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Globally, oral disease is a major health problem, which affects the quality of life. The role of oral microflora in the oral diseases is well established. However, with the increase in the frequency of oral disease, the development of antimicrobial drug resistance to the existing drugs has insisted on searching for alternative drugs from plant sources. Herein, herbal-based mouthwash is formulated to effectively control the dominant oral pathogens. The antimicrobial activity of plant extracts was evaluated against oral pathogens by zone of inhibition test. Mouthwash was formulated with one gram of each plant extracts (Rosa damascena flower petals, Coleus amboinicus leaves , Psidium guajava leaves, and Phyllanthus acidus fruits) in 10% ethanol. Antimicrobial efficacy of the formulated mouthwash was assessed against Streptococcus mutans , Enterococcus faecalis , Staphylococcus aureus , Escherichia coli, and Candida albicans by standard protocol. Also, the antibiofilm effect of the formulated mouthwash was assessed against preformed S mutans biofilm and visualised using SEM and CLSM. The formulated mouthwash exhibits excellent broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity. The minimum inhibitory concentration result indicates that the susceptibility of the pathogens was found as follows: S aureus < S mutans < C albicans < E faecalis < E coli. Also, it shows a great anti-inflammatory effect. SEM and CLSM images reveal that the formulated mouthwash has the potential to inhibit the oral biofilm of S. mutants. This study concludes that the formulated herbal-based mouthwash might be useful in controlling multiple oral pathogens and biofilms. [Display omitted] • Herbal-based mouthwash is formulated to control the dominant oral pathogens. • It shows excellent broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against oral pathogens. • The antibiofilm effect of the mouthwash was visualised using scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy. • The formulated mouthwash has the potential to inhibit the oral biofilm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Removal of noise and restoration of images has been one of the most interesting researches in the field of image processing in the past few years. Existing filter-based methods can remove image noise; however, they cannot preserve image quality and information such as lines and edges. The proposed noise reduction image restoration technique initially performs noise removal by employing a hybrid denoising filter with an adaptive genetic algorithm. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated by comparing the result for the proposed technique with existing denoising filters, and genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimisation methods. The comparison results show that the proposed method achieves higher-quality denoising and a high restoration ratio for noisy images than the existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative site management practices such as harvest residue retention can potentially convey long term benefits for site sustainability, but they are only practiced to a limited extent in many Eucalyptus plantations in the tropical regions. Burning and/or removal of harvest residues can remove substantial quantities of nutrients, but it is still common practice in many parts of India. We explored the effect of harvest residue retention or removal on soil properties at 4 multi-rotation Eucalyptus plantations in Kerala, India. Soil carbon, N and P content were little influenced by differing harvest residue treatments. Interestingly, soil N mineralization rates were affected only minimally by harvest residue retention at individual sites, however, laboratory incubations demonstrated a significant increase in soil N-mineralization potential with increasing harvest residue additions. Soil microbial biomass was influenced to a lesser extent by harvest residue retention. We conclude that harvest residue retention can help to sustain the soil fertility in subsequent rotations and minimize the loss of nutrients from the sites, but fertilizers are still likely to be an important part of the nutrient management regime for productive plantations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distilleries produce on an average of 15 L of effluent per litre of alcohol which has the characteristics of BOD as 40,000-50,000 ppm and COD as 80,000-100,000 ppm. In industries, the effluent is treated by anaerobic digestion having twin benefits such as degrading the effluent to an extent of BOD 8,000-10,000 ppm, COD 29,000-35,000 ppm while producing biogas having 55% methane. 0.4 to 0.6 kg of methane is produced per kg of BOD reduced by anaerobic digestion. Effluent after anaerobic digestion is subsequently treated by aeration technique. Treatment through aeration requires high energy for treating the effluent to the standards. Now, due to water crisis, number of industries is following either reverse osmosis (RO) or multiple effect evaporation after anaerobic digestion to recycle the water. RO is employed to recover 60% of water as permeate with COD of 100 ppm. Admitting high pollutant load to the RO process, leads to higher pressure drop across the membrane, increasing its operational and maintenance cost. The pollution profile of the reject is more complicated to tackle. In case of multiple effect evaporators, 550 kcal of energy is required for evaporating 1 L of water. The performance of the evaporators will deteriorate faster with time, due to the high influent load and reducing its life cycle. Hence, it necessitates the requirement of an intermediate treatment which would help to reduce the effluent characteristics of biomethanated wash to an appreciable level and would make the further operations less energy intensive. The major reason for high BOD, COD of effluent is due to the presence of colored compounds such as melanoidin. This review aims at degrading possibility of melanoidin using phycoremediation as an intermediate step between anaerobic digestion and aeration. The biomass thus generated by growing microalgae, will be useful for producing by-products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of a weak Cl⋯O bond has been discerned both experimentally and computationally in our studies on the trimethyl phosphate (TMP)–CCl4 system. TMP and CCl4 were codeposited in a nitrogen matrix and adducts of these species were identified using infrared spectroscopy. Formation of the weak adducts were evidenced by shifts in the vibrational frequencies of TMP. The structures and the vibrational frequencies of these adducts were computed at the HF/6-31G&ast;&ast; level and the computed vibrational frequencies compared well with the observed frequencies. The nature of the bonding in this adduct was also studied using the atom-in-molecule theory, which clearly showed a (3, −1) bond critical point between the two submolecules. The stabilization energy of these adducts, were computed both at the HF/6-31G&ast;&ast;//HF/6-31G&ast;&ast; and MP2/6-31G&ast;&ast;//HF/6-31G&ast;&ast; levels after correcting for zero-point energies and basis set superposition errors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Ligand sensitized fluorescence of europium ion using thenoyltrifluoroacetone (TTA) as a sensitizing ligand and dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) as a solvent is studied for the first time. TTA ligand enhances the fluorescence of Eu3+ by a factor of 40000 in DMSO. Linearity is obtained for a concentration range of 0.076-7.6ng/mL of Eu3+ with a detection limit of 7.6pg/mL. The quenching of Eu3+-TTA fluorescence by uranium matrix was studied in different solvents and found to be less in DMSO. Consequently, estimation of Eu3+ in a large excess of uranium becomes a possibility without the need to separate uranium from the solution, which has been demonstrated in this paper. Satisfactory results are obtained when Eu3+ is present at a concentration of 0.6µg/g in uranium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tribological properties of nanocrystalline diamond nanowire (DNW) film treated in CH4 atmosphere at 400 °C were studied in ambient atmosphere at room temperature using various allotropes of alumina ball as sliding counterbodies. Super low value of friction coefficient (~ 0.003) and extremely high wear resistance (~ 2.8 x 10- 21 mm³/Nm) were observed when the Al2O3 ball slides against the film. In contrast, high friction coefficients with the values ~ 0.06 and ~ 0.07 were observed while using sapphire and ruby balls, respectively. Wear loss was also high ~ 4 x 10- 19 mm³/Nm and 2.8 x 10- 15 mm³/Nm in DNW/sapphire and DNW/ruby sliding pairs, respectively. Such a behavior is fundamentally explained in terms of the chemical nature of the sliding interfaces and surface energy of ball counterbodies. As a consequence, the chemical affinity of Al2O3 ball towards the carbon atoms is less, which resulted in the absence of carbonaceous transfer layer formation on the Al2O3 ball scar. However, in the case of sapphire and ruby balls, the wear track was found to be highly deformed and significant development of carbonaceous transfer layer was observed on respective ball scars. This phenomenon involving transfer layer formation is related to high surface energy and strong chemical affinities of sapphire and ruby balls towards carbon atoms. In such a condition, sliding occurs between film and the carbonaceous transfer layer formed on the ball exhibiting high energy due to covalent carbon bonds that chemically interact and enhance sliding resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital communication is provided with an effective communication platform to share and transfer information. The emergence of the Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a platform incorporated with electronic devices that enables the services through a digital platform. The considerable challenges of this system are security issues, abnormality, and service failure. Hence, the requirement of providing an effective system, which should be overcome these issues. This paper analyzes these problems and providing the paradigm in terms of enhanced communication paradigm, specifically propose Energy Aware Smart Home (EASH) framework. With this work, the problem in communication failures and types of network attacks are analyzed in EASH. With the utilization of the machine learning technique, the abnormality sources of the communication paradigm are differentiated. To evaluate the performance, we analyze the proposed work based on its accuracy, performance, and efficiency. Hence, we obtain better results especially the result shows an 85% accuracy rate. In the future, we try to enhance a high accuracy rate for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]