Polymer Composites in Green Technology: A Review

Rapid depletion of fossil resources, high demand for energy and global warming together encourage us to look for renewable polymer items with low carbon. ‘Green monomers’ could be derived from bio-refineries, biowastes or renewable oil, plastics-waste. The polymer obtained from such green monomers are renewable and can display good characteristics equivalent to the traditional polymers or sometimes better than the existing polymers. Green technology is a global movement to create vibrant and sustainable cities. Green technology addresses social, economic and environmental values and creates a green economy. Green technology is based on the process of using waste materials for beneficial purposes by managing, and recycling the waste. This technology involves the waste treatment, incineration and management. Many materials prepared form green composites are cost effective in-terms less consumption of electricity, and water, at the same time a significant decrease in CO2 emission, and solid waste generation. The present review presents the effective techniques, difficulties, applications & information on bio-polymers, natural fiber reinforcements, properties of the different green composites and recommendations

Robust Coordinated Design of PSS and TCSC using PSO Technique for Power System Stability Enhancement

Power system stability improvement by coordinated design of a Power System Stabilizer (PSS) and a Thyristor Controlled Series Compensator (TCSC) controller is addressed in this paper. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique is employed for optimization of the parameterconstrained nonlinear optimization problem implemented in a simulation environment. The proposed controllers are tested on a weakly connected power system. The non-linear simulation results are presented for wide range of loading conditions with various fault disturbances and fault clearing sequences as well as for various small disturbances. The eigenvalue analysis and simulation results show the effectiveness and robustness of proposed controllers to improve the stability performance of power system by efficient damping of low frequency oscillations under various disturbances

Effect of clonidine and gabapentin as oral premedication on hemodynamic response to laryngoscopy and tracheal intubation

Background: Laryngoscopy and endotracheal intubation causes stimulation of symphatho-adrenal system resulting in increase in blood pressure and heart rate. The present study compared oral clonidine, gabapentin and placebo premedication in attenuating haemodynamic response to laryngoscopy and endotracheal intubation.Methods: About 90 adult patients of ASA grade I and II patients in age group of 18-60 yrs, of either sex posted for surgery under general anaesthesia were randomly divided into three groups (30 patients in each group). The study drugs were given orally 90minutes before induction. Group 1 and Group 2 were pre treated with oral clonidine (0.2mg) and gabapentin (800mg) respectively and Group-3 received placebo. The HR, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and mean arterial blood pressure were recorded before induction of anesthesia and 1, 3, 5, 10min after laryngoscopy and intubation.Results: It was found that both clonidine and gabapentin reduces HR, SBP, DBP, MAP than placebo group at lminute, 3minutes, 5minutes and 10minutes after intubation. But reduction is more with clonidine as compared to gabapentine and difference was statistically significant (P = <0.0001).Conclusions: Both oral clonidine and gabapentine attenuate hemodynamic response to laryngoscopy and endotracheal intubation but effect is better with clonidine than oral gabapentine

Detection of high-risk human papillomavirus RNA in urine for cervical cancer screening with HPV 16 & 18/45 genotyping

© 2020 The Authors Objective: To detect high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) messenger-RNA (mRNA) in urine samples, compare their concordance with cervical samples including HPV 16 & 18/45 genotyping, and to determine the utility in detecting ≥ CIN 2 lesions. Methods: A cohort of 189 non-pregnant patients (age ≥ 25) was recruited in three groups: Group 1 with abnormal pap-smears and hrHPV positivity, Group 2 with normal pap-smears and hrHPV positivity, and Group 3 with normal pap-smears and hrHPV negativity. Urine samples were tested for hrHPV-mRNA and subsequent hrHPV-mRNA genotype if positive. High-risk HPV detection and genotyping were performed using Aptima assays which are validated for cervical HPV testing. Colposcopy results from groups 1 & 2 were analyzed. Results: The sensitivity of urine hrHPV-mRNA detection was 31.5% while the specificity and PPV were above 95% (96.9% & 95.1% respectively) (p \u3c 0.001). The kappa agreement with cervical samples was fair (0.22, p = 0.04). The sensitivity and specificity of urine hrHPV-mRNA genotyping were 20.0% & 100% respectively (p \u3c 0.001) with 100% genotype-specific concordance. The kappa agreement with cervical samples was fair (0.25, p = 0.16). For urine hrHPV-mRNA detection of ASC-H/HSIL when grouped by age ≥ 30, the sensitivity and specificity were 45.4% & 63.9% respectively (p = 0.009). For urine hrHPV-mRNA detection of ≥ CIN 2 for all ages, the sensitivity and specificity were 45.5% & 75.0% respectively (p = 0.03). Conclusion: Using the Aptima Assay, urine hrHPV-mRNA detection is suboptimal for cervical cancer screening but given the high specificity, it has the potential to identify high-grade lesions (≥ CIN 2). Urine hrHPV-mRNA genotyping via this modality is not beneficial in triage settings of normal or abnormal cytology to determine the need for colposcopy

Prevalence and identification of Candida sp. in pregnant women using VITEK-2

Background: Candida sp. is seen in several areas of body such as, mouth, groin area including vagina and digestive tract as thrush or gastroenteritis. The slide-culture technique and the VITEK-2 automated system were used for species-identification of the fungus; nonetheless, a gold standard or any first identification method would have inherent errors in arriving at a correct identification of a microorganism at species level.Methods: Morphological fungal criteria were ascertained with germ tubes, glucose agar, sugar fermentation and sugar assimilation tests Candida from vaginal swabs and other clinical samples of 85 infected pregnant women with diabetes, by growing swab lots on Sabouraud’s Dextrose Agar (SDA) plates, the slide culture technique and the VITEK-2 automated system.Results: Of 85 patients, 122 isolates in SDA culture were determined as 7 Candida sp.  with number of isolates of each species, as follows: 47 C. albicans, 9 C. famata, 11 C. glabrata, 13 C. guilliermondii, 8 C. krusei, 3 C. parapsilosis and 37 C. tropicalis from vaginal swabs. From 60 vaginal swabs, 46 urine samples and 12 throat swabs it was seen that C. albicans was most prevalent. However, withVITEK-2, 201 fungal strains were identified; Candida sp. was isolated in all samples: 59 C. albicans, 19 C. famata, 21 C. glabrata, 23 C. guilliermondii,18 C. krusei, 13 C. parapsilosis and 48 C. tropicalis.Conclusions: The most prevalent species among the isolated fungi was C. albicans, causing VC in diabetic pregnant women

Dynamic Energy Management

We present a unified method, based on convex optimization, for managing the power produced and consumed by a network of devices over time. We start with the simple setting of optimizing power flows in a static network, and then proceed to the case of optimizing dynamic power flows, i.e., power flows that change with time over a horizon. We leverage this to develop a real-time control strategy, model predictive control, which at each time step solves a dynamic power flow optimization problem, using forecasts of future quantities such as demands, capacities, or prices, to choose the current power flow values. Finally, we consider a useful extension of model predictive control that explicitly accounts for uncertainty in the forecasts. We mirror our framework with an object-oriented software implementation, an open-source Python library for planning and controlling power flows at any scale. We demonstrate our method with various examples. Appendices give more detail about the package, and describe some basic but very effective methods for constructing forecasts from historical data.Comment: 63 pages, 15 figures, accompanying open source librar

NMR studies on the Myb-DNA system

NMR structural studies on a bacterially produced DNA binding domain of Drosophila c-Myb protein as well as its cognate DNA sequence carried out in our laboratory have been surveyed. The structure of a self-complementary dodecamer DNA containing the Myb responsive element (TAACGG) has been determined to atomic resolution by the combined use of two-dimensional NMR, spectral simulations, restrained energy minimization and distance geometry calculations. The structure is seen to possess novel features which may play important roles during its interaction with the Myb protein, The DNA binding domain of c-Myb protein was seen to have a hydrophobic core and we have identified the types of residues contributing to its formation. Residues contributing to the hydrophobic core formation are seen to be well spread out over the whole length of the 160 residues in the protein and include isoleucines, valines, leuclnes, alanines threonines, aromatic residues, glutamines and possibly aspartates. Our experimental data in combination with those of others indicate that some of the amino acid residues which form the helical motifs that directly interact with DNA may also be a part of the hydrophobic core