Электронная структура вариантов составов скандатных и оксидно-никелевых катодов СВЧ приборов

By methods of electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis and spectroscopy of characteristic losses of electron energy, the electronic structure of barium oxide crystallites doped with other chemical elements, including scandium from scandium-containing phases, was investigated. The physical and physicochemical conditions are formulated, the fulfillment of which allows to form the electronic structure of the scandate cathode with a high level of thermionic emission: the achievement of the minimum ratio of the surface volume concentration of oxygen vacancies and the maximum distance between the top of the valence band and the Fermi level.

Prevalence of intestinal parasitic diseases in school children of rural areas of district Lower Dir, Pakistan

Present study was conducted among school children to recognize the prevalence of IPIs in rural communities of district Dir Lower, Pakistan. A sum of 324 samples of stool were collected (210 boys and 114 girls). Used direct smear method and formol ether sedimentation concentration technique for processing the samples. The result shows that 82% (n=266) were found infected comprised 64.8% male and 35.1% females. Children of the age group 10 to 12 years were found extremely infected 94.2% while 4-6 year age group were having minimum ratio of infection 72%. Current study shows mono parasitism in 50.6% of the students while 22.2% were infected with 2 species and 7.40% were infected with three species of parasites. Seven species of intestinal parasites were reported include Ascaris lumbricoid in male (n=122) 58.0% and in female (n=65) 57.0% followed by Hook worm (n=88) 41.9% and (n=44) 38.5%; Tania saginata (n=44) 20.9% and (n=24) 21.0%; Entrobius vermicularis (n=32) 15.2% and (n=16) 14.0%; Trichuris trichura (n=25) 11.9% and (n=22) 19.2%; Hymenolepis nana (n=24) 11.4% and (n=18) 15.7% and Entameoba histolytica (n=16) 7.61% and (n=14) 12.2% in male and females respectively. The study indicates that most occurring intestinal parasite in the current study were Ascaris lumbricoides 58.0% (n=122) followed by hookworms 41.9% (n=88). Male students were more infected than females in the present study.

Collision prediction on combined horizontal and vertical alignments of two-lane rural highways.

This study investigates the safety effects of combined horizontal and vertical alignments using accident occurrences on two-lane rural highways in Washington. Eight statistical models were developed to establish the relationships between vehicle accidents and their associated factors for eight combinations of alignments by the Poisson, negative binomial, zero-inflated Poisson, and zero-inflated negative binomial. Three selected models were validated. The findings show that degree of curvature is the most successful predictor for horizontal curves combined with vertical alignments. A minimum ratio of 25 of vertical curve radius to horizontal curve radius is recommended for a curve with radius of smaller than 6000 ft (or 1830 m). Vertical curves have relatively little influence on accident occurrences at horizontal tangents. The grade value and length of a grade increase accident occurrences when a horizontal curve or tangent is on a grade. A smaller curve should be avoided introducing at a steep grade.

Collision prediction on combined horizontal and vertical alignments of two-lane rural highways.

This study investigates the safety effects of combined horizontal and vertical alignments using accident occurrences on two-lane rural highways in Washington. Eight statistical models were developed to establish the relationships between vehicle accidents and their associated factors for eight combinations of alignments by the Poisson, negative binomial, zero-inflated Poisson, and zero-inflated negative binomial. Three selected models were validated. The findings show that degree of curvature is the most successful predictor for horizontal curves combined with vertical alignments. A minimum ratio of 25 of vertical curve radius to horizontal curve radius is recommended for a curve with radius of smaller than 6000 ft (or 1830 m). Vertical curves have relatively little influence on accident occurrences at horizontal tangents. The grade value and length of a grade increase accident occurrences when a horizontal curve or tangent is on a grade. A smaller curve should be avoided introducing at a steep grade.

The Nutrient, Mineral and Anti-Nutrient Studies of Two Indigenous South African Spices

The two South African spices named Lippia javanica (Izinziniba) and Foeniculum vulgare (Imbambosi) were studied for its proximate principles, minerals, vitamins and anti-nutrients properties. The experiment shows that L. javanica had higher figure in its lipids, fibres and carbohydrates contents. This implies that L. javanica may help the body to maintain an internal distention for proper peristaltic movement of the intestinal tract than F. vulgare will do. While, the protein, ash, moisture contents were more in F. vulgare, this may be the reason, more elemental composition were observed in it because the level of ash, moisture and protein contents determines its minerals or inorganic components. Elements such as Nitrogen (N), Potassium (K), Magnesium (Mg) and Sodium (Na) were observed to be more to mentioned few, the Ca/P levels of both plants was observed to be more than 0.5 which is the minimum ratio required for favourable calcium absorption in the intestine for bone formation. Likewise both plants shows no significant differences in its anti-nutrients levels such as the phytate, oxalate and tannin contents, but L. javanica had more of Vitamin A and E levels, compared to F. vulgare with better Vitamin C, Cyanide and Saponin contents. In general, spices have been reported to contribute to the average requirement for different nutrients. Polyphenols such as tannins have anticancer properties, so beverages such as green tea that contain large amount of these compounds might also be good for maintenance of human health despite its anti-nutrient properties. Comparatively, L. javanica has a better nutrient composition than F. vulgare.

Multi-Objective Optimization of Integrated Civilian-Military Scheduling of Medical Supplies for Epidemic Prevention and Control

In a large-scale epidemic, such as the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), there is huge demand for a variety of medical supplies, such as medical masks, ventilators, and sickbeds. Resources from civilian medical services are often not sufficient for fully satisfying all of these demands. Resources from military medical services, which are normally reserved for military use, can be an effective supplement to these demands. In this paper, we formulate a problem of integrated civilian-military scheduling of medical supplies for epidemic prevention and control, the aim of which is to simultaneously maximize the overall satisfaction rate of the medical supplies and minimize the total scheduling cost, while keeping a minimum ratio of medical supplies reservation for military use. We propose a multi-objective water wave optimization (WWO) algorithm in order to efficiently solve this problem. Computational results on a set of problem instances constructed based on real COVID-19 data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Highly effective silver oxides: influence of oxygen concentration on antibacterial activity against clinical strains of Staphylococcus aureus

Aim of study. Comparative analysis of antibacterial activity of silver oxides (Ag0,2O, Ag1 O, Ag2 O) in relation to clinical strains of Staphylococcus aureus obtained from patients with orthopaedic infection. Material and methods. Films of silver oxides were coated on paper surface in vacuum via the method of ion-plasma arc sputtering of the metallic target. Isolation of S.aureus was performed via standard manual methods from January to June 2021, identification was carried out via the MALDI-TOF-MS method. Sensitivity to antibiotics was evaluated according to EUCAST (2021, v.11.0) requirements. Antibacterial activity of the silver oxide samples obtained against 130 clinical strains of S.aureus was analysed in liquid nutrient broth with subsequent measurement of optical density. Results. Over 90% of the clinical strains of S.aureus isolated from patients with orthopaedic infection were sensitive to the silver oxides obtained. The amount of oxygen in the compound exerted almost no influence on the sensitivity to the oxides: even a minimum ratio between silver and oxygen provided a pronounced antibacterial effect. Additionally, the sensitivity to silver oxides did not depend on the MRSA resistance phenotype and the compounds were effective against XDR strains of S.aureus in 96.7% of the cases. Conclusion. All tested samples of silver oxides (Ag0,2O, Ag1 O, Ag2O) were characterised by pronounced antibacterial activity against S. aureus. The data obtained point to prospects in application of silver oxides for prevention and treatment of orthopaedic infection induced by Staphylococcus aureus without regard for the sensitivity phenotype of the pathogen.

CNT-Based Solar Thermal Coatings: Absorptance vs. Emittance

A novel approach for fabricating selective absorbing coatings based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for mid-temperature solar–thermal application is presented. The developed formulations are dispersions of CNTs in water or solvents. Being coated on stainless steel (SS) by spraying, these formulations provide good characteristics of solar absorptance. The effect of CNT concentration and the type of the binder and its ratios to the CNT were investigated. Coatings based on water dispersions give higher adsorption, but solvent-based coatings enable achieving lower emittance. Interestingly, the binder was found to be responsible for the high emittance, yet, it is essential for obtaining good adhesion to the SS substrate. The best performance of the coatings requires adjusting the concentration of the CNTs and their ratio to the binder to obtain the highest absorptance with excellent adhesion; high absorptance is obtained at high CNT concentration, while good adhesion requires a minimum ratio between the binder/CNT; however, increasing the binder concentration increases the emissivity. The best coatings have an absorptance of ca. 90% with an emittance of ca. 0.3 and excellent adhesion to stainless steel.

Discrete Artificial Dragonflies Algorithm in Agent Based Modelling for Exact Boolean kSatisfiability Problem

The development of metaheuristics and Boolean Satisfiability representation plays an important part in a neural network (NN) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) communities. In this paper, a new hybrid discrete version of the artificial dragonfly algorithm (DADA) applying a minimum objective function in agent-based modelling (ABM) obeying a specified procedure to optimize the states of neurons, for optimal Boolean Exact Satisfiability representation on NETLOGO as a dynamic platform. We combined the artificial dragonfly algorithm for its random searching ability that encourages diverse solutions and formation of static swarm’s mechanism to stimulus computational problems to converge to the best global optimal search space. The global performance of the proposed DADA was compared with genetic algorithm (GA) that are available in the literature based on the global minimum ratio (gM), Local Minimum Ratio (yM), Computational time (CPU) and Hamming distance (HD). The final results showed good agreement between the proposed DADA and discrete version of GA to efficiently optimize the Exact-kSAT problem. It found that DADA-ABM has high potentiality for optimizing or modelling a network that is very hard or often impossible to capture by exact or traditional optimization modelling techniques such as Boolean satisfiability problem is better than existing methods in the literature.

Electrodermal Response Ratios: Scoring Against the Stronger of Two Comparison Questions in Search of an Optimal Minimum Threshold

Previously, Krapohl (2020) evaluated the Bigger-Is-Better Rule (BIBR) on the polygraph electrodermal channel to assess whether there was a best minimum ratio between response sizes for assigning a score. Performance peaked at a minimum ratio between 10% and 20%. The ratios had been calculated by comparing the electrodermal responses for each relevant question against those of the immediately preceding comparison question. The analysis did not consider whether the same optimal ratio would be found if the relevant question electrodermal responses are compared to those of the stronger of two adjacent comparison questions. To investigate we analyzed responses from an independent sample of 255 laboratory cases. The data from those cases found the highest correlation between scores and ground truth occurred when the minimum difference between two electrodermal responses was 30%.