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Anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the promising technologies for organic waste management, which also supports green energy recovery in the form of biogas. As compared to mesophilic anaerobic digestion (MAD), thermophilic anaerobic digestion (TAD) is considered highly efficient due to accelerated rate-limiting steps in the AD i.e., hydrolysis and methanogenesis, and disruption of contaminants at high temperature. The literature is thoroughly reviewed with the specific key-words on popular platforms including Scopus, Researchgate and Google Scholar and discussed in the present article. It is found that TAD is often encountered with process instability due to the accumulation of high volatile fatty acids and elevated ammonia levels that adversely affect the methanogens and ultimately reduce the methane formation. This inadequacy could be overcome by following several techniques, such as co-digestion of mixed feedstocks of different characteristics, addition of micro-nutrients and conductive materials, and incorporation of exogenous microbial strains of interest into the thermophilic consortium. Despite these conventional methods, various state-of-the-art strategies including integration of AD with bioelectrochemical systems and genetic manipulation in particular microorganisms involved in the process, are now gathering attention that could help to enhance the TAD process performance. However, these methods have been limited to the MAD process only. Thus, this article mainly discusses the conventional and emerging approaches to alleviate the challenges confronted in the TAD process that could improve the process stability. Further, the merits of individual approaches, along with key discrepancies, are also discussed in this review article. The novelty of this article lies in the emphasis of advanced techniques to stabilize TAD process for enhanced biogas/ biomethane production.

The current study investigates the impact of family board members (FBM) and the CEO's business education (CEO_BUSEDU) on the investment in information technology (INVEST_IT) in family business enterprises (FBEs). This study considered using a survey research design to collect data from owners of FBEs in India. As robustness checks, this study utilised a two-stage least (2SLS) square model to reduce endogeneity problems. Empirical analysis shows that FBMand CEO_BUSEDUincrease INVEST_IT, and financial support from foreign family members moderates the relationship between FBMand INVEST_IT. The empirical results contribute to the literature on the impact of FBM and CEO_BUSEDUon INVEST_IT. In addition, the results may help academia extend the studies on family board members, CEOs' business education, and INVEST_ITby collecting data from different countries. Furthermore, family business owners may find the results helpful in increasing INVEST_IT.

We examined the impact of adoption of information technology on human capital performance of MSEs in India. A sample of 500 respondent firms from north states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh has been collected from health care services and hospitality sector. To reach the target population judgmental sampling technique has been used. Multiple regression technique and descriptive statistics have been applied to analyse the results. The study found that information technology has positive impact on the work experience and overall employee productivity. So, it is concluded that investment in information technology significantly affects the human capital performance of firms. So, our findings recommended that micro and small firms should invest more and more in human capital to enhances entrepreneurial performance. It also helps in sustainability of business with optimum profits.

A novel strategy has been developed to spontaneously form ligand-free Pd(0) nanoparticles (NPs) from water- and air-sensitive Pd2dba3in water. These NPs are thoroughly characterized by IR, NMR, and mass spectrometry, revealing that the metal–micelle binding plays a critical role in their stability and activity. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy supported the ultrasmall nature of NPs, whereas X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis confirmed the zero-oxidation state of Pd. The shielding effect of micelles and enhanced stability of NPs enabled fast cross-couplings of water-sensitive triazine adducts of carboxylic acid to form nonsymmetrical biaryl ketones. These naturally formed NPs are more efficient than new synthetic NPs formed under a hydrogen atmosphere and traditional NPs formed using the air-sensitive Grignard reagent as a reductant. The activity of naturally formed NPs is compared with that of synthetic NPs over 34 substrates, revealing that naturally formed NPs are much more efficient than synthetic NPs.

1-Ethyl-3-(3-(dimethylamino)propyl)-carbodiimide (EDC•HCl) has both lipophilic and hydrophilic regions, causing self-aggregation (also called nanoparticle formation) in an aqueous medium containing PS-750-M amphiphile. Kinetic and proton nuclear magnetic resonance studies were used to probe the effect of different organic bases on the potential nanoparticle formation of EDC•HCl. It also reveals why the pyridine base works better under micellar conditions. The methodology was examined on the multigram scale synthesis of bioactive molecules, where excellent reaction yields were obtained without product epimerization while maintaining a shorter reaction time.

Neutrophils play a crucial role in the intertwined processes of thrombosis and inflammation. An altered neutrophil phenotype may contribute to inadequate resolution, which is known to be a major pathophysiological contributor of thromboinflammatory conditions such as sickle cell disease (SCD). The endogenous protein annexin A1 (AnxA1) facilitates inflammation resolution via formyl peptide receptors (FPRs). We sought to comprehensively elucidate the functional significance of targeting the neutrophil-dependent AnxA1/FPR2/ALX pathway in SCD. Administration of AnxA1 mimetic peptide AnxA1Ac2-26 ameliorated cerebral thrombotic responses in Sickle transgenic mice via regulation of the FPR2/ALX (a fundamental receptor involved in resolution) pathway. We found direct evidence that neutrophils with SCD phenotype play a key role in contributing to thromboinflammation. In addition, AnxA1Ac2-26 regulated activated SCD neutrophils through protein kinase B (Akt) and extracellular signal–regulated kinases (ERK1/2) to enable resolution. We present compelling conceptual evidence that targeting the AnxA1/FPR2/ALX pathway may provide new therapeutic possibilities against thromboinflammatory conditions such as SCD.

Neutrophils play a crucial role in the intertwined processes of thrombosis and inflammation. An altered neutrophil phenotype may contribute to inadequate resolution, which is known to be a major pathophysiological contributor of thromboinflammatory conditions such as sickle cell disease (SCD). The endogenous protein annexin A1 (AnxA1) facilitates inflammation resolution via formyl peptide receptors (FPRs). We sought to comprehensively elucidate the functional significance of targeting the neutrophil-dependent AnxA1/FPR2/ALX pathway in SCD. Administration of AnxA1 mimetic peptide AnxA1Ac2-26ameliorated cerebral thrombotic responses in Sickle transgenic mice via regulation of the FPR2/ALX (a fundamental receptor involved in resolution) pathway. We found direct evidence that neutrophils with SCD phenotype play a key role in contributing to thromboinflammation. In addition, AnxA1Ac2-26regulated activated SCD neutrophils through protein kinase B (Akt) and extracellular signal–regulated kinases (ERK1/2) to enable resolution. We present compelling conceptual evidence that targeting the AnxA1/FPR2/ALX pathway may provide new therapeutic possibilities against thromboinflammatory conditions such as SCD.

This research paper very diligently reviews the working conditions of the construction workers. The guidelines provided under the Building and Other Construction Workers Act (BOCW Act, 1996) have been discussed and evaluated. The study shows a detailed comparison of the law and the actual condition of the construction sites. Factor analysis have been applied on the data collected from 15 construction sites around Delhi, Noida and Gurugram to find out the major factors which play an important role in development of labours in construction industry in India. Conclusions were made to develop the methodology to eradicate the issues of the construction workers which would ultimately provide the solution to improve the performance of the workers at the construction sites. This paper adds value to the regulators and owners of construction site to come up with guidelines and procedures which will not only decrease the number of accidents occurring at sites but would also increase their efficiency at work.

We present a model of a Raman-parametric hybrid amplifier for flat gain amplification of narrowband Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed (DWDM) terabits capacity system. In the proposed configuration Raman pump has been cascaded with one – pump parametric amplifier. While Raman amplifier typically uses a long length single mode fiber as a gain medium, the Fiber Optical Parametric Amplifiers (FOPA) uses a small length of Highly Non-Linear Fibers (HNLF). This allows for maximum optimization of the gain achieved using Raman as well as parametric processes. We focus on the signal degradation due to non-linear crosstalk arising because of multi-pump configuration, in particular, due to the generated idlers within the operational bandwidth. As the channel spacing is reduced, fiber non-linearities increase significantly. The dilemma to use the fewer number of high powered pumps Vs, the use of increased number of relatively low powered pumps has been investigated for DWDM system. The optimization of the pump powers has been evaluated in terms of signal degradation, gain, gain variation and OSNR. It has been demonstrated that a maximum gain of 45.38 dB for 96×40 Gbps, 25 GHz system is attainable up to 200 km of transmission distance while maintaining OSNR>18 dB using the proposed hybrid. No gain compensation or gain optimization technique has been used. The findings of this work establish flat gain in narrowband DWDM systems is achievable through proper optimization of pump wavelengths and their powers.

Synthesis of nanoparticles (NPs) using plant extracts has been suggested as an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical synthesis of semiconductor NPs. In the present study, ZnO NPs were synthesized by a simple and cost-effective method using Coriandrum sativumleaf extract and zinc acetate as precursors. The as-synthesized ZnO NPs were characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. The results confirmed the formation of ZnO NPs with a wurtzite structure, spherical shape and average particle size of 24 nm. The photocatalytic degradation of reactive yellow 186 (RY 186) dye was carried out under direct sunlight irradiation and its degradation efficiency and apparent rate constant (K’app) of reaction were calculated to be 93.38%, and 0.0019 min−1, respectively. The optical band gap value of the as-synthesized ZnO NPs was found to be 3.4 eV, which indicates the presence of blueshift. Owing to the presence of blueshift and a wide band gap of synthesized biogenic ZnO NPs, the overall absorption of sunlight irradiation will be enhanced, which leads to higher degradation efficiency of the dye. The current study thus highlights the optical band gap properties of biogenic ZnO NPs and their significance as a heterogeneous catalyst for the purification of polluted water.

Improved Reliability and Low Latency Communication (IRLC) with Augmented Reality (AR) has become an emerging technology in today’s world. To minimize an accessory adaptation for Customer Equipment (CE) in AR, it may be feasible to offload the AR workload onto the onboard devices. Mobile-Edge Computation (MEC) will improve the throughput of a CE. MEC has caused enormous overhead or communication omissions on wireless media, making it difficult to choose the optimal payload proposition. The proposed system explores on-board devices that work together to achieve an AR goal. Code splitting is a Bayesian network used to examine the overall interdependence of efforts. From a longevity and endurance perspective, it is used to reduce the Probability of Supplier Failure (PSF) of an MEC-enabled AR environment. Weighed Particle Swarm Optimization (WPSO) was proposed despite the reality based on the emphasis on balancing the issue. As a result, a heuristic-based WPSO facilitates to improve the performance measures. A hybrid method could significantly increase the assertion of a predicted PSF in various network scenarios compared to the existing communication technologies. A preliminary iterative approach is suitable for AR operations and IRLC scenarios to generalize the attributes.

Nowadays, the development of infrastructure is in full swing, which exploits natural resources and causes environmental pollution. Furthermore, cement is the most essential commodity for construction material mainly concrete, and its production is rapidly increasing to fulfil the demand for construction. The cement production is regarded as the one of the key causes of CO2emissions, which adversely affect the atmosphere by causing global warming. In addition to this, the ecosystem may suffer from marble quarrying and construction material processing. Nonetheless, waste marble can be used as a by-product if managed in accordance with regional, national, and international environmental laws. On the other hand, Currently, LD slag is disposed of in landfills, which exacerbates the scarcity of available land and contaminates groundwater through the leaching of heavy metals. The waste materials have the potential to be used in the development of infrastructure materials. The infrastructure development has aggravated the issue of rainwater runoff and flash flooding in rainy seasons because of inappropriate drainage. The elimination of sand in pervious concrete reduces its strength performance its practical applications are still limited. This study is aimed toward the permeability improvement of conventional pavement concrete by the implementation of pervious concrete and also to improve its strength characteristics. In this study, an attempt has to be made to replace the cement with marble dust up to a replacement level of 0% to 20% with an interval of 5%. Also, natural aggregate is replaced with Linz-Donawitz (LD) slag by 5%, 15%, 25%, and 35%. From the study, it is found that the use of marble dust and LD slag improves the strength properties, but reduces the permeation properties.

This review demonstrates the multiple roles of surfactants in aqueous micellar catalysis. It covers the design and recent applications of proline-based amphiphile PS-750-M, including completely organic solvent-free amide couplings, C–H fluorination of arenes and heteroarenes achieved via radical pathway facilitated by the shielding effect of micelles. In addition, it critically sheds light on selective hydrogenolysis and cross-couplings of water-sensitive acid chlorides in water, catalyzed by phosphine ligand-free Pd (0) nanoparticles. The metal-micelle interaction responsible for catalytic activities as probed by various spectroscopic techniques is also discussed.

The development and commercial use of virtualized sensing (smooth) in the manufacturing of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) and sewage treatment are both covered in this paper. The major purpose of using based on an input Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to give operations with real-time estimates of the PET permeability. Additionally, the redundancy viscosity measures provided by the ANN-based soft-sensor (ANNSES) were used to compare the outcomes of the procedure fully equipped. Everything was established that the proposed ANNSES could accurately infer the polymeric viscosity, allowing for the implementation of this soft sensor in real-time system integration. Multidisciplinary modeling, ANN, & a composite method that includes a primary clustering technique are used for data from industrial wastewater operations. The combined ANN approach decreases the overfitting problem with biological systems & improves forecasting accuracy. The results show that the hybrid ANN method can be used to both explain why difficult wastewater treatment processes are nonlinear & to obtain knowledge in imbalanced datasets.

The recent research area endeavors to discover ultimate multi-target ligands, an increasingly feasible and attractive alternative to existing mono-targeted drugs for treatment of complex, multi-factorial inflammation process which underlays plethora of debilitated health conditions. In order to improvise this option, exploration of relevant chemical core scaffold will be an utmost need. Privileged benzimidazole scaffold being historically versatile structural motif could offer a viable starting point in the search for novel multi-target ligands against multi-factorial inflammation process since, when appropriately substituted, it can selectively modulate diverse receptors, pathways and enzymes associated with the pathogenesis of inflammation. Despite this remarkable capability, the multi-target capacity of the benzimidazole scaffold remains largely unexploited. With this in focus, the present review article attempts to provide synopsis of published research to exemplify the valuable use of benzimidazole nucleus and focus on their suitability as starting scaffold to develop multi-targeted anti-inflammatory ligands.

A coherent precipitate, on growth beyond a critical size, can become semicoherent through the formation of interfacial misfit dislocations. This investigation pertains to the finite element simulation of the state of stress of a coherent precipitate, its growth and the change in state of stress on the formation of an interfacial misfit dislocation loop. Critical radii are determined from the simulations based on: (i) global energy minimum (r*) and (ii) local force balance along the radial direction (rc). The concept of local force balance as existing in literature is extended to the circumferential direction, to calculate a new critical size (rt). Local force balance gives radii at which the interface is the stable position for the dislocation loop. Off-interface stability of the dislocation loops is also investigated. The Cu–?Fe system is used as an example to illustrate the new methodology developed and validate the results of the simulation. The power of the methodology is shown by considering a configuration (precipitation in a thin disc), where standard theoretical formulations are inadequate.

Opinion mining also known as Sentiment analysis is one of the most recent challenges in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Individuals expressing their opinions on various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp are also a difficult task because innovation has increased exponentially. With the popularity of social media, a massive amount of data namely comments, reviews and opinions have been generated. According to researchers, analysis of sentiments is based on a sentence level, document level, aspect level and user level. The analysis of this data consumes more time and is difficult for processing. As a result, there is a need to create an intelligent system that can classify or determine positive, negative, and neutral opinions. The main goal of this paper is to provide a brief summary of opinion mining using techniques like machine learning, deep learning, transfer learning, and the Hadoop framework.

AbstractThe present study investigate the differences in arm-hand steadiness arising out of individuals subjected to different training conditions and to investigate for gender differences in performance. The samples for the study are 300 normal, healthy subjects aged between 18-35 years and 100 subjects each from Armed Forces, Punjab Police and Civilians (control). Subjects are tested on a standard laboratory 9 hole steadiness tester for their ability to hold a stylus in a series of holes decreasing from 12.5 mm to 2.5 mm without touching the sides of the holes. The number of contacts and the contact time during the test are noted. It has been observed that the armed forces are steadiest and statistically significant differences in all the holes at p ≤ 0.001. Also females are steadier than their male counterparts with statistically significant differences in all the holes at p≤0.001. It is concluded that the Armed Forces are steadier than the Punjab Police personnel due to the strict selection criteria and the regular training they received. And females are steadier than males due to non-prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse of any kind. Potential application of the research includes the validation of strict selection criteria and various psychomotor tests in armed forces. Also there needs to be an increase in the female work force in the tasks requiring a greater degree of Arm-Hand Steadiness.

10.1002/1348-9585.12094_video1Video 1joh212094media1.wmvjoh212094media16341536589112

Poultry farm workers are exposed to barn air and suffer from various respiratory disorders. Due to frequent prevalence of endotoxin in the farm settings workers can get co‐exposed to barn air and endotoxin. The study was aimed to explore the pulmonary damage following long‐term multiple exposures to poultry barn air with or without endotoxin. We studied the pulmonary expression of Toll‐like receptor 4 (TLR4) and Interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β) by exposing Swiss albino mice to poultry barn air for 6 days (Monday‐Saturday) in a week for 5 and 10 weeks. At the end of exposure, animals were challenged with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or normal saline solution @80 μg/mouse intranasally. Histopathology, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid and blood analysis were used to characterize lung damage. mRNA and protein expression of TLR4 and IL‐1β were evaluated using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and immunohistochemistry, respectively. Histopathology along with TLC and DLC of blood and BAL fluid revealed lung damage following multiple exposures and damage was severe in combination with LPS. Exposures altered mRNA and protein expression of TLR‐4 and IL‐1β and the expression was more marked following 30 days of exposure. Further LPS co‐challenge showed a synergistic effect on the expression of TLR4 and IL‐1β. The data suggest that long‐term exposures with or without LPS caused lung damage and altered the pulmonary expression of TLR4 and IL‐1β.

Conducting polymer provides an intriguing type of environment for various inorganic structures resulting in the generation of exciting properties in the composite owing to the mutual interactions between the two and this provides interesting dimensions for the development of new multifunctional devices. ZrO2 ceramic is one of the most investigated materials for its outstanding mechanical properties ionic, conduction properties and due to its high oxygen ion conduction. In order to achieve novel properties of ZrO2 nanoparticles, nanocomposites of ZrO2 with Polypyrrole (PPy) were prepared through in-situ method using ZrO2/pyrrole dispersions. Firstly, ZrO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by co-precipitation method and then embedded in pyrrole solution for polymerization. The structural and optical properties of ZrO2/PPy nanocomposites were investigated comprehensively by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), UV-visible spectroscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). XRD and FTIR highlight the presence of tetragonal phase of ZrO2 nanoparticles in nanocomposites, whereas UV-Visible and PL spectra indicate the presence of different electronic levels.