Effect of Zn(II) deposition in soil on mulberry-silk worm food chain

The present study was conducted to evaluate the entrance of Zn(II) into the food chain of Bombyx mori (silk worm) from mulberry plants irrigated using Zn(II) containing synthetic effluents. The soil, plant, silkworm and their excreta were sampled to determine Zn(II) amount by using atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). The amount of Zn(II) deposited by synthetic effluent to soil was increased with pH of the effluent. However, the bioaccumaltion of Zn(II) in Morus alba leaves and B. mori larvae was high when the effluent pH was in the acidic range. B. mori excreted considerable amount of Zn(II) but still most of Zn(II) resided inside its body. The maximum Zn(II) amount detected in soil, leaves, larvae andfaeces were 386.51 ± 0.03, 142.85 ± 0.001, 91.375 ± 0.019 and 42.13 ± 0.69 mg/kg, respectively. Zn(II) present in B. mori body was responsible for toxic effects on its life cycle. First instar of B. mori was most affected by Zn(II) toxicity. Body length, body weight of B. mori decreased with increase in bioaccumlated Zn(II) amount in larval body. Higher Zn(II) concentration in larval body increased B. mori death rate significantly

Menempelkan Mata Kaki Saat Shalat Jamaah, Wajibkah?

Jika kita shalat jamaah di masjid hari ini, masalah meluruskan shaf tentu bukan hal yang susah. Hal itu karena di masjid sudah ada karpet yang bergaris, atau paling tidak lantai yang sudah ada garis penanda shafnya

Siapakah Amil Zakat?

Zakat selain sebagai kewajiban ibadah kepada Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, juga sebagai bentuk hadirnya orang kaya untuk membantu saudaranya yang kurang mampu secara finansial. Jika zakat bisa dimaksimalkan fungsinya, maka fakir-miskin sangat mungkin untuk bisa dientaskan dari keterpurukan ekonominya. Pemerintah harusnya hadir secara penuh dan bertanggung jawab atas warganya yang kurang mampu. Jika pemerintah memaksimalkan pengelolaan zakat, sangat mungkin kemiskinan dapat dientaskan. Pengelolaan zakat oleh pemerintah meliputi penarikan zakat dari wajib zakat (muzakki), mengumpulkan, mendata, mengorganisasi dan akhirnya menyalurkan ke pihak yang berhak. Tentu bukan presiden sendiri yang harus turun tangan. Pemerintah mengangkat orang-orang tertentu untuk mengemban tugas ini, yang dinamakan amil zakat. Hanya saja, kadang peran pemerintah dalam hal zakat kurang terasa, maka beberapa masyarakat berinisiatif mendirikan yayasan amil atau yang sering disebut dengan Lembaga Amil Zakat. Maka bermunculan amil-amil swasta yang tak jarang saling antar mereka malah berebut muzakki. Bahkan tak jarang, beberapa majelis taklim, masjid, mushalla juga ikut mengumpulkan zakat dari para jamaahnya. Khususnya ketika bulan Ramadhan. Di satu sisi, amil bentukan pemerintah itu kurang Amil Zakat | 7 muka | daftar isi bisa diandalkan, muncul Lembaga Amil non pemerintah yang lebih dipercaya publik. Hanya saja, tak jarang terjadi saingan antar amil non pemerintah, rebutan lahan muzakki, sampai peruntukan zakat yang kadang hanya sebagai iklan agar para muzakki mau membayarkan zakat melalui mereka. Maka tak ubahnya amil non pemerintah itu hanya seperti event organizer saja. Belum lagi jika amil zakat non pemerintah itu dari satu golongan tertentu, pasti peruntukan zakatnya tak akan keluar hanya kecuali kepada anggota golongannya. Lantas, siapakah sebenarnya amil menurut syariah? Apakah amil non pemerintah juga bisa disebut amil? Berapakah kompensasi amil dalam syariah? B

Proximate composition and mineral profile of eight different unstudied date (Phoenix dactylifera L.) varieties from Pakistan

With the aim of extending the knowledge on chemical composition of dates (Phoenix dactylifera L.), eight different sun dried date varieties; (1) Daki, (2) Aseel, (3) Coconut, (4) Khuzravi, (5) Halavi, (6) Zahidi, (7) Deglet Noor and (8) Barkavi were examined to determine their proximate composition and mineral profile. All the date varieties were found to be rich in proteins, fiber, carbohydrates and net gross energy (352.329 Kcal/100 g in Aseel to 425.147 Kcal/100 g in Khuzravi) having suitable levels of lipids and low values of ash, moisture and oxalates. Na, K and Li were found as macrominerals whereas Cr, Cu, Ca, Mg, Ni, Zn and Mn were found as microminerals. The results suggest that all the studied dates serve as good source of vital nutrients and can be considered as premium quality having significantly higher energy values than the earlier reported values for dates

Polypogon monspeliensis waste biomass: A potential biosorbent for Cd (II)

Polypogon monspeliensis a globally available natural waste material was used for uptake of Cd (II) from aqueous solutions in this study. The results clearly demonstrate the effect of important experimental parameters on the biosorption process in batch experiments. The evaluated pH, biosorbent dose, size and initial metal concentration for Cd (II) uptake by P. monspeliensis waste biomass were 6, 0.05 g, 0.10 mm and 100 mg/L respectively. The Cd (II) sorption process by P. monspeliensis waste biomass was described well by pseudo second order kinetic model and Langumir sorption isotherm model. Metal equilibrium was reached in 120 min. A further increase in incubation time had no significant effect on the biosorption of the metal. FTIR spectroscopic results pointed out the involvement of hydroxyl and amine groups in the Cd (II) sorption by P. monspeliensis waste biomass

SeVuc: A study on the Security Vulnerabilities of Capsule Networks against adversarial attacks

Capsule Networks (CapsNets) preserve the hierarchical spatial relationships between objects, and thereby bear the potential to surpass the performance of traditional Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in performing tasks like image classification. This makes CapsNets suitable for the smart cyber-physical systems (CPS), where a large amount of training data may not be available. A large body of work has explored adversarial examples for CNNs, but their effectiveness on CapsNets has not yet been studied systematically. In our work, we perform an analysis to study the vulnerabilities in CapsNets to adversarial attacks. These perturbations, added to the test inputs, are small and imperceptible to humans, but can fool the network to mispredict. We propose a greedy algorithm to automatically generate imperceptible adversarial examples in a black-box attack scenario. We show that this kind of attacks, when applied to the German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark and CIFAR10 datasets, mislead CapsNets in making a correct classification, which can be catastrophic for smart CPS, like autonomous vehicles. Moreover, we apply the same kind of adversarial attacks to a 5-layer CNN (LeNet), to a 9-layer CNN (VGGNet), and to a 20-layer CNN (ResNet), and analyze the outcome, compared to the CapsNets, to study their different behaviors under the adversarial attacks

Kinetic and equilibrium modeling of Cu(II) and Ni(II) sorption onto physically pretreated Rosa centifolia distillation waste biomass

The removal of Cu(II) and Ni(II) from aqueous solution by physically pretreated (boiled, heated and autoclaved) Rosa centifolia distillation waste biomass was conducted in batch conditions. The obtained results revealed that initial metal ion concentration, kinetics, and temperature affected the adsorption capacity of the physically pretreated R. centifolia distillation waste biomass. The Cu(II) and Ni(II) equilibrium sorption data agreed well to Langmuir isotherm model and the sorption kinetics were accurately described by pseudo second order kinetic model. The Cu(II) and Ni(II) uptake capacities (mg g-1) of physical pretreated R. centifolia distillation waste biomass were in following order: boiled (66.91) > heated (52.51) > autoclaved (49.82) > native (42.68) and boiled (67.55) > heated (65.19) > autoclaved (58.09) > native (45.19), respectively. The nature of R. centifolia distillation waste biomass surface functionalities was analyzed by FTIR spectroscopy.Keywords: Cu(II), Ni(II), isotherms, kinetics, pretreatment, Rosa centifolia

Development and in-vitro Evaluation of Once Daily Tablet Dosage Form of Loxoprofen Sodium

Purpose: To formulate and characterize once daily controlled release tablet of loxoprofen sodium.Methods: Eudragit RS-100, hydroxylpropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) and pectin were used as release retarding polymers. All the formulations were prepared by direct compression method. Various precompression studies were carried out to determine Hausner’s ratio, Carr’s index, angle of repose, bulk density and tapped density Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies and also post-compression studies to evaluate hardness, friability, weight variation, drug content, in-vitro drug release were conducted on the tablets. The drug release data were subjected to kinetic models, including zero order, first order, Hixon Crowell, Higuchi and Korsmeyer-Peppas.Results: Compressibility index (7.6 ± 1.32 - 12.5 ± 1.43%), Hausner’s ratio (1.08 ± 0.04 - 1.14 ± 0.03), angle of repose (27.78 ± 0.47 - 30.49 ± 0.46°), hardness (6.25 ± 0.27 - 7.21±0.21 kg/cm2), friability (0.14 ± 0.06 - 0.28 ± 0.0 %), weight variation (249.5 ± 2.09 - 251.35 ± 2.41 mg) and drug content  (97.30 ± 0.28 - 103.70 ± 0.31 %) were within generally accepted limits for the pre-and post-compression formulations, respectively. The tablets having the maximum amount of among the three polymers tested as matrix materials, HPMC, represented by F3 tablets, exerted better sustained release properties after 12 h. Release pattern was more of Fickian diffusion followed by Higuchi mechanism.Conclusion: The release of the loxoprofen sodium was optimized up to 12 h.Keywords: Loxoprofen, Sustained release, hydroxypropyl methylcelluose, Pectin, Eudragit, Matrix tablet

University Students’ Overall and Domain-Specific Physical Activity During COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study in Seven ASEAN Countries

This research investigated the overall and domain-specific physical activity (PA) of university students in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. A cross-sectional study was applied to socioeconomic (SE) and PA online data collected from 15,366 students across 17 universities in seven Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. Statistical analyses using logistic regressions established SE–PA relationships. Over half (60.3%) of ASEAN university students met age-span specific PA guidelines. Students participated in recreational PA the most, followed by study-related activities and 44.1% of students engaged in \u3e8 hrs/day of sedentary time (ST). Compared to students with a normal body mass index (BMI), students who were underweight (UW), overweight (OW), and obese (OB) respectively, had a 14% (UW odds ratio (OR) = 1.14, p = 0.005), 25% (OW OR = 1.25, p \u3c 0.001), and 24% (OB OR = 1.24, p = 0.005) greater probability of meeting PA guidelines. Those who engaged in active transport and belonged to a sports club (SC) had 42% (SC OR = 0.58, p \u3c 0.001, for both) less probability of meeting the PA guidelines, compared with those who travelled inactively and did not belong to a sports club, respectively. Students who participated in 4–6 sport or exercise activities had ten times more likelihood of meeting PA guidelines (OR = 10.15, p \u3c 0.001), compared with those who did not play any sport or do any exercise. Students who spent \u3e8 hrs/day of ST had 32% (ST OR = 0.68, p \u3c 0.001) less probability of meeting PA guidelines, compared with those who spent \u3c3 hrs of ST. These data showed that over half of ASEAN university students achieved PA guidelines and were highly sedentary during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recreational and study-related activities were important for students to maintain sufficient PA and should be actively promoted within the restrictions imposed during periods of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns