Enhancing thermal transport mechanisms in nanostructures and nanomaterials are important factors for their use in green renewable energy applications. The behaviors and reliability of nanoscale ...devices strongly depend on the way the systems dissipate heat. Therefore, using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we investigated the interface thermal resistance between liquid water and various metallic surfaces in nanochannels. Solid-liquid interface thermal resistance is well known as the Kapitza length. In this study, we model heat transfer through two parallel solid walls separated by liquid water, holding each solid wall at a different temperature to impose a temperature gradient. Silicon with a diamond crystal lattice structure and copper, silver, gold, and platinum with face-centered cubic (FCC) crystal lattice structure were chosen as the solid materials due to their extensive applications in nanotechnology. Temperature jumps at such solid-liquid interfaces are due to thermal transport between the dissimilar materials, resulting in an interface thermal resistance. We observed the behaviors of liquid water molecules in the vicinity of the metallic surfaces, revealing that the Kapitza length varies as a function of solid-liquid interaction strength, and confirming the effect of Lennard-Jones (LJ) interaction added to long-range Coulombic interaction in the liquid model, and using liquid water instead of simple LJ liquid.
Pharmaceutical active compound (PhAC) residues are considered an emerging micropollutant that enters the aquatic environment and causes harmful ecotoxicity. The significant sources of PhACs in the ...environment include the pharmaceutical industry, hospital streams, and agricultural wastes (animal husbandry). Recent investigations demonstrated that wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are an important source of PhACs discharging ecosystems. Several commonly reported that PhACs are detected in a range level from ng L−1 to μg L−1 concentration in WWTP effluents. These compounds can have acute and chronic adverse impacts on natural wildlife, including flora and fauna. The approaches for PhAC removals in WWTPs include bioremediation, adsorption (e.g., biochar, chitosan, and graphene), and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs). Overall, adsorption and AOPs can effectively remove PhACs from wastewater aided by oxidizing radicals. Heterogeneous photocatalysis has also proved to be a sustainable solution. Bioremediation approaches such as membrane bioreactors (MBRs), constructed wetlands (CWs), and microalgal-based systems were applied to minimize pharmaceutical pollution. Noteworthy, applying MBRs has illustrated high removal efficiencies of up to 99%, promising prospective future. However, WWTPs should be combined with advanced solutions, e.g., AOPs/photodegradation, microalgae–bacteria consortia, etc., to treat and minimize their accumulation. More effective and novel technologies (e.g., new generation bioremediation) for PhAC degradation must be investigated and specially designed for a low-cost and full-scale. Investigating green and eco-friendly PhACs with advantages, e.g., low persistence, no bioaccumulation, less or non-toxicity, and environmentally friendly, is also necessary.
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•PhACs are found in the range from ng to μg L−1 concentration in WWTPs effluents•Pharmaceuticals have both acute and chronic harmful impacts•AOPs reach high effective removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater owing to oxidizing radicals•The high removal efficiency of up to 99% and MBRs indicate prospective treatment•Microalgal-based technologies were applied to minimize pharmaceuticals effectively
We present the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the finite-size effect in 2D silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs). Five silicene nanoribbon structures were modelled with the same length and buckling, ...but different width sizes. All models were melted from the perfect honeycomb silicene structure and then cooled from the disordered liquid state. Structural properties such as ring sizes, radial distribution function, coordination numbers, and interatomic distances have been carefully analysed. All models' critical melting and cooling temperature were determined via total energy per atom. We found that 2D SiNRs transition temperature is lower than the pristine silicene. Particularly, the SiNRs present a noticeable finite-size effect on nanoribbons, resulting in a domain-type structure of 4, 5, and 6-fold rings.
In this paper, we consider the fuzzy moving sliding surface anti-sway control problem for container cranes. We first introduce the dynamic model of container cranes. Then, we develop the coupled ...sliding surface which ensures the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. Based on the proposed sliding surface, we propose the continuous sliding mode control law which guarantees the reachability of the sliding variable to zero in finite time. Hence, the proposed controller first guarantees the finite-time convergence to the sliding surface and then achieves the stability of the closed-loop system in the predefined sliding surface. Besides, in order to obtain the effective gains for the proposed sliding variable, the fuzzy logic system is employed. To illustrate the efficiency of the proposed control law, simulation results are provided.
Capillary zone electrophoresis was successfully applied to the enantiomeric purity determination of dexlansoprazole using sulfobutyl ether-β-cyclodextrin and methyl-β-cyclodextrin as chiral ...selectors. Separations were carried out in a 50 μm, 64/56 cm fused-silica capillary. The optimized conditions included 90 mM phosphate buffer, pH 6.0, containing 30 mM sulfobutyl ether-β-cyclodextrin, 20 mM methyl-β-cyclodextrin as background electrolyte, an applied voltage of 25 kV and a temperature of 16 °C, detection was at 280 nm. The assay was validated for the S-(−)-lansoprazole in the range of 0.2–1.0%. The limit of detection was 0.07%, the limit of quantitation was 0.20%, relative to a total concentration of 4.0 mg mL
−1
. Intra-day precision varied between 1.72 and 2.07%. Relative standard deviations of inter-day precision ranged between 1.62 and 1.96% for peak area ratio. The assay was applied for the determination of the chiral purity of dexlansoprazole capsules. Recovery in capsules was ranged between 101.7 and 103.1%.
Graphical Abstract
Acute kidney injury is common in patients with cancer and may result from sepsis, obstruction, radiotherapy, chemotherapeutic agents, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Rare reports of acute ...kidney injury due to cast nephropathy in patients with pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma have been described, but a pathogenetic link between cast nephropathy and carcinoma was not established. We report a patient with pancreatic mixed acinar-neuroendocrine carcinoma who developed severe acute kidney injury. Kidney biopsy showed cast nephropathy characterized by fractured periodic acid–Schiff–negative casts, associated with mononuclear and giant cell reaction. The patient did not have multiple myeloma and casts did not show immunoglobulin light chain restriction on immunofluorescence. Analysis using liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry and immunohistochemistry identified 2 acinar cell–specific proteins, regenerating islet-derived 1α and carboxypeptidase A1, in both tubular casts and tumor cells. Thus, this case demonstrates that solid tumor–specific proteins can be nephropathic by obstructing renal tubules, resulting in acute kidney injury, a previously proposed but not characterized pathophysiologic mechanism for paraneoplastic nephropathy associated with carcinoma.
Primary hepatic schwannoma is an extremely rare tumor with a good prognosis. Preoperative diagnosis is often challenging due to nonspecific clinical symptoms and its rarity. Here, we report a case of ...a 56-year-old male patient misdiagnosed with malignant liver tumor, later identified as primary hepatic schwannoma. Furthermore, clinical and histopathological features of 19 cases of primary hepatic schwannoma are also documented. The age of the patients ranged from 38 to 72 years, with a mean age of 56.4 years, and the disease was more common in females. Patients typically presented without clinical symptoms and were not associated with neurofibromatosis type 1. Histopathological features of the tumor were similar to soft tissue schwannoma, characterized by a thick capsule consisting of Antoni A and Antoni B areas. Immunohistochemically, the tumor showed strong positivity and diffusely stained with S-100, while being negative for CD34, CD117, and SMA. Complete resection of the tumor was achieved in all patients. The prognosis was favorable, with no signs of recurrence. Follow-up examinations revealed disease-free survival ranging from 6 to 27 months. Differential diagnosis of primary hepatic schwannoma from malignant liver tumors and metastatic liver tumors can be made based on histopathological features and immunohistochemical staining with S-100.
The success of crowdsourcing projects relies critically on motivating a crowd to contribute. One particularly effective method for incentivising participants to perform tasks is to run contests where ...participants compete against each other for rewards. However, there are numerous ways to implement such contests in specific projects, that vary in how performance is evaluated, how participants are rewarded, and the sizes of the prizes. Also, the best way to implement contests in a particular project is still an open challenge, as the effectiveness of each contest implementation (henceforth,
incentive
) is unknown in advance. Hence, in a crowdsourcing project, a practical approach to maximise the overall utility of the requester (which can be measured by the total number of completed tasks or the quality of the task submissions) is to choose a set of incentives suggested by previous studies from the literature or from the requester’s experience. Then, an effective mechanism can be applied to automatically select appropriate incentives from this set over different time intervals so as to maximise the cumulative utility within a given financial budget and a time limit. To this end, we present a novel approach to this
incentive selection problem
. Specifically, we formalise it as an online decision making problem, where each action corresponds to offering a specific incentive. After that, we detail and evaluate a novel algorithm, HAIS, to solve the incentive selection problem efficiently and adaptively. In theory, in the case that all the estimates in HAIS (except the estimates of the effectiveness of each incentive) are correct, we show that the algorithm achieves the regret bound of
O
(
B
/
c
)
, where
B
denotes the financial budget and
c
is the average cost of the incentives. In experiments, the performance of HAIS is about 93% (up to 98%) of the optimal solution and about 9% (up to 40%) better than state-of-the-art algorithms in a broad range of settings, which vary in budget sizes, time limits, numbers of incentives, values of the standard deviation of the incentives’ utilities, and group sizes of the contests (i.e., the numbers of participants in a contest).
Recurrent neural network (RNN)-based accelerated prediction was achieved for the long-term time-dependent behavior of viscoelastic composite laminated Mindlin plates subjected to arbitrary mechanical ...and hygrothermal loading. Time-integrated constitutive stress-strain relation was simplified via Laplace transform to a linear system to reduce the computational storage. A fast converging smooth finite element method named cell-based smoothed discrete shear gap was employed to enhance the data generation procedure for straining RNNs with a sparse mesh. This technique is applicable under varying hygrothermal conditions for real engineering structure problems with fluctuating temperature and moisture. Hence, accurate RNN-based long-term deformation prediction for laminated structures was realized using the history of environmental temperature and moisture condition.
The atomic structures and solidification point of silver nanoparticles (SNPs) are studied in a series of molecular dynamics simulations based on the empirical embedded atom methods (EAM). The ...solidification point is calculated from the extracted potential energy during the cooling process, whereas the atomic structures are analyzed using the common neighbor (CN) method. The results indicate that the structures of the solidified SNPs are very sensitive to both the applied cooling rate and the particle size. We find the critical cooling rate where a glassy structure is observed. Below the critical rate, polycrystalline nanoparticles are formed, where the percentage of the close-packed structures, i.e., FCC and HCP, decreases with increasing cooling rate. Moreover, the proportion of those structures is always larger with a bigger particle size for an identical applied cooling rate. The findings in this study provide useful information for many practical applications where the nanostructure strongly affects thermal management and operational efficiency.
Graphical abstract
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