A Comparative Study on the Cellular Inflammatory Indices among ICU Vs Non ICU Patients of Covid-19 in a Tertiary Hospital

Background: As accumulating evidence has suggested that there is an association of increased levels of inflammatory bio markers in relation to severity of covid -19 illness, the present study was planned to examine the scenario of association between inflammatory markers and severity of covid-19 illness by studying ICU and non ICU patients comparatively. Research Question: Is there a positive association between increased levels of inflammatory biomarkers and severely ill patients of covid-19 disease? The setting of the study was at Government General Hospital, (State Covid Care Hospital) Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. An observational study was conducted during the period from March 2021 to August 2021 on 60 ICU and 40 Non ICU patients of covid-19 by studying their socio demographic profiles and scenario of increased levels of inflammatory Biomarkers in relation with severity of illness of covid-19 disease. Results: Maximum about 52% of the admissions were confined to the age group of 41 to 60 years with the mean ± 2 SD = 47.4 ± 24.8 at 95 CI with 70:30% of sex ratio was observed among study subjects as male & female. High CRP & IL 6 levels were observed among ICU patients when compared to Non ICU patients. Further it was observed that maximum high levels of serum ferritin between 501 to 750 Micrograms/L among ICU admissions of covid-19 significantly with the P< 0.01 when compared to non ICU admissions. And also high levels of LDH between 231-600 U/ml were observed among the both groups of ICU & non ICU patients. It was also observed that related to D dimer high levels ≥ 10,000 Micrograms/ml were noticed among ICU patients only. It was concluded that high levels of inflammatory Bio markers were associated with older and severely affected covid-19 patients in this study

SIMULATION STUDIES ON THE EFFECT OF PROJECTILE NOSE SHAPE IMPACTING ON ALUMINUM PLATES

In mechanics, an impact is a high force or shock applied over a short period when two or more bodies collide. Such a force or acceleration usually has a greater effect than a lower force applied over a proportionally longer period of time. The effect depends critically on the relative velocity of the bodies to one another. Structural failure due to impact is a common but complex phenomenon. In earlier days the impact problems were primarily confined to the military. As the civilian technology has grown in sophistication, more studies are being carried out to understand the behavior of materials subjected to short duration of loading. The field of impact dynamics is of interest to engineers concerned with design of light weight body amour, safety of nuclearreactor containment vessels subjected to missile or aircraft impact, protection of spacecraft from meteoroid impact, safe demolition of pre stressed concrete structures and transportation safety of the hazardous materials. In the present work, simulation is performed by impacting aluminum plates of three different thicknesses viz. 0.81 mm, 1.51 mm and 2.05 mm by three different nose projectiles, i.e., blunt, conical and hemispherical with varying kinetic energy in Finite Element Code. Problem is modeled using ANSYS/Explicit Axi-symmetric Model

Thermoelectric properties of Cu3SbSe3 with intrinsically ultralow lattice thermal conductivity

We report the synthesis, characterization and evaluation of the thermoelectric properties of Cu3SbSe3 with a view to explore its utility as an useful thermoelectric material due to its intrinsically low thermal conductivity. Cu3SbSe3 was synthesized employing a solid state reaction process followed by spark plasma sintering, and the synthesized material was extensively characterized for its phase, composition and structure, which suggested formation of a single-phase. The measured electrical transport properties of Cu3SbSe3 indicated p-type conduction in this material. The electrical transport behavior agrees well with that predicted theoretically using first-principle density-functional theory calculations, employing generalized gradient approximation. The measured thermal conductivity was found to be 0.26 W m(-1) K-1 at 550 K, which is the lowest reported thus far for Cu3SbSe3 and is among the lowest for state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials. Despite its ultralow thermal conductivity coupled with a moderate Seebeck coefficient, the calculated value of its thermoelectric figure-of-merit was found to be exceptionally low (<0.1), which was primarily attributed to its low electrical conductivity. Nevertheless, it is argued that Cu3SbSe3, due its environmentally-friendly constituent elements, ultralow thermal conductivity and moderate thermopower, could be a potentially useful thermoelectric material as the power factor can be favorably tailored by tuning the carrier concentration using suitable metallic dopants

Multiplexed Chat Application

Multiplexing in socket programming is the capability of handling input and output from different I/O channels. we can multiplex UDP and TCP sockets to build multiplexed chat application UDP is a connectionless transport layer protocol. Since TCP doesn\u27t provide the feature of Multicasting UDP is a widely used protocol to implement it. UDP\u27s stateless nature is useful for servers that answer small queries for large number of clients. Socket network programming is one of the most popular technologies used to build a chat application and establishing network communication between systems. Socket programming helps to implement the bottom level of network communication, using Application Programming Interface (API). In this paper we propose a method to make a chat room using socket based on User Datagram Protocol (UDP) which enables the feature of acknowledgments after every message sent and poll system call[1]. It is equivalent to a dedicated chat server having a Server and n number of Clients. After client and server set up to connect, you can achieve many machines to communicate through peer to peer communication, multicasting and File sending. During communication taking place there might be different system and network failures occurring, which we have discussed and proposed a convenient solution for that

Microstructure and mechanical properties of thermoelectric nanostructured n-type silicon-germanium alloys synthesized employing spark plasma sintering

Owing to their high thermoelectric (TE) figure-of-merit, nanostructured Si80Ge20 alloys are evolving as a potential replacement for their bulk counterparts in designing efficient radio-isotope TE generators. However, as the mechanical properties of these alloys are equally important in order to avoid in-service catastrophic failure of their TE modules, we report the strength, hardness, fracture toughness, and thermal shock resistance of nanostructured n-type Si80Ge20 alloys synthesized employing spark plasma sintering of mechanically alloyed nanopowders of its constituent elements. These mechanical properties show a significant enhancement, which has been correlated with the microstructural features at nano-scale, delineated by transmission electron microscopy

Ultrafine grain structure features in spray-formed AZ31 magnesium alloy

The ultrafine grain structure was developed in spray-formed AZ31 magnesium alloy by optimizing delivery tube orifice diameter. A significant refinement of grain size similar to 1 mu m in ultrafine level was achieved by using 2.25 mm delivery tube orifice diameter. The tensile strength value was increased from 145 MPa of as-cast alloy to 250 MPa of spray-formed alloy, registering an enhancement of similar to 72%. On the other hand, elongation was increased from 6% to 13% using 2.25 mm orifice, registering more than onefold increase in elongation. Also, hardness enhancement of similar to 49% was observed in spray-formed AZ31 alloy compared to as-cast alloy. The fracture surface of spray-formed AZ31 Mg alloy evidences the mixed type of ductile and brittle fracture

EM shielding effectiveness of Pd-CNT-Cu nanocomposite buckypaper

We report the synthesis of a nanocomposite consisting of Pd doped multiwall carbon nanotubes decorated with Cu nanoparticles, as a lightweight and flexible microwave absorbing material, using an electroless technique. The synthesised nanocomposite was extensively characterized by employing X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, FESEM, and HRTEM and their results were correlated with the high electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding observed in the present study. The optimum dielectric properties coupled with good electrical conductivity of this nanocomposite contribute to designing this absorption-based microwave shield, which exhibited a good EMI shielding effectiveness (EMI SE) of similar to 35 dB at a thickness of 200 mm, resulting in a high specific EMI SE of similar to 108 dB cm(3) g(-1) in the Ku-band

Synthesis and characterization of Al2O3-TiC nano-composite by spark plasma sintering

Al2O3-10TiC composite was synthesized by high energy ball milling followed by spark plasma sintering (SPS) process. Microstructure of the sintered composite samples reveals homogeneous distribution of the TIC particles in Al2O3 matrix. Effect of sintering temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties was studied. The sample sintered at 1500 degrees C shows a measured density of 99.97% of their theoretical density and hardness of 1892 Hv with very high scratch resistance. These results demonstrate that powder metallurgy combined with spark plasma sintering is a suitable method for the production of Al2O3-10TiC composites

Facile synthesis of earth-abundant and non-toxic p-type Si96B4/SiCp nanocomposites with enhanced thermoelectric performance

One of the impediments in the development of thermoelectric devices for power generation is that they mostly contain toxic and expensive elements and/or are synthesized using expensive or time-consuming material processing methodology. We report the synthesis of Silicon-Boron (Si96B4) alloy employing earth abundant constituent element using a facile single-step reactive sintering using spark plasma sintering technique. In order to enhance its mechanical properties, the synthesized Si96B4 alloy was dispersed with SiC nanoparticles and the effect of its addition on the thermoelectric and mechanical properties in the resulting Si96B4/SiC nanocomposite has been investigated. A thermoelectric figure-of-merit ZT similar to 0.27 at 1123 K was realized at an optimized composition of Si96B4/1 wt% SiC nanocomposite. This enhancement in ZT primarily originates from a noticeable reduction in the thermal conductivity on SiC dispersion in Si96B4 alloy, owing to the scattering of heat-carrying phonons by nanoscale SiC particles and mesoscale SiB3 precipitates, formed in-situ. The synthesized samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction and field emission scanning electron microscopy, based on which the enhancement in their thermoelectric and mechanical properties are discussed. Considering the low-cost and nontoxicity of the constituent elements coupled with facile and up-scalable one-step processing employed in its synthesis, Si96B4/SiC nanocomposites could be a potential p-type thermoelectric material for high-temperature power generation applications

Al2O3-TiC Composite Prepared by Spark Plasma Sintering Process: Evaluation of Mechanical and Tribological Properties

Al2O3-10TiC composites were synthesized by spark plasma sintering (SPS) process. Microstructural and mechanical properties of the composite reveal homogeneous distribution of the fine TiC particles in the matrix. The samples were produced with different sintering temperature, and it shows that the hardness and density gradually increases with increasing sintering temperature. Abrasion wear test result reveals that the composite sintered at 1500 A degrees C shows high abrasion resistance (wt. loss similar to 0.016 g) and the lowest abrasion resistance was observed for the composite sample sintered at 1100 A degrees C (wt. loss similar to 1.459 g). The profilometry surface roughness study shows that sample sintered at 1100 A degrees C shows maximum roughness (R (a) = 6.53 A mu m) compared to the sample sintered at 1500 A degrees C (R (a) = 0.66 A mu m) corroborating the abrasion wear test results