to its root word. Stemming is extensively used as a pre-processing tool in the field of natural language processing, information retrieval, and language modeling. Though a lot of advancements have been made in the field, yet organized arrangement of the previous work and efforts are lacking in this field. In this paper, we present a review of the text stemming theory, algorithms, and applications. It first describes the existing literature relevant to text stemming by classifying it according to certain key parameters; then it describes the deep analysis of some well-known stemming algorithms on standard data sets. In the end, the current state-of-the-art and certain open issues related to unsupervised stemming are presented. The main aim of this paper is to provide an extensive and useful understanding of the important aspects of text stemming. The open issues and analysis of the current stemming techniques will help the researchers to think of new lines to conduct research in future.     

Electromagnetic radiation detection in 0-3 cement-PZT composite under impact loading

Electromagnetic responses of cement–PZT composites under impact loading have been presented in this work. The values of density, dielectric constant and EMR voltage increase while that of porosity and loss tangent decrease with increase in PZT content. Filler (PZT) concentration dependent dielectric constant as well as loss tangent data shows exponential variation. The emitted EMR voltage as well as average EMR energy release rate for 21?cm height of impact increase from 1.03 V to 2.24 V and 0.10092 V²-sec/sec to 0.4635 V²-sec/sec respectively with the increasing PZT content (5% to 40%). The EMR responses of the composites were also found to be proportional to the height of impact in all the composites tested, indicating that the measurement of EMR responses from the cement based composites may be useful for deformation monitoring.     

Comparison of electrocoagulation,peroxi-electrocoagulation and peroxi-coagulation processes for treatment of simulated purified terephthalic acid wastewater: Optimization,sludge and kinetic analysis

This study mainly focuses on a comparative study of electrocoagulation (EC), peroxi-electrocoagulation (PEC) and peroxi-coagulation (PC) processes for the treatment of aqueous solution containing major toxic components of purified terephthalic acid wastewater: benzoic acid (BA), terephthalic acid (TPA), para-toluic acid (p-TA) and phthalic acid (PA). The solution was initially treated by acid treatment method at various pH (2-4) and temperature (15-60 °C). The supernatant was further remediated by EC, PEC and PC methods independently. Process variables such as pH (4-12) and pH (1-5), current density (45.72-228.60 A/m²), electrolyte concentration (0.04-0.08 mol/L), electrode gap (1-3 cm), H₂O₂ concentration (600-1,000 mg/L) and reaction time (20-100 min) during EC, PEC and PC treatment were effectively optimized through central composite design under Design Expert software. Maximum COD removal of 60.76%, 73.91%, 66.68% with energy consumption (kWh/kg COD removed) of 95.81, 49.58, 69.26 was obtained by EC, PEC and PC treatments, respectively, at optimum conditions. Electrochemical methods were compared by removal capacities, consumption of energy, operating cost, degradation kinetics and sludge characteristics. PEC treatment was found most effective among EC, PEC and PC processes due to its highest removal capacity and lowest energy consumption features.     

Biodegradation of Direct Red 5B, a textile dye by newly isolated Comamonas sp. UVS

Soil samples collected from the vicinity of "Manpasand textile industry", located near Ichalkaranji, India were studied for screening and isolation of bacterial strains capable of degradation of textile dyes. A potential strain was selected on the basis of rapid dye degradation and later identified as Comamonas sp. UVS. Comamonas sp. UVS showed 100% decolorization of Direct Red 5B (DR5B) dye at 40 degrees C and pH 6.5. The maximum Direct Red 5B concentration decolorized was 1100mg/l in nutrient broth within 125h. A numerical simulation with the Michaelis-Menten kinetics model gives an optimal value of 16.01+/-0.36mgdye/gcell/h for maximum rate (V(max)) and 7.97+/-0.21mg/l for the Michaelis constant (K(m)). The induction in the activities of laccase and LiP was observed during decolorization. These enzymes were inhibited by the addition of sodium azide. The biodegradation was monitored by UV-vis, FTIR spectroscopy and HPLC. The GCMS analysis indicated the presence of 7-benzoylamino-3-diazenyl-4-hydroxy-naphthalene-2-sulfonic acid in degraded product of the dye. The germination of Triticum aestivum seeds was inhibited with DR5B treatment but not with the treatment of dye degradation products.     

Swirl effects on harmonically excited,premixed flame kinematics

This paper describes the response of a swirling premixed flame with constant burning velocity to non-axisymmetric harmonic excitation. This work extends prior studies of axisymmetric forcing, which have shown that wrinkles are excited on the flame that propagate downstream along the mean flame surface at a speed given by U_o cos ψ, where U_o is the mean flow velocity and ψ is the flame angle. The swirl component in the flow field introduces an azimuthal transport mechanism for disturbances on the flame. As such, the flame response at any given position is a superposition of flame wrinkles excited at earlier times, upstream axial locations, and different azimuthal positions. These swirl transport effects do not arise in problems where axisymmetric flames are subjected to axisymmetric excitation, but enter quite prominently in the presence of non-axisymmetries, such as when the flame is subjected to transverse excitation. The solution characteristics are strongly dependent upon the ratio of angular rotation rate to excitation frequency, denoted by σ = Ω/ω, which describes the fraction of azimuthal rotation a disturbance makes in one acoustic period. When σ ? 1 and σ ? 1, the axial wavelength of flame wrinkles scales with the convective wavelength, λ_c, but becomes much longer for σ ～ O(1). The spatial variation in phase of flame wrinkling is also strongly dependent upon σ. Regardless of swirl number, flame wrinkles propagate in helical spirals along the solution characteristics at a phase speed equal to the local tangential velocity. The axial phase characteristics of flame wrinkling at a fixed azimuthal location, as would be measured by laser sheet imaging, are much more complex. For σ < 1, the wrinkles exhibit the familiar negative roll-off character for the phase with axial downstream distance, indicative of an axially convecting disturbance. The slope of this phase roll-off decreases with increasing σ, however, and becomes zero at σ = 1 for a compact flame. For σ > 1, the wrinkles actually have a positive roll-off character for the phase with axial downstream distance, indicating a flame wrinkle with a negative trace velocity, but whose actual propagation velocity is positive. Finally, these results show that while the flame response to transverse acoustic excitation is quite strong locally, its spatially integrated effect is much smaller for acoustically compact flames. This suggests that the dominant mechanism through which the flame responds globally to transverse excitation is the induced vortical and longitudinal acoustic fluctuations.     

Micromechanical characteristics of flux-grown SmAlO<Subscript>3</Subscript> single crystal

Results on mechanical characterization of flux-grown samarium aluminate (SmAlO₃) crystals in the load range from 0.098 to 0.98 N are reported. The variation of microhardness with applied load is found to be nonlinear and is explained by using the Hays–Kendall law. The applicability of the Hays–Kendall law leads to the load-independent value of hardness. The indentations are associated with cracks only at higher loads (over 0.686 N) and the cracks developed are Palmqvist’s in nature. The hardness results and the indentation-induced cracking yield the value of fracture toughness (K_c ), brittleness index (B_i ), and yield strength (σ_Y ) for SmAlO₃ crystal.     

Prediction of Fracture Parameters of High Strength and Ultra-High Strength Concrete Beams using Minimax Probability Machine Regression and Extreme Learning Machine

This paper deals with the development of models for prediction of facture parameters, namely, fracture energy and ultimate load of high strength and ultra high strength concrete based on Minimax Probability Machine Regression (MPMR) and Extreme Learning Machine (ELM). MPMR is developed based on Minimax Probability Machine Classification (MPMC). ELM is the modified version of Single Hidden Layer Feed Foreword Network (SLFN). MPMR and ELM has been used as regression techniques. Mathematical models have been developed in the form of relation between several input variables such as beam dimensions, water cement ratio, compressive strength, split tensile strength, notch depth, and modulus of elasticity and output is fracture energy and ultimate load A total of 87 data sets (input-output pairs) are used, 61 of which are used to train the model and 26 are used to test the models. The data-sets used in this study are derived from experimental results. A comparative study has been presented between the developed MPMR and ELM models. The results showed that the developed models give reasonable performance for prediction of fracture energy and ultimate load.