Controls on sediment storage in wide mountain valleys − a case study from Srinagar (Garhwal) valley, NW Himalaya

Rahul Devrani,Vimal Singh,Hari S. Saini,Syed Ali I. Mujtaba 한국지질과학협의회 2023 Geosciences Journal Vol.27 No.1

The valley-fill deposits in a tectonically active setting play a key role in understanding a river’s response to climatic/tectonic shifts. These deposits are a result of the interaction between the regional and the local processes, which in turn are controlled by tectonics and climate. In this study, valley-fill deposits in the widest reach of the Alaknanda River (a headwater tributary of the Ganga River)—the Srinagar valley—in the northwest Himalaya is investigated for the interaction between, 1) the axial channel (representing regional processes) and local tributary (representing local processes) and 2) axial channel and hillslope (representing local processes). We identified eight levels of terraces and five levels of debris flow surfaces in the Srinagar valley. The terraces are composed of axial river deposits and local stream deposits, whereas debris flow surfaces mainly consist of hillslope deposits. Strath terraces are also present towards the western part of the valley. The 1D resistivity survey and field data show that thick sedimentary cover caps the bedrock in the eastern part of the Srinagar valley. Geochronology data based on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) datingsuggests that some of the sediments in the Alaknanda valley are older than 80 ± 5 ka. Integration of results shows that the width of the Srinagar valley is controlled structurally by the presence of the North Almora Thrust (NAT), a regional structure present in the Alaknanda River basin. The valley width increases around the central part of the Srinagar valley; this increase in width has provided accommodation space and resulted in thick sedimentation. Major filling and evacuation of the Srinagar valley occurred between 80 ± 5 ka and 8 ± 1 ka. The study demonstrates that the long-term interaction of the axial river, tributaries, and the hillslope processes can often be masked by the younger sediments to give a deceptive morphology and evolution history, if not thoroughly investigated.

Photoelectrocatalysis performance of Se doped-TiO2/Ti nanotube arrays for visible-light-driven degradation of diazinon pesticide

Nurdin Muhammad,Watoni Abdul Haris,Natsir Muhammad,Rahmatilah Sarifa,Maulidiyah Maulidiyah,Wibowo Dwiprayogo,Salim La Ode Agus,Sadikin Siti Naqiyah,Bijang Catherina Manukpadang,Umar Akrajas Ali 한국화학공학회 2023 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.40 No.9

The modification of ternary metal oxide to improve the photoelectrocatalysis (PEC) properties of TiO2 photocatalyst is a hot issue in environmental and resource applications. Herein, we present a novel photoelectrocatalytst of Se doped-TiO2/Ti nanotube arrays (Se@TiO2/Ti-NTAs) for high-efficiency degradation of diazinon pesticide. The Se@TiO2/Ti-NTAs were prepared to treat the TiO2-NTAs in Se-TiO2 sol-gel for 10 min, which was followed by calcination in air at 200 °C for 1 h. Optical absorption spectroscopy of the Se@TiO2/Ti-NTAs indicated that there is a red-shift in the optical energy gap to 2.95 eV if compared to the pristine TiO2/Ti NTAs, which suggests that the new photoelectrocatalyst is photoactive under visible light irradiation. We evaluated the photoactivity of the sample by using it as the photoelectrocatalyst in the degradation of diazinon pesticides under the PEC process. The results showed that the Se@TiO2/Ti-NTAs can degrade 95.62% for 1 h under visible light irradiation, which is equivalent to the degradation rate constant of 0.0183 s−1. For comparison, the pristine TiO2/Ti NTAs only degrades the diazinon as high as 87.65%, even then under UV light irradiation. Our result also indicated that the Se@TiO2/Ti-NTAs promote active photoelectron transfer and active radical formation, such as •OH and •O − 2 , for rapid diazinon pesticide degradation. The Se@TiO2/Ti-NTAs photoelectrode should be a potential platform for environmental pollution treatment.

Nanocomposite design of graphene modified TiO2 for electrochemical sensing in phenol detection

Muhammad Nurdin,Maulidiyah Maulidiyah,Abdul Haris Watoni,Armawansa Armawansa,La Ode Agus Salim,Zul Arham,Dwiprayogo Wibowo,Irwan Irwan,Akrajas Ali Umar 한국화학공학회 2022 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.39 No.1

This study is the stage of developing a phenol detection electrochemical sensor. Phenol is one of the organic pollutants harmful to human life and ecosystems. The development of this sensor was carried out by studying the use of TiO2 anatase as a modifier of graphene electrodes. The mass of TiO2 anatase was varied, while the mass of graphene and paraffin was fixed. The results showed that the TiO2 mass of 1.0 g was the best mass as a graphene electrode modifier. The use of this mass increases the oxidation current (Ipa) of phenol by 450 A, which is observed at an oxidation potential (Epa) of −0.30 V. The presence of interfering ions such as K+, Fe2+, and OH− can decrease the measurement current. However, based on the %RSD value, it shows that the performance of TiO2-graphene is in a good category, where the %RSD value obtained is 0.6%. TiO2-graphene electrodes can be used repeatedly for 12 days. Overall, this work demonstrates the potential of TiO2-graphene electrodes as electrode candidates for electrochemical-based phenol sensors.

Chorea as a Presentation of SARS-CoV-2 Encephalitis: A Clinical Case Report

Muhammad Hassan,Fibhaa Syed,Liaqat Ali,Haris Majid Rajput,Farhan Faisal,Waleed Shahzad,Mazhar Badshah 대한파킨슨병및이상운동질환학회 2021 Journal Of Movement Disorders Vol.14 No.3

Central nervous system (CNS) involvement in SARS-CoV-2 is now a known fact, likely due to viral transmission through the olfactory nerve and high brainstem viral load, which also suggests dissemination in the ambiguus and solitary nuclei from the respiratory tract via the vagus nerve

Risk factors for intensive care unit admission and mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

Ayaz Ahmed,Arshad Ainan,Malik Hajra,Ali Haris,Hussain Erfan,Jamil Bushra 대한중환자의학회 2020 Acute and Critical Care Vol.35 No.4

Background: This study investigated the clinical features and outcome of hospitalized coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients admitted to our quaternary care hospital. Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we included all adult patients with COVID-19 infection admitted to a quaternary care hospital in Pakistan from March 1 to April 15, 2020. The extracted variables included demographics, comorbidities, presenting symptoms, laboratory tests and radiological findings during admission. Outcome measures included in-hospital mortality and length of stay. Results: Sixty-six COVID-19 patients were hospitalized during the study period. Sixty-one percent were male and 39% female; mean age was 50.6±19.1 years. Fever and cough were the most common presenting symptoms. Serial chest X-rays showed bilateral pulmonary opacities in 33 (50%) patients. The overall mortality was 14% and mean length of stay was 8.4±8.9 days. Ten patients (15%) required intensive care unit (ICU) care during admission, of which six (9%) were intubated. Age ≥60 years, diabetes, ischemic heart disease, ICU admission, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio ≥3.3, and international normalized ratio ≥1.2 were associated with increased risk of mortality. Conclusions: We found a mortality rate of 14% in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 cases are still increasing exponentially around the world and may overwhelm healthcare systems in many countries soon. Our findings can be used for early identification of patients who may require intensive care and aggressive management in order to improve outcomes.

Making Sense of Sensor: An Update from Low-cost Air Quality Sensor for Air Quality Monitoring in Malaysia

Mohd Shahrul Mohd Nadzir,Sawal Hamid Md Ali,Mohd Talib Latif,Soo Wei Khor,Haris Hafizal Abd Hamid,Utbah Rabuan,Zaki Khaslan 한국대기환경학회 2021 한국대기환경학회 학술대회논문집 Vol.2021 No.10

Clean air is one of the most fundamental principles of life quality and well-being. Outdoor and indoor air pollutions both can contributes to human health problems. Conventionally, the methodologies adapted to measure indoor air pollutants are based on: (i) passive samplers, which require long sampling periods and/or (ii) continuous sampling, which generally are bulky and expensive, generating noise and vibration, preventing its deployment in many places at the same time, leading to a limited spatiotemporal coverage. In recent years, low-cost air pollution technologies have gained increasing interest and, consequently, have been studied widely by the scientific community for air pollutions monitoring. Thus, it is important that these new sensing technologies provide reliable data, with good precision and accuracy. Electrochemical (EC) sensors from AiRBOXSense were constructed to measure CO, NO₂, and O₃. Results showed that the sensors behaved highly linearly in laboratory experiments and had response times of around 0.5-1.6 min. In this study, a simple equation was used to translate the signal to mixing ratio and was calibrated by adding a correction in order to achieve the minimum difference against the gas standard. We found that with the added corrections such as the new sensitivity and offset to the quation with most of the pollutants were r² = 0.8 (p ˂ 0.01), the difference values between mixing ratio of EC sensor and gas standard became decreased. Furthermore, this equation is deployed together with the other calibration model which constructed using the machine learning to translate signal to mixing ratios in the field experiment. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the representatives of measurements in this result only showed during the conditions of this campaign. Thus, the use of low-cost sensing technology to monitor indoor air pollutions is encouraged, but not waiving the relevance of high quality instruments (mainly reference instruments) as reference.

Treatment of millet crop plant (Sorghum bicolor) with the entomopathogenic fungus (Beauveria bassiana) to combat infestation by the stem borer, Chilo partellus Swinhoe (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)

Narasimha P. Reddy,Akbar P. Ali Khan,Uma K. Devi,Hari C. Sharma,Annette Reineke 한국응용곤충학회 2009 Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology Vol.12 No.4

Experiments were done to test if Beauveria bassiana can become an endophyte in sorghum and confer protection from stem borer. Four-week-old sorghum seedlings were treated with B. bassiana. The plants were examined for endophytic presence of B. bassiana, 30 and 60 days after treatment. Stem cultures from treated plants showed growth of B. bassiana. PCR amplification using fungal specific primers for a conserved region of β tubulin gene yielded identical 360 bp products from both B. bassiana and treated sorghum plants. In a subsequent experiment, B. bassiana treated and untreated (control) sorghum plants were artificially infested with stem borer (Chilo partellus) larvae 15 days post treatment and the extent of damage was compared. About 40% of the control plants developed dead heart while no plant in the B. bassiana treated plot did. In the surviving control plants, stem tunneling by shoot borer was significantly higher compared to B. bassiana treated sorghum plants. Experiments were done to test if Beauveria bassiana can become an endophyte in sorghum and confer protection from stem borer. Four-week-old sorghum seedlings were treated with B. bassiana. The plants were examined for endophytic presence of B. bassiana, 30 and 60 days after treatment. Stem cultures from treated plants showed growth of B. bassiana. PCR amplification using fungal specific primers for a conserved region of β tubulin gene yielded identical 360 bp products from both B. bassiana and treated sorghum plants. In a subsequent experiment, B. bassiana treated and untreated (control) sorghum plants were artificially infested with stem borer (Chilo partellus) larvae 15 days post treatment and the extent of damage was compared. About 40% of the control plants developed dead heart while no plant in the B. bassiana treated plot did. In the surviving control plants, stem tunneling by shoot borer was significantly higher compared to B. bassiana treated sorghum plants.

Activity of Pralsetinib Versus Selpercatinib in Patients with RET Fusionpositive Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

( Faiza Ahmed ),( Israr Khan ),( Nazma Hanif ),( Alaa Hamdan ),( Mohammad Ali Zaidi ),( Zeynep Yukselen ),( Umer Salman ),( Sakshi Mishra ),( Jack Michel ),( Muhammad Haris Khan ),( Andre Thompson ),( 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 2021 대한결핵 및 호흡기학회 추계학술대회 초록집 Vol.129 No.-

Background Pralsetinib and selpercatinib are anticancer drugs targeting RET fusions (oncogenic drivers) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The US FDA approved both drugs in 2020 for the treatment of RET-fusion positive NSCLC. Methods We assessed the efficacy & safety of pralsetinib versus selpercatinib in RET fusion-positive NSCLC in two clinical trials: phase1/2 ARROW trial (n=354) and phase 1/2 LIBRETTO-001 trial (n=144). Results In patients who had previously received platinum-based therapy (n=105), Drilon et al., 2020 showed an overall response rate (ORR) of 64% (95% CI, 54-73) and a median duration of response (mDOR) of 17.5 months (95% CI, 12.0-NE) with selpercatinib in phase 1/2 LIBRETTO-001 trial. Furthermore, a complete response (CR) of 2%, partial response (PR) of 62%, stable disease (SD) of 29%, and median progression-free survival (mPFS) of 16.5 months ( 95% CI, 13.7 - NE) were reported. Treatment naive patients (n=39) demonstrated an ORR of 85% (95% CI, 70-94) and PR of 85%. The responses were determined by the independent review committee. Lee et al., 2019 (n=111) demonstrated a rapid lowering of RET circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in 81% of NSCLC patients with pralsetinib therapy. A phase 1/2 ARROW trial (n= 116) exhibited a median follow-up of 8.8 months in patients who received pralsetinib 400 mg daily. Additionally, ORR was 65%, CR 6%, disease control rate 93 (95% CI, 87 - 97), and resulted in overall tumor size reduction in 96% of patients. Refer to (Table 1) for further details. Conclusion Pralsetinib and Selpercatinib have shown promising anti-tumor activity and an acceptable safety profile in RET fusion-positive NSCLC. However, we cannot draw a firm conclusion regarding which one is better due to insufficient data. Clinical trials, including AcceleRET, are still ongoing, and data is pending. Further comparative studies are needed to derive meaningful survival outcomes.

Identification and Molecular Characterization of HOS15-interacting Proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana

Junghoon Park;Chae Jin Lim,Irfan Ullah Khan;Masood Jan;Haris Ali Khan;Hee Jin Park,Yan Guo,Dae-Jin Yun 한국식물학회 2018 Journal of Plant Biology Vol.61 No.5

Chromatin modification is a key mechanism ofgene expression in eukaryotes, and involve interactionsamong several proteins. Recently, we reported that HOS15,a cullin-based E3 ligase receptor, is involved in chromatinremodeling, and regulates gene expression and cold tolerance inArabidopsis thaliana. To identify the protein complexes thatfunction in conjunction with HOS15, we performed FLAGtagaffinity purification using transgenic Arabidopsis plantsexpressing HOS15-FLAG, and isolated HOS15-interactingproteins. To identify these proteins, matrix-assisted laserdesorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) massspectrometry (MS) analysis was conducted, and 16 proteinswere identified. Database searches revealed that these proteinswere histone variants, histone deacetylases, mRNA splicingregulators, a protein kinase, and proteins of unknownfunction. The ability of these proteins binding to HOS15 wasconfirmed using yeast two-hybrid, co-immunoprecipitation(Co-IP), and luciferase complementation imaging (LCI)assays. Our data suggest that specific interactions betweenHOS15 and those proteins involve in chromatin remodelingand RNA processing regulates plant development and abioticstress in Arabidopsis.

Assessment of roof waterproofing by pre-packaged polymer modified slurry (PPPMS) and bitumen

Iqbal, Safdar,Jehan, Beenish,Khan, Fasih Ahmed,Khan, Haris,Khan, Sarmad Ali Techno-Press 2019 Advances in environmental research Vol.8 No.1

Effective waterproofing of structures was a compulsory constraint to avoid leaks and dampness or humidity in walls, ceilings, roofs underground tank and underground room. Traditionally used methods of roof waterproofing were bitumen with tinny seared clay tiles are very troublesome, overwhelming time and involving high labor cost. These waterproofing methods are not allocation the purpose due to their intrinsic disadvantages. Prepackaged polymer modified slurries (PPPMS) are now attainment the vogue and easy to use, easily available in the market, cheaper in cost and more workable than the traditional methods of waterproofing. An experimental study has shown that prepackaged polymer modified slurries (PPPMS) are superior in cost and performance to as a roof water proof coatings. Bituminous coatings were mixed with water and different combination of prepackaged polymer modified slurries and primer respectively, to find optimum coverage underneath worst atmospheric conditions. Every specimen of different proportioned was applied on plane roofs and through the passage of time, their performance was checked, assessed and associated with each other. The roof of approximately 40000 ft² area of prepackaged polymer modified slurries was used will give us hundred percent result (no water seepage or no water absorption) therefore no complaints as compare to roofs area of approximately 24000 ft² bituminous coating was used for waterproofing they have shown the result of 30 to 40 percent water seepage. This result shows that prepackaged polymer modified slurries were two times cheaper than bituminous coating. Comparing an equal number of surfaces coated with a polymer modified prepackaged mortar and bitumen the prepackaged polymer modified slurries (PPPMS) showed excellent performance, ease of application and low bitumen coating cost.