Synthesis of Organotin Polyamine Ethers Containing Acyclovir and their Preliminary Anticancer and Antiviral Activity

Organotin polyamine ethers containing acyclovir in their backbone were synthesized in moderate to high yield employing the aqueous interfacial polycondensation system. The products are high molecular weight polymers. Infrared spectroscopy of the products shows new bands characteristic of the formation of Sn–N and Sn–O bonds consistent with the proposed structure. MALDI-TOF MS below 2000 Da shows the presence of organotin and acyclovir units containing these two moieties. The products show moderate inhibition of a number of cancer cell lines and exhibit the ability to inhibit a number of viruses, particularly the herpes simplex virus-1 and varicella zoster virus that are responsible for herpes, chicken pox and shingles.     

Compressive strength and hydration of wastepaper sludge ash-ground granulated blastfurnace slag blended pastes

Compressive strength and hydration characteristics of wastepaper sludge ash-ground granulated blastfurnace slag (WSA-GGBS) blended pastes were investigated at a water to binder (w/b) ratio of 0.5. The strength results are compared to those of normal Portland cement (PC) paste and relative strengths are reported. Early relative strengths (1 day) of WSA-GGBS pastes were very low but a marked gain in relative strength occurred between 1 and 7 days and this increased further after 28 and 90 days. For the 50% WSA-50% GGBS blended paste, the strength achieved at 90 days was nearly 50% of that of the PC control paste. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric (TG) analysis were carried out to identify the mineral components in the WSA and the hydration products of WSA and WSA-GGBS pastes. The principal crystalline components in the WSA are gehlenite, calcium oxide, bredigite and α′-C₂S (stabilised with Al and Mg) together with small amounts of anorthite and calcium carbonate and traces of calcium hydroxide and quartz. The α′-C₂S and bredigite, which phase separate from liquid phase that forms a glass on cooling, are difficult to distinguish by XRD. The hydration products identified in WSA paste are CH, C₄AH₁₃, C₃A.0.5CC?.0.5CH.H_11.5 and C-S-H gel plus possible evidence of small amounts of C₂ASH₈ and C₃A.3CS?.H₃₂. Based upon the findings, a hydration mechanism is presented, and a model is proposed to explain the observed strength development.     

Fractional Order Nonlinear Bone Remodeling Dynamics Using the Supervised Neural Network

This study aims to solve the nonlinear fractional-order mathematical model (FOMM) by using the normal and dysregulated bone remodeling of the myeloma bone disease (MBD). For the more precise performance of the model, fractional-order derivatives have been used to solve the disease model numerically. The FOMM is preliminarily designed to focus on the critical interactions between bone resorption or osteoclasts (OC) and bone formation or osteoblasts (OB). The connections of OC and OB are represented by a nonlinear differential system based on the cellular components, which depict stable fluctuation in the usual bone case and unstable fluctuation through the MBD. Untreated myeloma causes by increasing the OC and reducing the osteoblasts, resulting in net bone waste the tumor growth. The solutions of the FOMM will be provided by using the stochastic framework based on the Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation (LVMBP) neural networks (NN), i.e., LVMBPNN. The mathematical performances of three variations of the fractional-order derivative based on the nonlinear disease model using the LVMPNN. The static structural performances are 82% for investigation and 9% for both learning and certification. The performances of the LVMBPNN are authenticated by using the results of the Adams-Bashforth-Moulton mechanism. To accomplish the capability, steadiness, accuracy, and ability of the LVMBPNN, the performances of the error histograms (EHs), mean square error (MSE), recurrence, and state transitions (STs) will be provided.     

A survey on search results diversification techniques

The quantity of information placed on the web has been greater than before and is increasing rapidly day by day. Searching through the huge amount of data and finding the most relevant and useful result set involves searching, ranking, and presenting the results. Most of the users probe into the top few results and neglect the rest. In order to increase user’s satisfaction, the presented result set should not only be relevant to the search topic, but should also present a variety of perspectives, that is, the results should be different from one another. The effectiveness of web search and the satisfaction of users can be enhanced through providing various results of a search query in a certain order of relevance and concern. The technique used to avoid presenting similar, though relevant, results to the user is known as a diversification of search results. This article presents a survey of the approaches used for search result diversification. To this end, this article not only provides a technical survey of existing diversification techniques, but also presents a taxonomy of diversification algorithms with respect to the types of search queries.     

Efficient deterministic secure quantum communication protocols using multipartite entangled states

We propose two deterministic secure quantum communication protocols employing three-qubit GHZ-like states and five-qubit Brown states as quantum channels for secure transmission of information in units of two bits and three bits using multipartite teleportation schemes developed here. In these schemes, the sender’s capability in selecting quantum channels and the measuring bases leads to improved qubit efficiency of the protocols.     

Effect of Varying Amount of Polyethylene Glycol (PEG-600) and 3-Aminopropyltriethoxysilane on the Properties of Chitosan based Reverse Osmosis Membranes

Chitosan and polyethylene glycol (PEG-600) membranes were synthesized and crosslinked with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES). The main purpose of this research work is to synthesize RO membranes which can be used to provide desalinated water for drinking, industrial and agricultural purposes. Hydrogen bonding between chitosan and PEG was confirmed by displacement of the hydroxyl absorption peak at 3237 cm⁻¹ in pure chitosan to lower values in crosslinked membranes by using FTIR. Dynamic mechanical analysis revealed that PEG lowers Tg of the modified membranes vs. pure chitosan from 128.5 °C in control to 120 °C in CS-PEG5. SEM results highlighted porous and anisotropic structure of crosslinked membranes. As the amount of PEG was increased, hydrophilicity of membranes was increased and water absorption increased up to a maximum of 67.34%. Permeation data showed that flux and salt rejection value of the modified membranes was increased up to a maximum of 80% and 40.4%, respectively. Modified films have antibacterial properties against Escherichia coli as compared to control membranes.     

Natural frequencies of square plates with reinforced central holes subjected to inplane loads

The natural frequencies and the elastic buckling loads of square plates, containing reinforced square holes and subjected to inplane loads, are determined using the finite element method. The reinforcing beams which are located at the four edges of the hole are either square or rectangular in cross section.

To determine the appropriate out-of-plane stiffness and mass matrices, a rectangular non-conforming bending element is employed. This element has three degrees of freedom at each of its four corner nodes. The finite element method is also used to calculate the inplane stress distribution prior to buckling. This inplane element is rectangular and is based on strain assumptions. The element also includes the inplane rotation as well as the two translational displacements as the three degrees of freedom at each of its four corner nodes. To model the behaviour of the reinforcement, a three-dimensional exact beam element is used. For this element, the degrees of freedom for out-of-plane displacement are consistent with the non-conforming bending element, and the inplane degrees of freedom are consistent with the inplane strain-based element.

In the present paper the natural frequencies and the corresponding modes of vibration are investigated when the reinforced plates are subjected to uniform uniaxial, biaxial and shear loads. The variation of the natural frequencies with various sizes of reinforcement is obtained for plates subjected to a range of magnitude of inplane loading.     

Unequal Power Allocation for JPEG Transmission Over MIMO Systems

With the introduction of multiple transmit and receive antennas in next generation wireless systems, real-time image and video communication are expected to become quite common, since very high data rates will become available along with improved data reliability. New joint transmission and coding schemes that explore advantages of multiple antenna systems matched with source statistics are expected to be developed. Based on this idea, we present an unequal power allocation scheme for transmission of JPEG compressed images over multiple-input multiple-output systems employing spatial multiplexing. The JPEG-compressed image is divided into different quality layers, and different layers are transmitted simultaneously from different transmit antennas using unequal transmit power, with a constraint on the total transmit power during any symbol period. Results show that our unequal power allocation scheme provides significant image quality improvement as compared to different equal power allocations schemes, with the peak-signal-to-noise-ratio gain as high as 14 dB at low signal-to-noise-ratios.      

Geomembrane puncture and strains from stones in an underlying clay layer

Results from physical experiments are presented to assess the possible puncture of a 1.5-mm-thick HDPE geomembrane and, if not punctured, the maximum tensile strains in the deformed geomembrane from intentionally placed stone particles in an underlying compacted clay liner when subjected to applied vertical stresses. The influences of applied pressure, clay water content, stone size, stone burial depth and protection layer on the geomembrane tensile strains are reported. Except in one test conducted to a pressure of 2000 kPa, the geomembrane was not punctured in the short-term tests conducted; however, it was subjected to local indentations and tensile strains from the underlying gravel particles that may exceed proposed allowable long-term strain limits. Tensile strains for the specific 35 mm stones tested when initially flush with the clay surface were negligible, even up to pressures of 1000 kPa, provided the initial water content of clay was 12%. Increases in water content or stone size were found to increase the tensile strain. Placing the clay at the lower limit of acceptable water content was found to be beneficial in terms of reducing strains from buried stones; however, this was also found to make the geomembrane more susceptible to stone particles sitting on top of the clay surface and hence careful site inspection is required to remove all visible stones that sit on top of the clay surface.