Seed Oil Based Zinc Bioactive Polymers: Synthesis, Characterization and Biological Studies

Zinc containing oil based polyesteramide resins were synthesized by condensation polymerization reaction between castor/soyabean oil derived castor/soyabean fatty amide diol (HECA/HESA), Zn (OH)₂ and adipic acid. The conventional spectroscopic techniques such as FTIR, ¹HNMR, ¹³CNMR have been used to establish the structure of the polymers. Standard laboratory methods were used to study the physicochemical characteristics like acid value, hydroxyl value, saponification value, iodine value, specific gravity, and viscosity. The thermal behaviour of the polymers was analyzed by using thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). In vitro antifungal (anticandidial) activity of the polymers was studied against C. albicans ATCC-10261, C. glabrata ATCC-90030 and C. tropicalis ATCC-750, respectively. Antibacterial activity against Gram positive (S. subtillis) and Gram negative bacteria (E. coli and S. typhi) was also examined. For more accuracy, growth curve studies were carried out with the polymer SZ showing higher biological activity against E. coli by using conventional spectrophotometer. The result showed that the polymers have potent anticandidial and antibacterial activities.     

Molecular recognition of geometrical isomers in montmorillonite

cis-alkenes are hydrogenated preferentially followed by trans-alkenes sequentially from the mixture of geometrical isomers by the montmorillonitebipyridylpalladium(II) acetate catalyst. Such molecular recognition in montmorillonite is unusual and remarkable, and forms an advanced model to enzymes.IICT Communication No. 3187.     

Estimation of fuzzy memberships from histograms

Based on the conclusions drawn in the bijective transformation between possibility and probability, a method is proposed to estimate the fuzzy membership function for pattern recognition purposes. A rational function approximation to the probability density function is obtained from the histogram of a finite (and sometimes very small) number of samples. This function is normalized such that the highest ordinate is one. The parameters representing the rational function are used for classifying the pattern samples based on a max-min decision rule. The method is illustrated with examples.     

Effect of Sn doping on the growth and optical properties of AgI nanoparticles

Controlled iodization and Sn doping of vacuum-evaporated Ag films has helped understand the initial-stage kinetics of AgI nanoparticle growth under ambient conditions. Use of XRD, optical spectroscopy, and AFM has unravelled systematic correlation between Sn-induced disorder in Ag crystal structure, nanoparticle size, and exciton growth dynamics. Sn doping of Ag leads to three specific effects: removal of UV absorption minimum in Ag, introduction of a plasmon-type absorption in the red region, and a reduction in particle size in thicker (than 10 nm) films (but an increase in particle size in 10 nm films) relative to that in undoped Ag films.     

Biopreservative technologies of food: an alternative to chemical preservation and recent developments

Food Science and Biotechnology - Despite centuries of developing strategies to prevent food-associated illnesses, food safety remains a significant concern, even with multiple technological...     

Liquid phase exfoliated WS2 nanosheet-based gas sensor for room temperature NO2 detection

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Layered transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials possess novel and unique semiconducting properties when exfoliated into thin sheets...     

Impact of the electromagnetic flow of an MHD Casson fluid over an oscillating porous plate

This study deals with the effect of electric force and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) of the transient state on natural convection flow past an oscillating vertical plate. In addition to this, thermal radiation and porous media are also examined in the Casson fluid flow. The Poisson-Boltzmann equation is employed to show the electric potential character within the fluid region, which is put into a linear form by the implementation of Debye–Hückel linearization. It is possible to compute the precise solution to the governing equations using the Laplace transform approach. The expression of fluid velocity, fluid concentration, and temperature are exposed graphically, and numerical results for Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are also derived for vital pertinent flow constraints. Increasing electroosmosis parameters strongly boosts fluid velocity. The nonnegative values of the Helmholtz–Smoluchowski velocity highly induce the axial velocity and the negative value decelerates. With increasing radiation strength and Prandtl number, the fluid's temperature distribution diminishes. These more intricate electrokinetic rheological flows associated with electroosmotic separators, such as biomedical absorbers, are illuminated by these models.     

Stance detection and mobile app recommendation discourse on tweets

Web‐based social networking such as microblogging administrations and long‐range informal communication locales are changing the way in which individuals collaborate on the web and search for data and opinions. An essential parameter of online networking discourse is searchability. A key semiotic asset supporting this capacity is the hashtag, a type of social label that enables microbloggers to insert metadata in online networking posts. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze stance detection and app recommendation discourse on tweets in view of hashtag techniques, which is in the territory of etymology, and to spotlight the structure of dialect at the provision level. With a revival of enthusiasm for topics identified by modeling language at the discourse level, a graphical model of conversational structure (ie, the structural topic model) has been constructed by means of utilizing three methods: displaying words connected with topics or documents highly connected with topics, calculating topic correlations, and assessing associations between metadata and topical content, its capture of latent topics, and topical structures inside documents on a benchmark dataset (ie, SemEval 2016) has been scrutinized for stance detection, and data have been crawled from Twitter, using the hashtag #App for app recommendations.     

Design Principles and Synergistic Effects of Chlorination on a Conjugated Backbone for Efficient Organic Photovoltaics: A Critical Review

The pursuit of low-cost, flexible, and lightweight renewable power resources has led to outstanding advancements in organic solar cells (OSCs). Among the successful design principles developed for synthesizing efficient conjugated electron donor (ED) or acceptor (EA) units for OSCs, chlorination has recently emerged as a reliable approach, despite being neglected over the years. In fact, several recent studies have indicated that chlorination is more potent for large-scale production than the highly studied fluorination in several aspects, such as easy and low-cost synthesis of materials, lowering energy levels, easy tuning of molecular orientation, and morphology, thus realizing impressive power conversion efficiencies in OSCs up to 17%. Herein, an up-to-date summary of the current progress in photovoltaic results realized by incorporating a chlorinated ED or EA into OSCs is presented to recognize the benefits and drawbacks of this interesting substituent in photoactive materials. Furthermore, other aspects of chlorinated materials for application in all-small-molecule, semitransparent, tandem, ternary, single-component, and indoor OSCs are also presented. Consequently, a concise outlook is provided for future design and development of chlorinated ED or EA units, which will facilitate utilization of this approach to achieve the goal of low-cost and large-area OSCs.