Dielectric,ferroelectric, and energy storage properties in dysprosium doped sodium bismuth titanate ceramics

In this work, Na_0.5(Bi_1-xDy_x)_0.5TiO₃ (0?≤?x?≤?15%) ceramics were prepared via solid state reaction method and were characterized. A stable and pure perovskite phase was revealed by X-ray diffraction analysis for all compositions and a symmetry change from rhombohedral to orthorhombic phase was detected beyond 10% of Dy substitution. The incorporation of Dy³⁺ into Sodium Bismuth Titanate (Na_0.5Bi_0.5TiO₃) matrix allows a substantial decrease of the coercive field, an increase in the resistivity, and leads to a high stability of the dielectric permittivity (??/?_(150?°C) ≤?±?15%) over a wide temperature range. Furthermore, this system was found to exhibit improved energy storage properties at high temperatures with a maximum energy density of 1.2?J/cm³ obtained for 2%Dy composition at 200?°C. The obtained results are very promising for energy storage capacitors operating at high temperatures.     

Effect of doping polyacrylic acid with some dopants as studied by different techniques

The molecular weight of polyacrylic acid (PAA) was determined by a viscometric method using NaNO₃ as solvent at 30°C. The specific electric conductivities (σ) of PAA as well as PAA doped with carbon black (CB), chromium oxide (Cr₂O₃), and cupferron with different concentrations (from 0.25 to 1 wt %) were measured at a temperature range 360–400 K. IR spectra of some polymers were determined and it was shown that when PAA was doped with 0.5 wt % CB, a C? O? C band appeared at 775–875 cm^?1. The positron annihilation lifetime (PAL) spectra in PAA doped with the above‐mentioned dopants were measured as a function of their concentrations. It was observed that the short lifetime intensity I₁ decreased, whereas the intermediate lifetime intensity I₂, which is related to the conductivity of the material, increased with increasing the wt % of Cr₂O₃ and cupferron as well as at low concentrations of CB. These results are discussed in terms of the conducting island model. It was found that there were distinct positive relationships between σ and I₂. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 84: 877–883, 2002; DOI 10.1002/app.10381     

Modeling and Analysis of UAV-Assisted Mobile Network with Imperfect Beam Alignment

With the rapid development of emerging 5G and beyond (B5G), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly important to improve the performance of dense cellular networks. As a conventional metric, coverage probability has been widely studied in communication systems due to the increasing density of users and complexity of the heterogeneous environment. In recent years, stochastic geometry has attracted more attention as a mathematical tool for modeling mobile network systems. In this paper, an analytical approach to the coverage probability analysis of UAV-assisted cellular networks with imperfect beam alignment has been proposed. An assumption was considered that all users are distributed according to Poisson Cluster Process (PCP) around base stations, in particular, Thomas Cluster Process (TCP). Using this model, the impact of beam alignment errors on the coverage probability was investigated. Initially, the Probability Density Function (PDF) of directional antenna gain between the user and its serving base station was obtained. Then, association probability with each tier was achieved. A tractable expression was derived for coverage probability in both Line-of-Sight (LoS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) condition links. Numerical results demonstrated that at low UAVs altitude, beam alignment errors significantly degrade coverage performance. Moreover, for a small cluster size, alignment errors do not necessarily affect the coverage performance.     

Building a peer-to-peer content distribution network with high performance,scalability and robustness

Content distribution networks (CDN) are fundamental, yet expensive technologies for distributing the content of web-servers to large audiences. The P2P model is a perfect match to build a low-cost and scalable CDN infrastructure for popular websites by exploiting the underutilized resources of their user communities. However, building a P2P-based CDN is not a straightforward endeavor. In contrast to traditional CDNs, peers are autonomous and volunteer participants with their own heterogeneous interests that should be taken into account in the design of the P2P system. Moreover, churn rate is much higher than in dedicated CDN infrastructures, which can easily destabilize the system and severely degrade the performance. Finally and foremostly, while many P2P systems abstract any topological information about the underlying network, a top priority of a CDN is to incorporate locality-awareness in query routing in order to locate close-by content. This paper aims at building a P2P CDN with high performance, scalability and robustness. Our proposed protocols combine DHT efficiency with gossip robustness and take into account the interests and localities of peers. In short, Flower-CDN provides a hybrid and locality-aware routing infrastructure for user queries. PetalUp-CDN is a highly scalable version of Flower-CDN that dynamically adapts to variable rates of participation and prevent overload situations. In addition, we ensure the robustness of our P2P CDN via low-cost maintenance protocols that can detect and recover from churn and dynamicity. Our extensive performance evaluation shows that our protocols yield high performance gains under both static and highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, they incur acceptable and tunable overhead. Finally we provide main guidelines to deploy Flower-CDN for the public use.     

Differences in Transporters Rather than Drug Targets Are the Principal Determinants of the Different Innate Sensitivities of Trypanosoma congolense and Trypanozoon Subgenus Trypanosomes to Diamidines and Melaminophenyl Arsenicals

The animal trypanosomiases are infections in a wide range of (domesticated) animals with any species of African trypanosome, such as Trypanosoma brucei, T. evansi, T. congolense, T. equiperdum and T. vivax. Symptoms differ between host and infective species and stage of infection and are treated with a small set of decades-old trypanocides. A complication is that not all trypanosome species are equally sensitive to all drugs and the reasons are at best partially understood. Here, we investigate whether drug transporters, mostly identified in T. b. brucei, determine the different drug sensitivities. We report that homologues of the aminopurine transporter TbAT1 and the aquaporin TbAQP2 are absent in T. congolense, while their introduction greatly sensitises this species to diamidine (pentamidine, diminazene) and melaminophenyl (melarsomine) drugs. Accumulation of these drugs in the transgenic lines was much more rapid. T. congolense is also inherently less sensitive to suramin than T. brucei, despite accumulating it faster. Expression of a proposed suramin transporter, located in T. brucei lysosomes, in T. congolense, did not alter its suramin sensitivity. We conclude that for several of the most important classes of trypanocides the presence of specific transporters, rather than drug targets, is the determining factor of drug efficacy.     

A Toxoplasma gondii Oxopurine Transporter Binds Nucleobases and Nucleosides Using Different Binding Modes

Toxoplasma gondii is unable to synthesize purines de novo, instead salvages them from its environment, inside the host cell, for which they need high affinity carriers. Here, we report the expression of a T. gondii Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporter, Tg244440, in a Trypanosoma brucei strain from which nucleobase transporters have been deleted. Tg244440 transported hypoxanthine and guanine with similar affinity (K_m ~1 µM), while inosine and guanosine displayed K_i values of 4.05 and 3.30 µM, respectively. Low affinity was observed for adenosine, adenine, and pyrimidines, classifying Tg244440 as a high affinity oxopurine transporter. Purine analogues were used to probe the substrate-transporter binding interactions, culminating in quantitative models showing different binding modes for oxopurine bases, oxopurine nucleosides, and adenosine. Hypoxanthine and guanine interacted through protonated N1 and N9, and through unprotonated N3 and N7 of the purine ring, whereas inosine and guanosine mostly employed the ribose hydroxy groups for binding, in addition to N1H of the nucleobase. Conversely, the ribose moiety of adenosine barely made any contribution to binding. Tg244440 is the first gene identified to encode a high affinity oxopurine transporter in T. gondii and, to the best of our knowledge, the first purine transporter to employ different binding modes for nucleosides and nucleobases.     

Restoration of heavily polluted branches of the Shatt Al-Arab river, Iraq

In view of the desire to improve the water quality of the heavily polluted branches of the Shatt al-Arab River at the City of Basrah, it was proposed to maintain effective flushing as well as contracting sewerage system. The present study was conducted in order to examine the water quality of these branches in an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed flushing system. It has been found that their waters contained very low levels of dissolved oxygen and relatively high amounts of both COD and BOD₅. The annual average water quality parameters for Basrah Branches were: dissolved oxygen 3.4 ppm; pH 7.67; hydrogen sulphide 1.4 ppm; ammonia 97 μg-at. N l⁻¹; COD 15.9 mg l⁻¹; BOD₅ 12.7 mg l⁻¹; dissolved silicates 202 μg-at. Si l⁻¹; dissolved reactive phosphate 13.4 μg-at. P-PO₄³⁻ l⁻¹; nitrate 10.4 μg-at. N-NO₃⁻ l⁻¹; nitrite 2.1 μg-at. N-NO₂⁻ l⁻¹ and chlorophyll-α 14.3 mg m⁻³. Based on our calculations, it has been concluded that the proposed system is effective, thus within a flushing cycle all of the above mentioned parameters will become within the acceptable values of the Shatt al-Arab water quality. Moreover, this system has no appreciable effect upon the water quality characteristics of the Shatt al-Arab River due to the fact that it discharges a high volume of water annually. However, It has been recommended to dredge the deposited sludge to a minimum depth of 50 cm.     

Natural Convection of Nanofluid in Cylindrical Enclosure Filled with Porous Media

A numerical study has been carried out to investigate the effect of aspect ratio on heat transfer by natural convection of nanofluid taking Cu nano particles and the water as based fluid. The flow is laminar, steady state, axisymmetric two-dimensional in a vertical cylindrical channel filled with porous media. Heat is generated uniformly along the center of the channel with its vertical surface remain with cooled constant wall temperature and insulated horizontal top and bottom surfaces. The governing equations which used are continuity, momentum and energy equations using Darcy law and Boussinesq＇s approximation which are transformed to dimensionless equations. The finite difference approach is used to obtain all the computational results using the MATLAB-7 program. The parameters affected on the system are Rayleigh number ranging within （10≤ Ra ≤ 103）, aspect ratio （1 ≤ As 〈 5） and the volume fraction （0 ≤0 〈 0.2）. The results obtained are presented graphically in the form of streamline and isotherm contour plots and the results show that as ~ increase from 0.01 to 0.2 the value of the mean Nusselt number increase 50.4% for Ra = 1,000.     

Rosemary (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Rosmarinus officinalis</Emphasis>) oil: composition and functionality of the cold-pressed extract

The aim of this work was to investigate cold-pressed rosemary oil (RO) for its lipid classes, subclasses, fatty acid composition, tocochromanols and total phenolics amount. Antiradical activity against 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH^?) and galvinoxyl radicals, antioxidant activity, as measured by the Rancimat test, as well as antimicrobial activity against food-borne bacteria, and dermatophytic fungi of RO were evaluated. In RO, the amount of neutral lipids was highest (ca. 86%), followed by phospholipids (0.92%) and glycolipids (0.88%). The percentages of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated fatty acids were 41.7, 42.3, and 15.8%, respectively. Linoleic acid (41.7%) and oleic acid (41.2%) were the major fatty acids while linolenic acid accounted for 1.3% of total fatty acids. The following tocochromanols were detected: α-, β-, γ- and δ-tocopherols, which accounted for 291, 22, 1145, and 41 mg/100 g oil, respectively, as well as α-, β-, γ- and δ-tocotrienols, which accounted for 18, 12, 29, and 158 mg/100 g oil, respectively. RO also contained high levels of phenolic compounds (7.2 mg GAE/g). After 60 min of reaction with free radicals, 67% of DPPH^? and 55% of galvinoxyl radicals were quenched by RO. Rancimat test showed that blending RO with sunflower oil increased the induction period (IP) for blends. The IP of the RO: sunflower oil blend (1:9, v/v) was 390 min, and RO: sunflower oil blend (2:8, v/v) was longer (540 min). RO exhibited high antimicrobial potential against food-borne pathogenic bacteria (E. coli, S. enteritidis, and L. monocytogenes) and high antifungal potential against dermatophyte fungi (T. mentagrophytes, and T. rubrum). RO had unique high level of γ-tocopherol, which is a scavenger of reactive nitrogen species making it a promising material in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications.