Nanotechnology is an emerging multidisciplinary field that has the potential to offer solutions to pharmaceutical challenges starting from drug delivery to therapeutic applications. The plant-mediated method is eco-friendly and the most inexpensive of the various techniques used to synthesize nanoparticles (NPs). In this study, silver (Ag) NPs have been successfully synthesized using leaf extract of Catharanthus roseus and Ocimum tenuiflorum. X-ray diffraction revealed an average crystalline size of 19.96 and 21.42 nm for C. roseus and O. tenuiflorum-mediated Ag NPs, respectively. Further, shape, size, and elemental composition were analyzed using a scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope (TEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectral technique. TEM study revealed spherical/spheroidal-shaped Ag NPs were formed between 10−48 nm with C. roseus and 17−55 nm with O. tenuiflorum. Both synthesized Ag NPs inhibited Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis, where the effect w... [more]

Intelligent manufacturing under Industry 4.0 assimilates sophisticated technologies and artificial intelligence for sustainable production and outcomes. Blockchain paradigms are coined with Industry 4.0 for concurrent and well-monitored flawless production. This article introduces Sustainable Production concerned with External Demands (SP-ED). This method is more specific about energy production and the distribution for flawless and outage-less supply. First, the energy demand is identified for internal and external users based on which sustainability is planned. Secondly, Ethereum blockchain monitoring for a similar production and demand satisfaction is coupled with the production system. From two perspectives, the monitoring and condition satisfaction processes are validated using federated learning (FL). The perspectives include demand distribution and production sustainability. In the demand distribution, the condition of meeting the actual requirement is validated. Contrarily, the... [more]

Batch processes in the biopharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing industries often develop new products to meet changing market demands. When the dynamic models of these new products are trained, dynamic modeling with limited data for each product can lead to inaccurate results. One solution is to extract useful knowledge from past historical production data that can be applied to the product of a new grade. In this way, the model can be built quickly without having to wait for additional modeling data. In this study, a subspace identification combined common feature learning scheme is proposed to quickly learn a model of a new grade. The proposed modified state-space model contains common and special parameter matrices. Past batch data can be used to train common parameter matrices. Then, the parameters can be directly transferred into a new SID model for a new grade of the product. The new SID model can be quickly well trained even though there is a limited batch of data. The effec... [more]

Many fundamental decisions in the process design of a separation task are conducted in an early stage where, unfortunately, process simulation does not have the highest priority. Subsequently, during the setup of the digital twin, dedicated experiments are carried out in the design space that was established earlier. These experiments are most often too complicated to conduct directly. This paper addresses the idea of a combined approach. The early-stage buffer screening and optimization experiments were planned with the Design of Experiments, carried out and then analyzed statistically to extract not only the best buffer composition but also the crucial model parameters, in this case the isotherm dependency on the buffer composition. This allowed the digital twin to predict the best buffer composition, and if the model-predicted control was applied to keep the process at the optimal productivity at a predetermined purity. The methodology was tested with an industrial peptide purificat... [more]

CDK1 (cyclin dependent kinase 1) is a key regulator of the cell cycle and is frequently dysregulated in cancer, making it a promising target for anticancer therapy. Securigera securidaca L. (S. securidaca) seeds, traditionally used in folk medicine for various ailments including cancer, were examined for their potential as CDK1/Cks2 inhibitors using in silico approaches. A total of 14 phytocompounds was identified in the GC/MS chromatogram, with gingerone being the most abundant at 25.67% and hippeastrine the least at 2%. Major constituents of the essential extract, including gingerol, eugenol, α-curcumene, and gingerol, showed high values and made up 52% of the total content of the volatile extract. Molecular docking and ADMET studies suggested that hippeastrine and naringenin are potential hit candidates against CDK1, exhibiting good drug-like properties and molecular interactions with desirable pharmacokinetic and toxicological characteristics close to dinaciclib. Furthermore, molec... [more]

Digital images can be easily shared or stored using different imaging devices, storage tools, and computer networks or wireless communication systems. However, these digital images, such as headshots or medical images, may contain private information. Hence, to protect the confidentiality, reliability, and availability of digital images on online processing applications, it is crucial to increase the infosecurity of these images. Therefore, an authorization encryption scheme should ensure a high security level of digital images. The present study aimed to establish a multilayer convolutional processing network (MCPN)-based cryptography mechanism for performing two-round image encryption and decryption processes. In the MCPN layer, two-dimensional (2D) spatial convolutional operations were used to extract the image features and perform scramble operations from grayscale to gray gradient values for the first-image encryption and second-image decryption processes, respectively. In the MCP... [more]

Triticale (× Triticosecale Wittmack), developed by crossing rye and wheat, is increasingly applied in food production. The aim of this paper was to study the grinding process of eight new triticale grain (TG) varieties harvested in 2020 and 2021. TG was tempered to 12% of moisture and a knife mill was used for the size reduction. The following parameters characterizing the grinding process of TG were determined: specific grinding energy, Sokołowski grinding index, particle size distribution and average particle size. Additionally, the basic chemical composition, total phenolic content and antiradical activity of TG were determined. The protein content of TG was strongly influenced both by the variety and harvesting year, while other components were mostly affected by the genetic factor. The strongest influence on the grinding indices has a variety of TG. Specific grinding energy varied in the range of 14.0 kJ kg−1−17.8 kJ kg−1 and was positively correlated with the size of ground parti... [more]

This study examines the literature on improving the low performance of Savonius wind turbines, which are a type of vertical axis wind turbine. The literature studies on improving the performance of Savonius turbines have been summarized into two categories: interior structural design and exterior additional design. Due to the extensive nature of studies focusing on interior design changes, this research primarily focuses on performance studies related to exterior design modifications of Savonius wind turbines, particularly in recent years. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive examination of these performance studies and contribute to the existing literature by presenting a systematic reference on this issue. To achieve this objective, a thorough review of turbine exterior design studies has been conducted. The focus was on determining the percentage increase in power coefficient achieved by turbines with exterior design modifications compared to the classical turbine versions. H... [more]

The concept of geological engineering-integrated fracturing is widely applied in the conventional and unconventional reservoirs, aiming to achieve efficient and economic development. There is no doubt that fine reservoir evaluation is the basis and core of geological engineering-integrated fracturing. Therefore, in this paper, we performed a series of investigations on the basis of formation fine evaluation by using RoqScan technology. Firstly, the physical parameters of the target well located in Daniudi Gas Field were evaluated by a laboratory test and logging interpretation. Next, the composition and function of the RoqSCAN tool were introduce in detail. Furthermore, the elements, minerals, and rock mechanical parameters of the target well were evaluated by the RoqSCAN tool. Finally, the fine reservoir model was established on the basis of fine formation evaluation. Moreover, we conducted a series of research on porosity and principal stress of the target formation to compare the di... [more]

Recently, non-electrolyzed HOCl water has gained the attention of researchers as a new disinfecting agent owing to its high sterilization power, easy accessibility, and safety. Non-electrolyzed HOCl water was developed through mixing at a specific ratio based on hypochlorite and mineral supplements, which revealed a high oxidizing power. In this study, we investigated the effects of non-electrolyzed HOCl water on Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection in C57BL/6 mice over 10 weeks. Mice were divided into three groups: normal control (NC) group supplied with purified water (PW) without infection, PW + H. pylori group supplied with PW after H. pylori infection, and HOCl + H. pylori group supplied with HOCl after H. pylori infection. Our findings demonstrated that the HOCl + H. pylori group greatly inhibited WBC and its differential counts, including total white blood cell (WBC), neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, and eosinophils, when compared to the PW + H. pylori group. Accordingl... [more]

With the targets of petroleum exploration transferred to the deep and ancient strata, abundant oil and gas resources have been found in Lower Paleozoic and older strata in central and western China. Due to complex evolutionary processes including multiple episodes of hydrocarbon accumulation and ubiquitously accompanied by secondary alterations, significant uncertainties remain concerning the generation time and accumulation processes of these revealed petroleum sources. In this paper, relative pure Re and Os elements existing in the asphaltene fractions of Lower Cambrian solid bitumen collected from the Guangyuan area, western Sichuan Basin, SW China and Middle−Lower Ordovician heavy oils in the Aiding area of the Tahe oilfield in the Tarim Basin, NW China were successfully obtained by sample pretreatments, and Re−Os isotopic analysis was subsequently carried out for the dating of these. The Re−Os isotopic composition indicates a generation time of Guangyuan bitumen to between 572 Ma... [more]

The use of Horizontal wells is a common method of underground natural gas storage (UGS), but there is still a need to discuss whether they are more suitable for slotted liner or perforation completions. To address this issue, a numerical model is developed to predict the gas injection rate of horizontal wells while considering the skin factor. Here, a novel uncoupled iteration method is employed to determine the skin factor deriving from turbulence in each time step when the bottom hole pressure is fixed. The uncoupled method begins with an estimate of the initial gas injection rate, which is then used to calculate a turbulent skin factor. This turbulent skin factor is then used to update the gas injection rate, iterating continuously until convergence is achieved. The effects of slotted liner and perforation design parameters, formation damage, and injection pressure on the skin factor are analyzed. The main findings suggest that the error in the gas injection rate calculated by the n... [more]

The increased usage of pharmaceuticals coupled with the desire for greywater reuse to reduce the freshwater demand for potable water requires a user-friendly engineered solution. Activated carbon is a proven technology that is typically used for organic pollutant removal at water treatment plants. Lignite, coconut, and a blend of activated carbon powders were used to develop rapid-dissolving pellets with an inorganic binder. Ibuprofen was the model compound chosen for pharmaceutical adsorption in deionized water and synthetic hydrolyzed and synthetic fresh urine at rapid contact times (0.5 to 30 min) and using various pellet dosages (0.5 to 10 g/L). A cost analysis was performed to determine the feasibility of the engineered solution. With an increase in contact time, the coconut pellets outperformed both the blend and lignite pellets in deionized water at a set pellet dosage. The lignite pellets were the most cost-effective with rapid adsorption in fresh urine and a capacity of 0.089... [more]

The kinetics of amylose leaching in hot, excess water from native, oxidized-by-potassium permanganate and heat-treated potato starch at temperatures of 62−90 °C was investigated in isothermal conditions. For the first time, it was proposed to describe the kinetic data by the Kroger−Ziegler equation. It was found that for native starch in the range of 62−70 °C, the activation energy of the amylose leaching process is 192.3 kJ/mol, and at a temperature of 80−90 °C, it decreases to 22 kJ/mol. Similar patterns were established for modified starches. In the kinetic mode, the activation energy was 102.5 kJ/mol for oxidized starch and 44.7 and 82.5 kJ/mol for heat-treated starches at a temperature of 135 °C for 2.5 and 5 h. In the diffusion mode, it was: 18.7 kJ/mol for oxidized and 16.2 and 18.9 kJ/mol for heat-treated starches for 2.5 and 5 h, respectively. It is shown that the consideration of amylose leaching as a heterogeneous pseudochemical process makes it possible to explain the chang... [more]

Wave energy converters are attracting attention as an energy source that can respond to climate change. In order to increase the energy efficiency of the wave energy converters, efficient power converters are also required. The efficient converters require operation at a low switching frequency, which increases the weight and volume of the passive components. Therefore, in this paper, the performance of various types of topologies is compared to select the optimal power converter for wave energy converters. In order to cope with the unbalanced operation and unbalanced load of renewable energy, in this paper, the topology of the four-leg type is analyzed centrally. In addition, the analysis was performed by applying the model predictive control that can quickly respond to the rapid energy change of wave energy. In addition, model predictive control was applied to the four-leg converter analyzed in this paper because it is suitable for application to atypical topologies. For performance... [more]

In order to determine a way to be able to shorten the smelting time of low-carbon ferrochrome alloys and to strengthen the temperature control capability of the AOD converter during the smelting process, this article establishes a mechanism model of the rate of oxygen supply and carbon content change in the smelting process as well as the temperature of the reaction fluid in the converter. The physical and chemical reactions of the smelting process and the actual smelting data are used as the basis. The temperature and carbon content in the smelting converter are considered as the output quantity and the rate of oxygen supply is considered as the input quantity. An expert internal model control framework is built. In addition, an adaptive parameter adjustment mechanism is added to the control framework, taking into account data such as the maximum gas supply rate and the maximum limiting temperature of the actual production process. This method improves the smelting speed and smelting... [more]

The production of palm oil, which is used in various foods, is associated with environmental destruction and climate change risks; therefore, there is an urgent need for sustainable alternatives. “Yeast oil” produced by Lipomyces starkeyi, an oil-producing yeast, is expected to solve these problems because its fatty acid composition is similar to that of palm oil. To date, we have successfully developed yeast oil as an edible alternative to palm oil. However, conventional processes, including cell collection and lyophilization, are difficult to industrialize in terms of equipment and cost. Therefore, a method for extracting yeast oil from the emulsified liquid generated by crushing the culture was investigated. It is presumed that the emulsified state is stable owing to the components derived from yeast cells and metabolites; thus, solid−liquid filtration separation was attempted before extraction. The extraction recovery ratio of yeast oil was 98.2% when a hexane/ethanol mixture (3:1)... [more]

Nanotechnology is an emerging field in the food industry that will be important for future industrial production to address rising customer concerns and expectations for natural, nutritious, and healthful food items. People are increasingly motivated to purchase unprocessed food or even high-quality processed foods with minimum chemical additives, highlighting the need to investigate natural alternatives for commercial purposes. Natural compounds are becoming more popular among consumers since they are safer than synthetic chemical additions; however, their most functional compounds are sensitive to the adverse conditions of processing and the digestive tract, impairing their use in food matrices, and industrial-scale applications. Nowadays, nanoencapsulation of natural products can be the most suitable nanotechnology to improve stability, solubility, and bioavailability. The nanostructure can be incorporated into food during production, processing, packaging, and security. Despite the... [more]

Achieving plastic circularity is imperative to using plastics without adverse effects. Today, only 9% of global plastic waste is recycled, signifying the need for more substantial advancements to accelerate our progress toward achieving plastic circularity. This article contributes to our collective efforts to accelerate plastic circularity by critically assessing the state-of-the-art, gaps, and outlook of the pathways and processes to circular plastics. It employs qualitative methods to derive new insights that empower scholars and practitioners to prescribe effective strategies to shape the future of plastic circularity and its research agenda. This article concludes that today’s circularity pathways for plastics are not economically viable, significantly hindering their scalability and widespread adoption. It further validates that focusing on the product design and effectiveness of the available collection and sorting systems can considerably improve our progress in achieving plast... [more]

The Maximum Power Point Tracking method is a mainstream method for improving the operational efficiency of photovoltaic power generation, but it is difficult to adapt to the rapidly changing environment and lacks good steady-state and dynamic performance. To achieve fast and accurate tracking of the Maximum Power Point Tracking, the optimization of the contraction expansion coefficient of the Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm is studied, and then the Levy flight strategy is introduced to optimize the algorithm’s global convergence ability, thereby constructing the Hybrid Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. Finally, the Hybrid Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization combined with the Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithm is obtained. The research results showed that the Hybrid Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization combined with the Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithm can always converge to the theoretical minimum value with a probability of more than 94% in the Rose... [more]

The combination of genomic and proteomic analyses is a useful tool for the study of novel Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) strains, as these approaches allow the accurate identification of pesticidal proteins and virulence factors produced. Here, we isolated and evaluated the potential of a novel Neotropical Bt strain (TOD651) for controlling larvae of Aedes aegypti and Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes. Aiming for the full comprehension of the TOD651 larvicidal potential, we further evaluated the whole TOD651 genome and conducted the proteomic analysis of the TOD651 spore−crystal mixtures. Our results showed that Bt TOD651 similarly killed both A. aegypti (0.011 µg/mL) and C. quinquefasciatus (0.023 µg/mL) larvae, exhibiting similar potency to the commercial Bt strain. The genome sequence revealed that Bt TOD651 harbors cry11Aa3, cry10Aa4, cry4Aa4, cry4Ba5, cyt1Aa5, cyt1Ca1, cyt2Ba13, mpp60Aa3, and mpp60Ba3. The proteomic analysis revealed no expression of Mpp60Aa3, while all the other pes... [more]

Deep learning can realize the approximation of complex functions by learning deep nonlinear network structures, characterizing the distributed representation of input data, and demonstrating the powerful ability to learn the essential features of data sets from a small number of sample sets. A long short-term memory network (LSTM) is a deep learning neural network often used in research, which can effectively extract the dependency relationship between time series data. The LSTM model has many problems such as excessive reliance on empirical settings for network parameters, as well as low model accuracy and weak generalization ability caused by human parameter settings. Optimizing LSTM through swarm intelligence algorithms (SIA-LSTM) can effectively solve these problems. Group behavior has complex behavioral patterns, which makes swarm intelligence algorithms exhibit strong information exchange capabilities. The particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) and cuckoo search (CS) algorit... [more]

A fault is a common geological structure in coal mining. Large deformation or even instability and collapse often occur in roadways in fault areas, which restricts the safe and efficient production of mines. With the track roadway of the 5206 working face of Xin’an Coal Mine as the engineering background, this study aims to explore the failure mechanism of surrounding rock under the influence of fault structures. Field investigation and numerical simulation were used comprehensively to analyze the failure characteristics of the surrounding rock under the influence of a unidirectional fault structure. Based on the principle of thick-layer transboundary anchorage, the hierarchical continuous support technology of transboundary anchoring in the fault structure area was proposed. The results show that the stress near the fault area is relatively concentrated, and the rock mass strength is low, which may easily cause the deformation and failure of the surrounding rock under the dynamic stre... [more]

Providing a minimum of theory, this review focuses on practical aspects of analyzing the kinetics of nonisothermal crystallization as measured with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). It is noted that kinetic analysis is dominated by approaches based on the Avrami and Arrhenius equations. Crystallization kinetics should not be considered synonymous with the Avrami model, whose nonisothermal applications are subject to very restrictive assumptions. The Arrhenius equation can serve only as a narrow temperature range approximation of the actual bell-shaped temperature dependence of the crystallization rate. Tests of the applicability of both equations are discussed. Most traditional kinetic methods tend to offer very unsophisticated treatments, limited only to either glass or melt crystallization. Differential or flexible integral isoconversional methods are applicable to both glass and melt crystallization because they can accurately approximate the temperature dependence of the cry... [more]

Smart manufacturing has become a vital technique for increasing productivity and efficiency. Firms are following a smart manufacturing implementation system to compete in the market. Therefore, it is mandatory to find the crucial factors that enable the implementation of intelligent manufacturing in enterprises. This study proposes the framework for a new model factory based on the three-dimensional model that extends the product lifecycle layer. It also analyzes the significant attributes and interdependence relationships of causes and effects through the fuzzy DEMATEL approach for the selected small and medium enterprises discussed as a case study. The results show that the factors in Region 1 are significant attributes that need to be focused on for the development and establishment of small and medium enterprises under consideration. These attributes include design documentation (A11), intelligently management of small and medium enterprises (A3), visualization and monitoring of lo... [more]