In this study, a novel application of lab-scale dual chambered air-cathode microbial fuel cell (MFC) has been developed for simultaneous bio-treatment of real pharmaceutical wastewater and renewable electricity generation. The microbial fuel cell (MFC) was provided with zeolite-packed anodic compartment and a cation exchange membrane (CEM) to separate the anode and cathode. The performance of the proposed MFC was evaluated in terms of COD removal and power generation based on the activity of the bacterial consortium in the biofilm mobilized on zeolite bearer. The MFC was fueled with real pharmaceutical wastewater having an initial COD concentration equal to 800 mg/L and inoculated with anaerobic aged sludge. Results demo

Semiconductor-based photocatalytic processes are widely applied as ecofriendly technology for degrading organic pollutants. Establishing photocatalytic heterojunctions with Z-type photocarriers transfer pathways is projected to be a superb strategy to enhance photocatalytic behavior. In this paper, novel and stable (0D/2D) heterojunctions of CoS-embedded boron-doped g-C3N4 (CoS/BCN) with a high rate of charges transfer/separation were assembled for degradation of malachite green dye (MG). The CoS/BCN photocatalyst achieves a photodegradation efficiency of 96.9 % within 1 h of LED illumination, which is 2.5 and 1.4-fold enhancement compared with bare g-C3N4 and BCN, respectively. Besides, the results of species-trapping trials exhibited that

Sub-threshold operation has received a lot of attention in limited performance applications.However, energy optimization of sub-threshold circuits should be performed with the concern of the performance limitation of such circuit. In this paper, a dual size design is proposed for energy minimization of sub-threshold CMOS circuits. The optimal downsizing factor is determined and assigned for some gates on the off-critical paths to minimize the energy at the maximum allowable performance. This assignment is performed using the proposed slack based genetic algorithm which is a heuristic-mixed evolutionary algorithm. Some gates are heuristically assigned to the original and the downsized design based on their slack time determined by static tim

<p>Energy and memory limitations are considerable constraints of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The limited energy supplied to network nodes causes WSNs to face crucial functional limitations. Therefore, the problem of limited energy resource on sensor nodes can only be addressed by using them efficiently. In this research work, an energy-balancing routing scheme for in-network data aggregation is presented. This scheme is referred to as Energy-aware and load-Balancing Routing scheme for Data Aggregation (hereinafter referred to as EBR-DA). The EBRDA aims to provide an energy efficient multiple-hop routing to the destination on the basis of the quality of the links between the source and destination. In

The gas-lift method is crucial for maintaining oil production, particularly from an established field when the natural energy of the reservoirs is depleted. To maximize oil production, a major field's gas injection rate must be distributed as efficiently as possible across its gas-lift network system. Common gas-lift optimization techniques may lose their effectiveness and become unable to replicate the gas-lift optimum in a large network system due to problems with multi-objective, multi-constrained & restricted gas injection rate distribution. The main objective of the research is to determine the possibility of using the genetic algorithm (GA) technique to achieve the optimum distribution for the continuous gas-lift injectio

Sequence covering array (SCA) generation is an active research area in recent years. Unlike the sequence-less covering arrays (CA), the order of sequence varies in the test case generation process. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the SCA strategies, earlier works reported that finding a minimal size of a test suite is considered as an NP-Hard problem. In addition, most of the existing strategies for SCA generation have a high order of complexity due to the generation of all combinatorial interactions by adopting one-test-at-a-time fashion. Reducing the complexity by adopting one-parameter- at-a-time for SCA generation is a challenging process. In addition, this reduction facilitates the supporting for a higher strength of cove

Sequence covering array (SCA) generation is an active research area in recent years. Unlike the sequence-less covering arrays (CA), the order of sequence varies in the test case generation process. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the SCA strategies, earlier works reported that finding a minimal size of a test suite is considered as an NP-Hard problem. In addition, most of the existing strategies for SCA generation have a high order of complexity due to the generation of all combinatorial interactions by adopting one-test-at-a-time fashion. Reducing the complexity by adopting one-parameter- at-a-time for SCA generation is a challenging process. In addition, this reduction facilitates the supporting for a higher strength of

On the basis of known coumarin-based prodrug system, a novel coumarin-based mutual prodrug of 5-fluorouracil and dichloroacetic acid was designed, synthesized and evaluated as a promising oral chemotherapeutic agent basing on in vitro stability study in HCl buffer (pH 1.2) and in phosphate buffer (pH 7.4), as well as in vitro release study in human serum. The chemical structure of prodrug was confirmed by analyzing its FTIR, ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR and MS-ESI spectra. The results of in vitro kinetic study indicated that the prodrug was significantly stable in HCl and in phosphate buffers, and was hydrolyzed in human serum followed pseudo first order kinetics.

Keywords: Coumarin-bas