CuCo2O4 films with different morphologies of either mesoporous nanosheets, cubic, compact‐granular, or agglomerated embossing structures are fabricated via a hydrothermal growth technique using ...various solvents, and their bifunctional activities, electrochemical energy storage and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for water splitting catalysis in strong alkaline KOH media, are investigated. It is observed that the solvents play an important role in setting the surface morphology and size of the crystallites by controlling nucleation and growth rate. An optimized mesoporous CuCo2O4 nanosheet electrode shows a high specific capacitance of 1658 F g−1 at 1 A g−1 with excellent restoring capability of ≈99% at 2 A g−1 and superior energy density of 132.64 Wh kg−1 at a power density of 0.72 kW kg−1. The CuCo2O4 electrode also exhibits excellent endurance performance with capacity retention of 90% and coulombic efficiency of ≈99% after 5000 charge/discharge cycles. The best OER activity is obtained from the CuCo2O4 nanosheet sample with the lowest overpotential of ≈290 mV at 20 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope of 117 mV dec−1. The superior bifunctional electrochemical activity of the mesoporous CuCo2O4 nanosheet is a result of electrochemically favorable 2D morphology, which leads to the formation of a very large electrochemically active surface area.
The direct growth of shape‐controlled CuCo2O4 electrodes on a 3D architecture of Ni foam is achieved via a hydrothermal growth technique using various solvents, followed by air annealing treatment. The high bifunctional electrochemical activity of the mesoporous CuCo2O4 nanosheet is a result of the electrochemically favorable 2D morphology, which leads to the formation of a very large electrochemically active surface area.
On-demand service is the main feature of the 5G network, and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides it by virtualizing the existing 5G network infrastructure. NFV crafts various virtual ...networks on a shared physical network, but one of the core challenges in future 5G networks is to automate the modeling of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) and end-to-end Network Service (NS) orchestration with less human interaction. Traditionally, the descriptor of VNF and NS is created manually, which requires expert-level skills. This manual approach has a big threat of human error, which can be avoided by using the Intent-Based Networking (IBN) approach. The IBN approach eliminates the requirement of expertise for designing VNFs and NS by taking users’ intentions as an input. In this paper, the proposed system presents the Intent Management System for VNF modeling and end-to-end NS orchestration for multi-platforms. This system takes the high-level information related to a specific service, configures it accordingly, and converts it into the selected platform. The proposed system is tested using Mobile Central Office Re-architected as Data Center (M-CORD) and Open-Source Management and Orchestration (OSM) orchestrators. The results section shows that the proposed system reduces the effort of the end-user in creating network slices and provides seamless end-to-end service orchestration.
Summary
Replacing oxygen in an oxide‐based material with sulfur can produce improved flexibility and more efficient electron transport in its structure leading to enhanced electrical performance. ...Herein, facile template‐free growth of free‐standing cobalt (II, III) oxide (Co3O4) on Ni foam via a mild hydrothermal technique followed by its transformation to cobalt (II, III) sulfide (Co3S4) via an ion‐exchange is reported. The microstructural morphology, phase, and porosity of the prepared Co3O4 and Co3S4 are characterized by FESEM, XRD, Raman, XPS, TEM, and BET analyses. The electrochemical performance of the Co3S4 film with a microporous morphology is considerably superior to that of Co3O4, exhibiting a high specific capacitance of 1604 F g−1 (905 F g−1 for Co3O4), the excellent restorative ability of ~99% at 1 A g−1 (~96% for Co3O4), and good retention of 98% at 10 A g−1 (~70% for Co3O4). The Co3S4 electrode shows excellent capacitance endurance even after 10 000 charge/discharge cycles and a high energy density of 128.32 Wh kg−1 at 0.72 kW kg−1. A fabricated symmetric Co3S4 supercapacitor device also reveals superior charge/discharge, restorative, and retention performances compared to a Co3O4 one. The excellent supercapacitive performance of phase‐transformed Co3S4 electrode is due its large electrochemically active surface area along with synergetic effect of small charge transfer resistance and high relative diffusion coefficient.
Ion‐exchange synthesis of polyhedral Co3S4 on the three‐dimensional architecture of Ni foam with a desirable microporous morphology is reported along with its impressive electrochemical energy storage performance in alkaline KOH medium. The fabricated symmetric supercapacitor cell exhibits an outstanding supercapacitive performance due to the enhanced conductivity (resistivity ~10−4 Ω), low electronegativity, and efficient electron transport endowed with flexible material structure of Co3S4 than its oxide counterpart.
The high-activity of metallic nanofilament array (NFA) embedded tungsten oxide (WO
3
) bifunctional electrodes for electrochromism and electrochemical energy storage is presented. The NFA reduces ...charge transfer resistance and increases the electrochemically active surface area at the electrode-electrolyte interface. The NFA-embedded WO
3
electrode exhibits a specific capacity of 214 F g
−1
(pristine WO
3
: 133 F g
−1
) at 0.25 mA cm
−2
, excellent cycling stability with ∼92% capacitance retention after 2000 cycles (pristine WO
3
: ∼75% capacitance retention) and a coloration efficiency of 128 cm
2
C
−1
(pristine WO
3
: 91 cm
2
C
−1
) with superb optical modulation. These properties are significantly more advanced compared to the pristine WO
3
electrode and superior to previously reported WO
3
-based composites and nanostructured materials.
Nanofilament array embedded metal oxide for a highly efficient electrochemical electrode.
In this paper, a cooperative wireless system with unreliable wireless backhaul connections is investigated. To increase the throughput and maximize the receiver signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), a ...selection combining (SC) protocol is employed. Cooperative transmitters are connected to the control unit (CU) via independent but unreliable wireless backhaul connections. Simultaneously taking into account the reliability of each backhaul and different fading conditions of Nakagami-m fading channels, the statistical properties of the effective SNR (e-SNR) at the receiver are investigated. Closed-form expressions are derived for several performance metrics, including the outage probability, average spectral efficiency (ASE), and average symbol error rate (ASER). The effects of backhaul reliability on these performance metrics are also investigated. The scaling relationship between the convergence behavior of these performance metrics and the conventional diversity gain is also analytically investigated in the asymptotic high-SNR regime. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to verify the derived impact of backhaul reliability on the performance.
The fifth-generation mobile network presents a wide range of services which have different requirements in terms of performance, bandwidth, reliability, and latency. The legacy networks are not ...capable to handle these diverse services with the same physical infrastructure. In this way, network virtualization presents a reliable solution named network slicing that supports service heterogeneity and provides differentiated resources to each service. Network slicing enables network operators to create multiple logical networks over a common physical infrastructure. In this research article, we have designed and implemented an intent-based network slicing system that can slice and manage the core network and radio access network (RAN) resources efficiently. It is an automated system, where users just need to provide higher-level network configurations in the form of intents/contracts for a network slice, and in return, our system deploys and configures the requested resources accordingly. Further, our system grants the automation of the network configurations process and reduces the manual effort. It has an intent-based networking (IBN) tool which can control, manage, and monitor the network slice resources properly. Moreover, a deep learning model, the generative adversarial neural network (GAN), has been used for the management of network resources. Several tests have been carried out with our system by creating three slices, which shows better performance in terms of bandwidth and latency.
The development of an earth abundant, low‐cost, and energy‐efficient electrocatalyst with robust adhesion is highly essential for the generation of hydrogen fuel. Herein, the outstanding overall ...water splitting performance of a CuCo2O4 catalyst which is fabricated using a hydrothermal process is reported. The performance optimization is done through engineering the surface structure and size of the CuCo2O4 catalyst, without altering its chemical composition and crystallinity. Different solvents used in the hydrothermal growth tune the morphology of CuCo2O4 from porous 2‐dimensional nanosheets through cubes and grains to agglomerated spheres. An optimized 2‐dimensional nanosheet CuCo2O4 catalyst exhibits superior electrochemical performance for both hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction, achieving the smallest overpotential of 115 and 290 mV versus a reversible hydrogen electrode, respectively, at 10 mA cm−2 with excellent long‐term stability under an alkaline electrolyte medium (1.0 m KOH). This highly stable and electrochemically active bifunctional electrocatalyst can deliver a cell voltage of 1.64 V at 10 mA cm−2 under alkaline condition. Moreover, the correlation between electrochemical catalytic activity with solvent viscosity is manifested in the present study, which reveals that a change in morphologies causes the catalytically active surface area to vary and influences the intrinsic reaction kinetics.
Template‐free morphologically engineered CuCo2O4 nanocatalysts are directly fabricated on Ni foam via a single‐step hydrothermal growth technique. A 2‐dimensional porous nanosheet CuCo2O4 catalyst shows a highly efficient bifunctional electrochemical water splitting activity. This is the consequence of a porous 2‐dimensional nanosheet morphology which endows large electrocatalytically active surface and short diffusion pathways for electrons/ions during electrochemical reaction.
This study aims to determine whether serum Beta hCG can be used as a tumour marker in Breast malignancies. The objective of this study is to evaluate the serum Beta hCG in various stages of breast ...carcinoma and to correlate its level with disease severity and prognosis. Cross sectional analytical study of assessing serum Beta hCG in 200 patients with palpable breast malignancies at hospitals in urban Mangalore, India. In our study there was No increase in serum Beta hCG, in women with breast malignancies, but there was a pattern amongst the negative results. A Beta hCG of < 5mIU/mL is taken as negative, but in our study of 200 individuals, a mean value of 2mIU/mL was used as differentiation between low and high risk individuals. With our study we tried to correlate the value of Beta hCG with malignant breast lesions, and even though women with such lesions did not have a value of > 5mIU/mL, we found substantial evidence that women who had a value of > 2mIU/mL had a more advanced disease, be it in terms of staging, and comparing it with markers like ki67. A direct correlation between Beta hCG and severity of the disease in terms of staging was proved, hereby directly affecting the outcome of patients. Higher the level of Beta hCG, graver the prognosis. Even though Beta hCG cannot be used as tumour marker, it can be used to prognosticate the severity in women with palpable breast malignancies.
Network slicing in 5G is a solution to accommodate a wide range of services. It also enables the network operators to establish multiple end-to-end (e2e) logically isolated and customized networks ...with shared or dedicated resources over the same infrastructure. Although, many tools and platforms have been developed to accomplish the management and orchestration (MANO) of e2e network slicing automatically, it is still challenging. Each of these platforms requires expertise and manual effort to define the requirements for the provisioning of the resources. The other issue is the generation of well-defined network slice configurations with lifecycle parameters. To this end, this paper proposes an efficient solution that automates the configuration process and performs the management and orchestration of network slices. This solution contains a one-touch Intent-based Networking (IBN) platform that effectively orchestrates and manages the lifecycle of multi-domain slice resources. IBN automates the process of slice configuration generation, service provisioning, service update, and service assurance by eliminating experts and manual effort. Furthermore, it has an intelligent Deep Learning (DL) based resource update and assurance mechanism which handles the run-time resource scalability and assurance.
A significant number of nucleic acid therapies have been approved, highlighting the vast potential of nucleic acid therapeutics. Although numerous delivery strategies have been investigated, and ...progress has been made in nucleic acid delivery systems, the oral delivery route still presents a significant obstacle. Recently, a novel and promising force in oral nucleic acid delivery has emerged, namely Decoctosomes and Bencaosomes, obtained from the decoction of natural herbs, which refers to boiled Chinese herbal medicines. The active components of Decoctosomes include small molecules, peptides, and small RNAs (sRNAs). sRNAs were the first targets of extensive research. Additionally, Bencaosomes have been proven effective in several disease mouse models as artificially enhanced decoctosome products. This perspective summarizes the development and possible future directions of Decoctosomes and Bencaosomes, two varieties of nanoparticles that may open the door to new possibilities in nucleic acid therapy.
Recently, two new types of herbal nano‐products, Decoctosomes and Bencaosomes, were discovered. This perspective provides a concise overview of the advancement and possible future pathways of oral nucleic acid treatments, which have introduced a novel path for therapeutic interventions.
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