Penetrating orbitocranial injuries can present with foreign body/bodies (FBs) lodged in eye, orbit, and/or brain. But limited literatures are available about FBs lodged partly in orbit and partly ...intracranially. Here, we present a rare case of orbitocranial wooden FB impacted in right palpebral aperture extending intracranially following accidental fall from height. Unexpectedly, the patient himself removed the FB in fully conscious and oriented state while waiting for neurosurgical intervention, later completely recovered under observation and antibiotic prophylaxis. Therefore, it is important to have high suspicion of intracranial extension in impacted orbital FBs and a team approach for managing such cases.
Understanding different aspects of information spread have been a crucial direction of research in information and social sciences. Recent studies are found to be focused on accelerating and ...controlling the spread of information. One such study is to control the spread of information by manipulating the Principal Eigen Vector (PEV) of the network adjacency matrix. In this paper, Inverse Participation Ratio (IPR) is used to measure the localization of PEV. The studies say that maximum IPR leads to a high localization state of the network. In literature, IPR maximization is shown to be a hard problem. Therefore, we use approximation approach of solution to this problem by employing metaheuristic algorithms. In this direction, we propose graph versions of three Rao’s metaheuristic variants: Rao’s Algorithm, Jaya Algorithm, and Teaching–Learning-Based Optimization (TLBO) Algorithm for IPR maximization. Four evaluation parameters: Average Optimal IPR, Factor Improvement (IPR), Average Modification %, and Average Execution Time are used for comparison among the algorithms. The results show that TLBO outperforms the other two variants. In TLBO, the factor of improvement over the initial IPR value is found to be 1.5 in KC dataset with an average modification of 25%, 5.9 in GD 99 dataset with an average modification of 32%, 12.1 in GD 01 dataset with an average modification of 19%, 2.1 in USAL dataset with an average modification of 17%, and 15.1 in CL dataset with an average modification of 18%. Also, TLBO reports a better Average Optimal IPR value than the existing Random Perturbation (RP) approach.
•Obligations in achieving high cooling rates by spray cooling are overcome.•Heat removal is enhanced by spray cooling with coolants-ethanol and tween20 in water.•Achieved CHF with Tween ...20-ethanol-water mixture is 1.6 times higher than pure water.•Maximum obtained cooling rate is 141°C/s in case of ethanol-water-Tween 20 mixture.
Spray cooling is an efficient cooling technology over conventional cooling methods such as jet cooling on run-out table. However, the achieved cooling rates are still not enough for some specific applications. The main obligation in achieving high cooling rates is the occurrence of film boiling phenomenon. In the absence of any information on the heat transfer augmentation techniques of spray cooling at very high initial surface temperatures (∼900°C), the present work deals with enhancement of spray cooling at the aforesaid initial temperature by using different coolants which enhance the heat removal rate by creating high heat transfer area and decreasing the stability of the vapour and liquid film on the hot plate. For the experimental investigation, spray cooling experiments were conducted at 900°C initial surface temperature on a 6mm thick AISI 304 steel plate (100×100mm) by using different coolants. The surface temperature and heat flux have been calculated using INTEMP software. For the understanding of heat transfer mechanism, the coolants properties at different concentrations and spray behavior at different flow rates were measured. The ethanol-water spray cooling demonstrates that the heat removal rate increases with increasing ethanol concentration by decreasing contact angle. The reduction in the contact angle results in increasing heat transfer area and decreasing the vapour-bubble coalescence rate. However, beyond ethanol concentration of 500ppm, the excessive occurrence of the foaming decreases the heat removal rate. Further, the heat transfer rate is tried to enhance by adding tween-20 surfactant which lowers the contact angle significantly with the controlled characteristics of foaming. In the case of ethanol-water-tween 20 mixture spray, the achieved critical heat flux (2.1MW/m2) is 1.6 times that of pure water (1.3MW/m2). Due to the above mentioned favorable conditions for fast cooling, a maximum cooling rate of 141°C/s is achieved.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability in the USA and the world; it constitutes 30% of injury-related deaths (Taylor et al., MMWR Surveill Summ 66:1-16, 2017). Contact ...sports athletes often experience repetitive TBI (rTBI), which exerts a cumulative effect later in life. Visual impairment is a common after-effect of TBI. Previously, we have shown that C-C chemokine 20 (CCL20) plays a critical role in neurodegeneration and inflammation following TBI (Das et al., J Neuroinflammation 8:148, 2011). C-C chemokine receptor 6 (CCR6) is the only receptor that CCL20 interacts with. The objective of the present study was to investigate the role of CCL20-CCR6 axis in mediating rTBI-induced visual dysfunction (TVD).
Wild type (WT) or CCR6 knock out (CCR6-/-) mice were subjected to closed head rTBI. Pioglitazone (PG) is a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) agonist which downregulates CCL20 production. Subsets of WT mice were treated with PG following final rTBI. A subset of mice was also treated with anti-CCL20 antibody to neutralize the CCL20 produced after rTBI. Histopathological assessments were performed to show cerebral pathologies, retinal pathologies, and inflammatory changes induced by rTBI.
rTBI induced cerebral neurodegeneration, retinal degeneration, microgliosis, astrogliosis, and CCL20 expression. CCR6-/- mice showed reduced retinal degeneration, microgliosis, and inflammation. Treatment with CCL20 neutralization antibody or PG showed reduced CCL20 expression along with reduced retinal degeneration and inflammation. rTBI-induced GFAP-positive glial activation in the optic nerve was not affected by knocking out CCR6.
The present data indicate that rTBI-induced retinal pathology is mediated at least in part by CCL20 in a CCR6-dependent manner.
Aquaculture is emerging as one of the most viable and promising enterprises for keeping pace with the surging need for animal protein, providing nutritional and food security to humans, particularly ...those residing in regions where livestock is relatively scarce. With every step toward intensification of aquaculture practices, there is an increase in the stress level in the animal as well as the environment. Hence, disease outbreak is being increasingly recognized as one of the most important constraints to aquaculture production in many countries, including India. Conventionally, the disease control in aquaculture has relied on the use of chemical compounds and antibiotics. The development of non-antibiotic and environmentally friendly agents is one of the key factors for health management in aquaculture. Consequently, with the emerging need for environmentally friendly aquaculture, the use of alternatives to antibiotic growth promoters in fish nutrition is now widely accepted. In recent years, probiotics have taken center stage and are being used as an unconventional approach that has numerous beneficial effects in fish and shellfish culture: improved activity of gastrointestinal microbiota and enhanced immune status, disease resistance, survival, feed utilization and growth performance. As natural products, probiotics have much potential to increase the efficiency and sustainability of aquaculture production. Therefore, comprehensive research to fully characterize the intestinal microbiota of prominent fish species, mechanisms of action of probiotics and their effects on the intestinal ecosystem, immunity, fish health and performance is reasonable. This review highlights the classifications and applications of probiotics in aquaculture. The review also summarizes the advancement and research highlights of the probiotic status and mode of action, which are of great significance from an ecofriendly, sustainable, intensive aquaculture point of view.
With increased integration of wind energy systems, an accurate wind speed forecasting technique is a must for the reliable and secure operation of the power network. Statistical methods such as ...Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and hybrid methods such as Wavelet Transform (WT) based ARIMA (WT-ARIMA) model have been the popular techniques in recent times for short-term and very short-term forecasting of wind speed. However, the contribution of the forecasting error due to different decomposed time series on the resultant wind speed forecasting error has yet not been analyzed. This paper, thus explores this shortcoming of the ARIMA and WT-ARIMA models in forecasting of wind speed and proposes a new Repeated WT based ARIMA (RWT-ARIMA) model, which has improved accuracy for very short-term wind speed forecasting. A comparison of the proposed RWT-ARIMA model with the benchmark persistence model for very short-term wind speed forecasting, ARIMA model and WT-ARIMA model has been done for various time-scales of forecasting such as 1min, 3min, 5min, 7min and 10min. This comparison proves the superiority of the proposed RWT-ARIMA model over other models in very short-term wind speed forecasting.
•A new Repeated WT based ARIMA (RWT-ARIMA) model is proposed for very short-term wind speed forecasting.•Wavelet decomposition is used to extract wind speed in different frequency bands.•The proposed method is capable of comprehensively capturing gust and turbulence in wind speed.•The proposed model is tested for different time-scales of forecasting and its superiority over benchmark models is verified.
Landslides are one of the most destructive natural hazards in the mountainous regions across the globe including the western Himalayas of India. Hence, it is essential to implement mitigation plans, ...evacuation measures, and an infrastructure plan based on precise, efficient landslide susceptibility models. Current methods of landslide susceptibility mapping are improving constantly, using geospatial techniques to incorporate visual representation of the environment. However, these current methods are often opinion driven, due to lack of consensus on which factors take precedence over others. This study aims to provide a different approach namely a machine learning based approach towards Landslide Susceptibility Mapping, integrating GIS to give an accurate visual representation of the surrounding areas ranked by order of susceptibility in/and around Kullu Valley of western Himalaya, India. The landslide conditioning factors used in the study involve both static and dynamic data such as slope, land use, land cover, and rainfall variables. The research found that although the Extremely Randomised Trees provide a considerably more accurate assessment of the study area’s vulnerability, the Random Forest Regressor has greater overall accuracy. There is a significant relationship between the model’s outputs and past landslides. According to the study, there would be significantly more regions with high susceptibility to the effects of climate change on landslides by 2030. The application can identify the geographical distribution of landscape risk and is significantly less time-consuming than current methods of susceptibility analysis. Machine learning models could be crucial in evacuation efforts and in preventing damage to life and property.
Insecticides are widely used in agriculture, horticulture, medicine, and industry, as well as domestically. Increased insecticide application has been attributed to higher agricultural productivity ...and lower infield and postharvest crop loss in the twentieth century. Malathion is a very commonly used organophosphorus (OP) insecticide applied in over 100 food crops in agriculture and post-harvest storage. Different species of Aspergillus have shown their efficiency to degrade OP chemicals. A malathion tolerant Aspergillus niger MRU01, developed by prolonged malathion exposure, was tested for its efficiency to remove malathion as well as three other commonly used OP insecticides, viz., parathion, chlorpyrifos and dimethoate. The tolerant strain showed growth efficiency as well as enhanced production of phosphatases and esterase enzyme as compared to untreated and treated wild type (A. niger ATCC16404). The removal of malathion was 29% and 68%, in the wild type and the tolerant strain, respectively during five days. The tolerant strain was also able to remove dimethoate (63%) and chlorpyrifos (54%) with high efficiency while a low rate of removal of parathion (33%) was observed. The strain can be tested in the microcosms more specifically for bioremediation of other OP insecticides before its application in the field.
The malathion tolerant Aspergillus niger MRU01 grew efficiently in the presence of 500 μM malathion.
Treatment of the fungus with malathion and other OP insecticides - parathion, chlorpyrifos, and dimethoate - caused enhanced expression of phosphatases and esterases.
The tolerant A. niger MRU01 strain had significantly lower mycelia concentrations of insecticides than of the wild type A. niger ATCC16404.
Degradation of insecticides by the tolerant strain was significantly higher than by the wild type indicating its broad spectrum of tolerance.
•A 3PR combined cycle with VAIAC is considered for analysis.•Component wise exergy destruction of IAC combined cycle is presented.•The influence of TIT, TIC, βcomp, Tamb, and RHamb on CC performance ...is assessed.•Inlet air cooling improves overall exergy efficiency of combined cycle system.
The aim of this study is to perform an exergetic evaluation of a gas-steam combined cycle power utility that is integrated with vapor absorption inlet air cooling system. Effect of several thermodynamic parameters on component-level and total exergy destruction are discussed. A detailed breakdown of exergy destruction in the cycle has been presented along with useful recommendations to improve exergy based cycle performance. The integration of inlet air cooling has been observed to increase exergy efficiency of combined cycle beyond a turbine inlet temperature of 1650 K. The combustor has been identified as the greatest source of irreversibility with highest exergetic improvement potential. The total exergy destruction for the cycle has been observed to reduce with increase in turbine inlet temperature (TIT) and decrease in compressor inlet temperature (TIC). At higher compressor pressure ratio (βcomp), except combustor all other components of topping cycle has been observed to suffer an increase in exergy destruction where as exergy destruction has been observed to reduce for all bottoming cycle components except the stack. The summation of exergy destruction of all cycle components is observed to be reduced at lower ambient relative humidity and lower ambient temperature.
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