In this study, the production and physicochemical characterization of exopolysaccharide (EPS) produced by
Lysinibacillus fusiformis
KMNTT-10 were investigated. Also, in vitro assays were conducted to ...investigate the biotechnological functional activities of EPS, including flocculation, emulsification, and antioxidant activity. Results showed that the maximum EPS produced by strain KMNTT-10 was 4.19 g/l after 120 h. The monosaccharides present in EPS were xylose, rhamnose, arabinose, galactose, and glucose in varying combinations. Characterization of EPS by FTIR and XRD analysis revealed the presence of hydroxyl, amino, and carboxyl functional groups and further, the EPS is an amorphous nature. SEM envisaged a highly porous web-like structure with an irregular surface in the EPS morphology. Further, the EPS had good flocculation activity with a maximum of 89.66% and also had potent emulsifying activity towards hydrocarbons with 1% EPS concentration. The EPS showed good antioxidant activity by potent scavenging actions on DPPH, ABTS, and nitric oxide free radicals. Overall results demonstrated that EPS of KMNTT-10 could be used in various industrial applications due to its excellent flocculation, emulsification potential, and good antioxidant activity.
This work demonstrates the first-ever completely metal-free approach to the capture of CO2 from air followed by reduction to methoxyborane (which produces methanol on hydrolysis) or sodium formate ...(which produces formic acid on hydrolysis) under ambient conditions. This was accomplished using an abnormal N-heterocyclic carbene (aNHC)–borane adduct. The intermediate involved in CO2 capture (aNHC-H, HCOO, B(OH)3) was structurally characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Interestingly, the captured CO2 can be released by heating the intermediate, or by passing this compound through an ion-exchange resin. The capture of CO2 from air can even proceed in the solid state via the formation of a bicarbonate complex (aNHC-H, HCO3, B(OH)3), which was also structurally characterized. A detailed mechanism for this process is proposed based on tandem density functional theory calculations and experiments.
Decision tree ensembles are among the most commonly used machine learning models. These models are used in a wide range of applications and are deployed at scale. Decision tree ensemble inference is ...usually performed with libraries such as XGBoost, LightGBM, and Sklearn. These libraries incorporate a fixed set of optimizations for the hardware targets they support. However, maintaining these optimizations is prohibitively expensive with the evolution of hardware. Further, they do not specialize the inference code to the model being used, leaving significant performance on the table.
This paper presents Treebeard, an optimizing compiler that progressively lowers the inference computation to optimized CPU code through multiple intermediate abstractions. By applying model-specific optimizations at the higher levels, tree walk optimizations at the middle level, and machine-specific optimizations lower down, Treebeard can specialize inference code for each model on each supported CPU target. Treebeard combines several novel optimizations at various abstraction levels to mitigate architectural bottlenecks and enable SIMD vectorization of tree walks.
We implement Treebeard using the MLIR compiler infrastructure and demonstrate its utility by evaluating it on a diverse set of benchmarks. Treebeard is significantly faster than state-of-the-art systems, XGBoost, Treelite and Hummingbird, by 2.6×, 4.7× and 5.4× respectively in a single-core execution setting, and by 2.3×, 2.7× and 14× respectively in multi-core settings.
Scrub typhus, caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi present in small mammals harbouring the ectoparasites. A study was undertaken to detect the pathogen present in small mammals and its ectoparasites in ...the scrub typhus-reported areas.
The small mammals (rodents/shrews) and its ectoparasites were screened for O. tsutsugamushi using nested PCR amplification of the groEL gene. Small mammals were collected by trapping and screened for ectoparasites (mites, ticks and fleas) by combing method.
All the chigger mites collected were tested negative for O. tsutsugamushi . Interestingly, adult non-trombiculid mites ( Oribatida sp., Dermanyssus gallinae ), fleas ( Xenopsylla astia, X. cheopis, Ctenophalides felis and Ctenophalides sp.) and ticks ( Rhipicephalus sanguineus , R. haemaphysaloides ) screened were found to be positive for O. tsutsugamushi , which the authors believe is the first report on these species globally. Bandicota bengalensis with O. tsutsugamushi infection is reported for the first time in India. The O. tsutsugamushi groEL sequences from the positive samples were similar to the reference strains, Karp and Ikeda and phylogenetically clustered in clade IV with less evolutionary divergence. The blood samples of Rattus rattus , Suncus murinus and B. bengalensis collected from this area were tested positive for O. tsutsugamushi ; interestingly, the sequence similarity was much pronounced with their ectoparasites indicating the transmission of the pathogen to host or vice versa .
The outcome of the present investigations widened our scope on the pathogens present in ectoparasites and rodents/shrews from this area. This will help to formulate the required vector control methods to combat zoonotic diseases.
Herein we report a transition metal free catalytic terminal alkyne functionalization across the C–X triple bond (X = CH and N) with E-selective homo (alkyne–alkyne) and head-to-tail selective hetero ...(alkyne–nitrile) dimerization. A series of stoichiometric reactions enabled us to crystallize a reactive organometallic intermediate K-arylacetylide complex which was characterized by X-ray crystallography, indicating that an ionic mechanism is operative.
Accurate and reliable Information improves decision making, reduces costs, and saves time. The ophthalmic Libraries supply quality ophthalmic information to the ophthalmologists to serve the patients ...in a better way and stimulate the growth of ophthalmic field. This paper aims to study the usage of library collection, services and assistance among the Ophthalmologists - Eye Doctors in India. A survey method is used to obtain the ophthalmologists' usage of library collection, services and assistance. Through convenient sampling method, a structured questionnaire is circulated to the ophthalmologists in India and 633 ophthalmologists are responded. Among the 633 ophthalmologist, 82.15% of the ophthalmologists use the library collection - book. 73.46% of the ophthalmologists use the online data / journals. 89.73% of the ophthalmologists seek assistance to locate books/articles/documents. There exists a significant difference between the ophthalmologists use of Library Service and gender (p value 0.001**). There exists a significant difference between the ophthalmologists use of Library Assistance / help and designation category (p value 0.000**). There exists a significant difference between the ophthalmologists use of Library Assistance / help and working experience (p value 0.017**). There exists a significant difference between Library Services (p value 0.009**), Library Assistance / help (p value 0.000**) and institution type. The study results will help the ophthalmic libraries to serve the user better.
Acetylene black carbons were activated under flowing CO2 atmosphere at 900 °C for different treatment times. The impact of this heat treatment on the porosity, hydrophilicity, and surface oxygen ...groups was carefully examined. Longer periods of activation led to increases in the surface area and porosity of the samples. Pore size distributions of the samples showed an increase in micropores, followed by a rise in mesopores, which indicated the occurrence of pore widening with a longer activation period. When used as a microporous layer for H2/air fuel cells, samples with higher levels of porosity showed, in general, reduced mass transport performance due to the formation of pooling locations for water. These results highlight the importance of textural pores in carbon structures on the water management in hydrogen fuel cell when operating under high humidity conditions.
Ophthalmologists - Eye Doctors working in academic eye hospitals confront various barriers in their information use. The purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers of ophthalmologists in ...their information use. The study design is cross sectional and convenience sampling method is adopted. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. SPSS 18 PASW Statistical package was used for statistical analysis. Frequencies, percentages, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Factor Analysis, Wilcoxon signed rank test were used in the study. Around 633 ophthalmologists working in 47 academic eye hospitals from 16 states of India were included in the study. The study results revealed that majority of the ophthalmologists encountered the barrier "Information scattered in too many sources". The statistical test results showed up that there exist a significant difference between barriers in using information among ophthalmologists and institution type. The two major factors of barriers in using information among ophthalmologists were for lack of motivation and support and brunt of technology. The barriers due to brunt of technology were significantly higher than the lack of motivation and support. The barriers faced by ophthalmologists can be jointly handled by the ophthalmic libraries, ophthalmic institutions, information service providers and ophthalmic community.
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