Crosslinked poly(vinyl alcohol) membrane as separator for domestic wastewater fed dual chambered microbial fuel cells

The use of Nafion as a proton exchange membrane in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) is expensive with operational issues like biofouling and fuel crossover limiting the practical application of the device to harvest energy from wastewaters. In this connection, a facile route is adapted to fabricate a Nafion-alternative membrane using poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GA) as a relatively low-cost, effective membrane for MFCs. The crosslinking of the PVA membrane resulted in a reduction in hydroxyl groups and the formation of the acetal ring and ether linkage demonstrated by controlled water uptake and swelling ratio with enhanced thermo-mechanical stability. The crosslinked membrane displayed higher power density than those typically reported for domestic wastewater fed MFCs, reaching a maximum of 158.28 mW/m² for the fabricated membrane. The PVA-GA membrane with antimicrobial activity, high power performance, and negligible fuel crossover shows its potential as a separator in future MFCs based on its performance and low cost of installation.     

Semi-supervised deep learning based named entity recognition model to parse education section of resumes

Neural Computing and Applications - A job seeker’s resume contains several sections, including educational qualifications. Educational qualifications capture the knowledge and skills relevant...     

Applications of computational intelligence techniques to software engineering problems

Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering -     

Flash Sintering of (La,Sr)(Co,Fe)O3–Gd‐Doped CeO2 Composite

Sintering of composites constituted by two nonstoichiometric phases (La_0.6Sr_0.4)(Co_0.2Fe_0.8)O₃ (LSCF) and Gd_0.1Ce_0.9O₂ (GDC) under constant electric field in constant heating rate experiment is studied in this work. The requirements of field and temperature for composite systematically increase with GDC amounts this indicating the importance of material conductivity. Sintering/grain growth rate is higher in the composite compared to pure LSCF phase. Flash‐sintering phenomenon in the composite is explained on the basis of three factors: (1) large and continuous increase in conductivity of LSCF acts as source of defects, (2) maintenance of sufficient local temperature because of GDC during continuous conductivity increase facilitates the cationic diffusion, and (3) reduction reactions of LSCF, during polaron hopping conduction, and of GDC phase at higher temperature activate the sintering process.     

Investigation of structural and some physical properties of Cr substituted polycrystalline Eu<Subscript>0.5</Subscript>Sr<Subscript>0.5</Subscript>Mn<Subscript>1−x</Subscript>Cr<Subscript>x</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript> (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1) manganites

The polycrystalline samples with nominal composition Eu_0.5Sr_0.5Mn_1?x Cr _x O₃ (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1) were prepared by the conventional solid state reaction method and characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and electrical resistivity behavior without and with magnetic field. The structural parameters obtained by using Rietveld refinement of X-ray diffraction data showed that all samples crystallize with orthorhombic perovskite type symmetry with Pbnm space group. The scanning electron micrograph images reveal that the increase in Cr substitution hinders grain growth and grain connectivity. The temperature dependence of electrical resistivity show the semiconducting nature of these compounds and support the small polaron hoping model and variable range hopping conduction model. The calculated hopping distance and activation energy decreased as rate of Cr content increased whereas density of states at Fermi level increased. A large negative magnetoresistance is also present in the sample at the lowest temperature of measurements.     

Intelligent Cloud IoMT Health Monitoring-Based System for COVID-19

The most common alarming and dangerous disease in the world today is the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The coronavirus is perceived as a group of coronaviruses which causes mild to severe respiratory diseases among human beings. The infection is spread by aerosols emitted from infected individuals during talking, sneezing, and coughing. Furthermore, infection can occur by touching a contaminated surface followed by transfer of the viral load to the face. Transmission may occur through aerosols that stay suspended in the air for extended periods of time in enclosed spaces. To stop the spread of the pandemic, it is crucial to isolate infected patients in quarantine houses. Government health organizations faced a lack of quarantine houses and medical test facilities at the first level of testing by the proposed model. If any serious condition is observed at the first level testing, then patients should be recommended to be hospitalized. In this study, an IoT-enabled smart monitoring system is proposed to detect COVID-19 positive patients and monitor them during their home quarantine. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), known as healthcare IoT, is employed as the foundation of the proposed model. The least-squares (LS) method was applied to estimate the linear model parameters for a sequential pilot survey. A statistical sequential analysis is performed as a pilot survey to efficiently collect preliminary data for an extensive survey of COVID-19 positive cases. The Bayesian approach is used, based on the assumption of the random variable for the priori distribution of the data sample. Fuzzy inference is used to construct different rules based on the basic symptoms of COVID-19 patients to make an expert decision to detect COVID-19 positive cases. Finally, the performance of the proposed model was determined by applying a four-fold cross-validation technique.     

Ceramide-2 nanovesicles for effective transdermal delivery: development,characterization and pharmacokinetic evaluation

Context: The vesicles based on skin lipid have a drug localization effect and its main lipid, ceramide provides protective and regenerative effects while oleic acid (OA) is a penetration enhancer, however, it causes slight irritation, so we have formulated formulation incorporating both of these to develop a transdermal formulation for better permeation.

Objective: Present study investigated the preparation and characterization of physicochemical properties and permeation of nanovesicles of ceramide-2 containing OA and palmitic acid (PA) respectively and a commercial gel.

Materials and methods: The vesicles were made using ceramide 2, cholesterol (Chol), cholesteryl sulfate (CS) and OA or PA, respectively, using film hydration method. The vesicles were characterized for physicochemical properties, ex vivo permeation using human skin and pharmacokinetic parameters and anti-inflammatory activity in rats.

Results: The vesicles showed size at 102–125?nm while PDI was 0.11–0.13 and negative zeta potential. OV-3 showed highest entrapment efficiency. The drug fluxes were 92.02 and 8.920?μg/cm²/h, respectively, for OV-3 and PV-1. The C_max were 7.91 and 4.01?μg/ml at 4 and 6?h for OV-3 (2.5?mg) and PV-1 (10?mg), respectively. OV-3 and PV-1 showed 98.8% and 77.36% edema inhibition, respectively, at 3?h.

Discussion: Both formulations showed similar physical parameters and different permeation since OA get incorporated in vesicles and increases its permeability and ceramide makes sure that vesicles can rapidly traverse the stratum corneum.

Conclusion: OV-3 containing 3% OA showed optimum physical parameters and good permeation with maximum anti-inflammatory activity.