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Urbanized rivers flowing through polluted megacities receive substantial amount of carbon from domestic sewage and industrial effluents which can significantly alter the air-water CO 2 flux rates. In this regard, we quantified the partial pressure of CO 2 in the surface water (pCO 2 (water)), air-water CO 2 fluxes, and associated biogeochemical parameters in the Hooghly River, India, flowing through two of the most polluted cities of the country, Kolkata and Howrah, over a complete annual cycle during spring tidal phase (SP) and neap tidal phase (NP). This urbanized part of Hooghly River was always supersaturated with CO 2 having an annual mean pCO 2 (water) and air-water CO 2 flux of ~ 3800 μatm and ~ 49 mol C m −2 year −1 , respectively. Significant seasonal variability was observed for both pCO 2 (water) and air-water CO 2 flux (pre-monsoon, 3038 ± 539 μatm and 5049 ± 964 μmol m −2 h −1 ; monsoon, 4609 ± 711 μatm and 7918 ± 1400 μmol m −2 h −1 ; post-monsoon, 2558 ± 258 μatm and 4048 ± 759 μmol m −2 h −1 , respectively). Monthly mean pH and total alkalinity varied from 7.482 to 8.099 and from 2437 to 4136 μmol kg −1 , respectively, over the annual cycle. pCO 2 (water) showed significant positive correlation with turbidity and negative correlation with electrical conductivity and gross primary productivity (GPP). High water discharge could have facilitated high turbidity, especially during the monsoon season, which led to depletion in GPP and enhancement in pCO 2 (water) which in turn led to very high CO 2 effluxes. The CO 2 efflux rate in this urbanized riverine stretch was substantially higher than that observed in previous studies carried out in the less urbanized estuarine stretch of Hooghly. This indicates that the presence of highly urbanized and polluted metropolis potentially enhanced the pCO 2 (water) and CO 2 effluxes of this river. Similar observations were made recently in some Asian and Australian urban rivers.

In this paper, we study current and upcoming frontiers across the landscape of skeleton-based human action recognition. To study skeleton-action recognition in the wild, we introduce Skeletics-152, a curated and 3-D pose-annotated subset of RGB videos sourced from Kinetics-700, a large-scale action dataset. We extend our study to include out-of-context actions by introducing Skeleton-Mimetics, a dataset derived from the recently introduced Mimetics dataset. We also introduce Metaphorics, a dataset with caption-style annotated YouTube videos of the popular social game Dumb Charades and interpretative dance performances. We benchmark state-of-the-art models on the NTU-120 dataset and provide multi-layered assessment of the results. The results from benchmarking the top performers of NTU-120 on the newly introduced datasets reveal the challenges and domain gap induced by actions in the wild. Overall, our work characterizes the strengths and limitations of existing approaches and datasets. Via the introduced datasets, our work enables new frontiers for human action recognition.

Efficient, sustainable, safe, and portable energy storage technologies are required to reduce global dependence on fossil fuels. Lithium-ion batteries satisfy the need for reliability, high energy density, and power density in electrical transportation. Despite these advantages, lithium plating, i.e., the accumulation of metallic lithium on the graphite anode surface during rapid charging or at low temperatures, is an insidious failure mechanism that limits battery performance. Lithium plating significantly shortens the battery’s life and rapidly reduces capacity, limiting the widespread adoption of electrical vehicles. When lithium plating is extreme, it can develop lithium dendrites, which may pass through the separator and lead to an internal short circuit and the subsequent thermal runaway damage of the cell. Over the last two decades, a large number of published studies have focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying lithium plating and on approaches to mitigate its harmful effects. Nevertheless, the physics underlying lithium plating still needs to be clarified. There is a lack of real-time techniques to accurately detect and quantify lithium plating. Real-time detection is essential for alleviating lithium plating-induced failure modes. Several strategies have been explored to minimize plating and its effect on battery life and safety, such as electrolyte design, anode structure design, and hybridized charging protocol design. We summarize the current developments and the different reported hypotheses regarding plating mechanisms, the influence of environmental and electrochemical conditions on plating, recent developments in electrochemical detection methods and their potential for real-time detection, and plating mitigation techniques. The advantages and concerns associated with different electrochemical detection and mitigation techniques are also highlighted. Lastly, we discuss outstanding technical issues and possible future research directions to encourage the development of novel ideas and methods to prevent lithium plating.

The global political economy is currently in the midst of a refugee crisis, one that is complex and that remains poorly researched and under-theorized within both economics and political science. There is little understanding of the many diverse situations that led to it, and refugees are all too often included in the category of forced migrants.

OBJECTIVES: In the present study, we tested the functional/pharmacological significance of dimethyl fumarate (DMF) in streptozotocin-induced diabetic neuropathy (DN) in rats and high glucose-exposed Neuro2a (N2a) cells. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To evaluate the pharmacological effects of DMF on diabetic neuropathy, we assessed behavioral and functional parameters of peripheral neuropathy, oxidative stress markers, and target protein expression using immunohistochemistry/immunocytochemistry, and Western blotting in diabetic rats and hyperglycemic N2a cells. RESULTS: Diabetic rats exhibited hyperalgesia, allodynia, and compromised sensory and motor nerve conduction velocities in comparison to normal rats. Dorsal root ganglias of diabetic rats showed decreased antioxidant levels and increased pro-inflammatory transcription factors such as nuclear factor erythroid-related factor 2 and nuclear factor-kappa B, alongside reduced expression of the heat shock protein (HSP) 90. Administering DMF to diabetic rats for 2 weeks reversed these effects in a dose-dependent manner. We observed significant compromise in mitochondrial function, indicated by reduced mitochondrial membrane potential, increased free radical levels, and compromised mitochondrial complex activities in N2a cells exposed to elevated glucose levels. Conversely, DMF treatment restored mitochondrial function and augmented mitochondrial biogenesis through the upregulation of PGC-1α and improved chaperone activity by increasing the expression of HSP 60 and HSP 70. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, DMF alleviated neurobehavioral deficits in DN rats and enhanced mitochondrial function and chaperone activity under hyperglycemic conditions in both diabetic rats and N2a cells.

Propolis is a natural bee product that is widely used in folk medicine. This study aimed to evaluate the antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities of ethanolic extract of propolis (EEP) on methicillin-resistant and sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA and MSSA). Propolis samples were collected from six regions in Hungary. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) values and the interaction of EEP-antibiotics were evaluated by the broth microdilution and the chequerboard broth microdilution methods, respectively. The effect of EEP on biofilm formation and eradication was estimated by crystal violet assay. Resazurin/propidium iodide dyes were applied for simultaneous quantification of cellular metabolic activities and dead cells in mature biofilms. The EEP1 sample showed the highest phenolic and flavonoid contents. The EEP1 successfully prevented the growth of planktonic cells of S. aureus (MIC value = 50 µg/mL). Synergistic interactions were shown after the co-exposition to EEP1 and vancomycin at 108 CFU/mL. The EEP1 effectively inhibited the biofilm formation and caused significant degradation of mature biofilms (50–200 µg/mL), as a consequence of the considerable decrement of metabolic activity. The EEP acts effectively as an antimicrobial and antibiofilm agent on S. aureus. Moreover, the simultaneous application of EEP and vancomycin could enhance their effect against MRSA infection.

Locating potential zones of ground water reservoir is a challenging task particularly in dry areas, mountaneous region or lateritic zones. In the present century, Satellite Remote sensing could offer a fresh promise to identify surface and sub-surface water resources with less time and cost. The present study was carried out in the drought-prone red and lateritic zones (RLZs) of West Bengal, India, to identify groundwater potential zones. Multi-criteria approach based on remote sensing and geographic information system utilizing six parameters, namely hydrogeomorphology, slope, drainage density, lineaments density, land use/land cover and fractional impervious surface were used in this analysis. Weightages were assigned to the parameters using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) while different classes within each parameter were ranked according to their relative importance for groundwater potentiality. The study characterized different zones of groundwater prospects, viz. excellent (0.77%), good (35.20%), fair (61.80%), and poor (2.13%). During validation, 81% among the surveyed 180 dug wells of the area in the “good” potential zones were found to be perennial; while, ten among the ten dug wells surveyed in the ‘poor’ potential zone were found to be non-perennial in nature. The findings, thus, could establish that present methodology using AHP with enhanced parameterization has a better potential to identify and map the groundwater potential zones more realistically, and can be applied for drought risk reduction in wider RLZ zones.

Effective stiffness of reinforced concrete (RC) members has a very important role in the performance evaluation of RC frame buildings through nonlinear dynamic analyses. The beam effective stiffness can be readily computed using mechanics, but the evaluation of column stiffness is a complicated process and the use of support vector regression helps in this regard. Therefore, in this study, an attempt is made to predict the effective stiffness ratio of reinforced concrete columns using support vector regression (SVR) approach. A data set of 208 samples, which are collected through nonlinear dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete buildings using SAP2000 software, is utilized to develop the SVR model. The input parameters considered are reinforcement percentage, axial load and depth of the column section in both the perpendicular directions, and the output parameter is the effective stiffness ratio of columns. Three different kernel parameters are used, namely exponential radial basis function (ERBF), Gaussian radial basis function and polynomial function for SVR modelling, among which ERBF is found to be the most suitable one. The obtained results indicate that the statistical performance of the SVR-ERBF model is better than the models with other two kernels in predicting the effective stiffness ratio of reinforced concrete columns. Performance of the SVR model is compared with the results of multi-variable regression analysis. In addition to that, a sensitivity analysis is also performed to check the influence of each input parameter on output responses.

Presence of heavy metals in wastewater is a critical environmental issue, and efficient extraction of the metals remains a challenging task. In this study, the adsorption behavior of Ce(III), Hg(II), and Cu(II) metal ions using MCM-48 material modified with acid and base functional groups was examined. The modified materials were characterized using various techniques, including XRD, BET, FT-IR, NMR, and SEM, which revealed that the materials’ properties remained unchanged after modification. The adsorption capacity of the modified materials for metal ions was then evaluated and was found that the amine-modified MCM-48 material exhibited the highest adsorption efficiency. Precisely, the amine-modified material achieved an adsorption capacity of 97% for Ce(III), 98% for Hg(II), and 90% for Cu(II) after 180 min of adsorption. These results highlight the effectiveness of amine functionalization in enhancing the adsorption capacity of silica material for heavy metals.

In this work, our main focus is to establish asymptotic expansions for the triple gamma function in terms of the triple Bernoulli polynomials. As application, an asymptotic expansion for hyperfactorial function is also obtained. Furthermore, using these asymptotic expansions, Padé approximants related to the triple gamma function are derived as a consequence. The results obtained are new, and their importance is demonstrated by deducing several interesting remarks and corollaries.