Design, Synthesis and Study of Redox and Optoelectronic Properties of Aromatic Oxidants and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Organic materials play a significant role for the next generation photovoltaic devices that convert solar energy into usable forms of energy. In this regard, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are fundamental tools in the developing area of molecular electronics and photovoltaics as they show excellent optical/electronic properties and are well-suited for applications in such developing areas as flexible display devices, field effect transistors and solar cell panels. Design and synthesis of novel materials for photovoltaics applications would require the proper understanding the mechanism of charge transport and identification of the structural features necessary in a particular molecular wire or PAH. To understand the charge transport mechanism and the hole delocalization one needs to generate the cation radical of a given electron donor in solution by using robust aromatic oxidants. Among these oxidants, magic blue has been widely used as an aromatic oxidant for the one electron oxidation due to its commercial availability and a reasonable oxidizing power. However, a modest stability of the magic blue salt leads to a slow decomposition to produce unknown impurities, which have been named “blues brothers”. Importantly, these impurities produce a noticeable band in the near-IR region—that is the same region where one usually expects to see an intervalence band of the cation radical with extensive hole delocalization. In this work a rational approach to synthesis of novel analogue of the magic blue that does not undergo degradation has been demonstrated. Furthermore, in the course of the rational design of novel molecular wires with enhanced redox and optical properties, one usually considers various geometrical factors in order to control the mechanism of charge delocalization. For example, a relatively small interplanar dihedral angle between adjacent units in poly-p-phenylene wire leads to a significant interchromophoric electronic coupling and thereby to extensive hole delocalization. However, it remains unclear how change in the interplanar angle would impact the redox and optical properties of the wire as well the mechanism of the hole delocalization in its cation radical. Accordingly, in this work it has been described the syntheses and study of the electrochemical and optoelectronic properties of a number of different series of biaryls connected by different numbers of methylene group to vary the dihedral angle in order to probe the mechanism and extent of hole delocalization in biaryls. Although significant progress has been made in understanding the charge transport mechanisms in various polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the usefulness of such materials in functional devices remains limited; hence design and synthesis of new PAHs to better understand the charge transport mechanisms remains an active area of research. An oxidative cyclodehydrogenation strategy was used for synthesizing a highly soluble, fluorene based larger derivative of hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene (FHBC), where twelve carbon-carbon bonds are formed in a single step. Deployment of fluorenes at the periphery of the HBC core not only imparts solubility to the structure, but also allows the new PAHs to be functionalized further to make bigger PAHs to tune its desirable electronic properties

Future importance of healthy oceans: Ecosystem functions and biodiversity, marine pollution, carbon sequestration, ecosystem goods and services

The paper provides a review the current status of ecosystem and resource extraction to provide a series of thoughts related to the future challenges in maintaining the health of the Marine and coastal ecosystems at the Bay of Bengal. The chapter highlighted the challenges current efforts and future interventions necessary to keep the Bay of Bengal large marine ecosystem healthy. They are mainly linked to climate change, environmental pollution from different sources, biodiversity conservation, sediment movement. marine spatial planning and adoption of protected area concept to design marine reserve, fish sanctuary and ecological critical areas in the coastal zone were highlighted. The importance and means of monitoring of the marine and coastal ecosystem at the Bay of Bengal required local and international collaboration in order to ensure adoption and management of an objective monitoring syste

Support of Social Development Foundation (SDF) and Its Impact on the Livelihood of Poor and Hardcore Poor Families: A Case of Two Villages in Bangladesh

This study was conducted in order to understand the livelihood improvement of the poor and hardcore poor families by utilizing the project support. Associated objectives included to understand the women empowerment and change in other social areas. This was a three months study carried out between mid-September to mid-December 2016 with the stakeholders of the Social Investment Program Project (SIPP) implemented by Social Development Foundation (SDF) (An autonomous body of Finance Ministry of Bangladesh). A field survey was carried out in November 2016, through FGD sessions and key informant interviews with selected poor and hardcore families of two project villages under Jamalpur District. Respondents totaled 80 in these surveys. Discussion was also held with the project staffs and leaders of the Village Organizations to learn more about the details of project activities. Through the study it is revealed that with the project support the beneficiaries are able to start income generating activities and also able to save on regular basis. Change also observed in other areas like sanitation, housing, women empowerment water source etc. It was found that the concerned members of the village organizations are very much interested in continuing with income generating and social development activities. Based on the findings, the study makes the following recommendations as; for future sustainability the village organizations needed to be registered under respective government department. More initiative is needed for new leadership development. Presently the leadership found concentrated on few members.  All sorts of documentation, financial and others needed to be maintained and update regularly in a transparent way. Ensure group meetings in regular basis with maximum participation.  More Initiative is required to develop market channel and group investment. Keywords: Social Development Foundation(SDF), Impact, Livelihood,  Poor and Hardcore Poor Families, Banglades

Development of a hot water treatment plant suitable for banana

Banana is a year round fruit in Bangladesh.  After harvesting, banana is attacked by postharvest disease caused by some fungi.  The quality and quantity losses of banana occur due to disease attacks and lack of proper postharvest handling.  Fungus can be destroyed or made inactive by chemical or heat treatment.  Most of the chemicals are hazardous to human health.  Heat treatment technology is simple and is a non-chemical method to kill or inactivate pest and to control fungus.  A hot water treatment plant was designed and developed with local materials for treating banana fruits.  Overall dimensions of the hot water treatment plant were 1600 mm×926 mm×1566 mm and operated by an electrical motor of 0.38 kW.  Water was heated by the six electric immersion heaters of 2,000 W of each.  The capacity of the plant was 350 kg h-1.  The price of the hot-water treatment plant was Taka 1,00,000 (US$1300) and treatment cost was Taka 0.55 kg-1 ($0.007).  The effective combinations of temperatures and exposure periods of BARI Kola 1 and Sabri Kola were found to be 55°C for 5 min.  When the banana fruits were treated with hot water, the shelf-life of the fruits was found to increase by 30% and the postharvest loss reduced by 70% over those of untreated bananas.  The break-even point of the plant was 70 h yr-1.  Banana fruits treated by the plant can be profitable to traders when the annual use of the plant exceeds 70 h.  Payback period of the plant was estimated to be 26 d.  Therefore, there is a good opportunity of farmers and traders to increase income and generate employment using the hot water treatment plant.   Keywords: Hot-water treatment plant, banana, temperature, exposure period, break-even point and payback perio

国際化する資本・労働の一般均衡分析 : 経済成長、貧困、および、不平等への影響

政策分析プログラム / Policy Analysis Program政策研究大学院大学 / National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies論文審査委員: 細江 宣裕（主査）, 土谷 隆, 諸星 穂積, 大槻 恒裕（大阪大学国際公共政策研究科

Spreading Electron Density Thin: Increasing the Chromophore Size in Polyaromatic Wires Decreases Interchromophoric Electronic Coupling

The development of novel polychromophoric materials using extended polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as a single large chromophore holds promise for long-range charge-transfer applications in photovoltaic devices and molecular electronics. However, it is not well-understood how the interchromophoric electronic coupling varies with the chromophore size in linearly connected molecular wires. Here, we show with the aid of electrochemistry, electronic spectroscopy, density functional theory calculations, and theoretical modeling that as the number of aromatic moieties in a single chromophore increases, the interchromophoric electronic coupling decreases and may reach negligible values if the chromophore is sufficiently large. The origin of this initially surprising result becomes clear when one considers this problem with the aid of Hückel molecular orbital theory, as at the polymeric limit energies of the molecular orbitals cluster to form bands and thus the energy spacing between orbitals, and thereby the electronic coupling must decrease with the chromophore expansion

Temperature effects on pathogenicity of selected Edwardsiella tarda strain to Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica

Temperature effect on the pathogenicity of selected Edwardsiella tarda V-1 strain to Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica was investigated. To evaluate the effects of both pathogen incubation temperature and fish cultivation temperature on pathogen pathogenicity a two-factor design was conducted. E. tarda was incubated at 15, 20, 25, 30 and 37±1°C, and the fish (mean weight: 100g) were reared at 15, 20, 25 and 28±1°C respectively. The fish reared at different temperatures were infected with the E. tarda incubated at different temperatures. The results of a 4-day LD50 test showed that temperature significantly affected the pathogenicity of E. tarda (p<0.01) and the interaction between the two factors was also significant (p<0.01). For fish reared at 20°C the pathogenicity of E. tarda was the highest at 30°C of pathogen incubation. When the fish rearing temperature was raised to 25 and 28°C, the pathogenicity of E. tarda incubated at all temperatures increased. Isolation testing demonstrated results similar to those of LD50. The selected isolate was virulent to eel, but pathogenicity varied with temperature

Fuzzy Multi-Objective Linear Programming for Project Management Decision under Uncertain Environment with AHP Based Weighted Average Method

Smooth implementation and controlling conflicting goals of a project with the usage of all related resources through organization is inherently a complex task to management. At the same time deterministic models are never efficient in practical project management (PM) decision problems because the related parameters are frequently fuzzy in nature. The project execution time is a major concern of the involved stakeholders (client, contractors and consultants). For optimization of total project cost through time control, here crashing cost is considered as a critical factor in project management. The proposed approach aims to formulate a multi objective linear programming model to simultaneously minimize total project cost, completion time and crashing cost with reference to direct, indirect cost in the framework of the satisfaction level of decision maker with fuzzy goal and fuzzy cost coefficients.. To make such problems realistic, triangular fuzzy numbers and the concept of minimum accepted level method are employed to formulate the problem. The proposed model leads decision makers to choose the desired compromise solution under different risk levels and the project optimization problems have been solved under multiple uncertainty conditions. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is used to rank multiple objectives to make the problem realistic for the respective case. Here minimum operator and AHP based weighted average operator method is used to solved the model and the solution is obtained by using LINGO softwar