A bibliometric tale of two cities: Hong Kong and Singapore

A research evaluation of the leading research universities globally using the curated bibliometric data from Shanghai Rankings Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2018 shows Hong Kong at the top position. A X/GDP productivity criteria is used where each country’s scientific wealth is represented by X, a second-order bibliometric indicator, and its nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is taken as a measure of its economic wealth. Singapore appears at the fifth position. This brief communication looks at the anatomy of this exceptional performance of the two city states, which are similar in many ways and yet dissimilar in many other ways. Hong Kong has the slight edge over Singapore in translating economic wealth to scientific wealth.

     

High yield formation of carbon nanotubes using a rotating cathode in open air

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been synthesized using the arc discharge method with a rotating graphite disc as the cathode. Arcing was carried out in open air and without the use of catalysts. The current density was maintained constant through out the experiment, while, the rate of rotation of the cathode and atmosphere under which arcing was carried out were changed during experimentation. Characterization of the samples produced indicates that rotation of the cathode has a significant impact on the quality and yield of the process. It is proposed that rotation of the cathode drags plasma formed between two electrodes away from high temperature region. This results in a sudden quenching of the reactive plasma. The time available for nucleation and growth phenomena is significantly reduced and thus leads to the formation of highly graphitic multi walled CNTs (yield 60%) and traces of double walled CNTs.     

Biosynthesised silver and copper nanoformulation as foliar spray to control bird's eye spot disease in tea plantations

Tea leaves have economic importance in preparation of the popular beverage of the world “tea”. Bird’s eye spot disease of tea leaves creates significant revenue loss in tea trade of many tea plant cultivating countries. Management of this disease by silver (AgNps) and copper (CuNps) nanoparticles that are biosynthesised by efficient antagonists was studied. The biocontrol agents like Pseudomonas fluorescens, Trichoderma atroviride and Streptomyces sannanensis were evaluated for nanoparticle synthesis against Cercospora theae isolates namely KC10, MC24 and VC38. Initially, the freshly prepared extracellular AgNps showed high disease control (59.42 – 79.76%), but the stability of antagonistic property in stored nanoparticles were significantly high in CuNps (58.71 – 73.81%). Greenhouse studies on various treatments imposed also showed reduced disease incidence percentage of 13.4, 7.57 and 10.11% when treated with CuNps synthesized by P. fluorescens, T. atroviride and S. sannanensis respectively. Various treatment schedule in fields suggested the use of Bionanocopper@1.5 ppm for highest yield (3743 kg/ha) with 66.1% disease prevention. The results suggest the use of biosynthesised CuNps using Streptomyces sannanensis for controlling the tea plant pathogens causing foliar disease with higher stability in releasing the antagonistic activity during sporadic disease incidence of bird’s eye spot disease in tea plants.Inspec keywords: silver, copper, crops, plant diseases, nanoparticles, air pollution, agrochemicals, nanobiotechnologyOther keywords: biosynthesised silver, biosynthesised copper, nanoformulation, foliar spray, bird eye spot disease control, tea plantations, tea leaves, economic importance, revenue loss, tea trade, tea plant cultivating countries, silver nanoparticles, AgNps, copper nanoparticles, CuNps, biocontrol agents, nanoparticle synthesis, Cercospora theae isolates, KC10, MC24, VC38, greenhouse studies, antagonistic property, P. fluorescens, T. atroviride, S. sannanensis, fungicides, synthetic nanomaterials, bionanomaterials, disease prevention, green leaf yield, BionanoCu, tea plant pathogens, foliar disease     

Energy indicators and percentile ranking normalization

Scalar measures of research performance (Energy, Exergy, and Entropy or EEE) are based on what can be called the bibliometrics-thermodynamics consilience. Here, their application to the percentile ranking normalization scheme is demonstrated.     

Scientific wealth and inequality within nations

We show that the greater the scientific wealth of a nation, the more likely that it will tend to concentrate this excellence in a few premier institutions. That is, great wealth implies great inequality of distribution. The “scientific wealth” is interpreted in terms of citation data harvested by Google Scholar Citations for profiled institutions from all countries in the world.     

A three-dimensional bibliometric evaluation of recent research in India

In this paper a three-dimensional framework to see how Indian universities and research-focused institutions fare in the world of high end research in terms of excellence and diversity of its research base is proposed. At the country level scholarly performance is broken down into three components—size, excellence and balance or evenness. A web application available in the public domain which visualizes scientific excellence worldwide in several subject areas is used. India has a presence in fifteen of twenty-two subject areas in which there are at least 50 institutes globally that have published more than 500 papers. It has no institution which can be counted at this level of size and excellence in seven areas: Arts and Humanities; Business, Management and Accounting; Health Professions; Neuroscience; Nursing; Psychology; and Social Sciences. India’s research base is completely skewed towards the Physical Sciences and Engineering with very little for Biological Sciences and Medicine and virtually none in Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities when excellence at the highest level is considered. Its performance is also benchmarked against three nations, namely Australia, The Netherlands and Taiwan which are of similar size in terms of GDP and scientific output. It is seen that although India has the highest GDP among the four countries, its performance lags considerably behind. Even in terms of diversity, its performance is poor compared to the three comparator countries.     

Homogenization for Dispersion and Reduction in Length of Carbon Nanotubes

An important aspect that limits the use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is the difficulty in obtaining homogeneously dispersed CNTs of uniform length. Hence, homogenization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) was carried out using bullet blender and the dispersion behavior was compared with that of ultrasonication. 1% sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), Triton-x-100 and polyethylene glycol 4000 were used as dispersing agents during homogenization. The dispersed CNTs were studied using transmission electron microscopy, ImageJ and Raman spectroscopy. Though dispersion and reduction in length of MWCNTs were observed both with ultrasonication and homogenization, lowest length range with about 75% reduction in polydispersity index was obtained on homogenization. Longer time of ultrasonication resulted in damage to small MWCNTs. Well dispersed and shorter MWCNTs were obtained with Triton-x-100 while reduction in length was minimum with SDS. SWCNTs of less than 1 μm length could be obtained by homogenization with Triton-x-100.     

Synthesis and characterisation of CuS nanomaterials using hydrothermal route

Copper sulphide (CuS) nanomaterials with interesting morphology were synthesised using copper nitrate trihydrate, thiourea and water as a solvent by a simple hydrothermal route. A systematic investigation was carried out to investigate the effect of reaction time (5, 16 and 24?h) at 150°C on the morphology of the materials. Without the use of any template or additives, shape controlled synthesis of CuS nanocrystallites were achieved. The possible mechanism for the formation of the various nanostructures of CuS in this system is discussed. The prepared materials were characterised by X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and DRS-UV–Vis absorption analysis. The UV–Vis spectrum shows that it is the promising material which can absorb in the visible region and hence could be used for photocatalytic applications. In addition, the electrochemical characteristic of the synthesised material was investigated by cyclic voltammetric analysis, which shows that CuS could be used for electrocatalytic applications.