Behaviour of Magnetic Tubes in Neutron Star's Interior

It is found from Maxwell's equations that the magnetic field lines are good analogues of relativistic strings. It is shown that the super-conducting current in the neutron star's interior causes local rotation of magnetic flux tubes carrying quantized flux.Comment: 6 pages, no figure

Nanomaterials based Decontamination Formulation for use in Personal Decontamination Kit Against Chemical Warfare Agents

Present paper relates to nanomaterials based decontamination formulation made up of TiO2, MgO, and ZnO nanoparticles for the use against chemical warfare agents. This decontamination formulation was prepared by mixing 90 per cent of TiO2 nanoparticles of 5-15 nm size range, 8 per cent of MgO nanoparticles of 5-15 nm size range, and 2 per cent of ZnO nanoparticles of 20-30 nm size range. Prepared formulation exhibited 98-99 per cent of physical removal efficiency against contaminated glass, rubber, painted metal, metal surfaces. It efficiently removed chemical warfare agents from contaminated skin thus ameliorating chances of fatality which is expected due to skin penetrated chemical warfare agents. It also chemically degraded 97 per cent of sulphur mustard in 24 h, 99.9 per cent of sarin in 2 h, respectively unlike Fuller’s earth which chemically degraded only 63 per cent of sulphur mustard and 59 per cent of sarin in 24 h

Parameterized Verification of Safety Properties in Ad Hoc Network Protocols

We summarize the main results proved in recent work on the parameterized verification of safety properties for ad hoc network protocols. We consider a model in which the communication topology of a network is represented as a graph. Nodes represent states of individual processes. Adjacent nodes represent single-hop neighbors. Processes are finite state automata that communicate via selective broadcast messages. Reception of a broadcast is restricted to single-hop neighbors. For this model we consider a decision problem that can be expressed as the verification of the existence of an initial topology in which the execution of the protocol can lead to a configuration with at least one node in a certain state. The decision problem is parametric both on the size and on the form of the communication topology of the initial configurations. We draw a complete picture of the decidability and complexity boundaries of this problem according to various assumptions on the possible topologies.Comment: In Proceedings PACO 2011, arXiv:1108.145

Detection of Defects on Cold Rolling Mill (CRM) Rolls with Ultrasonic and Eddy Current Flaw Dectors

The service induced defects in CRM rolls, due to them being subjected to complex mechanical & thermal stresses in cold rolling of steel strips or coils, if not removed completely during roll grinding, become primarily respo-nsible for roll spalling. The high instances of roll spalling lead to increased specific roll consumption and production delays. The inspection of some 15-20% of CRM work rolls with portable Ultrasonic and Eddy Current flaw detectors was undertaken to detect and remove the service induced defects on surface & sub-surface regions of rolls which would otherwise have remained undetected leading to roll spalling and other associated failures. The incid-ences of spalling has reduced by up to 38% during the period of roll inspection compared to the spalling incid-ences in the prior periods of time leading to prolonged uses of rolls. Although no reduction in Specific Roll Consumption (SRC) has been observed, the loss of useful roll materials due to reduced incidences of spalling has reduced. The reduced occurences of roll spalling have also resulted in savings of premature roll changing time lead-ing to increased mill availibility

Status of Legislation and Regulatory Control of Public Health Pesticides in Countries Endemic with or at Risk of Major Vector-Borne Diseases

Background: Legislation and regulation of pesticides used in public health are essential for reducing risks to human health and the environment

DFT Study of Planar Boron Sheets: A New Template for Hydrogen Storage

We study the hydrogen storage properties of planar boron sheets and compare them to those of graphene. The binding of molecular hydrogen to the boron sheet (0.05 eV) is stronger than that to graphene. We find that dispersion of alkali metal (AM = Li, Na, and K) atoms onto the boron sheet markedly increases hydrogen binding energies and storage capacities. The unique structure of the boron sheet presents a template for creating a stable lattice of strongly bonded metal atoms with a large nearest neighbor distance. In contrast, AM atoms dispersed on graphene tend to cluster to form a bulk metal. In particular the boron-Li system is found to be a good candidate for hydrogen storage purposes. In the fully loaded case this compound can contain up to 10.7 wt. % molecular hydrogen with an average binding energy of 0.15 eV/H2.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, and 3 table

Immuno-informatics analysis predicts B and T cell consensus epitopes for designing peptide vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 with 99.82% global population coverage.

The current global pandemic due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has taken a substantial number of lives across the world. Although few vaccines have been rolled-out, a number of vaccine candidates are still under clinical trials at various pharmaceutical companies and laboratories around the world. Considering the intrinsic nature of viruses in mutating and evolving over time, persistent efforts are needed to develop better vaccine candidates. In this study, various immuno-informatics tools and bioinformatics databases were deployed to derive consensus B-cell and T-cell epitope sequences of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein. This approach has identified four potential epitopes which have the capability to initiate both antibody and cell-mediated immune responses, are non-allergenic and do not trigger autoimmunity. These peptide sequences were also evaluated to show 99.82% of global population coverage based on the genotypic frequencies of HLA binding alleles for both MHC class-I and class-II and are unique for SARS-CoV-2 isolated from human as a host species. Epitope number 2 alone had a global population coverage of 98.2%. Therefore, we further validated binding and interaction of its constituent T-cell epitopes with their corresponding HLA proteins using molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation experiments, followed by binding free energy calculations with molecular mechanics Poisson-Boltzmann surface area, essential dynamics analysis and free energy landscape analysis. The immuno-informatics pipeline described and the candidate epitopes discovered herein could have significant impact upon efforts to develop globally effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccines

Thermal Equation of State of Tantalum

We have investigated the thermal equation of state of tantalum from first principles using the Linearized Augmented Plane Wave (LAPW) and pseudopotential methods for pressures up to 300 GPa and temperatures up to 10000 K. The equation of state at zero temperature was computed using LAPW. For finite temperatures, mixed basis pseudopotential computations were performed for 54 atom supercells. The vibrational contributions were obtained by computing the partition function using the particle in a cell model, and the the finite temperature electronic free energy was obtained from the LAPW band structures. We discuss the behavior of thermal equation of state parameters such as the Gr\"uneisen parameter $\gamma$, $q$, the thermal expansivity $\alpha$, the Anderson-Gr\"uneisen parameter $\delta_T$ as functions of pressure and temperature. The calculated Hugoniot shows excellent agreement with shock-wave experiments. An electronic topological transition was found at approximately 200 GPa