Selective Recovery of Cadmium,Cobalt, and Nickel from Spent Ni–Cd Batteries Using Adogen® 464 and Mesoporous Silica Derivatives

Spent Ni–Cd batteries are now considered an important source for many valuable metals. The recovery of cadmium, cobalt, and nickel from spent Ni–Cd Batteries has been performed in this study. The optimum leaching process was achieved using 20% H₂SO₄, solid/liquid (S/L) 1/5 at 80 °C for 6 h. The leaching efficiency of Fe, Cd, and Co was nearly 100%, whereas the leaching efficiency of Ni was 95%. The recovery of the concerned elements was attained using successive different separation techniques. Cd(II) ions were extracted by a solvent, namely, Adogen^® 464, and precipitated as CdS with 0.5% Na₂S solution at pH of 1.25 and room temperature. The extraction process corresponded to pseudo-2nd-order. The prepared PTU-MS silica was applied for adsorption of Co(II) ions from aqueous solution, while the desorption process was performed using 0.3 M H₂SO₄. Cobalt was precipitated at pH 9.0 as Co(OH)₂ using NH₄OH. The kinetic and thermodynamic parameters were also investigated. Nickel was directly precipitated at pH 8.25 using a 10% NaOH solution at ambient temperature. FTIR, SEM, and EDX confirm the structure of the products.     

Light Spectral Composition Modifies Polyamine Metabolism in Young Wheat Plants

Although light-emitting diode (LED) technology has extended the research on targeted photomorphogenic, physiological, and biochemical responses in plants, there is not enough direct information about how light affects polyamine metabolism. In this study, the effect of three spectral compositions (referred to by their most typical characteristic: blue, red, and the combination of blue and red [pink] lights) on polyamine metabolism was compared to those obtained under white light conditions at the same light intensity. Although light quality induced pronounced differences in plant morphology, pigment contents, and the expression of polyamine metabolism-related genes, endogenous polyamine levels did not differ substantially. When exogenous polyamines were applied, their roborative effect were detected under all light conditions, but these beneficial changes were correlated with an increase in polyamine content and polyamine metabolism-related gene expression only under blue light. The effect of the polyamines on leaf gene expression under red light was the opposite, with a decreasing tendency. Results suggest that light quality may optimize plant growth through the adjustment of polyamine metabolism at the gene expression level. Polyamine treatments induced different strategies in fine-tuning of polyamine metabolism, which were induced for optimal plant growth and development under different spectral compositions.     

Preemptive cloud resource allocation modeling of processing jobs

Cloud computing allows execution and deployment of different types of applications such as interactive databases or web-based services which require distinctive types of resources. These applications lease cloud resources for a considerably long period and usually occupy various resources to maintain a high quality of service (QoS) factor. On the other hand, general big data batch processing workloads are less QoS-sensitive and require massively parallel cloud resources for short period. Despite the elasticity feature of cloud computing, fine-scale characteristics of cloud-based applications may cause temporal low resource utilization in the cloud computing systems, while process-intensive highly utilized workload suffers from performance issues. Therefore, ability of utilization efficient scheduling of heterogeneous workload is one challenging issue for cloud owners. In this paper, addressing the heterogeneity issue impact on low utilization of cloud computing system, conjunct resource allocation scheme of cloud applications and processing jobs is presented to enhance the cloud utilization. The main idea behind this paper is to apply processing jobs and cloud applications jointly in a preemptive way. However, utilization efficient resource allocation requires exact modeling of workloads. So, first, a novel methodology to model the processing jobs and other cloud applications is proposed. Such jobs are modeled as a collection of parallel and sequential tasks in a Markovian process. This enables us to analyze and calculate the efficient resources required to serve the tasks. The next step makes use of the proposed model to develop a preemptive scheduling algorithm for the processing jobs in order to improve resource utilization and its associated costs in the cloud computing system. Accordingly, a preemption-based resource allocation architecture is proposed to effectively and efficiently utilize the idle reserved resources for the processing jobs in the cloud paradigms. Then, performance metrics such as service time for the processing jobs are investigated. The accuracy of the proposed analytical model and scheduling analysis is verified through simulations and experimental results. The simulation and experimental results also shed light on the achievable QoS level for the preemptively allocated processing jobs.     

Automatic verification of reduction techniques in Higher Order Logic

In this paper we propose an automatic methodology to verify the soundness of model checking reduction techniques. The idea is to use the consistency of the specifications to verify if the reduced model is faithful to the original one. The user provides the reduction technique, the specification and the system under verification. Then, using Higher Order Logic he verifies automatically if the reduction technique is soundly applied. The method is completely defined in an MDG–HOL special integration platform that combines an automatic high level model checking tool Multiway Decision Graphs (MDGs) within the HOL theorem prover. We provide two case studies, the first one is the reduction using SAT–MDG of an Island Tunnel Controller and the second one is the MDG–HOL assume-guarantee reduction of the Look-Aside Interface. The obtained results of our approach offer a considerable gain in terms of the correctness of heuristics and reduction techniques as applied to commercial model checking, however a small penalty is paid in terms of CPU time and memory usage.     

Natural convection from isothermal flat surfaces

Local heat-transfer coefficients along a flat plate in natural convection in air were measured using Boelter-Schmidt type heat flux meters. Experiments were carried out for different temperature differences in heating and cooling, and with inclinations varying from the horizontal “facing upwards” position, through the vertical position, to the horizontal “facing downwards” position.

The results are presented in terms of local Nusselt number as a function of the local Grashof number “tangential component”. All runs were in the range accepted as that of laminar boundary layer flow. However, under certain conditions when the normal velocity component of the air is directed away from the surface, separated flow is indicated along the trailing part of the surface, well before turbulence sets in in the boundary layer. Separation starts at a certain point along the surface. This point is nearer to the leading edge the higher the temperature difference, and the larger the inclination of the surface to the vertical.

In a separation region, the flux density is uniform. In all other regions the results agreed closely with established theories of laminar boundary layer flow.

A leading adiabatic section, used in some of the experiments, did not affect the results. An appendix gives relations recommended for engineering calculations.     

Robust design of processes and products using the mathematics of the stochastic frontier (SF)

The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology - The paper discusses a generic procedure for the parameter design of product and process development using planned and non-planned...     

Zr‐Doped Indium Oxide (IZRO) Transparent Electrodes for Perovskite‐Based Tandem Solar Cells

Parasitic absorption in transparent electrodes is one of the main roadblocks to enabling power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) for perovskite‐based tandem solar cells beyond 30%. To reduce such losses and maximize light coupling, the broadband transparency of such electrodes should be improved, especially at the front of the device. Here, the excellent properties of Zr‐doped indium oxide (IZRO) transparent electrodes for such applications, with improved near‐infrared (NIR) response, compared to conventional tin‐doped indium oxide (ITO) electrodes, are shown. Optimized IZRO films feature a very high electron mobility (up to ≈77 cm² V^?1 s^?1), enabling highly infrared transparent films with a very low sheet resistance (≈18 Ω □^?1 for annealed 100 nm films). For devices, this translates in a parasitic absorption of only ≈5% for IZRO within the solar spectrum (250–2500 nm range), to be compared with ≈10% for commercial ITO. Fundamentally, it is found that the high conductivity of annealed IZRO films is directly linked to promoted crystallinity of the indium oxide (In₂O₃) films due to Zr‐doping. Overall, on a four‐terminal perovskite/silicon tandem device level, an absolute 3.5 mA cm^?2 short‐circuit current improvement in silicon bottom cells is obtained by replacing commercial ITO electrodes with IZRO, resulting in improving the PCE from 23.3% to 26.2%.     

Synthesis and Anti-Cancer Activity of New Pyrazolinyl-Indole Derivatives: Pharmacophoric Interactions and Docking Studies for Identifying New EGFR Inhibitors

Newly designed series of indole-containing pyrazole analogs, pyrazolinylindoles, were synthesized, and their structures were confirmed based on the spectral data of the ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, and HR-MS analyses. Preliminary anti-cancer activity testings were carried out by the National Cancer Institute, United States of America (NCI, USA). Compounds HD02, HD05, and HD12 demonstrated remarkable cytotoxic activities against nine categories of cancer types based cell line panels which included leukemia, colon, breast, melanoma, lungs, renal, prostate, CNS, and ovarian cancer cell lines. The highest cytotoxic effects were exhibited by the compounds HD02 [1-(5-(1-H-indol-3-yl)-3-(p-tolyl)-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-1-yl)-2-phenylethanone], HD05 [1-(3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-(1H-indol-3-yl)-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-1-yl)-2-phenoxyethanone], and HD12 [(3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-(1H-indol-3-yl)-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-1-yl)(pyridin-4-yl)methanone] against some of the 56 types of NCI-based cell lines in different panels. Compound HD05 showed the maximum range of cancer cell growth inhibitions against all categories of the cell lines in all nine panels. On average, in comparison to the referral standard, imatinib, at a dose level of 10 µM, the HD05 showed significant activity against leukemia in the range of 78.76%, as compared to the imatinib at 9% of cancer cells’ growth inhibitions. Molecular docking simulation studies were performed in silico on the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase, in order to validate the activity.