19 research outputs found
Construction and evaluation of novel molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPS) using helical poly(3-Methyl-4-Vinylpyridine), 2017
No full textA novel chiral helical imprinted polymer (MIP) has been prepared by bulk copolymerization of 3-methyl-4-vinylpyridine and a crosslinker using chiral S-mandelic acid as template. The resulting MIPs after removing the template show optical activity that is derived from the presence of chiral helical structures of poly(3-methyl-4-vinylpyridine) (P3M4VP) embedded within the MIP matrix. The basic functional monomer 3-methyl-4-vinylpyridine (3M4VP) was utilized with the acidic template to ensure good interaction between the template and the polymer. Divinylbenzene (DVB) and ethyleneglycoldimethacrylate (EGDMA) with widely varying degree of rigidity, flexibility, and polarity were selected as crosslinking agents. Using two different crosslinkers, it was possible to optimize the MIP for maximum specificity and selectivity. Spectroscopic methods such as FT-IR and 1H NMR were used to investigate the interaction between template and functional monomer. Scanning electron microscopy and nitrogen sorption analysis showed significant difference of the surface morphological characteristics between imprinted and non-imprinted polymers. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out to investigate thermal stability of MIPs and NIPs. The binding studies and the selectivity of the polymers were analyzed using UV-visible spectroscopy. The chiral secondary or higher structural ordering within the MIPs was examined using circular dichroism (CD) spectrometry. The polymer preparations were evaluated and compared with non-imprinted polymers for their ability to bind the template which is a measure of the specificity of the imprinted system. The nature and degree of crosslinking and other parameters like concentration of the template solution, solvent, and time which influences the binding of these imprinted polymers towards the print molecule were also investigated to optimize the imprinted system. The ability of the S-enantiomer imprinted polymer to bind the R-enantiomer was investigated. The separation and selectivity factors have been quantified. The present study develops a successful strategy for preparing chiral MIPs, which are expected to find vital applications in chiral separation, and enantioselective release of chiral drugs. KEY TERMS: MIPs, 3M4VP, S-MA, Binding sites, Polymer Chemistr
Internet of Things Assisted Solid Biofuel Classification Using Sailfish Optimizer Hybrid Deep Learning Model for Smart Cities
No full textSolid biofuels and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies play a vital role in the development of smart cities. Solid biofuels are a renewable and sustainable source of energy obtained from organic materials, such as wood, agricultural residues, and waste. The integration of IoT technology with solid biofuel classification can improve the performance, quality control, and overall management of biofuel production and usage. Recently, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models can be applied for the solid biofuel classification process. Therefore, this article develops a novel solid biofuel classification using sailfish optimizer hybrid deep learning (SBFC-SFOHDL) model in the IoT platform. The proposed SBFC-SFOHDL methodology focuses on the identification and classification of solid biofuels from agricultural residues in the IoT platform. To achieve this, the SBFC-SFOHDL method performs IoT-based data collection and data preprocessing to transom the input data into a compatible format. Moreover, the SBFC-SFOHDL technique employs the multihead self attention-based convolutional bidirectional long short-term memory model (MSA-CBLSTM) for solid biofuel classification. For improving the classification performance of the MSA-CBLSTM model, the SFO algorithm is utilized as a hyperparameter optimizer. The simulation results of the SBFC-SFOHDL technique are tested and the results are examined under different measures. An extensive comparison study reported the betterment of the SBFC-SFOHDL technique compared to recent DL models
Author Correction: Continuous production of pure liquid fuel solutions via electrocatalytic CO<inf>2</inf> reduction using solid-electrolyte devices (Nature Energy, (2019), 4, 9, (776-785), 10.1038/s41560-019-0451-x)
No full textIn the version of this Article originally published, the author name Eli Stavitski was incorrectly written as Eli Stavitsk. This error has been corrected in all versions of the Article
First-Principles Investigations on Europium Monoxide
No full textEuropium monoxide is both an insulator and a Heisenberg ferromagnet (Tc=69 K).
In the present thesis, the author has investigated the electronic structure of different
types of EuO by density functional theory. The on-site Coulomb interaction of the
localized Eu 4f and 5d electrons, which is wrongly treated in the standard generalized
gradient approximation method, is found to be crucial to obtain the correct insulating
ground state as observed in experiments. Our results show that the ferromagnetism
is stable under pressure, both hydrostatic and uniaxial. For both types of pressure
an insulator-metal transition is demonstrated. Moreover, the experimentally observed
insulator-metal transition in oxygen deficient and gadolinium-doped EuO is reproduced
in our calculations for impurity concentrations of 6.25% and 25%. Furthermore, a 10-
layer EuO thin film is theoretically predicted to be an insulator with a narrow band gap
of around 0.08 eV, while the Si/EuO interface shows metallic properties with the Si and
O 2p as well as Eu 5d bands crossing the Fermi level
الشِّاهد الشِّعري في كتابِ شذا العَرفِ في فنِّ الصَّرفِ لِلحَملاوي صُورُهُ وسياقاتُهُ
No full textThis research investigates the poetic witness in the book Shaza Al-Orf in the Art of Morphology, which is a topic that needs to be studied and collected to know (Al-Hamalawy) employment of poetic evidence and prove the morphological issues with them. know Sheikh (Al-Hamalawy) is considered one of the prominent scholars of linguistics in the modern era and his authentic reference under investigation got widespread fame for language learners. In it, its author followed the approach of the ancients, so the poetic evidence came in it, either to indicate the regularity of a morphological rule or its abnormality from the ordinary, or to clarify the structure of a word, or to prove a morphological rule, just as in most of his poetic evidence - which amounted to eighty-seven witnesses - he was satisfied with mentioning (and saying), Or (and the saying of the poet) without attributing it to its owners, as the case of ancient authors. In the contexts of the poetic witness and the forms of his appearance in the book, he varied, and the images presented by his author differed, as he is either in one verse of al-Qaeda the subject of martyrdom, or in two verses, or in a half of a verse that has a completeness that is not mentioned, or a bifurcated witness that varied between one to three
Prevalence, persistence, and phenotypic variation of Aspergillus fumigatus in the outdoor environment in Manchester, UK, over a 2-year period
No full textAspergillus fumigatus, an opportunistic fungal pathogen that causes invasive aspergillosis in immunosuppressed patients, is considered to be the world's most dangerous mould. It is widely distributed in the environment, and airborne asexual conidia serve as the main mode of transport for pulmonary lung infection. It is important to monitor seasonal airborne conidia levels when assessing the risk of acquiring this infection. In this study, air was sampled for total viable fungal spores and viable A. fumigatus conidiamonthly over a 2-year period (2009 and 2010) close toManchester, UK, city center. Total viable airborne fungal counts varied seasonally, peaking in the summer and autumn for both years and reaching levels of approximately 1100- 1400 colony-forming units (CFU)/m3; counts were strongly positively correlated to mean temperature (R2 = 0.697). By contrast, A. fumigatus viable airborne counts were not seasonally associated; persistent low levels were between 3 and 20 CFU/m3 and were not correlated with mean temperature (R 2 = 0.018). A total of 220 isolates of A. fumigatus were recovered on potato dextrose agar (PDA) at 45°C, and internal transcribed spacer sequencing and restriction digestion of a partial polymerase chain reaction amplicon of the β-tubulin gene (benA) of 34 randomly selected isolates were used to confirm the isolates as A. fumigatus. When the colony radial growth rates (Kr) were determined, the highest rates were observed on PDA, followed by Vogel's medium supplemented with phosphatidylcholine and Vogel's medium alone. Clinical isolates had a significantly higher mean colony Kr on PDA compared with environmental isolates. © The Author 2014
Activity Specification for Time-based Discrete Event Simulation Models
No full textabstract: Computational models for relatively complex systems are subject to many difficulties, among which is the ability for the models to be discretely understandable and applicable to specific problem types and their solutions. This demands the specification of a dynamic system as a collection of models, including metamodels. In this context, new modeling approaches and tools can help provide a richer understanding and, therefore, the development of sophisticated behavior in system dynamics. From this vantage point, an activity specification is proposed as a modeling approach based on a time-based discrete event system abstraction. Such models are founded upon set-theoretic principles and methods for modeling and simulation with the intent of making them subject to specific and profound questions for user-defined experiments.
Because developing models is becoming more time-consuming and expensive, some research has focused on the acquisition of concrete means targeted at the early stages of component-based system analysis and design. The model-driven architecture (MDA) framework provides some means for the behavioral modeling of discrete systems. The development of models can benefit from simplifications and elaborations enabled by the MDA meta-layers, which is essential for managing model complexity. Although metamodels pose difficulties, especially for developing complex behavior, as opposed to structure, they are advantageous and complementary to formal models and concrete implementations in programming languages.
The developed approach is focused on action and control concepts across the MDA meta-layers and is proposed for the parallel Discrete Event System Specification (P-DEVS) formalism. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) activity meta-models are used with syntax and semantics that conform to the DEVS formalism and its execution protocol. The notions of the DEVS component and state are used together according to their underlying system-theoretic foundation. A prototype tool supporting activity modeling was developed to demonstrate the degree to which action-based behavior can be modeled using the MDA and DEVS. The parallel DEVS, as a formal approach, supports identifying the semantics of the UML activities. Another prototype was developed to create activity models and support their execution with the DEVS-Suite simulator, and a set of prototypical multiprocessor architecture model specifications were designed, simulated, and analyzed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201
Author Correction: Predictive analytics of complex healthcare systems using deep learning based disease diagnosis model
No full textAuthor Correction: Continuous production of pure liquid fuel solutions via electrocatalytic CO2 reduction using solid-electrolyte devices
No full textElectrocatalytic CO2 reduction is often carried out in a solution electrolyte such as KHCO3(aq), which allows for ion conduction between electrodes. Therefore, liquid products that form are in a mixture with the dissolved salts, requiring energy-intensive downstream separation. Here, we report continuous electrocatalytic conversion of CO2 to pure liquid fuel solutions in cells that utilize solid electrolytes, where electrochemically generated cations (such as H+) and anions (such as HCOO−) are combined to form pure product solutions without mixing with other ions. Using a HCOOH-selective (Faradaic efficiencies > 90%) and easily scaled Bi catalyst at the cathode, we demonstrate production of pure HCOOH solutions with concentrations up to 12 M. We also show 100 h continuous and stable generation of 0.1 M HCOOH with negligible degradation in selectivity and activity. Production of other electrolyte-free C2+ liquid oxygenate solutions, including acetic acid, ethanol and n-propanol, are also demonstrated using a Cu catalyst. Finally, we show that our CO2 reduction cell with solid electrolytes can be modified to suit other, more complex practical applications.This work was supported by Rice University. This research used the 8-ID (ISS) beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facilities operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract no. DE-SC0012704. Q.J. and H.N.A. acknowledge the support from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Bridging the gap between documents and practice in medication management “Documents Vitalization”
No full text
Purpose
Health care is a complex system, mandating adoption of unrelenting updates of guidelines and best practices. Securing a balanced system of current practice and matching documentation has always been a challenge due to impaired connection between traditional forms of documentation (e.g. policies, procedures, and guidelines) and users. Departmental manuals always find their way back to shelves away from the workplace, and continuous interaction with customers and complexity of business processes hinder timely update and consequently sustainable improvement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
In late 2014, the corresponding author visited Japan as part of Kaizen benchmark tour that introduced the concepts and applications of “Kaizen,” the Japanese word for continuous improvement, in Toyota factory and health care institutes in Fukuoka, Nagoya, and Tokyo. Soon thereafter, the authors adopted Kaizen to be the organizational theme for improvement. QPS team launched several initiatives throughout 2015 to improve the quality of documentation. Documents submitted had one thing in common, all participants used flowcharts, diagrams, and even drawings to simplify hard-to-understand processes. This challenge highlighted the utilization of diagrams, well-organized forms, infographics, and other methods to simplify processes and to vitalize documents.
Findings
Since the hospital utilizes the paper-form prescribing system, prescription errors lead to delays in dispensing time, affecting patient satisfaction in emergency room’s pharmacy. Pharmacy team launched a project using document vitalization as an improvement strategy. Aggregate results showed 16.7 percent reduction in average time per prescription in inpatient pharmacy and 20.0 percent reduction in emergency room pharmacy. Although measurements did not continue over a longer period or were statistically analyzed, they provide a crude indication of possible improvement using document vitalization.
Research limitations/implications
Lack of a sound measurement system with proper statistical analysis prevented the provision of reliable evidence of improvement. Moreover, lack of previous case studies has been an obstacle. It is the authors’ plan to provide measurable evidence of improvement for multiple projects through measurement of process time, customer and employee satisfaction, the number of process errors, etc. Nevertheless, feedback from users provides a rough indication of possible improvement using document vitalization. It is the authors’ aim to incorporate “document vitalization” into the fabric of documentation process and SFHPM culture.
Practical implications
Empowerment creates an energy-filled work environment where staff members feel they are the real change factors and are actively contributing to the advancement and success of their organizations (Taylor 2013). This does not mean allowing chaos and unplanned changes to disrupt process flow but rather to leave room for trial and error in a controlled environment and pilot-testing significant changes before generalization.
Originality/value
The term vitalization itself is a brand new one used in this field, and the authors introduce it for the first time to be a solution that comes from frontliners and can bridge the gap between document and practice. If all document vitalization successes were a tribute to one factor, it would be “empowerment.” Once leaders have the courage to listen to frontline staff voice and allow them to do things differently, the staff members will surprise their organizations with the marvels of their creations.
</jats:sec
