A comparison of Zayandehrood River water values for agriculture and the environment

River water management is challenging not only since they are open systems with changing physical structures, but also because the water values are mostly unknown over varied sectors. If policymakers grasp water values, water management will be more efficient. This research intends to examine the values of water in agriculture, which receives the most substantial portion of water resources, with the values of water in the environment in Isfahan located in the Zayandehrood River basin of Iran. The consequences of contingent valuation and production function methods revealed that per cubic metre value of water is 13 times higher in the environment than agriculture. The government should reconsider the higher value of the environment despite it is a non‐market value. The contingent valuation model additionally proved that women exhibited 21% more willingness to pay than men in order to protect the environment; however, they are paid less by 36%.     

Prediction of geological hazardous zones in front of a tunnel face using TSP-203 and artificial neural networks

This research aims at improving the methods of prediction of hazardous geotechnical structures in the front of a tunnel face. We propose and showcase our methodology using a case study on a water supply system in Cheshmeh Roozieh, Iran. Geotechnical investigations had previously reported three measurements of the newly established method of TSP-203 (Tunnel Seismic Prediction) along 684 m of the 3200 m long tunnel up to a depth of 600 m. We use the results of TSP-203 in a trained artificial neural network (ANN) to estimate the unknown nonlinear relationships between TSP-203 results and those obtained by the methods of Rock Mass Rating classification (RMR – treated here as real values). Our results show that an appropriately trained neural network can reliably predict the weak geological zones in front of a tunnel face accurately.     

Electrochemical oxidation of acetaminophen in aqueous solutions: Kinetic evaluation of hydrolysis, hydroxylation and dimerization processes

Electrochemical oxidation of acetaminophen (paracetamol) has been studied in various pHs using cyclic voltammetry and controlled-potential coulometry. The results indicate that electrochemically generated N-acetyl-p-benzoquinone-imine (NAPQI) participates in different type reactions based on solution's pH. It is hydrolyzed in strong acidic media and hydroxylated in strong alkaline media and also, it is dimerized in intermediate pHs. Furthermore, in this work, a simple method for electrochemical synthesis of acetaminophen's dimer is described. In addition, in various pHs, based on related mechanism, the observed homogeneous rate constants (k_obs) of hydrolysis, hydroxylation and dimerization reactions were estimated by comparing the experimental cyclic voltammetric responses with the digital-simulated results. The most amounts of k_obs are calculated in pHs less than 2 and more than 9. In this study, the least observed homogeneous rate constant (k_obs) belongs to pHs 5.0 and 9.0.     

Clean energy consumption and economic growth nexus: asymmetric time and frequency domain causality testing in China

ABSTRACT

This article examines the symmetric and asymmetric causal relationships between clean energy consumption and economic growth in time and frequency domains for China. The results of both symmetric and asymmetric causality analysis suggest that clean energy consumption does not cause economic growth. This implies that the level of clean energy consumption in China seems to be optimal and beyond this level, it does not affect the growth level of the country. However, examination of the causality linkage from economic growth to clean energy consumption indicates medium and long-run evidence of a frequency-based symmetric causal relationship. Our asymmetric analysis makes this relation clearer such that only the adverse shocks to economic growth lead to a decline in the clean energy consumption level. This inference is complemented with the estimated causal parameter of 0.13, indicating that a 1% decrease in economic growth results in a 0.13% reduction in the level of clean energy consumption.     

Functional Nanomaterials on 2D Surfaces and in 3D Nanocomposite Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

An emerging approach to improve the physicobiochemical properties and the multifunctionality of biomaterials is to incorporate functional nanomaterials (NMs) onto 2D surfaces and into 3D hydrogel networks. This approach is starting to generate promising advanced functional materials such as self‐assembled monolayers (SAMs) and nanocomposite (NC) hydrogels of NMs with remarkable properties and tailored functionalities that are beneficial for a variety of biomedical applications, including tissue engineering, drug delivery, and developing biosensors. A wide range of NMs, such as carbon‐, metal‐, and silica‐based NMs, can be integrated into 2D and 3D biomaterial formulations due to their unique characteristics, such as magnetic properties, electrical properties, stimuli responsiveness, hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity, and chemical composition. The highly ordered nano‐ or microscale assemblies of NMs on surfaces alter the original properties of the NMs and add enhanced and/or synergetic and novel features to the final SAMs of the NM constructs. Furthermore, the incorporation of NMs into polymeric hydrogel networks reinforces the (soft) polymer matrix such that the formed NC hydrogels show extraordinary mechanical properties with superior biological properties.     

Identifying factors that influence the acceptability of smart devices: implications for recommendations

This paper presents results from a web-based study that investigates users’ attitudes toward smart devices, focusing on acceptability. Specifically, we conducted a survey that elicits users’ ratings of devices in isolation and devices in the context of tasks potentially performed by these devices. Our study led to insights about users’ attitudes towards devices in isolation and in the context of tasks, and about the influence of demographic factors and factors pertaining to technical expertise and experience with devices on users’ attitudes. The insights about users’ attitudes provided the basis for two recommendation approaches based on principal components analysis (PCA) that alleviate the new-user and new-item problems: (1) employing latent features identified by PCA to predict ratings given by existing users to new devices, and by new users to existing devices; and (2) identifying a relatively small set of key questions on the basis of PCs, whose answers account to a large extent for new users’ ratings of devices in isolation and in the context of tasks. Our results show that taking into account latent features of devices, and asking a relatively small number of key questions about devices in the context of tasks, lead to rating predictions that are significantly more accurate than global and demographic predictions, and substantially reduce prediction error, eventually matching the performance of strong baselines.     

Evolutionary Adaptation and Amyloid Formation: Does the Reduced Amyloidogenicity and Cytotoxicity of Ursine Amylin Contribute to the Metabolic Adaption of Bears and Polar Bears?

Much of our knowledge of diabetes is derived from studies of rodent models. An alternative approach explores evolutionary solutions to physiological stress by studying organisms that face challenging metabolic environments. Polar bears eat an enormously lipid-rich diet without deleterious metabolic consequences. In contrast, transgenic rodents expressing the human neuropancreatic polypeptide hormone amylin develop hyperglycemia and extensive pancreatic islet amyloid when fed a high-fat diet. The process of islet amyloid formation by human amylin contributes to β-cell dysfunction and loss of β-cell mass in type 2 diabetes. We show that ursine amylin is considerably less amyloidogenic and less toxic to β-cells than human amylin, consistent with the hypothesis that part of the adaptation of bears to metabolic challenges might include protection from islet amyloidosis-induced β-cell toxicity. Ursine and human amylin differ at four locations: H18R, S20G, F23L, and S29P. These are interesting from a biophysical perspective, since the S20G mutation accelerates amyloid formation, but the H18R slows it. An H18RS20G double mutant of human amylin behaves similarly to the H18R mutant, indicating that the substitution at position 18 dominates the S20G replacement. These data suggest one possible mechanism underpinning the protection of bears against metabolic challenges and provide insight into the design of soluble analogs of human amylin.     

Does Capacity Utilization Predict Inflation? A Wavelet Based Evidence from United States

Computational Economics - This paper aims to test a causal nexus between capacity utilization and inflation in the United States for the period from January 1969 to June 2017. Given the...     

Methanol steam reforming in a planar wash coated microreactor integrated with a micro-combustor

A numerical simulation of methanol steam reforming in a microreactor integrated with a methanol micro-combustor is presented. Typical Cu/ZnO/Al₂O₃ and Pt catalysts are considered for the steam reforming and combustor channels respectively. The channel widths are considered at 700 μm in the baseline case, and the reactor length is taken at 20 mm. Effects of Cu/ZnO catalyst thickness, gas hourly space velocities of both steam reforming and combustion channels, reactor geometry, separating substrate properties, as well as inlet composition of the steam reforming channel are investigated. Results indicate that increasing catalyst thickness will enhance hydrogen production by about 68% when the catalyst thickness is increased from 10 μm to 100 μm. Gas space velocity of the steam reforming channel shows an optimum value of 3000 h⁻¹ for hydrogen yield, and the optimum value for the space velocity of the combustor channel is calculated at 24,000 h⁻¹. Effects of inlet steam to carbon ratio on hydrogen yield, methanol conversion, and CO generation are also examined. In addition, effects of the separating substrate thickness and material are examined. Higher methanol conversion and hydrogen yield are obtained by choosing a thinner substrate, while no significant change is seen by changing the substrate material from steel to aluminum with considerably different thermal conductivities. The produced hydrogen from an assembly of such microreactor at optimal conditions will be sufficient to operate a low-power, portable fuel cell.     

Electrochemical synthesis of new catechol derivatives

Electrochemical oxidation of catechols (1a-e) has been studied in the presence of 2-acetylcyclopentanone (3) as a nucleophile in aqueous solutions, using cyclic voltammetry and controlled-potential coulometry. The results indicate that the quinones derived from catechols (1a-e), participate in Michael addition reactions with anion of 2-acetylcyclopentanone (3) and via EC mechanism pathway, converted to corresponding catechol derivatives (4a-e). In this work, we derived novel catechol derivatives with good yields based on electrochemical oxidation in aqueous solutions, at carbon electrode in an undivided cell, using environmentally friendly method.