Ab initio calculations of MgH2, MgH2:Ti and MgH2:Co compounds

The understanding of hydrogen bonding in magnesium and magnesium based alloys is an important step toward its prospective use. In the present study, a density functional theory (DFT) based, full-potential augmented plane waves method of calculation, extended with local orbitals (FP-APW+lo), was used to investigate the stability of MgH₂ and MgH₂:TM (TM = Ti and Co) 10 wt % alloys and the influence of this alloying on hydrogen storage properties of MgH₂ compound. Effects of a possible spin polarisation induced in the system by transition metal (TM) ions were considered too. It has been found that TM-H bonding is stronger than the Mg–H bond, but at the same time it weakens other bonds in the second and third coordination around a TM atom, which leads to overall destabilization of the MgH₂ compound. Due to a higher number of d-electrons, this effect is more pronounced for Co alloying, where in addition, the spin polarisation has a noticeable and stabilising influence on the compound structure.     

3,10-Dihydroxy-decanoic acid,isolated from royal jelly,stimulates Th1 polarising capability of human monocyte-derived dendritic cells

Different pharmacologically active components have been isolated from royal jelly. Some of them possess imunomodulatory activity, but the mechanisms of their effect on the immune system have not been elucidated yet. In this study we tested the effect of 3,10-dihydroxy-decanoic acid (3,10-DDA), a fatty acid isolated from royal jelly, on maturation and functions of human monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MoDCs). We showed that 3,10-DDA stimulated maturation of MoDCs by up-regulating the expression of CD40, CD54, CD86 and CD1a, and increased their allostimulatory potential in co-culture with allogeneic CD4⁺T cells. 3,10-DDA-treated MoDCs enhanced the production of IL-12 and IL-18, and stimulated the production of interferon-γ in co-culture with allogeneic CD4⁺T cells, compared to control MoDCs. In contrast, the production of IL-10 was down-regulated. In conclusion, our results suggest that 3,10-DDA stimulates maturation and Th1 polarising capability of human MoDCs in vitro, which could be beneficial for anti-tumour and anti-viral immune responses.     

Fatty acids composition and rheology properties of wheat and wheat and white or brown rice flour mixture

Manufacturing of bread from rice flour only presents technological difficulty because the rice is gluten-free and gluten is the most important structure forming protein. By using wheat and rice flour mixture, this problem can be avoided, and end product is enriched by rice-oil constituents. In this paper fatty acids composition, with an emphasis on total saturated, and total unsaturated fatty acids, rheological and baking properties of wheat–rice flour mixture (70:30 w/w) were investigated. The results show that wheat–rice flour mixture has better fatty acids composition with higher content of stearic, arachidic, lignoceric, oleic, and phthalic acids compared to wheat flour. Also, wheat flour did not include myristic, arachidic, lignoceric and linolenic acids, so rice flour addition made fatty acids profile richer as number of constituents is higher, nine instead six. The content of total unsaturated fatty acids content was higher in wheat–brown rice flour mixture than in wheat flour and in wheat–white rice flour mixture. When rice flour was added to wheat flour the rheological properties were changed: flour mixture had less water absorption, less degree of softening, longer development time, higher gelatinization temperature, but better stability and finally, better quality number and group than wheat flour. So, the wheat and rice flour mixture can be considered as a good quality flour and can be used for making good quality wheat-rice bread and cake.     

Importance of the Electron–Phonon Interaction with the Forward Scattering Peak for Superconducting Pairing in Cuprates

We discuss first some basic experimental facts related to ARPES, tunnelling, optics and neutron scattering measurements. They give evidence for the relevance of the electron–phonon interaction (EPI) in pairing mechanism of HTSC cuprates. A controllable and very efficient theory for strong correlations and their effects on EPI is discussed. The theory is based on the 1/N expansion method in the t–J model without using slave bosons (or fermions). The remarkable prediction is that strong correlations renormalize EPI and other charge-fluctuation properties (by including nonmagnetic impurity scattering) in such a way that the forward scattering peak (FSP) appears in the corresponding effective interactions. The existence of FSP in EPI is additionally supported by the weakly screened Madelung interaction in the ionic–metallic structure of layered cuprates. Pronounced FSP in EPI of HTSC cuprates reconciles many puzzling results, which could not be explained by the old theory with the momentum independent EPI. For instance, EPI with FSP gives that the couplings in the s- and d-wave pairing channel are of the same magnitude near and below the optimal hole doping. It is shown that FSP in the impurity scattering potential is responsible for robustness of d-wave pairing in cuprates with nonmagnetic impurities and other defects. The ARPES kink and the isotope effect in the nodal and anti-nodal points, as well as the collapse of the elastic nonmagnetic impurity scattering in the superconducting state, are explained by this theory in a consistent way. The proposed theory also explains why the nodal kink is not-shifted in the superconducting state while the anti-nodal kink is shifted by the maximal superconducting gap. It turns out, that in systems with FSP in EPI besides the classical phase fluctuations there are also internal fluctuations of Cooper pairs. The latter effect is pronounced in systems with long-ranged pairing forees, thus giving rise to an additional contribution to the pseudogap behavior.     

Chlorine Dioxide Inactivation of Cryptosporidium Parvum in Oxidant Demand-Free Phosphate Buffer

Chlorine dioxide inactivation of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts was studied at bench-scale in oxidant demand-free 0.05 M phosphate buffer at pH 6, 8, and 11, and temperature from 1°C to 37°C. Animal infectivity using neonatal CD-1 mice was used for evaluation of oocyst infectiousness before and after treatment. Survival curves of the oocysts following treatment declined linearly with the chlorine dioxide Cavgt product. Temperature was critical for C. parvum inactivation, while pH was found not to be a significant factor at pH 6–11. Inactivation kinetics at different temperatures was expressed as a Chick-Watson model with different reaction rate constants adjusted by van't Hoff-Arrhenius relationship. Between 1°C and 37°C, for every 10°C decrease in temperature, the reaction rate constant decreased by a factor of 2.3, corresponding to an activation energy of 54.9 kJ∕mol. Design criteria targeting 0.5 to 2.0 log-units of inactivation of C. parvum were developed for different water temperatures and their 90% confidence intervals were provided.     

A Laser Synthesis Route to Boron-Doped Gold Nanoparticles Designed for X-Ray Radiotherapy and Boron Neutron Capture Therapy Assisted by CT Imaging

New multifunctional theranostic vectors allow the expansion of cancer therapeutic approaches toward scarcely investigated fields. One example is the combination of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) and X-ray radiotherapy (XRT) for treating normal and XRT-resistant hypoxic tumor regions and reduce recurrence. Of great relevance for BNCT is also the support of viable, rapid, safe, and reliable techniques for the localization and quantification of the radiosensitizers in the tissues. To address these challenges, polymer-coated Au-B nanoparticles (NPs) are obtained starting from a laser ablation in liquid process. Despite thermodynamic constraints, the two elements coexist by short-range boron segregation in the gold lattice, as demonstrated experimentally and explained with the support of density functional theory calculations. Thus, the Au-B NPs maintain a marked gold character such as biocompatibility, stability, and straightforward surface chemistry with thiolated compounds, desirable for the integration with agents capable of cell targeting and internalization. Overall, the Au-B NPs exhibit the appropriate features for the investigation of combined BNCT and XRT, supported by the localization and quantification with X-ray computed tomography imaging. Besides, the Au-B nanotechnology tool is achievable without renouncing to reproducibility, environmental sustainability, and cost affordability thanks to the laser-assisted synthetic pathway.     

Fuzzy String Matching with a Deep Neural Network

A deep learning neural network for character-level text classification is described in this work. The system spots keywords in the text output of an optical character recognition system using memoization and by encoding the text into feature vectors related to letter frequency. Recognizing error messages in a set of generated images, dictionary and spell-check-based approaches achieved 69% to 88% accuracy, while various deep learning approaches achieved 91% to 96% accuracy, and a combination of deep learning with a dictionary achieved 97% accuracy. The contribution of this work to the state of the art is to describe a new approach for character-level deep neural network classification of noisy text.     

Mobile Fog Computing by Using SDN/NFV on 5G Edge Nodes

Fog computing provides quality of service for cloud infrastructure. As the data computation intensifies, edge computing becomes difficult. Therefore, mobile fog computing is used for reducing traffic and the time for data computation in the network. In previous studies, software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) were used separately in edge computing. Current industrial and academic research is tackling to integrate SDN and NFV in different environments to address the challenges in performance, reliability, and scalability. SDN/NFV is still in development. The traditional Internet of things (IoT) data analysis system is only based on a linear and time-variant system that needs an IoT data system with a high-precision model. This paper proposes a combined architecture of SDN and NFV on an edge node server for IoT devices to reduce the computational complexity in cloud-based fog computing. SDN provides a generalization structure of the forwarding plane, which is separated from the control plane. Meanwhile, NFV concentrates on virtualization by combining the forwarding model with virtual network functions (VNFs) as a single or chain of VNFs, which leads to interoperability and consistency. The orchestrator layer in the proposed software-defined NFV is responsible for handling real-time tasks by using an edge node server through the SDN controller via four actions: task creation, modification, operation, and completion. Our proposed architecture is simulated on the EstiNet simulator, and total time delay, reliability, and satisfaction are used as evaluation parameters. The simulation results are compared with the results of existing architectures, such as software-defined unified virtual monitoring function and ASTP, to analyze the performance of the proposed architecture. The analysis results indicate that our proposed architecture achieves better performance in terms of total time delay (1800 s for 200 IoT devices), reliability (90%), and satisfaction (90%).     

Protecting Data Mobility in Cloud Networks Using Metadata Security

At present, health care applications, government services, and banking applications use big data with cloud storage to process and implement data. Data mobility in cloud environments uses protection protocols and algorithms to secure sensitive user data. Sometimes, data may have highly sensitive information, leading users to consider using big data and cloud processing regardless of whether they are secured are not. Threats to sensitive data in cloud systems produce high risks, and existing security methods do not provide enough security to sensitive user data in cloud and big data environments. At present, several security solutions support cloud systems. Some of them include Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) baseline Kerberos security, socket layer-based HDFS security, and hybrid security systems, which have time complexity in providing security interactions. Thus, mobile data security algorithms are necessary in cloud environments to avoid time risks in providing security. In our study, we propose a data mobility and security (DMoS) algorithm to provide security of data mobility in cloud environments. By analyzing metadata, data are classified as secured and open data based on their importance. Secured data are sensitive user data, whereas open data are open to the public. On the basis of data classification, secured data are applied to the DMoS algorithm to achieve high security in HDFS. The proposed approach is compared with the time complexity of three existing algorithms, and results are evaluated.     

Diluted alcohol solutions in bubble columns and draft tube airlift reactors with a single orifice sparger: experiments and simple correlations

BACKGROUND: Bubble columns (BCs) and airlift reactors (ALRs) have important applications as bioreactors, chemical reactors and as contactors in waste‐water treatment. The liquid phase properties in these reactors significantly influence the main hydrodynamic and mass transfer characteristics. Dilute alcohol solutions can be used to simulate real industrial systems in bioreactors. However, only a few research studies have considered such systems. The aim of this paper is to broaden the existing experimental data related to the influence of alcohol addition on the main characteristics of draft tube airlift reactors (DT‐ALRs), and to propose simple correlations for their prediction. RESULTS: New experiments were conducted in a DT‐ALR with a single orifice sparger, and with dilute aliphatic alcohol solutions from methanol to n‐octanol. Also, simple correlations were developed to predict the gas hold‐up and volumetric mass transfer coefficients in BCs and DT‐ALRs, but also the downcomer liquid velocity and liquid circulation time DT‐ALRs with single orifice sparger and dilute alcohol solutions. The proposed correlations included, in addition to the superficial gas velocity, the surface tension gradient as the only factor to characterize the liquid phase. CONCLUSIONS: General conclusion can be made that the gas holdup increased, but the downcomer liquid velocity decreased in a DT‐ALR, with increase in surface tension gradient of the alcohol solutions. Also, very good agreement was achieved between experimental and calculated data, by applying the developed correlations, with relative average errors less than 5%, except for gas hold‐up, where it was in the range 8–32%. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry