Investigating the activity of Ca2Fe2O5 additives on the thermochemical energy storage performance of limestone waste.

Efficient and reliable energy storage systems are necessary to address the intermittency and variability of renewable energy sources. Thermochemical energy storage (TCES) has emerged as a promising solution for long-term renewable energy storage, with limestone being a widely studied material due to its abundance and high energy density. However, the practical implementation of limestone-based TCES systems faces challenges related to performance degradation upon multiple energy storage/release cycles, impacting their long-term viability and efficiency. In this study, we investigate the activity of Ca2Fe2O5 additives on the thermochemical energy storage performance of limestone waste. Ca2Fe2O5 additives were synthesized by a wet precipitation method using three different Ca/Fe molar ratios and added to limestone waste in a 5, 10, and 20 weight concentration. The synthesized samples were characterized using XRD, SEM, EDS, BET, and XPS techniques. The thermal properties and heat storage performance of the samples were evaluated through thermogravimetric analysis of calcination/carbonation cycling experiments. The results demonstrate the potential of Ca2Fe2O5 additives to improve the cycling stability and energy storage density of limestone-based TCES systems. The sample with 5 wt% of Ca2Fe2O5 additive having Ca : Fe molar ratio of 1 : 1 outperformed all samples with an effective conversion rate of 0.21 after 40 cycles, 1.31 times higher than limestone waste.

Adverse drug reaction profile of daily regimen antituberculosis treatment.

Objectives: The objective was to estimate the proportion of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to daily regimen antituberculosis treatment (ATT) among the ADRs received in the ADR monitoring center (AMC) of the institution and to describe its pattern. Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive study conducted in the Department of Pharmacology of a Government Medical College in Central Kerala and the period under study was October 2017-June 2020. The data on ADR were entered into a structured pro forma and data were analyzed using SPSS for Windows Version 16.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA). Results: Of the 643 ADRs, 98 (15.24%) were suspected to be due to the daily regimen of ATT. The most common organ system affected was hepatobiliary 46 (46.9%) namely hepatitis in 35 and asymptomatic elevated liver enzymes in 11 followed by eye with 26 reports of decreased vision. In 96 (97.95%), the suspected ADR had probable causality and in 2 (2.04%) it was possible. Seventy-seven (78.6%) ADR reports were serious as well as moderate-level 4b in severity and 57 (58.16%) were probably preventable. The mean days of onset of ADR after starting the ATT regimen were 56.40 ± 58.29 days (range 1-180). Decrease in vision with a mean duration of 125.23 ± 55.46 days had the longest latency in onset among all the ADRs. Conclusions: Of all the ADRs reported to AMC 15.24% were due to the daily regimen of ATT. Hepatitis was the most common ADR encountered followed by decrease in vision. The majority of the ADRs were probable in causality, serious, moderate-level 4b in severity, and probably preventable.

Innate Immune Cytokine Profiling and Biomarker Identification for Outcome in Dengue Patients.

Background: Early biomarkers of progression to severe dengue are urgently required to enable effective patient management and control treatment costs. Innate immune cells, which comprise the earliest responders to infection and along with the cytokines and chemokines they secrete, play a vital role in orchestrating the subsequent adaptive immune response and have been implicated in the enhancement of infection and "cytokine storm" associated with dengue severity. We investigated the early innate immune cytokine profile of dengue patients during acute phase of disease in a prospective blinded study that included subjects with acute dengue and febrile controls from four major hospitals in Bengaluru, India along with healthy controls. We used intracellular cytokine staining and flow cytometry to identify innate immune biomarkers that can predict progression to severe dengue. Results: Dengue infection resulted in enhanced secretion of multiple cytokines by all queried innate immune cell subsets, dominated by TNF-α from CD56+CD3+ NKT cells, monocyte subsets, and granulocytes along with IFN-γ from CD56+CD3+ NKT cells. Of note, significantly higher proportions of TNF-α secreting granulocytes and monocyte subsets at admission were associated with mild dengue and minimal symptoms. Dengue NS1 antigenemia used as a surrogate of viral load directly correlated with proportion of cytokine-secreting innate immune cells and was significantly higher in those who went on to recover with minimal symptoms. In patients with secondary dengue or those with bleeding or elevated liver enzymes who revealed predisposition to severe outcomes, early activation as well as efficient downregulation of innate responses were compromised. Conclusion: Our findings suggested that faulty/delayed kinetics of innate immune activation and downregulation was a driver of disease severity. We identified IFN-γ+CD56+CD3+ NKT cells and IL-6+ granulocytes at admission as novel early biomarkers that can predict the risk of progression to severity (composite AUC = 0.85-0.9). Strong correlations among multiple cytokine-secreting innate cell subsets revealed that coordinated early activation of the entire innate immune system in response to dengue virus infection contributed to resolution of infection and speedy recovery.

Femtosecond Laser Assisted Crystallization of Gold Thin Films.

We propose a novel low temperature annealing method for selective crystallization of gold thin films. Our method is based on a non-melt process using highly overlapped ultrashort laser pulses at a fluence below the damage threshold. Three different wavelengths of a femtosecond laser with the fundamental (1030 nm), second (515 nm) and third (343 nm) harmonic are used to crystallize 18-nm and 39-nm thick room temperature deposited gold thin films on a quartz substrate. Comparison of laser wavelengths confirms that improvements in electrical conductivity up to 40% are achievable for 18-nm gold film when treated with the 515-nm laser, and the 343-nm laser was found to be more effective in crystallizing 39-nm gold films with 29% improvement in the crystallinity. A two-temperature model provides an insight into ultrashort laser interactions with gold thin films and predicts that applied fluence was insufficient to cause melting of gold films. The simulation results suggest that non-equilibrium energy transfer between electrons and lattice leads to a solid-state and melt-free crystallization process. The proposed low fluence femtosecond laser processing method offers a possible solution for a melt-free thin film crystallization for wide industrial applications.

Crystallographic Characterisation of Ultra-Thin, or Amorphous Transparent Conducting Oxides-The Case for Raman Spectroscopy.

The electronic and optical properties of transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are closely linked to their crystallographic structure on a macroscopic (grain sizes) and microscopic (bond structure) level. With the increasing drive towards using reduced film thicknesses in devices and growing interest in amorphous TCOs such as n-type InGaZnO 4 (IGZO), ZnSnO 3 (ZTO), p-type Cu x CrO 2 , or ZnRh 2 O 4 , the task of gaining in-depth knowledge on their crystal structure by conventional X-ray diffraction-based measurements are becoming increasingly difficult. We demonstrate the use of a focal shift based background subtraction technique for Raman spectroscopy specifically developed for the case of transparent thin films on amorphous substrates. Using this technique we demonstrate, for a variety of TCOs CuO, a-ZTO, ZnO:Al), how changes in local vibrational modes reflect changes in the composition of the TCO and consequently their electronic properties.

Importance of Local Bond Order to Conduction in Amorphous, Transparent, Conducting Oxides: The Case of Amorphous ZnSnOy.

In this report, reactive and nonreactive sputtering of amorphous ZnSnOy (a-ZnSnOy) was investigated, and extensive composition maps have been measured by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The comprehensive analysis of the ((ZnO)x(SnO2)1-x) composition reveals that the best Zn/Sn ratio for high conductivity of the material can vary depending on the deposition technique utilized. Best conductivities of 225 S/cm were found to occur at x = 0.32 for reactive sputtering of a Sn target and x = 0.27 for nonreactive sputtering of a SnO2 target. These values correspond to unstable polymorphs of a-ZnSnOy, ZnSn2O5, and ZnSn3O7. Distinct local bonding arrangements have been confirmed by Raman spectroscopy.

Modulation of seminal plasma content in extended semen improves the quality attributes of ram spermatozoa following liquid preservation at 3-5°C.

Seminal plasma (SP) is known to induce motility and capacitation in spermatozoa curtailing their lifespan when preserved. Hence, this study was conducted to examine the effects of removal of SP from sperm surface prior to liquid preservation either by high dilution (1/15) or by washing and the poststorage treatment with SP (15% and 25%, v/v) on the quality attributes of liquid-preserved ram semen. Over the period of storage, the rapid motility (66.0% and 71.1% vs. 58.3%), straightness (87.1% and 82.1% vs. 79.4%), average path velocity (152.3 and 152.0 µm/s vs. 133.3 µm/s) and the straight-line velocity (131.3 and 127.8 µm/s vs. 108.5 µm/s) were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in both the high-dilution and wash groups as compared to the control (1/3 dilution). The functional membrane integrity (82.3% vs. 77.2%) and noncapacitated sperm count (65.0% vs. 58.7%) were also significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the high-dilution and wash groups, respectively, as compared to the control. The poststorage treatment of sperm with SP significantly (p < 0.05) increased the functional membrane integrity (70.1% vs. 53.8%) and most of the motility attributes as compared to the control (without SP). In conclusion, both the removal of SP prior to liquid preservation and poststorage treatment with SP significantly improved the quality attributes of ram spermatozoa.

Prime-boost using separate oncolytic viruses in combination with checkpoint blockade improves anti-tumour therapy.

The anti-tumour effects associated with oncolytic virus therapy are mediated significantly through immune-mediated mechanisms, which depend both on the type of virus and the route of delivery. Here, we show that intra-tumoral oncolysis by Reovirus induced the priming of a CD8+, Th1-type anti-tumour response. By contrast, systemically delivered Vesicular Stomatitis Virus expressing a cDNA library of melanoma antigens (VSV-ASMEL) promoted a potent anti-tumour CD4+ Th17 response. Therefore, we hypothesised that combining the Reovirus-induced CD8+ T cell response, with the VSV-ASMEL CD4+ Th17 helper response, would produce enhanced anti-tumour activity. Consistent with this, priming with intra-tumoral Reovirus, followed by an intra-venous VSV-ASMEL Th17 boost, significantly improved survival of mice bearing established subcutaneous B16 melanoma tumours. We also show that combination of either therapy alone with anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint blockade augmented both the Th1 response induced by systemically delivered Reovirus in combination with GM-CSF, and also the Th17 response induced by VSV-ASMEL. Significantly, anti-PD-1 also uncovered an anti-tumour Th1 response following VSV-ASMEL treatment that was not seen in the absence of checkpoint blockade. Finally, the combination of all three treatments (priming with systemically delivered Reovirus, followed by double boosting with systemic VSV-ASMEL and anti-PD-1) significantly enhanced survival, with long-term cures, compared to any individual, or double, combination therapies, associated with strong Th1 and Th17 responses to tumour antigens. Our data show that it is possible to generate fully systemic, highly effective anti-tumour immunovirotherapy by combining oncolytic viruses, along with immune checkpoint blockade, to induce complementary mechanisms of anti-tumour immune responses.

Measurement of deposition rate and ion energy distribution in a pulsed dc magnetron sputtering system using a retarding field analyzer with embedded quartz crystal microbalance.

A compact retarding field analyzer with embedded quartz crystal microbalance has been developed to measure deposition rate, ionized flux fraction, and ion energy distribution arriving at the substrate location. The sensor can be placed on grounded, electrically floating, or radio frequency (rf) biased electrodes. A calibration method is presented to compensate for temperature effects in the quartz crystal. The metal deposition rate, metal ionization fraction, and energy distribution of the ions arriving at the substrate location are investigated in an asymmetric bipolar pulsed dc magnetron sputtering reactor under grounded, floating, and rf biased conditions. The diagnostic presented in this research work does not suffer from complications caused by water cooling arrangements to maintain constant temperature and is an attractive technique for characterizing a thin film deposition system.

Facile Diversity-Oriented Synthesis of Polycyclic Pyridines and Their Cytotoxicity Effects in Human Cancer Cell Lines.

A three-component cascade method has been developed for the direct synthesis of polysubstituted pyridines. This strategy provides a very convenient route to pyridines using a variety of ß-bromo-α,ß-unsaturated aldehydes, 1,3-diketones, and ammonium acetate without any additional catalyst or metal salt under mild conditions. A variety of ß-ketoesters and 4-hydroxycoumarin were also used instead of 1,3-diketones for the diverse synthesis of polycyclic pyridines. One of the synthesized pyridines has been unambiguously established by a single crystal XRD study. All of the synthesized pyridine derivatives were evaluated for their antiproliferative properties in vitro against the human cancer cell lines HeLa, Me180, and ZR751. Compounds 4{4,1} and 4{2,4} showed significant cytotoxicity in the human breast cancer cell line ZR751 and cervical cancer cell line Me180, respectively, and a few other compounds were found to have moderate activities.

Pulsed-Plasma Physical Vapor Deposition Approach Toward the Facile Synthesis of Multilayer and Monolayer Graphene for Anticoagulation Applications.

We demonstrate the growth of multilayer and single-layer graphene on copper foil using bipolar pulsed direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering of a graphite target in pure argon atmosphere. Single-layer graphene (SG) and few-layer graphene (FLG) films are deposited at temperatures ranging from 700 °C to 920 °C within <30 min. We find that the deposition and post-deposition annealing temperatures influence the layer thickness and quality of the graphene films formed. The films were characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and optical transmission spectroscopy techniques. Based on the above studies, a diffusion-controlled mechanism was proposed for the graphene growth. A single-step whole blood assay was used to investigate the anticoagulant activity of graphene surfaces. Platelet adhesion, activation, and morphological changes on the graphene/glass surfaces, compared to bare glass, were analyzed using fluorescence microscopy and SEM techniques. We have found significant suppression of the platelet adhesion, activation, and aggregation on the graphene-covered surfaces, compared to the bare glass, indicating the anticoagulant activity of the deposited graphene films. Our production technique represents an industrially relevant method for the growth of SG and FLG for various applications including the biomedical field.

Use of the HPRT gene to study nuclease-induced DNA double-strand break repair.

Understanding the mechanisms of chromosomal double-strand break repair (DSBR) provides insight into genome instability, oncogenesis and genome engineering, including disease gene correction. Research into DSBR exploits rare-cutting endonucleases to cleave exogenous reporter constructs integrated into the genome. Multiple reporter constructs have been developed to detect various DSBR pathways. Here, using a single endogenous reporter gene, the X-chromosomal disease gene encoding hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT), we monitor the relative utilization of three DSBR pathways following cleavage by I-SceI or CRISPR/Cas9 nucleases. For I-SceI, our estimated frequencies of accurate or mutagenic non-homologous end-joining and gene correction by homologous recombination are 4.1, 1.5 and 0.16%, respectively. Unexpectedly, I-SceI and Cas9 induced markedly different DSBR profiles. Also, using an I-SceI-sensitive HPRT minigene, we show that gene correction is more efficient when using long double-stranded DNA than single- or double-stranded oligonucleotides. Finally, using both endogenous HPRT and exogenous reporters, we validate novel cell cycle phase-specific I-SceI derivatives for investigating cell cycle variations in DSBR. The results obtained using these novel approaches provide new insights into template design for gene correction and the relationships between multiple DSBR pathways at a single endogenous disease gene.

A simple nonlinear PD controller for integrating processes.

Many industrial processes are found to be integrating in nature, for which widely used Ziegler-Nichols tuned PID controllers usually fail to provide satisfactory performance due to excessive overshoot with large settling time. Although, IMC (Internal Model Control) based PID controllers are capable to reduce the overshoot, but little improvement is found in the load disturbance response. Here, we propose an auto-tuning proportional-derivative controller (APD) where a nonlinear gain updating factor α continuously adjusts the proportional and derivative gains to achieve an overall improved performance during set point change as well as load disturbance. The value of α is obtained by a simple relation based on the instantaneous values of normalized error (eN) and change of error (ΔeN) of the controlled variable. Performance of the proposed nonlinear PD controller (APD) is tested and compared with other PD and PID tuning rules for pure integrating plus delay (IPD) and first-order integrating plus delay (FOIPD) processes. Effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified on a laboratory scale servo position control system.

Prediction of protein secondary structure using probability based features and a hybrid system.

In this paper, we propose some co-occurrence probability-based features for prediction of protein secondary structure. The features are extracted using occurrence/nonoccurrence of secondary structures in the protein sequences. We explore two types of features: position-specific (based on position of amino acid on fragments of protein sequences) as well as position-independent (independent of amino acid position on fragments of protein sequences). We use a hybrid system, NEUROSVM, consisting of neural networks and support vector machines for classification of secondary structures. We propose two schemes NSVMps and NSVM for protein secondary structure prediction. The NSVMps uses position-specific probability-based features and NEUROSVM classifier whereas NSVM uses the same classifier with position-independent probability-based features. The proposed method falls in the single-sequence category of methods because it does not use any sequence profile information such as position specific scoring matrices (PSSM) derived from PSI-BLAST. Two widely used datasets RS126 and CB513 are used in the experiments. The results obtained using the proposed features and NEUROSVM classifier are better than most of the existing single-sequence prediction methods. Most importantly, the results using NSVMps that are obtained using lower dimensional features, are comparable to those by other existing methods. The NSVMps and NSVM are finally tested on target proteins of the critical assessment of protein structure prediction experiment-9 (CASP9). A larger dataset is used to compare the performance of the proposed methods with that of two recent single-sequence prediction methods. We also investigate the impact of presence of different amino acid residues (in protein sequences) that are responsible for the formation of different secondary structures.

Soft x-ray spectroscopic investigation of Zn doped CuCl produced by pulsed dc magnetron sputtering.

We report on a systematic investigation of the electronic properties of UV-light emitting Zn doped CuCl thin films implemented using near edge x-ray absorption fine structures (NEXAFS) and high-resolution x-ray photoemission spectroscopy. A clear shift of the valence band maximum towards higher binding energy by 0.2 ± 0.1 eV was observed in Zn doped CuCl as compared to undoped CuCl. This shift is in correlation with the increase in conductivity measured by the Hall effect measurements. A decrease in the optical band gap of CuCl film is also observed as a function of Zn doping. The profound changes in the full width at half maximum and the gradual disappearance of satellite features of Cu 2p core level photoemission as a function of Zn dopant are attributed to the reduced presence of the surface layer of Cu(2+) species with d(9) configuration in the doped films. These investigations help us to understand the doping mechanisms and underlying physics. The reduced presence of the Cu(2+) related surface layer as a function of Zn doping is also verified using NEXAFS.

Protection and functionalisation of silver as an optical sensing platform for highly sensitive SPR based analysis.

Silver thin films are well known as the most sensitive material for surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based analysis. However, the use of silver for this purpose is limited by three main issues, namely poor adhesion to plastic substrates, chemical instability in both air and aqueous environments and hence the difficulty in functionalizing the silver coated substrate for immobilizing biomolecular ligands by conventional liquid phase methods. In this work, we have successfully addressed these problems using gas-phase coating processes. We demonstrate highly adherent sputter-deposited silver coatings on low cost polymer substrates using a sputter-deposited thin gold adhesion layer. The problems of chemical instability and functionalisation have been addressed by using the gas phase process of plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) to deposit thin films with a base SiO(x)C(y)H(z) layer (using tetraethyl orthosilicate precursor) functionalised with carboxylic acid (from sequential deposition with acrylic acid precursor). The resultant coating serves as a protective layer against degradation of the optical properties of silver under long term storage and use in ambient conditions. The reactive carboxyl functionality is used for the covalent immobilization of biomolecules. The successful stabilisation and functionalization of silver films on plastic sensor chips is demonstrated by mouse IgG immunoassays. The expected superior performance of the silver thin films over gold thin films for SPR analysis is demonstrated.

Performance improvement of PI controllers through dynamic set-point weighting.

Responses of high-order systems under Ziegler-Nichols tuned PI controllers (ZNPIs) are characterized by excessive oscillation with a large overshoot. Although, a fixed set-point weighting based PI controller (FSWPI) may decrease the overshoot considerably, it fails to reduce the oscillation in the set-point response. Moreover, both FSWPI and ZNPI exhibit equally poor load regulation. Keeping in mind an overall improved performance, we propose an online dynamic set-point weighting technique for ZNPIs. The dynamic set-point weighting factor (ß(d)) is heuristically derived from the instantaneous process trend. Performance of the proposed dynamic set-point weighting based PI controller (DSWPI) for various second- and third-order processes including a pH process shows a significant improvement during both the set-point and load disturbance responses over other methods. Stability and robustness of the proposed DSWPI are addressed. Effectiveness of the DSWPI is demonstrated through the real-time implementation on a practical DC position control system.

An improved auto-tuning scheme for PID controllers.

An improved auto-tuning scheme is proposed for Ziegler-Nichols (ZN) tuned PID controllers (ZNPIDs), which usually provide excessively large overshoots, not tolerable in most of the situations, for high-order and nonlinear processes. To overcome this limitation ZNPIDs are upgraded by some easily interpretable heuristic rules through an online gain modifying factor defined on the instantaneous process states. This study is an extension of our earlier work [Mudi RK., Dey C. Lee TT. An improved auto-tuning scheme for PI controllers. ISA Trans 2008; 47: 45-52] to ZNPIDs, thereby making the scheme suitable for a wide range of processes and more generalized too. The proposed augmented ZNPID (AZNPID) is tested on various high-order linear and nonlinear dead-time processes with improved performance over ZNPID, refined ZNPID (RZNPID), and other schemes reported in the literature. Stability issues are addressed for linear processes. Robust performance of AZNPID is observed while changing its tunable parameters as well as the process dead-time. The proposed scheme is also implemented on a real time servo-based position control system.

CodY activates transcription of a small RNA in Bacillus subtilis.

Regulatory small RNAs (sRNAs) in bacterial genomes have become a focus of research over the past 8 years. Whereas more than 100 such sRNAs have been found in Escherichia coli, relatively little is known about sRNAs in gram-positive bacteria. Using a computational approach, we identified two sRNAs in intergenic regions of the Bacillus subtilis genome, SR1 and SR2 (renamed BsrF). Recently, we demonstrated that SR1 inhibits the translation initiation of the transcriptional activator AhrC. Here, we describe detection of BsrF, its expression profile, and its regulation by CodY. Furthermore, we mapped the secondary structure of BsrF. BsrF is expressed in complex and minimal media in all growth phases in B. subtilis and, with a similar expression profile, also in Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. Neither overexpression nor deletion of bsrF affected the growth of B. subtilis. BsrF was found to be long-lived in complex and minimal media. Analysis of 13 putative transcription factor binding sites upstream of bsrF revealed only an effect for CodY. Here, we showed by using Northern blotting, lacZ reporter gene fusions, in vitro transcription, and DNase I footprinting that the transcription of bsrF is activated by CodY in the presence of branched-chain amino acids and GTP. Furthermore, BsrF transcription was increased 1.5- to 2-fold by glucose in the presence of branched-chain amino acids, and this increase was independent of the known glucose-dependent regulators. BsrF is the second target for which transcriptional activation by CodY has been discovered.

Inducible clindamycin resistance among clinical isolates of Staphylococci.

INTRODUCTION: Clinical failure of clindamycin therapy has been reported due to multiple mechanisms that confer resistance to macrolide, lincosamide and streptogramin antibiotics. This study was undertaken to detect the presence of inducible clindamycin resistance among clinical isolates of staphylococci. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The detection of inducible clindamycin resistance was performed by D-test using erythromycin and clindamycin discs as per CDC guidelines. RESULTS: Among the 244 clinical isolates of staphylococci studied, 32 (13.1%) showed inducible clindamycin resistance and belonged to the MLSBi phenotype. Among the MLS B i phenotypes, 10 isolates were methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (38.4% of the total MRSA), 16 were methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (12.9% of the total MSSA) and 6 were coagulase-negative staphylococci (6.3% of the total CONS). CONCLUSION: The test for inducible resistance to clindamycin should be included in the routine antibiotic susceptibility testing, as it will help in guiding therapy.