A combined experimental‐numerical framework for residual energy determination in spent lithium‐ion battery packs

The present research proposes a combined framework that evaluates remaining capacity, material behavior, ions concentration of remaining metals, and current rate of chemical reactions of spent Li‐ion batteries accurately. Voltage, temperature, internal resistance, and capacity were studied during charging and discharging cycles. Genetic programming was applied on the obtained data to develop a model to predict remaining capacity. The results of experimental work and those estimated from model were found to be correlated, confirming the validation of model. Materials structure and electrochemical behavior of electrodes during cycles were studied by cyclic voltammetry, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersion spectrum.     

Interplay of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and tissue engineering: a review on clinical aspects of ROS-responsive biomaterials

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) refers to the reactive molecules and free radicals of oxygen generated as the by-products of aerobic respiration. Historically, ROS are known as stress markers that are linked to the response of immune cell against microbial invasion, but recent discoveries suggest their role as secondary messengers in signal transduction and cell cycle. Tissue engineering (TE) techniques have the capabilities to harness such properties of ROS for the effective regeneration of damaged tissues. TE employs stem cells and biomaterial matrix, to heal and regenerate injured tissue and organ. During regeneration, one of the constraints is the unavailability of oxygen as proper vasculature is absent at the injured site. This creates hypoxic conditions at the site of regeneration. Hence, effective response against the stresses like hypoxia spurs the regeneration process. Contrary, hyperoxic condition may increase the risk of ROS stress at the site. TE tries to overcome these limitations with the new class of biomaterials that can sense such stresses and respond accordingly. This review endeavors to explain the role of ROS in stem cell proliferation and differentiation, which is a key component in regeneration. This compilation also highlights the new class of biomaterials that can overcome the hypoxic conditions during tissue regeneration along with emphasis on the ROS-responsive biomaterials and their clinical applications. Incorporating these biomaterials in scaffolds development holds huge potential in tissue or organ regeneration and even in drug delivery.

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An experimental study of the contact mode AFM scanning capability of polyimide cantilever probes

This paper presents a preliminary exploration of high-speed contact mode performed with a polyimide probe. The probe is batch micromachined by a lithographic manufacturing process. It offers a spring constant of <0.1N/m, a resonance frequency of about 50k Hz, and a tip diameter of 50-100 nm. The probe is particularly suitable for scanning soft specimens such as biological and polymeric samples. Topographical contact mode imaging at high scanning rates of 48 Hz (1.47 mm/s) has been demonstrated, detecting features <100 nm over a 15 microm scan, yielding >7 bit resolution at 48 Hz. Scanning rates of 16 Hz (0.5mm/s) have been demonstrated for lateral force imaging with spatial resolution of 100 nm over a 15 microm scan, which translates into >7 bit resolution at 16 Hz. These results suggest that the probe can be used in high throughput applications.     

Improving reliability and reducing cost of task execution on preemptible VM instances using machine learning approach

The Journal of Supercomputing - Cloud users can acquire resources in the form of virtual machines (VMs) instances for computing. These instances can be on-demand, reserved and spot instances....     

Self‐Assembled Room Temperature Multiferroic BiFeO3‐LiFe5O8 Nanocomposites

Multiferroic materials have driven significant research interest due to their promising technological potential. Developing new room‐temperature multiferroics and understanding their fundamental properties are important to reveal unanticipated physical phenomena and potential applications. Here, a new room temperature multiferroic nanocomposite comprised of an ordered ferrimagnetic spinel α‐LiFe₅O₈ (LFO) and a ferroelectric perovskite BiFeO₃ (BFO) is presented. It is observed that lithium (Li)‐doping in BFO favors the formation of LFO spinel as a secondary phase during the synthesis of Li_xBi_1?xFeO₃ ceramics. Multimodal functional and chemical imaging methods are used to map the relationship between doping‐induced phase separation and local ferroic properties in both the BFO‐LFO composite ceramics and self‐assembled nanocomposite thin films. The energetics of phase separation in Li doped BFO and the formation of BFO‐LFO composites are supported by first principles calculations. These findings shed light on Li's role in the formation of a functionally important room temperature multiferroic and open a new approach in the synthesis of light element doped nanocomposites for future energy, sensing, and memory applications.     

Identification of Drought Occurrences Using Ensemble Predictions up to 20-Days in Advance

In the present study, skill of an extended range forecast system has been evaluated for identifying droughts over central India 20-days in advance. Rainfall forecasts from 44 ensemble members of the forecast system developed Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune have been used to prepare probabilistic rainfall forecasts. It is seen that the uncertainties in the forecasts (in terms of ensemble spread) increases from day-5 to day 20. As the focus of the study is for drought predictions, forecasts in the bins 0-5 mm/5 day and 5-25 mm/5 day (no rain or less rain) were studied in detail. It is found that the modeling system has a tendency to over-forecast rainfall probabilities. With bias correction, the forecasts become more reliable. Various drought indices were computed using the mean of the forecast distribution up to 20-days in advance. Standardized precipitation index (SPI) computed using Gamma and Pearson type-III distributions are similar in the study region. It was found that these are in reasonable agreement with those from observations. Probabilistic forecasts of standardized precipitation index (SPI) were made and the relative operating characteristics (ROC) scores indicate that the forecasted SPI values are suitable for application.     

Facile and green synthesis of highly dispersed cobalt oxide (Co3O4) nano powder: Characterization and screening of its eco-toxicity

A novel green synthesis of cobalt oxide (Co₃O₄) nanoparticles using latex of Calotropis procera via simple precipitation method at room temperature was investigated. An extensive characterization of the product was carried out using X-ray diffractometry (XRD), Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and UV–Visible spectroscopy. The results of the characterization confirmed that the synthesized nanomaterial is highly dispersed. TEM analysis revealed that the nano particles are having an average size around 10?nm. The eco-toxic investigation suggested that the particles are non-toxic and safe towards the environment. This green strategy proves to be an effective, fast, simple and cost-effective approach for the synthesis of Co₃O₄ nanoparticles for various applications.     

Experimental investigations and comparison of various MPPT techniques for photovoltaic system

This paper deals with Matlab/Simulink and experimental investigations of various maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques namely incremental conductance (Inc), perturb and observation (P&O), constant voltage control (CVC) method, and introduction of a novel reference power (Pref) method for extracting the maximum power from the solar photovoltaic (PV) system. The complete system model along with these MPPT methods are developed in Matlab/Simulink and simulation results are obtained during sudden increase in irradiation of 1000 W/m², and verified experimentally. These MPPT methods are also implemented on Inverse-Sepic converter, which claims to extract maximum power from the PV system. Various experimental observations are taken to access the performance of these MPPT techniques such as settling time of the full load current under sudden exposure of irradiation level of 1000 W/m², performance during step increase in irradiation level (from 500 W/m² to 1000 W/m²) and vice versa. Extensive results are taken to compare these methods. The proposed Pref method is found to have lowest settling time to stabilize the load current as 520 ms, whereas, Inc method takes 1.24 s. Further, the efficiency of Inverse-Sepic converter with Pref method achieves the highest efficiency of 95.26%, whereas, it extracts lowest efficiency on same input as 90.77% with P&O method. The overall performance of the proposed Pref method is found to be superior as compared to other discussed MPPT methods as verified by experimental results.     

Response of Haloalkaliphilic Archaeon <Emphasis Type="Italic">Natronococcus Jeotgali</Emphasis> RR17 to Hypergravity

The survival of archaeabacteria in extreme inhabitable environments on earth that challenge organismic survival is ubiquitously known. However, the studies related to the effect of hypergravity on the growth and proliferation of archaea are unprecedented. The survival of organisms in hypergravity and rocks in addition to resistance to cosmic radiations, pressure and other extremities is imperative to study the possibilities of microbial travel between planets and endurance in hyperaccelerative forces faced during ejection of rocks from planets. The current investigation highlights the growth of an extremophilic archaeon isolated from a rocky substrate in hypergravity environment. The haloalkaliphilic archaeon, Natronococcus jeotgali RR17 was isolated from an Indian laterite rock, submerged in the Arabian sea lining Coastal Maharashtra, India. The endolithic haloarchaeon was subjected to hypergravity from 56 – 893 X gusing acceleration generated by centrifugal rotation. The cells of N. jeotgali RR17 proliferated and demonstrated good growth in hypergravity (223 X g). This is the first report on isolation of endolithic haloarchaeon N. jeotgali RR17 from an Indian laterite rock and its ability to proliferate in hypergravity. The present study demonstrates the ability of microbial life to survive and proliferate in hypergravity. Thus the inability of organismic growth in hypergravity may no longer be a limitation for astrobiology studies related to habitability of substellar objects, brown dwarfs and other planetary bodies in the universe besides planet earth.     

Growth and characterization of Ni substituted Bi2Se3 single crystals

Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism - In this article, we report synthesis and magneto-transport analysis of Ni substituted Bi2Se3 crystals. Phase purity and crystalline growth are...