Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

The wide applicability of acoustics in the life of mankind spread over health, energy, environment and others. These acoustic technologies rely on the properties of the materials with which they are made of. However, traditional devices have failed to develop into low-cost, portable devices and need to overcome issues like sensitivity, tunability and applicability in biological in vivo studies. Nanomaterials, especially 2D materials, have already been proven to produce high optical contrast in photoacoustic applications. One such wonder kid in the materials family is MXenes, which are transition metal carbides, that are nowadays flourishing in the materials world. Recently, it has been demonstrated that MXene nanosheets and quantum dots can be synthesized by acoustic excitations. In addition, MXene can be used as a mechanical sensing material for building piezoresistive sensors to realize sound detection as it produces a sensitive response to pressure and vibration. It has also been demonstrated that MXene nanosheets show high photothermal conversion capability, which can be utilized in cancer treatment and photoacoustic imaging (PAI). In this review, we have rendered the role of acoustics in the palette of MXene, including acoustic synthetic strategies of MXenes, applications such as acoustic sensors, PAI, thermoacoustic devices, sonodynamic therapy, artificial ear drum and others. The review also discusses the challenges and future prospects of using MXene in acoustic platforms in detail. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review combining acoustic science in MXene research. © 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

World University root node

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Nanoscale

Acoustic platforms meet MXenes - a new paradigm shift in the palette of biomedical applications

In the present study, carbon cloth (CC) was functionalized using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and employed as an excellent bioanode for improving defluoridation efficiency, wastewater treatment and power output from a microbial desalination cell (MDC). The Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis of DMSO modified carbon cloth (CCDMSO) confirmed the functionalization of CCDMSO and the water drop contact angle of 0° ensured its superior hydrophilicity. The presence of –COOH (carboxyl), S[dbnd]O (sulfoxide) and O–C[dbnd]O (carbonyl) functional groups on CCDMSO aids in enhancing the performance of the MDC. Besides, cyclic voltametric and electrochemical impedance analysis revealed that CCDMSO had an excellent electrochemical performance with low charge transfer resistance. Replacing CC with CCDMSO as anode in MDC, the time required for 3,10 and 20 mg/L of initial fluoride (F−) concentrations in the middle chamber was reduced from 24 ± 0.75 to 17 ± 0.37, 72 ± 1 to 48 ± 0.70 and 120 ± 0.5 to 96 ± 0.53 h, respectively to meet the prescribed standards (1.5 mg/L). Furthermore, using CCDMSO, the anode chamber of MDC exhibited a maximum of 83% substrate degradation and simultaneously, the power output is increased by 2–2.8 times. CCDMSO improved the power production from 0.009 ± 0.003, 1.394 ± 0.06 and 1.423 ± 0.15 mW/m2 to 0.020 ± 0.07, 2.748 ± 0.22 and 3.245 ± 0.16 mW/m2, respectively, for initial F− concentrations of 3,10 and 20 mg/L. Modifying CC with DMSO thus proved to be an efficient and simple methodology for enhancing the overall performance of MDC. © 2023 The Authors

Heliyon

Improved defluoridation and energy production using dimethyl sulfoxide modified carbon cloth as bioanode in microbial desalination cell

Molecules with tuneable properties are well known for their applications in the material and bio-medical fields; nevertheless, the structural and functional tunability makes them more significant in diverse applications. Herein, we designed and synthesized a novel class of star-shaped molecules via incorporating two important functional groups, i.e., triazole and dithiocarbamate (DTC). The rationale behind selecting these two key functional groups is their diverse applications, e.g., DTC having applications for therapeutics, pesticides, and vulcanizing agents, and triazole having applications for anti-cancer, fungicides, anti-microbials, inhibitors, etc. The structure of the molecules was strategically designed in such a way that their overall structures are the same (central tertiary-amine and peripheral hydroxy groups), except the key functional group (DTC and triazole) in the respective molecules was different. Following synthesis and characterization, the influence of DTC and triazole groups on their bioactivity was compared via interacting with the most abundant proteins present in the blood, including serum albumin, trypsin, haemoglobin, and ribonuclease. From both the experimental and molecular docking studies, it was confirmed that the triazole molecule has a higher binding affinity towards these proteins as compared to the DTC molecule. In summary, two star-shaped DTC- and triazole-based molecules were synthesized and their bioactivity was compared via binding with blood plasma proteins.

Department of Chemistry

ORGANICS

A Novel Class of Functionally Tuneable Star-Shaped Molecules for Interaction with Multiple Proteins

Organic polymers are widely explored due to their high stability, scalability, and more facile modification properties. We developed cost-effective dithiocarbamate-based organic polymers synthesized using diamides, carbon disulfide, and diamines to apply for environmental remediation. The sequestration of radioiodine is a serious concern to tackle when dealing with nuclear power for energy requirements. However, many of the current sorbents have the problem of slower adsorption for removing iodine. In this report, we discuss the utilization of an electron-rich dithiocarbamate-based organic polymer for the removal of iodine in a very short time and with high uptake. Our material showed 2.8 g/g uptake of vapor iodine in 1 h, 915.19 mg/g uptake of iodine from cyclohexane within 5 s, 93% removal of saturated iodine from water in 1 min, and 1250 mg/g uptake of triiodide ions from water within 30 s. To the best of our knowledge, the iodine capture was faster than previously observed for any existing material. The material was fully recyclable when applied for up to four cycles. Hence, this dithiocarbamate-based polymer can be a promising system for the fast removal of various forms of iodine and, thus, enhance environmental security. © 2023 by the authors.

Fulltext

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Superfast Capture of Iodine from Air, Water, and Organic Solvent by Potential Dithiocarbamate-Based Organic Polymer

Herein, we describe the design and synthesis of PyQ, a novel pyrene-quinoline based cell-permeable aggregation-induced emission luminogen (AIEgen) with implications in cellular imaging and antibacterial activity. The synthesised compound was characterised by NMR, HR-MS and IR studies. PyQ exhibited AIE in the DMSO-water mixture and this was confirmed by fluorescence spectroscopic studies. The addition of water to the DMSO solution of PyQ resulted in enhanced fluorescence emission for up to 70% water in DMSO. The SEM and TEM data also confirmed the aggregate formation in addition to DLS, quantum yield and lifetime measurements. The synthesised AIE compound was found to be non-toxic and cell-permeable that could readily label the cytoplasm and plasma membrane. Of note, PyQ exhibited both blue and green emission inside the cell. We further evaluated the antibacterial activity of PyQ aggregates against the model Gram-negative bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli) using the standard colony forming unit (CFU) counting assay. The results suggest that the aggregates were potent antibacterial agents and the SEM data clearly showed the disruption of the bacterial membrane. Taken together, this work provides a simple and efficient technique for the development of an AIEgen with antibacterial activity as well as rapid cellular imaging with both blue and green emission. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Chemistry

Design, synthesis, and applications of pyrene-quinoline based cell-permeable AIEgen for cellular imaging and antibacterial activity

The delay and sum (DAS) has been the popular beamforming algorithm for image reconstruction in ultrafast ultrasound imaging systems due to its low complexity implementation. However, to improve the lower contrast and resolution in images reconstructed using DAS, there have been many adaptive and non-linear beamforming algorithms developed in the recent past. One of the popular non-linear algorithms proposed in the literature, filtered delay multiply and sum (F-DMAS) is sensitive to off-axis clutters and produces artifacts that result in the degradation of the overall image quality along with a possible dynamic range alteration. In this work, a novel approach to combining the strengths of DAS and F-DMAS algorithms is proposed. The proposed approach referred to as beam multiply and sum (BMAS), employs a DAS beamformer in multiple sub-apertures at receive to form the sub-aperture beams and cross multiplies them using a multiply and sum architecture to enhance the spatial coherence and suppress the clutter artifacts. An exhaustive performance comparison in terms of dynamic range alteration, resolution, and contrast of the BMAS is performed with standard in-silico and in -vitro datasets. The results suggest that the proposed approach outperforms the DAS and F-DMAS beamformers in most cases. More than the proposal of a novel beamforming algorithm, to the best of our knowledge, the approach is the first attempt of its kind towards the possibility of the co-existence of two or more beamformers in an ultrasound imaging system. With optimal tuning, it could provide a good trade-off between the effects of improved resolution and improved contrast while keeping the dynamic range linearity unaltered.

Department of Electrical Engineering

BIOMEDICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING AND CONTROL

Beam multiply and sum: A tradeoff between delay and sum and filtered delay multiply and sum beamforming for ultrafast ultrasound imaging

Underwater acoustic imaging has been gaining popularity due to its ability to image in very turbid oceanic conditions. However, the complexity of conducting underwater experiments using expensive hardware is an infeasible solution and hence there is an importance of realistic simulation models to understand various underwater scenarios. The k-Wave toolbox models realistic underwater scenario for accurate object detection, image enhancement and classification. The advantage of k-Wave is that it offers precise and computationally effective simulation for acoustic imaging and has the advantage of modeling the 2D environment with the ability to assign the sound speed and medium density at pixel level, providing more accurate backscattered echoes for various sonar signal processing applications. However, modeling underwater scenarios requires large computational grids, resulting in huge storage memory and computation requirements resulting in limited usage of k-Wave for underwater scenarios. In this study, we propose an efficient multilayering technique for modelling underwater targets for acoustical 2D imaging using the k- Wave toolbox. It is observed that the time and memory taken was reduced by 21\% and 77.02\% when employing the proposed multi-layering technique when compared to the typical k- Wave simulations.

Underwater Target Modelling using k-Wave Toolbox by Multilayering Technique for Acoustical Imaging

Real-time 3D acoustic imaging underwater is becoming increasingly important, as 3D geometry information of underwater objects is required for autonomous underwater vehicles to avoid obstacles. A major problem for real-time imaging is the time required to process the data associated with large planar arrays and the hardware cost of uniform 2D receiving arrays. The solutions to the problem are to reduce the number of elements in the receiving array and find fast beamforming techniques for 3D imaging. In this work, we propose an efficient cross-array beamforming using spatial cross correlation of azimuth and elevation beams for underwater real-time 3D imaging. The simulation result demonstrated that the proposed method could reconstruct a 3d image of an underwater target with an inferior but acceptable resolution. The proposed method is twenty-two times faster than the conventional delay and sum beamforming for 120 x 120 beams.

An Efficient Cross Array Beamforming for Underwater Acoustical 3D imaging

We propose a novel method that leverages the combination of Blender and K-Wave software to generate a realistic acoustic dataset for side-scan sonar images. Side scan sonar (SSS) images have numerous applications in the underwater environment. However, the challenges and high cost of acquiring SSS images in real experiments and the lack of benchmark open-source datasets encourage the researchers to consider the generation of simulated SSS image datasets. There have been several attempts in the literature to combine open-source computer graphics design software such as Blender with generative adversarial networks (GANs) to generate synthetic SSS images. However, the speckles generated in all such approaches have been unrealistic; hence, the DL approaches trained for object detection employing such data are bound to fail. In the proposed method, we first generate acoustic images from Blender. Then, the CycleGAN is applied for style transfer to generate realistic acoustic images based on the speckle generated using k-Wave. The K-wave, Blender, and cycleGAN are used to generate a closed set of SSS images. We then leverage ConSinGAN to generate varying resolution high-quality sonar images from a closed set of SSS images. As per our knowledge, this is the first attempt that uses k-wave in conjunction with Blender and CycleGAN to generate SSS images. The proposed method is cost-effective and efficient alternative for acquiring large SSS datasets.

Physics driven deep learning based simulation of side scan sonar images

The high penetration of inverter-based resources (IBRs) will substantially change the dynamic behavior of the power system including inertia distribution. Real-time inertia distribution monitoring is important to support power system operation in future low inertia grids. This article presents the development and validation of a center of power-based inertia distribution estimation technique utilizing the measurements available from the phasor measurement units of the wide-area measurement systems. The suggested technique is validated on the 246-bus northern regional power grid of Indian power system. The impact of different penetration levels of IBRs on the proposed inertia distribution index (IDI) is also studied. The suggested index works purely on power system measurements and does not need any model information. Further, the impact of change in IDI on oscillation baselining study is explored. © 2007-2012 IEEE.

IEEE Systems Journal

A Practical Approach to Inertia Distribution Monitoring and Impact of Inertia Distribution on Oscillation Baselining Study for Renewable Penetrated Power Grid