Enhancement of glass-ceramic performance by TiO2 doping: In vitro cell viability,proliferation, and differentiation

A new TiO₂-containing bioactive glass and glass-ceramics based on 50SiO₂-(45-X)CaO-(XTiO₂)-5P₂O₅ system was designed using a sol–gel technique (where X = 5, 7.5 and 10 wt %). The roles of the crystallization behavior and physicochemical characteristics of the designed glass and glass-ceramics which were played in the introduction of TiO₂ substitutions were investigated. Moreover, cell proliferation and differentiation were evaluated against human osteosarcoma cells (Saos-2). The TiO₂/CaO replacements led to the formation of a stronger glass structure and thus increased thermal parameters and the chemical stabilization of the designed materials. The FTIR data confirmed the existence of Ti within the glass and glass-ceramics samples, and no remarkable effect on their chemical integrity was observed. The XRD patterns indicated that calcium-containing minerals, including Ca₂SiO₄,Ca₃(PO₄)₂, Ca(Ti,Si)O₅, CaTiSiO₅, and Ca₁₅(PO₄)₂·(SiO₄)₆ phases were developed as a role of structure/texture under the applied heat-treatment. The results of the cytotoxicity test proved that a safe sample dose is 12–50 μg/ml, at which cell viability is ≥ 85%. The cell differentiation determined by ALP test proved the superiority of glass-ceramics compared with their native glasses. Therefore, the obtained materials could be safely used as novel biocompatible materials for the regeneration of bone tissue.     

Effect of cellulose acetate/cellulose triacetate ratio on reverse osmosis blend membrane performance

Surface functionalization and modification including the grafting process are effective approaches to improve and enhance the reverse osmosis (RO) membrane performance. This work is aimed to synthesize grafted/crosslinked cellulose acetate (CA)/cellulose triacetate (CTA) blend RO membranes using N-isopropylacrylamide (N-IPAAm) as a monomer and N,N-methylene bisacrylamide (MBAAm) as a crosslinker. The morphology of these membranes was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and their surface roughness was characterized by atomic force microscopy. The performance of these membranes was evaluated through measuring two major parameters of salt rejection and water flux using RO unit at variable operating pressures. It was noted that the surface average roughness obviously decreased from 148 nm for the pure CA/CTA blend membrane with 2.5% CTA to 110 nm and 87 nm for the grafted N-IPAAm and grafted/crosslinked N-IPAAM/MBAAm/CA/CTA-RO membranes, respectively. Moreover, the contact angle decreased from 51.98° to 47.6° and 43.8° after the grafting and crosslinking process. The salt rejection of the grafted CA/CTA-RO membrane by 0.1% N-IPAAm produced the highest value of 98.12% and the water flux was 3.29 L/m²h at 10 bar.     

A STUDY OF THE FLOTATION OF OXIDIZED AHASRA COAL

The flotation of oxidized Amasra Coal which was collected between 1973-1978 and, stored in the atmospheric conditions was examined In this work. Coal samples were fractioned by wet screening to +0.560 mm, -0.500 + 0.140 mm, -0.140 mm particle sizes and first fraction was ground to -0.560 mm before flotation. Motorin and pine oil which had been heated at 125° C for 5 hours were used ns flotation reagents. The influence of impeller speed, aeration rate, solid concent of the pulp, reagent amounts were examined and optimum values were determined. Increase of the pine oil amount added to the pulp, increased the coal. recovery on the flotation of this oxidized coal.     

Window materials for high power gyrotron

The room temperature application of sapphire as window material at higher frequencies is not feasible since its absorption coefficient increases almost linearly with increasing frequency in the millimeter wavelength region. At cryogenic temperature the absorption coefficient value decreases only by a few factors (factor of 2 to 3) in the 90 – 200 GHz region. The earlier reported temperature squared dependence (decrease) in the absorption coefficient or the loss tangent value is totally absent in our broad band continuous wave data we are reporting here (at 6.5 K, 35K, 77K and 300K) and one we reported at conferences earlier. Our results are verified by another technique. We utilize our precision millimeter wave dispersive Fourier transform spectroscopic techniques at room temperature and at cryogenic temperatures The extra high resistivity single crystal compensated silicon is no doubt the lowest loss material available at room temperature in the entire millimeter wavelength region At higher millimeter wave frequencies an extra high resistivity silicon window or an window made with extra high resistivity silicon coated with diamond film would certainly make a better candidate in the future. A single free standing synthetic diamond window seems to have higher absorption coefficient values at millimeter wavelength region at this time although it is claimed that it possesses good mechanical strength and higher thermal conductivity characteristics. It certainly does not rule out the use of diamond film on a single crystal high resistivity silicon to improve its mechanical strength and thermal conductivity     

An Eco-Friendly Approach to the Control of Pathogenic Microbes and Anopheles stephensi Malarial Vector Using Magnesium Oxide Nanoparticles (Mg-NPs) Fabricated by Penicillium chrysogenum

The discovery of eco-friendly, rapid, and cost-effective compounds to control diseases caused by microbes and insects are the main challenges. Herein, the magnesium oxide nanoparticles (MgO-NPs) are successfully fabricated by harnessing the metabolites secreted by Penicillium chrysogenum. The fabricated MgO-NPs were characterized using UV-Vis, XRD, TEM, DLS, EDX, FT-IR, and XPS analyses. Data showed the successful formation of crystallographic, spherical, well-dispersed MgO-NPs with sizes of 7–40 nm at a maximum wavelength of 250 nm. The EDX analysis confirms the presence of Mg and O ions as the main components with weight percentages of 13.62% and 7.76%, respectively. The activity of MgO-NPs as an antimicrobial agent was investigated against pathogens Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, and Candida albicans, and exhibited zone of inhibitions of 12.0 ± 0.0, 12.7 ± 0.9, 23.3 ± 0.8, 17.7 ± 1.6, and 14.7 ± 0.6 mm respectively, at 200 µg mL⁻¹. The activity is decreased by decreasing the MgO-NPs concentration. The biogenic MgO-NPs exhibit high efficacy against different larvae instar and pupa of Anopheles stephensi, with LC50 values of 12.5–15.5 ppm for I–IV larvae instar and 16.5 ppm for the pupa. Additionally, 5 mg/cm² of MgO-NPs showed the highest protection percentages against adults of Anopheles stephensi, with values of 100% for 150 min and 67.6% ± 1.4% for 210 min.     

An enhanced LBP-based technique with various size of sliding window approach for handwritten Arabic digit recognition

Many variations of local binary pattern (LBP) were proposed to enhance its performance, including uniform local binary pattern (ULBP), center-symmetric local binary patterns (CS-LBP), center symmetric local ternary patterns (CS-LTP), center symmetric local multilevel pattern (CS-LMP), etc. In this paper, the accuracies of LBP technique and its variations are enhanced using four different sizes of a sliding window approach. This approach is used for investigating whether the features extracted by LBP are significant enough or its versions are needed as well. Five LBP-based techniques have been used including LBP, CS-LBP, CS-LTP, CS-LMP, and U2LBP. They have been applied to an Arabic digit image dataset called MAHDBase. Support vector machine (SVM) and random forests are utilized as classifiers. The experimental results show that the obtained accuracies have been improved by 19.56%, 21.43%, 5.63%, 6.51% and 5.62% for CS-LBP, CS-LMP, U2LBP, CS-LTP, and LBP, respectively, when the sliding window approach has been applied and SVM with linear kernel has been used as a classifier. Moreover, the results show that there is no need to use LBP variations to enhance the accuracy if the sliding window is applied because the highest accuracy has been acquired using LBP. At the end, the accuracy of proposed systems has been compared against other state-of-the-art LBP-based techniques showing the significance of the proposed systems.

     

Developing an Interactive Spatial Multi-Attribute Decision Support System for Assessing Water Resources Allocation Scenarios

Water Resources Management - In water resource management, assessing water resource allocation scenarios (WRASs) is an important multi-attribute decision making (MADM) problem. It involves...     

Predictive control for voltage collapse avoidance using a modified discrete multi-valued PSO algorithm

Voltage stability is one of the most challenging concerns that power utilities are confronted with, and this paper proposes a voltage control scheme based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) to overcome this kind of instability. Voltage instability has a close relation with the adequacy of reactive power and the response of Under Load Tap Changers (ULTCs) to the voltage drop after the occurrence of a contingency. Therefore, the proposed method utilizes reactive power injection and tap changing to avoid voltage collapse. Considering discrete nature of the changes in the tap ratio and also in the reactive power injected by capacitor banks, the search area for the optimizer of MPC will be an integer area; consequently, a modified discrete multi-valued Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is considered to perform this optimization. Simulation results of applying the proposed control scheme to a 4-bus system confirm its capability to prevent voltage collapse.     

Supporting multiple perspectives in feature-based configuration

Feature diagrams have become commonplace in software product line engineering as a means to document variability early in the life cycle. Over the years, their application has also been extended to assist stakeholders in the configuration of software products. However, existing feature-based configuration techniques offer little support for tailoring configuration views to the profiles of the various stakeholders. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, yet formal and flexible, mechanism to leverage multidimensional separation of concerns in feature-based configuration. We propose a technique to specify concerns in feature diagrams and to generate automatically concern-specific configuration views. Three alternative visualisations are proposed. Our contributions are motivated and illustrated through excerpts from a real web-based meeting management application which was also used for a preliminary evaluation. We also report on the progress made in the development of a tool supporting multi-view feature-based configuration.     

Parallel Lagrange interpolation on <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-ary <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-cubes with maximum channel utilization

This paper proposes an efficient parallel algorithm for computing Lagrange interpolation on k-ary n-cube networks. This is done using the fact that a k-ary n-cube can be decomposed into n link-disjoint Hamiltonian cycles. Using these n link-disjoint cycles, we interpolate Lagrange polynomial using full bandwidth of the employed network. Communication in the main phase of the algorithm is based on an all-to-all broadcast algorithm on the n link-disjoint Hamiltonian cycles exploiting all network channels, and thus, resulting in high-efficiency in using network resources. A performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm reveals an optimum speedup for a typical range of system parameters used in current state-of-the-art implementations.