Phylogenetic relationships among species of the subsection Dendrophlomis Bentham

This study used randomly amplified polymorphic DNA markers to determine genetic relationships among species of the subsection Dendrophlomis. Twenty accessions of the eleven Phlomis taxa were evaluated to determine genetic variability using fourteen ten mer primers selected from a 125 random oligonucleotide set. These 14 selected primers generated 85 RAPD bands that ranged in size from 200 to 1200 base pairs. Of the total bands, 88% (75) were polymorphic among the samples. Genetic distances among accessions were computed to produce a dendrogram based on UPGMA. Genetic distances ranged from 0.133 (between P. amanica and P. monocephala) to 0.494 (between P. chimerae and P. lunariifolia). The UPGMA tree based on distances has two major groups. The first comprised 9 taxa that were clustered into two subgroups. The first subgroup consisted of P. viscosa, P. lycia, P. amanica and P. monocephala while the second comprised P. lunariifolia, P. bourgaei, P. longifolia var. longifolia, P. grandiflora var. grandiflora and P. grandiflora var. fimbrilligera. The second group comprised 2 species, P. leucophracta and P. chimerae. Species-specific bands were observed for P. lycia, P. leucophracta, P. lunariifolia, P. bourgaei, P. chimerae and P. longifolia var longifolia

From Sophisticated Analysis to Colorimetric Determination: Smartphone Spectrometers and Colorimetry

Smartphone-based spectrometer and colorimetry have been gaining relevance due to the widespread advances of devices with increasing computational power, their relatively low cost and portable designs with user-friendly interfaces, and their compatibility with data acquisition and processing for “lab-on-a-chip” systems. They find applications in interdisciplinary fields, including but not limited to medical science, water monitoring, agriculture, and chemical and biological sensing. However, spectrometer and colorimetry designs are challenging tasks in real-life scenarios as several distinctive issues influence the quantitative evaluation process, such as ambient light conditions and device independence. Several approaches have been proposed to overcome the aforementioned challenges and to enhance the performance of smartphone-based colorimetric analysis. This chapter aims at providing researchers with a state-of-the-art overview of smartphone-based spectrometer and colorimetry, which includes hardware designs with 3D printers and sensors and software designs with image processing algorithms and smartphone applications. In addition, assay preparation to mimic the real-life testing environments and performance metrics for quantitative evaluation of proposed designs are presented with the list of new and future trends in this field

Guillain-Barré Syndrome after Thrombolysis with Streptokinase

Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) is an eponym for a heterogeneous group of immune-mediated peripheral neuropathies. We describe a case of GBS in a patient who recieved intravenous streptokinase therapy for acute anterior myocardial infarction. Clinical symptoms are thought to result from streptokinase-antibody complex mediated damage to the local blood-nerve barrier. Patient was treated with 5-days course of intravenous gammaglobulin and his outcome was good

The Effects of Novel Additives Used in PVA/Starch Biohybrid Films

The main aim of this chapter is to indicate the importance of additives and modifications used for PVA/starch biohybrid films. The additives and modifications used to improve the mechanical, thermal, and morphological properties of films are plasticizers, cross-linkers, fillers, physical and chemical treatment, and natural materials as well as thermoplastic starch. Plasticizers are preferred for higher molecular dynamism because of flexibility of functional groups in PVA and starch. Their flexibility is considerably affected by carboxyl and hydroxyl groups of plasticizers. The use of cofunctional groups increases the plasticity, flexibility, and physicochemical and mechanical properties of films. Moreover, cross-linking modifications are also effective to enhance the properties of biofilms. These modifications improve the tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, water resistance, thermal resistance, swelling behavior, and antibacterial activity of films. Fillers are also used to enhance the properties of PVA/starch films. In this way, the properties such as gas barrier, mechanical stiffness, transparency and thermal stability of the filler-added films are improved. The chemical and physical modifications provide stronger hydrogen bonds in films due to increasing carboxyl groups. Thus, the physical, biological, and chemical properties of films are improved because of the changing molecular structure via esterification, etherification, hydrogen bonding, and oxidation

Effect of the sensing layer resistivity on sensitivity in DSAWR sensors

SAW sensors have become important for gas detection applications in recent years. One of the parameters affecting the sensitivity of SAW sensors is the resistivity of the sensing layer. In this study, it is tried to determine the sensitivities of the sensors for different resistance values for the designed DSAWR. In accordance with this purpose, instead of using actual sensing layers whose resistance can be changed by parameters such as temperature etc., 8 different fixed resistors in the range of 3 to 4M ohms were used to fully demonstrate the effect of the resistance. It has been found that the DSAWR has better sensitivity for active layer resistances between kΩ to a few hundred kΩ

Index Modulation-based Information Harvesting for Far-Field RF Power Transfer

While wireless information transmission (WIT) is evolving into its sixth generation (6G), maintaining terminal operations that rely on limited battery capacities has become one of the most paramount challenges for Internet-of-Things (IoT) platforms. In this respect, there exists a growing interest in energy harvesting technology from ambient resources, and wireless power transfer (WPT) can be the key solution towards enabling battery-less infrastructures referred to as zero-power communication technology. Indeed, eclectic integration approaches between WPT and WIT mechanisms are becoming a vital necessity to limit the need for replacing batteries. Beyond the conventional separation between data and power components of the emitted waveforms, as in simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) mechanisms, a novel protocol referred to as information harvesting (IH) has recently emerged. IH leverages existing WPT mechanisms for data communication by incorporating index modulation (IM) techniques on top of the existing far-field power transfer mechanism. In this paper, a unified framework for the IM-based IH mechanisms has been presented where the feasibility of various IM techniques are evaluated based on different performance metrics. The presented results demonstrate the substantial potential to enable data communication within existing far-field WPT systems, particularly in the context of next-generation IoT wireless networks.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Heat-resistant hydrophobic-oleophobic coatings

Thermally and chemically durable hydrophobic oleophobic coatings, containing different ceramic particles such as SiO2, SiC, Al 2O3, which can be alternative instead of Teflon, have been developed and applied on the aluminum substrates by spin-coating method. Polyimides, which are high-thermal resistant heteroaromatic polymers, were synthesized, and fluor oligomers were added to these polymers to obtain hydrophobic-oleophobic properties. After coating, Al surface was subjected to Taber-abrasion, adhesion, corrosion, and thermal tests. The effects of the particle size of ceramic powders, organic matrix, and heat on the coating material were investigated. Coating material was characterized by FTIR spectrophotometer. Surface properties and thermal resistance of the coating materials were investigated by SEM and TGA analyses. After thermal curing, contact angles of these coatings with H2O and n-hexadecane were measured. It was observed that coatings like ceramic particles are more resistant against scratch and abrasion than the other coatings. Also, they are harder than coatings, which do not include ceramic particles. It was seen that coatings, containing Fluorolink D10H, have high-contact angles with water and n-hexadecane