•One-step facile, low-cost, time-saving synthesis of single phase Te NPs.•XRD displays strong and enhanced (hk0) reflection peaks.•Protic solvent supports better reaction and higher solvation than ...aprotic solvents.•Argon atmosphere enhanced stability and avoid oxidation.•No sign of oxidation from high laser power (25 mW) is seen.
Tellurium (Te), a chalcogenide element, and its compounds are essential in the development of energy harvesting applications. Here, we reported successfully synthesized Te nanoparticles (NPs) at room temperature (RT) and 120 °C by wet chemical method, employing potassium tellurite (K2TeO3) and bulk Te powder as source with hydrazine hydrate (HH) as reducing agent. We found that protic solvent supports better reaction than aprotic solvents at RT. X-ray diffraction (XRD) displays enhanced peaks corresponds to hexagonal phase of Te. Raman spectra depicted the presence of intense peaks at 122 and 142 cm−1 attributed to A1 and E2 bond-stretching mode, respectively. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) revealed the formation of nanorods, nanoplates or rice-like structures. The presented work has prospective use for many applications like thermoelectric, solar cells etc.
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•SnTe-Te heterostructures synthesized first time using microwave solvothermal method.•Room temperature thermoelectric power - enhanced by 55% when compared to nano SnTe.•Simultaneous ...enhancement in Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity.•Attributed to a significant enhancement in effective mass and carrier mobility.•SnTe-Te heterostructures are promising for large scale thermoelectric applications.
SnTe nanomaterials are investigated as the potential “Lead” free thermoelectric material owing to their low thermal conductivity induced enhanced figure of merit in comparison with their bulk counterpart. In this work, SnTe and its SnTe-Te heterostructures were synthesized for the first time by changing the protocol of heating time using microwave-assisted solvothermal processes. The confocal and scanning electron microscope images demonstrate the nano-flower-like morphology of SnTe-Te heterostructures. Multi-phase Reitveld refinement structural analysis exhibits a significant increase in tellurium occupancies, whereas elemental mapping confirms the presence of SnTe-Te heterostructure. Interestingly, room temperature thermoelectric power of SnTe-Te heterostructures (~60 μV/K) is increased by ~55% when compared to SnTe nanostructures (~45 μV / K). Simultaneous enhancement of both electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient are attributed to the increment of carrier mobility and effective mass respectively which is due to the novel strategy of SnTe-Te heterostructures formation that is promising for large scale p-type thermoelectric applications.
For many high-tech and Internet-related products, utility to consumers depends in part on the size of the user base, a phenomenon called network externality. A firm with a portfolio of these and ...other products-that are often asymmetric in their degree of network externality or marginal cost-may have to look beyond the traditional strategies of pure components, pure bundling, and mixed bundling. One such strategic alternative in a two-product case would be a so-called mixed bundling-1 under which the bundle and product 1 are offered, but the other product can only be purchased in a bundled form. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the impact of such asymmetry or symmetry in (direct) network externality and cost on the choice of bundling strategies. We model a monopolist firm that has a product in each of two categories and faces heterogeneous consumers. Results suggest that pure bundling is more profitable when both products have low marginal costs or high network externality whereas pure components or mixed bundling-1 is more profitable when the products diverge in their costs and network externality (e.g., only one product has network externality). Traditional mixed bundling is optimal in other instances.
Contemplating the exemplary benefits of pectin on human health, we precisely characterized and evaluated the antibacterial and anticancer activities from purified Mulberry Fruit Pectins (MFP). Here, ...we tested BR-2 and S-13 varieties of mulberry fruit pectins against six bacterial strains and two human cancer cell lines (HT-29 and Hep G-2), using MIC and an in vitro cell-based assay respectively. The BR-2 mulberry fruit pectin performs superior to S-13 by inhibiting strong bacterial growth (MIC = 500-1000 μg/mL) against tested bacterial strains and cytotoxic activities at the lowest concentration (10 µg/ml) against the Hep G-2 cell line. However, both tested drugs failed to exhibit cytotoxicity on the human colon cancer cell line (HT-29). Based on molecular interaction through docking, pectin binds effectively with the receptors (1e3g, 3t0c, 5czz, 6j7l, 6v40, 5ibs, 5zsy, and 6ggb) and proven to be a promising antimicrobial and anti-cancer agents. The pursuit of unexploited drugs from mulberry fruit pectin will potentially combat against bacterial and cancer diseases. Finally, future perspectives of MFP for the treatment of many chronic diseases will help immensely due to their therapeutic properties.
Incremental innovations in operation theaters Tagare, Shivraj; Nair, Megha; Venkatesh, R
Indian Journal of Ophthalmology/Indian journal of ophthalmology,
06/2023, Letnik:
71, Številka:
6
Journal Article
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Odprti dostop
Background: The field of ophthalmology has been built upon continuous innovations. COVID-19 pandemic has been an important driving force behind many innovations in ophthalmology and other branches of ...medicine. Innovations in ophthalmology has been a key to surgical progress. The process of promoting innovation in surgery is imperative in the evolving practice of ophthalmology. Purpose: In this video we demonstrate some incremental innovations in operation theaters which help in increasing the efficiency and improving the performance of a surgeon. These innovations also provide a more comfortable environment for the patient undergoing the surgery. Synopsis: A few incremental innovations that are described in our video also help in preventing the spread of COVID infection during surgery. This video also showcases a few wet lab innovations that help train residents in their surgical skills. Highlights: Use and reuse of simple materials make it cost effective and ecofriendly. These incremental innovations help in the smooth running of operation theaters. Thus, they are small improvements in the existing setup and help in creating a smooth and error free OT flow. Video Link: https://youtu.be/thFLvC-XykE
Now days, health prediction in modern life becomesvery much essential. Big data analysis plays a crucial role to predict future status of healthand offerspreeminenthealth outcome to people. Heart ...disease is a prevalent disease cause’s death around the world. A lotof research is going onpredictive analytics using machine learning techniques to reveal better decision making. Big data analysis fosters great opportunities to predict future health status from health parameters and provide best outcomes. WeusedBig Data Predictive Analytics Model for Disease Prediction using Naive Bayes Technique (BPA-NB). It providesprobabilistic classification based on Bayes’ theorem with independence assumptions between the features. Naive Bayes approach suitable for huge data sets especially for bigdata. The Naive Bayes approachtrain the heart disease data taken from UCI machine learning repository. Then, it was making predictions on the test data to predict the classification. The results reveal that the proposed BPA-NB scheme providesbetter accuracy about 97.12% to predict the disease rate. The proposed BPA-NB scheme used Hadoop-spark as big data computing tool to obtain significant insight on healthcare data. The experiments are done to predict different patients’ future health condition. It takes the training dataset to estimate the health parameters necessary for classification. The results show the early disease detection to figure out future health of patients.
The traditional shell and tube heat exchanger (STHE) is widely utilized in various engineering segments and has found a drawback in limited thermo-hydraulic behavior. This study enriches the STHE ...thermo-hydraulic performance using different baffle configurations (BC) such as single segment, double segment, single helical, single segment—no tubes in window (NTIW), propeller type and spiral baffle. The influences of BC on thermo-hydraulic behavior are analyzed through heat transfer research Inc. (HTRI) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). During the analysis, the 60LPM flow rate is fixed under the shell/tube inlet temperature of 30 °C and 80 °C, followed by the counter flow. Additionally, fluid parameters on logarithmic mean temperature difference (LMTD), number of transfer units (NTU), overall heat transfer coefficient (
U
), effectiveness (
η)
and exergy efficiency (
η
ex
) of STHE are recorded by both HTRI and CFD analysis. According to the analysis results, the single helical 15° and double segmental BC offered superior LMTD, NTU, U,
η
and
η
ex
related to others.
The study of eye gaze fixations on photographic images is an active research area. In contrast, the image sub-category of freehand sketches has not received as much attention for such studies. In ...this paper, we analyze the results of a free-viewing gaze fixation study conducted on 3904 freehand sketches distributed across 160 object categories. Our analysis shows that fixation sequences exhibit marked consistency within a sketch, across sketches of a category and even across suitably grouped sets of categories. This multi-level consistency is remarkable given the variability in depiction and extreme image content sparsity that characterizes hand-drawn object sketches. In this paper, we show that the multi-level consistency in the fixation data can be exploited to 1) predict a test sketch's category given only its fixation sequence and 2) build a computational model which predicts part-labels underlying fixations on objects. We hope that our findings motivate the community to deem sketch-like representations worthy of gaze-based studies vis-a-vis photographic images.
Nanostructured topological crystalline insulators (TCIs) in the presence of exotic surface states with spin momentum locking reported in individual nanostructures are predicted to hold a great ...promise for spintronics and quantum computing applications. However, practical application demands a strategy with large-scale production and integration for device applications. In this work, we demonstrate through prominent signatures of weak antilocalization (WAL), arising predominantly from destructive quantum interference on robust surface states, that a correlated TCI phase is possible in the nanobulk assembly of carefully nanostructured quasi-two-dimensional SnTe (edge-to-edge length ∼ 382 nm) synthesized by a simple, rapid, and scalable microwave-assisted solvothermal method. Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka analysis (
), as well as the temperature dependence of resistivity, illustrates an interplay of both conductions from 2D channels and 3D EEI effects as the precursor for the observed WAL at low temperatures (2-6 K). Interestingly, the enhanced thermoelectric power of the sample of ∼45 μV/K, with a p-type carrier concentration of ∼10
/cm
at 300 K, makes this SnTe nanocrystalline assembly more attractive as a multifunctional material for large-scale technological applications.
With a high strength-to-weight ratio, the AZ91 grade magnesium alloy is essential in various engineering applications like automotive, aerospace, marine, and defence. The main drawback of magnesium ...casting has oxidation results in agglomeration, slag formation, and voids. The present investigation of the liquid state vacuum stir cast process under an inert atmosphere was utilized to prepare AZ91 alloy nanocomposites with 0, 3, 6, 9, and 12 wt% of nano-zirconium dioxide (ZrO
2
) particles. The microstructure elemental composition of the developed composites was subjected to SEM/EDS analysis. The effect of ZrO
2
nanoparticles on the composite's physical, mechanical, wear, and corrosion properties was studied. The composite's actual density obeys the mixture's rule and is found to be lightweight compared to conventional materials. The composite contained 9 wt% of ZrO
2
and showed the maximum micro Vickers hardness number (96.71 ± 1.05 HV), ultimate tensile (281 ± 1.1 MPa), and impact strength (20.61 J). The higher content of ZrO
2
offered good wear resistance (value) under 40 N at 1 m/sec sliding speed compared to unreinforced cast AZ91 alloy and facilitated higher corrosion resistance of 3.23 mm/year.
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