Activities of Hydrolases and Oxidases as Influenced by the Application of Monocrotophos in Sandy Loam Soil of Rajasthan

Continuous and repeated use of pesticides affects soil microbial flora and fauna and hence indirectly affects the activity of diverse microbial enzymes present within it. The present study investigates the interaction effect of different concentrations of monocrotophos on diverse hydrolases and oxidases, viz., protease, alkaline phosphatase, acid phosphatase, cellulase, amylase, invertase, arginine deaminase, and dehydrogenase, present in sandy loam soil of Rajasthan under in vitro conditions for 30 days. Soil sample was inoculated with three different concentrations of monocrotophos, viz., 50, 100, and 150 μg kg^-1, and incubated in dark at room temperature. At regular interval of 5 days, sample was withdrawn and enzyme activity was calculated and compared with that of control. Application of various concentrations of monocrotophos enhanced the activity of diverse enzymes present in soil. Therefore, the study revealed synergistic or additive effect of monocrotophos on all the tested microbial enzyme entities. Increasing concentration of the pesticide, however, poses an antagonistic interaction on the increment of different enzymes activities. Therefore, it can be concluded from the study that monocrotophos impose a positive effect at low concentration of pesticide, whereas high concentration poses negative effect on the activity of different enzymes present in soil.     

Non‐dominated sorting particle swarm optimization (NSPSO) and network security policy enforcement for Policy Space Analysis

Network operators depend on security services with the aim of safeguarding their IT infrastructure. Various types of network security policies are employed on a global scale and are disseminated among several security middleboxes implemented in networks. But, owing to the complications in security policies, it is not quite efficient to directly use the path‐wise enforcement schemes that are prevalent. The major motivation of this work is to improve security levels and solve the policy enforcement problem. For the first time, this work reports the issue of policy enforcement on middleboxes. The major contribution of this work is to design security policy enforcement as a Weighted K Set Covering Problem, and we designed a Policy Space Analysis (PSA) tool intended for a group of operations in the security policy. This PSA tool was developed based on range‐signified hyper‐rectangles, which are indexed by the Hilbert R‐tree. Leveraging the PSA, we first investigated the topological features of various kinds of policies. Balancing the PSA tool in a non‐dominated sorting particle swarm optimization technique exposes the intrinsic difficulties of this security strategy and provides guidance for designing the enforcement approach. In addition, in this research, a new fuzzy rule‐based classification system is introduced for packet classification. A scope‐wise policy enforcement algorithm was proposed, which chooses a moderate number of enforcement network nodes for deploying multiple policy subsets in a greedy manner. This scheme is much quicker compared with the first one and therefore has found its application in real‐time deployments.     

Estimation of plutonium present in 200 litre waste drums containing high amount of beta gamma activity

The segmented gamma ray scanning system developed for the assay of plutonium present in 200?L waste drums was modified for the estimation of gram amounts of plutonium in the presence of high beta gamma activity. A multi gamma ray source of ¹⁵²Eu having?~1?mCi activity was used for the determination of attenuation correction factors for high count rate drums. Dead time corrections were applied to arrive at the corrected count rates for all the gamma rays. Present study has shown that the estimation of?~1?g of ²³⁹Pu in a waste drum can be carried out in the presence of ¹³⁷Cs up to an activity level of 20?mCi.     

Molecular forces and elastic constants of polyethylene single crystals

Polyethylene has an orthorhombic lattice for which nine elastic constants exist; they are obtained in terms of the intra- and intermolecular forces. Constants involved in the 6-12 Lennard-Jones potential approximating the London dispersion type of van der Waals' forces are obtained by computing the crystal potential energy and comparing it with the cohesive energy. First and second nearest-neighbor interactions are considered to establish relationship between the elastic constants and the interaction constants. The latter are obtained in terms of the C—C bond, stretching, bending, and repulsive force constants and the L-J potential constants. A limited type of central force assumption is applied. Values of Young and shear moduli are obtained along the three axes. The value along the chain compares with the experimentally determined and calculated values for oriented polyethylene. Young's modulus along the lateral direction is of the order of Young's modulus of bulk polyethylene, showing that intermo-lecular forces are the ones that determine the Young modulus of bulk polyethylene.     

A thermo-mechanically-coupled theory accounting for hydrogen diffusion and large elastic–viscoplastic deformations of metals

In this paper we develop a thermodynamically-consistent coupled-theory which accounts for diffusion of hydrogen, diffusion of heat, and large elastic–viscoplastic deformations of metals. The theory should be of utility in the analysis of hydrogen diffusion in elastic–plastically-deforming solids, an analysis which is an essential prerequisite for theoretical and numerical efforts aimed at modeling the integrity of structural components used for hydrogen gas storage and distribution.     

Stereoselective and facile total synthesis of (+)-goniodiol,a styryllactone from carbohydrates

The stereoselective synthesis of (+)-goniodiol, a cytotoxic styryllactone, has been accomplished in 10 steps starting from inexpensive and readily available d-manitol and δ-gluconolactone involving the direct and straightforward reaction conditions of Grignard addition, chain elongation, and hydroboration, thus making the synthesis simple and convenient.     

First structural characterization of core modified 10,15-meso aryl azuliporphyrins: observation of C-H...pi interaction between pyrrole beta-CH and mesityl ring

First successful syntheses and structural characterization of new core modified meso aryl azuliporphyrins by a simple [3 + 1] methodology are reported.