Green Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles from Cis-Bixin and Cis-Norbixin: Potential Application for Fuel Desulfurisation

Green methods have been actively pursued in recent years as an efficient, inexpensive and environmentally safe approach for nanoparticle formation over the conventional chemical methods. Nanoparticle mediated adsorptive desulfurisation has been considered as an alternative, ecofriendly approach for fuel desulfurisation. Fuel desulfurisation is indispensible due to the fact that the combustion of fuels containing sulfur compounds release sulfur oxide compounds into environment and engenders devastating consequences on the chemistry of atmosphere. The present investigation devoted to the possibility of green synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) using cis-bixin and cis-norbixin carotenoids as reducing and stabilising agents and the possibility of synthesised nanoparticles for removal of sulfur compounds in fuel. Cis-bixin was extracted from the pericarp of the seeds of Achiote (Bixaorellana) tree and cis-norbixin was synthesised from cis-bixin. The synthesized AgNPs from both carotenoids were characterised using UV-Visible spectroscopic technique for Surface Plasmon Resonance and absorbance peaks were obtained at 391 nm for cis-bixin and 405 nm for cis-norbixin AgNPs. The effect of temperature, pH, ionic strength of AgNO3 solution, time and stability of the formed AgNPs under electrolytic conditions were studied using UV-Visible spectroscopy and results revealed that the room temperature was paragon for optimum synthesis and AgNPs were stable in slightly acidic, neutral and slightly basic pHs and in different concentrations of NaCl (upto 0.2 M for cis-bixin and upto 0.3 M for cisnorbixin AgNPs). Synthesised AgNPs were used to investigate the fuel desulfurisation potential by using commercial kerosene as testing fuel material. For the comparative purposes NaBH4 reduced AgNPs were used. The adsorption of sulfur compounds in oil medium onto surface of AgNPs in aqueous medium produce self-assembled sulfur compounds adsorbed AgNP layer (interfacial material) on the oil/aqueous interface. The potential of the synthesised AgNPs for desulfurisation of kerosene was confirmed by analysing the sulfur content in each kerosene sample and formed interfacial material through X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy. The formed interfacial material was further characterised through FTIR spectroscopy. The XRF results revealed that the AgNPs synthesised from cis-norbixin has the highest capability to reduce considerable amount of sulfur in kerosene compared to the other synthesised AgNPs. This study reports the possibility of rapid green synthesis of AgNPs form cis-bixin and norbixin under room temperature and feasible pH conditions followed by the capability for desulfurisation of fuel.Keywords: Green synthesis, Silver nanoparticles, Cis-Bixin, Cis-Norbixin, Fuel desulfurisatio

Dialectic nature of digital culture: theoretical analysis of evolutionary 'digital Buddhism' of social media debate

Popular Buddhism is one of the key cultural aspects in present Sri Lankan society.  Its main cause is the characteristics of the path of the Buddhism which it currently travels. Digital anthropology is a field that studies the complex relationships between human culture and the concept of digital. Prominently, digital is a concept based on binary numbers which means 1 and 0. This research aims to provide some insight into the behavior of digital within the social institution of religion. To accomplish these objectives the researchers utilized a Facebook page (Siri Sadaham Ashramaya) and conducted an analysis through the comments from its purposively selected post and it was based on speech act theory elaborated by J. L. Austin (1962) and John Searle (1975). The theoretical approach for this research is the first principle of digital anthropology: dialectic nature of digital culture, developed by Daniel Miller and Heather Horst. A hypothesis was applied as: modern popular Buddhism expand the dialectic nature of culture through social media that consisted of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis as Hegal and Marx stated. The results of the study proved the hypothesis and the opinions of the respective audience’s reactions and comments among the applied Facebook page, and emphasized the dialectical nature of digital culture which means the contribution to the increment of logical background of the culture. Consequently, this study suggests that the modern popular Buddhism concept evolved into a novel concept as “Digital Buddhism” and it can be defined as a new division of Sri Lankan Buddhism as proposed by Gananth Obeyesekere and Richard Gombrich during 1988s. Researchers propose a newly designed model to analyze the digital nature and the theoretical perspective of digital anthropology utilizing the nature of modern popular Buddhism. KEYWORDS:  anthropology, digital, dialectic, popular Buddhism, culture  &nbsp

Background report: Kurunegala, Sri Lanka

Development projects / Water resources / Social aspects / Population / Households / Income / Water supply / Sanitation / Wastewater / Water quality / Public health / Waterborne diseases / Land use / Land tenure / Legislation / Sri Lanka / Kurunegala / Wan Ela / Beu Ela

On the diffusion of lattice matched InGaAs/InP microstructures

Copyright (2003) American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in F. Bollet et al., J. Appl. Phys. 93, 3881 (2003) and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?jap/93/388

A fully integrated autonomous power management system with high power capacity and novel MPPT for thermoelectric energy harvesters in IoT/wearable applications

This paper reports a fully integrated autonomous power management system for thermoelectric energy harvesting with application in batteryless IoT/Wearable devices. The novel maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm does not require open circuit voltage measurement. The proposed system delivers 0.5 mA current with 1 V regulated output based on simulations, which is the highest output current for a fully integrated converter reported in the literature for ultra-low voltage applications, to the best knowledge of the authors. Regulated 1 V output can be achieved for load range >2 k Omega, and input voltage range >140 mV. The circuit has been implemented in UMC-180nm standard CMOS technology and simulated

Meeting Development Challenges by Introducing Global ICT Standards to Agricultural Industry in Sri Lanka

Agriculture is the main source of livelihood of the rural population, whichaccounts for 70% of the total population in Sri Lanka besides issues related to theagricultural value chain, more specifically supply chain deficiencies are seriousdemanding urgent remedies. Meanwhile, the World Summit on the Information Society(WSIS) includes e-agriculture as an area of application of Information andCommunication Technologies (ICTs) to ensure the systematic dissemination ofinformation in order to provide ready access to comprehensive, up-to-date and detailedknowledge and information, particularly in rural areas. Although the digital presence ofmajority of Sri Lankan industry is commendable, agricultural industry is not anadequate level. One promising solution for this situation could be development of anonline trading portal.With the objective of rectifying the issues briefed above, by adopting designscience research methodology, proof-of-concept implementation of a trading portal foragriculture industry has been completed in this study. The information artifactsdeveloped in the research being thoroughly evaluated in laboratory with interestingresults and real world empirical evaluation is in the pipe-line of future work.Therefore, it is possible to claim that the portal developed is capable of reducingthe majority of supply chain deficiencies in agricultural trading while in compliancewith Global Electronic Business Collaboration Standards. In this work we have selectedrecommendation from United Nation‟s Center for Trade Facilitations and ElectronicBusiness (UN:CEFACT), i.e. UN:CEFACT‟s Modeling Methodology (UMM) andInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO) phases of a business processnamely planning, identification, negotiation, actualization and post-actualization.Among the contributions from this work, not only the operational trading portal but alsothe documented eCommerce solution developed approaches based on the globalstandards are central. The systematic eCommerce solution development methodologydocumented here could readily be re-used in many other trading scenarios fromdifferent domains.Key words: UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology, REA Ontology, BusinessCollaboration Standard

Meta-model for Collaboration Modeling in Legal Sector

Cost effective and best practice legal services are highly relying on the coordination of collaborativeworkflow activities as well as of several resources needed to perform these activities and their flow ofinformation exchanges among many different participants. In the context of ever increasing numbers of legalcases and involved stakeholders in multi-party collaborations, we have discovered the appropriateness of theadaptation of workflow management systems in legal sector to address the resulting complexities andperformance issues in legal service collaborations. In this work, a meta-model for legal service collaborationmodeling which includes the main semantics of modeling elements, has been introduced as the basis fordefining the choreography for sector collaboration with the objective of facilitating legal collaborationmodeling in such a way as to provide a useful input for the creation of legal workflow specifications forsetting up legal workflow management systems. The meta-model was developed based on BusinessTransaction View meta-model in UN/CEFACT’s recommendations for business collaborations. The proposedmodeling framework could facilitate and guide the complex legal collaboration modeling processes withpromising results in workflow coordination.KEYWORDS: Meta-model, Legal Collaborations, Legal Activity Coordinatio

Myocardial contrast echocardiography and the transmural distribution of flow: A critical appraisal during myocardial ischemia not associated with infarction

AbstractObjectives. This study was undertaken to determine whether myocardial contrast echocardiography can be used to estimate the transmural distribution of flow.Background. Myocardial contrast echocardiography has been shown to reliably measure average transmural blood flow during myocardial ischemia. However, there is controversy regarding its ability to determine the transmural distribution of flow.Methods. The transmural distribution of flow was measured in 21 open chest anesthetized dogs with use of radiolabeled microspheres and sonicated albumin microbubbles (mean size 4.5 μm). In the 11 Group I dogs, myocardial contrast echocardiography was performed at baseline and during left anterior descending artery stenosis. In five of these dogs, it was also performed during left circumflex artery stenosis. In these dogs large (mean 12 μm) hand-agitated bubbles were also used. In the five Group II dogs, myocardial contrast echocardiography was performed before and 45 s after intracoronary injection of 6 mg of papaverine in the presence of a critical left circumflex artery stenosis. The five Group III dogs were studied during cardiopulmonary bypass at baseline and during left anterior descending artery stenosis. Off-line image analysis of the echocardiographic images was performed and timeintensity curves obtained from thess images were correlated with radiolabeled microsphere-derived flows.Results. The ratios of the parameters derived from the endocardium and epicardium during myocardial contrast echocardiography were found to correlate poorly (ranging from R2= 0 to R2= 0.35) with radiolabeled microsphere-derived endocardial/ epicardial flow ratios over a wide range of flow ratios (0.01 to 2.58). These results were not influenced either by the location of the regions of interest (left anterior descending vs. left circumflex artery bed) or by the size of the bubbles (4.5 vs. 12 μm).Conclusions. Myocardial contrast echocardiography cannot be used to assess the transmural distribution of flow during myocardial ischemia not associated with infarction