Adsorption Studies of Volatile Organic Compound (Naphthalene) from Aqueous Effluents: Chemical Activation Process Using Weak Lewis Acid,Equilibrium Kinetics and Isotherm Modelling

This study deals with the preparation of activated carbon (CDSP) from date seed powder (DSP) by chemical activation to eliminate polyaromatic hydrocarbon—PAHs (naphthalene—C₁₀H₈) from synthetic wastewater. The chemical activation process was carried out using a weak Lewis acid of zinc acetate dihydrate salt (Zn(CH₃CO₂)₂·2H₂O). The equilibrium isotherm and kinetics analysis was carried out using DSP and CDSP samples, and their performances were compared for the removal of a volatile organic compound—naphthalene (C₁₀H₈)—from synthetic aqueous effluents or wastewater. The equilibrium isotherm data was analyzed using the linear regression model of the Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin equations. The R² values for the Langmuir isotherm were 0.93 and 0.99 for naphthalene (C₁₀H₈) adsorption using DSP and CDSP, respectively. CDSP showed a higher equilibrium sorption capacity (q_e) of 379.64 µg/g. DSP had an equilibrium sorption capacity of 369.06 µg/g for C₁₀H₈. The rate of reaction was estimated for C₁₀H₈ adsorption using a pseudo-first order, pseudo-second order and Elovich kinetic equation. The reaction mechanism for both the sorbents (CDSP and DSP) was studied using the intraparticle diffusion model. The equilibrium data was well-fitted with the pseudo-second order kinetics model showing the chemisorption nature of the equilibrium system. CDSP showed a higher sorption performance than DSP due to its higher BET surface area and carbon content. Physiochemical characterizations of the DSP and CDSP samples were carried out using the BET surface area analysis, Fourier-scanning microscopic analysis (FSEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis and Fourier-transform spectroscopic analysis (FTIR). A thermogravimetric and ultimate analysis was also carried out to determine the carbon content in both the sorbents (DSP and CDSP) here. This study confirms the potential of DSP and CDSP to remove C₁₀H₈ from lab-scale synthetic wastewater.     

miRNAs in Regulation of Tumor Microenvironment,Chemotherapy Resistance,Immunotherapy Modulation and miRNA Therapeutics in Cancer

miRNAs are 20–22 long nucleotide non-coding ribonucleic acid molecules critical to the modulation of molecular pathways. Immune evasion and the establishment of a suitable tumor microenvironment are two major contributors that support tumor invasion and metastasis. Tumorigenic miRNAs support these two hallmarks by desensitizing important tumor-sensitive regulatory cells such as dendritic cells, M1 macrophages, and T helper cells towards tumors while supporting infiltration and proliferation of immune cells like Treg cells, tumor-associated M2 macrophages that promote self-tolerance and chronic inflammation. miRNAs have a significant role in enhancing the efficacies of immunotherapy treatments like checkpoint blockade therapy, adoptive T cell therapy, and oncolytic virotherapy in cancer. A clear understanding of the role of miRNA can help scientists to formulate better-targeted treatment modalities. miRNA therapeutics have emerged as diverse class of nucleic acid-based molecules that can suppress oncogenic miRNAs and promote the expression of tumor suppressor miRNAs.     

Moisture and Temperature Response of Structural and Lithology based Thermophysical and Energy Saving Traits of Limestone using Experimental and Least-Square Fitting Methods

Thermophysical analysis of the crustal rocks is important for heat transfer determination and insulation purposes to save energy in buildings.In the presented w...     

Comparative study: Thermal and non-thermal treatment on enzyme deactivation and selected quality attributes of fresh carrot juice

The combined effect of emerging electro-technology high-voltage cold plasma (HVCP) and non-thermal ultra-high hydrostatic pressure (UHP) as bioprocess technologies on the quality and stability of carrot juice has been evaluated. Carrot juice was treated with HVCP (70 kV for 3 min), UHP (300, 400, and 500 MPa) at 25 °C for 5 min, and a blanched sample of 100 °C for 5 min (BS) was also prepared. As compared to control and single treatments, the combined treatment (HVCP-UHP500) has attained better results in terms of enzyme inactivation and electroporation extraction of coloring compounds, phytochemicals, and ascorbic acid. Wherein, the maximum of 25.87 ± 0.12^a µg/100 mL of β-Carotene, 11.89 ± 0.80^a GAE (µg g⁻¹) of total phenols, and 24.07 ± 0.12^b mg/100 mL of ascorbic acid content in carrot juice were also observed in the combined treatment at 500 MPa. In addition, phytochemical enhancement might be attributed to the disintegration of phenolic dimers into simple aglycones, predominantly because of the electro-kinetic phenomenon of HVCP, which is subsequently intensified by UHP treatment. Therefore, the current study suggests that the combination of two novel techniques is a highly efficient method in terms of energy, time, and cost, with low yield efficiency and bio-safety.     

Encoder-Decoder Based LSTM Model to Advance User <i>QoE</i> in 360-Degree Video

The development of multimedia content has resulted in a massive increase in network traffic for video streaming. It demands such types of solutions that can be addressed to obtain the user's Quality-of-Experience (QoE). 360-degree videos have already taken up the user's behavior by storm. However, the users only focus on the part of 360-degree videos, known as a viewport. Despite the immense hype, 360-degree videos convey a loathsome side effect about viewport prediction, making viewers feel uncomfortable because user viewport needs to be pre-fetched in advance. Ideally, we can minimize the bandwidth consumption if we know what the user motion in advance. Looking into the problem definition, we propose an Encoder-Decoder based Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) model to more accurately capture the non-linear relationship between past and future viewport positions. This model takes the transforming data instead of taking the direct input to predict the future user movement. Then, this prediction model is combined with a rate adaptation approach that assigns the bitrates to various tiles for 360-degree video frames under a given network capacity. Hence, our proposed work aims to facilitate improved system performance when QoE parameters are jointly optimized. Some experiments were carried out and compared with existing work to prove the performance of the proposed model. Last but not least, the experiments implementation of our proposed work provides high user's QoE than its competitors.     

Smart Designing of Tragacanth Gum by Graft Functionalization for Advanced Materials

Tragacanth gum is a novel polysaccharide which offers interesting features in terms of high hydrophilicity, good biocompatibility, and biodegradability. The engineering of hydrogels requires careful designing of their macromolecular structures so that desirable features may be incorporated into the material. Graft polymerization has come up as an interesting approach to develop molecules for drug delivery, wound care systems, and infection‐resistant materials. The most important aspect of graft functionalization is the proper control over physico‐chemical properties of the grafted matrix. The extent of functionalization may be governed by the grafting parameters and may lead to the chemical designing of the molecule in a controlled manner. This opens up enormous possibilities of developing materials for a wide range of applications as advanced materials.     

Optimal communication in bluetooth piconets

Bluetooth is a low-power, low-cost, short-range wireless communication system operating in the 2.4-GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band. Bluetooth links use frequency hopping whereby each packet is sent on a single frequency while different packets are sent on different frequencies. Further, there are a limited number of packet sizes. We show that we can exert indirect control over transmission conditions by choosing the packet size transmitted over each frequency as a function of the channel conditions. Our goal then is to provide a packet-size-selection algorithm that can maximize the throughput in a Bluetooth piconet in the presence of lossy wireless channels. We first develop a renewal-theory-based mathematical model of packet transmission in a frequency-hopping system such as a Bluetooth piconet. We use this model to show that a threshold-based algorithm for choosing the packet lengths maximizes the throughput of the system. We provide an algorithm that determines the optimal thresholds efficiently. We show the optimality of this algorithm without using standard optimization techniques, since it is not clear that these techniques would be applicable given the functions involved. Using simulations, we observe that this strategy leads to significantly better throughput as compared to other baseline strategies, even if the assumptions made to prove optimality are relaxed.     

一种高速DSP中延迟优化的乘累加单元的设计与实现

乘累加单元是任何数字信号处理器(DSP)数据通路中的一个关键部分.多年来,硬件工程师们一直倾注于其优化与改进.本文描述了一种速度优化的乘累加单元的设计与实现.本文的乘累加单元是为一种高速VLIW结构的DSP核设计,能够进行16×16 40的无符号和带符号的二进制补码操作.在关键路径延迟上,本文的乘累加单元比其他任何使用相同或不同算数技术实现的乘累加单元都更优.本文的乘累加单元已成功使用于synopsys的工具,并与synopsys的Design Ware库中相同位宽的乘累加单元比较.比较结果表明,本文的乘累加单元比Design Ware库中的任何其他实现都要快,适合于在需要高吞吐率的DSP核中使用.注意:比较是在Design compiler中使用相同属性和开关下进行的.     

Isolation and Detection of Extended Spectrum β‐Lactamase (ESBL)‐Producing Enterobacteriaceae from Meat using Chromogenic Agars and Isothermal Loop‐Mediated Amplification (LAMP) Assays

The aim of this work was to develop a molecular method using loop‐mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for detection of extended spectrum β‐lactamase (ESBL)‐producing Enterobacteriaceae from meat, and to compare it with different isolation agars and microarrays. LAMP assays were developed for CTX‐M groups 1, 2, and 9 and OXA‐10‐like genes. Chicken, lamb, beef, pork, and turkey samples were spiked with 10, 100, and 1,000 cfu/gram using 8 strains of ESBL‐producing Enterobacteriaceae (CTX‐M sequence types 1, 2, 3, 14, 15, OXA‐11, SHV‐2, TEM‐52) +/– a mix of competitor organisms. Samples were enriched overnight in buffered peptone water (BPW) +/– antibacterials before plating to CHROMagar CTX, OXOID ESBL Brilliance agar, and MacConkey agar with 1 mg/L cefotaxime. Selected BPW broths were also tested using LAMP assays, microarrays and using cefpodoxime discs on agar. For isolation/detection of ESBL producers from beef, pork, lamb, and turkey spiked with 10 or 100 cfu/gram ESBL (natural flora only), all agars and the LAMP assays showed 100% sensitivity and specificity for ESBL spike strains. For chicken samples, both LAMP and chromogenic agars showed improved sensitivity and specificity for isolation of ESBLs compared with MacConkey agar, particularly with competitor bacteria added. In comparison, the cefpodoxime disc method and microarray showed reduced sensitivity.