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The methanolic fraction of the root extract of Mikania cordata was found to possess an inhibitory effect on carrageenin and other mediator-induced oedema; there was a significant inhibition of protein exudation, an increase in peritoneal capillary permeability and leucocyte migration in inflammatory conditions. The extract significantly inhibited both cotton pellet and carrageenin-induced granuloma formation, was effective in experimentally induced arthritic conditions and turpentine-induced joint oedema. The extract also possessed inhibitory effects on sodium urate-induced experimental gout. A significant reduction of pyrexia was also found to occur when rats were treated with the extract. Thus it may be concluded that the methanolic fraction of M. cordata root extract possessed significant antiinflammatory effects in exudative, proliferative and chronic phases of inflammation and demonstrated an antipyretic activity.

An improved mathematical model to study the free vibration behavior of rotating functionally graded material beam is presented, considering non-linearity up to second order for the normal and transverse shear strains. The study is carried out considering thermal loading due to uniform temperature rise and using temperature-dependent material properties. Power law variation is assumed for through-thickness symmetric functional gradation of ceramic-metal functionally graded beam. The effects of shear deformation and rotary inertia are considered in the framework of Timoshenko beam theory. First, the rotating beam configuration under time-invariant centrifugal loading and thermal loading is obtained through a geometrically non-linear analysis, employing minimum total potential energy principle. Then, the free vibration analysis of the deformed beam is performed using the tangent stiffness of the deformed beam configuration, and employing Hamilton's principle. The Coriolis effect is considered in the free vibration problem, and the governing equations are transformed to the state-space to obtain the eigenvalue problem. The solution of the governing equations is obtained following Ritz method. The validation is performed with the available results, and also with finite element software ANSYS. The analysis is carried out for clamped-free beam and for clamped-clamped beam with immovably clamped ends. The results for the first two modes of chord-wise and flap-wise vibration in non-dimensional speed-frequency plane are presented for different functionally graded material compositions, material profile parameters, root offset parameters and operating temperatures.

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The optimization of industrial processes is a critical task for leveraging profitability and sustainability. To ensure the selection of optimum process parameter levels in any industrial process, numerous metaheuristic algorithms have been proposed so far. However, many algorithms are either computationally too expensive or become trapped in the pit of local optima. To counter these challenges, in this paper, a hybrid metaheuristic called PSO-GSA is employed that works by combining the iterative improvement capability of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and gravitational search algorithm (GSA). A binary PSO is also fused with GSA to develop a BPSO-GSA algorithm. Both the hybrid algorithms i.e., PSO-GSA and BPSO-GSA, are compared against traditional algorithms, such as tabu search (TS), genetic algorithm (GA), differential evolution (DE), GSA and PSO algorithms. Moreover, another popular hybrid algorithm DE-GA is also used for comparison. Since earlier works have already studied the performance of these algorithms on mathematical benchmark functions, in this paper, two real-world-applicable independent case studies on biodiesel production are considered. Based on the extensive comparisons, significantly better solutions are observed in the PSO-GSA algorithm as compared to the traditional algorithms. The outcomes of this work will be beneficial to similar studies that rely on polynomial models.