Green synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is gaining attention of researchers because of their varieties of biomedical and environmental applications. This study reported the novel eco‐friendly ...synthesis of AuNPs using green macroalgae Halimeda macroloba (HM) extract and evaluate their photocatalytic potential. The green synthesized H. macroloba mediated gold nanoparticles (HM‐AuNPs) was characterized using UV–visible spectrophotometry, Fourier‐transform infrared (FT‐IR) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope (TEM), scanning electron microscope‐energy dispersive spectroscopy, x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and particle size distribution (PSD) anlaysis. The UV–visible spectrum shows a sharp intense plasmonic resonance peak at 543 nm. The bioactive compounds present in HM were primarily responsible for the biological reduction of gold ions validated by FT‐IR analysis. XRD analysis proved the crystalline face centered cubic structure of the HM‐AuNPs. The average particle size of 18.72 nm and morphological evidences were obtained from the images from TEM. The metallic form of biosynthesised HM‐AuNPs was confirmed by XPS results with a distinctive binding energy. The photocatalytic degradation ability of the green synthesized HM‐AuNPs was investigated against the methylene blue (MB) and methylene orange (MO) dyes under sunlight irradiation. The HM‐AuNPs exhibited 97.23% and 89.91% photocatalytic activity against MB and MO after 90 min of exposure to sunlight, respectively. The overall results of this research indicate that H. macroloba mediated HM‐AuNPs can be used as an effective option for the degradation of industrial dyes.
A network of real time devices that can sense and transmit the information from the deployed environment by using multi hop communication is called as Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs). Despite the ...rapid advancement of WSN, where an increasing number of physical devices so called as sensors nodes are connected with each other, providing the improved security with optimized energy consumption during data transmission, communication and computation remains huge challenge. In wireless sensor networks, numerous sensor nodes are deployed in the physical environment to sense and collect the required information from the given environment. The sensed information is needed to be transmitted from the nodes to the control station in an energy efficient manner. Data aggregation is one kind of techniques which will optimize the energy usage in wireless sensor networks during the data transmission. In data aggregation, the unnecessary data is removed which will significantly reduce energy of the nodes during data transmission. However, collected data during the data aggregation should be completely protected and there are various threats that can be launched by the intruders to carry out unauthorised data access and can cause threat to the integrity of the network. Therefore, ensuring data security during the data aggregation process is very important and essential for the security of the network. In this paper, a Secure Cluster based Data Aggregation Protocol (SCDAP) have been proposed to provide better security through secure authentication and verification process, and to reduce overall energy consumption of the network by implementing secure clustering process to eliminate the redundant data in the network. Moreover, the proposed system is more efficient in generating public and private keys for effective and secure data transmission and verification process. The proposed system is experimentally tested in NS-3 tool and proves that the proposed system reduces high energy consumption, computational and communicational cost, end-to-end delay and improves the packet delivery ratio. Moreover, the proposed system provides better security in the network when compared to other existing systems during the data aggregation.
Chickpea is the most important pulse crop globally after dry beans. Climate change and increased cropping intensity are forcing chickpea cultivation to relatively higher temperature environments. To ...assess the genetic variability and identify heat responsive traits, a set of 296 F
8–9
recombinant inbred lines (RILs) of the cross ICC 4567 (heat sensitive) × ICC 15614 (heat tolerant) was evaluated under field conditions at ICRISAT, Patancheru, India. The experiment was conducted in an alpha lattice design with three replications during the summer seasons of 2013 and 2014 (heat stress environments, average temperature 35 °C and above), and post-rainy season of 2013 (non-stress environment, max. temperature below 30 °C). A two-fold variation for number of filled pods (FPod), total number of seeds (TS), harvest index (HI), percent pod setting (%PodSet) and grain yield (GY) was observed in the RILs under stress environments compared to non-stress environment. A yield penalty ranging from 22.26% (summer 2013) to 33.30% (summer 2014) was recorded in stress environments. Seed mass measured as 100-seed weight (HSW) was the least affected (6 and 7% reduction) trait, while %PodSet was the most affected (45.86 and 44.31% reduction) trait by high temperatures. Mixed model analysis of variance revealed a high genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) (23.29–30.22%), phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) (25.69–32.44%) along with high heritability (80.89–86.89%) for FPod, TS, %PodSet and GY across the heat stress environments. Correlation studies (r = 0.61–0.97) and principal component analysis (PCA) revealed a strong positive association among the traits GY, FPod, VS and %PodSet under stress environments. Path analysis results showed that TS was the major direct and FPod was the major indirect contributors to GY under heat stress environments. Therefore, the traits that are good indicators of high grain yield under heat stress can be used in indirect selection for developing heat tolerant chickpea cultivars. Moreover, the presence of large genetic variation for heat tolerance in the population may provide an opportunity to use the RILs in future-heat tolerance breeding programme in chickpea.
The present investigation describes the development of a novel Chitosan/Polyvinyl Alcohol/Montmorillonite Clay (CS/PVA/MMT) scaffold by adopting an electrospinning method, and their biocompatibility ...was evaluated in vitro with L929 fibroblast cell line to ascertain its use in wound healing applications. The fabricated scaffold was characterized using analytical techniques. FT-IR measurement exhibited the existence of relevant functional groups and XRD implies scaffolds' amorphous nature. The scaffold's morphology and pore diameter were assessed using TEM and SEM. The pore diameter of the as-prepared scaffold was approximately 125 nm. The antimicrobial assay of the scaffold was evaluated against selected pathogens which demonstrated higher antimicrobial efficacy. The scavenging activity tested using the DPPH assay showed remarkable scavenging capability. The wound healing properties were tested through the Cytotoxicity assay conducted on the L929 assay which proved the scaffold to be a suitable material for cell proliferation. Also, a Molecular docking investigation was carried out for CS/PVA/MMT ligand using human neutrophil elastase (HNE) 1H1B protein as a receptor in the CB-Dock server. Studies conducted in silico revealed strong interaction and high binding energy ratings of CS/PVA/MMT ligand with key residues of human neutrophil elastase (HNE) 1H1B proteins that help in tissue regeneration activity.
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•CS/PVA/MMT hybrid scaffolds were developed using electrospinning.•The prepared scaffold had pores that were of the right size for the proliferation of cells.•Scaffolds had remarkable antimicrobial and antioxidant properties.•They were nontoxic to L929 cells and enabled cell attachment cell proliferation inside the scaffold•The in silico studies also support the use of the scaffold for skin regeneration
In this paper, a new robust and imperceptible digital image watermarking scheme that can overcome the limitation of traditional wavelet-based image watermarking schemes is proposed using hybrid ...transforms viz. Lifting wavelet transform (LWT), discrete cosine transform (DCT) and singular value decomposition (SVD). The scheme uses canny edge detector to select blocks with higher edge pixels. Two reference sub-images, which are used as the point of reference for watermark embedding and extraction, have been formed from selected blocks based on the number of edges. To achieve a better trade-off between imperceptibility and robustness, multiple scaling factors (MSF) have been employed to modulate different ranges of singular value coefficients during watermark embedding process. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm has been adopted to obtain optimized MSF. The performance of the proposed scheme has been assessed under different conditions and the experimental results, which are obtained from computer simulation, verifies that the proposed scheme achieves enhanced robustness against various attacks performed. Moreover, the performance of the proposed scheme is compared with the other existing schemes and the results of comparison confirm that our proposed scheme outperforms previous existing schemes in terms of robustness and imperceptibility.
The genus
Vigna
is an agronomically important taxon, with many of its species inhabiting a wide range of environments and offering numerous useful genes for the improvement of the cultivated types. ...The present study aimed to detect the genomic regions associated with yield-attributing traits by genome-wide association mapping. A diverse panel of 98 wild and cultivated
Vigna
accessions (acc.) belonging to 13 different species was evaluated for yield and related traits during the
kharif
season of 2017 and 2018. The panel was also genotyped using 92 cross-genera and cross-species simple sequence repeat markers to study the population genetic structure and useful market-trait associations. The PCA and trait correlation established relationships amongst the traits during both seasons while 100-seed weight (HSW) had a positive correlation with pod length (PL), and days to first flowering (DFF) with days to maturity (DM). The population genetic structure analysis grouped different acc. into three genetically distinct sub-populations with SP-1 comprising 34 acc., SP-2 (24 acc.), and SP-3 (33 acc.) and one admixture group (7 acc.). Mixed linear model analysis revealed an association of 13 markers, namely, VR018, VR039, VR022, CEDG033, GMES0337, MBSSR008, CEDG220, VM27, CP1225, CP08695, CEDG100, CEDG008, and CEDG096A with nine traits. Seven of the aforementioned markers, namely, VR018 for plant height (PH) and terminal leaflet length (TLL), VR022 for HSW and pod length (PL), CEDG033 for DFF and DM, MBSSR008 for DFF and DM, CP1225 for CC at 30 days (CC30), DFF and DM, CEDG100 for PH and terminal leaflet length (TLL), and CEDG096A for CC30 and chlorophyll content at 45 days were associated with multiple traits. The marker CEDG100, associated with HSW, PH, and TLL, is co-localized in gene-encoding histone–lysine N-methyltransferase
ATX5
. Similarly, VR22, associated with PL and HSW, is co-located in gene-encoding
SHOOT GRAVITROPISM 5
in mungbean. These associations may be highly useful for marker-assisted genetic improvement of mungbean and other related
Vigna
species.
Many interventions in bronchiolitis are low-value or poorly studied. Inpatient bronchiolitis management is multidisciplinary, with varying degrees of registered nurse (RN) and respiratory therapist ...(RT) autonomy. Understanding the perceived benefit of interventions for frontline health care personnel may facilitate deimplementation efforts. Our objective was to examine perceptions surrounding the benefit of common inpatient bronchiolitis interventions.
We conducted a cross-sectional survey of inpatient pediatric RNs, RTs, and physicians/licensed practitioners (P/LPs) (eg, advanced-practice practitioners) from May to December of 2021 at 9 university-affiliated and 2 community hospitals. A clinical vignette preceded a series of inpatient bronchiolitis management questions.
A total of 331 surveys were analyzed with a completion rate of 71.9%: 76.5% for RNs, 57.4% for RTs, and 71.2% for P/LPs. Approximately 54% of RNs and 45% of RTs compared with 2% of P/LPs believe albuterol would be "extremely or somewhat likely" to improve work of breathing (P < .001). Similarly, 52% of RNs, 32% of RTs, and 23% of P/LPs thought initiating or escalating oxygen in the absence of hypoxemia was likely to improve work of breathing (P < .001). Similar differences in perceived benefit were observed for steroids, nebulized hypertonic saline, and deep suctioning, but not superficial nasal suctioning. Hospital type (community versus university-affiliated) did not impact the magnitude of these differences.
Variation exists in the perceived benefit of several low-value or poorly studied bronchiolitis interventions among health care personnel, with RNs/RTs generally perceiving higher benefit. Deimplementation, educational, and quality improvement efforts should be designed with an interprofessional framework.
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