Neural machine translators (NMTs), such as Google Translate, may assist second language (L2) readers with general comprehension. However, previous empirical studies show mix ed r esults r egarding their e ffectiveness. In this study, 145 Korean English learners from a girls’ high school were asked to solve three types of reading comprehension problems (grammar judgment, inferring meaning from context, inferring main idea) under three reading conditions (no aid, MT, glossary). Overall, when using MT, reading comprehension scores were higher than in either the no aid or glossary conditions individually. However, none of the reading aid conditions improved grammar judgment. Only mid-proficiency learners benefited from MT in both inferring meaning from context and inferring main idea tasks. The results suggest that the glossary may have interrupted the flow of the reading process. With the widespread availability of MT as an online reference tool, L2 teachers should consider incorporating MT as a legitimate reading aid for different proficiency levels and reading purposes.

Copper, silver, and gold-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite (Cu-rGO, Ag-rGO, and Au-rGO) were fabricated via the hydrothermal method, which shows unique physiochemical properties. Environment friendly electromagnetic radiation was employed to synthesize rGO from GO. The nonlinear optical phenomenon of noble metal decorated rGO is predominantly due to excited state absorption, which arises from surface plasmon resonance and increases in defects at the surface due to Cu, Ag, and Au incorporation. It is found that the third-order nonlinear absorption coefficient was in the order of 10− 10 m/W, with notable enhancements in the third-order properties of Au-rGO compared to other nanocomposites and their respective counterparts. Functionalizing rGO induces defect states ( sp3), increasing NLO response. Cu, Ag, and Au exhibit higher Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) activity due to rGO-induced structural modifications. SERS signals are influenced by dominant signals from Au nanorods. The electronic structures for pure and doped rGO were investigated through Density Functional Theory (DFT). The computed partial density of states (PDOS) confirms the enhancement of the state in Au-doped rGO is due to the charge transference from Au to C 2p orbital. The optical absorption spectra and PDOS reveal the possibility of free carrier absorption enhancement in Au which validates experimentally observed higher two-photon absorption (β) value of Au-doped rGO. The tuning of nonlinear optical and SERS behaviour with variation in the noble metal upon rGO provides an easy way to attain tuneable properties which are exceedingly required in both optoelectronics and photonics applications.

Integration of noble metals on graphene is renowned for their catalytic and antioxidant prowess. However, utilization of toxic chemicals in the synthesis creates environmental pollution and poisonous nature of chemically synthesized materials. To address this, an economical and eco-friendly method for synthesizing graphene-gold (BRG-Au) nanocomposite by anchoring gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) onto reduced graphene oxide sheets using betel leaf extract as a reducing and stabilizing agent is presented. Comprehensive structural characterizations through UV–Visible, Raman, FT-IR, and XRD analyses confirm the successful formation of the BRG-Au nanocomposite. Morphological assessments utilizing FE-SEM and TEM techniques revealed the presence of transparent, twinkling graphene sheets embellished with 20 to 60 nm of Au NPs in various shapes, including spherical, triangular, pentagonal, circular, and trapezoids. The catalytic and antioxidant activities of the BRG-Au nanocomposite were thoroughly evaluated. In catalytic trials, the nanocomposite exhibited remarkable efficiency in the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol, accomplishing this transformation within a mere 30 min during the initial cycle and maintaining stable catalytic performance over three consecutive cycles. Additionally, antioxidant analyses employing Total Antioxidant Activity and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl methods demonstrated that BRG-Au nanocomposite possessed equal or superior antioxidant activity than the ascorbic acid standard. This research thus underscores the promising potential of environmentally benign synthesis method for graphene-gold nanocomposite with enhanced catalytic and antioxidant properties.

Since rice is the main food in Korea, there are no regulations on corn milling yet. Corn is known as one of the world's top three food crops along with wheat and rice, and it is known that 3.5 billion people worldwide use corn for food. In addition, corn mills are not developed or sold in Korea, but the use of corn mills is increasing significantly in many countries in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, as Korea's rice mill import increases, Korea's KAMICO (Korea Agricultural Machinery Industry Cooperative) and domestic company A agreed to develop a corn mill jointly with PHilMech, an organization affiliated with the Philippine Ministry of Agriculture. However, research on corn milling was very insignificant, so the development was carried out based on the technology of Korea's rice mill. Rice milling is performed by peeling off the skin of rice and producing brown or white rice, so it is carried out by removing the skin and cutting the skin. On the other hand, in the corn mill, the skin of the corn is peeled, pulverized and selected to produce main products suitable for edible use. Therefore, in order to develop a corn mill, processes such as peeling, transfer, grinding, sorting, and by-product separation are required, and suitable parts must be developed. In addition, the performance must be gradually improved through experiments in which corn is repeatedly milled. The Philippines produces 7.98 million tons/year of corn, which is about 100 times that of Korea, and is mostly consumed as a staple food. This is about 10% of the total crop production in the Philippines. In addition, the main cultivation complexes of corn are the mountainous regions of Tarlac or Pangasinan, and the produced corn is 72.4% of the so-called yellow corn called Arabel and Sarangani, and the remaining 27.6% are known as white corn. In this study, it was intended to produce grains of 2.5 mm or less suitable for food for yellow corn and to develop a corn mill for 200 kg per hour. Detailed conditions for development are stipulated as more than 55% of the main product recovery rate, more than 31% of the by-product recovery rate, less than 5% of the raw material loss rate, and more than 80% of the embryo dislocation rate. In this study, to achieve this, the overall process of the corn mill was developed, and the optimal conditions for the corn mill were obtained through the development of parts and empirical tests to improve performance. In addition, it was intended to achieve the development goal by evaluating and analyzing the performance of each part so that it did not conflict.

Synthesis of extremely competent materials is of great interest in addressing the energy storage concerns. Manganese oxide nanowires ( MnO2 NWs) are prepared in situ with multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and graphene oxide (GO) using a simple and effective hydrothermal method. Powder XRD, Raman and XPS analysis are utilized to examine the structural characteristics and chemical state of composites. The initial specific discharge capacity of pure MnO2 NWs, MnO2 NWs/ MWCNT and MnO2 NWs/rGO composites are 1225, 1589 and 1685 mAh/g, respectively. The MnO2 NWs/MWCNT and MnO2 NWs/rGO composites showed stable behavior with a specific capacity of 957 and 1108 mAh/g, respectively, after 60 cycles. Moreover, MnO2 NWs/rGO composite sustained a specific capacity of 784 mAh/g, even after 250 cycles at a current density of 1 A/g showing outstanding cycling stability.

New tetrazole fused imidazopyridine derivatives (12a–j) were developed to exploit their cytotoxic activity towards cancer cell lines-MCF7, A549, and MDA-MB-231, utilizing MTT reduction assay with doxorubicin as standard drug. The compounds 12 h and 12j demonstrated strong anticancer activity bearing IC50 values 1.44 μM and 1.33 μM against A549 cell line.

The mechanism of resonant light scattering in single-layer graphene is discussed. A new concept of electron–hole selfphotorecombination is proposed, which makes it possible to clearly separate the phenomena of resonant light scattering and resonant photoluminescence. It is established that Rayleigh resonant radiation has been found to consist of virtual and non-virtual components. It has been shown that Rayleigh radiation is mainly caused by resonant non-virtual optical transitions. The band of Rayleigh radiation due to resonant virtual transitions is quite wide, and the intensity is extremely low. On the basis of the presented theory, the results of numerical estimates of the linewidth and intensity of the Rayleigh band of single-layer graphene are in fairly good agreement with the experimental data.

Disinformation can distort real-world events and influence individuals’ decisions, posing a serious threat to society. However, moderating disinformation is still a major challenge for social network operators, as they are omnipresent, and social media’s ease-of-use, anonymity, and interconnectedness enables their rapid diffusion. Additionally, there is a lack of clear guidance on prioritizing content for censorship efforts. Until now, existing literature focuses on the virality of traditional online content, such as marketing campaigns, which are generally driven by positive emotions and arousal. Nevertheless, this type of content is vastly dissimilar from the hate-filled, misleading, and malicious content on social media platforms, rendering literature findings inapplicable when it comes to disinformation diffusion. So, what makes disinformation go viral? Using a unique dataset of ~400 million live-crawled messages on Twitter surrounding the US presidential election in 2020, our study analyzes which content and context characteristics drive the virality of disinformation. We classify ~10 million disinformation spread over ~50,000 distinct disinformation stories and (1) identify different diffusion trajectories of virality with the help of time series shape clustering. Moreover, to investigate the differing diffusion patterns, we (2) use state-of-the-art natural language processing to analyze linguistic and meta-level features. With that, this work provides ex-ante guidance to policymakers and network operators to help identify the most critical content on social media to curb the spread of threatening disinformation online. Furthermore, this study advances the overall understanding of disinformation diffusion by focusing exclusively on misleading content and the differences among them. Lastly, this work can add a new perspective to existing research by extensively quantifying the effects of viral disinformation online with a large-scale social media analysis.

Carbon/carbon composites are widely used in re-entry engineering applications thanks to their excellent mechanical properties at high temperatures, but they are easily oxidized in the oxygenated atmosphere. It is important to research their residual mechanical properties influenced by oxidation behaviour, in order to ensure the in-service safety. A microscale degradation model is proposed to predict the oxidation behavior based on the mass conservation and diffusion equations, the derived equivalent steady recession rate of composite is employed to evaluate the residual mechanical properties of the oxidized composite theoretically. A numerical strategy is proposed to investigate the oxidation mechanism of this composite. The differences in the degradation rate between the fiber and the matrix resulted in the steady state and an unchanged shape of the front. Residual mechanical properties of composite with three different domains of oxidation were simulated with a multiscale coupled model. The numerical results demonstrated that the mechanical properties of this composite decreased by 24–32% after oxidation for 30 min at 850 °C. Oxidation also caused the stress redistribution inside components, with the stress concentration diminishing their load-bearing capacity. The local areas of increased stress in the pyrocarbon matrix provided new ways for diffusion of oxygen into the pyrocarbon matrix and fibers.

In today’s world, carbon-based materials research is much wider wherein, it requires a lot of processing techniques to manufacture or synthesize. Moreover, the processing methods through which the carbon-based materials are derived from synthetic sources are of high cost. Processing of such hierarchical porous carbon materials (PCMs) was slightly complex and only very few methods render carbon nano-materials (CNMs) with high specific surface area. Once it is processed, which paves a path to versatile applications. CNMs derived from biological sources are widespread and their application spectrum is also very wide. This review focuses on biomass-derived CNMs from various plant sources for its versatile applications. The major thrust areas of energy storage include batteries, super-capacitors, and fuel cells which are described in this article. Meanwhile, the challenges faced during the processing of biomass-derived CNMs and their future prospects are also discussed comprehensively.

Рrecipitation of platinum group metals (Rh, Ru, Pd, so-called MPG) from the melt essentially affects the reliability of installations for vitrification of high-level liquid radioactive waste (HLW). To date, it is difficult to find an approach which allows simultaneous recovery of all three metals. The aim of our work was to select a sorbent that would provide simultaneous up to complete recovery of given metals. The following inorganic materials were tested as sorbents – yellow blood salt (YBS).and hexacyanoferrates of iron, aluminum, copper and nickel. The degree of metal recovery was studied is influenced by the temperature and concentration of nitric acid. Only palladium was completely recovered using YBS. At the same time, specially prepared iron hexacyanoferrate (HCF-Fe) under optimal experimental conditions recovers almost all Pd and more than 95% and 90% of Rh and Ru, respectively. The behavior of fission products, including the main dose-forming components of HLW (Cs, Sr) and Mo, U, Ag, REE) in the course of MPG recovery was studied. The experiments were carried using both multicomponent model solutions and real raffinates. Options for further management of the recovered metals have been worked out. Thus, the proposed method of metal recovery seems promising for the development of a technology for the removal of MPG from nitric HLW during the reprocessing of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) before vitrification. The recovered metals can be probably used in various technological processes. Also, this method can provide the MPG recovery from low-concentration tail solutions.

An efficient protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPs) has a positive impact on the economy as it can help attract foreign investment and encourage the advancement of science and technology. There has been much discussion among the ASEAN member States in harmonizing their IP systems to encourage registration and utilization of IPRs among them. However, many legal infrastructures should be prepared in each of the ASEAN member countries and at the ASEAN level before the harmonization of the IP system. In the patent area, the harmonization idea requires more effort since there is also a huge difference in technology development among them. This article discusses various strategies in harmonizing the patent system in the ASEAN member states. This author would look into similar regional organizations, such as the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization and the African Intellectual Property Organization to compare their patent systems to those of the ASEAN to promote the utilization of patents in the ASEAN region.

In this work, a nanocomposite containing gold (Au) nanofibers decorated iron-metal–organic framework (Fe-MOF) was successfully synthesized for electrochemical detection of acetaminophen (AAP). The as-synthesized Au@Fe-MOF nanocomposite was confirmed by various characterization techniques. Morphological analysis showed that the Au nanofibers with an average size of less than 10 nm were dispersed on the Fe-MOF. Cyclic voltammetric analysis showed that the Au@Fe-MOF nanocomposite showed well-defined redox peaks with higher current than that of GCE and Fe-MOF. The Au@Fe-MOF/ GCE exhibited a linear range, sensitivity, and detection limit of 0.5–18 μM, 4.95 μM/μA/cm2, and 0.12 μM, respectively. The Au@Fe-MOF/GCE showed a very low response for the interference materials. The real sample analysis revealed that the Au@Fe-MOF/GCE showed good recovery towards the AAP in urine and paracetamol. Therefore, the developed sensor can be used for quality control of AAP.

We report the behaviour of carbon black (CB) nanoparticles (spherical carbon shells), subjected to external pressure, using diamond anvil cell at synchrotron facility. CB nanoparticles have been synthesized by lamp black method using olive oil as combustion precursor and ferrocene as an organometallic additive. The catalyst-assisted CB has an iron oxide (γ-Fe2O3) core and amorphous carbon shell (i.e. core–shell structure). Our present study suggests that the carbon shells are partially transparent to the applied high pressure, and result in the reduction of effective pressure that gets transferred to the iron oxide core. High-pressure Raman spectroscopy results indicate that the surrounding carbon shells get compressed with pressure and this change is reversible. However, no structural transformation was observed till the highest applied pressure (25 GPa). The Raman spectroscopy results also suggests that the carbon shells are less pressure sensitive as their pressure coefficients (dω/dP) of G-peak were calculated (3.79 cm− 1/GPa) to be less than that for other carbon allotropes.

The central theme of this work is the synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) through the chemical vapor deposition method (CVD). Single-walled carbon nanotubes are synthesized using catalyst-chemical vapor deposition of acetylene at 750 °C temperature. X-ray diffraction study gives a characteristic peak (002) at 26.55° corresponding to the existence of carbon nanotube confirms that the particles are crystalline in nature and hexagonal phase. An SEM and HRTEM outcome gives surface morphology of SWCNTs. The elemental composition was confirmed by EDAX. The ideal concentration of single-walled carbon nanotubes was used to design a novel electrochemical sensor for determining paracetamol (PA) using cyclic voltammetry. Electrochemical determination of paracetamol is described using a single-walled carbon nanotube modified carbon paste electrode (SWCNT/MCPE). The SWCNT/MCPE was used in this study to detect paracetamol electrochemically at pH 7.2 in a 0.2 M PBS with a scan rate of 50 mV s− 1. A single-walled nanotube modified carbon paste electrode was used to develop a sensitive and selective electrochemical technique for the detection of PA. The SWCNT/MCPE showed excellent electrocatalytic activity towards the oxidation of paracetamol in phosphate buffer solution. Therefore, with increased oxidation currents, the voltammetric responses of paracetamol at the bare carbon paste electrode are organized within cyclic voltammetric peaks.

Individual multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were exposed to the electron beam of 200 kV energy and high resolution transmission electron micrographs were recorded at several time intervals. Interestingly, the nucleation of diamond nanoparticles with in the highly disordered MWCNT matrix upon electron-irradiation is observed. This happens without any assistance of high pressures and temperatures. High pressure X-ray diffraction experiments were performed on core/shell structures which suggest that even the closed structures of carbon resist any inward pressure, thereby ruling out the possibility of a hypothetical internal pressure under the electron irradiation conditions. Our experiments suggest that the transformation of graphitic carbon into diamond in the size window of a few nanometers is possible due to the stability of the diamond and a selective dissolution effect of 200 kV electrons on graphite. A mechanism for the same is proposed.