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Thermal interface materials (TIM) employed to electronic devices enhances interfacial heat dissipation and thermal contact conductance (TCC). This study compares the performance of TIMs (silicon grease, phase change material (PCM) and composite PCM) on a copper-aluminum contact pair under varying range of contact pressure (0.1 to 0.4 MPa) and interface temperature (35 to 65 °C). Composite PCM is prepared by mixing aluminum powder to PCM in different mass concentrations (4, 8 and 25 wt.%). Result shows that addition of aluminum powder > 8 wt.% to PCM reduces its heat storage capacity and delays heat transfer. Moreover, TCC with silicon grease outperforms PCM by 108%, while CPCM (8 wt. %) is 144% more efficient but costlier than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the most pressing issues that need to be resolved by the global community, including the Islamic banking industry, to ensure social equity, economic viability, and environmental protection. Accordingly, this study aims to develop a practical framework for evaluating the sustainability reporting performance of Islamic banks in the purview of the SDGs. This study employed the most recent Global Reporting Initiative and religious sustainability indicators to establish the measurement framework for evaluating sustainability reporting in relation to the SDGs. Centering on the Malaysian Islamic banks, this study found that overall performance on corporate sustainability reporting is quite low, though it has increased over time from 2011–2020. The bank-wise analysis implies that the SDGs reporting differs for Islamic banks, where most of the banks outperform on SDGs disclosure scores. Further, the SDG-wise analysis indicates that SDG-9, SDG-17, SDG-11, and SDG-1 appear to have the highest disclosure scores. Nevertheless, SDG-16 revealed the least SDG disclosure score, indicating that the sampled Islamic banks do not provide complete information about addressing sustainability-related issues. The outcome of the study might be useful to the regulators and managers of Islamic banks in embedding sustainability into their strategy for reporting on SDGs. This will help in recognizing the strong and weak points of their sustainability reporting procedures regarding the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study is to model and measure the impact of development and non-development expenditure on the carbon dioxide emissions (per capita metric tons) in India over 1980–2018. The Asymmetric ARDL approach (NARDL), an advanced econometric technique, was applied to examine the nexus between CO2 emissions, development and non-development expenditure, national income, energy consumption and population. The short-run and long-run results establish a statistically significant relationship between carbon emissions and the explanatory variables. The long-run asymmetrical results indicate that energy consumption and national income growth pollute the environment. However, we did not find any significant long-run impact of population on pollution levels in India. Furthermore, the results reveal that increase in development expenditure leads to environmental degradation and non-development expenditure mitigates pollution. No evidence of the applicability of EKC was found in India. The authors conclude that a reasonable method of tackling the threat of environmental degradation is to remove distortions in public expenditure policy. We recommend the government to phase out fiscal benefits to pollution-prone economic activities and thus spend the money saved on pollution abatement efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major limitation with the oral administration of most of the phytochemicals is their low aqueous solubility and bioavailability. Thymoquinone (THQ) is one of the most widely used phytochemicals used to treat a variety of diseases. However, strong lipophilic characteristics limit its clinical application. Therefore, this study was aimed to design novel chitosan (C) modified polycaprolactone (PL) nanoparticles (NPs) for improved oral bioavailability of THQ. THQ-CPLNPs was optimized 33-Box-Behnken design. After that, the optimized THQ-CPLNPs was characterized by different parameters. THQ-CPLNPs showed the size, PDI, and ZP of 182.32 ± 6.46nm, 0.179 ± 0.012, and þ21.36 ± 1.22 mV, respectively. The entrapment and loading capacity were found to be 79.86 ± 4.36%, and 13.45 ± 1.38%, respectively. THQ-CPLNPs exhibited burst release in initial 2 h followed by prolonged release up to 24 h in simulated intestinal fluids. THQ-CPLNPs showed excellent mucoadhesion properties which were further confirmed with the intestinal permeation study as well as confocal microscopy. The study revealed higher permeation of THQ-CPLNPs compared to neat THQ suspension (THQ-S). Moreover, in vivo gastric irritation study revealed good compatibility of THQ-CPLNPs with the gastric mucosa. Furthermore, pharmacokinetic results depicted -3.53-fold improved oral bioavailability of THQ from THQ-CPLNPs than THQ-S. Therefore, from the findings, it was concluded that the prepared polymeric NPs could be an effective delivery system for improved oral bioavailability of THQ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two series of 6-phenyl-4,5-dihydropyridazinone derivatives containing 2-substituted amin-1-yl-methyl (4a-g) and 2-substituted amin-1-yl-ethyl (5a-g) were synthesized and tested as antitubercular and anticonvulsant agents. and in vivo anticonvulsant activities were tested against maximum electroshock (MES) and Isoniazid (INH) induced convulsion methods in male Swiss albino mice. All the compounds (4a- g & 5a-g) were exhibited significant anticonvulsant activities against both MES and INH induced convulsions and compared with phenytoin sodium (25 mg/kg) and sodium vaproate (50 mg/kg) as reference drugs. The compounds (4a-g and 5a-g) were also exhibited anti-tubercular activity, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of compound 4a (3.12 μg/ml), 4g (6.25 μg/ml) and 4e (0. 2 μg/ml) which were found higher or equal MIC value than reference drugs streptomycin (6.25 μg/ml), pyrizinamide (3.125 μg/ml) and Isoniazid (3.125μg/ml). Other remaining compounds were also exhibited less antitubercular activity than reference drugs. All the compounds (4a-g & 5a-g) were exhibited significant anticonvulsant activities against both MES and INH induced convulsions and also exhibited significant antitubercular activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction of adsorption equilibria of methane (CH4)/carbon dioxide (CO2) on coal at various feed gas composition is essential for the commercial development of primary and enhanced coalbed methane (ECBM) recovery by CO2 sequestration from coal reservoirs. In this article, an attempt is made to determine the adsorption equilibria of CH4 and CO2 mixture over a wide range of pressure and free gas compositions with the help of developed computational approach using the Ideal Adsorption Solution theory (IAST) for multicomponent adsorption. The advantage of the model is that it can predict the adsorption equilibrium of the mixture from the pure gas equilibrium data. Considering the complex adsorption during gas transportation and efficient gas injection modes at constant pressure or constant composition, the two different computational approaches were developed to solve the iterative calculation of IAST, i.e. constant mole fraction with variable pressure (P = 0 to 1000 psi) and constant pressure with mole fraction as a variable (y = 0 to 1). Individual adsorption isotherm of CH4 and CO2 for the two different sub-bituminous coal samples was determined up to a pressures of 1250 psi. Pure gas isotherms reveal that volume wise CO2 has 2.00 to 2.63 times more adsorption capacity than CH4 for the samples respectively. Computational model developed using ideal solution theory can predict the adsorbed gas volume at any pressure on the experimentally studied samples collected from Indian CBM fields. The developed computational code using MATLAB© software was validated using the binary adsorption data for the two coal samples from global CBM fields published in the literatures, with calculated error lying within the permissible limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to explore the role of leisure activities in the life satisfaction of older people. In addition, the mediating and moderating effects of leisure activities and health on family support and life satisfaction are examined. This study is based on a primary survey of 311 older adults in India. A questionnaire was administered for data collection. PLS-SEM was used to analyse the data. The analysis was done in two phases: measurement model analysis and structural equation modelling. Measurement model analysis estimated that the constructs have adequate reliability and validity. SEM results showed the positive impact of family support on life satisfaction, both directly and indirectly through leisure activities. Health of older adults moderates the relationship between family support and life satisfaction. The novelty and value of the study is the significant role of health and leisure activities between family support and life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the long-run impact of financial development, energy consumption and economic growth on greenhouse gas emissions for India, in the presence of endogenous structural breaks, over the period 1971–2013. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing procedure (ARDL) and Hatemi-J threshold cointegration technique were used to test the variables for cointegration. ARDL bounds test did not confirm any cointegrating relationship between the variables. The threshold cointegration test establishes the presence of long-run impact of financial development, energy use and economic growth on greenhouse gas emissions in India. The results reveal that the long-run relationship between the variables has witnessed two regime shifts, in 1978 and 2002. The empirical evidence shows that financial sector development and energy consumption in India degrade the environment. Unlike previous studies, this paper finds no statistical evidence of a long-run relationship between economic growth and environmental deterioration. The study also challenges the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heat transfer experiments were performed in a vacuum environment (0.045 torr) to find out solid spot contact conductance for nominally flat surfaces of copper, brass, and stainless steel with different surface roughnesses (1–5 μm) for each specimen under several load conditions (0.6–15 MPa). A precise estimation of thermal contact conductance for the interface of sets of similar materials has been carried out employing a steady-state approach. Results have been compared with the theoretical models based on plastic and elastic deformation based theories for nominally flat metallic contacts. It has been demonstrated that a dire need exists to develop an experimentally based generalized correlation of thermal contact conductance for nominally flat metallic contacts that can be used by design engineers as well as for research purposes in different fields. Along with the generalized correlation, a specific correlation for thermal contact conductance has been proposed for three sets of materials. The thermal contact conductance of each set of materials presented in the form of specific correlations for different roughness parameters is one of the most important outcomes of the present research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A retrofitting strategy is proposed here that can enhance the conversion level while significantly reducing the pressure drop in fixed-bed glucose isomerization reactors. The proposed strategy utilizes hollow support matrix for enzyme immobilization instead of commonly used solid spherical support. The absence of core in hollow catalytic support helps to lower diffusional resistances, thus ensuring a better utilization of the catalytic material. This leads to higher conversion in the reactor. Moreover, the use of hollow packing yields high bed void fraction, which helps to substantially lower the pressure drop. Specifying the proposed hollow support matrix as being either cylindrical or ring shaped, a rigorous heterogeneous model for the glucose isomerization reactor is developed here. The model validity is first tested by using reported experimental data for spherical support. Using the present model, the reactor performance can be optimized in terms of shape parameters of the proposed hollow support for enzyme immobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explains the negative impacts of bureau-bashing on the Public Service Motivation (PSM) of civil servants. It differentiates between policy bashing and rhetoric bashing and argues that while policy bashing may be constructive in nature, rhetoric bashing often de‐motivates bureaucrats in terms of their rational, normative and affective motives (Perry and Wise, 1990Perry, 1996) In Bangladesh context, in critiquing public service, the previous attempts aimed to analyze the structural problems and recent attacks are directed towards the bureaucrats themselves. However, there are few empirical studies to measure the performance of bureaucrats by analyzing the initiatives they take and the problems they face in carrying out their responsibilities. Based on Perry & Wise's (1990) PSM model, we argue that in Bangladesh, bureau bashing is mostly rhetoric and thus it might have created a negative impact on PSM amongst bureaucrats, contributing to the poor state of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractPyridazinone derivatives, 6-aryl-pyridazinone (2a–f) and 2-(N-substituted)-6-aryl-pyridazinone (3a–h) derivatives were synthesized and assessed for cytotoxicity action using brine shrimp assessment method and in silico molecular studies. In silico molecular study of pyridazine derivatives used as NNRTIs and Doravirine is used as reference drug. The compounds were investigated for docking modes onto probable binding sites with HIV reverse transcriptase. The majority of these demonstrated favorable binding interactive connections with the active receptor domain. The majority of the compounds exhibited a remarkable docked binding affinity score when compared with the reference drugs. Among the synthesized pyridazine derivatives, compounds 3a and 3c–h exhibited a good docking score. For the designed compounds, in silico ADME assessment indicated the favorable physicochemical properties to be a suitable drug candidate. The synthesized compounds could serve as a novel alternative in designing safe and effective anti-HIV options with reverse transcriptase inhibitor potential. In the cytotoxicity study, all the compounds were evaluated at dose levels 10, and 20 (μg/mL), and potassium dichromate was used as a reference. Compounds 2c and 2e have shown potent lethality through LC50 2.23 and 3.20 μg respectively. Various compounds, including 2a, 2b, 2d, and 2f have demonstrated significant cytotoxicity. Their LC50 values are 7.58, 6.76, 8.91, and 4.46 μg, respectively. Additionally, compounds 3b and 3d exhibited potent lethality with LC50 values of 4.023 and 4.20 μg. Other compounds, namely 3g, 3f, 3c, 3h, 3a, and 3e, displayed noteworthy cytotoxicity ability13.91, 12.58, 11.91, 11.76, 10.58, 9.76, and 7.46 μg, respectively having LC50 values. This study supports the use of in silico molecular design and the brine shrimp bioassay as a suitable, reliable, and simple method for assessing the bioactivity of compounds. It provides further evidence for their use in medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe aim of the current study is to examine the effect of an ellipse-protruded twisted strip on thermo-hydraulic performancein a circular tube. When elliptically protruded twisted tape tube is compared to plain twisted tape tube, the deviation is between 30% and 33%. The modeling results of Nusselt number vs Reynolds number of the plain twisted tape tube with actual data show a variance of 9.5%. A plain tube has a friction factor of one, whereas a plain twisted tape tube has seven times the friction factor. An elliptical protruding twisted tape tube has 1.5 times the thermal performance factor of a regular twisted tape tube. A correlation between the Nusselt number and the friction factor for the elliptical protruded twisted tape domain has been given; the expected and numerical results are 7.5–8.5 and 6–8% of each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]