Green space is considered as the lungs of the city. It has immense health benefits mainly for elderly people. Regular physical activity in green space considerably reduces health risk of ...cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems, high blood pressure, paralysis, diabetes and other chronic diseases. Besides, it facilitates social interactions and promotes the sense of community among the citizens, which is very important for health and wellbeing of people, especially for elderly, because they predominantly suffer from the social isolation problem. The data on self-perceived health status have been obtained while surveying the green space users through survey schedule. About 92.65% of elderly sampled of those people who are reportedly affected by any of such diseases or a combination of multiple. Similarly, in Australia 85–90% of diabetes problems was found among the elderly. UGS benefits must be universal and this can be done through the universalization of its accessibility. This paper answers the questions as, Whether or not the health risk of NCD make elderly people necessary for visiting and using the green space? Whether or not the visit and use of park consequences better preconception on NCD related physical and psychological health? What factors restrict and motivate them to visit the green space? What would be the appropriate planning approach for making it available for neighbourhood residents? The paper finally proposes a participatory, bottom-up planning model as a planning toolkit.
•Regular physical activity in green space considerably reduces the health risk of non-communicable diseases.•Healthy living of elder people demand availability, proximity and regular use of urban green space.•The elderly regular park users self-reportedly affirmed the improved physical health, mood and attention.•Planning for availability of green space at residential proximity is needed to promote accessibility of elder people.
The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic is touching every facet of human lives (e.g., public health, education, economy, transportation, and the environment). This novel pandemic and non-pharmaceutical ...interventions of lockdown and confinement implemented citywide, regionally or nationally are affecting virus transmission, people's travel patterns, and air quality. Many studies have been conducted to predict the diffusion of the COVID-19 disease, assess the impacts of the pandemic on human mobility and on air quality, and assess the impacts of lockdown measures on viral spread with a range of Machine Learning (ML) techniques. This literature review aims to analyze the results from past research to understand the interactions among the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown measures, human mobility, and air quality. The critical review of prior studies indicates that urban form, people's socioeconomic and physical conditions, social cohesion, and social distancing measures significantly affect human mobility and COVID-19 viral transmission. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are inclined to use private transportation for necessary travel to mitigate coronavirus-related health problems. This review study also noticed that COVID-19 related lockdown measures significantly improve air quality by reducing the concentration of air pollutants, which in turn improves the COVID-19 situation by reducing respiratory-related sickness and deaths. It is argued that ML is a powerful, effective, and robust analytic paradigm to handle complex and wicked problems such as a global pandemic. This study also explores the spatio-temporal aspects of lockdown and confinement measures on coronavirus diffusion, human mobility, and air quality. Additionally, we discuss policy implications, which will be helpful for policy makers to take prompt actions to moderate the severity of the pandemic and improve urban environments by adopting data-driven analytic methods.
Perovskite halides are the most promising current candidates for the construction of solar cells and other photovoltaic devices. This is the first theoretical approach to explore the effects of ...Mn-doping on the optoelectronic performance of the lead-free halide CsGeBr3 and the lead-bearing halide CsPbBr3. We have performed the first-principles calculations to investigate the structural, mechanical, electronic, and optical properties of pure and Mn-doped CsGeBr3 and CsPbBr3 perovskite halides in detail. The lattice constants of Mn-doped halides were slightly reduced compared to their pure phases, which is common in materials after doping. The structural stability of both undoped and doped halides was confirmed by their formation enthalpy. Analysis of the mechanical properties revealed the mechanical stability of both undoped and Mn-doped CsGeBr3 and CsPbBr3. The lower values of the bulk modulus suggested potential optoelectronic applications for the halides being studied. Remarkably, the partial substitution of Ge with Mn narrows the bandgap of both Pb-free and Pb halides, enhancing the electron transfer from the valence band to the conduction band, which increased the absorption and conductivity, essential for superior optoelectronic device applications. The combined analysis of mechanical, electronic, and optical properties indicated that the Mn-doped halides, CsGeBr3 and CsPbBr3, are more suitable for the solar cells and optoelectronic applications than undoped CsGeBr3 and CsPbBr3.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has been considered with great importance on correct screening procedure. The detection efficiency of recent variants of concern ...were observed by comparing 5 commercial RT-PCR kits and a SYBR-green method developed and validated in our laboratory. The RNA was extracted from nasopharyngeal samples from suspected COVID-19 patients and RT-PCR assay was performed according to the instruction of the respective manufacturers. The specificity and sensitivity of Maccura kit was 81.8% and 82.5%, A*Star kit was 100% and 75.4%, Da An Gene kit was 100% and 68.4%, Sansure kit was 54.5% and 91.2% and TaqPath kit was 100% and 70.2% respectively. Our in house SYBR-Green method showed a consistent detection result with 90.9% specificity and 91.2% sensitivity. We also found that detection kits targeting more genes showed better accuracy which facilitates less false positive results (< 20%). Our study found a significant difference (p < 0.005) in Ct value reported for common target genes shared by the RT-PCR kits in relation with different variants of COVID-19 infection. Recent variants of concerns contain more than 30 mutations in the spike proteins including 2 deletion and a unique insertion mutation by which makes detection of these variants difficult and these facilitates the variants to escape from being detected.
•Effects of Mg doping on the physical properties of SrMoO3 were studied.•Cohesive energy confirmed the structural stability of undoped and doped systems.•The elastic constants satisfied the Born ...stability criteria.•All the mechanical properties demonstrated the prominent effects of Mg doping.•The Mg addition tuned the band structure of SrMoO3 significantly.
The structural, mechanical, and electronic properties of perovskite molybdates are a topic of frequent study in materials science. In this study, the influence of Mg doping on the physical metallurgy of perovskite molybdates is investigated using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Our calculated optimized lattice parameters (3.9945, 3.8964, 3.8634, 3.8440, and 3.7952 Å mentioned only DFT data, MD data listed in Table 2 for x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 respectively) of SrMo1−xMgxO3 are highly consistent with other experimental results (3.9762, 3.9695, and 3.9649 Å for x = 0, 0.1, and 0.2 respectively) and some available theoretical results (3.9720 Å for x = 0, no previous data available for Mg-doped systems). The calculated elastic constants satisfied the Born stability criteria, indicating that our studied materials are mechanically stable at all doping concentrations, which was also confirmed by the calculated negative values of Cohesive energy. The mechanical behaviors of perovskite, including elastic constants, elastic moduli, ductility, and elastic anisotropy, were investigated and discussed. Our computed results suggest that Mg doping can increase elastic moduli. The calculated Pugh’s ratio increased from 0.42 to 0.71 DFT and from 0.47 to 0.75 MD as well as the Poisson’s ratio decreased from 0.31 to 0.21 DFT and from 0.30 to 0.21 MD which transformed the compound from ductile to brittle due to the addition of Mg at Mo-site. The band structures, density of states, and charge density redistributions of the undoped and Mg-doped materials were predicted. Our simulation outputs clearly illustrated the importance of accounting for Mg doping’s influence in theoretical simulations of the physical properties of the presently studied perovskite material.
The Malayan box turtle (Cuora amboinensis) (MBT) is a vulnerable and protected turtle species, but it is a lucrative item in the illegal wildlife trade because of its great appeal as an exotic food ...item and in traditional medicine. Although several polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays to identify MBT by various routes have been documented, their applicability for forensic authentication remains inconclusive due to the long length of the amplicon targets, which are easily broken down by natural decomposition, environmental stresses or physiochemical treatments during food processing. To address this research gap, we developed, for the first time, a species-specific PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) assay with a very short target length (120 bp) to detect MBT in the food chain; this authentication ensured better security and reliability through molecular fingerprints. The PCR-amplified product was digested with Bfa1 endonuclease, and distinctive restriction fingerprints (72, 43 and 5 bp) for MBT were found upon separation in a microfluidic chip-based automated electrophoresis system, which enhances the resolution of short oligos. The chances of any false negative identifications were eliminated through the use of a universal endogenous control for eukaryotes, and the limit of detection was 0.0001 ng DNA or 0.01% of the meat under admixed states. Finally, the optimized PCR-RFLP assay was validated for the screening of raw and processed commercial meatballs, burgers and frankfurters, which are very popular in most countries. The optimized PCR-RFLP assay was further used to screen MBT materials in 153 traditional Chinese medicines of 17 different brands and 62 of them were found MBT positive; wherein the ingredients were not declared in product labels. Overall, the novel assay demonstrated sufficient merit for use in any forensic and/or archaeological authentication of MBT, even under a state of decomposition.
Species substitution, the use of a low value fish in place of a high value fish, is the biggest problem in international trade and the leading cause of fraud in the fisheries arena sector. Current ...DNA barcoding systems have partly solved this problem but also failed in many instances to amplify PCR targets from highly processed products because of the degradation of a longer barcode marker (~650bp). In the present study, a novel mini barcode marker (295bp) was developed to discriminate fish species in raw and processed states forms. The barcode primers were cross-tested against 33 fish species and 15 other animal species and found to be universal for all the tested fish varieties. When 20 commercial fish products of five different categories were screened, all commercial fish sample yielded positive bands for the novel fish barcode. PCR product was sequenced to retrieve the species IDs that reflected 55% (11/20) of Malaysian fish products were mislabeled.
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•Novel COI mini barcode (295bp) to authenticate fish species.•It was validated against 33 fish and 15 non-fish species.•It is suitable to be used as a universal fish positive control under mixed matrices.•The screening of 22 Malaysian fish products revealed 55% fraud labelling.
Cycas pectinata Buch.-Ham. is commonly used in folk medicine against various disorders. The present study investigated the antidepressant and cytotoxicity activity of methanol extract of C. pectinata ...(MECP) along with quantitative phytochemical analysis by GC-MS method. Here, the GC-MS study of MECP presented 41 compounds, among which most were fatty acids, esters, terpenoids and oximes. The antidepressant activity was assessed by the forced swimming test (FST) and tail suspension test (TST) models. In contrast, MECP (200 and 400 mg/kg) exhibited a significant and dose-dependent manner reduction in immobility comparable with fluoxetine (10 mg/kg) and phenelzine (20 mg/kg). MECP showed a weak toxicity level in the brine shrimp lethality bioassay (ED50: 358.65 µg/mL) comparable to the standard drug vincristine sulfate (ED50: 2.39 µg/mL). Three compounds from the GC-MS study were subjected to density functional theory (DFT) calculations, where only cyclopentadecanone oxime showed positive and negative active binding sites. Cyclopentadecanone oxime also showed a good binding interaction in suppressing depression disorders by blocking monoamine oxidase and serotonin receptors with better pharmacokinetic and toxicological properties. Overall, the MECP exhibited a significant antidepressant activity with moderate toxicity, which required further advance studies to identify the mechanism.
Abstract
A newly invented post-translational modification (PTM), phosphoglycerylation, has shown its essential role in the construction and functional properties of proteins and dangerous human ...diseases. Hence, it is very urgent to know about the molecular mechanism behind the phosphoglycerylation process to develop the drugs for related diseases. But accurately identifying of phosphoglycerylation site from a protein sequence in a laboratory is a very difficult and challenging task. Hence, the construction of an efficient computation model is greatly sought for this purpose. A little number of computational models are currently available for identifying the phosphoglycerylation sites, which are not able to reach their prediction capability at a satisfactory level. Therefore, an effective predictor named PLP_FS has been designed and constructed to identify phosphoglycerylation sites in this study. For the training purpose, an optimal number of feature sets was obtained by fusion of multiple F_Score feature selection techniques from the features generated by three types of sequence-based feature extraction methods and fitted with the support vector machine classification technique to the prediction model. On the other hand, the k-neighbor near cleaning and SMOTE methods were also implemented to balance the benchmark dataset. The suggested model in 10-fold cross-validation obtained an accuracy of 99.22%, a sensitivity of 98.17% and a specificity of 99.75% according to the experimental findings, which are better than other currently available predictors for accurately identifying the phosphoglycerylation sites.
Researchers are currently showing interest in molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)-based solar cells due to their remarkable semiconducting characteristics. The incompatibility of the band structures at the ...BSF/absorber and absorber/buffer interfaces, as well as carrier recombination at the rear and front metal contacts, prevents the expected result from being achieved. The main purpose of this work is to enhance the performance of the newly proposed Al/ITO/TiO2/MoS2/In2Te3/Ni solar cell and investigate the impacts of the In2Te3 BSF and TiO2 buffer layer on the performance parameters of open-circuit voltage (V OC), short-circuit current density (J SC), fill factor (FF), and power conversion efficiency (PCE). This research has been performed by utilizing SCAPS simulation software. The performance parameters such as variation of thickness, carrier concentration, the bulk defect concentration of each layer, interface defect, operating temperature, capacitance–voltage (C–V), surface recombination velocity, and front as well as rear electrodes have been analyzed to achieve a better performance. This device performs exceptionally well at lower carrier concentrations (1 × 1016 cm–3) in a thin (800 nm) MoS2 absorber layer. The PCE, V OC, J SC, and FF values of the Al/ITO/TiO2/MoS2/Ni reference cell have been estimated to be 22.30%, 0.793 V, 30.89 mA/cm2, and 80.62% respectively, while the PCE, V OC, J SC, and FF values have been determined to be 33.32%, 1.084 V, 37.22 mA/cm2, and 82.58% for the Al/ITO/TiO2/MoS2/In2Te3/Ni proposed solar cell by introducing In2Te3 between the absorber (MoS2) and the rear electrode (Ni). The proposed research may give an insight and a feasible way to realize a cost-effective MoS2-based thin-film solar cell.
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