Paper-based analytical devices (PADs) with four new designs could be fabricated using commercially available home-based scan-and-cut printer. They serve for miniaturised platforms for chemical analysis. Replication analysis of a sample together with the calibration (using the analyte standards at different concentrations) can be completed in a single run, by utilising smartphone as the detector. Some new approaches for choosing detection zones were suggested. The four proposed PAD designs here were used as models in microliter scale operation to demonstrate the well-known chemistries of colorimetric determinations of iron, phosphate, and hardness using 1,10-phenanthroline and simple aqueous guava leaf extract; molybdate, and EBT-EDTA complexometric titration, respectively, through calibrations: where Blue (B) value = 88.2log [Fe3+] - 80.8, R2 = 0.989; B value = 1.75 [Fe3+] + 0.198, R2 = 0.999; Grey scale (I) value = 1.77 [Fe3+] - 1.22, R2 = 0.997; Red (R) value = 16.1log [PO43-] + 8.95, R2 = 0.999; Hue (H) value = 43.3log [Ca2+] + 233, R2 = 0.994, respectively. For the hardness, using one of the PAD designs, true titration was also possible. Applications of the proposed devices and procedures were demonstrated for real world samples with validation. Additionally, kinetic study of the molybdenum blue for phosphate was demonstrated using one of the PADs.
The present work reports the biobleaching effect on OPEFB pulp upon utilisation of extracellular xylano-pectinolytic enzymes simultaneously yielded from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens ADI2. The impacts of different doses, retention times, pH, and temperatures required for the pulp biobleaching process were delineated accordingly. Here, the OPEFB pulp was subjected to pre-treatment with xylano-pectinolytic enzymes generated from the same alkalo-thermotolerant isolate that yielded those of higher quality. Remarkable enhanced outcomes were observed across varying pulp attributes: for example, enzyme-treated pulp treated to chemical bleaching sequence generated improved brightness of 11.25%. This resulted in 11.25% of less chlorine or chemical consumption required for obtaining pulp with optical attributes identical to those generated via typical chemical bleaching processes. Ultimately, the reduced consumption of chlorine would minimise the organochlorine compounds found in an effluent, resulting in a lowered environmental effect of paper-making processes overall as a consequence. This will undoubtedly facilitate such environmentally-friendly technology incorporation in the paper pulp industry of today.
Independent evaluations of XEh Rapid®, an IgG4-based rapid dipstick test, were performed to assess its diagnostic performance to detect amebic liver abscess (ALA) using 405 samples at seven laboratories in four countries. The test showed high diagnostic specificity (97-100%) when tested with samples from healthy individuals (n = 100) and patients with other diseases (n = 151). The diagnostic sensitivity was tested with a total of 154 samples, and the results were variable. It was high in three laboratories (89-94%), and moderate (72%) and low (38%) in two other laboratories. Challenges and issues faced in the evaluation process are discussed. Nevertheless, XEh Rapid is promising to be developed into a point-of-care test in particular for resource-limited settings, and thus merits further confirmation of its diagnostic sensitivity.
Preparation of medicinal plants for experimental purposes is an initial step and key in achieving quality research outcome. It involves extraction and determination of quality and quantity of bioactive constituents before proceeding with the intended biological testing. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate various methods used in the preparation and screening of medicinal plants in our daily research. Although the extracts, bioactive fractions, or compounds obtained from medicinal plants are used for different purposes, the techniques involved in producing them are generally the same irrespective of the intended biological testing. The major stages included in acquiring quality bioactive molecule are the selection of an appropriate solvent, extraction methods, phytochemical screening procedures, fractionation methods, and identification techniques. The nitty-gritty of these methods and the exact road map followed solely depends on the research design. Solvents commonly used in extraction of medicinal plants are polar solvent (e.g., water, alcohols), intermediate polar (e.g., acetone, dichloromethane), and nonpolar (e.g., n-hexane, ether, chloroform). In general, extraction procedures include maceration, digestion, decoction, infusion, percolation, Soxhlet extraction, superficial extraction, ultrasound-assisted, and microwave-assisted extractions. Fractionation and purification of phytochemical substances are achieved through application of various chromatographic techniques such as paper chromatography, thin-layer chromatography, gas chromatography, and high-performance liquid chromatography. Finally, compounds obtained are characterized using diverse identification techniques such as mass spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet spectroscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Subsequently, different methods described above can be grouped and discussed according to the intended biological testing to guide young researchers and make them more focused.
Algae biomass comprises variety of biochemicals components such as carbohydrates, lipids and protein, which make them a feasible feedstock for biofuel production. However, high production cost mainly due to algae cultivation remains the main challenge in commercializing algae biofuels. Hence, extraction of other high value-added bioproducts from algae biomass is necessary to enhance the economic feasibility of algae biofuel production. This paper is aims to deliberate the recent developments of conventional technologies for algae biofuels production, such as biochemical and chemical conversion pathways, and extraction of a variety of bioproducts from algae biomass for various potential applications. Besides, life cycle evaluation studies on microalgae biorefinery are presented, focusing on case studies for various cultivation techniques, culture medium, harvesting, and dewatering techniques along with biofuel and bioenergy production pathways. Overall, the algae biorefinery provides new opportunities for valorisation of algae biomass for multiple products synthesis.
The default causal single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) effect size prior in Bayesian fine-mapping studies is usually the Normal distribution. This choice is often based on computational convenience, rather than evidence that it is the most suitable prior distribution. The choice of prior is important because previous studies have shown considerable sensitivity of causal SNP Bayes factors to the form of the prior. In some well-studied diseases there are now considerable numbers of genome-wide association study (GWAS) top hits along with estimates of the number of yet-to-be-discovered causal SNPs. We show how the effect sizes of the top hits and estimates of the number of yet-to-be-discovered causal SNPs can be used to choose between the Laplace and Normal priors, to estimate the prior parameters and to quantify the uncertainty in this estimation. The methodology can readily be applied to other priors. We show that the top hits available from breast cancer GWAS provide overwhelming support for the Laplace over the Normal prior, which has important consequences for variant prioritisation. This work in this paper enables practitioners to derive more objective priors than are currently being used and could lead to prioritisation of different variants.
Quantifying the elevated temperature strengths of cement-based material is crucial to the design of building structural systems for fire resistance purpose. This paper collates a database of elevated temperature axial compressive and flexural strengths of coir fibre reinforced foamed concrete exposed to heating temperatures of 105 °C, 200 °C, 300 °C, 400 °C, 500 °C, 600 °C, 700 °C and 800 °C. There were four densities of foamed concrete of 700, 1100, 1500 and 1900 kg/m3 were prepared and tested. The untreated coir fibre was added in foamed concrete in percentages of 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.4%, 0.5%, and 0.6% by mix volume fraction. The database can aid in prediction of elevated temperature strengths of fibre reinforced foamed concrete which can be exploited to assist manufacturers to develop their products without having to perform numerous large-scale elevated temperature tests in the future.
A high recombination rate and low charge collection are the main limiting factors of copper oxides (cupric and cuprous oxide) for the photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants. In this paper, a high performance copper oxide photocatalyst was developed by integrating cupric oxide (CuO) and cuprous oxide (Cu2O) thin films, which showed superior performance for the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) compared to the control CuO and Cu2O photocatalyst. Our results show that a heterojunction photocatalyst of CuO-Cu2O thin films could significantly increase the charge collection, reduce the recombination rate, and improve the photocatalytic activity.
This paper focus to examine the best molecular interaction between Polyamide Thin Film Composite (PA TFC) layers with different properties of the support membrane. The support membrane of Nylon 66 (N66) and Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) was chosen to represent the hydrophilic and hydrophobic model respectively in the Molecular Dynamic (MD) simulation. The Condensed-Phase Optimized Molecular Potential for Atomistic Simulation Studies (COMPASS) force field was used with the total simulation runs were set 1000 picoseconds run production ensembles. The temperature and pressure set for both ensembles were 298 K and 1 atm respectively. The validity of our model densities data was check and calculated where the deviation must be less than 6%. The comparison between hydrophobic and hydrophilic of the support membrane data was examined by the distance and magnitude of intensity of the Radial Distribution Function (RDF's) trends.
A compact, cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA), using radio frequency signals to identify different liquids is proposed in this paper. The proposed CDRA sensor is excited by a rectangular slot through a 3-mm-wide microstrip line. The rectangular slot has been used to excite the CDRA for H E M 11 mode at 5.25 GHz. Circuit model values (capacitance, inductance, resistance and transformer ratios) of the proposed CDRA are derived to show the true behaviour of the system. The proposed CDRA acts as a sensor due to the fact that different liquids have different dielectric permittivities and, hence, will be having different resonance frequencies. Two different types of CDRA sensors are designed and experimentally validated with four different liquids (Isopropyl, ethanol, methanol and water).
The aim of this paper is to augment the existing literature on convergence of CO2 emissions, by adding carbon footprint per capita and ecological footprint per capita to the convergence debate. We use the residual augmented least squares regression to examine the stochastic convergence of the environmental indices in 27 OECD countries. Furthermore, in contrast to the previous studies which mainly used the conventional beta-convergence approach to examine conditional convergence, we use a beta-convergence method that is capable of identifying the actual number of countries that contribute to conditional convergence. The sigma-convergence of the environmental indices is also examined. The results suggest that conditional convergence exists in 12 countries for CO2 emissions per capita, 15 countries for carbon footprint per capita and also 13 countries for ecological footprint per capita. There is evidence for sigma-convergence for all the three indicators. The policy implications of the results are discussed in the body of the paper.
In this paper, we investigate the dynamical behavior in an M-dimensional nonlinear hyperchaotic model (M-NHM), where the occurrence of multistability can be observed. Four types of coexisting attractors including single limit cycle, cluster of limit cycles, single hyperchaotic attractor, and cluster of hyperchaotic attractors can be found, which are unusual behaviors in discrete chaotic systems. Furthermore, the coexistence of asymmetric and symmetric properties can be distinguished for a given set of parameters. In the endeavor of chaotification, this work introduces a simple controller on the M-NHM, which can add one more loop in each iteration, to overcome the chaos degradation in the multistability regions.
Microbial content formed in bioreactors plays a significant role in the anaerobic process. Therefore, the physicochemical characteristics of microbial content in a modified anaerobic inclining-baffled reactor (MAI-BR) treating recycled paper mill effluent (RPME) were investigated using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric (TG), and derivative thermogravimetric (DTG) analyses, scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and surface area analyzer. FTIR spectra revealed that the microbial content had stronger characteristic peaks corresponding to alcohols, water, lipids carbohydrates, proteins, and mineral compounds. Calcite, muscovite, and lepidolite were the prevalent mineral phases found by XRD analysis. The elemental of these minerals like C, Ca, N, O, and Si was confirmed by XPS results. The microbial content samples from each compartment showed similar thermal behavior. SEM images showed that straight rod-shaped and Methanosaeta-like microorganisms were predominant, whereas C, O, and Ca were noticed by EDS on the surface of granules. The BET surface areas and pores of granules are found to decline throughout the reactor's compartment, where Compartment 1 had the largest values. Thus, the findings of this study establish further understanding of the physicochemical properties of microbial content formed in MAI-BR during the RPME treatment.
The continuous depletion of global oil reserves with the propensity for light distillates
propels the oil and gas industry to explore heavier fractions of crude oils with significant
amount of paraffin waxes. However, the precipitation and deposition of waxes during the
transportation of these waxy crude oils in the pipelines contribute to several issues, such as
the flowability reduction, excessive pumping cost, and wax gel formation, that adversely
affect the supposedly steady offshore oil production. As a result, substantial resources are
expended to resolve these flow assurance problems. The wax inhibitors and pour point
depressants are developed and modified to meet the wax remediation criteria. Essentially,
the wax crystals are formed through the nucleation, growth, and agglomeration processes,
while the deposition of these waxes occurs via molecular diffusion and shear dispersion.
The wax inhibitors are able to control the growth of wax crystals through nucleation, cocrystallization,
adsorption, and dispersion interactions. This paper particularly assessed
the following compounds: (1) polymeric wax inhibitors, (2) nano-hybrid pour point
depressants, (3) organic solvents, and
(4) surfactants. Given the significance of
these compounds in the deposition and
precipitation of waxes, it is imperative to
comprehensively explore the types and
nature of these compounds and their recent
applications as well as to critically assess
their strengths and drawbacks, which were
addressed in this paper. Furthermore, the
challenges of using these compounds and the factors that govern their efficiencies were also discussed. Accordingly, the carbon
length and the molecular weight of both paraffin waxes and wax inhibitors are among the
most influential factors.