With increasing volumes of household waste and diminishing landfill resources, recovering energy from waste is increasingly attractive. Waste-to-energy technologies (WtE-T) are optimistic techniques, especially for developing countries, to turn waste into a functional form of energy. According to the statistics, the amount of oil equivalent (eq) that can be obtained from biomass derived from WtE reached 92 million metric tons in the year 2020. The peak year for WtE capacity was 2021, when it reached 5000 MW; a projection for the WtE market in the EU is expected to be 2023, when it will reach $8.25 billion USD. Germany is the leading producer of biomass in the European Union (EU), with production volumes reaching up to 12.8 million metric tons of oil equivalent in the same year. France is the country that comes in second place (9 million metric tons). Germany had the highest amount of hazardous and nonhazardous waste that was treated in WtE facilities (over 45 million metric tons), and it is estimated that Germany's projected gross electricity generation from biomass waste will be almost 75,000 gigawatt hours by the year 2050 while reduced greenhouse gas emission is also the significant benefit. Nearly 750 million metric tons of biomass are available in India in a year. It estimated surplus biomass availability at about 230 million metric tons per annum covering agricultural residues corresponding to a potential of about 28 GW. The pursuit of sustainability goals is a feat shared by many researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders because it is considered essential to improving the quality of human life while respecting the surrounding environment. The initiative coming from the European Union (EU) is to prioritize and encourage the use of separate collection structures that are equipped with sufficient recycling capacities (i.e., from anaerobic digestion). Even though the management of WtE waste is still a contentious issue, the essence of this debate shifts when viewed from the perspective of renewable energy. It has become possible for member states to meet their national renewable energy targets through the use of the WtE industry as a result of the organic portion of MSW being defined as a potential source of energy.
This chapter gives a detailed presentation of the theoretical background and computational approaches to the utility of alignment-free sequence descriptors and multidimensional variable reduction methods in the characterization and visualization of biological sequence data. The utility of such novel methods developed by the authors of this chapter is shown using data on case studies of severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Coronavirus disease-2019, and Zika viruses.
Herein, we have demonstrated and compared bimodal strategies towards augmenting the antimicrobial activity of graphene oxide (GO). Among the two modifications viz. through alteration of GO surface functionalities and secondly through surface modification of GO with an ampicillin-based antibacterial ionic liquid (IL), the IL modification was most effective in enhancing the bactericidal effect. pH and the zeta potential values of the nanodispersions support the alteration of surface functionalities of GO by variation in reaction conditions and SEM, XRD, Raman spectra establish the resulting sheet thickness, morphology, stacking and planarity. The surface modification of GO with trihexyltetradecyl phosphonium ampicillin ([TTP][Amp]) IL as indicated by FTIR, SEM, pH and zeta potential measurements imply in nearly five times lower MBC value compared to average MBC value of the four GO variants. Hence, judicious IL modification can be an effective approach towards augmenting antibacterial property of GO for enduring antifouling coatings and membranes.
Background: The fact that homoeopathic medicines act even at very high dilutions has created a confusion amongst scientists. This led to different models such as formation of nanoparticles and memory of water. The basic question 'what is responsible for physiological activity of homoeopathic medicines' is yet to be answered conclusively. Objective: The objective of this overview was to find out if formation of nanoparticles or creation of quantum domain in the medium is responsible for the physiological activity of homoeopathic medicines. Methods: This overview is based on the experiments done between 2004 and 2019. Results: The succussion of the medicine has the following effects: i. At high potency, due to the mechanical energy transferred to the system, the size of the substrate reduces to nanodimension increasing membrane permeability. Furthermore, they affect several electrical properties of an electroactive polymer and enhance thermovoltage generation. ii. In the presence of an ambient electromagnetic field, domains composed of the vehicular polar molecules are formed, which bear the signature of the dissolved solute. The domains are sources of quasi-free electrons which are manifested in voltage generation separating two different polar media. The structured water also explains the ultraviolet–visible (UV-Vis) spectra. Conclusion: In high potency, formation of nanoparticles explains the effect of homoeopathic medicines on properties such as permeability, electrical properties of polymers and thermovoltage generation, whereas formation of domains in the vehicle medium explains properties such as voltage generation separating two different polar media and UV-Vis spectra.
The design for vaccines using in silico analysis of genomic data of different viruses has taken many different paths, but lack of any precise computational approach has constrained them to alignment methods and some alignment-free techniques. In this work, a precise computational approach has been established wherein two new mathematical parameters have been suggested to identify the highly conserved and surface-exposed regions which are spread over a large region of the surface protein of the virus so that one can determine possible peptide vaccine candidates from those regions. The first parameter, w, is the sum of the normalized values of the measure of surface accessibility and the normalized measure of conservativeness, and the second parameter is the area of a triangle formed by a mathematical model named 2D Polygon Representation. This method has been, therefore, used to determine possible vaccine targets against SARS-CoV-2 by considering its surface-situated spike glycoprotein. The results of this model have been verified by a parallel analysis using the older approach of manually estimating the graphs describing the variation of conservativeness and surface-exposure across the protein sequence. Furthermore, the working of the method has been tested by applying it to find out peptide vaccine candidates for Zika and Hendra viruses respectively. A satisfactory consistency of the model results with pre-established results for both the test cases shows that this in silico alignment-free analysis proposed by the model is suitable not only to determine vaccine targets against SARS-CoV-2 but also ready to extend against other viruses.
