Flow visualization using heat lines for unsteady radiative hydromagnetic Micropolar convection from a vertical slender hollow cylinder

The present study aims to investigate the thermal radiation heat transfer effect on unsteady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of micropolar fluid over a uniformly heated vertical hollow cylinder using Bejan’s heat function concept. The normalized conservation equations emerge as a system of time-dependent non-linear coupled partial differential equations. Under appropriate wall and free stream conditions these equations are solved with an efficient unconditionally stable implicit scheme of Crank-Nicolson type. Important thermo-physical parameters featured include the magnetic body force parameter (M), Grashof (free convection) parameter (Gr), Eringen micropolar material parameter (K), Prandtl number (Pr), conjugate heat transfer parameter (P) and radiative-conductive Rosseland parameter (N), are analyzed on the flow-field with ranges 0-3, 105-106, 0-1.2, 0.7-7.0, 0-0.5 and 0-15, respectively. The time-histories of average values of momentum and heat transport coefficients, as well as the steady-state flow variables are presented for selected values of these non-dimensional parameters. With elevation in magnetic parameter or radiation parameter, the time taken for the flow-field variables to attain the time-independent state increases. The dimensionless thermal radiative heat function values are closely correlated with the overall rate of heat transfer on the outer hot cylindrical wall. Bejan’s heat flow visualization implies that the thermal radiative heat function contours are compact in the neighbourhood of leading edge of the boundary layer on the outer hot cylindrical wall. Increasing radiation or magnetic parameter values result in an increase in the deviation of heat lines from the hot wall. Also, the heatlines are observed to depart slightly away from the hot wall with greater values of vortex viscosity. Furthermore, the deviations of flow variables from the hot wall for a micropolar fluid are significant compared to the Newtonian fluid (vanishing micropolar vortex viscosity)

Geospatial Modeling of Asthma Population in Relation to Air Pollution

Current observations indicate that asthma is growing every year in the United States, specific reasons for this are not well understood. This study stems from an ongoing research effort to investigate the spatio-temporal behavior of asthma and its relatedness to air pollution. The association between environmental variables such as air quality and asthma related health issues over Mississippi State are investigated using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and applications. Health data concerning asthma obtained from Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) for 9-year period of 2003-2011, and data of air pollutant concentrations (PM2.5) collected from USEPA web resources, and are analyzed geospatially to establish the impacts of air quality on human health specifically related to asthma. Disease mapping using geospatial techniques provides valuable insights into the spatial nature, variability, and association of asthma to air pollution. Asthma patient hospitalization data of Mississippi has been analyzed and mapped using quantitative Choropleth techniques in ArcGIS. Patients have been geocoded to their respective zip codes. Potential air pollutant sources of Interstate highways, Industries, and other land use data have been integrated in common geospatial platform to understand their adverse contribution on human health. Existing hospitals and emergency clinics are being injected into analysis to further understand their proximity and easy access to patient locations. At the current level of analysis and understanding, spatial distribution of Asthma is observed in the populations of Zip code regions in gulf coast, along the interstates of south, and in counties of Northeast Mississippi. It is also found that asthma is prevalent in most of the urban population. This GIS based project would be useful to make health risk assessment and provide information support to the administrators and decision makers for establishing satellite clinics in future

Using an A. pullulans metabolic reconstruction to determine gene targets for PMA production optimization

Poly(β-L-malic acid) (PMA) has broad prospects in industry due to its excellent water solubility, biodegradability, and biocompatibility. It has wide applications in the food, drug and biomedical industry as a novel biopolymeric material. Malic acid is a platform chemical that is normally produced in a racemic mixture of L and D isoforms. However, the D-form has concerns regarding human consumption. Due to this there is extensive interest in creating a bioprocess to produce PMA from renewable biomass. A potential candidate for this bioprocess is Aureobasidium pullulans, a black yeast with a large number of hydrolases capable of breaking down plant material. In the past Aureobasidium pullulans have had genome-scale computer models created in order to analyze PMA and poly-malic acid production. This previously created model will be updated and then tested for accuracy via comparing to other published data. The model will then determine the best gene knockout targets for PMA and poly-malic acid production. The model will be used to randomly knock out genes in-silico and observe PMA output.No embargoAcademic Major: Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineerin

Transient analysis of Casson fluid thermo-convection from a vertical cylinder embedded in a porous medium : entropy generation and thermal energy transfer visualization

Thermal transport in porous media has stimulated substantial interest in engineering sciences due to increasing applications in filtration systems, porous bearings, porous layer insulation, biomechanics, geomechanics etc. Motivated by such applications, in this article a numerical investigation of entropy generation effects on the heat and momentum transfer in unsteady laminar incompressible boundary layer flow of a Casson viscoplastic fluid over a uniformly heated vertical cylinder embedded in a porous medium is presented. Darcy’s law is employed to simulate bulk drag effects at low Reynolds number for an isotropic, homogenous porous medium. Heat line visualization is also included. The mathematical model is derived and normalized using appropriate transformation variables. The resulting time-dependent non-linear coupled partial differential conservation equations with associated boundary conditions are solved with an efficient unconditionally stable implicit finite difference Crank Nicolson scheme. The time histories of average values of momentum and heat transport coefficients, entropy generation and Bejan number, as well as the steady-state flow variables are computed for several values of non-dimensional parameters arising in the flow equations. The results indicate that entropy generation parameter and Bejan number are both elevated with increasing values of Casson fluid parameter, Darcy number, group parameter and Grashof number. To analyze the heat transfer process in a two-dimensional domain, plotting heat lines provides an excellent approach in addition to streamlines and isotherms. The dimensionless heat function values are shown to correlate closely with the overall rate of heat transfer. Bejan’s heat flow visualization implies that the heat function contours are compact in the neighbourhood of the leading edge of the boundary layer on the hot cylindrical wall. It is observed that as the Darcy number increases, the deviations of heat lines from the hot wall are reduced. Furthermore the deviations of flow variables from the hot wall for a Casson fluid are significant compared with those computed for a Newtonian fluid and this has important implications in industrial thermal materials processing operations

Southeast Air Quality: A Wildfire and Aerosol Transport Study Using Satellite Remote Sensing

https://louis.uah.edu/vbs-posters/1289/thumbnail.jp

Quantifying the Effect of Kerogen on Electrical Resistivity Measurements on Organic-rich Source Rocks

Interpretation of electrical resistivity logs in organic-rich source rocks has been challenging for petrophysicists. Conventional resistivity-porosity-saturation models (e.g., Archie’s, Dual-Water, and Waxman-Smits equations) assume that saline water is the only conductive part of the formation. However, this assumption is not reliable in organic-rich source rocks in the presence of highly mature organic matter, clay, and pyrite. Previous experimental studies indicate that aromaticity of kerogen increases with an increase in thermal maturity, which might lead to conductive behavior of kerogen. In this thesis, I investigated and quantified the effect of conductive kerogen on electrical resistivity of organic-rich source rocks. First, I investigated the reliability of conventional resistivity-porosity-saturation models in the assessment of fluid saturations in organic-rich source rocks using well logs and core measurements in the Haynesville shale-gas formation. Next, I numerically simulated electric field, electric currents, and electrical resistivity of pore-scale images of organic-rich source rocks. I quantified the effect of (a) volumetric concentration of kerogen, (b) kerogen conductivity, and (c) spatial connectivity of kerogen-water network on electrical resistivity of rocks using pore-scale numerical simulations. Well-log interpretation of the Haynesville shale-gas formation showed conventional resistivity-porosity-saturation models underestimate hydrocarbon saturation by 20% - 40% in the zones with high volumetric concentration of kerogen. In this thesis, I showed that the error in estimates of hydrocarbon saturation could be due to the impact of kerogen on electrical resistivity measurements. Pore-scale numerical simulations confirmed that conventional resistivity-porosity-saturation models could lead to 10% - 23% improvement in estimates of hydrocarbon saturation if the impact of conductive kerogen is taken into account. Results of this thesis act as the first step towards improving conventional resistivity-porosity-saturation models for estimation of fluid saturations in organic-rich source rocks

A new facile and efficient synthesis of 2-((5-aryl-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl) methoxy)-3-methyl quinoxaline and 3-methylquinoxalin-2-yl-2-(5-aryl-2H-tetrazol-2-yl)acetate derivatives

Newly synthesized compounds containing quinoxaline ring fused with tetrazoles and oxadiazoles show array of pharmacological activities, especially, anti-inflammatory, analgesic and anticonvulsant activities. The ability to serve as surrogates or bioisosteres for carboxylic acids, esters and carboxamides made them important moieties in drug designing. Considering the importance of quinoxalines, tetrazoles and 1,3,4-oxadiazoles to both medicinal and heterocyclic chemistry, the following 2-((5-aryl-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl)methoxy)-3-methyl quinoxaline and 3-methylquinoxalin-2-yl-2-(5-aryl-2H-tetrazol-2-yl)acetate derivatives are synthesized. The structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and Mass spectral data. All the synthesized derivatives were tested in vitro for their antibacterial activity

The combination of colistin and doripenem is synergistic against Klebsiella pneumoniae at multiple inocula and suppresses colistin resistance in an in vitro pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic model

There has been a resurgence of interest in aerosolization of antibiotics for treatment of patients with severe pneumonia caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens. A combination formulation of amikacin-fosfomycin is currently undergoing clinical testing although the exposure-response relationships of these drugs have not been fully characterized. The aim of this study was to describe the individual and combined antibacterial effects of simulated epithelial lining fluid exposures of aerosolized amikacin and fosfomycin against resistant clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MICs of 16 mg/liter and 64 mg/liter) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (MICs of 2 mg/liter and 64 mg/liter) using a dynamic hollow-fiber infection model over 7 days. Targeted peak concentrations of 300 mg/liter amikacin and/or 1,200 mg/liter fosfomycin as a 12-hourly dosing regimens were used. Quantitative cultures were performed to describe changes in concentrations of the total and resistant bacterial populations. The targeted starting inoculum was 10(8) CFU/ml for both strains. We observed that neither amikacin nor fosfomycin monotherapy was bactericidal against P. aeruginosa while both were associated with rapid amplification of resistant P. aeruginosa strains (about 10(8) to 10(9) CFU/ml within 24 to 48 h). For K. pneumoniae, amikacin but not fosfomycin was bactericidal. When both drugs were combined, a rapid killing was observed for P. aeruginosa and K. pneumoniae (6-log kill within 24 h). Furthermore, the combination of amikacin and fosfomycin effectively suppressed growth of resistant strains of P. aeruginosa and K. pneumoniae In conclusion, the combination of amikacin and fosfomycin was effective at maximizing bacterial killing and suppressing emergence of resistance against these clinical isolates

Image Encryption and Decryption Algorithm using XOR Operator

As the result of the rapid development of technology, information science has become much easier, and therefore the problem of information security is growing. This paper deals with the secretiveness of images, so image encryption is that the latest trend in information caching. The novelty of the work lies in generating crucial images for encryption. The crucial image is then created with the assistance of a secret alphanumeric key. Each alphanumeric key will have an 8bit value generated by the binary key table. The challenge is to return up with an image encryption algorithm that is simple yet safe, with featherweight computer processing. This encryption algorithm which mixes Playfair cipher and therefore the Vigenere cipher gives better results. An experiment showed a correlation between the precipitation of the image after encryption and its decline. Supported the standard of quality of encryption, the speed of change of image pixels was high enough for the cipher image to be difficult to spot. The image is meant to be more distorted in this fashion. The deciphered image is obtained by applying the backward process.XOR technique is used in the present paper, for security analysis using XOR technique is an effective method of scrambling, in visual component which may be used as an important visual cryptography. For secure transmission of an image XOR cipher is a best technique