Increasing productivity and protein content using early-maturing rices and efficient nitrogen management

Germplasm with shorter duration than that of the currently grown varieties is being generated to maximize productivity of irrigated rice. However, short-duration varieties often produce yields lower than the medium- and long-duration varieties. Experiments were conducted during the 1980–82 dry and wet seasons to increase productivity through the use of very early-maturing rices and the improved management of nitrogen (N) fertilizers.Results over three years showed that IR58 and IR9729-67-3 (growth duration 100 ± 5 days) yield as well as or higher than IR36 although earlier maturing. They generally had a higher productivity (kg ha^–1 day^–1) than IR36 (110 ± 5 days).Three years' data suggest that the improved timing of broadcast applications of urea in split doses increased grain yield comparable with the basal incorporation of slow-release sulfur-coated urea (SCU) or deep point-placement of urea supergranules (USG).Results on elite breeding lines showed that the early-maturing IR9729-67-3 produced higher protein yield ha^–1 than longer duration varieties such as IR8 and IR42 in the dry season. Furthermore, contrary to earlier results, single basal incorporation of slow-release SCU increased the protein yield of rice by 53 kg ha^–1 and deep point-placement of USG by 43 kg ha^–1 over split application of prilled urea.     

Studies on the reaction of bis(diisopropyl) thiophosphoryl disulfide with silica in the vulcanization of NR

The reaction between bis(diisopropyl) thiophosphoryl disulfide (DIPDIS) and silica has been investigated. The study reveals that DIPDIS can be used as a coupling agent for silica. The chemical bond between the silanol groups of silica and DIPDIS has been established through the isolation and characterization of isopropyl alcohol that is eliminated from the reaction. The chemical nature of the bond is also supported by the IR analysis of the reaction products of silica and DIPDIS obtained both in the presence and absence of rubber. From the exploratory studies it is indicated that DIPDIS can also react with NR even during mixing of ingredients. When used with 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT) or N-oxydiethylene-2-benzothiazole sulfenamide (OBTS) in the presence of silica, DIPDIS exhibits notable activation of cure and enhances the torque, modulus, tensile strength, and the scorch safety.     

Combustion of single char particles in a turbulent fluidized bed

The combustion of single bituminous char particles (4-12 mm diameter) was studied in a turbulent fluidized bed operated at 1098 K using air as the fluidising medium. Results indicated that particles burn with constant density following a shrinking sphere model. Burning rates are much higher than those observed in a bubbling fluidized bed. The rate of transfer of oxygen to the particle surface is also higher than that observed in bubbling beds. A model is proposed to calculate the Sherwood numbers of the burning carbon particles. Experimental values of the Sherwood numbers agree well with those predicted from the model.     

PARTICLE-LIQUID MASS TRANSFER IN MULTIIMPELLER MECHANICALLY AGITATED CONTACTORS

The mass transfer coefficients between solid particles and liquids in high aspect ratio contactors agitated by multiple impellers have been reported. Two vessel sizes i.e., 0.15 m and 0.30m I.D. each with a length of 1.0 m were used. The effects of particle size, liquid viscosity and agitation speed were studied using two types of impellers, i.e., disc turbine (DT) and pitched turbine downflow (PTD). The spacings between two impellers were maintained at tank diameter. A simple mass transfer correlation based on critical suspension speed is proposed.     

A piezoelectric model based multi-objective optimization of robot gripper design

The field of robotics is evolving at a very high pace and with its increasing applicability in varied fields, the need to incorporate optimization analysis in robot system design is becoming more prominent. The present work deals with the optimization of the design of a 7-link gripper. As actuators play a crucial role in functioning of the gripper, the actuation system (piezoelectric (PZ), in this case) is also taken into consideration while performing the optimization study. A minimalistic model of PZ actuator, consisting different series and parallel assembly arrangements for both mechanical and electrical parts of the PZ actuators, is proposed. To include the effects of connector spring, the relationship of force with actuator displacement is replaced by the relation between force and the displacement of point of actuation at the physical system. The design optimization problem of the gripper is a non-linear, multi modal optimization problem, which was originally formulated by Osyczka (2002). In the original work, however, the actuator was a ‘constant output-force actuator model’ providing a constant output without describing the internal structure. Thus, the actuator model was not integrated in the optimization study. Four different cases of the PZ modelling have been solved using multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). Relationship between force and actuator displacement is obtained using each set of non-dominated solutions. These relationships can provide a better insight to the end user to select the appropriate voltage and gripper design for specific application.     

Multi-input optical parallel logic processing with the shadow-casting technique

The lensless shadow-casting technique for coded pattern processing usually accommodates two inputs at a time to perform desired logical operations in parallel. A method of binary encoding is proposed that can accommodate multiple input patterns for simultaneous processing. With the proposed multiple-input encoding a carry-look-ahead technique of binary addition is developed that requires fewer processing steps than the conventional ripple-carry method. Experimental results for a few logic-processing operations are included to establish the validity of the proposed technique.     

Development of a biological detection platform utilizing a modular microfluidic stack

The goal of this project is to build a miniaturized, user-friendly cytometry setup (Datta et al. in Microfluidic platform for education and research. COMS, Baton Rouge, 2008; Frische et al. in Development of an miniaturized flow cytometry setup for visual cell inspection and sorting. Baton Rouge, Project Report, 2008) by combining a customized, microfluidic device with visual microscope inspection to detect and extract specific cells from a continuous sample flow. We developed a cytological tool, based on the Coulter particle counter principle, using a microelectrode array patterned on a borosilicate glass chip as electrical detection set-up which is fully embedded into a polymeric multi-layer microfluidic stack. The detection takes place between pairs of coplanar Cr/Au microelectrodes by sensing an impedance change caused by particles continuously carried within a microfluidic channel across the detection area under laminar flow conditions. A wide frequency range available for counting provides information on cell size, membrane capacitance, cytoplasm conductivity and is potentially of interest for in-depth cell diagnostic e.g. to detect damaged or cancerous cells and select them for extraction and further in-depth analysis.     

Multi-objective optimization of multicast overlays for collaborative applications

Current real-time collaborative application implementations use dedicated infrastructure to carry out all communication and synchronization activities. Specifically, they require all end nodes to communicate directly with and through the central server. In this paper, we investigate scenarios in which the most resource intensive functionality of continuous communication among collaborators to disseminate changes is decentralized, utilizing the end users themselves as relays. We observe that communication characteristics of real-time collaboration makes use of existing multicast mechanisms unsuitable. As collaborative editing sessions are typically long and repeated, it is possible to gather and leverage node behavior (their instabilities and frequency of sending updates) and communication links (latencies and average costs). Several criteria to determine the quality of a multicast tree can be identified: cost, latency and instability. In this paper, we analyze the complexity of the problem of finding optimal communication topologies, and propose approximate algorithms to optimize the same. We also consider the multiobjective problem in which we search for a topology that provides good trade-off between these sometimes conflicting measures. Validation of our proposed algorithms on numerous graphs shows that it is important to consider the multiobjective problem, as optimal solutions for one performance measure can be far from optimal for the other metrics. Finally, we briefly present an implementation of a communication library that uses the proposed algorithms to periodically adjust the dissemination tree.     

Bridging the gap: effect of text query reformulation in multimodal retrieval

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Multimodal Retrieval provides new paradigms and methods aimed at effectively searching through the enormous volume of data. Multimodal retrieval is a well...     

On negative results when using sentiment analysis tools for software engineering research

Recent years have seen an increasing attention to social aspects of software engineering, including studies of emotions and sentiments experienced and expressed by the software developers. Most of these studies reuse existing sentiment analysis tools such as SentiStrength and NLTK. However, these tools have been trained on product reviews and movie reviews and, therefore, their results might not be applicable in the software engineering domain. In this paper we study whether the sentiment analysis tools agree with the sentiment recognized by human evaluators (as reported in an earlier study) as well as with each other. Furthermore, we evaluate the impact of the choice of a sentiment analysis tool on software engineering studies by conducting a simple study of differences in issue resolution times for positive, negative and neutral texts. We repeat the study for seven datasets (issue trackers and Stack Overflow questions) and different sentiment analysis tools and observe that the disagreement between the tools can lead to diverging conclusions. Finally, we perform two replications of previously published studies and observe that the results of those studies cannot be confirmed when a different sentiment analysis tool is used.