Injectable Bone Cement Reinforced with Gold Nanodots Decorated rGO-Hydroxyapatite Nanocomposites,Augment Bone Regeneration

Interest in the development of new generation injectable bone cements having appropriate mechanical properties, biodegradability, and bioactivity has been rekindled with the advent of nanoscience. Injectable bone cements made with calcium sulfate (CS) are of significant interest, owing to its compatibility and optimal self-setting property. Its rapid resorption rate, lack of bioactivity, and poor mechanical strength serve as a deterrent for its wide application. Herein, a significantly improved CS-based injectable bone cement (modified calcium sulfate termed as CS_mod), reinforced with various concentrations (0–15%) of a conductive nanocomposite containing gold nanodots and nanohydroxyapatite decorated reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets (AuHp@rGO), and functionalized with vancomycin, is presented. The piezo-responsive cement exhibits favorable injectability and setting times, along with improved mechanical properties. The antimicrobial, osteoinductive, and osteoconductive properties of the CS_mod cement are confirmed using appropriate in vitro studies. There is an upregulation of the paracrine signaling mediated crosstalk between mesenchymal stem cells and human umbilical vein endothelial cells seeded on these cements. The ability of CS_mod to induce endothelial cell recruitment and augment bone regeneration is evidenced in relevant rat models. The results imply that the multipronged activity exhibited by the novel-CS_mod cement would be beneficial for bone repair.     

Density Based Fuzzy C Means Clustering to prolong Network Lifetime in Smart Grids

Wireless sensor networks (WSN's) are preferred for industrial applications due to progressive increase of sensor electronics. One such application is deployment of WSN's in smart grids. Smart Grid integrates information and communication techniques with electricity network. Smart grids utilize sophisticated control and monitoring devices for improving the efficiency of the grid. For energy efficient, low cost monitoring and control in smart grid WSN's is treated as a promising technology. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is the key technology in the distribution networks of Smart Grid. The AMI is composed of various sensors for metering purpose. The meter data is also useful for the distribution operators to manage the demand response. The network involves smart meters, smart electric gas and water meters along with digital network management appliances for optimizing the electric network with real time data management. The smart sensors are limited in terms of battery, operational power and memory. These sensors communicate with the base station in restricted range. The communication between smart grid nodes and base station (sink) is multi-hop in nature. The communication takes place within limited range of communication so the security concerns that are involved in the network are to be handled by the routing protocols. So as to make the bidirectional communication efficient between the smart sensors and utility an effective routing scheme is required for these energy limited devices to handle the heavy network traffic in smart grids. Here energy efficient routing for WSN's in NAN networks to attain load balancing is proposed through density based Fuzzy C means clustering (DFCM). The obtained simulation results show that DFCM can provide a satisfactory performance for enhancing the network life span.

     

SABC-SBC: a hybrid ontology based image and webpage retrieval for datasets

In the recent days, web mining is the one of the most widely used research area for finding the patterns from the web page. Similarly, web content mining is defined as the process of extracting some useful information from the web pages. For this mining, a Block Acquiring Page Segmentation (BAPS) technique is proposed in the existing work, which removes the irrelevant information by retrieving the contents. Also, the Tag-Annotation-Demand (TAD) re-ranking methodology is employed to generate the personalized images. The major disadvantage of these techniques is that it fails to retrieve both the images and web page contents. In order to overcome this issue, this paper focused to integrate the TAD and BAPS techniques for the image and web page content retrieval. There are two important steps are involved in this paper, which includes, server database upload and content extraction from the database. Furthermore, the databases are applied on the Semantic Annotation Based Clustering (SABC) for image and Semantic Based Clustering (SBC) for webpage content. The main intention of the proposed work is to accurately retrieve both the images and web pages. In experiments, the performance of the proposed SABC technique is evaluated and analyzed in terms of computation time, precision and recall.     

Treatment of oily waters using vermiculite

The main objective of this study was to examine the removal of oil from water by expanded and hydrophobized vermiculite. A pH of 9 showed a higher removal efficiency of oil by vermiculite. Oil removal efficiencies at pH 9 were found to be 79%, 93%, 90%, 57% for standard mineral oil (SMO), Canola oil (CO), Kutwell oil (KUT45), refinery effluent (RE), respectively, in the case of expanded vermiculite, and 56%, 58%, 47%, 43% for SMO, CO, KUT45 and RE, respectively, for hydrophobized vermiculite. Kinetic data satisfied both the Lagergren and Ho models. Equilibrium studies showed that the Langmuir isotherm was the best-fit isotherm for oil removal by both expanded and hydrophobized vermiculite. The data showed a higher adsorptive capacity by the expanded vermiculite compared to the hydrophobized vermiculite. Desorption studies showed that the expanded vermiculite did not desorb oil to the same extent compared to hydrophobized vermiculite. The Freundlich isotherm was the best-fit model for desorption. Expanded vermiculite showed better retention than hydrophobic vermiculite. The results showed that the expanded vermiculite had a greater affinity for oil than hydrophobized vermiculite.     

Oral bioavailability enhancement of acyclovir by self-microemulsifying drug delivery systems (SMEDDS)

Acyclovir is a potent anti-viral agent useful in the treatment of Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) infections. Acyclovir exerts its antiviral activity by competitive inhibition of viral DNA through selective binding of acyclovir to HSV-thymidine kinase. The main purpose of this work was to develop self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) for oral bioavailability enhancement of acyclovir. Solubility of acyclovir was determined in various vehicles. SMEDDS is mixture of oils, surfactants, and co-surfactants, which are emulsified in aqueous media under conditions of gentle agitation and digestive motility that would be encountered in the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract. Pseudoternary phase diagrams were constructed to identify the efficient self-emulsifying region dilution study was also performed for optimization of formulation. SMEDDS was evaluated for its percentage transmittance, Assay of SMEDDS, phase separation study, droplet size analysis, zeta potential, electrophoretic mobility, and viscosity. The developed SMEDDS formulation contained acyclovir (50 mg), Tween 60 (60%), glycerol (30%) and sunflower oil (9%) was compared with the pure drug solution by oral administrating to male albino rats. The absorption of acyclovir from SMEDDS form resulted about 3.5 fold increase in bioavailability compared with the pure drug solution. Our studies illustrated the potential use of SMEDDS for the delivery of hydrophobic compounds such as acyclovir by oral route.     

Quantum secret sharing protocol through noisy channel with application in visual cryptography

This study presents a quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol designed using Grover's search algorithm in a noisy environment. The proposed protocol utilizes Grover's three-particle quantum state. The proposed scheme is divided into secret information sharing and eavesdropping checking. The dealer prepares an encoded state by encoding the classical information as a marked state and shares the states' qubits between three participants. Using the amplitude-damping noise and the phase-damping noise as conventional noisy channels, it can be demonstrated that secret information can be conveyed between participants with some information lost. The security analysis shows the scheme is stringent against malicious participants or eavesdroppers. The simulation analysis is done on the cloud platform IBM-QE thereby showing the practical feasibility of the scheme. Finally, an application of the proposed scheme is demonstrated in visual cryptography using the GNEQR representation of images.     

Nanostructured mesoporous tungsten oxide films with fast kinetics for electrochromic smart windows

A potential driven self-assembly of sodium dodecyl sulfate/tungsten oxide aggregates at the electrolyte-electrode interface followed by template extraction and annealing yielded mesoporous thin films of electrochromic tungsten oxide (WO(3)). Electron microscopy images revealed that the films are characterized by a hitherto unreported hybrid structure comprising nanoparticles and nanorods with a tetragonal crystalline phase of WO(3) with the measured lattice parameters: a = 0.53?nm and c = 0.37?nm. In addition to pentagonal voids characteristic of the tetragonal WO(3) phase at the lattice scale, open channels and pores of 5-10?nm in diameter lie between the nanoparticles, which cumulatively promote rapid charge transport through the film. This resulted in colouration efficiency (η(max)～90?cm(2)?C(-1) at λ = 900?nm) and switching kinetics (colouration time = 3?s and bleaching time = 2?s for a 50% change in transmittance) higher and faster than previously reported values for mesoporous WO(3) films. Repetitive cycling between the clear and blue states has no deleterious effect on the electrochromic performance of the film, which is suggestive of its potential as a cathode in practical electrochromic windows.     

Effect of humidity on structure and electrochromic properties of sol–gel-derived tungsten oxide films

The influence of varying relative humidity (RH55 and 75%) during thin film deposition from an oxalato-acetylated peroxotungstic acid sol by dip coating, on the microstructure and electrochromic properties of pristine tungsten oxide (WO₃) films obtained upon annealing is presented. The films fabricated under a relative humidity of 55% are amorphous whereas the ones cast under a substantially humid atmosphere (RH75%) are characterized by interconnected nanocrystallites with a triclinic phase and a nanoporous surface morphology as well. Upon lithium insertion, larger integrated values of transmission modulation and coloration efficiency are observed over the photopic and solar regions, for the films prepared under a RH75% as compared to that observed for the films deposited under a RH of 55%. Functional improvements are due to the larger surface area of nanocrystallites and a porous microstructure, a consequence of a higher degree of hydration and hydroxylation in the former films in contrast to the non-porous and a rather featureless structure of the latter films. Faster switching kinetics between the clear and blue states, a greater current density for lithium intercalation, a higher diffusion coefficient for lithium and a superior cycling stability, again shown by the film fabricated under a 75% RH confirm that the WO₃ film microstructure is most conducive for a more facile ion insertion–extraction process, which hints at its potential for electrochromic window applications.     

A structural investigation relating to the pozzolanic activity of rice husk ashes

Various factors determine the applicability of rice husk ash (RHA) as a pozzolanic material. The amount and accessibility of reactive sites is thought to be a key factor. A structural study of RHA samples in relation to their reactivity has been performed; Silica in RHA formed by burning rice husk in a laboratory furnace under continuous supply of air have been characterized as a function of incineration temperature, time and cooling regime. The characterization methods included chemical analyses, conductivity measurements, microscopic analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and ²⁹Si magic-angle spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). In line with earlier observations, the analyses show that the highest amounts of amorphous silica occur in samples burnt in the range of 500 °C–700 °C. The ²⁹Si NMR data allow direct identification of the reactive silanol sites in the RHA samples. De-convolution of the NMR spectra clearly shows that the quickly cooled RHA resulting from burning rice husk for 12 h at 500 °C has the highest amount of silanol groups. This sample also induced the largest drop in conductivity when added to a saturated calcium hydroxide solution giving an indication of its reactivity towards lime. Therefore, this RHA is the favorable sample to be used as pozzolanic cement additive.     

Landscape phages and their fusion proteins targeted to breast cancer cells

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women in the USA. The efficacy of existing anticancer therapeutics can be improved by targeting them through conjugation with ligands binding to cellular receptors. Recently, we developed a novel drug targeting strategy based on the use of pre-selected cancer-specific 'fusion pVIII proteins' (fpVIII), as targeting ligands. To study the efficiency of this approach in animal models, we developed a panel of breast cancer cell-binding phages as a source of targeted fpVIIIs. Two landscape phage peptide libraries (8-mer f8/8 and 9-mer f8/9) were screened to isolate 132 phage variants that recognize breast carcinoma cells MCF-7 and ZR-75-1 and internalize into the cells. When tested for their interaction with the breast cancer cells in comparison with liver cancer cells HepG2, human mammary cells MCF-10A cells and serum, 16 of the phage probes selectively interacted with the breast cancer cells whereas 32 bound both breast and liver cancer cells. The most prominent cancer-specific phage DMPGTVLP, demonstrating sub-nanomolar Kd in interaction with target cells, was used for affinity chromatography of cellular membrane molecules to reveal its potential binding receptor. The isolated protein was identified by direct sequencing as cellular surface nucleolin. This conclusion was confirmed by inhibition of the phage-cell interaction with nucleolin antibodies. Other prominent phage binders VPTDTDYS, VEEGGYIAA, and DWRGDSMDS demonstrate consensus motifs common to previously identified cancer-specific peptides. Isolated phage proteins exhibit inherent binding specificity towards cancer cells, demonstrating the functional activity of the selected fused peptides. The selected phages, their peptide inserts and intact fusion proteins can serve as promising ligands for the development of targeted nanomedicines and their study in model mice with xenograft of human cells MCF-7 and ZR-75-1.