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This study investigates the new surface development on AA6061 and AA5086 alloys considering the wire-arc additive manufacturing technique as a direct energy deposition (DED) process of wire. Two different quantities of MWCNTs, i.e., 0.01 (low) and 0.02 (high) g, with a constant nickel (Ni) weight (0.2 g) were pre-placed in the created square patterns. ER4043 filler was used as a wire for additive deposition, and an arc was generated through a tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding source. Furthermore, hardness and pin-on-disk wear-testing methods were employed to measure the changes at the surfaces with the abovementioned inducements. This work was designed to illustrate the hardness and the offered wear resistance in terms of mass loss of the AA6061 and AA5086 aluminum alloys with the function of nano-inducements. Two sliding distance values of 500 m and 600 m were selected for the wear analysis of mass loss from tracks. A maximum increase in hardness for AA6061 and AA5086 alloys was observed in the experiments, with average values of 70.76 HRB and 74.86 HRB, respectively, at a high mass content of MWCNTs. Moreover, the tribological performance of the modified surfaces improved with the addition of MWCNTs with Ni particles in a broader sense; the modified surfaces performed exceptionally well for AA5086 compared to AA6061 with 0.02 and 0.01 g additions, respectively. The system reported a maximum of 38.46% improvement in mass loss for the AA5086 alloy with 0.02 g of MWCNTs. Moreover, the morphological analysis of the developed wear tracks and the mechanism involved was carried out using scanning electron microscope (SEM) images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of miRNA mimic technology for silencing mature miRNA began in 2007. This technique originated from the discovery of the INDUCED BY PHOSPHATE STARVATION 1 (IPS1) gene, which was found to be a competitive mimic that prevents the cleavage of the targeted mRNA by miRNA inhibition at the post-transcriptional level. To date, various studies have been conducted to understand the molecular mimic mechanism and to improve the efficiency of this technology. As a result, several mimic tools have been developed: target mimicry (TM), short tandem target mimic (STTM), and molecular sponges (SPs). STTM is the most-developed tool due to its stability and effectiveness in decoying miRNA. This review discusses the application of STTM technology on the loss-of-function studies of miRNA and members from diverse plant species. A modified STTM approach for studying the function of miRNA with spatial–temporal expression under the control of specific promoters is further explored. STTM technology will enhance our understanding of the miRNA activity in plant-tissue-specific development and stress responses for applications in improving plant traits via miRNA regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the field of psychopharmacology is ongoing to develop novel compounds which can revolutionize the treatment of psychiatric disorders. The concept of bench-to-bedside is a tedious process, transforming the initial research performed in the laboratories into novel treatment options. Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a chronic psychiatric illness with significant morbidity and mortality. SCZ not only presents with psychotic symptoms including hallucinations and delusions but also with negative and cognitive symptoms. The negative symptoms include the diminished ability to express emotions, loss of pleasure, and motivation with minimal social interactions. Conventional antipsychotics primarily target positive symptoms with minimal therapeutic benefits for negative and cognitive symptoms along with metabolic side effects. Researchers have explored novel targets to develop new compounds to overcome the above limitations. The glutamatergic system has provided new hope in treating schizophrenia by targeting negative and cognitive symptoms. Other receptor modulators, including serotonergic, phosphodiesterase, trans-amine-associated receptors, etc., are novel targets for developing new compounds. Future research is required in this field to explore novel compounds and establish their efficacy and safety for the treatment of schizophrenia. Last but not least, pharmacogenomics has effectively utilized genetic information to develop novel compounds by minimizing the risk of failure of the clinical trials and enhancing efficacy and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry 4.0 implementations integrate people, machines, data, technology, and processes and allow organizations to connect through digitization and cloud-based systems. The purpose of the present research is to realize the need and sustainability of digitization and connectivity within the quality management domain in developing countries, which is now called Quality 4.0. In previous research, several Quality 4.0 frameworks have been proposed. However, most of the frameworks are based on philosophy or require vast resources to implement. Hence, this research work proposes a framework for the implementation of Quality 4.0 in different industries. This framework is based on eleven dimensions that are the core requirements of the Quality 4.0; key variables are evaluated to gauge the maturity of the implementation of the framework. A research instrument is developed based on the variables to acquire the industry data, which are statistically analyzed to determine the maturity of implementation. It was found that scalability, culture, and app development require the most immense attention from industry to completely implement the requirements of Quality 4.0. Finally, recommendations are suggested that address the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in transforming traditional quality management systems to the Quality 4.0 framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sammulfar (arsenic trioxide) is a notorious poison and has extensively been studied for its toxicity. It is in use for various purposes for centuries and is used even today as a therapeutic agent in the form of kushta (calx) in traditional systems of medicine, particularly Unani medicine, but without apparent safety data. The present study, therefore, was conducted to produce data for prolong use of calx of arsenic trioxide. The calx (test drug) was prepared by the method described in National Formulary of Unani Medicine. The study was carried in healthy Wistar rats of either sex; weighing 150-250 g; 2- 3 months of age, in a dose dependent manner, following the methods of Gupta et al. (2002), Ghosh (2008) and Klaassan (2008). The animals were divided into four groups of 10 animals each. Group I served as control, where as group II, III and IV were used for three dose levels of the test drug i.e. low (8.75 mg-1kg), medium (17.50 mg-1 kg) and higher (26.25 mg-1kg). Standard parameters usually applied for chronic toxicity studies were considered. The study revealed dose dependent toxicity. Usual signs of chronic toxicity were observed during the study. Low dose of Kushta Sammulfar (KSF) did not produce remarkable toxic effects. Mild to moderate toxicity was seen in KSF-II and KSF-III. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generalized Petersen graphs are a type of cubic graph formed by connecting the vertices of a regular polygon to the corresponding vertices of a star polygon. This graph has many interesting graph properties. As a result, it has been widely researched. In this work, the edge metric dimensions of the generalized Petersen graphs GP(2l + 1, l) and GP(2l, l) are explored, and it is shown that the edge metric dimension of GP(2l + 1, l) is equal to its metric dimension. Furthermore, it is proved that the upper bound of the edge metric dimension is the same as the value of the metric dimension for the graph GP(2l, l). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the two-step method is considered with the generalized Newton method as a predictor step. The three-point Newton–Cotes formula is taken as a corrector step. The proposed method's convergence is discussed in detail. This method is very simple and therefore very effective for solving large systems. In numerical analysis, we consider a beam equation, transform it into a system of absolute value equations and then use the proposed method to solve it. Numerical experiments show that our method is very accurate and faster than already existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systolic arrays are an integral part of many modern machine learning (ML) accelerators due to their efficiency in performing matrix multiplication that is a key primitive in modern ML models. Current state-of-the-art in systolic array-based accelerators mainly target area and delay optimizations with power optimization being considered as a secondary target. Very few accelerator designs directly target power optimizations and that too using very complex algorithmic modifications that in turn result in a compromise in the area or delay performance. We present a novel Power-Intent Systolic Array (PI-SA) that is based on the fine-grained power gating of the multiplication and accumulation (MAC) block multiplier inside the processing element of the systolic array, which reduces the design power consumption quite significantly, but with an additional delay cost. To offset the delay cost, we introduce a modified decomposition multiplier to obtain smaller reduction tree and to further improve area and delay, we also replace the carry propagation adder with a carry save adder inside each sub-multiplier. Comparison of the proposed design with the baseline Gemmini naive systolic array design and its variant, i.e., a conventional systolic array design, exhibits a delay reduction of up to 6%, an area improvement of up to 32% and a power reduction of up to 57% for varying accumulator bit-widths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seaweed has been known to possess beneficial effects forhuman health due to the presence of functional bioactive components. The n-butanol and ethyl acetate extracts of Dictyota dichotoma showed ash (31.78%), crude fat (18.93%), crude protein (14.5%), and carbohydrate (12.35%) contents. About 19 compounds were identified in the n-butanol extract, primarily undecane, cetylic acid, hexadecenoic acid, Z-11-, lageracetal, dodecane, and tridecane, whereas 25 compounds were identified in the ethyl acetate extract, mainly tetradecanoic, hexadecenoic acid, Z-11-, undecane, and myristic acid. FT-IR spectroscopy confirmed the presence of carboxylic acid, phenols, aromatics, ethers, amides, sulfonates, and ketones. Moreover, total phenolic contents (TPC) and total flavonoid contents (TFC) in ethyl acetate extract were 2.56 and 2.51 mg GAE/g and in n-butanol extract were 2.11 and 2.25 mg QE/g, respectively. Ethyl acetate and n-butanol extracts at a high concentration of 100 mg mL−1 showed 66.64 and 56.56 % inhibition of DPPH, respectively. Antimicrobial activity revealed that Candida albicans was the most susceptible microorganism, followed by Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli, whereas Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed the least inhibition at all concentrations. The in vivo hypoglycemic study revealed that both extracts exhibited concentration-dependent hypoglycemic activities. In conclusion, this macroalgae exhibited antioxidant, antimicrobial, and hypoglycemic potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, convolutional neural network architectures have become increasingly complex to achieve improved performance on well-known benchmark datasets. In this research, we have introduced G-Net light, a lightweight modified GoogleNet with improved filter count per layer to reduce feature overlaps, hence reducing the complexity. Additionally, by limiting the amount of pooling layers in the proposed architecture, we have exploited the skip connections to minimize the spatial information loss. The suggested architecture is analysed using three publicly available datasets for retinal vessel segmentation, namely DRIVE, CHASE and STARE datasets. The proposed G-Net light achieves an average accuracy of 0.9686, 0.9726, 0.9730 and F 1 - s c o r e of 0.8202, 0.8048, 0.8178 on DRIVE, CHASE, and STARE datasets, respectively. The proposed G-Net light achieves state-of-the-art performance and outperforms other lightweight vessel segmentation architectures with fewer trainable number of parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge about the spatial distribution of soil organic carbon stock (SOCS) helps in sustainable land-use management and ecosystem functioning. No such study has been attempted in the complex topography and land use of Himalayas, which is associated with great spatial heterogeneity and uncertainties. Therefore, in this study digital soil mapping (DSM) was used to predict and evaluate the spatial distribution of SOCS using advanced geostatistical methods and a machine learning algorithm in the Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Eighty-three soil samples were collected across different land uses. Auxiliary variables (spectral indices and topographic parameters) derived from satellite data were used as predictors. Geostatistical methods—ordinary kriging (OK) and regression kriging (RK)—and a machine learning method—random forest (RF)—were used for assessing the spatial distribution and variability of SOCS with inter-comparison of models for their prediction performance. The best fit model validation criteria used were coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) with resulting maps validated by cross-validation. The SOCS concentration varied from 1.12 Mg/ha to 70.60 Mg/ha. The semivariogram analysis of OK and RK indicated moderate spatial dependence. RF (RMSE = 8.21) performed better than OK (RMSE = 15.60) and RK (RMSE = 17.73) while OK performed better than RK. Therefore, it may be concluded that RF provides better estimation and spatial variability of SOCS; however, further selection and choice of auxiliary variables and higher soil sampling density could improve the accuracy of RK prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhizoctonia solani is a species complex composed of many genetically diverse anastomosis groups (AG) and their subgroups. It causes economically important diseases of soybean worldwide. However, the global genetic diversity and distribution of R. solani AG associated with soybean are unknown to date. In this study, the global genetic diversity and distribution of AG associated with soybean were investigated based on rDNA-ITS sequences deposited in GenBank and published literature. The most prevalent AG, was AG-1 (40%), followed by AG-2 (19.13%), AG-4 (11.30%), AG-7 (10.43%), AG-11 (8.70%), AG-3 (5.22%) and AG-5 (3.48%). Most of the AG were reported from the USA and Brazil. Sequence analysis of internal transcribed spacers of ribosomal DNA separated AG associated with soybean into two distinct clades. Clade I corresponded to distinct subclades containing AG-2, AG-3, AG-5, AG-7 and AG-11. Clade II corresponded to subclades of AG-1 subgroups. Furthermore, AG and/or AG subgroups were in close proximity without corresponding to their geographical origin. Moreover, AG or AG subgroups within clade or subclades shared higher percentages of sequence similarities. The principal coordinate analysis also supported the phylogenetic and genetic diversity analyses. In conclusion, AG-1, AG-2, and AG-4 were the most prevalent AG in soybean. The clade or subclades corresponded to AG or AG subgroups and did not correspond to the AG's geographical origin. The information on global genetic diversity and distribution will be helpful if novel management measures are to be developed against soybean diseases caused by R. solani. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage studies and historical preservation in Pakistan, which have gained momentum in the past few decades, have been focused primarily on residential, commercial, and religious architecture dating to the British and Mughal eras, leaving aside an important layer of economic and urban history related to the industrialization of major cities. Most industrial buildings are left to decay or are demolished to make space for new development. Based on a literature review of Pakistan's industrial heritage and site surveys conducted in Pakistan between 2019 and 2021, several industrial facilities were identified that have social, cultural, and economic potential for reuse or retooling to address the problem of inadequate public amenities in urban areas. There is, however, no documentation regarding such sites that is available for use by potential stakeholders. An inventory system is proposed to establish an overview of the industrial heritage in Pakistan (types of sites, current properties, spatial characteristics, significance) and to facilitate the recognition and management of these sites. An "industrial site inventory record" (ISIR) form is proposed to record information about industrial buildings and sites. In addition, an "industrial site statement of significance" (ISSOS) is proposed for use in recording the description, heritage value, and important architectural elements of significant industrial buildings and sites. The proposed inventory system is a step toward the recognition of industrial heritage and its potential for adaptive reuse and contribution to urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research evidence suggests that elevated homocysteine level (hyperhomocysteinemia) is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The current study aimed to investigate the prevalence and associated risk factors for hyperhomocysteinemia among adolescent Afghan refugees aged 10–19 years. In total, 206 healthy adolescent boys and girls were randomly recruited from a refugee village in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2020. Socio-demographic data, anthropometric assessment, and blood sample collection were performed following standard methods. Serum homocysteine was assessed using a chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay, with hyperhomocysteinemia defined as levels ≥ 15 µmol/L. The overall prevalence of hyperhomocysteinemia was 25%, with mean homocysteine levels significantly (p = 0.004) higher among boys (14.1 µmol/L) than girls (11.8 µmol/L). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed a significant association between hyperhomocysteineimia and serum levels of vitamin B12 (OR 0.29; 95% CI of 0.14 to 0.62; p < 0.01) and folate (OR 0.1; 95% CI of 0.03 to 0.27; p < 0.001). Overall, our study findings indicate high prevalence of hyperhomocysteinemia among adolescent Afghan refugees who are potentially at high risk of developing cardiovascular diseases in future. There is a dire need to develop and implement nutritional and public health strategies to control hyperhomocysteinemia, protect against related diseases and complications in future, and ensure healthy lives and well-being among these vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurodegenerative disorders involve various pathophysiological pathways, and finding a solution for these issues is still an uphill task for the scientific community. In the present study, a combination of molecular docking and dynamics approaches was applied to target different pathways leading to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Initially, abrineurin natural inducers were screened using physicochemical properties and toxicity assessment. Out of five screened compounds, a pentacyclic triterpenoid, i.e., Soyasapogenol B appeared to be the most promising after molecular docking and simulation analysis. Soyasapogenol B showed low TPSA (60.69), high absorption (82.6%), no Lipinski rule violation, and no toxicity. Docking interaction analysis revealed that Soyasapogenol B bound effectively to all of the targeted proteins (AChE, BuChE MAO-A, MAO-B, GSK3β, and NMDA), in contrast to other screened abrineurin natural inducers and inhibitors. Importantly, Soyasapogenol B bound to active site residues of the targeted proteins in a similar pattern to the native ligand inhibitor. Further, 100 ns molecular dynamics simulations analysis showed that Soyasapogenol B formed stable complexes against all of the targeted proteins. RMSD analysis showed that the Soyasapogenol B–protein complex exhibited average RMSD values of 1.94 Å, 2.11 Å, 5.07 Å, 2.56 Å, 3.83 Å and 4.07 Å. Furthermore, the RMSF analysis and secondary structure analysis also indicated the stability of the Soyasapogenol B–protein complexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cation/proton antiporter (CPA) family represents a class of transmembrane transporter proteins that play a crucial role in plants during high salinity stress by maintaining the cell's ionic balance and pH homeostasis. So far, the CPA genes have not been systematically characterized in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). In this study, we identified and analyzed 33 putative CPA genes in tomato. Phylogenetic analysis showed that tomato CPAs could be classified into three subgroups, i.e., CHX (18 genes), KEA (8 genes), and NHX (7 genes). CPA genes within each subgroup shared similar motifs, conserved catalytic domains and gene structure. Further analysis revealed that the CPA genes were unevenly distributed on the chromosomes and segmental duplication events played a major role in the expansion of the CPA gene family in tomato. Gene expression analysis exhibited that CPA genes were differentially expressed in different tissues, various stages of fruit development, and differentially regulated in response to abiotic stresses, especially salt stress. Further, co-localization of tomato CPA genes with quantitative trait loci (QTL) of salt stress-related phenotypes revealed their broader functions in salt stress tolerance. Finally, predicted protein–protein interactions of tomato CPAs, gene ontology analysis, and the presence of putative cis-elements in the promoter further support the diverse role of tomato CPAs in plant development and plant stress tolerance. In brief, this study highlights the potential role of tomato CPAs in plant development and abiotic stress tolerance, especially in salt stress, and provides comprehensive information to explore new candidate genes for salt tolerance in tomato. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modification of a cell's architecture can enhance the performance parameters. This paper reports on the numerical modeling of a thin-film organic solar cell (OSC) featuring distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) pairs. The utilization of DBR pairs via the proposed method was found to be beneficial in terms of increasing the performance parameters. The extracted results showed that using DBR pairs helps capture the reflected light back into the active region by improving the photovoltaic parameters as compared to the structure without DBR pairs. Moreover, implementing three DBR pairs resulted in the best enhancement gain of 1.076% in power conversion efficiency. The measured results under a global AM of 1.5G were as follows: open circuit voltage (Voc) = 0.839 V; short circuit current density (Jsc) = 10.98 mA/cm2; fill factor (FF) = 78.39%; efficiency (η) = 11.02%. In addition, a thermal stability analysis of the proposed design was performed and we observed that high temperature resulted in a decrease in η from 11.02 to 10.70%. Our demonstrated design may provide a pathway for the practical application of OSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant-associated endophytic microorganisms are essential to developing successful strategies for sustainable agriculture. Grazing is an effective practice of grassland utilization through regulating multitrophic relationships in natural grasslands. This study was conducted for exploring the effects of grazing on the diversities and communities of bacteria and fungi presented in rhizosphere soils, roots, stems, and leaves of Leymus chinensis (L. chinensis), based on high-throughput sequencing. Grazing increased bacterial diversity but reduced fungal diversity in plant leaves. Further analysis confirmed that the abundance of Chloroflexi, Gemmatimonadota, Nitrospirota, Sordariales, and Pezizales in plant leaves was increased by grazing. The Bray–Curtis similarities of microbial communities in the endosphere were higher under grazing plots than non-grazing plots. Moreover, the bacterial communities were significantly correlated with ions, while the nutrient and negative ions exhibited strong influence on fungal communities. We concluded that grazing-induced changes of microbial diversities and communities in different compartments of a dominant perennial grass (L. chinensis) could be attributed to the nutrient and ion distribution in host plant. The current study highlights the importance of livestock in mediating diversities and communities of endophytic microbes, and will be useful for better understanding the complexity of multitrophic interactions in a grassland ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]