A family of thioxanthato ruthenium and osmium aryls

The title complexes of type M(RL²)(PPh₃)₂(CO)(S₂CSEt) ( 2a : M = Ru; 2b : M = Os) have been synthesized in excellent yields by reacting M(RL¹)(PPh₃)₂(CO)X ( 1a : M = Ru, × = Cl; 1b : M = Os, × = Br) with potassium ethyl thioxanthate and have been characterized with the help of spectral and electrochemical data. The RL² ligand in 2 is the imine-phenol tautomer of N-C₆H₄R(p)-4-methylsalicylaldimine (R = Me, MeO, Cl) coordinated at the carbanionic-C2 atom only while RL¹ in 1 is the iminium-phenolato tautomer chelated via carbanionic-C2 and phenolato-O atoms. The synthetic reaction is thus attended with tautomerization of the Schiff base ligand. It is also associated with a rotation of the ligand by ˜180° around the M–C bond in order to exclude steric repulsion. These features have been revealed by structure determination of 2a (R = Me). The metallated aldimine ring is found to be highly noncoplanar (dihedral angle ˜40°) with the thioxanthate chelate ring due to steric repulsion originating from the relatively large size of the sulfur atom. This phenomenon, which is absent in both the precursor 1 (R = Me) and in the carboxylate analogue Ru(MeL²)(PPh₃)₂(CO)(O₂CMe), 7 , has distinctive effects on bond parameters of 2a (R = Me). Thus the two Ru–P bonds in 2a (R = Me) differ in length by as much as 0.06 Å. The thioxanthate 2 is thermodynamically more stable than the precursor 1 as well as the carboxylate 7 . Accordingly, both of these are irreversibly transformed to 2a (R = Me) upon treatment with thioxanthate.     

Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques with Groundwater Flow Modeling for Assessment of Waterlogged Areas

False Colour Composites (FCC's) of IRS-1A LISS-II sensor pertaining to the dates 9th April 1989 and 7th December 1989 are used to delineate the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon surface waterlogged areas in a region around Habibpur sub-distributary bounded by Vaishali branch canal and Gandak river in North Bihar, India for the year 1989 using visual interpretation technique. Also, digital data of IRS-1C LISS-III sensor pertaining to the dates 7th December 1998 and 6th April 1999 are analyzed in a digital image processing software – ERDAS Imagine 8.3.1, to delineate the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon surface waterlogged areas for the year 1998–1999. Further, for the study area, the waterlogging conditions are delineated for the year 1991–1992 using the groundwater flow modeling software package, MODFLOW. The results obtained using satellite remote sensing data and groundwater flow modeling are integrated in a GIS environment in ERDAS Imagine for assessment of the waterlogging areas.     

Failure Analysis of Stacker-cum-Reclaimer in Ore Handling Plant

A catastrophic failure of a Stacker-cum-Reclaimer led to loss of several days of service in one ore handling plant in India. The failure was severe enough to initiate an investigation into the possible causes of failure and estimation of the residual life for other units of Stacker-cum-Reclaimer of the same design and age, working in the plant. The failure analysis included a visual inspection of the failed structure, metallographic studies, static stress and stability analysis under normal operating conditions, stress analysis for a possible impact load on the structure, experimental stress analysis, and fatigue life cycle analysis. The results obtained indicate that the failure could be caused by an impact load arising out of some operational conditions resulting from the conditions of the rail track on which the machine travels. The material properties, the physical conditions of the material, and a fatigue analysis indicate that the existing system can work for several more decades, provided some checkpoints are planned and instituted to monitor the health of the structure at regular intervals.     

Studies on distribution of filament length and non-broken filament length for tropical tasar and muga silk cocoons vis-à-vis mulberry silk cocoons

Non-broken filament length (NBFL) is one of the most important quality parameter of silk cocoon because it is directly proportional to reeling speed. Due to excessive breaks during withdrawal of filament from tasar cocoons, the average NBFL ranges from 150 to 175 m. The average NBFL of muga cocoon is at par with tasar cocoons because of lower filament length. In case of mulberry silk cocoons, the average NBFL is above 450 m due to higher filament length and occurrence of very few breaks during reeling. The statistical term skewness denotes the asymmetry in distribution of data. The maximum frequency i.e. mode value for NBFL of tasar and muga cocoons is lower than median and average and hence the skewness is positive. In case of mulberry varieties, negative value of skewness is observed as the mode value is higher than median and average. This parameter establishes the reason for higher reeling speed about 100 m/min for mulberry cocoons as against only 25 m/min in case of tasar and muga cocoons.     

The thermoelastic martensitic transformation in β′ Ni-Al alloys: II. Electron microscopy

The substructure of martensite in a 63.4 at. pct Ni-Al alloy was studied by transmission electron microscopy with particular attention to the “mixed” martensite morphologies observed in Ni-Al alloys, {111} <11?2>_fct transformation twinning was the only mode of lattice-invariant shear found and the measured twin thicknesses lead to an inhomogeneous shear value,m ₂, in excellent agreement with that predicted from the crystallographic theory. The internal twins in the martensite plates forming characteristic mixed morphologies were found to be at definite angles to one another and these angles were carefully measured to be 96 deg and 125 deg for the “fork” type or “spear” type martensite morphologies. The corresponding angles as predicted from the Bowles-Mackenzie theory are 94.2 deg and 124.4 deg. The interface plane between the martensite variants that form the spear type morphology was found to be a {011}_β' type plane with the internal twins in each variant twin related to each other across this mirror plane.     

Relaxation studies on V2O5-TeO2 glasses using heterogeneous conductor model

The dielectric modulus spectra of glasses in the system V₂O₅-TeO₂ have been studied as a function of frequency in the temperature range 230 to 330K. A heterogeneous conductor model developed recently with the assumption of a sinusoidally varying local conductivity in the conducting phase has been successfully applied to analyse the data in this glass system. The Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts (KWW) stretched exponential function has also been used to fit the measured modulus spectra. The exponentβ is found to be correlated to the conductivity fluctuation in the conducting phase as assumed in the heterogeneous model.     

Diffusion and electrical conductivity studies in some heterophase glasses containing bismuth

Self-diffusion coefficients of sodium in the temperature range 300 to 375° C have been measured for glasses in the system Na₂O-B₂O₃-Bi₂O₃-SiO₂, by using a radioactive tracer technique. All these glasses have a two-phase structure. The d.c. resistivities of these glasses were also measured over the temperature range 30 to 375° C. The correlation factors,f, of all the samples have been calculated by using the diffusion coefficients and d.c. resistivity values for temperatures above 300° C. The anomalously largef values in the case of Bi₂O₃-containing glasses are thought to be due to a distribution of sodium ions in the dispersed as well as the continuous phases in these systems.     

Automated and semi-automated cell tracking: addressing portability challenges

Cell tracking is a key task in the high-throughput quantitative study of important biological processes, such as immune system regulation and neurogenesis. Variability in cell density and dynamics in different videos, hampers portability of existing trackers across videos. We address these potability challenges in order to develop a portable cell tracking algorithm. Our algorithm can handle noise in cell segmentation as well as divisions and deaths of cells. We also propose a parameter-free variation of our tracker. In the tracker, we employ a novel method for recovering the distribution of cell displacements. Further, we present a mathematically justified procedure for determining the gating distance in relation to tracking performance. For the range of real videos tested, our tracker correctly recovers on average 96% of cell moves, and outperforms an advanced probabilistic tracker when the cell detection quality is high. The scalability of our tracker was tested on synthetic videos with up to 200 cells per frame. For more challenging tracking conditions, we propose a novel semi-automated framework that can increase the ratio of correctly recovered tracks by 12%, through selective manual inspection of only 10% of all frames in a video.     

Optical properties of bismuth granules in a glass matrix

Optical absorption characteristics for ultra-fine bismuth particles having dimensions around 10 nm and dispersed in both silicate and vanadium phosphate glass matrices have been investigated in the wavelength range 300 to 700 nm. Bismuth particles in vanadium phosphate matrix show an absorption peak around 440 nm whereas in silicate glass matrix they give two peaks in the ranges 500 to 530 nm and 420 to 430 nm respectively. The peak positions in all the glass-bismuth metal systems are predicted in fair agreement with experiment by Maxwell-Garnett (mg), as extended by Polder and van Santen (mg-pvs) and Bruggeman (br) effective medium theories. It is observed, however, thatmg-pvs andbr models give the best fit to experimental data over the entire wavelength range studied.