Green synthesised zinc oxide nanostructures through Periploca aphylla extract shows tremendous antibacterial potential against multidrug resistant pathogens

To grapple with multidrug resistant bacterial infections, implementations of antibacterial nanomedicines have gained prime attention of the researchers across the globe. Nowadays, zinc oxide (ZnO) at nano‐scale has emerged as a promising antibacterial therapeutic agent. Keeping this in view, ZnO nanostructures (ZnO‐NS) have been synthesised through reduction by P. aphylla aqueous extract without the utilisation of any acid or base. Structural examinations via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X‐ray diffraction have revealed pure phase morphology with highly homogenised average particle size of 18 nm. SEM findings were further supplemented by transmission electron microscopy examinations. The characteristic Zn–O peak has been observed around 363 nm using ultra‐violet–visible spectroscopy. Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy examination has also confirmed the formation of ZnO‐NS through detection of Zn–O bond vibration frequencies. To check the superior antibacterial activity of ZnO‐NS, the authors'' team has performed disc diffusion assay and colony forming unit testing against multidrug resistant E. coli, S. marcescens and E. cloacae. Furthermore, protein kinase inhibition assay and cytotoxicity examinations have revealed that green fabricated ZnO‐NS are non‐hazardous, economical, environmental friendly and possess tremendous potential to treat lethal infections caused by multidrug resistant pathogens.Inspec keywords: nanomedicine, zinc compounds, II‐VI semiconductors, wide band gap semiconductors, nanoparticles, scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray diffraction, antibacterial activity, transmission electron microscopy, particle size, Fourier transform infrared spectra, ultraviolet spectra, visible spectra, enzymes, biochemistry, molecular biophysics, microorganisms, drugs, toxicology, bonds (chemical), semiconductor growth, nanofabrication, vibrational modesOther keywords: green synthesised zinc oxide nanostructures, Periploca aphylla extract, antibacterial potential, multidrug resistant pathogens, multidrug resistant bacterial infections, antibacterial nanomedicines, P. aphylla aqueous extract, structural examinations, scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray diffraction, pure phase morphology, homogenised average particle size, SEM, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy, bond vibration frequency, antibacterial activity, disc diffusion assay, colony forming unit testing, S. marcescens, E. cloacae, E. coli, ultraviolet‐visible spectroscopy, protein kinase inhibition assay, cytotoxicity, lethal infections, ZnO     

Enhancement in Physical Properties of Silver-Doped Fe–Ni Invar Nano-alloy Using Chemical Reduction Method

Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism - Silver-substituted Fe–Ni nano invar alloy is a new and innovative field of research due to their interesting invar, magnetic and electrical...     

Power Allocation Strategy for Secret Key Generation Method in Wireless Communications

Secret key generation (SKG) is an emerging technology to secure wireless communication from attackers. Therefore, the SKG at the physical layer is an alternate solution over traditional cryptographic methods due to wireless channels’ uncertainty. However, the physical layer secret key generation (PHY-SKG) depends on two fundamental parameters, i.e., coherence time and power allocation. The coherence time for PHY-SKG is not applicable to secure wireless channels. This is because coherence time is for a certain period of time. Thus, legitimate users generate the secret keys (SKs) with a shorter key length in size. Hence, an attacker can quickly get information about the SKs. Consequently, the attacker can easily get valuable information from authentic users. Therefore, we considered the scheme of power allocation to enhance the secret key generation rate (SKGR) between legitimate users. Hence, we propose an alternative method, i.e., a power allocation, to improve the SKGR. Our results show 72% higher SKGR in bits/sec by increasing power transmission. In addition, the power transmission is based on two important parameters, i.e., epsilon and power loss factor, as given in power transmission equations. We found out that a higher value of epsilon impacts power transmission and subsequently impacts the SKGR. The SKGR is approximately 40.7% greater at 250 from 50 mW at epsilon = 1. The value of SKGR is reduced to 18.5% at 250 mW when epsilonis 0.5. Furthermore, the transmission power is also measured against the different power loss factor values, i.e., 3.5, 3, and 2.5, respectively, at epsilon = 0.5. Hence, it is concluded that the value of epsilon and power loss factor impacts power transmission and, consequently, impacts the SKGR.     

Evaporated Thin Films of CdS and CdTe: Optimization for Photovoltaic Applications

Thin films of cadmium sulphide and cadmium telluride have been prepared by thermal evaporation under various conditions of deposition. These films have been characterized optically. electrically and for structure determination. The results of these characterizations along with the initial results of all thin film CdS/CdTe solar cells are presented in this paper     

Numerical modelling of second‐grade fluid flow past a stretching sheet

The present numerical study reports the chemically reacting boundary layer flow of a magnetohydrodynamic second‐grade fluid past a stretching sheet under the influence of internal heat generation or absorption with work done due to deformation in the presence of a porous medium. To distinguish the non‐Newtonian behaviour of the second‐grade fluid with those of Newtonian fluids, a very popularly known second‐grade fluid flow model is used. The fourth order momentum equation with four appropriate boundary conditions along with temperature and concentration equations governing the second‐grade fluid flow are coupled and highly nonlinear in nature. Well‐established similarity transformations are efficiently used to reduce the dimensional flow equations into a set of nondimensional ordinary differential equations with the necessary conditions. The standard bvp4c MATLAB solver is effectively used to solve the fluid flow equations to get the numerical solutions in terms of velocity, temperature, and concentration fields. Numerical results are obtained for a different set of physical parameters and their behaviour is described through graphs and tables. The viscoelastic parameter enhances the velocity field whereas the magnetic and porous parameters suppress the velocity field in the flow region. The temperature field is magnified for increasing values of the heat source/sink parameter. However, from the present numerical study, it is noticed that the flow of heat occurs from sheet to the surrounding ambient fluid. Before concluding the considered problem, our results are validated with previous results and are found to be in good agreement.     

An inverse solution methodology for estimating the diffusion coefficient of gases in Athabasca bitumen from pressure-decay data

An inverse solution methodology is developed for the estimation of diffusion coefficient of gases in highly viscous, oil-sands bitumens from isothermal, pressure-decay measurements. The approach involves modeling the rate of change in pressure using the diffusion equation for the liquid phase coupled with a mass balance equation for the gas phase. The inverse solution framework is utilized to arrive at two graphical techniques for estimating the diffusion coefficient. Both techniques involve the determination of the slope of a straight line resulting from plotting the experimental data in accordance with the developed model. An advantage of the proposed techniques is that the diffusion coefficient is estimated directly, i.e. without making it an adjustable parameter. The novelty of the proposed method is in its simplicity as well as its ability to isolate portions of the pressure-decay data affected by experimental fluctuations. The effect of the initial pressure on the predicted diffusion coefficient and pressure-decay profile was also investigated. The diffusion coefficients of CO₂, CH₄, C₂H₆ and N₂ in Athabasca bitumen at 50–90 °C and about 8 MPa were estimated and compared with literature values.     

Deposition thickness based high-throughput nano-imprint template

International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors 2003 projected nano-imprint lithography has the potential of high throughput, sub-20 nm resolution, and low cost [S.Y. Chou, P.R. Krauss, P.J. Renstrom, Appl. Phys. Lett. 67 (1995) 3144; Science 272 (1996) 85, J.A. Rogers, C. Mirkin, Mater. Res. Bull. 26 (2001)]. For nano-imprint lithography, a template with 1X resolution is required. The existing industrial infrastructure for supporting deep ultra violet 4X photo masks by e-beam and/or a laser beam scanning writer does not offer pitch (center-to-center distance of an array of patterned lines) less than ∼60 nm [<http://public.itrs.net/2003ITRS>]. For nano-imprint lithography to be accepted across the industry, a reproducible simple fabrication process to make a high resolution, single emboss template is essential [L. Jay Guo, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 37 (2004) R123-R141]. Here we show, a general fabrication method and fabricated nano-imprint templates with sub-15 nm template line width and 10 nm pitch length through out the entire 200 mm wafer, varying the deposition thickness of multiple alternate films, using atomic layer deposition. Although multilayer nano-imprint templates and their exciting use have been demonstrated, [W.J. Dauksher et al., J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 22 (2004) 3306, B. Heidari, et al., The 49th international conference on electron, ion and photon beam technology and nanofabrication, Orlando, Florida, 2005, William M. Tong, et al., Proc. SPIE 5751 (2005) 46-55, N.A. Melosh, A. Boukai, F. Diana, B. Gerardot, A. Badolato, P.M. Petroff, J.R. Heath, Science 300 (2003) 112] such a small pitch was not shown and either complex lattice mismatch-based epitaxially grown films or unconventional etch chemistry was used. The bare necessity was a simple and economical fabrication process for a high throughput nano-imprint template. In that context, we have developed a template fabrication process using classical micro-fabrication techniques. Successful use of these techniques made the template fabrication process simple, economical, and expedient. Also a novel technique to provide flexible and accurate alignment for nanowire patterning has been described. In this technique, nanowire patterning is accomplished on the entire wafer with a single impression. Industry level batch-fabrication of our scheme illustrates its reproducibility and manufacturability. We anticipate, this simple, economical and time saving technique will help researchers and developers to perform their experiment on nano-scale feature patterned substrates easily and conveniently.     

An online resource allocation algorithm to minimize system interference for inband underlay D2D communications

This paper addresses the research question of total system interference minimization while maintaining a target system sum rate gain in an inband underlay device‐to‐device (D2D) communication. To the best of our knowledge, most of the state of the art research works exploit offline resource allocation algorithms to address the research problem. However, in Long‐Term Evolution (LTE) and beyond systems (4G, 5G, or 5G+), offline resource allocation algorithms do not comply with the fast scheduling requirements because of the high data rate demand. In this paper, we propose a bi‐phase online resource allocation algorithm to minimize the total system interference for inband underlay D2D communication. Our proposed algorithm assumes D2D pairs as a set of variable elements whereas takes the cellular user equipment (UEs) as a set of constant elements. The novelty of our proposed online resource allocation algorithm is that it incurs a minimum number of changes in radio resource assignment between two successive allocations among the cellular UEs and the D2D pairs. Graphical representation of the simulation results suggests that our proposed algorithm outperforms the existing offline algorithm considering number of changes in successive allocation for a certain percentage of sum rate gain maintaining the total system interference and total system sum rate very similar.     

A packet scheduling scheme for 4G wireless access systems aiming to maximize revenue for the telecom carriers

Efficient utilization of network resources is a key goal for emerging BWAS. This is a complex goal to achieve due to the heterogeneous service nature and diverse QoS requirements of various applications that BWAS support. Packet scheduling is an important activity that affects BWAS QoS outcomes. This paper proposes a new packet scheduling mechanism that improves QoS in mobile wireless networks which exploit IP as a transport technology for data transfer between BWAS base stations and mobile users at the radio transmission layer. In order to improve BWAS QoS the new packet algorithm makes changes at both the IP and the radio layers. The new algorithm exploits handoff priority scheduling principles and takes into account buffer occupancy and channel conditions. The packet scheduling mechanism also incorporates the concept of fairness. The algorithm offers an opportunity to maximize the carriers’ revenue at various traffic situations. Simulation results were compared to well-known algorithms which demonstrated the new packet scheduling algorithm is able to provide a low handoff packet drop rate, low packet forwarding rate, low packet delay, ensure fairness amongst the users of different services and generates higher revenue. Furthermore this research proposes a new and novel measure named “Satisfaction Factor” to measure the efficacy of various scheduling schemes and finally proposes four performance metrics for NodeB’s of in Next Generation Wireless Networks.