Inorganic oxide core, polymer shell nanocomposite as a high K gate dielectric for flexible electronics applications

Organic/inorganic core shell nanoparticles have been synthesized using high K TiO(2) as the core nanoparticle, and polystyrene as the shell. This material is easy to process and forms transparent continuous thin films, which exhibit a dielectric constant enhancement of over 3 times that of bulk polystyrene. This new dielectric material has been incorporated into capacitors and thin film transistors (TFTs). Mobilities approaching 0.2 cm(2)/V.s have been measured for pentacene TFTs incorporating the new TiO(2) polystyrene nanostructured gate dielectric, indicating good surface properties for pentacene film growth. This novel strategy for generating high K flexible gate dielectrics will be of value in improving organic and flexible electronic device performance.     

Extraction spectrophotometric determination of cobalt and nickel using ethylthioxanthate

A spectrophotometric method for the determination of cobalt and nickel using a new reagent sodium ethylthioxanthate has been described. The yellow-colored cobalt complex and red-colored nickel complex have been extracted quantitatively using carbon tetrachloride in the pH ranges 4.0–11 and 4.0–6.7, respectively. The colors of these complexes are stable and absorbances have been measured at 389 nm for cobalt and 495 nm for the nickel complexes. Few ions interfere but the method has been applied successfully for the determination of these metal ions in various complex materials.     

A simulation as a service cloud middleware

Many seemingly simple questions that individual users face in their daily lives may actually require substantial number of computing resources to identify the right answers. For example, a user may want to determine the right thermostat settings for different rooms of a house based on a tolerance range such that the energy consumption and costs can be maximally reduced while still offering comfortable temperatures in the house. Such answers can be determined through simulations. However, some simulation models as in this example are stochastic, which require the execution of a large number of simulation tasks and aggregation of results to ascertain if the outcomes lie within specified confidence intervals. Some other simulation models, such as the study of traffic conditions using simulations may need multiple instances to be executed for a number of different parameters. Cloud computing has opened up new avenues for individuals and organizations with limited resources to obtain answers to problems that hitherto required expensive and computationally-intensive resources. This paper presents SIMaaS, which is a cloud-based Simulation-as-a-Service to address these challenges. We demonstrate how lightweight solutions using Linux containers (e.g., Docker) are better suited to support such services instead of heavyweight hypervisor-based solutions, which are shown to incur substantial overhead in provisioning virtual machines on-demand. Empirical results validating our claims are presented in the context of two case studies.     

Multispectroscopic DNA interaction and Docking studies

Two new water soluble oxovanadium(IV) complexes with formulae Na[VO(his)(met)SO₄] (1) and Na[VO(gly)(met)SO₄] (2), (gly=glycine his=histidine, and met=metformin) were synthesized and characterized by LCMS, UV‐Visible absorption, infrared spectra, magnetic moment, elemental analysis, thermal analysis and electronic spectral studies. The metal center was found in an octahedral geometry. DNA binding interaction of these complexes with CT DNA has been explored by UV‐Visible absorption, fluorescence, viscosity measurements and cleavage studies. Finally the binding of the complexes with CT‐DNA could be surface binding, mainly in the groove binding. The complexes were docked in to B‐DNA sequence, 5’(D*AP*CP*CP*GP*AP*CP*GP*TP*CP*GP*GP*T)‐3’ retrieved from protein data bank (PDB ID: 423D), using Discovery Studio 2.1 software.     

PVT properties of PUREX/UREX solvent tri-n-butyl phosphate

Tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP) is the workhorse of solvent extraction operations in nuclear fuel cycle as well as an important industrial chemical. Its PVT properties are not available in literature. In this study, PVT properties of TBP, estimated using group contribution method, are reported. Wagner constants were also reported in the range of 273.15?K to critical temperature.     

Speciation of 30 % tri-n-butyl phosphate solvent during extraction of nitric acid

Several solutions of 30 % TBP/n-dodecane were equilibrated with different concentrations of aqueous nitric acid solutions at 298.15 K at a phase ratio of unity. The resultant equilibrated aqueous and organic solutions were analyzed for acidity. A three-solvate model with molecular HNO₃ based mechanism was assumed for nitric acid extraction by TBP. With nonlinear chemometric methods, the coefficients were evaluated. With the set of optimized coefficients, derived on the basis of experiments reported in this work, the estimated solvate species and free-TBP species in the TBP containing organic phase were found to be in good agreement with the reported concentrations in the literature.     

Structural interaction leading to volumetric changes in aqueous solutions of nitrates of rubidium,cesium, strontium,yttrium, and gallium at different temperatures

Densities of the aqueous dilute solutions of rubidium, cesium, strontium, yttrium, and gallium nitrate were measured at different temperatures ranging from (293.15–343.15) K and atmospheric pressure. From these density values, the apparent molal volumes were calculated and fitted to Masson’s correlation and the temperature dependence was correlated by a second order polynomial. The apparent molal volumes at infinite dilution and experimental slopes have been interpreted in terms of ion–solvent and ion–ion interactions, respectively. The measurements include density as per ASTM D-4052, refractive index (nD²⁵) at sodium D line at 25 °C. Thermal isobaric expansibility was calculated and structure making and structure breaking behaviour of electrolytes were inferred from the sign of the second derivative of apparent molal volumes with respect to temperature at constant pressure. The experimental apparent molal volume was compared with the available literature value.