Reno-colo-cutaneous fistula. A case report

Reno-colo-cutaneous fistula due to genito-urinary tuberculosis is extremely rare. We describe one such case which was successfully managed by single stage surgery (nephroureterectomy, fistulectomy and primary repair of colon) and anti-tubercular treatment.     

Elucidating the Response of Crop Plants towards Individual,Combined and Sequentially Occurring Abiotic Stresses

In nature, plants are exposed to an ever-changing environment with increasing frequencies of multiple abiotic stresses. These abiotic stresses act either in combination or sequentially, thereby driving vegetation dynamics and limiting plant growth and productivity worldwide. Plants’ responses against these combined and sequential stresses clearly differ from that triggered by an individual stress. Until now, experimental studies were mainly focused on plant responses to individual stress, but have overlooked the complex stress response generated in plants against combined or sequential abiotic stresses, as well as their interaction with each other. However, recent studies have demonstrated that the combined and sequential abiotic stresses overlap with respect to the central nodes of their interacting signaling pathways, and their impact cannot be modelled by swimming in an individual extreme event. Taken together, deciphering the regulatory networks operative between various abiotic stresses in agronomically important crops will contribute towards designing strategies for the development of plants with tolerance to multiple stress combinations. This review provides a brief overview of the recent developments in the interactive effects of combined and sequentially occurring stresses on crop plants. We believe that this study may improve our understanding of the molecular and physiological mechanisms in untangling the combined stress tolerance in plants, and may also provide a promising venue for agronomists, physiologists, as well as molecular biologists.     

Evaluation of mixed micellar interactions of CnBCl and SDBS mixtures using dissociated Margules model and influence of different salts

The conductivity measurement has been used to determine the first and second CMC's (CMC₁ and CMC₂) of alkyldimethylbenzylammonium chloride (C_nBCl; n = 12, 14 and 16) as well as gemini surfactant trimethylene-1,2-bis-(dodecyldimethylammonium bromide) (12-2-12) with sodium dodecylbenzenesulphonate (SDBS) in aqueous solutions using Rubingh's the regular theory approximation as well as the dissociated Margules Model. The use of Margules model allows us to calculate activity coefficients of the constituents and hence provides better values of micellar parameters for asymmetric mixed systems as compared to the regular solution theory. The CMC₁ values for C_nBCl/SDBS mixtures were seen to be lower than those predicted from their ideal mixtures suggesting synergistic interactions although the synergism increases with chain length (n) of the cationic surfactant. Both CMC₁ and CMC₂ experience a decrease with rising values of n. The addition of salts including NaCl, KCl, NaBr, Na₃PO₄, and Na₂SO₄ in mixtures of C₁₆BCl and SDBS suggests that salt counterions have a considerable impact on CMC₁ when either surfactant is in excess. Zeta potential (ζ) measurements provide more evidence in favor of these observations. The thermodynamic features of micellization have also been scrutinized using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC).     

Rapid removal of lead(II) ions from water using iron oxide–tea waste nanocomposite – a kinetic study

Lead (Pb) ions are a major concern to the environment and human health as they are contemplated cumulative poisons. In this study, facile synthesis of magnetic iron oxide–tea waste nanocomposite is reported for adsorptive removal of lead ions from aqueous solutions and easy magnetic separation of the adsorbent afterwards. The samples were characterised by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform‐infrared spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction, and Braunner–Emmet–Teller nitrogen adsorption study. Adsorptive removal of Pb(II) ions from aqueous solution was followed by ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectrophotometry. About 95% Pb(II) ion removal is achieved with the magnetic tea waste within 10 min. A coefficient of regression R ²  ≃ 0.99 and adsorption density of 18.83 mg g⁻¹ was found when Pb(II) ions were removed from aqueous solution using magnetic tea waste. The removal of Pb(II) ions follows the pseudo‐second‐order rate kinetics. External mass transfer principally regulates the rate‐limiting phenomena of adsorption of Pb(II) ions on iron oxide–tea waste surface. The results strongly imply that magnetic tea waste has promising potential as an economic and excellent adsorbent for the removal of Pb(II) from water.Inspec keywords: visible spectra, scanning electron microscopy, mass transfer, ultraviolet spectra, X‐ray diffraction, nanocomposites, lead, adsorption, magnetic separation, iron compounds, nanofabrication, Fourier transform infrared spectraOther keywords: FeO, Pb, time 10.0 min, X‐ray diffraction, Fourier transform‐infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, adsorbent, magnetic separation, rapid removal, Braunner–Emmet–Teller nitrogen adsorption, iron oxide–tea waste surface, magnetic tea waste, aqueous solution, adsorptive removal, magnetic iron oxide–tea waste nanocomposite, lead(II) ions     

Analysis of Underlap Strained Silicon on Insulator MOSFET for Accurate and Compact Modeling

Silicon - Recently, transistors with an underlapped gate structure have been widely studied to overcome several challenges associated with nanoscale devices. In this work, underlap region is...     

Cluster Head Selection in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network Using a New Evolutionary Algorithm

Wireless Personal Communications - In wireless sensor network (WSN), limited energy resources with the nodes is a complex challenge as far as data routing, collecting and aggregating the data is...     

Identifying the Activity Origin of a Cobalt Single-Atom Catalyst for Hydrogen Evolution Using Supervised Learning

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) have become the forefront of energy conversion studies, but unfortunately, the origin of their activity and the interpretation of the synchrotron spectrograms of these materials remain ambiguous. Here, systematic density functional theory computations reveal that the edge sites—zigzag and armchair—are responsible for the activity of the graphene-based Co (cobalt) SACs toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Then, edge-rich (E)-Co single atoms (SAs) were rationally synthesized guided by theoretical results. Supervised learning techniques are applied to interpret the measured synchrotron spectrum of E-Co SAs. The obtained local environments of Co SAs, 65.49% of Co-4N-plane, 13.64% in Co-2N-armchair, and 20.86% in Co-2N-zigzag, are consistent with Athena fitting. Remarkably, E-Co SAs show even better HER electrocatalytic performance than commercial Pt/C at high current density. Using the joint effort of theoretical modeling, thorough characterization of the catalysts aided by supervised learning, and catalytic performance evaluations, this study not only uncovers the activity origin of Co SACs for HER but also lays the cornerstone for the rational design and structural analysis of nanocatalysts.     

An efficient adaptive artificial neural network based text to speech synthesizer for Hindi language

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Speech recognition is one of the major research regions these days under speech processing. This paper depends on developing a whole process that takes the input...     

A meta-heuristic-based energy efficient route modeling for EV on non-identical road surfaces

Neural Computing and Applications - Electric vehicles (EVs) have emerged as a fast-growing industry not only in India but all over the world due to their environment friendly and economic...