Yuying Jiang^1,#, Renhua Huang^1,#, Lei Jiang¹, Ke Chen^1,*, Wenkun Zhu^2,*

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol.90, No.2, pp. 403-415, 2021, DOI:10.32604/phyton.2021.014376 - 07 February 2021

Abstract Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can improve plant tolerance to several abiotic stresses, including heavy metals, drought or salinity exposure. However, the role of AMF in alleviation of soil cadmium (Cd)-induced toxicity to plants is still largely unknown. In this study, Cd speciation in soil and subcellular distribution of Cd were used to characterize the roles of application AM fungi in the alleviation of Cd toxicity in alfalfa plants. Our results showed that the addition of Glomus mosseae in Cd contaminated soil (10 mg/Kg) significantly increased soil pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC) and organic matter in rhizosphere… More >

Amir Haider¹, MuhibUr Rahman², Tayyaba Khan³, Muhammad Tabish Niaz¹, Hyung Seok Kim^1,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.67, No.2, pp. 1747-1758, 2021, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2021.015611 - 05 February 2021

Abstract The 5G cellular network aims at providing three major services: Massive machine-type communication (mMTC), ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and enhanced-mobile-broadband (eMBB). Among these services, the URLLC and eMBB require strict end-to-end latency of 1 ms while maintaining 99.999% reliability, and availability of extremely high data rates for the users, respectively. One of the critical challenges in meeting these requirements is to upgrade the existing optical fiber backhaul network interconnecting the base stations with a multigigabit capacity, low latency and very high reliability system. To address this issue, we have numerically analyzed 100 Gbit/s coherent optical… More >

Taoze Sun, Wei Tan, Yujie Yang, Hongna Mu^*

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol.90, No.1, pp. 171-178, 2021, DOI:10.32604/phyton.2020.013668 - 20 November 2020

Abstract Pinus elliottii is an exotic afforestation pine extensively distributed in southern parts of China. In order to understand whether endophytic fungi can affect seedling growth of P. elliottii, Piriformospora indica (Pi), Funnelifcrmis mosseae (Fm), and Diversispora tortuosa (Dt) were inoculated respectively, and the non-inoculated group was set as control. The growth indexes, the contents of soluble sugar and soluble protein, and plant endogenous hormone levels in the leaves of P. elliottii, were analyzed. The results showed that Fm, Dt and Pi colonized the P. elliottii roots to form mycorrhizal structure and chlamydospores arranged in beads respectively. Three fungal inoculants exhibited the stimulated… More >

Nishit Savla¹, Raksha Anand², Soumya Pandit^2,*, Ram Prasad^3,*

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.8, No.12, pp. 1581-1605, 2020, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2020.011803 - 12 November 2020

Abstract Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are an attractive innovation at the nexus of energy and water security for the future. MFC utilizes electrochemically active microorganisms to oxidize biodegradable substrates and generate bioelectricity in a single step. The material of the anode plays a vital role in increasing the MFC’s power output. The anode in MFC can be upgraded using nanomaterials providing benefits of exceptional physicochemical properties. The nanomaterials in anode gives a high surface area, improved electron transfer promotes electroactive biofilm. Enhanced power output in terms of Direct current (DC) can be obtained as the consequence More >

Yanrong Zhao^1,2,3,#, Ping Chen^1,4,*,#, Shifeng Wang⁵, Yaxiong Ji^3,4, Yuanhao Wang^3,4,*, Bolin Wu^1,2, Rongjin Liu¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.8, No.11, pp. 1531-1541, 2020, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2020.011462 - 28 September 2020

Abstract Bayer red mud (BRM) is a kind of industrial solid waste characterized by huge volume and high alkalinity. Its disposal generates serious environmental pollution and occupies a large number of farmland. The utilization and recycling of BRM is currently a crucial issue and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. The chemical composition of BRM is similar to cement clinker. In this study, the feasibility of preparing Belite-ferroaluminate clinker (BFAC) with different BRM was explored. The physical properties, mechanics performance, radioactivity levels and trace harmful metals leaching were measured. XRD, BEI and EDS were… More >

HAO WANG^1,2,#, FANG FANG^1,#, CHAOYI FANG¹, RUNSHENG ZHAO^1,*, SHAOXIAN WANG^1,*

BIOCELL, Vol.44, No.3, pp. 421-429, 2020, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2020.010257 - 22 September 2020

Abstract Stress is an inevitable interference factor that seriously affects health. Listening to music is an economical, noninvasive, and highly accepted tool for easing stress. However, physiological studies investigating the ability of music to reduce stress in daily life are limited. We established rat models of chronic immobilization stress (CIS) to observe changes in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus (ARC) neurons involved in the regulation of food intake and the effect of comfortable classical music exposure. Twenty-one days of stress resulted in decreased food intake and delayed body weight gain; up-regulation of leptin receptor (Ob-R), cocaine- and… More >

Tahir Abbas Khan¹, Sagheer Abbas¹, Allah Ditta², Muhammad Adnan Khan^{3, *}, Hani Alquhayz⁴, Areej Fatima³, Muhammad Farhan Khan⁵

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.65, No.3, pp. 2591-2605, 2020, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2020.011892 - 16 September 2020

Abstract The prediction of human diseases, particularly COVID-19, is an extremely challenging task not only for medical experts but also for the technologists supporting them in diagnosis and treatment. To deal with the prediction and diagnosis of COVID-19, we propose an Internet of Medical Things-based Smart Monitoring Hierarchical Mamdani Fuzzy Inference System (IoMTSM-HMFIS). The proposed system determines the various factors like fever, cough, complete blood count, respiratory rate, Ct-chest, Erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein, family history, and antibody detection (lgG) that are directly involved in COVID-19. The expert system has two input variables in layer… More >

Ehab Mahmoud Mohamed^{1, 2, *}, Sherief Hashima^{3, 4}, Kohei Hatano^{3, 5}, Hani Kasban⁴, Mohamed Rihan⁶

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.65, No.3, pp. 1987-2007, 2020, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2020.011816 - 16 September 2020

Abstract The communication in the Millimeter-wave (mmWave) band, i.e., 30~300 GHz, is characterized by short-range transmissions and the use of antenna beamforming (BF). Thus, multiple mmWave access points (APs) should be installed to fully cover a target environment with gigabits per second (Gbps) connectivity. However, inter-beam interference prevents maximizing the sum rates of the established concurrent links. In this paper, a reinforcement learning (RL) approach is proposed for enabling mmWave concurrent transmissions by finding out beam directions that maximize the long-term average sum rates of the concurrent links. Specifically, the problem is formulated as a multiplayer… More >

A. Renugambal^{1, *}, K. Selva Bhuvaneswari²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.64, No.2, pp. 681-700, 2020, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2020.09519 - 10 June 2020

Abstract In this study, a novel hybrid Water Cycle Moth-Flame Optimization (WCMFO) algorithm is proposed for multilevel thresholding brain image segmentation in Magnetic Resonance (MR) image slices. WCMFO constitutes a hybrid between the two techniques, comprising the water cycle and moth-flame optimization algorithms. The optimal thresholds are obtained by maximizing the between class variance (Otsu’s function) of the image. To test the performance of threshold searching process, the proposed algorithm has been evaluated on standard benchmark of ten axial T₂-weighted brain MR images for image segmentation. The experimental outcomes infer that it produces better optimal threshold values… More >

Dzun Noraini Jimat^*, Sharifah Shahira Syed Putra, Parveen Jamal, Wan Mohd Fazli Wan Nawawi, Mohammed Saedi Jami

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.8, No.7, pp. 739-757, 2020, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2020.010357 - 01 June 2020

Abstract Increasing usage of foams in various industry sectors had causing serious disposal problems once it reaches the end of its life-cycle. Herein, PVA-MFC foam was prepared by freeze-drying using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and microfibrillated cellulose (MFC) as a reinforced material from sugarcane bagasse (SCB). In this study, the PVA-MFC foam was chemically silylated with Y-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS) and tetraethoxysilane (TEOS). The wetting ability and mechanical strength of the silylated _2,20PVA-MFC foam was greatly enhanced compared with unmodified _2,20PVA-MFC foam. The silane chemicals (MPS and TEOS) had been confirmed grafted on _2,20PVA-MFC foam due to the presence of Si-C… More >