INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE AND POLYMER/ MOLD SURFACE INTERACTIONS ON MICRO-FEATURE REPLICATION AT AMBIENT PRESSURE IN MICRO INJECTION MOLDING

This study assesses micro-feature replication at elevated mold temperature and ambient pressure using a variety of polymers. Moldings were made on the surface of stainless steel and silicon wafers containing features as small as 130 nm under isothermal conditions in a heated chamber by allowing polymer to spread over the features at ambient pressure. Feature replication was analyzed via AFM and SEM. Polymer behavior was characterized via melt contact angle and melt viscosity. While feature detail was well replicated, the moldings exhibited poor dimensional accuracy due to shrinkage. In general, polymers with low viscosity and surface tension comparable to the mold material showed better feature replication

COPid: composition based protein identification

In the past, a large number of methods have been developed for predicting various characteristics of a protein from its composition. In order to exploit the full potential of protein composition, we developed the web-server COPid to assist the researchers in annotating the function of a protein from its composition using whole or part of the protein. COPid has three modules called search, composition and analysis. The search module allows searching of protein sequences in six different databases. Search results list database proteins in ascending order of Euclidian distance or descending order of compositional similarity with the query sequence. The composition module allows calculation of the composition of a sequence and average composition of a group of sequences. The composition module also allows computing composition of various types of amino acids (e.g. charge, polar, hydrophobic residues). The analysis module provides the following options; i) comparing composition of two classes of proteins, ii) creating a phylogenetic tree based on the composition and iii) generating input patterns for machine learning techniques. We have evaluated the performance of composition-based (or alignment-free) similarity search in the subcellular localization of proteins. It was found that the alignment free method performs reasonably well in predicting certain classes of proteins. The COPid web-server is available at http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/copid/

Comparative Assessment of Economic Burden of Disease in Relation to Out of Pocket Expenditure

Background: The economic costs associated with morbidity pose a great financial risk on the population. Household's over-dependence on out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditure and their inability to cope up with the economic costs associated with illness often push them into poverty. The current paper aims to measure the economic burden and resultant impoverishment associated with OOP health expenditure for a diverse set of ailments in India.Methods: Cross-sectional data from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 71st Round on “Key Indicators of Social Consumption: Health” has been employed in the study. Indices, namely the payment headcount, payment gap, concentration index, poverty headcount and poverty gap, are defined and computed. The measurement of catastrophic burden of OOP health expenditure is done at 10% threshold level.Results: Results of the study reveal that collectively non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have higher economic and catastrophic burden, individually infections rather than NCDs such as Cardio Vascular Diseases and cancers have a higher catastrophic burden and resultant impoverishment in India. Ailments such as gastro-intestinal, respiratory, musco-skeletal, obstetrics, and injuries also have a substantial economic burden on population and push them below the poverty line. Results also show that despite the pro-poor concentration of infections, their economic burden is more concentrated among the wealthier consumption groups.Conclusion: The study concludes that universal health coverage through adequate provision of pooled resources for health care and community-based health insurance is critical to reduce the economic burden and impoverishment related to OOP health expenditure. Measures should also be instituted to insulate people from economic burden on morbidity, especially the NCDs

Homologous self-assembled superlattices: What causes their periodic polarity switching? Review, model, and experimental test

Quantum semiconductor structures are commonly achieved by bandgap engineering that relies on the ability to switch from one semiconductor to another during their growth. Growth of a superlattice is typically demanding technologically. In contrast, accumulated evidence points to a tendency among a certain class of multiple-cation binary oxides to self-assemble spontaneously as superlattice structures. This class has been dubbed the homologous superlattices. For a famous example, when a mixture of indium and zinc is oxidized, the phases of In-O and ZnO separate in an orderly periodic manner, along the ZnO polar axis, with polarity inversion taking place between consecutive ZnO sections. As we review here, the same structure has been observed when the indium was replaced with other metals, and perhaps even in ZnO alone. This peculiar self-assembled structure has been attracting research over the past decade. The purpose of this study is to gain understanding of the physics underlying the formation of this unique structure. Here, we first provide an extensive review of the accumulated literature on these spontaneously-formed structures and then propose an explanation for the long-standing mystery of this intriguing self-assembly in the form of an electrostatic growth phenomenon and test the proposed model on experimental data

NIOSOMES:THE UNIQUE VESICULAR DRUG CARRIERS

Drug targeting is the ability to direct a therapeutic agent specifically to desired site of action with little or no interaction with nontarget tissue. Niosomes are one of the best carriers for drug targeting. Niosomes are self assembled vesicles composed primarily of synthetic surfactants and cholesterol. They are analogous in structure to the more widely studied liposomes formed from biologically derived phospholipids. Niosomes are biodegradable, relatively nontoxic, more stable and inexpensive, an alternative to liposomes. The method of preparation of niosome is based on liposome technology. The basic process of preparation is the same i.e. hydration by aqueous phase of the lipid phase which may be either a pure surfactant or a mixture of surfactant with cholesterol. After preparing niosomal dispersion, unentrapped drug is separated by dialysis centrifugation or gel filtration. Niosomes can be SUV (Small Unilamellar Vesicles), MLV (Multilamellr Vesicles) or LUV (Large Unilamellar Vesicles). Niosomal drug delivery is potentially applicable to many pharmacological agents for their action against various diseases

Gangotri glacier dynamics from multi-sensor SAR and optical data

The present study has analyzed dynamics of Gangotri glacier using multiple remote sensing (RS) datasets and ground based observations. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data pairs from European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS 1/2) tandem pair for spring of 1996, Sentinel-1 SAR pairs and Japanese's Advance Land Observation System (ALOS) PALSAR-2 SAR data for Spring of 2015 were used to derive glacier-surface velocity at seasonal time scale using Differential InSAR (DInSAR) techniques. Bi-static TanDEM-X (Experimental) data was used for the 1st time to estimate glacier surface elevation changes for a period of 22, 44, 88 days during summer of 2012 using InSAR techniques in this study. Annual glacier velocity was also estimated using temporal panchromatic data of LANDSAT-5 (30 m), LANDSAT-7/8 (15 m), Sentinel-2 (10 m) and Indian Remote Sensing Satellite IRS-1C/1D panchromatic (5 m) data during 1998–2019 with feature tracking approach. This study has estimated glacier surface velocity and surface elevation changes for the major parts of Gangotri glacier and its tributary glaciers using medium to high resolution optical and SAR datasets, at annual and seasonal time scale, which is an improvement over earlier studies, wherein snout based glacier recession or only main glacier velocities were reported. The velocity and slope were used to assess glacier-ice thickness distribution using Glabtop-2, slope dependent and laminar flow based methods over the Gangotri group of glaciers. The estimated ice thickness was estimated in the range of 58–550 m for the complete glacier while few small areas in middle &amp; upper regions carry higher thickness of about 607 m. The estimated glacier-ice thickness was found in the range of 58–67 m at the snout region. The estimation was validated using 2014 field measurements from Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) for the first time and correlation was found to be 0.799 at snout of the glacier.</p

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Search for supersymmetry in events with one lepton and multiple jets in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

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