Studies on batch adsorptive removal of cadmium and nickel from synthetic waste water using silty clay originated from Balochistan–Pakistan

The potentials of silty clay(SC), acquired from Chaman, Balochistan, were investigated as adsorbent for Ni(Ⅱ)and Cd(Ⅱ) removal from contaminated media. The influence of different operating factors like dose, pH, temperature, and time of contact was explored, and optimum values were noted under batch adsorption method. Isothermal study was conducted with varying concentrations of solutions on optimized conditions and different adsorption models i.e., Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin–Radushkevich(D–R) isotherm, which were employed to interpret the process. The isothermal data of both Ni(Ⅱ) and Cd(Ⅱ) were well fitted to Langmuir isotherm suggesting the formation of monolayer of metal ions on silty clay. The values of adsorption capacity noted for Ni(Ⅱ) and Cd(Ⅱ) were 3.603 mg·g~(-1) and 5.480 mg·g~(-)1, respectively. Kinetic studies affirmed that pseudo second order(PSO) kinetics was being obeyed by the removal of Ni(Ⅱ) and Cd(Ⅱ). Thermodynamic variables like free energy change(ΔG°), enthalpy change(ΔH°) and entropy change(ΔS°) were calculated. The negative value of ΔG° and the positive values of ΔH° and ΔS° unfolded that the removal process of both metal ions of by SC was spontaneous, endothermic and feasible.     

Synthesis of Sulfur‐Based Biocompatible Nonionic Surfactants and Their Nano‐Vesicle Drug Delivery

Nonionic surfactants are capable of forming nano‐range vesicles upon self‐assembling in an aqueous medium. These vesicles are highly stable, low in toxicity, and cost‐effective. Owing to their ability to solubilize both hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances, they are of great interest for drug solubilization and delivery. This study describes the synthesis and characterization of two new nonionic surfactants and their screening for biocompatibility and drug loading potentials in nano‐scale niosomal vesicles. They were characterized through mass spectroscopy, ¹HNMR, and FT‐IR. Their critical micelle concentration (CMC) was investigated using UV–vis spectrophotometry. The biocompatibility study was carried out through blood hemolysis and in vitro cytotoxicity assays. The surfactants have very low CMC values, are highly hemo‐compatible, and were nontoxic when tested against a cell culture. They were able to form nano‐range niosomal vesicles with large variation in their size. Both new surfactants were able to encapsulate increased amounts of the drug, in this case clarithromycin. The chemical nature of the drug remained intact in the niosomal vesicles. The results suggest that these nonionic surfactants could be promising drug delivery vehicles.     

Evaluating the lucrative role of probiotics in the aquaculture using microscopic and biochemical techniques

The present study focused to elucidate the promising role of probiotics in the fish culture, by employing microscopic and biochemical parameters to rationalize the possible outcomes. After preliminary feeding trial histopathological analysis revealed clear and visible changes in the intestinal and liver cells of CTRL (control group) compared to probiotics supplemented group, the bacterial inoculations resulted in shorten and swelled villi, while liver kupffer cells increased many folds in the CTRL. Moreover, there was clear hypertrophy and lamellar fusion in the gills tissues examined under microscope. Furthermore, intriguing results were obtained, such as a substantial increase in the weight gain, specific growth rate (%BW/day), FCE%, survival%, and improved secretions of amylase, cellulase, and protease activities. Likewise, high crude protein, fats content, while low moisture and total Ash was noticed in EXP I (Probiotics supplemented) compared to CTRL. The microscopic and biochemical analysis disclosed the positive role of probiotics on the fish health, thus we suggest its supplementations in the fish diet.     

Netted radar: Network communications design and optimisation

Networks of phased array radars are generally able to provide better counter stealth target detection and classification. Each radar sensor (or node) generates information which requires transmission to a central authority that is able to evaluate the information. This requires a communications network to be established to allow transmission of information to and from any node. Each radar node is limited by range and degree and relies on the formation of a multi-hop network to facilitate these transmissions.This paper presents a model whereby the radar beam itself is used in the formation of a multi-hop network. The phased array’s multi-functional nature allows rapid switching between communications and radar function. A model of how the communication system could operate is presented, and an evolutionary optimisation algorithm based upon the concept of Pareto optimality is used for the topological design of the network. Finally, a simulation environment is presented to show the simulated performance of the communication model and designed networks.     

Machine learning in vehicular networking: An overview

As vehicle complexity and road congestion increase, combined with the emergence of electric vehicles, the need for intelligent transportation systems to improve on-road safety and transportation efficiency using vehicular networks has become essential. The evolution of high mobility wireless networks will provide improved support for connected vehicles through highly dynamic heterogeneous networks. Particularly, 5G deployment introduces new features and technologies that enable operators to capitalize on emerging infrastructure capabilities. Machine Learning (ML), a powerful methodology for adaptive and predictive system development, has emerged in both vehicular and conventional wireless networks. Adopting data-centric methods enables ML to address highly dynamic vehicular network issues faced by conventional solutions, such as traditional control loop design and optimization techniques. This article provides a short survey of ML applications in vehicular networks from the networking aspect. Research topics covered in this article include network control containing handover management and routing decision making, resource management, and energy efficiency in vehicular networks. The findings of this paper suggest more attention should be paid to network forming/deforming decision making. ML applications in vehicular networks should focus on researching multi-agent cooperated oriented methods and overall complexity reduction while utilizing enabling technologies, such as mobile edge computing for real-world deployment. Research datasets, simulation environment standardization, and method interpretability also require more research attention.     

Formulation and characterisation of a self‐nanoemulsifying drug delivery system of amphotericin B for the treatment of leishmaniasis

This study was aimed to develop a self‐nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS) for amphotericin B (AmB) potential use in leishmaniasis through topical and oral routes. Two formulations, formulation A and formulation B (FA and FB) of AmB loaded SNEDDS were developed by mixing their excipients through vortex and sonication. The SNEDDS formulation FA and FB displayed a mean droplet size of 27.70 ± 0.5 and 30.17 ± 0.7 nm and zeta potential −11.4 ± 3.25 and −13.6 ± 2.75 mV, respectively. The mucus permeation study showed that formulation FA and FB diffused 1.45 and 1.37%, respectively in up to 8 mm of mucus. The cell permeation across Caco‐2 cells monolayer was 10 and 11%, respectively. Viability of Caco‐2 cells was 89% for FA and 86.9% for FB. The anti‐leishmanial activities of FA in terms of IC₅₀ were 0.017 µg/ml against promastigotes and 0.025 µg/ml against amastigotes, while IC₅₀ values of FB were 0.031 and 0.056 µg/ml, respectively. FA and FB killed macrophage harboured Leishmania parasites in a dose‐dependent manner and a concentration of 0.1 µg/ml killed 100% of the parasites. These formulations have the potential to provide a promising tool for AmB use through oral and topical routes in leishmaniasis therapy.Inspec keywords: nanomedicine, drops, microorganisms, electrokinetic effects, cellular biophysics, drug delivery systems, monolayers, drugs, diseasesOther keywords: self‐nanoemulsifying drug delivery system, topical routes, oral routes, SNEDDS formulation, mucus permeation study, cell permeation, leishmaniasis treatment, amphotericin B, zeta potential, Caco‐2 cell monolayer, vortex, sonication, droplet size, Caco‐2 cell viability, antileishmanial activity, promastigotes, amastigotes, Leishmania parasites     

QoS Aware Multicast Routing Protocol for Video Transmission in Smart Cities

In recent years, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has become an important candidate for communication infrastructure in smart cities. It produces a drastic increase in the need for delivery of video services that are of high resolution, multiview, and large-scale in nature. However, this entity gets easily influenced by heterogeneous behaviour of the user's wireless link features that might reduce the quality of video stream for few or all clients. The development of SDN allows the emergence of new possibilities for complicated controlling of video conferences. Besides, multicast routing protocol with multiple constraints in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) is a Nondeterministic Polynomial time (NP) hard problem which can be solved only with the help of metaheuristic optimization algorithms. With this motivation, the current research paper presents a new Improved Black Widow Optimization with Levy Distribution model (IBWO-LD)-based multicast routing protocol for smart cities. The presented IBWO-LD model aims at minimizing the energy consumption and bandwidth utilization while at the same time accomplish improved quality of video streams that the clients receive. Besides, a priority-based scheduling and classifier model is designed to allocate multicast request based on the type of applications and deadline constraints. A detailed experimental analysis was carried out to ensure the outcomes improved under different aspects. The results from comprehensive comparative analysis highlighted the superiority of the proposed IBWO-LD model over other compared methods.     

A Highly Efficient Algorithm for Phased-Array mmWave Massive MIMO Beamforming

With the rapid development of the mobile internet and the internet of things (IoT), the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication system is seeing explosive growth in data traffic. In addition, low-frequency spectrum resources are becoming increasingly scarce and there is now an urgent need to switch to higher frequency bands. Millimeter wave (mmWave) technology has several outstanding features—it is one of the most well-known 5G technologies and has the capacity to fulfil many of the requirements of future wireless networks. Importantly, it has an abundant resource spectrum, which can significantly increase the communication rate of a mobile communication system. As such, it is now considered a key technology for future mobile communications. MmWave communication technology also has a more open network architecture; it can deliver varied services and be applied in many scenarios. By contrast, traditional, all-digital precoding systems have the drawbacks of high computational complexity and higher power consumption. This paper examines the implementation of a new hybrid precoding system that significantly reduces both calculational complexity and energy consumption. The primary idea is to generate several sub-channels with equal gain by dividing the channel by the geometric mean decomposition (GMD). In this process, the objective function of the spectral efficiency is derived, then the basic tracking principle and least square (LS) techniques are deployed to design the proposed hybrid precoding. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves system performance and reduces computational complexity by more than 45% compared to traditional algorithms.     

Multi‐agent‐based sharing power economy for a smart community

In this paper, a multi‐agent‐based locally administrated power distribution hub (PDH) for social welfare is proposed that optimizes energy consumption, allocation, and management of battery energy storage systems (ESSs) for a smart community. Initially, formulation regarding optimum selection of a power storage system for a home (in terms of storage capacity) is presented. Afterwards, the concept of sharing economy is inducted in the community by demonstrating PDH. PDH is composed of multiple small‐scale battery ESSs (each owned by community users), which are connected together to form a unified‐ESS. Proposed PDH offers a localized switching mechanism that takes decision of whether to buy electricity from utility or use unified‐ESS. This decision is based on the price of electricity at ‘time of use’ and ‘state of charge’ of unified‐ESS. In response to power use or share, electricity bills are created for individual smart homes by incrementing or decrementing respective submeters. There is no buying or selling of power from PDH; there is power sharing with the concept of ‘no profit, no loss’. The objective of the proposed PDH is to limit the purchase of electricity on ‘high priced’ hours from the utility. This not only benefits the utility at crucial hours but also provides effective use of power at the demand side. The proposed multi‐agent system depicts the concept of sharing power economy within a community. Finally, the proposed model is analyzed analytically, considering on‐peak, off‐peak, and mid‐level (mid‐peak) prices of a real‐time price signal during 24 h of a day. Results clearly show vital financial benefits of ‘sharing power economy’ for end users and efficient use of power within the smart community. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hazardous impact of toxic metals on tobacco leaves grown in contaminated soil by ultrasonic assisted pseudo-digestion: multivariate study

Tobacco leaves (Nicotiana tabacum L.), agricultural soil and pollute irrigated lake water samples were collected during 2005–2006 and analyzed for Cd and Ni by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS). A simple and efficient procedure was investigated for the complete decomposition of tobacco leaves using ultrasonic assisted acid pseudo-digestion method (UPDM). A Plackett–Burman experimental design was used as a multivariate strategy for the evaluation of seven factors/variables at once, while central composite were used to found optimum values of significant variables. The accuracy of the proposed methods was assessed by analyzing certified reference (CRM); Virginia tobacco leaves (CTA-VTL-2). The results being compared with those obtained by conventional wet acid digestion method. The result obtained by optimized method showed good agreement with the certified values and sufficiently high recovery 97.8 and 98.7% for Cd and Ni, respectively. Under optimal conditions, the detection limits (3σ) were evaluated to be 0.019 μg g⁻¹ for Cd and 0.37 μg g⁻¹ for Ni. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of Cd and Ni in raw, processed tobacco and different branded cigarettes samples.