Search

Vitamin D deficiency has emerged as a significant public health problem throughout the world. Even in the Indian context, it has been reported to be present in majority of children in spite of wide availability of sunlight. Our objective was to evaluateSerum Vitamin D Level in Vitamin D Supplemented 9 to 12 Months Old Children in a Tertiary Care Hospital. A cross sectional study was conducted in the patients aged 9 months to 12 months attending Out Patient Department and Ward of Tertiary care mother and child hospital, Department. of Paediatrics between April, 2019 to March, 2020.Blood sample was collected and analysed by the Electrochemiluminescence Immunoassay (ECLIA) with the help of HITACHI Elecsys Cobas E411 to estimate 25-OH-D level after getting proper consent. The study done among 100 Vitamin D Supplemented 9 to 12 Months Old Children in a Tertiary Care Hospital resulted standard error 0.0952 and standard deviation 0. 9522. The children who had regularly taken vitamin D3 at 400IU/day since birth showed minimum vitamin D3 level at 22.34ng/ml and maximum vitamin D3 level found is 98.18ng/ml with a mean value of 40.67ng/ml that is sufficient. In our study we have found that if children are given vitamin D3 regularly since birth at 400IU/day the attain desired serum vitamin D3 level irrespective of the brand/preparation.

The morphological transformation of adipogenic progenitors into mature adipocytes requires dissolution of cytoskeleton driven by progressive loss of MRTF-SRF activity. Circadian clock confers temporal control in adipogenic differentiation, and MRTF-SRF inhibits beige adipocyte development. Here we identify that key components of the actin cytoskeleton-MRTF/SRF signaling cascade are direct transcriptional targets of circadian clock, and a clock-MRTF/SRF regulatory axis suppresses beige adipocyte thermogenic recruitment. Genetic loss- or gain-of-functions of the core clock regulator, Brain and Muscle Arnt-like 1 (Bmal1), altered actin cytoskeleton organization, cell shape and SRF activity. Genes involved in actin dynamic-MRTF-SRF pathway display diurnal expression profiles in beige adipose tissue, with identification of Bmal1 direct transcriptional regulation. Using beige adipocyte-selective genetic models together with pharmacological approaches, we demonstrate that Bmal1 inhibits beige adipogenesis and thermogenic capacity via the MRTF-SRF pathway. Selective ablation of Bmal1 induced beigeing, whereas its targeted overexpression attenuated the beige thermogenic program resulting in obesity. Collectively, our findings define a novel circadian clock control in actin cytoskeleton-MRTF-SRF signaling that suppresses beige adipogenesis to maintain metabolic homeostasis.

The reuse instead of discharge of cooling tower water can significantly lower the industrial fresh water footprint. The reuse of cooling tower water requires the removal of different chemical fractions from the cooling tower water, such as dissolved minerals, phosphate, organic carbon and industrial chemicals. However, there is no stand-alone water treatment technology that can remove all these fractions simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the removal of these fractions with an innovative pilot-scale technology train that was fed with real cooling tower water consisting of green and grey technologies: constructed wetlands, nanofiltration, electrochemical oxidation and reverse osmosis. In addition, attention was paid to the fate of emerging industrial contaminant benzotriazole, the performance of the nanofiltration membranes and potential production of unwanted by-products by electrochemical oxidation. The experiments showed that 1) The treatment-train was capable of reaching the desired water quality; 2) Benzotriazole was completely removed by the constructed wetlands that acted as pre-treatment before nanofiltration as a result of biodegradation; 3) the production of inorganic carbon species in the constructed wetlands resulted in increased fouling of the subsequent nanofiltration membranes; 4) these membranes mainly retained divalent ions and did not retain monovalent ions, which resulted in a permeate stream whose EC was too high for reuse applications and therefore required further treatment by reverse osmosis; 5) electrochemical oxidation of the nanofiltration concentrate was more efficient than direct electrochemical oxidation of cooling tower water in terms of degradation of recalcitrant humic acids. In addition, less unwanted chlorinated by-products were produced as a result of different ions ratios due to retention of ions by the nanofiltration membranes. Before the full-scale application of the studied treatment train for cooling tower water treatment, it is recommended to identify strategies to improve the water recovery, to include innovative new nanofiltration membranes that can make the use of reverse osmosis redundant and to adopt new insights in preventing unwanted by-product formation during electrochemical oxidation.

Electrochemical oxidation is an effective technique for treating persistent organic pollutants, which are hardly removed in conventional wastewater treatment plants. Sulfate and chloride salts commonly used and present in natural wastewater influence the electrochemical degradation process. In this study, the effect of electrolyte composition on the active sulfate species (SO4●⁻ and S2O82⁻) formation, benzotriazole degradation-a model organic compound, and chlorinated by-products distribution have been investigated while using a boron-doped diamond (BDD) anode. Different Na2SO4:NaNO3 and Na2SO4:NaCl ratios with constant conductivity of 10 mS/cm were used in the experiments and applied anode potential was kept constant at 4.3 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The electrogenerated SO4●⁻ and S2O82⁻ formation were faster in 10:1 and 2:1 Na2SO4:NaNO3 ratios than in the 1:0 ratio. The ●OH-mediated SO4●⁻ production has prevailed in 10:1 and 2:1 ratios. However, ●OH-mediated SO4●⁻ production has hindered the 1:0 ratio due to excess chemisorption of SO42⁻ on the BDD anode. Similarly, the faster benzotriazole degradation, mineralization, and lowest energy consumption were achieved in the 10:1 Na2SO4:NaNO3 and Na2SO4:NaCl ratio. Besides, chlorinated organic by-product concentration (AOX) was lower in the 10:1 Na2SO4:NaCl ratio but increased with the increasing chloride ratio in the electrolyte. LC-MS analysis shows that several chlorinated organic transformation products were produced in 0:1 to 2:1 ratio, which was not found in the 10:1 Na2SO4:NaCl ratio. A comparatively higher amount of ClO4⁻ was formed in the 10:1 ratio than in 2:1 to 0:1 ratio. This ClO4⁻ formation train evidence the effective ●OH generation in a sulfate-enriched condition because the ClO4⁻ formation is positively correlated to ●OH concentration. Overall results show that sulfate-enriched electrolyte compositions are beneficial for electrochemical oxidation of biorecalcitrant organic pollutants.

One of the major challenges in reusing cooling tower blowdown water (CTBD) utilizing membrane processes is its remaining organic compounds, e.g., humic substances leading to biofouling. Besides, the possible abundance of chloride in CTBD imposes the concern of the formation of chlorinated by-products. To choose a pre-treatment process for the studied CTBD composition, various advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), including electrooxidation (EO), photocatalytic degradation (PCD), heat-activated persulfate oxidation (PS), UVC/vacuum UV (UVC/VUV), and UVC processes, were evaluated and compared based on two main targets: i) highest removal and mineralization of the organics, especially humic substances; and ii) lowest formation of chlorinated by-products including adsorbable organic halides and oxychlorides. All the processes were conducted in the natural condition of the real CTBD, while solution pH was monitored. Based on results of chemical oxygen demand, total organic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, UV254 absorbance, liquid-chromatography–organic carbon detection (LC-OCD), and fluorescence excitation-emission matrices (FEEM), it is concluded that PS leads to complete removal of organic compounds along with the lowest formation of low molecular weight organic acids and organic neutrals. FEEM and LC-OCD data also indicated that EO, PCD, and UVC/VUV processes brought about substantial removal of organic compounds and broke down the humic substances into low molecular weight building blocks and organics. Besides, EO exhibited the highest AOX and oxychlorides formation, while these were limited when using the other AOPs. Summarizing, PS, PCD, and UVC/VUV were efficient processes for the degradation and mineralization of organics without generating significant amounts of chlorinated by-products.

In this paper, we present an efficient technique of electronic tongue (ET) signal processing using the sparse decomposition method for the prediction of tea quality. Sparse model coefficients of an under complete dictionary are considered as characteristic attributes of the ET signals obtained for characterization of tea samples. The effectiveness of the proposed method is established by performing experiment on three different types of pulse voltammetry. The ability of the sparse coefficients, as features of ET signal, is tested by employing three different classifiers. High classification accuracy of all the classifiers on three types of voltammetric measurement data validates the usefulness of this technique. The present model-based the tea quality prediction method is very fast, simple, and straightforward. This tea quality prediction method is able to address the problem more efficiently in comparison to other techniques found in the literature.

CD11c+ macrophages/dendritic cells (MDCs) are increased and display classically activated M1-like phenotype in obese adipose tissue (AT) and may contribute to AT inflammation and insulin resistance. Stat1 is a key transcription factor for MDC polarization into M1-like phenotype. Here, we examined the role of Stat1 in obesity-induced AT MDC polarization and inflammation and insulin resistance using mice with specific knockout of Stat1 in MDCs (cKO). Stat1 was upregulated and phosphorylated, indicating activation, early and persistently in AT and AT MDCs of wild-type mice fed high-fat diet (HFD). Compared to littermate controls, cKO mice fed HFD (16 weeks) had reductions in MDC (mainly CD11c+ macrophage) M1-like polarization and interferon-g–expressing T helper type 1 (Th1) cells, but increases in interleukin-5–expressing Th2 cells and eosinophils in perigonadal and inguinal AT, and enhanced inguinal AT browning, with increased energy expenditure. cKO mice compared with controls also had significant reductions in triglyceride content in the liver and skeletal muscle and exhibited improved insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. Taken together, our results demonstrated that Stat1 in MDCs plays an important role in obesity-induced MDC M1-like polarization and AT inflammation and contributes to insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunctions in obese mice.

CD11c(+) macrophages/dendritic cells (MDCs) are increased and display the classically activated M1-like phenotype in obese adipose tissue (AT) and may contribute to AT inflammation and insulin resistance. Stat1 is a key transcription factor for MDC polarization into the M1-like phenotype. Here, we examined the role of Stat1 in obesity-induced AT MDC polarization and inflammation and insulin resistance using mice with specific knockout of Stat1 in MDCs (cKO). Stat1 was upregulated and phosphorylated, indicating activation, early and persistently in AT and AT MDCs of wild-type mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD). Compared with littermate controls, cKO mice fed an HFD (16 weeks) had reductions in MDC (mainly CD11c(+) macrophage) M1-like polarization and interferon-γ–expressing T-helper type 1 (Th1) cells but increases in interleukin 5–expressing Th2 cells and eosinophils in perigonadal and inguinal AT, and enhanced inguinal AT browning, with increased energy expenditure. cKO mice compared with controls also had significant reductions in triglyceride content in the liver and skeletal muscle and exhibited improved insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. Taken together, our results demonstrate that Stat1 in MDCs plays an important role in obesity-induced MDC M1-like polarization and AT inflammation and contributes to insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunctions in obese mice.

Inactivating mutations in the copper transporter Atp7b result in Wilson’s disease. The Atp7b(−/−) mouse develops hallmarks of Wilson’s disease. The activity of several nuclear receptors decreased in Atp7b(−/−) mice, and nuclear receptors are critical for maintaining metabolic homeostasis. Therefore, we anticipated that Atp7b(−/−) mice would exhibit altered progression of diet-induced obesity, fatty liver, and insulin resistance. Following 10 wk on a chow or Western-type diet (40% kcal fat), parameters of glucose and lipid homeostasis were measured. Hepatic metabolites were measured by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry and correlated with transcriptomic data. Atp7b(−/−) mice fed a chow diet presented with blunted body-weight gain over time, had lower fat mass, and were more glucose tolerant than wild type (WT) littermate controls. On the Western diet, Atp7b(−/−) mice exhibited reduced body weight, adiposity, and hepatic steatosis compared with WT controls. Atp7b(−/−) mice fed either diet were more insulin sensitive than WT controls; however, fasted Atp7b(−/−) mice exhibited hypoglycemia after administration of insulin due to an impaired glucose counterregulatory response, as evidenced by reduced hepatic glucose production. Coupling gene expression with metabolomic analyses, we observed striking changes in hepatic metabolic profiles in Atp7b(−/−) mice, including increases in glycolytic intermediates and components of the tricarboxylic acid cycle. In addition, the active phosphorylated form of AMP kinase was significantly increased in Atp7b(−/−) mice relative to WT controls. Alterations in hepatic metabolic profiles and nuclear receptor signaling were associated with improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity as well as with impaired fasting glucose production in Atp7b(−/−) mice.

Biochemical means of tea quality evaluation is quite accurate, but it requires very costly instruments and takes a long time to conduct the experiment. Researches show that thearubigin (TR) and theaflavin (TF) are the two most important biochemical compounds present in tea liquor on which liquor characteristics of black CTC tea depends. Consequently, this fact may be the basis of determining tea quality by assessment of TR and TF via electronic tongue (ET) response. This technique is free from subjective factors. In literature, there are only two research works using this technique so more research work is required to address the problem. This chapter proposes a modeling technique of ET response using sparse decomposition technique to estimate TR and TF content in a given tea sample. For each tea sample, sparse model coefficients obtained from the ET response is considered as a characteristic attribute of it. Experimental results using dissimilar regression models show high prediction accuracies which justify the efficacy of the proposed method.

The reuse of cooling tower blowdown (CTBD) in the cooling tower itself requires CTBD deionization and a pre-treatment before deionization to remove organic compounds (OCs) that induce membrane fouling. This study assesses the potential of electrochemical oxidation (EO) with a boron-doped diamond (BDD) and a Ti/RuO2 mixed-metal oxide (MMO) anode for CTBD pre-treatment. Also, the influence of the applied current density (j), initial pH, hydrodynamic conditions, and supporting electrolyte on the process performance was evaluated. Results show that COD and TOC removal were 85 and 51%, respectively, with the BDD-anode; however, they were 50 and 12% with MMO-anode at a j-value of 8.7 mA cm−2 and neutral pH. An increased j-value increased the COD and TOC removal; however, different pHs, hydrodynamic conditions, and the addition of supporting electrolytes had a minor impact on the removal with both anodes. Liquid chromatography-organic carbon detection analysis showed that the OC in CTBD mainly consisted of humic substances (HS). EO with the BDD-anode resulted in 35% HS mineralization, while the rest of the HS were partially oxidized into low molecular weight compounds and building blocks. However, HS mineralization was limited with the MMO-anode. The mineralization and oxidation were accompanied by the formation of organic and inorganic chlorinated species. These species increased the toxicity to Vibrio fischeri 20-fold compared to the initially low-toxic CTBD. Thus, EO with a BDD-anode is a promising pre-treatment technology for the removal of OCs before CTBD deionization, but measures to minimize the chlorinated species formation are required before its application.

A substantial part of the freshwater used in the industry is consumed in cooling towers. Cooling towers discharge saline cooling tower blowdown (CTBD), and the reuse of CTBD in the cooling tower can lower the industrial freshwater footprint. This reuse requires CTBD desalination and a pre-treatment that removes organic chemicals before physico-chemical desalination technologies to be applied efficiently. In the present study, the pre-treatment of CTBD by a combination of electrochemical oxidation (EO) with a boron-doped diamond (BDD) or mixed-metal oxide (MMO) anode and a vertical flow constructed wetland (VFCW) was assessed in both possible configurations. The integrated VFCW-EO systems removed more organic chemicals, such as COD, TOC, and the corrosion inhibitor benzotriazole than the EO-VFCW systems. However, the EO resulted in highly toxic effluent to Vibrio fischeri and the plants in the VFCW. This toxicity was the result of the production of unwanted chlorinated organic compounds and ClO3− and ClO4− by both the BDD- and MMO-anode during EO. These toxic EO by-products were removed substantially in the VFCW during EO-VFCW treatment but did impact the removal efficiency and viability of the VFCW. Moreover, significant water loss was observed in the VFCW due to evapotranspiration. In conclusion, the negative impact of EO effluent on the VFCW and evapotranspiration of the VFCW should be considered during application.

We evaluated electrochemical degradation (ECD) and photocatalytic degradation (PCD) technologies for saline water purification, with a focus on rate comparison and formation and degradation of chlorinated aromatic intermediates using the same non-chlorinated parent compound, 4-ethylphenol (4EP). At 15 mA·cm-2, and in the absence of chloride (0.6 mol·L-1 NaNO3 was used as supporting electrolyte), ECD resulted in an apparent zero-order rate of 30 μmol L-1·h-1, whereas rates of ?300 μmol L-1·h-1 and ?3750 μmol L-1·h-1 were computed for low (0.03 mol·L-1) and high (0.6 mol·L-1) NaCl concentration, respectively. For PCD, initial rates of ?330 μmol L-1·h-1 and 205 μmol L-1·h-1 were found for low and high NaCl concentrations, at a photocatalyst (TiO2) concentration of 0.5 g·L-1, and illumination at λmax ≈ 375 nm, with an intensity ?0.32 mW·cm-2. In the chlorine mediated ECD approach, significant quantities of free chlorine (hypochlorite, Cl2) and chlorinated hydrocarbons were formed in solution, while photocatalytic degradation did not show the formation of free chlorine, nor chlorine-containing intermediates, and resulted in better removal of non-purgeable hydrocarbons than ECD. The origin of the minimal formation of free chlorine and chlorinated compounds in photocatalytic degradation is discussed based on photoelectrochemical results and existing literature, and explained by a chloride-mediated surface-charge recombination mechanism.

The legacy electromagnetic (EM) pump analysis tool MATRIX has been improved by the addition of a thermal analysis module. Although the module is patterned after the general-purpose Advanced General...

In this paper, a novel method to model the responses of electronic tongue (ET) sensors using autoregressive (AR) and AR moving average techniques is presented. The transient response of each electrode present in the sensor array of an ET is characterized with tea samples of different qualities. Models coefficients are used as the characteristics features of the ET response corresponding to the tea samples. Three different classifiers, namely, artificial neural network, vector valued regularized kernel function approximation, and one-versus-one support vector machine, are employed to evaluate the performance of these features to discriminate the quality of black tea. Experimental results on three types of voltammetric measurement data show that the proposed method may be very useful for prediction of tea quality. The present model-based classification method is very straightforward and provides better or similar performance compared with some other methods proposed in the literature for ET signal classification.

Electromagnetic (EM) pumps are a major component in the safe operation of liquid metal—cooled nuclear reactors and can also be used in any other application in which a conductive fluid is being pumped through a system. During the design of an EM pump, it is useful to model its operating characteristics for pump sizing, flow capabilities, and other design checks. The EM pump analysis code known as MATRIX is a prime example of a tool that can be used for such pump modeling. This paper introduces the modernization and capability investigation efforts completed on MATRIX. An output data comparison of the modernized code is made between both the legacy code and the measured EM pump. Further improvement of MATRIX through data analysis and flow correction techniques is explained.

This article describes the direct hot extrusion process and the typical sequence of operations for producing extruded aluminum shapes from soft and medium-grade aluminum alloys, hard alloys, and aluminum-matrix composites. It discusses key process variables, including extrusion speed and exit temperature, and their effect on product quality. The article also provides information on extrusion presses, press dies, and tooling, and addresses quality issues such as surface defects, blistering, and internal cracking. It concludes with a discussion on the drawing of solid section and aluminum tube.

To develop any autonomous computerized algorithm for abnormality detection based on medical image analysis essentially requires a robust segmentation algorithm. To achieve this goal of accurate segmentation of medical image it requires an effective edge detection algorithm. Generalized edge detection algorithms like Sobel, Canny, though effective in normal images but often fails in case of medical images. Medical images obtained from devices such as Ultrasonography, X-Ray, CT and MRI exhibit diverse image characteristics but are essentially collection of intensity variations from which specific abnormalities are needed to be isolated. Homogeneity enhancement, followed by edge detection and resulting segmentation is essential prerequisite for all medical image analysis system. This paper proposes a robust medical image enhancement and edge detection algorithm that is equally effective with most medical images that are popular now-a-days yielding excellent segmentation results in all cases.

Objective: Autism has a strong genetic basis, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is unclear. This descriptive type of cross sectional study was conducted to explore the knowledge on care of autistic children among the mother’s attending Protibondhi Foundation, Dhaka.Methods: A total of 385 samples were selected purposively, but due to time and budget constrict it was 150 finally. Data were collected by using an anonymous, pre-tested, semi structured and self-administered questionnaire.Results: The study revealed that more than 50% of the respondent’s were in the age group 16-30 years, majority of the respondent’s were Muslim. Almost 84% of the respondents were SSC-Graduate and majority of them (nearly 50%) were housewife .The monthly family income was ranged between Taka 25,001-50,000 and its percentage was 53.3%. The knowledge about type of autism is very low, the data showed that only two types of autism they knew and the respondent’s knowledge about the risk factor was also very low; only 24% of the respondents had knowledge about complications during pregnancy and delivery related risk factors. About 28% needed physiotherapy, 30% needed occupational therapy, 34% needed speech therapy & 44.7% needed psychotherapy. Here significant association was found between age, education and knowledge about autism (p

This article discusses two basic forms of extrusion: cold and hot. It provides information on three types of extrusion processes, namely, direct extrusion, reverse extrusion, and hydrostatic extrusion. The article also discusses the mechanics, analysis, tooling and die design of extrusion as well as thermodynamics. The finite-element method suitable for simulation of metal forming processes is explained. The article examines the extrusion defects that are divided into three different categories including surface, subsurface, and internal type. It includes information on friction and lubrication modeling of extrusion processes. The article also discusses the fundamentals of extrusion technology of titanium alloys and aluminum. It concludes with information on two forms of wear in extrusion, namely, adhesive and abrasive wear.

Microbial electrosynthesis is a useful form of technology for the renewable production of organic commodities from biologically catalyzed reduction of CO2. However, for the technology to become applicable, process selectivity, stability and efficiency need strong improvement. Here we report on the effect of different electrochemical control modes (potentiostatic/galvanostatic) on both the start-up characteristics and steady-state performance of biocathodes using a non-enriched mixed-culture inoculum. Based on our results, it seems that kinetic differences exist between the two dominant functional microbial groups (i.e., homoacetogens and methanogens) and that by applying different current densities, these differences may be exploited to steer product selectivity and reactor performance.

Electronic tongue (ET) system is under extensive development for automatic analysis and prediction of quality of different industrial end products. Each sensor in an ET system generates a specific electronic response in presence of different organic or inorganic compounds in the sample. The vital part of the ET system is the discrimination of the complex pattern generated by the sensor array. In this paper, a novel technique of black tea quality estimation is using the ET signals. A moving window is used to extract discrete wavelet transform coefficients from the transient response of ET. The energy in different frequency bands are used as the features of the ET signal for different positions of the window. The prediction of a new sample is performed by the highest score obtained by a particular class by testing all the patterns generated by windowing ET signal. The performance of the proposed technique is verified to estimate black tea quality using two kernel classifiers, namely support vector machine and recently proposed vector valued regularized kernel function approximation method. High prediction accuracy of both the classifiers confirms the effectiveness of the proposed technique of tea quality estimation using ET signals.

For the first time in Bangladesh, a bench scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) unit was tested in treating a textile wastewater in the industry premises of EOS Textile Mills LTD, Dhaka for three months. The performance of the unit was compared with that of the conventional activated sludge treatment plant, which is in operation in the same premises. The COD and BOD removal efficiency of the MBR unit reached to around 90% and 80% respectively in 20 days whereas the removal efficiency of the conventional treatment plant was as low as 40-50% and 38-40% respectively. The outlet COD and the BOD level for the MBR unit remained stable in spite of the fluctuation in the feed value, while the conventional effluent treatment plant (ETP) failed to keep any stabilized level. The performance of the MBR unit was much superior to that of the functional ETP and the water treated by the MBR system can meet disposal standard. © 2014 Techno-Press, Ltd.

This study focused on the generation of electricity from whey in a bio-fuel cell (BFC). Whey or Milk Serum is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It is a by-product of the manufacture of cheese or casein in Foods and Sweets Company. It was selected as electrolyte in biofuel cell due to containing higher amount of branched-chain amino acids (BCAA's).The pH value of fresh whey was 3.1-3.8. Three categories of whey were used in the experiments included fresh whey, preserved by thermal treatment and preserved with 2% phenol by volume. It was observed that microorganism growth was zero in the sample with 2% phenol and growth rate was medium in the sample preserved by thermal treatment and that was higher in the fresh sample. In this biofuel cell, voltage was increased with the increase of surface area of electrodes. For a single compartment containing 8 unit cells, resultant voltage and current were 2.86V and 450?A and four compartment 32 unit cells in series, the values were 10.90V and 8.05mA respectively. When anode area was increased to reduce polarization, power generation was initially high but the decreasing rate of power was also elevated. Finally, for commercial electrodes, maximum power and minimum internal resistance were recorded. The maximum Current, Voltage and Power for commercial electrodes in a single compartment containing 10 unit cells were 78mA, 3.88V and 0.30264W respectively. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jce.v28i1.18105 Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol. 28, No. 1, December 2013: 22-26

In this study, a cost effective, simple, environment friendly way of fermentable reducing sugar production from rice straw has been carried out by using naturally grown raw wood rotting enzyme. The rotten bark of three trees was collected as the source of enzyme, called enzyme strain. The yield of reducing sugar from rice straw by enzyme strain at various operating condition was studied. A kinetic model expression has been developed for the enzymatic hydrolysis process based on the Michaelis – Mentens approach. Comparison between the experimental data and theoretical data predicted from the rate model render sound accord with a mean deviation of about 0.679. Strain collected from the Rain tree (Samanea Saman) showed the maximum production of reducing sugar. The absence of light gives 36.36% higher production than that of the presence of light. The optimum pH is found as 5. Strain concentration at 0.0233g/ml shows the maximum sugar production as 0.09854 mg/ml in 10 days. Substrate concentration at .0143mg/ml gives maximum production of 0 .15991 mg/ml in 16 days. From this study the optimum condition was found as 0.157 mg/ml fermentable reducing sugar in 11 days. This study provides an alternative and attractive cost effective source of fermentable sugar which can be further converted to valuable product such as bio-ethanol to meet the worlds increasing energy demand. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jce.v28i1.18108 Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol. 28, No. 1, December 2013: 32-35

A bacterial isolate Pseudomonas sp. was isolated from the solid waste slump collected from a local duping site of Sylhet district and was efficiently utilized for the removal of dye (Orange 3R) from simulated synthetic waste water in a lab scale Stirred Tank Sequencing Batch Bioreactor (STSBBR) in batch mode. A reactor with 2 L capacity (working volume 0.5 L) equipped with suitable control means and stirring mechanism was operated at room temperature and pH 6.6 ± 1 in fill-react-settling-draw mode with different initial dye concentrations (50, 100, 150, 200 & 300 ppm) where the hydraulic retention time was maintained for 12-72 hours depending on the adaptation of waste water by the bacterial strain. The efficiency of the reactor was analyzed with respect to three strands and found to be negative correlation with the concentration of the dye. Overall color, COD, and BOD in the Stirred tank bioreactor system (STSBBR) were removed by 49.67, 37.45 and 33.89%, respectively with 50 ppm dye concentration and HRT of 24 h. The efficiency of the reactor was found to be in negative correlation with the concentration of the dye. This STSBBR system was found very effective for efficient biological treatment of such dyeing industry waste water by the bacterial strain Pseudomonas sp. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jce.v27i2.17808 Journal of Chemical Engineering, IEB Vol. ChE. 27, No. 2, December 2012: 77-82

As the gradual up-growing trend of industrialization and urbanization leading steady increment of demand of energy; eco-friendly, bio degradable, cost competitive and promising source of energy with high sustainability is toughly needed for the new era of modern world. Hydrolysis of cellulose by cellulase enzymes is a vital candidate for this option. It is a solid-liquid heterogeneous reaction; strongly affected by the non-reaction resistances caused most notably by the crystalline structure; reaction environment parameters as temperature, pH, characteristics of enzyme, cell & substrate loading and hence must have to be defined for specific enzyme-substrate amalgamation. In this present investigation, glucose was produced from rice straw using cellulytic enzyme pseudomonas sp., isolated from municipal solid waste. Glucose yield was found to increase as the rice straw particle size decreased from 0.5 mm to 45 ?m, while the optimal temperature and pH were found within the range of 30°C and 7.0 respectively. The concentration and rate of glucose production was observed to depend on pretreatment of rice straw, substrate concentration and enzyme loading. A kinetic model rate expression has been developed for such a process based on the Michaelis – Mentens and Line weaver–Burk approach. Comparison between the experimental data and those predicted from the rate model indicate good agreement with a mean absolute deviation of about 0.304916. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jce.v27i2.17778 Journal of Chemical Engineering, IEB Vol. ChE. 27, No. 2, December 2012: 20-24

The paper archives the proceedings of an expert panel discussion on the issues and future direction of thermal-hydraulic research and development in nuclear power reactors held at the NURETH-14 conference in Toronto, Canada, in September 2011. Thermal-hydraulic issues related to both operating and advanced reactors are presented. Advances in thermal-hydraulics have significantly improved the performance of operating reactors. Further thermal-hydraulics research and development is continuing in both experimental and computational areas for operating reactors, reactors under construction or ready for near-term deployment, and advanced Generation-IV reactors. As the computing power increases, the fine-scale multi-physics computational models, coupled with the systems analysis code, are expected to provide answers to many challenging problems in both operating and advanced reactor designs.

The electronic tongue (ET) system is basically a multi-electrode system where the response of each electrode in presence of tea samples are multi dimensional combinations of different chemical compounds and represented by large number of measured points. It is expected that an ET system will examine and identify these signals precisely. Relevant feature extraction with appropriate signal processing of the responses generated by the electrode array may help to achieve this task of ET. In this work, a feature extraction method using singular value decomposition (SVD) method has been used to represent the ET signal before sending them to appropriate pattern classifier. The efficiency of the proposed method is verified on three types of ET data sets using support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. More than 98% of accuracy is obtained in all the three data sets which prove the efficacy of the proposed method.