Porosity development in activated carbon from palm kernel and coconut shell by chemical activation method

Several series of activated carbons have been prepared by chemical activation with phosphoric acid from palm kernel and coconut shells to study the effect of preparation variables such as precursor, precursor size, pretreatment, impregnation condition and ratio and finally the carbonization temperature on specific surface area and pore distribution of the resulting active carbon. Both precursors showed similar N2 adsorption isotherms, an upward deviation at high relative pressure, revealing the presence of mesorpores when carbonized at 5000 C with H3PO4. The bigger hysteresis loop indicates higher mesoporosity in coconut shell derived carbon whereas palm kernel shell derived carbon showed a higher macroporosity nature Prolong sinking of the precursor in H3PO4 impregnation solution followed by carbonization at moderate temperature (450-500 0C) produces carbon of high surface area with a higher macroporosity. The lowering of precursor size favors micropore development and semi-drying of the impregnation chemical prior to carbonization diminishes the macroporosity to a great extent. Thus an appropriate choice of preparation variables enables us to produce high surface area of micro and mesoporous activated carbon

Porosity development in activated carbon from palm kernel and coconut shell by chemical activation method

A preparation and modification of activated carbon from oil-palm shell has been investigated in this paper. A pretreatment method has been established to avoid partial fusion and swelling in the carbonization stage. Carbonization has been studied at different temperatures and the structure of the microporous chars has been characterized. Activated carbon has been prepared from steam gasification of chars obtained at 800O C. This activation increases both total and narrow microporosity and develops a substantial mesoporosity. Activated carbon with different pore size distribution is impregnated with zirconium chloride and iron chloride salts to give impregnated carbon with different metals loading. The presences of active metal on an impregnated activated carbon surface greatly affect the adsorption affinity since some inorganic compounds will then be adsorbed preferentially

Porosity development in activated carbon from palm kernel and coconut shell by chemical activation method

Several series of activated carbons have been prepared by chemical activation with phosphoric acid from palm kernel and coconut shells to study the effect of preparation variables such as precursor, precursor size, pretreatment, impregnation condition and ratio and finally the carbonization temperature on specific surface area and pore distribution of the resulting active carbon. Both precursors showed similar N2 adsorption isotherms, an upward deviation at high relative pressure, revealing the presence of mesorpores when carbonized at 5000 C with H3PO4. The bigger hysteresis loop indicates higher mesoporosity in coconut shell derived carbon whereas palm kernel shell derived carbon showed a higher macroporosity nature Prolong sinking of the precursor in H3PO4 impregnation solution followed by carbonization at moderate temperature (450-500 0C) produces carbon of high surface area with a higher macroporosity. The lowering of precursor size favors micropore development and semi-drying of the impregnation chemical prior to carbonization diminishes the macroporosity to a great extent. Thus an appropriate choice of preparation variables enables us to produce high surface area of micro and mesoporous activated carbon

Prevalence of Brucellosis in Kuku Dairy Khartoum State and the Susceptibility of Isolates to Some Chemotherapeutic Agents

The objectives of this work were to study human and bovine brucellosis in Kuku Dairy Co-operative Scheme, Khartoum State, Sudan. And to isolate the causative agent and determination of their susceptibility patterns to some chemotherapeutic agents and to identify risk factors associated with the infection as well. The study provided information about the epidemiology of the disease among both animal and human subjects in the study area. Epidemiological data were obtained from primary and secondary sources. This was performed by conducting two brucellosis field surveys for both humans and cattle. Personal communications withexperts, meetings with farmers were also used as primary sources for data collection. While secondary ones used were textbooks, publications and the internet. Human brucellosis survey was carried out in the period from June to September 2004. One hundred and seventy six volunteer participants were enrolled in the study, mainly those who were working in close contact with animals. The diagnosis of human brucellosis was based on clinical examination and serological tests. Those were Rapid Slide Test (RST), Rose Bengal Plate Test (RBPT), Competitive Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (cELISA) and Tube Agglutination Test (TAT). The later test is practiced routinely for the diagnosis of human brucellosis in the Sudan, but in our study was used for titration only. Survey for bovine brucellosis was carried out in the period from January to June 2005. Cattle examined were selected randomly from dairy farms "holdings" (which represented the primary statistical units). Then the individual animals (which represented the secondary statistical units) “i.e. all adults cows” were identified and sampled. According to Robinson, (2003) the size of the primary statistical units was calculated as 30.1 units, with α=0.05 and desired accuracy of 10. The number of animals examined was 566 cows. Blood for serum samples, milk, synovial fluids, vaginal swabs and tissues from retained placentas were collected for culture. Diagnosis of bovine brucellosis Prevalence of brucellosis was based on isolation of brucellae and serological examinations (i.e. RBPT, cELISA and Milk Ring Test "MRT"). Human brucellosis prevalence rate was found be 16.5%, 15.9 %, 14.8%, and 11.4% based on RBPT, RST, TAT and cELISA, respectively. Four patients (2.3%) out of the total human subjects investigated were found to have active disease. Factors associated with infection such as consumption of raw milk (92.6% of the study population) and exposure to contaminated materials (89.8% of the study population) were found to be the mostsignificant risk factors. Bovine brucellosis prevalence rate among selected farms was found to be 93.3% based on RBPTand 90% based on cELISA. While the prevalence among individual animals investigated was found to be 32.7%, 27.4%, 28.8 % and 1.8% based on RBPT, cELISA, MRT and isolation of brucellae, respectively. The study confirmed thatthe Kuku Dairy Co-operative Scheme area was endemic with brucellosis. To strains of Brucella abortus biovar 1 and eight strains of Brucella abortus biovar 6 were isolated, and their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns tosome chemotherapeutic agents were determined. And accordingly; two strains of B. abortus biovar 6were found resistant to Rifampicin. The study recommends control of the disease in animals initially by whole herd vaccination and adoption of test and slaughter policy thereafter for eradication purposes. In addition, education of people at high risk is of paramount importance. Furthermore, comprehensive studies at national are also recommended

Diagnostic tool for Glanzmann\u27s thrombasthenia clinicopathologic spectrum

OBJECTIVE: To platelet aggregometry and describe the clinical spectrum of Glanzmann\u27s thrombasthenia diagnosed by platelet aggregometry. STUDY DESIGN: A case-series. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: This study was carried out at the clinical laboratories at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi from January 2003 to January 2006. PATIENTS AND METHODS: All patients irrespective of age and gender presenting with bleeding symptoms and having normal platelet count were evaluated. Demographic details, relevant clinical history along with results of complete blood count, bleeding time and platelet aggregation studies were retrieved through computerized data base and evaluated for the diagnosis of Glanzmann\u27s thrombasthenia. RESULTS: During the study period, 50 out of 2317 patients (2.2%) were diagnosed as Glanzmann\u27s thrombasthenia by platelet aggregometry with male to female ratio of 0.85:1 and median age of 10.2 years (ranging from 3 months to 27 years). Common symptoms were epistaxis, oral and gingival bleed, bleeding from minor cuts and trauma that were observed in 46% of the patients; while 18%, 8% and 10% of them also complained of bruising, hematuria and bleeding per rectum respectively. Majority i.e. 86% had a bleeding time greater than 10 minutes. All patients had received blood or blood products for their bleeding episodes. CONCLUSION: Platelet aggregometry is a useful diagnostic modality for the assessment of Glanzmann\u27s thrombasthenia. The disorder presents with muco-cutaneous bleeding and was found to be a common cause of bleeding in our setup

Oesophageal duplication cyst presenting as haemoptysis

Duplications of the alimentary tract include a variety of cysts, diverticula, and tubular malformations, all believed to have embryological origin. The cysts are most commonly found in children, and the diagnosis is made in infancy in the majority of patients. We report a case of a two-and-a-half year old child, presenting with the history of repeated episodes of haematemesis. Upper GI endoscopy was unremarkable and the chest x-ray showed no pathology. Computed tomography (CT) angiogram revealed soft tissue density lesion in the right chest at the level of T6. Right thoracotomy suggested a cystic mass close to the oesophagus which was shown on histopathology to be lined with gastric mucosa consistent with oesophageal duplication cyst. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of its kind reported from Pakistan

Memory embedded non-intrusive reduced order modeling of non-ergodic flows

Generating a digital twin of any complex system requires modeling and computational approaches that are efficient, accurate, and modular. Traditional reduced order modeling techniques are targeted at only the first two but the novel non-intrusive approach presented in this study is an attempt at taking all three into account effectively compared to their traditional counterparts. Based on dimensionality reduction using proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), we introduce a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network architecture together with a principal interval decomposition (PID) framework as an enabler to account for localized modal deformation, which is a key element in accurate reduced order modeling of convective flows. Our applications for convection dominated systems governed by Burgers, Navier-Stokes, and Boussinesq equations demonstrate that the proposed approach yields significantly more accurate predictions than the POD-Galerkin method, and could be a key enabler towards near real-time predictions of unsteady flows

Mortality Rate Prediction in the Critically Ill Patients by Using Apache-II Scoring Tool

OBJECTIVES The study’s objective was to implement a methodological approach, "Acute Physiological and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE-II),” to classify critically ill patients based on severity. METHODOLOGY A retrospective study design was conducted at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital Lahore, Pakistan, from May 2019 to May 2020. A pilot study of 6 months was conducted by reviewing the medical record of 30 adult patients following convenient sampling after the approval of the proposal by ASRB/IRB of Shaukat Khanum hospital. The record of both male and female patients was studied, while no record of paediatric or adult patients outside the ICU was studied. Each patient’s severity score was obtained using the patient’s parameters with the help of the APACHE-II table. RESULTS Among the patients, three out of 30 scored 25, 29 and 30 on APACHE-II. These patients later passed away in ICU. This indicates that the mortality rate increases with an increase in the APACHE-II score. Thus, the scoring system is very beneficial in predicting adult ICU patients' mortality rate. CONCLUSION It is concluded that APACHE II is one of the best severity scoring systems in predicting the critical condition of patients

Why Police Violate the Human Rights: Bangladesh Chapter

The police are one of the important law enforcement agency in Bangladesh. Police are the best agency to protect human rights. Indeed, the police have a special responsibility to protect people. In addition, to their duty, they also serve in people's social and moral call, especially during COVID-19 situations they imprint many examples of humanity. People experience many good deeds of police during a national disaster as well. However, allegation against the police for violations of human rights is not uncommon. Cases of torture, death in police custody, involvement in the drug trade and robberies, entrapment with drug, helping in land grabbing, etc. are being published in newspapers. Nevertheless, to protect human rights or to take care of human rights is the prime function of the police. This research efforts to find out the answer to why police violate human rights. This research may help police professionals or administrators in taking policy initiatives to erase the negative image of the police