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Graphene Nanotechnology for Renewable Energy Systems
The high degree of mechanical, electrical, and thermal conductivity of graphene enables its application in the renewable energy sector. Graphene plays a vital role in diodes, photovoltaic cells, supercapacitors, batteries, and full cells applications and it enhances the existing efficiency in a tremendous way. The addition of graphene can do tremendous effects on all kinds of inorganic and organic materials for solar cells. In the supercapacitor domain, graphene plays a vital role to provide a large surface which can be useful for energy storage applications. The hybrid supercapacitor and battery trends in research and technology have been discussed. The electrical vehicles and green applications need and accomplishments of graphene and its derivatives have also been described. 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. -
Nutraceuticals to prevent and manage cardiovascular diseases
Unhealthy lifestyle and diet are the key risk factors to cardiovascular diseases. A healthy cardiac and vascular system can prevent cardiovascular-related diseases like hypertension, atherosclerosis, and heart stroke. Identifying pharmacologically important metabolites had paved the way to contemporary medicine. People are more attracted to them as they are majorly plant-based metabolites such as polysaccharides, polyphenols, polysterols, and vitamins as cardio-protectors. Preclinical, clinical, and animal studies provide substantial data confirming nutraceuticals as a promising therapeutic agent in curing cardiovascular diseases. This chapter summarizes on major bioactive molecules as nutraceuticals with preclinical and clinical studies, emphasising their cardiovascular protective roles. 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -
Bacteriocins as Biotechnological Tools in Food and Pharmaceuticals: Applications and Future Prospects
The World Health Organization (WHO) and FAO have defined probiotics as non- pathogenic living organisms that greatly benefit host cells and have several positive outcomes at the level of gut. The intake of probiotics at an adequate amount confers good health and many times is used for several treatments (Hill et al. 2014; Gibson et al. 2017). Not only the microorganisms as a whole, but the proteins or peptides secreted by these species have tremendous applications in food spoilage, pharmaceuticals, antibiotic development, and much more. Thus, antimicrobial peptides from bacteria have drawn more attention for their wide range of applications. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Arti Gupta and Ram Prasad; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Advances in the use of ceramic catalysts in fine chemical synthesis
Ceramics are versatile materials that have been put to many different uses. Catalysis is one such area where they have been used, both as catalyst and as a robust support material for catalysts. Properties like porosity and thermal and mechanical stability make ceramics attractive in these applications. Oxidation, esterification, hydrogenation, reduction, condensation reaction, and FriedelCrafts reaction are important reactions, which have uses spanning a wide range of applications, most notably in energy and environment. This chapter gives the recent advancements in ceramic materials used in the synthetic applications of the abovementioned reactions. The type and class of the ceramic material used and its role have been mentioned for these reactions. 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. -
Sustainable Biodegradable and Bio-based Materials
The quest for sustainable biodegradable and bio-based materials is ever increasing due to their versatile properties and also their ability to serve as potential alternatives to their synthetic counterparts. The major types of bio-based materials of commercial importance can be derived majorly from plant, animal, and microbial sources through physical, chemical, or biological extraction methods. Despite their potential applications, biocompatibility, and biodegradability, these bio-based polymers still face hurdles in competing with conventional plastics. The major factors contributing to this involve the production and extraction cost. In recent years, the integration of waste valorization with biopolymer production and the development of eco-friendly green extraction protocols with minimum usage of chemicals were visualized as efficient strategies for the sustainable production of biopolymers. This study summarizes the important biodegradable and bio-based materials of commercial importance along with their production methods and application in diverse sectors. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Ajay, Parveen, Sharif Ahmad, Jyotsna Sharma, Victor Gambhir. -
Adoption of blockchain technology in the real estate sector toward the improvement of smart cities
The rapid urbanization of global population causes many social, economic, and environmental issues, which does significantly influence the quality of life and living conditions of the people over the past years. The idea of smart city has grown popular, and it brings the opportunity to solve these urban issues. The motives of smart cities are to create the best use of public resources, enhance the quality life of people, and provide high quality services. Also, smart cities benefit from innovative applications of new kinds of information and communication technology to support communal sharing. Blockchain technology (BT) is more helpful to promote the development of smart cities through the implementation of BT in all the sectors. Blockchain-based smart contracts are disrupting the smart real estate sector of the smart cities. With this background, the study aims to explore the adoption of green BT in real estate sector toward the implementation of smart cities. 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -
A Glimpse into the Future: AI, Digital Humans, and the Metaverse Opportunities and Challenges for Life Sciences in Immersive Ecologies
The Metaverse is poised to have a significant impact in life sciences, especially in the healthcare sector. In the near future, genomic data along with AI and extended reality may be used to enhance digital humans to create digital twins to be used for virtual world interactions, or manipulated to obtain insights for real-world healthcare decision-making. In addition, extended reality may enable more robust population-based research and faster drug discovery, and permit the creation of virtual spaces and immersive environments for patients and physicians alike. In this chapter, we examine aspects of extended reality and AI that will play important roles in various areas of life sciences and discuss the future of life sciences in the Metaverse. 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. -
Optical Properties of Magnetic Quantum Dots
The delta-like dispersion of the density of states (DoS) enable quantum dots (QD) to display optical and electronic properties comparable with those of real atoms. The discrete electronic structure of QDs akin to that of atoms is formed due to the effect of quantum confinement (QCE). In the case of magnetic quantum dots (MQD), the QDs are incorporated with magnetic impurities such as Mn atom, rare earth elements etc., by which the QDs undergo significant changes in optical and electronic properties by lifting their degeneracies (Zeeman effect). The combination of fluorescent and magnetic entities opens up opportunities for synthesizing two-in-one nanocomposites beneficial for multi-functional, multi-targeting, and multi-theranostic tools. Optical properties of QDs consisting of magnetic impurities, such as the absorption coefficient, oscillator strength, and refractive index are discussed in this chapter. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Amin Reza Rajabzadeh, Seshasai Srinivasan, Poushali Das, and Sayan Ganguly. -
Microbial Enzymes for Synthesis of Chiral Drug Intermediates
Microbes or microbial enzymes can catalyze the synthesis of bioorganic compounds, and this process is defined as biocatalysis. Biocatalysis has become an essential technique in organic biotransformation, typically applied in chemical industries. Biocatalysts generally show high activity and excellent enantio, stereo, regio, and chemo-selectivity. They offer practical and cost-effective ways to synthesize semi-synthetic analogues and novel drug molecules. Many bacteria and fungi-derived enzymes could catalyze highly specific hydroxylations of various substrates that are highly complex to synthesize by chemical methods. This chapter details and discusses different biocatalytic microbial platforms that permit to produce the chiral drug intermediates. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Ranjna Sirohi, Amit Kumar Rai, Luciana Porto de Souza Vandenberghe, and Binod Parameswaran; individual chapters, the contributors -
Risks and ethics of nanotechnology: an overview
Environmental nanotechnology is thought to be important to current environmental engineering and scientific techniques. The biomedical, textile, aerospace, manufacturing, cosmetics, oil, defense, agricultural, and electronics industries can all benefit from the use of nanotechnology to enhance a wide range of material properties, including physical, chemical, and biological properties. However, nanotechnology-based products or nanomaterials (e.g., nanofibers, nanowires, nanocomposites, and nanofilms) may be harmful to human health. Since nanomaterials are usually manufactured using novel manufacturing techniques and have a variety of sizes, shapes, and surface energies, there can also be uncertainties in their manufacture and handling. This chapter provides a detailed account of ethical issues related to nanotechnology, particularly environmental toxicity, risk management, health risk evolution, and environmental significance of nanomaterials. In addition, environmental challenges, toxic effect of nanoparticles on the environment, ethics of nanotechnology, and social, ecological, biological, and other legal issues are highlighted. The potential of nanomaterials in environmental remediation and their use in environmental protection is also emphasized. 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -
The Truncated Modified Lindley Generated Family of Distributions
In this paper, two contributions to the modified Lindley distribution are provided. First, we bend the truncation scheme to this model to introduce a new distribution on the interval (0, 1). Theory and practice are provided. In particular, we show that it can be an interesting alternative to the analogous truncated exponential and Lindley distributions. Then, we employ this truncated distribution to develop a new generalized family of distributions. We examine its main theoretical properties, and show how it can be applied quite efficiently to analyse various data sets. 2023 Mir Masoom Ali, Irfan Ali, Haitham M. Yousof and Mohamed Ibrahim. -
Microbial Synthesis of Alkaloids and Applications in Healthcare
Plant alkaloids are a large group of natural compounds with wide-ranging bioactive characteristics, but the number of alkaloids obtained from the plant is low. Mass extraction of these bioactive alkaloids is affected by the trouble in large-scale propagation of these plants and absence of efficient strategies for extraction. However, production by chemical reactions is a substitute method; it is less effective due to its highly complex structure. The extensive study of alkaloid biosynthesis in plants and the advancement of genetic and metabolic engineering techniques enabled the opportunity to synthesise alkaloids through microbial hosts via metabolic engineering and bioprocess optimisations. In this chapter, we discuss the various gene-manipulation strategies to produce alkaloids in various microbial hosts and their application in the healthcare industry. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Ranjna Sirohi, Amit Kumar Rai, Luciana Porto de Souza Vandenberghe, and Binod Parameswaran; individual chapters, the contributors -
Detection of Alzheimers Disease Stages Based on Deep Learning Architectures from MRI Images
Acquiring, utilizing and storing information of any sort is known as memory. The power of memory makes the life of mankind to be more alive and reasonable. Thus, the loss of one such great capability is a rather painful phase of human life which can be destructed by multiple reasons such as diseases and disorders. One such disease is Alzheimers disease (AD). Alzheimers disease progressively damages brain cells and degrades mental activity that leads to mental illness. The accurate diagnosis of AD at earlier stages will help to prevent the disease before the brain gets damaged completely. In analyzing neurodegenerative disorders, neuroimaging plays an important role in diagnosing subjects with AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and cognitively normal (CN). In this study, advanced deep learning (DL) architectures with brain imaging techniques were employed to maximize the diagnostic accuracy of the model developed. The proposed method works with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to analyze the MRI input-output modalities. The method is evaluated using Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset. Binary classification is done on AD and MCI subjects from CN. This method is efficient to analyze multiple classes with a less amount of training data. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Jyotismita Chaki; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Plant- based Metabolites as Source of Antimicrobial Therapeutics: Prospects and Challenges
Plants are used as traditional medicines from ancient times to today as they are the largest living storehouses of bio- chemicals and pharmaceuticals known on Earth (Abdallah, 2011). The World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) database reported in April 2021 that there are 1,383,297 plant names with 996,093 plants identified at species level, constituting 342,953 accepted vascular plant species (Govaerts et al., 2021). Around 10% of the reported vascular plants are used as medicines (Salmer- Manzano et al., 2020). According to the MPNS, 33,443 species are recorded as being used for medicinal purpose (MNPS, 2021). Medicinal plants are those that have therapeutic properties which can pose pharmacological effect on the human or animal body (Namdeo, 2018). About 80% of the world's population depends on plant- based medicine for treatment of diseases (Okoye et al., 2014). The medicinal property of a plant is attributed to rich and diverse secondary metabolites (Allemailem, 2021). Secondary metabolites are intermediates or products of primary metabolism that are not involves directly in the growth and development of the plant (Jain et al., 2019). Plants generate secondary metabolites in response to stresses posed by biotic factors (bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites, pests, weeds, and herbivore animals) and abiotic environmental factors (temperature, salinity, drought, UV radiation etc.) so as to adapt and survive in response to environmental stimuli during their life time (Yang et al., 2018). 2023 selection and editorial matter, Arti Gupta and Ram Prasad; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Blockchain technology toward green internet of thingsan exploratory survey
Over the past couple of decades, there has been a spike in industrial activity across the entire world, which has led to an increase in the utilization of fossil fuels. During the same era, technological innovations have triggered an increase in both climate change and carbon legacies. The use of energy by the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in a fresh dilemma, which has oriented our priority toward the design of an IoT ecosystem that is more ecological and sustainable. Institutions of higher learning and business corporations have shown interest in the green IoT because it facilitates improved energy-efficient delivery of services and simplifies the process to generate and make consumable use of renewable energy. Blockchain technology is gaining interest from energy producers, entrepreneurial ventures, investment firms, legislatures, and scientists since it is incredibly flexible, safe, and secure. This chapter focuses on the significance of blockchain technology in the green IoT community, highlights the critical considerations that need to be taken into account, and explores how blockchain technology renders the IoT ecosphere healthier and greener. In addition to this, it places an emphasis on the inherent necessity of establishing a long-term IoT infrastructure that takes utilization of the appropriate blockchain technology to another level altogether. 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -
Review of Medical Drones in Healthcare Applications
Drone technology has an immense potential to provide various efficient solutions in the healthcare sector. It has been used in different applications ranging from transportation to rescue. The recent benefits of drone technology to assist emergency situations have achieved academic attention, which results in extensive practical implementation and simulation. However, it still needs to come into a reality beyond a certain extent. The involvement of drones in the healthcare industry has grown to be smart and intelligent for providing better medical care, fast transport and delivery of medicines, and search and rescue operations. The most important reason behind the evolution of drones is the replacement of human service, which is required during the global health crisis. Recent technology such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and the 5G network joined hands with drone technology, resulting in a great benefit to the healthcare industry. Drones are needed to battle the coronoavirus by delivering medicines and test samples. It is also involved in remote pandemic management in the form of helping the authorities to monitor social gatherings, by broadcasting the awareness messages and nearby hospitals details, for spraying virus protection liquid on the street, and many more. Therefore, this chapter proposes the intricacies of the Internet of medical drones in the healthcare sector, in hopes of empowering and eliciting more aggressive investigation. 2023 selection and editorial matter, Saravanan Krishnan and M. Murugappan; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Synthesis and catalytic applications of metal boride ceramics
Metal borides belong to the class of high-temperature ceramics and have conventionally been used for high-temperature applications. However, in the past few decades, new variants of metal borides have emerged, with high catalytic capabilities. Owing to their tuneable structural, compositional, and morphological properties, metal borides have huge potential for industrially relevant catalytic applications. This chapter compiles the existing knowledge on the ever-expanding family of metal borides. Various synthesis strategies that are commonly adopted for the fabrication of metal borides, both in crystalline and amorphous/nanocrystalline forms, are discussed in detail. The chapter also aims to explain the origin of catalysis in metal borides. Some of the most prominent catalytic applications of metal borides are vividly discussed in this chapter. At the end of this chapter, a brief outlook is provided for future research initiatives with metal borides. 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. -
A Review of Deep Learning Methods in Automatic Facial Micro-expression Recognition
Facial expression analysis to understand human emotion is the base for affective computing. Until the last decade, researchers mainly used facial macro-expressions for classification and detection problems. Micro-expressions are the tiny muscle moments in the face that occur as responses to feelings and emotions. They often reveal true emotions that a person attempts to suppress, hide, mask, or conceal. These expressions reflect a persons real emotional state. They can be used to achieve a range of goals, including public protection, criminal interrogation, clinical assessment, and diagnosis. It is still relatively new to utilize computer vision to assess facial micro-expressions in video sequences. Accurate machine analysis of facial micro-expression is now conceivable due to rapid progress in computational methodologies and video acquisition methods, as opposed to a decade ago when this had been a realm of therapists and assessment seemed to be manual. Even though the research of facial micro-expressions has become a longstanding topic in psychology, this is still a comparatively recent computational science with substantial obstacles. This paper a provides a comprehensive review of current databases and various deep learning methodologies to analyze micro-expressions. The automation of these procedures is broken down into individual steps, which are documented and debated. 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. -
Denial of Service Attacks in the Internet of Things
A DoS attack is the most severe attack on IoT and creates a crucial challenge for the detection and mitigation of such attacks. A DoS attack occurs at multiple layers of the IoT protocol stack and exploiting the protocol vulnerabilities disrupts communication. Traditional mechanisms employ single-layer detection of DoS attacks, which individually detect and mitigate attacks. However, it is essential to establish a general framework for detecting DoS attacks in a real-time environment and coping with diversified applications. This can be achieved by fetching attack features of multiple layers to create a pool of numerous attacks and then designing a system that detects the attack when fed with specific attack features. This chapter comprehensively analyzes the research gap in the DoS attack detection techniques proposed. Secondly, we offer a two-stage framework for DoS attack detection, comprising Fuzzy Rule Manager and Neural Network (NN), to detect cross-layer DoS attacks in real time. The Input Data Type (IDT) is derived using a fuzzy rule manager that can identify the type of input dataset as usual or attack in real time. This IDT is passed to the NN along with the real-time dataset to increase detection accuracy and decrease false alarms. 2024 selection and editorial matter, Vinay Chowdary, Abhinav Sharma, Naveen Kumar and Vivek Kaundal; individual chapters, the contributors. -
Introduction
[No abstract available]