Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Carboxylated Cellulose Nanocrystals from Recycled Fiberboard Fibers Using Ammonium Persulfate Oxidation

As a way of finding value-added materials from waste medium density fiberboard (MDF), this study characterized cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) isolated by ammonium persulfate (APS) oxidation using recycled MDF fibers. Chemical composition of the recycled MDF fibers was done to quantify α-cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, nitrogen, ash and extractives. The APS oxidation was performed at 60 °C for 16 h, followed by ultrasonication, which resulted in a CNC yield of 11%. Transmission electron microscope images showed that rod-like CNCs had an average length and diameter of 167±47 nm and 8.24±2.28 nm, respectively, which gave an aspect ratio of about 20. The conductometric titration of aqueous CNCs suspension resulted in a carboxyl content of 0.24 mmol/g and the degree of oxidation was 0.04. Attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy clearly showed the presence of carboxyl group on the CNCs prepared by the APS oxidation. The change of pH of the aqueous CNC suspension from 4 to 7 converted the carboxyl group to sodium carboxylate group. These results showed that the APS oxidation was facile and CNCs had a one-step preparation method, and thus suggested an optimization of the oxidation condition in future.
Effect of different substrates and casing materials on growth and yield of Calocybe indica (P&C) in North Bengal, India

Cultivation of Calocybe indica was undertaken with locally available substrates viz. paddy straw, maize stalk waste, bamboo leaves and young coconut fibre alone and various combinations with paddy straw + maize stalk (1:1 v/v), paddy straw+ saw dust (1:1 v/v), and paddy straw+ saw dust (1:2 v/v)and different casing materials suchas vermicompost, soil+ sand (1:1v/v), dried saw dust, hard paper (wet condition) and combination of tea waste+soil+ sand, saw dust +sand (1:1 v/v), tea waste+ sand (1:1 v/v) in paddy straw cultivating condition. Among the substrates, paddy straw was the best with 196.12 % biological efficiency (BE) followed by different substrate combinations but the bamboo leaves alone was recorded as substrate with lowest potential (84%) for cultivation. As casing material the spent mushroom compost (SMC) of Agaricus bisporus resulted in the highest biological efficiency (207%) followed by soil+ sand (196%), sand +saw dust (163%) but combination of tea waste+ soil + sand was inferior (151%). Saw dust gave the lowest (96.8%) biological efficiency. In conclusion the maximum biological efficiency of C. indica can be obtained by using paddy straw as a substrate encased with spent compost of button mushroom.
Correlation and path analysis in garden pea (Pisum sativum L.)

The experiment was conducted in order to estimate the character association for eleven traits in thirty diverse garden pea genotypes during Rabi season of 2018-19 at the Research Farm, Department of Vegetable Science, College of Horticulture, Mudigere. Quantitative analysis were carried out for all the characters which are directly or indirectly associated with the yield and yield contributing traits. The correlation studies revealed that pod yield per plant exhibited highly positive and significant character association with number of pods per plant and weight of ten pods. Therefore, these traits may be considered as the most reliable selection indices for effective improvement in yield.
Pure laparoscopic versus open donor hepatectomy for adult living donor liver transplantation – A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Pure laparoscopic donor hepatectomy (PLDH) for adult living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) remains controversial. The aim of this study was to undertake a systematic review and meta-analysis of donor outcomes following PLDH for adult LDLT. Materials and Methods: Systematic review in line with the meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology guidelines. Results: Eight studies were included in the systematic review and six in the meta-analysis. A total of 575 donors underwent PLDH for adult LDLT. The mean donor age was 32.8 years with a BMI of 23.4 kg/m2 and graft weight of 675 g. The mean operative time was 353 min and the conversion rate was 2.8% (n = 16). Overall morbidity was 10.8% with 1.6% major complications (Clavien-Dindo grade 3b), zero mortality and 9.0 days length of stay (LOS). The meta-analysis demonstrated that the operative time was significantly shorter for the open donor hepatectomy group (mean difference 29.15 min; P = 0.006) and the LOS was shorter for the PLDH group (mean difference −0.73 days; P = 0.02), with a trend towards lesser estimated blood loss in PLDH group. However, no difference between the two groups was noted in terms of overall morbidity or major complications. Conclusions: Perioperative outcomes of PLDH are similar to the standard open approach in highly specialised centers with trend towards lesser blood loss and overall shorter hospital stay. Careful donor selection and standardisation of the technique are imperative for the successful implementation and adoption of the procedure worldwide.
On the influence of low-energy ionizing radiation on the amino acid molecule: Valine case

New data on the valine molecule (C5H11NO2) fragmentation under the low-energy electron-impact are presented. These data are related to the formation of ionized products due to the ionizing radiation influence on the above amino acid molecule. A series of the fragments produced are identified by applying an extensive DFT-theory approach. The results obtained allowed the principal pathways of the valine molecule fragmentation to be found. The absolute appearance energies of some fragments are both measured experimentally and calculated theoretically. The experimental and theoretical data are compared and analysed.
Enhanced luminescence/photodetecting bifunctional devices based on ZnO:Ga microwire/p-Si heterojunction by incorporating Ag nanowires

With the disadvantages of indirect band gap, low carrier mobility, and large lattice mismatch with other semiconductor materials, one of the current challenges in Si-based materials and structures is to prepare low-dimensional high-performance optoelectronic devices. In this work, an individual ZnO microwire via Ga-incorproration (ZnO:Ga MW) was employed to prepare a light-emitting/detecting bifunctional heterojunction structure, combined with p-type Si crystal wafer as a hole transporting layer. In a forward-bias regime, red luminescence peaking at around 680 nm was captured. While, the fabricated heterojunction device also exhibited an obvious photoresponse in the ultraviolet wavelengths. Interestingly, the introduction of Ag nanowires (AgNWs) are utilized to increase light output with amplitude 4 times higher than with that of naked wire-based LEDs. Similarly, the performance parameters of the fabricated n-AgNWs@ZnO:Ga MW/p-Si heterojunction photodetector are significantly enhanced, containing a responsivity of 5.52 A W−1, detectivity of 2.34 × 1012 Jones, external quantum efficiency of 1.9 × 103% illuminated under 370 nm at −1 V. We compare this work with previous reported photodetectors based on various ZnO/Si-based materials and structures, some performance parameters are not superior, but our constructed n-AgNWs@ZnO:Ga MW/p-Si heterojunction photodetector has comparable overall characteristics, and our findings stand out especially for providing an inexpensive and suitable pathway for developing low-cost, miniaturized and integrated ultraviolet photodetectors. The demonstration of AgNWs enhanced low-dimensional light-emitting/detecting bifunctional photodiodes can offer a promising scheme to construct high-performance Si-based optoelectronic devices.
Modelling and Simulation of Spacecraft Hardware based on Machine Learning Techniques

Research and development projects involving complex systems are often executed in a collaboration between engineers and scientists of various institutions. In such a collaboration, different parts of the system are developed by different companies located in different physical locations. Whenever this happens, testing the system and its components is difficult, since the adjacent hardware required to test the communication channels may not be available on site. This is further problematic in the space industry, because replicating a spacecraft hardware is expensive and arises other technical difficulties as every hardware is a prototype. A solution to this problem is to use a hardware emulator application in the development cycle of the OBSW which can reflect the true hardware behaviour and can be shared easily between the distributed development teams. However, precise low-level hardware emulators are very tedious to build and require deep domain knowledge. A noble alternative solution to this problem is to learn a black-box model from the temporal data-space of the candidate hardware using a ML algorithm which can reflect the realistic hardware behaviour. RNN based models with the LSTM and GRU memory units are excellent in learning sequences and are able to capture long-range dependencies in the temporal dataset. In this study, different LSTM and GRU models are applied to the task of modelling a physical hardware system. Input and output signals from the real hardware are used to train the RNN models following a supervised learning method. The obtained result show that both types of RNN models are capable of simulating the realistic hardware behaviour with a considerable accuracy. The performance of the well configured GRU model is seen to be slightly better than that of the equivalent LSTM model. Nevertheless, the signals predicted by both RNN models showed more than 90% resemblance to the actual signals obtained from the hardware in their frequency spectrum.
A Better Than Alamouti OSTBC for MIMO Backscatter Communications

Backscatter communications have received increasingly attention in Internet of Things (IoT) due to its advantages of requiring no internal battery and almost zero maintenance. However, the drawback of backscatter communications is that, its channel fades deeper than conventional channel. To improve the performance, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques have been investigated for backscatter communications. By considering duty cycle, a particular behavior of backscatter communications, as a new performance criterion, we propose a $2 \times 2$ orthogonal space-time block code for MIMO backscatter communications. The new code is a rotation of the classical Alamouti code, and in MIMO backscatter channels, this simple rotation will incur an improved duty cycle for both linear and nonlinear energy harvester models, as well as a same, or even better symbol error rate performance. We provide both rigorous mathematical proofs and numerical simulations to show the above results. An interesting thing is that, this new code does not outperform Alamouti code in conventional MIMO channels, which indicates that the space-time code design criteria for conventional channels is not the optimal one for backscatter channels, and existing space-time codes should be reconsidered and/or redesigned to achieve a higher performance in MIMO backscatter communications.
Low-Resistant Ion-Exchange Membranes for Energy Efficient Membrane Capacitive Deionization

Membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) has emerged as an effective and energy efficient desalination technology for treating brackish water streams used in numerous industrial processes. Most material research studies on MCDI focus on improving the porous electrodes or using flowing electrode architectures, and little emphasis is given to the rationale design of ion-exchange membranes (IEMs) for MCDI. In this work, the ionic conductivity, permselectivity, and thickness for three different IEM chemistries (polyaliphatic, poly(arylene ether), and perfluorinated) were correlated to MCDI performance attributes: energy expended per ion removed, salt removal efficiency, and Coulombic efficiency. A 5- to 10-fold reduction in area specific resistance, which accounts for thickness and ionic conductivity, with unconventional perfluorinated and poly(arylene ether) IEMs reduced the energy expended per ion removed in MCDI by a factor of 2 when compared to conventional electrodialysis IEMs. In situ electrochemical imp.
Effect of Different Age of Rootstock on Grafting of Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus L.) var.Palur-1

Jackfruit is a popular fruit in several tropical and sub-tropical countries. It is regarded as “poor man’s fruit” in eastern and southern parts of India. Jackfruit is believed to be native of India, originating in Western Ghats and is widely cultivated in Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Brazil, West Indies, Vietnam, Pakistan and other tropical countries (Bose and Mitra, 2002; Anonymous, 2009). In India, the total area under jackfruit cultivation is approximately 1,51,000 hectares (Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers welfare, 2016). In Tamil Nadu, jack fruit is considered as the second most important fruit after mango in the triple fruit concept (Mango, Jackfruit and Banana) mentioned in Hindu scriptures.
Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Characteristics of Volatile Components and Ethanolic Fruit Extract of Prosopis farcta (Bank & Soland.)

The present investigation was conducted to study the volatile composition of essential oil, the radical scavenging and antimicrobial characteristics of the ethanolic fruit extract of Prosopis farcta (Bank & Soland.). The fruit essential oil was analyzed by means of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/Mass). Twenty seven compounds were identified which represents 97.3% of the total oil. Among the chemical components of the oil, the highest percentage was recorded for 9,12-octadecadienoic acid ethyl ester (35.11%). Palmitic acid (21.38%), cemberene A and nonanal (4.7%) and myristic acid (4.4%) were identified as the major constituents. P. farcta ethanolic fruit extract exhibited a high phenol content (61.55±0.07 mg gallic acid equivalent (GAE)/g of dry plant) while its total flavonoid content was found to be 17±0.08 mg quercetin equivalent (QE)/g of dry plant. Evaluation of antioxidant efficacy of ethanolic fruit extract was performed using DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl), FRAP (Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power) and ABTS+ (2,2’-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) assays. In DPPH scavenging assay, IC50 value of the ethanolic fruit extract of P. farcta was found to be 62.45±00 µg/mL. The extract also exhibited a significant ABTS+ free radical inhibition (IC50, 53.24±0.03 µg/mL) while displayed a moderate reducing ability (IC50 =121.43±0.57 µg/ml) in FRAP assay. Results of antimicrobial screening revealed the higher inhibitory effect of ethanolic fruit extract against the growth of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli both with MIC values of 16 µg/ml when compared to other tested bacteria. A significant anti-candidial activity was detected for P. farcta ethanolic fruit extract (MIC50, 32 µg/mL) among the tested fungal species.
Virtual humans elicit socially anxious interactants' verbal self‐disclosure

We explored the relationship between interactants' social anxiety and the interactional fidelity of virtual humans. We specifically addressed whether the contingent non‐verbal feedback of virtual humans affects the association between interactants' social anxiety and their verbal self‐disclosure. This subject was investigated across three experimental conditions where participants interacted with real human videos and virtual humans in computer‐mediated interview interactions. The results demonstrated that socially anxious people revealed more information and greater intimate information about themselves when interacting with a virtual human when compared with real human video interaction, whereas less socially anxious people did not show this difference. We discuss the implication of this association between the interactional fidelity of virtual humans and social anxiety in a human interactant on the design of an embodied virtual agent for social skills' training and psychotherapy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Direct PCR-RFLP based detection and differentiation of Anaplasma species in naturally infected goats of eastern Haryana, India

The present investigation was designed to develop a novel, rapid and cost effective direct PCR-RFLP assay, as a specific diagnostic tool for detection and differentiation of two Anaplasma species (A. ovis and A. marginale). Blood samples were collected randomly from 83 goats. A direct blood polymerase chain reaction (DT-PCR) for amplifying a fragment of the major surface protein 5 (msp5) gene of A. ovis/A. marginale from whole blood was developed and standardized. Blood smear examination revealed 24 samples (28.91%) positive for Anaplasma inclusion bodies. While, 39 (47%) samples were positive by DT-PCR. The results revealed that DT- PCR was 100% sensitive and 74.57% specific compared to microscopy based detection (k =0.62). Additionally DT-PCR showed 94.44% sensitivity and 100% specificity compared to conventional PCR results with suspected blood samples (k=0.94). All DT-PCR positive samples were confirmed to be A. ovis by restriction fragments length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. The phylogenetic tree and sequence analysis revealed msp5 gene of Anaplasma species Indian isolate had maximum distance from A. phagocytophilum followed by A. centrale and A. marginale and 100% sequence identity with A. ovis isolates of Chinese origin which further confirmed the sequence identified in native goats to be of A. ovis. The simplified DT-PCR assay as a viable alternative to conventional PCR could be helpful for fast and accurate diagnosis of Anaplasma species and suitable for screening a large number of samples. Furthermore, results revealed that DT-PCR-RFLP of the msp5 gene might be a useful method for simultaneous detection and differentiation of A. ovis and A. marginale in goats.
On autoignition mode under variable thermodynamic state of internal combustion engines

Autoignition modes under premixed combustion conditions are usually studied in constant-volume configurations. However, the autoignition events related to knocking combustion in spark-ignition engines do experience variable volumes in combustion chamber and ever-changing thermodynamic states caused by reciprocating piston motion and main flame front compression. Such combustion situations may lead to different autoignition modes from constant-volume scenarios. Using one-dimensional direct numerical simulations with detailed chemistry and transport of H2/air mixture, the autoignition modes during knocking combustion were studied under different engine combustion boundary conditions. It was the first to identify important influence of variable thermodynamic states on the development of autoignition modes through changing critical temperature gradients. Four autoignition modes—thermal explosion, supersonic deflagration, detonation, and subsonic deflagration—were observed, which, however, were quantitatively different from the constant-volume configurations in regime boundaries. Meanwhile, on comparison with intake temperature and equivalence ratio, intake pressure shows greater impact on detonation formation, characterized by a regime extension under high intake pressures. To classify the autoignition modes responsible for various knocking events with different intensities in a straightforward manner, a regime diagram was proposed based on the temperature gradients and the effective energy density used for universally quantifying various intake conditions. This diagram was found useful to determine the distributions of different autoignition modes (especially for detonation) and the potential approaches for achieving maximum thermal efficiency while suppressing engine knock. In addition, detonation mode was prevailing under high effective energy density conditions, and the underlying reasons were ascribed to the significant reduction of excitation time and pre-flame temperature increases by pressure wave.
Evaluating models' response of tropical low clouds to SST forcings using CALIPSO observations

Abstract. Recent studies have shown that, in response to a surface warming, the marine tropical low-cloud cover (LCC) as observed by passive-sensor satellites substantially decreases, therefore generating a smaller negative value of the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) cloud radiative effect (CRE). Here we study the LCC and CRE interannual changes in response to sea surface temperature (SST) forcings in the GISS model E2 climate model, a developmental version of the GISS model E3 climate model, and in 12 other climate models, as a function of their ability to represent the vertical structure of the cloud response to SST change against 10 years of CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations) observations. The more realistic models (those that satisfy the observational constraint) capture the observed interannual LCC change quite well (ΔLCC/ΔSST=-3.49±1.01 % K−1 vs. ΔLCC/ΔSSTobs=-3.59±0.28 % K−1) while the others largely underestimate it (ΔLCC/ΔSST=-1.32±1.28 % K−1). Consequently, the more realistic models simulate more positive shortwave (SW) feedback (ΔCRE/ΔSST=2.60±1.13 W m−2 K−1) than the less realistic models (ΔCRE/ΔSST=0.87±2.63 W m−2 K−1), in better agreement with the observations (ΔCRE/ΔSSTobs=3±0.26 W m−2 K−1), although slightly underestimated. The ability of the models to represent moist processes within the planetary boundary layer (PBL) and produce persistent stratocumulus (Sc) decks appears crucial to replicating the observed relationship between clouds, radiation and surface temperature. This relationship is different depending on the type of low clouds in the observations. Over stratocumulus regions, cloud-top height increases slightly with SST, accompanied by a large decrease in cloud fraction, whereas over trade cumulus (Cu) regions, cloud fraction decreases everywhere, to a smaller extent.
Investigating the role of framework topology and accessible active sites in silicoaluminophosphates for modulating acid-catalysis

The structure–property correlations which direct the formation of specific active-acid sites in nanoporous silicoaluminophosphates (SAPOs) have been explored, to afford a molecular basis for the rational design of solid-acid catalysts. It is demonstrated that the influence of the specific zeotype framework extends beyond modulating Bronsted acidity, with the framework topology playing a fundamental role in reaction kinetics. The structural integrity and nature of the active site has been probed using a combined catalysis and multi-technique characterization study, aimed at optimizing the production of e-caprolactam.