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Degradation of dyes under natural light sources is one of the most active research areas in basic science for greener technology. In this context, the photocatalytic activity of semiconductors has received massive attention in solving water treatment-related issues as these possess enormous potential for degrading organic impurities. Here, we report that barium aluminate (BaAl2O4, BAO), which has been extensively studied for photoluminescence applications, is found to be a highly potent candidate for photocatalytic activities. We have explored the degradation of dyes (meant for water purification) by using the photocatalytic properties of pure and Dy- and Yb-codoped BAO. Crystal structure, electron microscopy, and Raman analysis of the autocombustion-synthesized pure and codoped BAO samples revealed significant morphological changes such as increased particle size and stabilization of rod-like structures. UV–vis absorbance measurements confirm the presence of multiple bandgaps in the BAO samples, which is substantiated by X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements. Photocatalytic degradation studies of methylene blue (MB) dye (with different catalyst concentrations, dopings, and MB dye concentrations) have been carried out by using BAO. The kinetics of the photocatalytic degradation measurements has been explained by the Boltzmann distribution function, and the fastest (in less than 40 min), with more than 99% degradation of MB impurity, is reported here for the first time in BAO compounds. Synthesized BAO samples show excellent cyclic stability, which is essential for their potential applications in environmental remediation. The trade-off between the enhancement of surface area and increased particle size is considered the key parameter for controlling the photocatalytic performance of the BAO catalyst after Dy and Yb codopings.

In this article, a wideband linear-to-linear and linear-to-circular reflective polarization converter is discussed. The proposed polarization converter can efficiently convert an incoming wave with a linear polarization into a reflected wave with orthogonal polarization in the frequency ranges: 7.63–12.21 GHz and 19.34–21.2 GHz. Moreover, a circularly polarized reflected wave in the frequency band of 13.85–18.50 GHz is also obtained. The proposed polarization converter constitutes a split-ring and a metallic strip cut in the middle designed on an ultrathin single substrate layer (thickness of 0.079λo, where λocorresponds to wavelength at center frequency of lowest operational bandwidth). The study related to angular dependence of the proposed polarization converter is also carried out and a stability upto 15° is achieved at the lower and upper-frequency bands of operation, respectively. A prototype of the proposed polarization with 25 × 25 cells of the converter is fabricated and measured. Measurement results are in consensus with their simulated counterparts. Furthermore, a 12 × 12 array of the proposed polarization converter is used to study the radar cross-section (RCS) reduction ability of a microstrip patch antenna operating in X-band. The average RCS reduction of about 11 dBsm is obtained at normal incidence. The proposed polarization converter can be utilized in X/Ku/K frequency band applications.

Graphical Abstract

Approximately 5% of all gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding originates from the small bowel. Endoscopic therapy of small bowel bleeding should only be undertaken after consideration of the different options, and the risks, benefits, and alternatives of each option. Endoscopic therapy options for small bowel bleeding are like those treatments used for other forms of bleeding in the upper and lower GI tract. Available endoscopic treatment options include thermal therapy (eg, argon plasma coagulation and bipolar cautery), mechanical therapy (eg, hemoclips), and medical therapy (eg, diluted epinephrine injection). Patients with complicated comorbidities would benefit from evaluation and planning of available treatment options, including conservative and/or medical treatments, beyond endoscopic therapy.

[Display omitted] The growing global population has led to an increased demand for precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum group metals which are utilized in numerous applications. The modern industry's rapid development has led to a significant increase in the generation of wastewater and solid waste at the end of a product's lifecycle. To address this issue, emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) technology could be applied as an efficient method for recovering precious metals due to its attractive features. This review presents a bibliometric analysis of ELM technology growth and its application in the recovery of precious metals. The review also elucidates the affecting parameters that influence the ELM process. Besides, this review aims to promote sustainable development and prioritize environmental considerations as society progresses towards a more eco-friendly future. Hence, the article concludes by outlining the challenges and suggesting areas for further investigation of precious metals recovery using this technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a simple smartphone-based protocol for the estimation of the critical micelle concentration (CMC) of surfactants. The protocol is based on contact angle measurements from the smartphone-captured images of differently concentrated surfactant solution droplets mounted over a naturally existing or chemically synthesized superhydrophobic surface. A scatter plot of contact angle vs surfactant concentration is constructed for the determination of CMC. The described laboratory experiment, besides providing a simple, reliable, safe, cost-effective, and reproducible method for the estimation of CMC, will provide students with a fresh perspective on many fundamental and practical aspects of superhydrophobic surfaces, solid/liquid interfaces, and the self-aggregation of amphiphilic molecules.

Purpose: Medical IoT plays a substantial role in improving healthcare and patient monitoring. Enhancing the quality of healthcare system is a vibrant goal of society. IoT has been playing an important role in improving the quality of healthcare system. IoT technologies have been used over many years for observing patient’s health using different medical IoT devices in different scenarios and medical conditions like post COVID scenario. Medical IoT has wide range of applications in post COVID era like remote patient monitoring. Therefore, the role of IoT devices in different rising sectors is evident. These devices continuously generate huge amount of data counted among big data category. The data generation is so huge that special management is required to be analyzed and efficiently handle the patient care in real time environment taking into consideration the resource constrained nature of medical IoT devices. There are various challenges put forth by researchers in handling and managing medical IoT data due to resource constrained nature of IoT devices. This paper presents a survey of resource optimization in medical IoT. The main aim of this paper is to introduce novelty in medical IoT resource optimization through data management approach. Methods: This study was performed by searching the related papers from 2014-2022 using different online databases like IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, Google Scholar and PubMed to examine relevant work on resource optimization in medical IoT. Results: This paper presents a use case of Remote Patient Monitoring and proposes a model for optimizing medical IoT resources in medical IoT devices and the network through data management algorithms and protocols which are suited and specially designed for the purpose. This paper also presents a fair algorithm to pave a way for resource optimization. Conclusion: In existing literature major work has been done on optimizing medical IoT resources via resource management approaches like task scheduling, resource allocation, virtualization etc., with a little focus on data. As data is central to all medical IoT applications, so proper data management can lead to better resource optimization in medical IoT. In this paper, the parameters and resource identification using mathematical formulation has been done to augment proposed model of resource optimization.

Chickpeas play an important role in global protein production; However, this crop faces limitations primarily due to low soil phosphorus levels. Various methods are being implemented to address this challenge and improve phosphorus availability. Therefore, this research aimed to apply both bio-based and synthetic phosphorus to enhance its availability in two chickpea genotype crops. Subsequently, this experiment aimed to identify the superior genotype and evaluate the impact of Bacillus megaterium(BM) bacterium inoculation and phosphorus applications on chickpea growth, yield, protein content, and elemental composition. Regarding genotypes, Hazarmerd exhibited superior attributes when compared to Nainawa. Furthermore, BMinoculation positively influenced yield characteristics, including pod number, 100-seed weight, seed yield, biological yield, and harvest index, as well as phosphorus composition. Additionally, applying 40 kg/ha of phosphorus significantly affected pod weight, seed number, protein content, and nitrogen levels. Interestingly, BM exhibited a similar trend in protein content, and nitrogen levels were affected when compared to applying phosphorus at 40 kg/ha. However, 80 kg/ha of phosphorus has a minor effect on many characteristics. Hazarmerd treated with BMinoculum positively influenced various variables. This study provides valuable insights for farmers to adopt a sustainable approach, enhancing the quality and yield of crops in the field through cost-effective conventional methods.

Data-constrained environments present a significant challenge to the effectiveness of machine learning and deep learning algorithms. The performance of these algorithms is inherently dependent on the quality and quantity of the training data they are exposed to. When training data is insufficient, the efficacy of downstream learning tasks is markedly diminished. The constrained availability and scarcity of data result from diverse intrinsic factors, encompassing data regulations, privacy concerns, the confidential nature of data, and the inherent rarity of data of interest in critical real-world applications.  To tackle this, researchers have come up with the concept of synthetic data to provide a low-cost, easily available and secure alternative. Synthetic data serves to bolster the robustness of model learning within real-world contexts, addressing the formidable challenge posed by data scarcity. This scarcity leads to class imbalance problem and insufficient representation of data very often encountered in real world datasets. Popular data generation strategies involve increasing the representation of minority class instances through the generation of synthetic examples. The existing data generation techniques aim to expand datasets for balancing, yet they frequently fall short in achieving satisfactory sample diversity. This paper examines the potential of shallow interpolation based data generation technique to capture the local dynamics for minority balancing and deep generative modeling based generative adversarial networks (GANs) for global distribution estimation for augmentation the smaller datasets. This paper presents a hybrid amalgamation approach for tabular data involving mixed type attributes and pays special attention to data imbalance and insufficient data problems. We named this approach as hybrid data balancing and augmentation approach on mixed tabular data (HDBA-MTD) tailored for synthesizing samples on underrepresented target labels (skewed class labels) and insufficient data instances. This approach exhibits the potential to restore dataset balance, address bias in the dataset, mitigate over-fitting issues, enhance training data diversity, thereby pays special attention towards the downstream classification and generalization performance in data rarity dilemmas. Experiments are conducted on benchmark datasets to validate the feasibility of the proposed model in realistic scenarios. The evaluation and analysis of experimental procedures demonstrate favorable comparisons with other existing synthetic data generation techniques.

This study was undertaken to understand the root-driven differential response of enzymatic and non-enzymatic adaptive systems to drought in rice using 30 contrasting deep and shallow-rooted rice genotypes from the temperate rice diversity of Western Himalayan Kashmir under drought stress conditions. Our analysis focused on root and shoot traits and the assessment of 12 biochemical parameters encompassing both enzymatic and non-enzymatic responses. Under drought stress, deep-rooted genotypes exhibited significantly higher mean root depths, root biomass, and root-to-shoot ratios than their shallow-rooted counterparts. Interestingly, most of the biochemical parameters displayed an increasing trend in deep-rooted genotypes but decreased or showed non-significant increases in shallow-rooted genotypes under drought stress. Drought stress induced substantial changes in root and shoot parameters, with more pronounced effects observed in root traits. Deep-rooted genotypes demonstrated a remarkable 176.7% increase in root depth under drought conditions, compared to a modest 25.7% increase in irrigated conditions. Moreover, both enzymatic and non-enzymatic parameters exhibited higher increases in deep-rooted genotypes than shallow-rooted ones under drought stress. Our study unveiled significant associations among root and shoot traits and biochemical parameters, emphasizing the crucial role of roots in maintaining cellular homeostasis under stress conditions. These findings provide insights into the root-driven modulation of differential biochemical response of rice under drought stress, providing a foundation for further investigations into the molecular mechanisms through a multi-omics approach.

ABSTRACTZeolites are aluminosilicate minerals widely used in industrial applications including as commercial adsorbents and catalysts. This overview focuses on zeolites synthesised from coal fly ash (CFA). Human activities and industrial developments generate large volumes of polluted water, which have a significant ecological impact. Industrial wastewater may consist of different pollutant types, but of specific interest to this work are heavy metals, which. Heavy metal ions are among the most dangerous pollutants due to their toxicity and carcinogenicity. This overview covers the recent scientific literature, focused on using CFA-derived zeolites to remove Ni, Hg, Mn, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb, Cr, Co both from synthetic solutions replicating industrial wastewater and actual wastewater streams. The results described in many papers cited in this review look promising for industrial wastewater treatment operations. Furthermore, the large variety of possible synthetic zeolites provides a route for energy-efficient, pollutant-specific remediation of industrial heavy metals.

Purpose: Open-access repositories (OARs) are essential for openly disseminating intellectual knowledge on the internet and providing free access to it. The current study aims to evaluate the growth and development of OARs in the field of technology by investigating several characteristics such as coverage, OA policies, software type, content type, yearly growth, repository type and geographic contribution. Design/methodology/approach: The directory of OARs acts as the source for data harvesting, which provides a quality-assured list of OARs across the globe. Findings: The study found that 125 nations contributed a total of 4,045 repositories in the field of research, with the USA leading the list with the most repositories. Maximum repositories were operated by institutions having multidisciplinary approaches. The DSpace and Eprints were the preferred software types for repositories. The preferred upload content by contributors was “research articles” and “electronic thesis and dissertations”. Research limitations/implications: The study is limited to the subject area technology as listed in OpenDOAR; therefore, the results may differ in other subject areas. Practical implications: The work can benefit researchers across disciplines and, interested researchers can take this study as a base for evaluating online repositories. Moreover, policymakers and repository managers could also get benefitted from this study. Originality/value: The study is the first of its kind, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to investigate the repositories of subject technology in the open-access platform.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate multilingual representation on public signs in the High City tourist destination in Abha, Saudi Arabia. It also reveals the linguistic strategies used in such representation. Design/methodology/approach: This exploratory qualitative study used purposive sampling to analyze bottom-up public signs collected from the target tourist destination. A preliminary analysis was conducted for a more in-depth qualitative analysis of every sign. An Excel database was used to provide a general description and a preliminary reading of the strategies before using an in-depth analysis of every sign. Findings: The study revealed that monolingualism (Arabic or English) and bilingualism (Arabic and English) represented the High City as a tourist destination where the signs served information and symbolic functions. No single multilingual sign was found. Certain linguistic strategies were used on the public signs, including politeness, transliteration, hybrid representation, personification and fragmentary. Some tourist-oriented strategies, such as the crisis communication strategy, are still missing. Practical implications: These findings indicate that this tourist destination still targets local and regional visitors, and its linguistic landscape (LL) needs further consideration in terms of internationalization and targeting international visitors. This study implies that bilingual Arabic and English tourist destinations are potential domains for translation students and English language learners. Originality/value: This study has focused on the LL of a newly established tourist destination in Saudi Arabia. It has shed light on the nuanced representations and strategies used through public signage. It contributes to understanding how linguistic elements can shape tourists’ perceptions and experiences.

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AbstractNatural products have emerged as major leads for the discovery and development of new anti-cancer drugs. The plant-derived anti-cancer drugs account for approximately 60% and the quest for new anti-cancer agents is in progress. Anti-cancer leads have been isolated from plants, animals, marine organisms, and microorganisms from time immemorial. The process of semisynthetic modifications of the parent lead has led to the generation of new anti-cancer agents with improved therapeutic efficacy and minimal side effects. The various chemo-informatics tools, bioinformatics, high-throughput screening, and combinatorial synthesis are able to deliver the new natural product lead molecules. Plant-derived anticancer agents in either late preclinical development or early clinical trials include taxol, vincristine, vinblastine, topotecan, irinotecan, etoposide, paclitaxel, and docetaxel. Similarly, anti-cancer agents from microbial sources include dactinomycin, bleomycin, mitomycin C, and doxorubicin. In this review, we highlighted the importance of natural products leads in the discovery and development of novel anti-cancer agents. The semisynthetic modifications of the parent lead to the new anti-cancer agent are also presented. Further, the leads in the preclinical settings with the potential to become effective anticancer agents are also reviewed.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Energy and spectral efficiency are attracting attention as “emerging technology” that exploits the opportunities of sensing, communications and artificial intelligence. This paper proposes the features of these state of art techniques a new energy and spectrum efficient technique for 5G and beyond networks. By using Interference aware (IA) beam selection in beam-space MIMO, the large number of users are supported with a smaller number of radio-frequency (RF) chains at the same time and frequency resource. It has been observed from the proposed scheme that the achievable sum-rate of mm-wave channel model is also improved. From the simulation results it is found that Interference aware (IA) beam selection is used in beam-space to minimize the total obligatory RF-chains in mm-wave massive MIMO communication systems without noticeable loss in performance.

Chemical enhanced oil recovery applications continue to face a variety of obstacles, particularly in high saline and high-temperature reservoirs, in addition to high chemical prices. This issue creates difficulty in developing optimal recipes that can withstand these extreme circumstances and so achieve maximal hydrocarbon recovery at the lowest feasible cost. The usefulness of surfactant polymer (SP) in mobilizing oil and increasing sweep efficiency in carbonate rocks is assessed in this article. A thermo-viscosifying polymer and an acrylamido tertiary butyl sulfonate (ATBS)/acrylamide (AM) copolymer were employed. Surfactants of various grades of amphoteric carboxybetain are used. These potential chemicals were chosen after a thorough study of previous research, which included long-term thermal stability, fluid rheology, interfacial tension, adsorption, and microfluidic tests. The contact angles were measured using a captive drop analyzer at high pressure and high temperature. The core-flooding experiments for slug size and injection sequence optimization were carried out using 12-inch long and 1.5-inch diameter limestone cores. For two weeks, the samples were aged. The trials were carried out at 90 °C. The seawater (SW) salinity utilized in the injection was 57,000 ppm. The findings highlighted the importance of surfactant-polymer interactions in wettability and fluid rheology. The best chemical combination was carboxybetaine (0.05 wt%) and ATBS/AM (0.25 wt%) which recovered 31.29% of the residual oil saturation (ROS), or 11.63% of the original oil in place (OIIP). The optimal slug size was 3.5 PV, which recovered 34.21% of the ROS and 17.05% of the OIIP. The optimum injection sequence was the co-injection of surfactant and polymer SW-S1P1-SW, which extracted 31.29% of the ROS and 11.63% of the OIIP. The recoveries were discovered to be related to the slug’s size. The chemical injection sequence was critical to the eventual oil recovery. Among the other sequences, SW-SP-SW had the highest recovery (SW-P-S-SW, SW-S-SW-P-SW, and SW-P-SW-S-SW). This is thought to be owing to the compounds' synergistic impact. We found that there is no systematic optimization process that combines the effect of chemicals, slug size, and sequence in one study, which gave us the motivation to cover the research gap.

The existence of microplastics (MPs) in sea salt pond has the potential to pollute produced commercial salt. Therefore, identification and quantification of MPs in sea salt pond become necessary. This study was aimed to estimate the abundance of MPs in Osowilangun and Pademawu sea salt ponds producing commercial salt. Properties of the identified MPs in terms of shapes, color, size, and polymer type were characterized. This study found that the two study locations contained MPs with different levels, namely, a total of 38 particles were found in the Pademawu sea salt pond and 35 particles were found in the Osowilangun sea salt pond. Colors for the identified MPs were blue, black, red, and white depending on the sampling points and samples. In addition, size of MPs ranged from 0.2 to 0.8 mm and shape of MPs was dominated by fragment (90.32%) in Osowilangun sea salt pond and 86.98% in Pademawu sea salt pond. Findings of this study are highly important and significant for confirming the presence of MPs in sea salt ponds before producing for consumption.

AbstractIn this study, eco-friendly lightweight high-strength engineered cementitious composites (ELHECC) were developed using lightweight sand fines (LSF) and fly ash cenospheres. The effects of LSF content and pretreatment methods on mechanical properties, shrinkage and micro-mechanism of ELHECCs were investigated. Two pretreatment methods—normal pressure immersion and vacuum saturation—were employed. The internal curing effects of treated and untreated LSF were compared. The results showed that increasing the content of LSF slightly reduced compressive strength but improved the tensile properties and ductility of ELHECCs. Vacuum-saturated LSF improved the mechanical properties of ELHECCs more than normal pressure-immersed LSF. In addition, increasing the substitution amount of LSF increased the corresponding internal relative humidity, extended the duration of saturated humidity, and subsequently reduced the autogenous shrinkage of ELHECC. The reduction effect of autogenous shrinkage and drying shrinkage after LSF pre-saturation was much greater than without saturation. Moreover, LSF significantly delayed the hydration process and reduced the hydration heat rate and hydration heat, and the content of Ca(OH)2in ELHECCs decreased with increased LSF substitution rate. The effect of vacuum saturation for LSF in reducing the porosity of ELHECC was greater than that of normal pressure saturation. Furthermore, LSF had superior bonding with the ELHECC matrix, forming a well-integrated sand–matrix interface. The experimental results provide inspiration for green applications in bridge bearing structure, building structure reinforcement and repair in terms of impressive tensile properties, low shrinkage, light weight, and waste utilization.

Efficient fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass is an important step toward the replacement of fossil-based products. However, the utilisation of all of the components in biomass requires various fractionation techniques. One promising process configuration is to apply steam explosion for the recovery of hemicelluloses and a subsequent hydrotropic extraction step for the delignification of the remaining solids. In this work, the influence of residence time, temperature and biomass loading on lignin recovery from birch using sodium xylene sulphonate as a hydrotrope was investigated. Our results show that residence time, temperature and biomass loading correlate positively with lignin extraction, but the effects of these parameters were limited. Furthermore, when steam explosion was implemented as the initial step, hydrotropic extraction could be performed even at room temperature, yielding a lignin extraction of 50%. Also, hydrothermal degradation of the material was necessary for efficient delignification with sodium xylene sulphonate, regardless of whether it occurs during steam explosion pretreatment or is achieved at high temperatures during the hydrotropic extraction.

Angular leaf spot (ALS) is one of the most catastrophic diseases limiting the production of common bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.). This study was conducted to characterize common bean angular leaf spot pathogen based on morphology and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, and to identify the sources of resistance. Two isolates Pg01 and Pg02 were identified as Pseudocercospora griseolabased on morphological characteristics.In order to decipher the formae to which these isolates belong, internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of rDNA of two isolates were sequenced and the sequences with accession numbers MZ452242 and MZ413342 showed maximum similarity with the Andean types i.e. Pseudocercospora griseolaf.sp. griseolasequences available at NCBI. In phylogenetic analysis, isolates Pg01 and Pg02 were clustered with P. griseolaf.sp. griseola(Andean types) sequences retrieved from GenBank, whereas the sequences of P. griseolaf.sp. mesoamericanawere clustered separately. For germplasm evaluation under field conditions in the year 2020, out of 85 different genotypes 21 genotypes were resistant, 49 genotypes showed intermediate reaction and 15 genotypes were susceptible and in 2021, 25 genotypes showed resistant reaction, 47 genotypes were found intermediate, and 13 genotypes were found susceptible. Among 54 genotypes screened in greenhouse under artificial inoculation with Andean race Pg02 in 2020, 11 genotypes were resistant, 13 genotypes showed intermediate reaction while as rest of the genotypes were susceptible.