• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.33-44
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• 2015

The generation of artificial gametes is a real challenge for the scientific community today. In vitro development of human eggs and sperm will pave the way for the understanding of the complex process of human gametogenesis and will provide with human gametes for the study of infertility and the onset of some inherited disorders. However, the great promise of artificial gametes resides in their future application on reproductive treatments for all these people wishing to have genetically related children and for which gamete donation is now their unique option of parenthood. This is the case of infertile patients devoid of suitable gametes, same sex couples, singles and those fertile couples in a high risk of transmitting serious diseases to their progeny. In the search of the best method to obtain artificial gametes, many researchers have successfully obtained human germ cell-like cells from stem cells at different stages of differentiation. In the near future, this field will evolve to new methods providing not only viable but also functional and safe artificial germ cells. These artificial sperm and eggs should be able to recapitulate all the genetic and epigenetic processes needed for the correct gametogenesis, fertilization and embryogenesis leading to the birth of a healthy and fertile newborn.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.37-44
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• 2014

The $Li-O_2$ battery has been attracting much attention recently, due to its very high theoretical capacity compared with Li-ion chemistries. Nevertheless, several studies within the last few years revealed that Li-ion derived electrolytes based on alkyl carbonate solvents, which have been commonly used in the last 27 years, are irreversibly consumed at the $O_2$ electrode. Accordingly, more stable electrolytes are required capable to operate with both the Li metal anode and the $O_2$ cathode. Thus, due to their favorable properties such as non volatility, chemical inertia, and favorable behavior toward the Li metal electrode, ionic liquid-based electrolytes have gathered increasing attention from the scientific community for its application in $Li-O_2$ batteries. However, the scale-up of Li-$O_2$ technology to real application requires solving the mass transport limitation, especially for supplying oxygen to the cathode. Hence, the 'LABOHR' project proposes the introduction of a flooded cathode configuration and the circulation of the electrolyte, which is then used as an oxygen carrier from an external $O_2$ harvesting device to the cathode for freeing the system from diffusion limitation.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.99-116
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• 2020

The article provides information on ceramic / nanostructured materials which are suitable for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) working between 500 to 1000℃. However, low temperature solid oxide fuel cells LTSOFCs working at less than 600℃ are being developed now-a-days with suitable new materials and are globally explored as the "future energy conversion devices". The LTSOFCs device has emerged as a novel technology especially for stationary power generation, portable and transportation applications. Operating SOFC at low temperature (i.e. < 600℃) with higher efficiency is a bigger challenge for the scientific community since in low temperature regions, the efficiency might be less and the components might have exhibited lower catalytic activity which may result in poor cell performance. Employing new and novel nanoscale ceramic materials and composites may improve the SOFC performance at low temperature ranges is most focused now-a-days. This review article focuses on the overview of various ceramic and nanostructured materials and components applicable for SOFC devices reported by different researchers across the globe. More importance is given for the nanostructured materials and components developed for LTSOFC technology so far.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.337-343
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• 2013

Membrane reactors have been showing a promising future and attracted increasing attention in the scientific community as they possess advantages in terms of enhanced catalytic activity and selectivity, combination of processes (reaction and separation), simplicity in process design, and safety in operation. In particular, solid electrolyte membrane reactor principles are realized in fuel cells, electrolyzers and reactors for hydrogenation of carbon dioxide and other economically viable reactions. In this review, as a young generation of ion conducting materials, high temperature proton conductors are discussed in terms of the current status of material development and their various applications.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.03b
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• pp.216-217
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• 2008

In recent years, scientific community has found renewed interest in hypersonic flight research. These hypersonic vehicles undergo severe aero-thermal environment during their flight regimes. During reentry and hypersonic flight of these vehicles through atmosphere real gas effects come into play. The analysis of such hypersonic flows is critical for proper aero-thermal design of these vehicles. The numerical simulation of hypersonic real gas flows is a very challenging task. The present work emphasizes numerical simulation of hypersonic flows with thermal non-equilibrium. Hyperbolic system of equations with stiff relaxation method are identified in recent literature as a novel method of predicting long time behaviour of systems such as gas at high temperature. In present work, Energy Relaxation Method (ERM) has been considered to simulate the real gas flows. Navier-Stokes equations A numerical scheme Advection Upstream Splitting Method (AUSM) has been selected. Navier-Stokes solver along with relaxation method has been used for the simulation of real flow over a circular cylinder. Pressure distribution and heat flux over the surface of cylinder has been compared with experiment results of Hannemann. Present heat flux results over the cylinder compared well with experiment. Thus, real gas effects in hypersonic flows can be modeled through energy relaxation method.

• The Pure and Applied Mathematics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.137-155
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• 2020

Redundancy is commonly employed to improve system reliability. In most situations, components in the standby configurations are assumed statistically similar but independent. In many realistic models, all parts in standby are not treated as identical as they have different failure possibilities. The operational structure of the system has subsystem-1 with five identical components working under 2-out-of-5: G; policy, and the subsystem-2 has two units and functioning under 1-out-of-2: G; policy. Failure rates of units of subsystems are constant and assumed to follow an exponential distribution. Computed results give a new aspect to the scientific community to adopt multi-dimension repair in the form of the copula.

• Journal of Dairy Science and Biotechnology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.47-60
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• 2000

Over decades of work, the probiotic research has grown rapidly with a number of new cultures, which is claimed a variety of benefit. However, many of the specific effects attributed to the ingestion of probiotics remain convoluted and scientifically unsubstantiated. Accordingly, the scientific community faces a greater challenge and must objectively seek cause and effect relationships for many potential and currently investigated probiotic species. Rational selection and design of probiotics remains an important challenge and will require a solid information about the physiology and genetics of candidate strains relevant to their intestinal roles, functional activities, and interaction of with other resident micro flora. As far as beneficial culture of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) is concerned, simple, cost-effective, and exact identification of candidate strains is of foremost importance among others. Until recently, the relatedness of bacterial isolates has been determined sorely by testing for one or several phenotyphic markers, using methods such as serotyping, phage-typing, biotyping, and so forth. However, there are problems in the use of many of these phenotype-based methods. In contrast, some of newer molecular typing methods involving the analysis of DNA offer many advantages over traditional techniques. These DNA-based methods have the greater discriminatory power than that of phenotypic procedures. This review focuses on the importance and the basis of molecular typing methods along with some considerations on de-sign and selection of probiotic culture for human consumption.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.323-329
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• 2018

The municipal solid waste (MSW) management system in one of the Class II Indian cities i.e. Rishikesh was studied and analysed to identify the key issues in solid waste management in the city. A total of 329 solid waste samples from 47 households were collected to characterize the household solid waste (HSW). The average (HSW) generation rate was 0.26 kg/c/d and it was composed of organic waste (57.3%), plastics (14%), paper (10.9%), and glass and ceramic (1.3%) and other materials (16.5%). There was an inverse relationship between household waste generation rate and family size (p < 0.05). The MSW management system practiced in Rishikesh is unsound. There is no waste segregation at source, no provisions of composting and no recycling by formal sector. The collection and transportation of waste is inadequate and inappropriate. Collected waste is dumped in open dumping site without scientific management. Following are some recommendations for developing a sustainable solid waste management system in Rishikesh city: (1) sensitize people for segregation at source; (2) promote reduction, reuse and recycling of wastes; (3) promote community based composting; (4) provision for 100% door to door collection and; (5) formalize the informal sectors such as rag pickers and recycling industries.

• Journal of Information Management
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.47-62
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• 2011

While an ideal author graph should have its nodes to represent authors, automatically-generated author graphs mostly use author names as their nodes due to the difficulty of resolving author names into individuals. However, employing author names as nodes of author graphs merges namesakes, otherwise separate nodes in the author graph, into the same node, which may distort the characteristics of the author graph. This study proposes an algorithm which resolves author ambiguities based on co-authorship and then yields an author graph consisting of not author name nodes but author nodes. Scientific collaboration relationship this algorithm depends on tends to produce the clustering results which minimize the over-clustering error at the expense of the under-clustering error. In experiments, the algorithm is applied to the real citation records where Korean namesakes occur, and the results are discussed.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.93-105
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• 2021

Exosomes have gained the attention of the scientific community because of their role in facilitating intercellular communication, which is critical in disease monitoring and drug delivery research. Exosome research has grown significantly in recent decades, with a focus on the development of various technologies for isolating and characterizing exosomes. Among these efforts is the use of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS), which offers high-throughput direct analysis while also being cost and time effective. MALDI is used less frequently in exosome research than electrospray ionization due to the diverse population of extracellular vesicles and the impurity of isolated products, both of which necessitate chromatographic separation prior to MS analysis. However, MALDI-MS is a more appropriate instrument for the analytical approach to patient therapy, given it allows for fast and label-free analysis. There is a huge drive to explore MALDI-MS in exosome research because the technology holds great potential, most notably in biomarker discovery. With methods such as fingerprint analysis, OMICs profiling, and statistical analysis, the search for biomarkers could be much more efficient. In this review, we highlight the potential of MALDI-MS as a tool for investigating exosomes and some of the possible strategies that can be implemented based on prior research.