Environmental Technology Division

The solid resinous product (SRP) containing unsaturated/saturated dicarboxylic acid residues, phthalic acid and maleic acid is discharged as a solid waste during cracking of benzene over vanadium at temperatures above 500°C in the dicarboxylic acid manufacturing industry. In the present study the solid waste was diluted with water to a concentration of 0.5% w/v for microbial degradation. The waste was fermented in a reactor containing mesoporous activated carbon on which was immobilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae at an optimum residence time of 24 h at pH 6.5. The immobilized-yeast-treated samples were further treated in an upflow anaerobic reactor at an hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 0.1038 days at a hydraulic flow rate of 7.34 × 10−3 m3/day and chemical oxygen demand (COD) loading rate of 2.19 kg/m3/day. The pathway followed in the degradation of dicarboxylic acid into end products by anaerobic metabolism in the yeast cell fermentor and in the upflow anaerobic reactor was confirmed through HPLC, Fourier transform infra red spectroscopy and proton and 13C NMR spectroscopy.

Evaluation and ranking of every author is very crucial as it is widely used to evaluate the performance of the researcher. This article proposes a new method, called Bh-Index, to evaluate the researchers based on the publications and citations. The method is built on h-Index and only the h-core articles are taken into consideration. The method assigns value additions to those articles that receive significantly high citations in comparison to the h-Index of the researcher. It provides a wide range of values for a given h-Index and effective evaluation even for a short period. Use of Bh-Index along with the h-Index gives a powerful tool to evaluate the researchers.

Databases of Web of Science and Scopus show significant variations in the number of articles published by some journals. The number of articles published in a given journal may not be reflected as such in terms of numbers in both the databases. Such variations are often found in those journals that publish articles such as editorials, news, letter, etc. in addition to the research articles and reviews. In certain journals, the databases selectively categorize some of the articles as citable articles which the journals themselves specify as editorial, news, policy forum and book review. These variations lead to inappropriate evaluation of journals. This article highlights the occurrence of such discrepancies and variations in the databases and calls for accuracy and efficiency in compilation of the data.

Aggregated Citations of Cited Articles (ACCA) is a methodology for evaluation of scientific journals. ACCA is formulated based on a concept of discrete elemental system that is applicable to a number of fields such as physics, chemistry, etc. It considers journal as a discrete element system whose overall performance is measured only through the active articles and their citations. Evaluation of only the cited articles allows the journals to retain their originality in nature and variety in publication of documents, for which they are known, without affecting the ranking of the journal. The paper explains the theory and practical application of ACCA for the evaluation of the journals.