Planning for the Subernarekha river system in eastern India

The study describes the systems studies carried out to plan a river basin in order to determine the nature and size of water storage facilities and releases for irrigation and industrial uses, and the associated cropping pattern. The model has been formulated in the framework of a linear programming model for a specific target year. This model is developed in the context of planning the Subernarekha river basin. The results are discussed and these provide information and insight suggesting the need for more disaggregated analysis of interaction between irrigation and related agroeconomic parameters.     

Recent developments in aerosol measurement techniques and the metrological issues

A small error in the aerosol measurements can lead to a considerable influence on our understanding towards its impact on climate. To better simulate aerosol effects on the earth’s radiation budget, the chemical and physical characterizations of aerosol particles with accurate measurements have been a key interest in the aerosol research for last several decades. Recent advances in the chemical characterization of aerosols at bulk and molecular levels, and their physical characterization, such as size distribution, hygroscopicity, and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activity have improved our knowledge to better understand the aerosol sources, concentration distributions, atmospheric processing and their potential climate impacts. Apart from the complexity of atmospheric aerosols, because of the limited availability of aerosol certified reference materials, traceability data and measurement protocols, it is still a challenging task to measure the aerosol properties with reduced uncertainty. The recent developments on aerosol analytical techniques (on-line and off-line), which include gas chromatography/flame ionization detector (GC/FID)/mass spectrometry (MS)/isotope ratio mass spectrometry (irMS), ion chromatography (IC), organic carbon/elemental carbon (OC/EC) and water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) analyzers, and physical measurements using scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS), hygroscopicity tandem differential mobility analyzer (HTDMA) and cloud condensation nuclei-counter (CCN-C) are discussed with the metrological issues in the measurements. The importance of aerosol metrology is highlighted giving the data obtained from the laboratory studies and aerosol field campaigns.     

A cost-benefit analysis of a third camera for stereo correspondence

This paper looks at the twin issues of the gain in accuracy of stereo correspondence and the accompanying increase in computational cost due to the use of a third camera for stereo analysis. Trinocular stereo algorithms differ from binocular algorithms essentially in the epipolar constraint used in the local matching stage. The current literature does not provide any insight into the relative merits of binocular and trinocular stereo matching with the matching accuracy being verified aginst the ground truth. Experiments for evaluating the relative performance of binocular and trinocular stereo algorithms were conducted. The stereo images used for the performance evaluation were generated by applying a Lambertian reflectance model to real Digital Elevation Maps (DEMs) available from the U.S. Geological Survey. The matching accuracy of the stereo algorithms was evaluated by comparing the observed stereo disparity against the ground truth derived from the DEMs. It was observed that trinocular local matching reduced the percentage of mismatches having large disparity errors by more than half when compared to binocular matching. On the other hand, trinocular stereopsis increased the computational cost of local matching over binocular by only about one-fourth. We also present a quantization-error analysis of the depth reconstruction process for the nonparallel stereo-imaging geometry used in our experiments.     

Zincated Nanoclay Polymer Composites (ZNCPCs): Synthesis,Characterization, Biodegradation and Controlled Release Behaviour in Soil

Novel zincated nanoclay polymer composites (ZNCPCs) with variable percentage of commercial bentonite and nanobentonite (8%, 10% and 12% of monomer for each case) were synthesized. Polyacrylic acid-Polyacrylamide copolymer was synthesized using N, N-Methylene bisacrylamide as crosslinker and ammonium persulfate as initiator. Clays as well as ZNCPCs were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM and FTIR. 12% nanoclay containing formulation showed slowest release rate. ZNCPCs containing 8% clay recorded highest Zn content as well as highest equilibrium water absorbency. Biodegradation study revealed that Aspergillus spp was more effective as compared with Trichoderma spp in degradation of ZNCPCs.     

Fabrication of low-loss IR-transmitting Ge30As10Se30Te30 glass fibers

Improved purification and processing techniques have been utilized to fabricate Ge₃₀As₁₀Se₃₀Te₃₀ glass fibers with a minimum loss of O.11 dB/m at 6.6 μm. This is the lowest loss reported for any telluride glass fiber in the infrared region. Furthermore, the fibers exhibit less than 1 dB/m loss between 5.25 and 9.5 μm     

Refining competitive electricity market rules to unlock flexibility

Competitive electricity markets are undergoing a rapid transformation from systems with large, inflexible baseload resources to ones with smaller, modular, variable resources. Making the grid more flexible is critical to enabling a smooth transition. A significant amount of unused flexibility exists in the system today, but harnessing it requires changes to market rules.     

Reliability properties of low-voltage ferroelectric capacitors and memory arrays

We report on the reliability properties of ferroelectric capacitors and memory arrays embedded in a 130-nm CMOS logic process with 5LM Cu/FSG. Low voltage (<1.5 V) operation is enabled by the 70-nm thick MOCVD PZT ferroelectric films. Data loss resulting from high temperature bakes is primarily caused by the imprint effect, which shows /spl sim/1.5 eV time-to-fail activation energy. Excellent bit endurance properties are observed on fully packaged memory arrays, with no degradation up to 10/sup 13/ write/read polarization switching cycles. Retention measured after 10/sup 12/ switching cycles demonstrates no degradation relative to arrays with minimal cycling.     

Low energy oblique ion beam sputtering induced surface engineering of polyethylene terephthalate

ABSTRACT

In the present work, the self-organized pattern formation with simultaneous surface smoothing of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by 40 keV Ar+ ions irradiation has been discussed. The effect of most important experimental parameter i.e. ion beam incidence that control these processes has been discussed by varying off normal incidences from 30⁰ to 50⁰. The changes in surface topography have been studied using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). It has been investigated from AFM analysis that oblique ion beam induced sputtering significantly reduced the surface roughness with simultaneous formation of some hillock and hole like structures.     

Synthesis and anti-bacterial activity of novel dihydrochromeno[8,7-e][1,3]oxazine-2(8H)-thiones

A novel series of sulfur-containing dihydrochromeno[8,7-e][1,3]oxazine-2(8H)-thiones has been synthesized through an eco-friendly Mannich-type condensation cyclization reaction of 7-hydroxy-4-methyl-2-thiocoumarin or 6-chloro-7-hydroxy-4-methyl-2-thiocoumarin with formaldehyde and primary amines in water at 80–90°C for 2 h. All the synthesized compounds were screened for their in vitro anti-bacterial efficacy against two Gram-positive and three Gram-negative bacterial strains by using the disc diffusion method. The compound (8c) was found to be most potent with the zone of inhibition of 16 and 15 mm against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 2937 and Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 31488, respectively.