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

We propose a new second-order accurate finite volume (FV) scheme for diffusion equations with discontinuous coefficients on unstructured meshes. This scheme is based on a novel least squares reconstruction with a compact neighbourhood that computes the cell-centered diffusion fluxes from the normal diffusion flux at cell faces. We propose two variants of the scheme rooted in the concept of “alpha damping” (AD), which are both linearly exact on arbitrary mesh topologies even when the tangential diffusive fluxes are discontinuous. The first variant, referred to as AD-G (Alpha Damping-Gradient), effects the discretisation of the normal derivative while the second, referred to as AD-F (Alpha Damping-Flux), involves discretisation of the normal fluxes. It is shown that harmonic averaging for diffusion coefficient at the faces is essential for the accuracy of the solution with the AD-G scheme but this condition is not necessary for the AD-F scheme. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed FV schemes estimate the solution and fluxes to second and first order accuracy respectively for discontinuous diffusion problems on generic polygonal meshes. Studies also show that these schemes are discrete extremum preserving (DEP) and can be implemented with relative ease for diffusion problems in existing legacy codes. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

World University root node

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Computers and Mathematics with Applications

A novel least squares finite volume scheme for discontinuous diffusion on unstructured meshes

Sugarcane bagasse ash is available in abundance and it has significant pozzolanic reactivity. However, bagasse ash is currently disposed of as a waste in the major sugar-producing countries and its use in industrial-scale blended cement production is highly limited. A systematic review of the potential of bagasse ash for use as a pozzolan in concrete and the translation of the all-inclusive research outcomes from earlier research studies to the industry can enable its wider acceptance. Hence, this study undertakes a comprehensive review on the use of sugarcane bagasse ash in concrete. The physical, chemical and pozzolanic characteristics of sugarcane bagasse ash and their effects on the properties of concrete are reported. The use of bagasse ash is found to result in a notable increment in the compressive and tensile strengths up to 20% replacement. Nevertheless, delay in setting times and reduction in workability are widely reported. The resistance of bagasse ash blended concrete against chloride ion penetration, water permeability and air permeability were also reviewed and a considerable drop in the permeability was reported over the conventional cement concrete. Opportunities for the effective recycling of bagasse ash and their benefits in India, the second-largest sugar producer in the world, are presented. © 2021, Society for Sugar Research & Promotion.

Department of Civil Engineering

Sugar Tech

Sustainable Opportunities for Sugar Industries Through Potential Reuse of Sugarcane Bagasse Ash in Blended Cement Production

Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering

Preface

Infectious diseases caused by viruses can elevate up to undesired pandemic conditions affecting the global population and normal life function. These in turn impact the established world economy, create jobless situations, physical, mental, emotional stress, and challenge the human survival. Therefore, timely detection, treatment, isolation and prevention of spreading the pandemic infectious diseases not beyond the originated town is critical to avoid global impairment of life (e.g., Corona virus disease - 2019, COVID-19). The objective of this review article is to emphasize the recent advancements in the electrochemical diagnostics of twelve life-threatening viruses namely - COVID-19, Middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS), Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Influenza, Hepatitis, Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Human papilloma virus (HPV), Zika virus, Herpes simplex virus, Chikungunya, Dengue, and Rotavirus. This review describes the design, principle, underlying rationale, receptor, and mechanistic aspects of sensor systems reported for such viruses. Electrochemical sensor systems which comprised either antibody or aptamers or direct/mediated electron transfer in the recognition matrix were explicitly segregated into separate sub-sections for critical comparison. This review emphasizes the current challenges involved in translating laboratory research to real-world device applications, future prospects and commercialization aspects of electrochemical diagnostic devices for virus detection. The background and overall progress provided in this review are expected to be insightful to the researchers in sensor field and facilitate the design and fabrication of electrochemical sensors for life-threatening viruses with broader applicability to any desired pathogens. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Department of Chemistry

Biosensors and Bioelectronics

Electrochemical diagnostics of infectious viral diseases: Trends and challenges

In the present era, the consumption of electricity has increased rapidly with each passing year, due to the industrialization. Coal is a raw material for the production of electricity in the thermal power stations. Particularly, a large amount of unused ash is dumped in ponds, which are major problem concerning many developing countries. Further, dumping of ash in ponds causes environmental hazards effects such as soil, land and water pollution. Identifying a viable alternative to utilize pond ash becomes a necessity, to avoid these environmental hazards. In this research work, an attempt has been made to partially replace cement by the pond ash as a supplementary cementitious material {[}SCM] in concrete, which will considerably reduce the hazardous effects of pond ash, to the environment. The pond ash was ground to 45 mu m and it was used to replace the cement in concrete by proportions of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25\% by mass. Test on compressive strength, split tensile strength and modulus of rupture were conducted on concrete mixes. The result indicate that the addition of 10\% pond ash to concrete significantly increased the strength properties of the concrete at the age of 7, 28, 56 and 90 days.

CEMENT WAPNO BETON

Experimental investigation on strength properties of concrete incorporating ground pond ash

This paper deals with automatic spot welding, hemming and material handling in automotive industries. Here, hood, doors and tail gate are processed by implementation of robots. Spot welding and hemming of the panels are the two operations which decide the quality of the car body. The quality of hemming and spot welding should be highly accurate, which consumes more time if done manually. There will be quality defects if it is done manually and high rate of production cannot be achieved. The robots were selected according to the payload required and space available. In this project, all the processes were simulated using the software and the entire robot operations were also simulated in the virtual environment to check for collision, cycle time, reach and range. Finally the simulated robot work cell is implemented on the floor and the robots were programmed to do their specific tasks without any interference of humans. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Materials Research-2019.

MATERIALS TODAY-PROCEEDINGS

Investigation on spot welding and roller hemming by robots

Background Adherence to oral anticancer medication is important in cancer chemotherapy, with the advent of many oral anticancer regimens to ensure adequate cytologic response. Literature on adherence to oral anticancer therapy in India is very less. Materials and Methods This is a cross sectional analytical study consisting of all fit patients > 18 years of age taking oral anticancer therapy, with or without intravenous (IV) chemotherapy. Adherence was determined using Morisky-Green-Levine (MGL) scale, and factors affecting adherence details about cancer and treatment were obtained. All fit patients were recruited. Information was obtained using Tamil questionnaire and pro forma. Observation Of 152 patients, only 111 patients were found to be adherent to treatment. The mean age of the study population was 49.03 13.48 years. Only 12.5\% of patients were aware of the diagnosis, treatment, and outcome. The study population consisted mainly of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, colorectal carcinoma, breast carcinoma, and stomach carcinoma, which amounted for 78.3\% of the study population. Bivariate analysis concluded that duration of treatment, adverse drug reaction (ADR), duration of oral anticancer drug intake in a month, coadministration with IV anticancer drugs, and frequency of drug intake (anticancer drug) were significant factors affecting drug adherence. Multivariate analysis of the above variables was insignificant, but ADR tended toward significance. Conclusion Drug adherence plays a major role in treatment outcome in cancer patients. ADR was independently associated with decreased drug adherence. Key interventions which should include counseling and behavioral modifications will reduce nonadherence.

SOUTH ASIAN JOURNAL OF CANCER

Assessment of Oral Anticancer Medication Adherence: A Survey from a Tertiary Cancer Center

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Autophagy

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1

Majority of the corrosion inhibition studies of microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) have been carried out in the static mode conditions. Considering the constant flow similar to industrial pipelines, the dynamic systems for the corrosion inhibition analysis provide more accurate investigation of pipeline corrosion. Towards this aspect, we have analyzed the inhibition of MIC induced by chitosan@lignosulfonate (CS@LS) nanospheres in dynamic water injection systems using custom-made flow cell with a flow rate of 1 L/min. The designing and fabrication of flow cell have been made in a way that carbon steel coupons are placed in the bottom of flow cell. From the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, the sulfate reducing bacteria (SRB) induced corrosion is visible in SS400 carbon steel coupons and the corrosion products are FeS, Fe2O3 and organic sulfur as a result of SRB activity, however, the intensity of these peaks reduced in the presence of CS@LS. The electrochemical impedance analysis showed that the CS@LS exhibited a maximum of 84% corrosion inhibition. This work provides an insight into the use of CS@LS nanosphere in realistic practical applications such as oil and gas plants to prevent the damages caused by MIC.

Journal of Bio- and Tribo-Corrosion

Inhibition of Microbially Influenced Corrosion by Chitosan@lignosulfonate Nanospheres Under Dynamic Flow Conditions

This paper evaluates the electrochemical performance of platinum nanoparticles/Ti3C2Tx nanocomposite (Pt@Ti3C2Tx) towards environmental sensing applications. The nanocomposite was prepared by self-reduction of Pt salt to Pt nanoparticles (PtNPs) on the surface of delaminated Ti3C2Tx nanosheets, in which Ti3C2Tx simultaneously acted as reducing agent as well as conductive matrix. The Pt@Ti3C2Tx nanocomposites with different Pt loading have been electrochemically characterized and it was found that 10%Pt@Ti3C2Tx has the highest electrochemical activity in the anodic potential window. Hence, 10%Pt@Ti3C2Tx has been used to develop an electrochemical sensor for the detection of Bisphenol A (BPA), which is one of the common environmental pollutants. At the optimal conditions, the oxidation peak of BPA was proportional to the analyte concentration from 50 nM to 5 $\mu$M with a detection limit of 32 nM. The practical application of the proposed sensor was successfully evaluated in drinking water and fresh milk samples.