Advances in genetic engineering have enabled the use of bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) to deliver vaccines, drugs and immunotherapy agents, as a strategy to circumvent biocompatibility and large-scale production issues associated with synthetic nanomaterials. We investigate bioengineered OMVs for contrast enhancement in optoacoustic (photoacoustic) imaging. We produce OMVs encapsulating biopolymer-melanin (OMV^Mel) using a bacterial strain expressing a tyrosinase transgene. Our results show that upon near-infrared light irradiation, OMV^Mel generates strong optoacoustic signals appropriate for imaging applications. In addition, we show that OMV^Mel builds up intense heat from the absorbed laser energy and mediates photothermal effects both in vitro and in vivo. Using multispectral optoacoustic tomography, we noninvasively monitor the spatio-temporal, tumour-associated OMV^Mel distribution in vivo. This work points to the use of bioengineered vesicles as potent alternatives to synthetic particles more commonly employed for optoacoustic imaging, with the potential to enable both image enhancement and photothermal applications.

This paper presents the surface water absorption of self-compacting concrete (SCC) containing fly ash and silica fume using sorptivity test. Ordinary Portland cement was partially replaced by various combinations of fly ash and silica fume. Test results show that the presence of fly ash and silica fume significantly reduce the surface water absorption of self-compacting concrete at a water-binder ratio of 0.38. When only fly ash is used to partially replace Ordinary Portland cement, a more noticeable reduction in sorptivity is found when the fly ash content is greater than 20%. The effect of combined use of fly ash and silica fume on reducing the water absorption and sorptivity is much more significant than using fly ash only. Moreover, it is noted that increasing the proportion of fly ash and silica fume leads to an enhanced reduction in water absorption. The addition of fly ash and silica fume, in general, increases the 28-day cube strength. However, there is no correlation between the compressive strength and the sorptivity in SCC achieved.

In recent era, the creation of electronic contraptions is expanding step by step, which leads to tremendous electronic waste. This is the condition drives as a result of the current individuals expecting new innovation in a brief time. This circumstance makes the manufacturers in a circumstance to create the new item in a brief time, so the current items need to either be disposed or dismantled. In this circumstance the manufactures wanted to re-manufacture the end-of-life (E-O-L) items to meet the component necessity in the new items production. In this sense in our previous work we exhibited a methodology to choose the optimal number of take back product, so that the aggregate expense needed for the reverse logistic (RL) can be lessened. In this paper, we exhibited a novel methodology for the RL operation of E-O-L items, in view of an optimal scheduling algorithm. In the previous work we have located the optimal number of take back E-O-L products for the disassembly-to-order (D-T-O), and this paper displayed the procedure to legitimately schedule the machines to disassemble the products, so that the aggregate time as well as the total cost needed for the RL operation can be diminished. In the proposed structure artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is utilized. The proposed framework drives the preferred performance over the existing scheduling algorithms.

Low cost and eco-friendly green synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from silver nitrate (AgNO3) using Prunus japonica leaves extract as reducing agent by a simple method at room temperature. The biosynthesized nanoparticles (NPs) were characterized by UV-Vis, tunneling electron microscopy (HR-TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with X-ray energy dispersive spectrophotometer (EDAX), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). In UV-Vis spectroscopy results, the λmax was observed at 441 nm. The AgNPs synthesized were spherical, hexagonal, and irregular in shapes. The EDAX and XRD spectrum confirmed the presence of silver ions and crystalline nature of synthesized AgNPs. FTIR showed the functional groups such as C = O, N-H and C-N groups involved in the reduction of Ag+ to Ag. 2, 2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay was performed and it showed the percentage inhibition in concentration-dependent manner. The synthesized AgNPs showed antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus to different extents and the higher activity was observed in Proteus vulgaris.