Search results for: physicochemical and biological parameters

Authors: Deepa Shokeen, Bani Tamber Aeri

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Food choice is a complex process influenced by the interplay of multiple factors, including physical, socio-cultural and economic factors comprising macro or micro level food environments. While a clear understanding of the relationship between what we eat and the environmental context in which these food choices are made is still needed; it has however now been shown that food environments do play a significant role in the obesity epidemic and increasing cardio-metabolic risk factors. Evidence in other countries indicates that the food environment may strongly influence the prevalence of obesity and cardio-metabolic risk factors among young adults. Although in the Indian context, data does indicate the associations between sedentary lifestyle, stress, faulty diets but very little evidence supports the role of food environment in influencing cardio-metabolic health among employed adults. Thus, this research is required to establish how different environments affect different individuals as individuals interact with the environment on a number of levels. Methodology: The objective of the present study is to assess the effect of selected food and nutrition environments with emphasis on worksite environment and to analyse its impact on the food choices and dietary behaviour of the employees (25-45 years of age) of the organizations under study. In the proposed study an attempt will be made to randomly select various worksite environments from Delhi and NCR. The study will be conducted in two phases. In phase I, Information will be obtained on their socio-demographic profile and various factors influencing their food choices including most commonly consumed foods and most frequently visited eating outlets in and around the work place. Data will also be gathered on anthropometry (height, weight, waist circumference), biochemical parameters (lipid profile and fasting glucose), blood pressure and dietary intake. Based on the findings of phase I, a list of the most frequently visited eating outlets in and around the workplace will be prepared in Phase II. These outlets will then be subjected to nutrition environment assessment survey (NEMS). On the basis of the information gathered from phase I and phase II, influence of selected food and nutrition environments on food choice, dietary behaviour and prevalence of cardio-metabolic risk factors among employed adults will be assessed. Expected outcomes: The proposed study will try to ascertain the impact of selected food and nutrition environments on food choice and dietary intake of the working adults as it is important to learn how these food environments influence the eating perceptions and health behavior of the adults. In addition to this, anthropometry blood pressure and biochemical assessment of the subjects will be done to assess the prevalence of cardio-metabolic risk factors. If the findings indicate that the work environment, where most of these young adults spend their productive hours of the day, influence their health, than perhaps steps maybe needed to make these environments more conducive to health.

Keywords: food and nutrition environment, cardio-metabolic risk factors, India, worksite environment

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Authors: Claudiu Mazilu, Ion Robu, Radu Deju

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At the end of 2011 worldwide there were 124 power reactors shut down, from which: 16 fully decommissioned, 50 power reactors in a decommissioning process, 49 reactors in “safe enclosure mode”, 3 reactors “entombed”, for other 6 reactors it was not yet have specified the decommissioning strategy. The concrete radioactive waste that will be generated from dismantled structures of VVR-S nuclear research reactor from Magurele (e.g.: biological shield of the reactor core and hot cells) represents an estimated amount of about 70 tons. Until now the solid low activity radioactive waste (LLW) was pre-placed in containers and cementation with mortar made from cement and natural fine aggregates, providing a fill ratio of the container of approximately 50 vol. % for concrete. In this paper is presented an innovative technology in which radioactive concrete is crushed and the mortar made from recycled radioactive sand, cement, water and superplasticizer agent is poured in container with radioactive rubble (that is pre-placed in container) for cimentation. Is achieved a radioactive waste package in which the degree of filling of radioactive waste increases substantially. The tests were carried out on non-radioactive material because the radioactive concrete was not available in a good time. Waste concrete with maximum size of 350 mm were crushed in the first stage with a Liebhher type jaw crusher, adjusted to nominal size of 50 mm. Crushed concrete less than 50 mm was sieved in order to obtain useful sort for preplacement, 10 to 50 mm. The rest of the screening > 50 mm obtained from primary crushing of concrete was crushed in the second stage, with different working principles crushers at size < 2.5 mm, in order to produce recycled fine aggregate (sand) for the filler mortar and which fulfills the technical specifications proposed: –jaw crusher, Retsch type, model BB 100; –hammer crusher, Buffalo Shuttle model WA-12-H; presented a series of characteristics of recycled concrete aggregates by predefined class (the granulosity, the granule shape, the absorption of water, behavior to the Los Angeles test, the content of attached mortar etc.), most in comparison with characteristics of natural aggregates. Various mortar recipes were used in order to identify those that meet the proposed specification (flow-rate: 16-50s, no bleeding, min. 30N/mm2 compressive strength of the mortar after 28 days, the proportion of recycled sand used in mortar: min. 900kg/m3) and allow obtaining of the highest fill ratio for mortar. In order to optimize the mortars following compositional factors were varied: aggregate nature, water/cement (W/C) ratio, sand/cement (S/C) ratio, nature and proportion of additive. To confirm the results obtained on a small scale, it made an attempt to fill the mortar in a container that simulates the final storage drums. Was measured the mortar fill ratio (98.9%) compared with the results of laboratory tests and targets set out in the proposed specification. Although fill ratio obtained on the mock-up is lower by 0.8 vol. % compared to that obtained in the laboratory tests (99.7%), the result meets the specification criteria.

Keywords: characteristics, radioactive recycled concrete aggregate, mortars, fill ratio

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Authors: Danute Karcauskiene, Dalia Ambrazaitiene, Regina Skuodiene, Monika Vilkiene, Regina Repsiene, Ieva Jokubauskaite

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The main ambition for nowadays agriculture is to get the economically effective yield and to secure the soil ecological sustainability. According to the effect on the main soil quality indexes, tillage systems may be separated into two types, conventional and conservation tillage. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of conservation and conventional primary soil tillage methods and soil fertility improvement measures on soil properties and crop productivity. Methods: The soil of the experimental site is Dystric Glossic Retisol (WRB 2014) with texture of sandy loam. The trial was established in 2003 in the experimental field of crop rotation of Vėžaičiai Branch of Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry. Trial factors and treatments: factor A- primary soil tillage in (autumn): deep ploughing (20-25cm), shallow ploughing (10-12cm), shallow ploughless tillage (8-10cm); factor B – soil fertility improvement measures: plant residues, plant residues + straw, green manure 1st cut + straw, farmyard manure 40tha-1 + straw. The four - course crop rotation consisted of red clover, winter wheat, spring rape and spring barley with undersown. Results: The tillage had no statistically significant effect on topsoil (0-10 cm) pHKCl level, it was 5.5 - 5.7. During all experiment period, the highest soil pHKCl level (5.65) was in the shallow ploughless tillage. The organic fertilizers particularly the biomass of grass and farmyard manure had tendency to increase the soil pHKCl. The content of plant - available phosphorus and potassium significantly increase in the shallow ploughing compared with others tillage systems. The farmyard manure increases those elements in whole arable layer. The dissolved organic carbon concentration was significantly higher in the 0 - 10 cm soil layer in the shallow ploughless tillage compared with deep ploughing. After the incorporation of clover biomass and farmyard manure the concentration of dissolved organic carbon increased in the top soil layer. During all experiment period the largest amount of water stable aggregates was determined in the soil where the shallow ploughless tillage was applied. It was by 12% higher compared with deep ploughing. During all experiment time, the soil moisture was higher in the shallow ploughing and shallow ploughless tillage (9-27%) compared to deep ploughing. The lowest emission of CO2 was determined in the deep ploughing soil. The highest rate of CO2 emission was in shallow ploughless tillage. The addition of organic fertilisers had a tendency to increase the CO2 emission, but there was no statistically significant effect between the different types of organic fertilisers. The crop yield was larger in the deep ploughing soil compared to the shallow and shallow ploughless tillage.

Keywords: reduced tillage, soil structure, soil pH, biological activity, crop productivity

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Authors: C. Bateira, J. Fernandes, A. Costa

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The Douro Demarked Region (DDR) is a production Porto wine region. On the NE of Portugal, the strong incision of the Douro valley developed very steep slopes, organized with agriculture terraces, have experienced an intense and deep transformation in order to implement the mechanization of the work. The old terrace system, based on stone vertical wall support structure, replaced by terraces with earth embankments experienced a huge terrace instability. This terrace instability has important economic and financial consequences on the agriculture enterprises. This paper presents and develops cartographic tools to access the embankment instability and identify the area prone to instability. The priority on this evaluation is related to the use of physically based mathematical models and develop a validation process based on an inventory of the past embankment instability. We used the shallow landslide stability model (SHALSTAB) based on physical parameters such us cohesion (c’), friction angle(ф), hydraulic conductivity, soil depth, soil specific weight (ϱ), slope angle (α) and contributing areas by Multiple Flow Direction Method (MFD). A terraced area can be analysed by this models unless we have very detailed information representative of the terrain morphology. The slope angle and the contributing areas depend on that. We can achieve that propose using digital elevation models (DEM) with great resolution (pixel with 40cm side), resulting from a set of photographs taken by a flight at 100m high with pixel resolution of 12cm. The slope angle results from this DEM. In the other hand, the MFD contributing area models the internal flow and is an important element to define the spatial variation of the soil saturation. That internal flow is based on the DEM. That is supported by the statement that the interflow, although not coincident with the superficial flow, have important similitude with it. Electrical resistivity monitoring values which related with the MFD contributing areas build from a DEM of 1m resolution and revealed a consistent correlation. That analysis, performed on the area, showed a good correlation with R2 of 0,72 and 0,76 at 1,5m and 2m depth, respectively. Considering that, a DEM with 1m resolution was the base to model the real internal flow. Thus, we assumed that the contributing area of 1m resolution modelled by MFD is representative of the internal flow of the area. In order to solve this problem we used a set of generalized DEMs to build the contributing areas used in the SHALSTAB. Those DEMs, with several resolutions (1m and 5m), were built from a set of photographs with 50cm resolution taken by a flight with 5km high. Using this maps combination, we modelled several final maps of terrace instability and performed a validation process with the contingency matrix. The best final instability map resembles the slope map from a DEM of 40cm resolution and a MFD map from a DEM of 1m resolution with a True Positive Rate (TPR) of 0,97, a False Positive Rate of 0,47, Accuracy (ACC) of 0,53, Precision (PVC) of 0,0004 and a TPR/FPR ratio of 2,06.

Keywords: agricultural terraces, cartography, landslides, SHALSTAB, vineyards

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Authors: Sundru Manjulata Devi, Prakash M. Halami

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The immemorial use of fermented foods from vegetables, dairy and other biological sources are of great demand in India because of their health benefits. However, the diversity of Lactobacillus plantarum group (LPG) of vegetable origin has not been revealed yet, particularly with reference to their probiotic functionalities. In the present study, the different species of probiotic Lactobacillus plantarum group (LPG) i.e., L. plantarum subsp. plantarum MTCC 5422 (from fermented cereals), L. plantarum subsp. argentoratensis FG16 (from fermented bamboo shoot) and L. paraplantarum MTCC 9483 (from fermented gundruk) (as characterized by multiplex recA PCR assay) were considered to investigate their relative expression of MUB domains of mub gene (mucin binding protein) by Real time PCR. Initially, the allelic variation in the mub gene was assessed and found to encode three different variants (Type I, II and III). All the three types had 8, 9 and 10 MUB domains respectively (as analysed by Pfam database) and were found to be responsible for adhesion of bacteria to the host intestinal epithelial cells. These domains either get inserted or deleted during speciation or evolutionary events and lead to divergence. The reverse transcriptase qPCR analysis with mubLPF1+R1 primer pair supported variation in amplicon sizes with 300, 500 and 700 bp among different LPG strains. The relative expression of these MUB domains significantly unregulated in the presence of 1% mucin in overnight grown cultures. Simultaneously, the mub gene expressed efficiently by 7 fold in the culture L. paraplantarum MTCC 9483 with 10 MUB domains. An increase in the expression levels for L. plantarum subsp. plantarum MTCC 5422 and L. plantarum subsp. argentoratensis FG16 (MCC 2974) with 9 and 8 repetitive domains was around 4 and 2 fold, respectively. The detection and expression of an integrase (int) gene in the upstream region of mub gene reveals the excision and integration of these repetitive domains. Concurrently, an in vitro adhesion assay to mucin and exclusion of pathogens (such as Listeria monocytogenes and Micrococcus leuteus) was investigated and observed that the L. paraplantarum MTCC 9483 with more adhesion domains has more ability to adhere to mucin and inhibited the growth of pathogens. The production and expression of plantaricin-like bacteriocin (plnNC8 type) in MTCC 9483 suggests the pathogen inhibition. Hence, the expression of MUB domains can act as potential biomarkers in the screening of a novel probiotic LPG strain with adherence property. The present study provides a platform for an easy, rapid, less time consuming, low-cost methodology for the detection of potential probiotic bacteria. It was known that the traditional practices followed in the preparation of fermented bamboo shoots/gundruk/cereals of Indian foods contain different kinds of neutraceuticals for functional food and novel compounds with health promoting factors. In future, a detailed study of these food products can add more nutritive value, consumption and suitable for commercialization.

Keywords: adhesion gene, fermented foods, MUB domains, probiotics

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Authors: Uraib Sharaha, Ahmad Salman, Eladio Rodriguez-Diaz, Elad Shufan, Klaris Riesenberg, Irving J. Bigio, Mahmoud Huleihel

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Antimicrobial drugs have played an indispensable role in controlling illness and death associated with infectious diseases in animals and humans. However, the increasing resistance of bacteria to a broad spectrum of commonly used antibiotics has become a global healthcare problem. Many antibiotics had lost their effectiveness since the beginning of the antibiotic era because many bacteria have adapted defenses against these antibiotics. Rapid determination of antimicrobial susceptibility of a clinical isolate is often crucial for the optimal antimicrobial therapy of infected patients and in many cases can save lives. The conventional methods for susceptibility testing require the isolation of the pathogen from a clinical specimen by culturing on the appropriate media (this culturing stage lasts 24 h-first culturing). Then, chosen colonies are grown on media containing antibiotic(s), using micro-diffusion discs (second culturing time is also 24 h) in order to determine its bacterial susceptibility. Other methods, genotyping methods, E-test and automated methods were also developed for testing antimicrobial susceptibility. Most of these methods are expensive and time-consuming. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microscopy is rapid, safe, effective and low cost method that was widely and successfully used in different studies for the identification of various biological samples including bacteria; nonetheless, its true potential in routine clinical diagnosis has not yet been established. The new modern infrared (IR) spectrometers with high spectral resolution enable measuring unprecedented biochemical information from cells at the molecular level. Moreover, the development of new bioinformatics analyses combined with IR spectroscopy becomes a powerful technique, which enables the detection of structural changes associated with resistivity. The main goal of this study is to evaluate the potential of the FTIR microscopy in tandem with machine learning algorithms for rapid and reliable identification of bacterial susceptibility to antibiotics in time span of few minutes. The UTI E.coli bacterial samples, which were identified at the species level by MALDI-TOF and examined for their susceptibility by the routine assay (micro-diffusion discs), are obtained from the bacteriology laboratories in Soroka University Medical Center (SUMC). These samples were examined by FTIR microscopy and analyzed by advanced statistical methods. Our results, based on 700 E.coli samples, were promising and showed that by using infrared spectroscopic technique together with multivariate analysis, it is possible to classify the tested bacteria into sensitive and resistant with success rate higher than 90% for eight different antibiotics. Based on these preliminary results, it is worthwhile to continue developing the FTIR microscopy technique as a rapid and reliable method for identification antibiotic susceptibility.

Keywords: antibiotics, E.coli, FTIR, multivariate analysis, susceptibility, UTI

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Authors: Jiahui You, Kyung Jae Lee

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Hydraulic fracturing fluid (HFF) is widely used in shale reservoir productions. HFF contains diverse chemical additives, which result in the dissolution and precipitation of minerals through multiple chemical reactions. In this study, a new pore-scale Darcy–Brinkman–Stokes (DBS) model coupled with Level Set Method (LSM) is developed to address the microscopic phenomena occurring during the iron–HFF interaction, by numerically describing mass transport, chemical reactions, and pore structure evolution. The new model is developed based on OpenFOAM, which is an open-source platform for computational fluid dynamics. Here, the DBS momentum equation is used to solve for velocity by accounting for the fluid-solid mass transfer; an advection-diffusion equation is used to compute the distribution of injected HFF and iron. The reaction–induced pore evolution is captured by applying the LSM, where the solid-liquid interface is updated by solving the level set distance function and reinitialized to a signed distance function. Then, a smoothened Heaviside function gives a smoothed solid-liquid interface over a narrow band with a fixed thickness. The stated equations are discretized by the finite volume method, while the re-initialized equation is discretized by the central difference method. Gauss linear upwind scheme is used to solve the level set distance function, and the Pressure–Implicit with Splitting of Operators (PISO) method is used to solve the momentum equation. The numerical result is compared with 1–D analytical solution of fluid-solid interface for reaction-diffusion problems. Sensitivity analysis is conducted with various Damkohler number (DaII) and Peclet number (Pe). We categorize the Fe (III) precipitation into three patterns as a function of DaII and Pe: symmetrical smoothed growth, unsymmetrical growth, and dendritic growth. Pe and DaII significantly affect the location of precipitation, which is critical in determining the injection parameters of hydraulic fracturing. When DaII<1, the precipitation uniformly occurs on the solid surface both in upstream and downstream directions. When DaII>1, the precipitation mainly occurs on the solid surface in an upstream direction. When Pe>1, Fe (II) transported deeply into and precipitated inside the pores. When Pe<1, the precipitation of Fe (III) occurs mainly on the solid surface in an upstream direction, and they are easily precipitated inside the small pore structures. The porosity–permeability relationship is subsequently presented. This pore-scale model allows high confidence in the description of Fe (II) dissolution, transport, and Fe (III) precipitation. The model shows fast convergence and requires a low computational load. The results can provide reliable guidance for injecting HFF in shale reservoirs to avoid clogging and wellbore pollution. Understanding Fe (III) precipitation, and Fe (II) release and transport behaviors give rise to a highly efficient hydraulic fracture project.

Keywords: reactive-transport , Shale, Kerogen, precipitation

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Authors: Andrey Cherdantsev, Mikhail Cherdantsev, Sergey Isaenkov, Dmitriy Markovich

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In annular gas-liquid flow, liquid flows as a film along pipe walls sheared by high-velocity gas stream. Film surface is covered by large-scale disturbance waves which affect pressure drop and heat transfer in the system and are necessary for entrainment of liquid droplets from film surface into the core of gas stream. Disturbance waves are a highly complex and their properties are affected by numerous parameters. One of such aspects is flow development, i.e., change of flow properties with the distance from the inlet. In the present work, this question is studied using brightness-based laser-induced fluorescence (BBLIF) technique. This method enables one to perform simultaneous measurements of local film thickness in large number of points with high sampling frequency. In the present experiments first 50 cm of upward and downward annular flow in a vertical pipe of 11.7 mm i.d. is studied with temporal resolution of 10 kHz and spatial resolution of 0.5 mm. Thus, spatiotemporal evolution of film surface can be investigated, including scenarios of formation, acceleration and coalescence of disturbance waves. The behaviour of disturbance waves' velocity depending on phases flow rates and downstream distance was investigated. Besides measuring the waves properties, the goal of the work was to investigate the interrelation between disturbance waves properties and integral characteristics of the flow such as interfacial shear stress and flow rate of dispersed phase. In particular, it was shown that the initial acceleration of disturbance waves, defined by the value of shear stress, linearly decays with downstream distance. This lack of acceleration which may even lead to deceleration is related to liquid entrainment. Flow rate of disperse phase linearly grows with downstream distance. During entrainment events, liquid is extracted directly from disturbance waves, reducing their mass, area of interaction to the gas shear and, hence, velocity. Passing frequency of disturbance waves at each downstream position was measured automatically with a new algorithm of identification of characteristic lines of individual disturbance waves. Scenarios of coalescence of individual disturbance waves were identified. Transition from initial high-frequency Kelvin-Helmholtz waves appearing at the inlet to highly nonlinear disturbance waves with lower frequency was studied near the inlet using 3D realisation of BBLIF method in the same cylindrical channel and in a rectangular duct with cross-section of 5 mm by 50 mm. It was shown that the initial waves are generally two-dimensional but are promptly broken into localised three-dimensional wavelets. Coalescence of these wavelets leads to formation of quasi two-dimensional disturbance waves. Using cross-correlation analysis, loss and restoration of two-dimensionality of film surface with downstream distance were studied quantitatively. It was shown that all the processes occur closer to the inlet at higher gas velocities.

Keywords: annular flow, disturbance waves, entrainment, flow development

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Authors: Varsha Puri, Sharon Hudson, Ian Kim

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Background: Incest-related childhood sexual abuse (IRCSA) is challenging to study due to the shame and secrecy experienced by its survivors. Ramifications of IRCSA worsen when it is unidentified, and interventions are not made. IRCSA perspectives are essential for future prevention and intervention strategies. However, there is limited understanding of this population’s experiences, perspectives, and long-term struggles. To date, research for IRCSA has utilized data from treatment programs and qualitative research with cohorts of 10-20 people, much of the data is from 10-40 years prior. Methods. In June 2018, an anonymous online survey was posted to multiple social media sites (e.g., Facebook IRCSA groups) and sexual abuse resource sites. Survey responses were collected for a year. The survey collected non-identifying demographics, IRCSA experiences, and outcomes data. Results: We obtained 1310 completed surveys. Demographics of all ages, racial backgrounds, financial backgrounds, and genders were obtained; the majority identified as white (81%) and female (76%). Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) started before the age of 6 in 49% and was endured for more than one year in 84% of respondents, and 39% reported ten or more years of abuse. CSA by multiple perpetrators occurred in 58%, while 8% had ten or more perpetrators. CSA by perpetrators under 21 years old was reported by 46%. Female perpetrators were reported by 28% of respondents. Fathers were the highest reported sexual abusers at 60%, and mothers were reported at 17%. Only 16% reported that at least one of their perpetrators was prosecuted for sexual abuse of a minor. Respondents confirmed that 54% of the time, they informed an adult of the abuse; only 2% agreed that “an intervention was made by the family that protected me.” A majority reported that IRCSA has negatively impacted their intimate/sexual relationships (96%) and mental health (96%). A majority reported negative impacts on biological family relationships (88%), physical health (73%), finances (59%), educational achievement (57%), and employment (56%). When asked about suffering from addiction, 85% of respondents answered yes. Prevention strategies selected most by respondents include early school education around CSA prevention (67%), removing the statute of limitations for reporting CSA (69%), and improved laws protecting IRCSA survivors (63%). Conclusion: The data document that IRCSA can be pervasive, and the dearth of intervention and support for survivors have major lasting impacts. Survivors have a unique and valuable perspective on what interventions are needed to prevent IRCSA and support survivors; their voice has long been unheard in crafting prevention and intervention policies and services. These results thus provide an important call to action from these critical stakeholders. Pediatricians should recognize that perpetrators can be pediatric patients, women, and parents. Pediatricians can advocate for more early CSA prevention education and policy changes that remove the statute of limitations for reporting CSA.

Keywords: incest, childhood sexual abuse, incest-related childhood sexual abuse, incest survivor

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Authors: Hanan Begali, Shahi Dost, Annett Ziegler, Markus Cornberg, Maria-Esther Vidal, Anke R. M. Kraft

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Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection can be treated with nucleot(s)ide analog (NA), for example, which inhibits HBV replication. However, they have hardly any influence on the functional cure of HBV, which is defined by hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) loss. NA needs to be taken life-long, which is not available for all patients worldwide. Additionally, NA-treated patients are still at risk of developing cirrhosis, liver failure, or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Although each patient has the same components of the immune system, immune responses vary between patients. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the immune response against HBV in different patients is necessary to understand the parameters leading to HBV cure and to use this knowledge to optimize HBV therapies. This requires seamless integration of an enormous amount of diverse and fine-grained data from viral markers, e.g., hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg) and hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). The data integration system relies on the assumption that profiling human immune systems requires the analysis of various variables (e.g., demographic data, treatments, pre-existing conditions, immune cell response, or HLA-typing) rather than only one. However, the values of these variables are collected independently. They are presented in a myriad of formats, e.g., excel files, textual descriptions, lab book notes, and images of flow cytometry dot plots. Additionally, patients can be identified differently in these analyses. This heterogeneity complicates the integration of variables, as data management techniques are needed to create a unified view in which individual formats and identifiers are transparent when profiling the human immune systems. The proposed study (HBsRE) aims at integrating heterogeneous data sets of 87 chronically HBV-infected patients, e.g., clinical data, immune cell response, and HLA-typing, with knowledge encoded in biomedical ontologies and open-source databases into a knowledge-driven framework. This new technique enables us to harmonize and standardize heterogeneous datasets in the defined modeling of the data integration system, which will be evaluated in the knowledge graph (KG). KGs are data structures that represent the knowledge and data as factual statements using a graph data model. Finally, the analytic data model will be applied on top of KG in order to develop a deeper understanding of the immune profiles among various patients and to evaluate factors playing a role in a holistic profile of patients with HBsAg level loss. Additionally, our objective is to utilize this unified approach to stratify patients for new effective treatments. This study is developed in the context of the project “Transforming big data into knowledge: for deep immune profiling in vaccination, infectious diseases, and transplantation (ImProVIT)”, which is a multidisciplinary team composed of computer scientists, infection biologists, and immunologists.

Keywords: chronic hepatitis B infection, immune response, knowledge graphs, ontology

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Authors: Johns Paul, Santhosh J. Nalluveettil, P. Purushothaman, M. Premdas

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Lunar landing is one of the most critical phases of lunar mission. The lander is provided with a soft landing system to prevent structural damage of lunar module by absorbing the landing shock and also assure stability during landing. Presently available software are not capable to simulate the rigid body dynamics coupled with contact simulation and elastic/plastic deformation analysis. Hence a separate mathematical model has been generated for studying the dynamics of a typical lunar soft lander. Parameters used in the analysis includes lunar surface slope, coefficient of friction, initial touchdown velocity (vertical and horizontal), mass and moment of inertia of lander, crushing force due to energy absorbing material in the legs, number of legs and geometry of lander. The mathematical model is capable to simulate plastic and elastic deformation of honey comb, frictional force between landing leg and lunar soil, surface contact simulation, lunar gravitational force, rigid body dynamics and linkage dynamics of inverted tripod landing gear. The non linear differential equations generated for studying the dynamics of lunar lander is solved by numerical method. Matlab programme has been used as a computer tool for solving the numerical equations. The position of each kinematic joint is defined by mathematical equations for the generation of equation of motion. All hinged locations are defined by position vectors with respect to body fixed coordinate. The vehicle rigid body rotations and motions about body coordinate are only due to the external forces and moments arise from footpad reaction force due to impact, footpad frictional force and weight of vehicle. All these force are mathematically simulated for the generation of equation of motion. The validation of mathematical model is done by two different phases. First phase is the validation of plastic deformation of crushable elements by employing conservation of energy principle. The second phase is the validation of rigid body dynamics of model by simulating a lander model in ADAMS software after replacing the crushable elements to elastic spring element. Simulation of plastic deformation along with rigid body dynamics and contact force cannot be modeled in ADAMS. Hence plastic element of primary strut is replaced with a spring element and analysis is carried out in ADAMS software. The same analysis is also carried out using the mathematical model where the simulation of honeycomb crushing is replaced by elastic spring deformation and compared the results with ADAMS analysis. The rotational motion of linkages and 6 degree of freedom motion of lunar Lander about its CG can be validated by ADAMS software by replacing crushing element to spring element. The model is also validated by the drop test results of 4 leg lunar lander. This paper presents the details of mathematical model generated and its validation.

Keywords: honeycomb, landing leg tripod, lunar lander, primary link, secondary link

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Authors: Santos Maza, Enzo Aldoradin, Carlos Pariona, Eliud Arpi, Maria Rosales

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The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of flaying then bleeding anchovy (Engraulis ringens) immersed within a sodium citrate solution. Anchovy is a pelagic fish that readily deteriorates due to its high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids. As such, within the Peruvian food industry, the shelf life of frozen anchovy is explicitly 6 months, this short duration imparts a barrier to use for direct consumption human. Thus, almost all capture of anchovy by the fishing industry is eventually used in the production of fishmeal. We offer this an alternative to its typical production process in order to increase shelf life. In the present study, 100 kg of anchovies were captured and immediately mixed with ice on ship, maintaining a high quality sensory metric (e.g., with color blue in back) while still arriving for processing less than 2 h after capture. Anchovies with fat content of 3% were immediately flayed (i.e., reducing subcutaneous fat), beheaded, gutted and bled (i.e., removing hemoglobin) by immersion in water (Control) or in a solution of 2.5% sodium citrate (treatment), then subsequently frozen at -30 °C for 8 h in 2 kg batches. Subsequent glazing and storage at -25 °C for 14 months completed the experiments parameters. The peroxide value (PV), acidity (A), fatty acid profile (FAP), thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), heme iron (HI), pH and sensory attributes of the samples were evaluated monthly. The results of the PV, TBARS, A, pH and sensory analyses displayed significant differences (p<0.05) between treatment and control sample; where the sodium citrate treated samples showed increased preservation features. Specifically, at the beginning of the study, flayed, beheaded, gutted and bled anchovies displayed low content of fat (1.5%) with moderate amount of PV, A and TBARS, and were not rejected by sensory analysis. HI values and FAP displayed varying behavior, however, results of HI did not reveal a decreasing trend. This result is indicative of the fact that levels of iron were maintained as HI and did not convert into no heme iron, which is known to be the primary catalyst of lipid oxidation in fish. According to the FAP results, the major quantity of fatty acid was of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PFA) followed by saturated fatty acid (SFA) and then monounsaturated fatty acid (MFA). According to sensory analysis, the shelf life of flayed, beheaded and gutted anchovy (control and treatment) was 14 months. This shelf life was reached at laboratory level because high quality anchovies were used and immediately flayed, beheaded, gutted, bled and frozen. Therefore, it is possible to maintain the shelf life of anchovies for a long time. Overall, this method displayed a large increase in shelf life relative to that commonly seen for anchovies in this industry. However, these results should be extrapolated at industrial scales to propose better processing conditions and improve the quality of anchovy for direct human consumption.

Keywords: citrate sodium solution, heme iron, polyunsaturated fatty acids, shelf life of frozen anchovy

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Authors: Shatakshi Garg

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As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, India, one of the most populous democratic federal developing nation, continues to report the highest active cases and deaths, as well as struggle to let its health infrastructure not succumb to the exponentially growing requirements of hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen to save thousands of lives daily at risk. In this context, the paper outlines the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic since it first hit India in January 2020 – the policy decisions taken by the Union and the State governments from the larger perspective of its federal structure. The Constitution of India adopted in 1950 enshrined the federal relations between the Union and the State governments by way of the constitutional division of revenue-raising and expenditure responsibilities. By way of the 72nd and 73rd Amendments in the Constitution, powers and functions were devolved further to the third tier, namely the local governments, with the intention of further strengthening the federal structure of the country. However, with time, several constitutional amendments have shifted the scales in favour of the union government. The paper briefly traces some of these major amendments as well as some policy decisions which made the federal relations asymmetrical. As a result, data on key fiscal parameters helps establish how the union government gained upper hand at the expense of weak state governments, reducing the local governments to mere constitutional bodies without adequate funds and fiscal autonomy to carry out the assigned functions. This quasi-federal structure of India with the union government amassing the majority of power in terms of ‘funds, functions and functionaries’ exposed the perils of weakening sub-national governments post COVID-19 pandemic. With a complex quasi-federal structure and a heterogeneous population of over 1.3 billion, the announcement of a sudden nationwide lockdown by the union government was followed by a plight of migrants struggling to reach homes safely in the absence of adequate arrangements for travel and safety-net made by the union government. With limited autonomy enjoyed by the states, they were mostly dictated by the union government on most aspects of handling the pandemic, including protocols for lockdown, re-opening post lockdown, and vaccination drive. The paper suggests that certain policy decisions like demonetization, the introduction of GST, etc., taken by the incumbent government since 2014 when they first came to power, have further weakened the states and local governments, which have amounted to catastrophic losses, both economic and human. The role of the executive, legislature and judiciary are explored to establish how all these three arms of the government have worked simultaneously to further weaken and expose the fault-lines of the federal structure of India, which has lent the nation incapacitated to handle this pandemic. The paper then suggests the urgency of re-looking at the federal structure of the country and undertaking measures that strengthen the sub-national governments and restore the federal spirit as was enshrined in the constitution to avoid mammoth human and economic losses from a pandemic of this sort.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, India, federal structure, economic losses

Procedia PDF Downloads 151

Authors: Laura Alvarez-Alonso, Francisco Garcia-Carro, Jorge Loredo

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Population growth and industrial development imply an increase in the energy demands and the problems caused by emissions of greenhouse effect gases, which has inspired the search for clean sources of energy. Hydrogen (H₂) is expected to play a key role in the world’s energy future by replacing fossil fuels. The properties of H₂ make it a green fuel that does not generate pollutants and supplies sufficient energy for power generation, transportation, and other applications. Supercritical Water Gasification (SCWG) represents an attractive alternative for the recovery of energy from wastes. SCWG allows conversion of a wide range of raw materials into a fuel gas with a high content of hydrogen and light hydrocarbons through their treatment at conditions higher than those that define the critical point of water (temperature of 374°C and pressure of 221 bar). Methane used as a transport fuel is another important gasification product. The number of different uses of gas and energy forms that can be produced depending on the kind of material gasified and type of technology used to process it, shows the flexibility of SCWG. This feature allows it to be integrated with several industrial processes, as well as power generation systems or waste-to-energy production systems. The final aim of this work is to study which conditions and equipment are the most efficient and advantageous to explore the possibilities to obtain streams rich in H₂ from oily wastes, which represent a major problem both for the environment and human health throughout the world. In this paper, the relative complexity of technology needed for feasible gasification process cycles is discussed with particular reference to the different feedstocks that can be used as raw material, different reactors, and energy recovery systems. For this purpose, a review of the current status of SCWG technologies has been carried out, by means of different classifications based on key features as the feed treated or the type of reactor and other apparatus. This analysis allows to improve the technology efficiency through the study of model calculations and its comparison with experimental data, the establishment of kinetics for chemical reactions, the analysis of how the main reaction parameters affect the yield and composition of products, or the determination of the most common problems and risks that can occur. The results of this work show that SCWG is a promising method for the production of both hydrogen and methane. The most significant choices of design are the reactor type and process cycle, which can be conveniently adopted according to waste characteristics. Regarding the future of the technology, the design of SCWG plants is still to be optimized to include energy recovery systems in order to reduce costs of equipment and operation derived from the high temperature and pressure conditions that are necessary to convert water to the SC state, as well as to find solutions to remove corrosion and clogging of components of the reactor.

Keywords: hydrogen production, organic wastes, supercritical water gasification, system integration, waste-to-energy

Procedia PDF Downloads 122

Authors: Kyong-Ku Yun, Dae-Ae Kim, Kyeo-Re Lee, Kyong Namkung, Seung-Yeon Han

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Micro silica is collected as a by-product of the silicon and ferrosilicon alloy production in electric arc furnace using highly pure quartz, wood chips, coke and the like. It consists of about 85% of silicon which has spherical particles with an average particle size of 150 μm. The bulk density of micro silica varies from 150 to 700kg/m^3 and the fineness ranges from 150,000 to 300,000cm^2/g. An amorphous structure with a high silicon oxide content of micro silica induces an active reaction with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)₂) generated by the cement hydrate of a large surface area (about 20 m^² / g), and they are also known to form calcium, silicate, hydrate conjugate (C-S-H). Micro silica tends to act as a filler because of the fine particles and the spherical shape. These particles do not get covered by water and they fit well in the space between the relatively rough cement grains which does not freely fluidize concrete. On the contrary, water demand increases since micro silica particles have a tendency to absorb water because of the large surface area. The overall effect of micro silica depends on the amount of micro silica added with other parameters in the water-(cement + micro silica) ratio, and the availability of superplasticizer. In this research, it was studied on cellular sprayed concrete. This method involves a direct re-production of ready mixed concrete into a high performance at a job site. It could reduce the cost of construction by an adding a cellular and a micro silica into a ready mixed concrete truck in a field. Also, micro silica which is difficult with mixing due to high fineness in the field can be added and dispersed in concrete by increasing the fluidity of ready mixed concrete through the surface activity of cellular. Increased air content is converged to a certain level of air content by spraying and it also produces high-performance concrete by remixing of powders in the process of spraying. As it does not use a field mixing equipment the cost of construction decrease and it can be constructed after installing special spray machine in a commercial pump car. Therefore, use of special equipment is minimized, providing economic feasibility through the utilization of existing equipment. This study was carried out to evaluate a highly reliable method of confirming dispersion through a high performance cellular sprayed concrete. A mixture of 25mm coarse aggregate and river sand was applied to the concrete. In addition, by applying silica fume and foam, silica fume dispersion is confirmed in accordance with foam mixing, and the mean and standard deviation is obtained. Then variation coefficient is calculated to finally evaluate the dispersion. Comparison and analysis of before and after spraying were conducted on the experiment variables of 21L, 35L foam for each 7%, 14% silica fume respectively. Taking foam and silica fume as variables, the experiment proceed. Casting a specimen for each variable, a five-day sample is taken from each specimen for EDS test. In this study, it was examined by an experiment materials, plan and mix design, test methods, and equipment, for the evaluation of dispersion in accordance with micro silica and foam.

Keywords: micro silica, distribution, ready mixed concrete, foam

Procedia PDF Downloads 186

Authors: Reuben Newell, Edward Archer, Alistair McIlhagger, Calvin Ralph

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Modern industry has developed a need for innovative 3D composite materials due to their attractive material properties. Composite materials are composed of a fibre reinforcement encased in a polymer matrix. The fibre reinforcement consists of warp, weft and binder yarns or tows woven together into a preform. The mechanical performance of composite material is largely controlled by the properties of the preform. As a result, the bulk of recent textile research has been focused on the design of high-strength preform architectures. Studies looking at optimisation of the weaving process have largely been neglected. It has been reported that yarns experience varying levels of damage during weaving, resulting in filament breakage and ultimately compromised composite mechanical performance. The weaving parameters involved in causing this yarn damage are not fully understood. Recent studies indicate that poor yarn tension control may be an influencing factor. As tension is increased, the yarn-to-yarn and yarn-to-weaving-equipment interactions are heightened, maximising damage. The correlation between yarn tension variation and weaving damage severity has never been adequately researched or quantified. A novel study is needed which accesses the influence of tension variation on the mechanical properties of woven yarns. This study has looked to quantify the variation of yarn tension throughout weaving and sought to link the impact of tension to weaving damage. Multiple yarns were randomly selected, and their tension was measured across the creel and shedding stages of weaving, using a hand-held tension meter. Sections of the same yarn were subsequently cut from the loom machine and tensile tested. A comparison study was made between the tensile strength of pristine and tensioned yarns to determine the induced weaving damage. Yarns from bobbins at the rear of the creel were under the least amount of tension (0.5-2.0N) compared to yarns positioned at the front of the creel (1.5-3.5N). This increase in tension has been linked to the sharp turn in the yarn path between bobbins at the front of the creel and creel I-board. Creel yarns under the lower tension suffered a 3% loss of tensile strength, compared to 7% for the greater tensioned yarns. During shedding, the tension on the yarns was higher than in the creel. The upper shed yarns were exposed to a decreased tension (3.0-4.5N) compared to the lower shed yarns (4.0-5.5N). Shed yarns under the lower tension suffered a 10% loss of tensile strength, compared to 14% for the greater tensioned yarns. Interestingly, the most severely damaged yarn was exposed to both the largest creel and shedding tensions. This study confirms for the first time that yarns under a greater level of tension suffer an increased amount of weaving damage. Significant variation of yarn tension has been identified across the creel and shedding stages of weaving. This leads to a variance of mechanical properties across the woven preform and ultimately the final composite part. The outcome from this study highlights the need for optimised yarn tension control during preform manufacture to minimize yarn-induced weaving damage.

Keywords: optimisation of preform manufacture, tensile testing of damaged tows, variation of yarn weaving tension, weaving damage

Procedia PDF Downloads 207

Authors: Jeronimo Cox, Tomonari Furukawa

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Magnetometers have become more popular in inertial measurement units (IMU) for their ability to correct estimations using the earth's magnetic field. Accelerometer and gyroscope-based packages fail with dead-reckoning errors accumulated over time. Localization in robotic applications with magnetometer-inclusive IMUs has become popular as a way to track the odometry of slower-speed robots. With high-speed motions, the accumulated error increases over smaller periods of time, making them difficult to track with IMU. Tracking a high-speed motion is especially difficult with limited observability. Visual obstruction of motion leaves motion-tracking cameras unusable. When motions are too dynamic for estimation techniques reliant on the observability of the gravity vector, the use of magnetometers is further justified. As available magnetometer calibration methods are limited with the assumption that background magnetic fields are uniform, estimation in nonuniform magnetic fields is problematic. Hard iron distortion is a distortion of the magnetic field by other objects that produce magnetic fields. This kind of distortion is often observed as the offset from the origin of the center of data points when a magnetometer is rotated. The magnitude of hard iron distortion is dependent on proximity to distortion sources. Soft iron distortion is more related to the scaling of the axes of magnetometer sensors. Hard iron distortion is more of a contributor to the error of attitude estimation with magnetometers. Indoor environments or spaces inside ferrite-based structures, such as building reinforcements or a vehicle, often cause distortions with proximity. As positions correlate to areas of distortion, methods of magnetometer localization include the production of spatial mapping of magnetic field and collection of distortion signatures to better aid location tracking. The goal of this paper is to compare magnetometer methods that don't need pre-productions of magnetic field maps. Mapping the magnetic field in some spaces can be costly and inefficient. Dynamic measurement fusion is used to track the motion of a multi-link system with us. Conventional calibration by data collection of rotation at a static point, real-time estimation of calibration parameters each time step, and using two magnetometers for determining local hard iron distortion are compared to confirm the robustness and accuracy of each technique. With opposite-facing magnetometers, hard iron distortion can be accounted for regardless of position, Rather than assuming that hard iron distortion is constant regardless of positional change. The motion measured is a repeatable planar motion of a two-link system connected by revolute joints. The links are translated on a moving base to impulse rotation of the links. Equipping the joints with absolute encoders and recording the motion with cameras to enable ground truth comparison to each of the magnetometer methods. While the two-magnetometer method accounts for local hard iron distortion, the method fails where the magnetic field direction in space is inconsistent.

Keywords: motion tracking, sensor fusion, magnetometer, state estimation

Procedia PDF Downloads 54

Authors: Ayon Mukherjee

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Covariate-adjusted response-adaptive (CARA) designs use the available responses to skew the treatment allocation in a clinical trial in towards treatment found at an interim stage to be best for a given patient's covariate profile. Extensive research has been done on various aspects of CARA designs with the patient responses assumed to follow a parametric model. However, ranges of application for such designs are limited in real-life clinical trials where the responses infrequently fit a certain parametric form. On the other hand, robust estimates for the covariate-adjusted treatment effects are obtained from the parametric assumption. To balance these two requirements, designs are developed which are free from distributional assumptions about the survival responses, relying only on the assumption of proportional hazards for the two treatment arms. The proposed designs are developed by deriving two types of optimum allocation designs, and also by using a distribution function to link the past allocation, covariate and response histories to the present allocation. The optimal designs are based on biased coin procedures, with a bias towards the better treatment arm. These are the doubly-adaptive biased coin design (DBCD) and the efficient randomized adaptive design (ERADE). The treatment allocation proportions for these designs converge to the expected target values, which are functions of the Cox regression coefficients that are estimated sequentially. These expected target values are derived based on constrained optimization problems and are updated as information accrues with sequential arrival of patients. The design based on the link function is derived using the distribution function of a probit model whose parameters are adjusted based on the covariate profile of the incoming patient. To apply such designs, the treatment allocation probabilities are sequentially modified based on the treatment allocation history, response history, previous patients’ covariates and also the covariates of the incoming patient. Given these information, an expression is obtained for the conditional probability of a patient allocation to a treatment arm. Based on simulation studies, it is found that the ERADE is preferable to the DBCD when the main aim is to minimize the variance of the observed allocation proportion and to maximize the power of the Wald test for a treatment difference. However, the former procedure being discrete tends to be slower in converging towards the expected target allocation proportion. The link function based design achieves the highest skewness of patient allocation to the best treatment arm and thus ethically is the best design. Other comparative merits of the proposed designs have been highlighted and their preferred areas of application are discussed. It is concluded that the proposed CARA designs can be considered as suitable alternatives to the traditional balanced randomization designs in survival trials in terms of the power of the Wald test, provided that response data are available during the recruitment phase of the trial to enable adaptations to the designs. Moreover, the proposed designs enable more patients to get treated with the better treatment during the trial thus making the designs more ethically attractive to the patients. An existing clinical trial has been redesigned using these methods.

Keywords: censored response, Cox regression, efficiency, ethics, optimal allocation, power, variability

Procedia PDF Downloads 137

Authors: K. K. Balavenkatraman, B. Bertschi, K. Bigot, A. Grevot, A. Doelemeyer, S. D. Chibout, A. Wolf, F. Pognan, N. Manevski, O. Kretz, P. Swart, K. Litherland, J. Ashton-Chess, B. Ling, R. Wettstein, D. J. Schaefer

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Skin toxicity is poorly detected during preclinical studies, and drug-induced side effects in humans such as rashes, hyperplasia or more serious events like bullous pemphigus or toxic epidermal necrolysis represent an important hurdle for clinical development. In vitro keratinocyte-based epidermal skin models are suitable for the detection of chemical-induced irritancy, but do not recapitulate the biological complexity of full skin and fail to detect potential serious side-effects. Normal healthy skin explants may represent a valuable complementary tool, having the advantage of retaining the full skin architecture and the resident immune cell diversity. This study investigated several conditions for the maintenance of good morphological structure after several days of culture and the retention of phase II metabolism for 24 hours in skin explants in vitro. Human skin samples were collected with informed consent from patients undergoing plastic surgery and immediately transferred and processed in our laboratory by removing the underlying dermal fat. Punch biopsies of 4 mm diameter were cultured in an air-liquid interface using transwell filters. Different cultural conditions such as the effect of calcium, temperature and cultivation media were tested for a period of 14 days and explants were histologically examined after Hematoxylin and Eosin staining. Our results demonstrated that the use of Williams E Medium at 32°C maintained the physiological integrity of the skin for approximately one week. Upon prolonged incubation, the upper layers of the epidermis become thickened and some dead cells are present. Interestingly, these effects were prevented by addition of EGFR inhibitors such as Afatinib or Erlotinib. Phase II metabolism of the skin such as glucuronidation (4-methyl umbeliferone), sulfation (minoxidil), N-acetyltransferase (p-toluidene), catechol methylation (2,3-dehydroxy naphthalene), and glutathione conjugation (chlorodinitro benzene) were analyzed by using LCMS. Our results demonstrated that the human skin explants possess metabolic activity for a period of at least 24 hours for all the substrates tested. A time course for glucuronidation with 4-methyl umbeliferone was performed and a linear correlation was obtained over a period of 24 hours. Longer-term culture studies will indicate the possible evolution of such metabolic activities. In summary, these results demonstrate that human skin explants maintain a normal structure for several days in vitro and are metabolically active for at least the first 24 hours. Hence, with further characterisation, this model may be suitable for the study of drug-induced toxicity.

Keywords: human skin explant, phase II metabolism, epidermal growth factor receptor, toxicity

Procedia PDF Downloads 258

Authors: L. P. Gomes, G. F. Araújo, Y. M. L. Cordeiro, C. T. Andrade, E. M. Del Aguila, V. M. F. Paschoalin

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The application of nanoscale materials and nanostructures is an emerging area, these since materials may provide solutions to technological and environmental challenges in order to preserve the environment and natural resources. To reach this goal, the increasing demand must be accompanied by 'green' synthesis methods. Chitosan is a natural, nontoxic, biopolymer derived by the deacetylation of chitin and has great potential for a wide range of applications in the biological and biomedical areas, due to its biodegradability, biocompatibility, non-toxicity and versatile chemical and physical properties. Chitosan also presents high antimicrobial activities against a wide variety of pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms. Ultrasonication is a common tool for the preparation and processing of polymer nanoparticles. It is particularly effective in breaking up aggregates and in reducing the size and polydispersity of nanoparticles. High-intensity ultrasonication has the potential to modify chitosan molecular weight and, thus, alter or improve chitosan functional properties. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of sonication intensity and time on the changes of commercial chitosan characteristics, such as molecular weight and its potential antibacterial activity against Gram-negative bacteria. The nanoparticles (NPs) were produced from two commercial chitosans, of medium molecular weight (CS-MMW) and low molecular weight (CS-LMW) from Sigma-Aldrich®. These samples (2%) were solubilized in 100 mM sodium acetate pH 4.0, placed on ice and irradiated with an ultrasound SONIC ultrasonic probe (model 750 W), equipped with a 1/2" microtip during 30 min at 4°C. It was used on constant duty cycle and 40% amplitude with 1/1s intervals. The ultrasonic degradation of CS-MMW and CS-LMW were followed up by means of ζ-potential (Brookhaven Instruments, model 90Plus) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements. After sonication, the concentrated samples were diluted 100 times and placed in fluorescence quartz cuvettes (Hellma 111-QS, 10 mm light path). The distributions of the colloidal particles were calculated from the DLS and ζ-potential are measurements taken for the CS-MMW and CS-LMW solutions before and after (CS-MMW30 and CS-LMW30) sonication for 30 min. Regarding the results for the chitosan sample, the major bands can be distinguished centered at Radius hydrodynamic (Rh), showed different distributions for CS-MMW (Rh=690.0 nm, ζ=26.52±2.4), CS-LMW (Rh=607.4 and 2805.4 nm, ζ=24.51±1.29), CS-MMW30 (Rh=201.5 and 1064.1 nm, ζ=24.78±2.4) and CS-LMW30 (Rh=492.5, ζ=26.12±0.85). The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) was determined using different chitosan samples concentrations. MIC values were determined against to E. coli (106 cells) harvested from an LB medium (Luria-Bertani BD™) after 18h growth at 37 ºC. Subsequently, the cell suspension was serially diluted in saline solution (0.8% NaCl) and plated on solid LB at 37°C for 18 h. Colony-forming units were counted. The samples showed different MICs against E. coli for CS-LMW (1.5mg), CS-MMW30 (1.5 mg/mL) and CS-LMW30 (1.0 mg/mL). The results demonstrate that the production of nanoparticles by modification of their molecular weight by ultrasonication is simple to be performed and dispense acid solvent addition. Molecular weight modifications are enough to provoke changes in the antimicrobial potential of the nanoparticles produced in this way.

Keywords: antimicrobial agent, chitosan, green production, nanoparticles

Procedia PDF Downloads 303

Authors: Andrew N. Saylor, James R. Peters

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Scoliosis is a complex 3D deformity of the thoracic and lumbar spines, clinically diagnosed by measurement of a Cobb angle of 10 degrees or more on a coronal X-ray. The Cobb angle is the angle made by the lines drawn along the proximal and distal endplates of the respective proximal and distal vertebrae comprising the curve. Traditionally, Cobb angles are measured manually using either a marker, straight edge, and protractor or image measurement software. The task of measuring the Cobb angle can also be represented by a function taking the spine geometry rendered using X-ray imaging as input and returning the approximate angle. Although the form of such a function may be unknown, it can be approximated using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The performance of ANNs is affected by many factors, including the choice of activation function and network architecture; however, the effects of these parameters on the accuracy of scoliotic deformity measurements are poorly understood. Therefore, the objective of this study was to systematically investigate the effect of ANN architecture and activation function on Cobb angle measurement from the coronal X-rays of scoliotic subjects. The data set for this study consisted of 609 coronal chest X-rays of scoliotic subjects divided into 481 training images and 128 test images. These data, which included labeled Cobb angle measurements, were obtained from the SpineWeb online database. In order to normalize the input data, each image was resized using bi-linear interpolation to a size of 500 × 187 pixels, and the pixel intensities were scaled to be between 0 and 1. A fully connected (dense) ANN with a fixed cost function (mean squared error), batch size (10), and learning rate (0.01) was developed using Python Version 3.7.3 and TensorFlow 1.13.1. The activation functions (sigmoid, hyperbolic tangent [tanh], or rectified linear units [ReLU]), number of hidden layers (1, 3, 5, or 10), and number of neurons per layer (10, 100, or 1000) were varied systematically to generate a total of 36 network conditions. Stochastic gradient descent with early stopping was used to train each network. Three trials were run per condition, and the final mean squared errors and mean absolute errors were averaged to quantify the network response for each condition. The network that performed the best used ReLU neurons had three hidden layers, and 100 neurons per layer. The average mean squared error of this network was 222.28 ± 30 degrees2, and the average mean absolute error was 11.96 ± 0.64 degrees. It is also notable that while most of the networks performed similarly, the networks using ReLU neurons, 10 hidden layers, and 1000 neurons per layer, and those using Tanh neurons, one hidden layer, and 10 neurons per layer performed markedly worse with average mean squared errors greater than 400 degrees2 and average mean absolute errors greater than 16 degrees. From the results of this study, it can be seen that the choice of ANN architecture and activation function has a clear impact on Cobb angle inference from coronal X-rays of scoliotic subjects.

Keywords: scoliosis, artificial neural networks, cobb angle, medical imaging

Procedia PDF Downloads 101

Authors: Kaleeswari R. K., Seevagan L .

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Soil quality in an agroecosystem is influenced by the cropping system, water and soil fertility management. A valid soil quality index would help to assess the soil and crop management practices for desired productivity and soil health. The soil quality indices also provide an early indication of soil degradation and needy remedial and rehabilitation measures. Imbalanced fertilization and inadequate organic carbon dynamics deteriorate soil quality in an intensive cropping system. The rice soil ecosystem is different from other arable systems since rice is grown under submergence, which requires a different set of key soil attributes for enhancing soil quality and productivity. Assessment of the soil quality index involves indicator selection, indicator scoring and comprehensive score into one index. The most appropriate indicator to evaluate soil quality can be selected by establishing the minimum data set, which can be screened by linear and multiple regression factor analysis and score function. This investigation was carried out in intensive rice cultivating regions (having >1.0 lakh hectares) of Tamil Nadu viz., Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Villupuram, Thiruvannamalai, Cuddalore and Ramanathapuram districts. In each district, intensive rice growing block was identified. In each block, two sampling grids (10 x 10 sq.km) were used with a sampling depth of 10 – 15 cm. Using GIS coordinates, and soil sampling was carried out at various locations in the study area. The number of soil sampling points were 41, 28, 28, 32, 37, 29 and 29 in Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Thiruvannamalai and Ramanathapuram districts, respectively. Principal Component Analysis is a data reduction tool to select some of the potential indicators. Principal Component is a linear combination of different variables that represents the maximum variance of the dataset. Principal Component that has eigenvalues equal or higher than 1.0 was taken as the minimum data set. Principal Component Analysis was used to select the representative soil quality indicators in rice soils based on factor loading values and contribution percent values. Variables having significant differences within the production system were used for the preparation of the minimum data set. Each Principal Component explained a certain amount of variation (%) in the total dataset. This percentage provided the weight for variables. The final Principal Component Analysis based soil quality equation is SQI = ∑ i=1 (W ᵢ x S ᵢ); where S- score for the subscripted variable; W-weighing factor derived from PCA. Higher index scores meant better soil quality. Soil respiration, Soil available Nitrogen and Potentially Mineralizable Nitrogen were assessed as soil quality indicators in rice soil of the Cauvery Delta zone covering Thanjavur, Thiruvavur and Nagapattinam districts. Soil available phosphorus could be used as a soil quality indicator of rice soils in the Cuddalore district. In rain-fed rice ecosystems of coastal sandy soil, DTPA – Zn could be used as an effective soil quality indicator. Among the soil parameters selected from Principal Component Analysis, Microbial Biomass Nitrogen could be used quality indicator for rice soils of the Villupuram district. Cauvery Delta zone has better SQI as compared with other intensive rice growing zone of Tamil Nadu.

Keywords: soil quality index, soil attributes, soil mapping, and rice soil

Procedia PDF Downloads 55

Authors: B. K. Kanungo, Monika Thakur, Minati Baral

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8-hydroxyquinoline, (8HQ), experiences a renaissance due to its utility as a building block in metallosupramolecular chemistry and its versatile use of its derivatives in various fields of analytical chemistry, materials science, and pharmaceutics. It forms stable complexes with a variety of metal ions. Assembly of more than one such unit to form a polydentate chelator enhances its coordinating ability and the related properties due to the chelate effect resulting in high stability constant. Keeping in view the above, a nonadentate chelator N-[3,5-bis(8-hydroxyquinoline-2-amido)cyclohexyl]-8-hydroxyquinoline-2-carboxamide, (TACH2OX), containing a central cis,cis-1,3,5-triaminocyclohexane appended to three 8-hydroxyquinoline at 2-position through amide linkage is developed, and its solution thermodynamics, photophysical and Density Functional Theory (DFT) studies were undertaken. The synthesis of TACH2OX was carried out by condensation of cis,cis-1,3,5-triaminocyclohexane, (TACH) with 8‐hydroxyquinoline‐2‐carboxylic acid. The brown colored solid has been fully characterized through melting point, infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance, electrospray ionization mass and electronic spectroscopy. In solution, TACH2OX forms protonated complexes below pH 3.4, which consecutively deprotonates to generate trinegative ion with the rise of pH. Nine protonation constants for the ligand were obtained that ranges between 2.26 to 7.28. The interaction of the chelator with two trivalent metal ion Fe3+ and Al3+ were studied in aqueous solution at 298 K. The metal-ligand formation constants (ML) obtained by potentiometric and spectrophotometric method agree with each other. The protonated and hydrolyzed species were also detected in the system. The in-silico studies of the ligand, as well as the complexes including their protonated and deprotonated species assessed by density functional theory technique, gave an accurate correlation with each observed properties such as the protonation constants, stability constants, infra-red, nmr, electronic absorption and emission spectral bands. The nature of electronic and emission spectral bands in terms of number and type were ascertained from time-dependent density functional theory study and the natural transition orbitals (NTO). The global reactivity indices parameters were used for comparison of the reactivity of the ligand and the complex molecules. The natural bonding orbital (NBO) analysis could successfully describe the structure and bonding of the metal-ligand complexes specifying the percentage of contribution in atomic orbitals in the creation of molecular orbitals. The obtained high value of metal-ligand formation constants indicates that the newly synthesized chelator is a very powerful synthetic chelator. The minimum energy molecular modeling structure of the ligand suggests that the ligand, TACH2OX, in a tripodal fashion firmly coordinates to the metal ion as hexa-coordinated chelate displaying distorted octahedral geometry by binding through three sets of N, O- donor atoms, present in each pendant arm of the central tris-cyclohexaneamine tripod.

Keywords: complexes, DFT, formation constant, TACH2OX

Procedia PDF Downloads 118

Authors: Bhupendra G. Prajapati, Alpesh R. Patel

Abstract:

The aim of this research work is to develop sustained release multi-particulates dosage form of Dexketoprofen trometamol, which is the pharmacologically active isomer of ketoprofen. The objective is to utilization of active enantiomer with minimal dose and administration frequency, extended release multi-particulates dosage form development for better patience compliance was explored. Drug loaded and sustained release coated pellets were prepared by fluidized bed coating principle by wurster coater. Microcrystalline cellulose as core pellets, povidone as binder and talc as anti-tacking agents were selected during drug loading while Kollicoat SR 30D as sustained release polymer, triethyl citrate as plasticizer and micronized talc as an anti-adherent were used in sustained release coating. Binder optimization trial in drug loading showed that there was increase in process efficiency with increase in the binder concentration. 5 and 7.5%w/w concentration of Povidone K30 with respect to drug amount gave more than 90% process efficiency while higher amount of rejects (agglomerates) were observed for drug layering trial batch taken with 7.5% binder. So for drug loading, optimum Povidone concentration was selected as 5% of drug substance quantity since this trial had good process feasibility and good adhesion of the drug onto the MCC pellets. 2% w/w concentration of talc with respect to total drug layering solid mass shows better anti-tacking property to remove unnecessary static charge as well as agglomeration generation during spraying process. Optimized drug loaded pellets were coated for sustained release coating from 16 to 28% w/w coating to get desired drug release profile and results suggested that 22% w/w coating weight gain is necessary to get the required drug release profile. Three critical process parameters of Wurster coating for sustained release were further statistically optimized for desired quality target product profile attributes like agglomerates formation, process efficiency, and drug release profile using central composite design (CCD) by Minitab software. Results show that derived design space consisting 1.0 to 1.2 bar atomization air pressure, 7.8 to 10.0 gm/min spray rate and 29-34°C product bed temperature gave pre-defined drug product quality attributes. Scanning Image microscopy study results were also dictate that optimized batch pellets had very narrow particle size distribution and smooth surface which were ideal properties for reproducible drug release profile. The study also focused on optimized dexketoprofen trometamol pellets formulation retain its quality attributes while administering with common vehicle, a liquid (water) or semisolid food (apple sauce). Conclusion: Sustained release multi-particulates were successfully developed for dexketoprofen trometamol which may be useful to improve acceptability and palatability of a dosage form for better patient compliance.

Keywords: dexketoprofen trometamol, pellets, fluid bed technology, central composite design

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Authors: Justyna P. Majewska, Szymon M. Truskolaski

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The growing importance of digitalized services in the so-called new economy, including the e-sports industry, can be observed recently. Various demographic or technological changes lead consumers to modify their needs, not regarding the services themselves but the method of their application (attracting customers, forms of payment, new content, etc.). In the case of leisure-related to competitive spectating activities, there is a growing need to participate in events whose content is not sports competitions but computer games challenge – e-sport. The literature in this area so far focuses on determining the number of e-sport fans with elements of a simple statistical description (mainly concerning demographic characteristics such as age, gender, place of residence). Meanwhile, the development of the industry is influenced by a combination of many different, intertwined demographic, personality and psychosocial characteristics of customers, as well as the characteristics of their environment. Therefore, there is a need for a deeper recognition of the determinants of the behavioral patterns upon selecting digitalized services by customers, which, in the absence of available large data sets, can be achieved by using econometric simulations – multi-agent modeling. The cognitive aim of the study is to reveal internal and external determinants of behavioral patterns of customers taking into account various variants of economic development (the pace of digitization and technological development, socio-demographic changes, etc.). In the paper, an agent-based model with heterogeneous agents (characteristics of customers themselves and their environment) was developed, which allowed identifying a three-stage development scenario: i) initial interest, ii) standardization, and iii) full professionalization. The probabilities regarding the transition process were estimated using the Method of Simulated Moments. The estimation of the agent-based model parameters and sensitivity analysis reveals crucial factors that have driven a rising trend in e-sport spectating and, in a wider perspective, the development of digitalized services. Among the psychosocial characteristics of customers, they are the level of familiarization with the rules of games as well as sports disciplines, active and passive participation history and individual perception of challenging activities. Environmental factors include general reception of games, number and level of recognition of community builders and the level of technological development of streaming as well as community building platforms. However, the crucial factor underlying the good predictive power of the model is the level of professionalization. While in the initial interest phase, the entry barriers for new customers are high. They decrease during the phase of standardization and increase again in the phase of full professionalization when new customers perceive participation history inaccessible. In this case, they are prone to switch to new methods of service application – in the case of e-sport vs. sports to new content and more modern methods of its delivery. In a wider context, the findings in the paper support the idea of a life cycle of services regarding methods of their application from “traditional” to digitalized.

Keywords: agent-based modeling, digitalized services, e-sport, spectators motives

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Authors: Azza A. Ali, Asmaa Abdelaty, Mona G. Khalil, Mona M. Kamal, Karema Abu-Elfotuh

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Background: Aluminium (Al) is known as a neurotoxin environmental pollutant that can cause certain diseases as Dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinsonism. It is widely used in antacid drugs as well as in food additives and toothpaste. Stresses have been linked to cognitive impairment; Social isolation (SI) may exacerbate memory deficits while protein malnutrition (PM) increases oxidative damage in cortex, hippocampus and cerebellum. The risk of cognitive decline may be lower by maintaining social connections. Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) is the most abundant catechin in green tea and has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-atherogenic effects as well as health-promoting effects in CNS. Objective: To study the influence of different stressful conditions as social isolation, electric shock (EC) and inadequate Nutritional condition as PM on neurotoxicity induced by Al in rats as well as to investigate the possible protective effect of EGCG in these stressful and PM conditions. Methods: Rats were divided into two major groups; protected group which was daily treated during three weeks of the experiment by EGCG (10 mg/kg, IP) or non-treated. Protected and non-protected groups included five subgroups as following: One normal control received saline and four Al toxicity groups injected daily for three weeks by ALCl3 (70 mg/kg, IP). One of them served as Al toxicity model, two groups subjected to different stresses either by isolation as mild stressful condition (SI-associated Al toxicity model) or by electric shock as high stressful condition (EC- associated Al toxicity model). The last was maintained on 10% casein diet (PM -associated Al toxicity model). Isolated rats were housed individually in cages covered with black plastic. Biochemical changes in the brain as acetyl cholinesterase (ACHE), Aβ, brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), inflammatory mediators (TNF-α, IL-1β), oxidative parameters (MDA, SOD, TAC) were estimated for all groups. Histopathological changes in different brain regions were also evaluated. Results: Rats exposed to Al for three weeks showed brain neurotoxicity and neuronal degenerations. Both mild (SI) and high (EC) stressful conditions as well as inadequate nutrition (PM) enhanced Al-induced neurotoxicity and brain neuronal degenerations; the enhancement induced by stresses especially in its higher conditions (ES) was more pronounced than that of inadequate nutritional conditions (PM) as indicated by the significant increase in Aβ, ACHE, MDA, TNF-α, IL-1β together with the significant decrease in SOD, TAC, BDNF. On the other hand, EGCG showed more pronounced protection against hazards of Al in both stressful conditions (SI and EC) rather than in PM .The protective effects of EGCG were indicated by the significant decrease in Aβ, ACHE, MDA, TNF-α, IL-1β together with the increase in SOD, TAC, BDNF and confirmed by brain histopathological examinations. Conclusion: Neurotoxicity and brain neuronal degenerations induced by Al were more severe with stresses than with PM. EGCG can protect against Al-induced brain neuronal degenerations in all conditions. Consequently, administration of EGCG together with socialization as well as adequate protein nutrition is advised especially on excessive Al-exposure to avoid the severity of its neuronal toxicity.

Keywords: environmental pollution, aluminum, social isolation, protein malnutrition, neuronal degeneration, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, rats

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Authors: Moustafa Osman Mohammed

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This paper introduces topological order in descried social systems starting with the original concept of autopoiesis by biologists and scientists, including the modification of general systems based on socialized medicine. Topological order is important in describing the physical systems for exploiting optical systems and improving photonic devices. The stats of topological order have some interesting properties of topological degeneracy and fractional statistics that reveal the entanglement origin of topological order, etc. Topological ideas in photonics form exciting developments in solid-state materials, that being; insulating in the bulk, conducting electricity on their surface without dissipation or back-scattering, even in the presence of large impurities. A specific type of autopoiesis system is interrelated to the main categories amongst existing groups of the ecological phenomena interaction social and medical sciences. The hypothesis, nevertheless, has a nonlinear interaction with its natural environment 'interactional cycle' for exchange photon energy with molecules without changes in topology. The engineering topology of a biosensor is based on the excitation boundary of surface electromagnetic waves in photonic band gap multilayer films. The device operation is similar to surface Plasmonic biosensors in which a photonic band gap film replaces metal film as the medium when surface electromagnetic waves are excited. The use of photonic band gap film offers sharper surface wave resonance leading to the potential of greatly enhanced sensitivity. So, the properties of the photonic band gap material are engineered to operate a sensor at any wavelength and conduct a surface wave resonance that ranges up to 470 nm. The wavelength is not generally accessible with surface Plasmon sensing. Lastly, the photonic band gap films have robust mechanical functions that offer new substrates for surface chemistry to understand the molecular design structure and create sensing chips surface with different concentrations of DNA sequences in the solution to observe and track the surface mode resonance under the influences of processes that take place in the spectroscopic environment. These processes led to the development of several advanced analytical technologies: which are; automated, real-time, reliable, reproducible, and cost-effective. This results in faster and more accurate monitoring and detection of biomolecules on refractive index sensing, antibody-antigen reactions with a DNA or protein binding. Ultimately, the controversial aspect of molecular frictional properties is adjusted to each other in order to form unique spatial structure and dynamics of biological molecules for providing the environment mutual contribution in investigation of changes due to the pathogenic archival architecture of cell clusters.

Keywords: autopoiesis, photonics systems, quantum topology, molecular structure, biosensing

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Authors: Jie Lin, Yiwen Pan, Li Zhang, Zhangyong Xia

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Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by the accumulation of lipids, immune cells, and extracellular matrix in the arterial walls. This pathological process can lead to the formation of plaques that can obstruct blood flow and trigger various cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke. The underlying molecular mechanisms still remain unclear, although many studies revealed the dysfunction of endothelial cells, recruitment and activation of monocytes and macrophages, and the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines in atherosclerosis. This study aimed to identify hub genes involved in the progression of atherosclerosis and to analyze their biological function in silico, thereby enhancing our understanding of the disease’s molecular mechanisms. Through the analysis of microarray data, we examined the gene expression in media and neo-intima from plaques, as well as distant macroscopically intact tissue, across a cohort of 32 hypertensive patients. Initially, 112 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified. Subsequent immune infiltration analysis indicated a predominant presence of 27 immune cell types in the atherosclerosis group, particularly noting an increase in monocytes and macrophages. In the Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), 10 modules with a minimum of 30 genes were defined as key modules, with blue, dark, Oliver green and sky-blue modules being the most significant. These modules corresponded respectively to monocyte, activated B cell, and activated CD4 T cell gene patterns, revealing a strong morphological-genetic correlation. From these three gene patterns (modules morphology), a total of 2509 key genes (Gene Significance >0.2, module membership>0.8) were extracted. Six hub genes (CD36, DPP4, HMOX1, PLA2G7, PLN2, and ACADL) were then identified by intersecting 2509 key genes, 102 DEGs with lipid-related genes from the Genecard database. The bio-functional analysis of six hub genes was estimated by a robust classifier with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.873 in the ROC plot, indicating excellent efficacy in differentiating between the disease and control group. Moreover, PCA visualization demonstrated clear separation between the groups based on these six hub genes, suggesting their potential utility as classification features in predictive models. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis highlighted DPP4 as the most interconnected gene. Within the constructed key gene-drug network, 462 drugs were predicted, with ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) being identified as a potential therapeutic agent for modulating DPP4 expression. In summary, our study identified critical hub genes implicated in the progression of atherosclerosis through comprehensive bioinformatic analyses. These findings not only advance our understanding of the disease but also pave the way for applying similar analytical frameworks and predictive models to other diseases, thereby broadening the potential for clinical applications and therapeutic discoveries.

Keywords: atherosclerosis, hub genes, drug prediction, bioinformatics

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Authors: Sezen Aslan, N. Aydan Sat

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The society of 21st century constantly faces with complex otherness that emerges in various forms and justifications. Otherness caused by class, race or ethnicity inevitably reflects to urban areas, and in this way, cities are diversified into totally self-centered and closed-off urban enclaves. One of the most important dynamics that creates otherness in contemporary society is migration. Immigration on an international scale is one of the most important events that have reshaped the world, and the number of immigrants in the world is increasing day by day. Forced migration and refugee statements constitute the major part of countries' immigration policies and practices. Domestic problems such as racism, violence, war, censorship and silencing, attitudes contrary to human rights, different cultural or religious identities cause populations to migrate. Immigration is one of the most important reasons for the formation of urban enclaves within cities. Turkey, which was used to face a higher rate of outward migration, has begun to host immigrant groups from foreign countries. 1980s is the breaking point about the issue as a result of internal disturbances in the Middle East. After Iranian, Iraqi and Afghan immigrants, Turkey faces the largest external migration in its story with Syrian population. Turkey has been hosting approximate three million Syrian people after Syrian Civil War which started in 2011. 92% of Syrian refugees are currently living in different urban areas in Turkey instead of camps. Syrian refugees are experiencing a spontaneous spatiality due to the lack of specific settlement and housing policies of the country. This spontaneity is one of the most important factors in the creation of urban enclaves. From this point of view, the aim of this study is to clarify processes that lead the creation of urban enclaves and to explain socio-spatial effects of these urban enclaves to the other parts of the cities. Ankara, which is one of the most registered Syrian hosting Province in Turkey, is selected as a case study area. About 55% of the total Syrian population lives in the Altındağ district in Ankara. They settled specifically in two neighborhoods in Altındağ district, named as Önder and Ulubey. These neighborhoods are old slum areas, and they were evacuated due to urban renewal on the same dates with the migration of the Syrians. Before demolition of these old slums, Syrians are settled into them as tenants. In the first part of the study, a brief explanation of the concept of urban enclave, its occurrence parameters and possible socio-spatial threats, examples from previous immigrant urban enclaves caused internal migration will be given. Emergence of slums, planning history and social processes in the case study area will be described in the second part of the study. The third part will be focused on the Syrian refugees and their socio-spatial relationship in the case study area and in-depth interviews with refugees and spatial analysis will be realized. Suggestions for the future of the case study area and recommendations to prevent immigrant groups from social and spatial exclusion will be discussed in the conclusion part of the study.

Keywords: migration, immigration, Syrian refugees, urban enclaves, Ankara

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Authors: R. P. Naik, A. K. Rakshit

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In recent years, with the rapid development in science and technology, people have increasing requirements on uses of clothing for new functions, which contributes to opportunities for further development and incorporation of new technologies along with novel materials. In this context, textiles are of fast decalescence or fast heat radiation media as per as comfort accountability of textile articles are concern. The microstructure and texture of textiles play a vital role in determining the heat-moisture comfort level of the human body because clothing serves as a barrier to the outside environment and a transporter of heat and moisture from the body to the surrounding environment to keep thermal balance between body heat produced and body heat loss. The main bottleneck which is associated with textile materials to be successful as thermal insulation materials can be enumerated as; firstly, high loft or bulkiness of material so as to provide predetermined amount of insulation by ensuring sufficient trapping of air. Secondly, the insulation depends on forced convection; such convective heat loss cannot be prevented by textile material. Third is that the textile alone cannot reach the level of thermal conductivity lower than 0.025 W/ m.k of air. Perhaps, nano-fibers can do so, but still, mass production and cost-effectiveness is a problem. Finally, such high loft materials for thermal insulation becomes heavier and uneasy to manage especially when required to carry over a body. The proposed works aim at developing lightweight effective thermal insulation textiles in combination with nanoporous silica-gel which provides the fundamental basis for the optimization of material properties to achieve good performance of the clothing system. This flexible nonwoven silica-gel composites fabric in intact monolith was successfully developed by reinforcing SiO2-gel in thermal bonded nonwoven fabric via sol-gel processing. Ambient Pressure Drying method is opted for silica gel preparation for cost-effective manufacturing. The formed structure of the nonwoven / SiO₂ -gel composites were analyzed, and the transfer properties were measured. The effects of structure and fibre on the thermal properties of the SiO₂-gel composites were evaluated. Samples are then tested against untreated samples of same GSM in order to study the effect of SiO₂-gel application on various properties of nonwoven fabric. The nonwoven fabric composites reinforced with aerogel showed intact monolith structure were also analyzed for their surface structure, functional group present, microscopic images. Developed product reveals a significant reduction in pores' size and air permeability than the conventional nonwoven fabric. Composite made from polyester fibre with lower GSM shows lowest thermal conductivity. Results obtained were statistically analyzed by using STATISTICA-6 software for their level of significance. Univariate tests of significance for various parameters are practiced which gives the P value for analyzing significance level along with that regression summary for dependent variable are also studied to obtain correlation coefficient.

Keywords: silica-gel, heat insulation, nonwoven fabric, thermal barrier clothing

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