Development of titanium dioxide nanoparticles/nanosolution for photocatalytic activity

Biological and chemical contaminants by man-made activities have been serious global issue. Exposure of these contaminants beyond the limits may result in serious environmental and health problem. Therefore, it is important to develop an effective solution that can be easily utilized by mankind. One of the effective ways to overcome this problem is by using titanium dioxide (TiO2). TiO2 is a well-known photocatalyst that widely used for environmental clean-up due to its ability to decompose organic pollutant and kill bacteria. Although it is proven TiO2 has an advantage to solve this concern, its usefulness unfortunately is limited only under UV light irradiation. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the potential of TiO2 that can be activated under visible light by the incorporation of metal ions (Fe, Ag, Zr and Ag-Zr). In this study, sol-gel method was employed for the synthesis of metal ions incorporated TiO2. XRD analysis revealed that all samples content biphasic anatase-brookite TiO2 of size 3 nm to 5 nm. It was found that the incorporation of these metal ions did not change the morphology of TiO2 but the crystallinity and optical properties were affected. The crystallinity of anatase in the biphasic TiO2 was found to be decreased and favored brookite formation. PL analysis showed metal ions incorporation suppressed the recombination of electron-hole pairs while the band gap energy of TiO2 (3.2 eV) was decreased by the incorporation of Fe (2.46 eV) and Ag (2.86 eV). Among this incorporation, Ag-Zr incorporated TiO2 showed highest performance for methyl orange degradation (93%) under fluorescent xxv light irradiation for 10 h. This follows by Zr-TiO2 (82%), Fe-TiO2 (75%) and Ag�TiO2 (43%). Meanwhile, the highest antibacterial performance was exhibited by Ag�TiO2. TEM images showed that E.coli bacterium was killed within 12 h after treated with Ag-TiO2. The results obtained from the fieldwork study established that Ag-Zr incorporation have excellent performances for VOC removal and antibacterial test. The VOC content after treated with Ag-Zr-TiO2 fulfilled the Industry Code of Practice on Indoor Air Quality 2010 which is lower than 3 ppm. In addition, the percentage of microbes also found to be decrease around 45 % within 5 days of monitoring

Let's bike! The factors that influence urban cycling

Transportation is one of the major carbon footprint contributors towards country.These emissions are generated from automobiles on traffic, especially during congestion.In Malaysia, traffic congestion remains an issue, especially in developing regions, Penang and Kuala Lumpur which results in massive delays, fuel wastage, monetary losses and environmental pollution.In order to deter these issues, a sustainable transport mode should be promoted which is bicycle.The present study intends to look into the relationship between infrastructural factors and cycling intention.Availability, route planning and accessibility, are the predictor variables and user intention is the criterion variable.The Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), will be the underpinning theory in order to understand the intention from the road users.Judgmental sampling method were used and 400 usable data were collected from Penang population through self-administered questionnaire.The findings reveal that relationship between Availability of Public Bike (APB), Route Planning (RP) and Accessibility of cycling-transit integration (ACT) are positively correlated with user’s intention to cycle (CCB), and APB was found to have a strongest relationship with user’s intention to cycle (CCB) in this study

Review of time in therapeutic range of warfarin in a tertiary centre in Malaysia

Anticoagulation management is a recognized challenge in medical care. Complications of supratherapeutic anticoagulation are hemorrhagic stroke, major bleeding, and death. There is an even greater risk of ischemic stroke in AF, worsening of VTE associated with subtherapeutic dosing

Nanoemulsion-based parenteral drug delivery system of carbamazepine: preparation, characterization, stability evaluation and blood-brain pharmacokinetics

Carbamzepine (CBZ) was encapsulated in a parenteral oil-in-water nanoemulsion, in an attempt to improve its bioavailability. The particle size, polydispersity index and zeta potential were measured using dynamic light scattering. Other parameters such as pH, osmolality, viscosity, drug loading efficiency and entrapment efficiency were also recorded. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that emulsion droplets were almost spherical in shape and in the nano-range. The in vitro release profile was best characterized by Higuchi's equation. The parenteral nanoemulsion of CBZ showed significantly higher AUC0→5, AUC0→∞, AUMC0→5, AUMC0→∞, Cmax and lower clearance than that of CBZ solution in plasma. Additionally, parenteral nanoemulsion of CBZ showed significantly higher AUC0→∞, AUMC0→∞ and Cmaxthan that of CBZ solution in brain. The parenteral nanoemulsion of CBZ could therefore use as a carrier, worth exploring further for brain targeting

Field Instruction Multiple Data

Fully homomorphic encryption~(FHE) has flourished since it was first constructed by Gentry~(STOC 2009). Single instruction multiple data~(SIMD) gave rise to efficient homomorphic operations on vectors in $(\mathbb{F}_{t^d})^\ell$, for prime $t$. RLWE instantiated with cyclotomic polynomials of the form $X^{2^N}+1$ dominate implementations of FHE due to highly efficient fast Fourier transformations. However, this choice yields very short SIMD plaintext vectors and high degree extension fields, e.g. $\ell 100$ for small primes~($t = 3, 5, \dots$). In this work, we describe a method to encode more data on top of SIMD, \emph{Field Instruction Multiple Data}, applying reverse multiplication friendly embedding~(RMFE) to FHE. With RMFE, length-$k$ $\mathbb{F}_{t}$ vectors can be encoded into $\mathbb{F}_{t^d}$ and multiplied once. The results have to be recoded~(decoded and then re-encoded) before further multiplications can be done. We introduce an FHE-specific technique to additionally evaluate arbitrary linear transformations on encoded vectors for free during the FHE recode operation. On top of that, we present two optimizations to unlock high degree extension fields with small $t$ for homomorphic computation: $r$-fold RMFE, which allows products of up to $2^r$ encoded vectors before recoding, and a three-stage recode process for RMFEs obtained by composing two smaller RMFEs. Experiments were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of FIMD from various RMFEs compared to standard SIMD operations. Overall, we found that FIMD generally had $>2\times$ better (amortized) multiplication times compared to FHE for the same amount of data, while using almost $k/2 \times$ fewer ciphertexts required

Seasonal variations in water quality of a tropical reservoir: Considerations for cage aquaculture expansion

A study of water quality of the 30 year-old Batang Ai hydroelectric reservoir at different depths and locations was conducted to give a better understanding of the water quality status for aquaculture expansion. The study was conducted at four locations where two were identified as potential cage culture sites but nearby current operations. Temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO) profilings and 13 other parameters at 0.2, 10 and 20 meters depths were also studied. It was found that the difference in DO between seasons were significant. Pockets of high nutrients and hydrogen sulphide were observed at 10 and 20 m nearby the two cage culture sites in dry season. Additionally, regardless of season, those sites showed significantly higher 10 m and 20 m suspended solids. At one of the locations near cage culture, dry season total phosphorus and ammonia were the highest at all depths and chlorophyll-a was at eutrophic level at 10 m depth. All these are attributed to aquaculture waste, pre-marketing fish processing and the lack of mixing. Water Quality Index shows that the 0.2 m depth is suitable for sensitive aquatic organism. However, dry season 10 m water column of the two potential cage culture sites was polluted. Though the cages do not normally extend to 10 m deep, when overturn occurs, it could cause fish kills. Thus, in reservoir cage culture, elimination of reservoir pre-market processing is crucial and considerations have to be made on the proximity to the current operations and dry season water quality limitations. © 2018, BIOFLUX SRL. All Rights Reserved

Atrial Fibrillation and the Prognostic Performance of Biomarkers in Heart Failure

BACKGROUND: Consideration of circulating biomarkers for risk stratification in heart failure (HF) is recommended, but the influence of atrial fibrillation (AF) on prognostic performance of many markers is unclear. We investigated the influence of AF on the prognostic performance of circulating biomarkers in HF. METHODS: N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), mid-regional-pro-atrial natriuretic peptide, C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), NT-proCNP, high-sensitivity troponin-T, high-sensitivity troponin-I, mid-regional-propeptide adrenomedullin, co-peptin, growth differentiation factor-15, soluble Suppressor of Tumorigenicitiy (sST2), galectin-3, and procalcitonin plasma concentrations were measured in a prospective, multicenter study of adults with HF. AF was defined as a previous history of AF, and/or presence of AF/flutter on baseline 12-lead electrocardiogram. The primary outcome was the composite of HF-hospitalization or all-cause mortality at 2 years. RESULTS: Among 1099 patients (age 62 +/- 12years, 28% female), 261(24%) patients had AF. Above-median concentrations of all biomarkers were independently associated with increased risk of the primary outcome. Significant interactions with AF were detected for galectin-3 and sST2. In considering NT-proBNP for additive risk stratification, sST2 (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR]1.85, 95%confidence interval [C.I.] 1.17-2.91) and galectin-3 (AHR1.85, 95%C.I. 1.09-2.45) were independently associated with increased primary outcome only in the presence of AF. The prognostic performance of sST2 was also stronger in AF for all-cause mortality (AF: AHR2.82, 95%C.I. 1.26-6.21; non-AF: AHR1.78, 95% C.I. 1.14-2.76 without AF), while galectin-3 predicted HF-hospitalization only in AF (AHR1.64, 95%C.I. 1.03-2.62). CONCLUSIONS: AF modified the prognostic utility of selected guideline-endorsed HF-biomarkers. Application of markers for prognostic purposes in HF requires consideration of the presence or absence of AF

Innate immune humoral factors, C1q and factor H, with differential pattern recognition properties, alter macrophage response to carbon nanotubes

Interaction between the complement system and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can modify their intended biomedical applications. Pristine and derivatised CNTs can activate complement primarily via the classical pathway which enhances uptake of CNTs and suppresses pro-inflammatory response by immune cells. Here, we report that the interaction of C1q, the classical pathway recognition molecule, with CNTs involves charge pattern and classical pathway activation that is partly inhibited by factor H, a complement regulator. C1q and its globular modules, but not factor H, enhanced uptake of CNTs by macrophages and modulated the pro-inflammatory immune response. Thus, soluble complement factors can interact differentially with CNTs and alter the immune response even without complement activation. Coating CNTs with recombinant C1q globular heads offers a novel way of controlling classical pathway activation in nanotherapeutics. Surprisingly, the globular heads also enhance clearance by phagocytes and down-regulate inflammation, suggesting unexpected complexity in receptor interaction. From the Clinical Editor: Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) maybe useful in the clinical setting as targeting drug carriers. However, it is also well known that they can interact and activate the complement system, which may have a negative impact on the applicability of CNTs. In this study, the authors functionalized multi-walled CNT (MWNT), and investigated the interaction with the complement pathway. These studies are important so as to gain further understanding of the underlying mechanism in preparation for future use of CNTs in the clinical setting.L.P., A.G.T., L.K., G.S. and U.K. thank Brunel University London for strategic Infrastructure funding. H.A.K. acknowledges the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding via Group No. RGP-009