Prediction of Fatigue Life in Plain Concrete Using Entropy Production

An energy approach within the framework of thermodynamics is used to model the fatigue process in plain concrete. Fatigue crack growth is an irreversible process associated with an irreversible entropy gain. A closed-form expression for entropy generated during fatigue in terms of energy dissipated is derived using principles of dimensional analysis and self-similarity. An increase in compliance is considered as a measure of damage accumulated during fatigue. The entropy at final fatigue failure is shown to be independent of loading and geometry and is proposed as a material property. A relationship between energy dissipated and number of cycles of fatigue loading is obtained. (C) 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Single Spin Asymmetry in Charmonium Production

We present estimates of single spin asymmetry (SSA) in the electroproduction of taking into account the transverse momentum dependent (TMD) evolution of the gluon Sivers function and using Color Evaporation Model of charmonium production. We estimate SSA for JLab, HERMES, COMPASS and eRHIC energies using recent parameters for the quark Sivers functions which are fitted using an evolution kernel in which the perturbative part is resummed up to next-to-leading logarithms accuracy. We find that these SSAs are much smaller as compared to our first estimates obtained using DGLAP evolution but are comparable to our estimates obtained using TMD evolution where we had used approximate analytical solution of the TMD evolution equation for the purpose.

Production and preliminary evaluation of Trypanosoma evansi HSP70 for antibody detection in Equids

The present immuno-diagnostic method using soluble antigens from whole cell lysate antigen for trypanosomosis have certain inherent problems like lack of standardized and reproducible antigens, as well as ethical issues due to in vivo production, that could be alleviated by in vitro production. In the present study we have identified heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) from T. evansi proteome. The nucleotide sequence of T. evansi HSP70 was 2116 bp, which encodes 690 amino acid residues. The phylogenetic analysis of T. evansi HSP70 showed that T. evansi occurred within Trypanosoma clade and is most closely related to T. brucei brucei and T. brucei gambiense, whereas T. congolense HSP70 laid in separate clade. The two partial HSP70 sequences (HSP-1 from N-terminal region and HSP-2 from C-terminal region) were expressed and evaluated as diagnostic antigens using experimentally infected equine serum samples. Both recombinant proteins detected antibody in immunoblot using serum samples from experimental infected donkeys with T. evansi. Recombinant HSP-2 showed comparable antibody response to Whole cell lysate (WCL) antigen in immunoblot and ELISA. The initial results indicated that HSP70 has potential to detect the T. evansi infection and needs further validation on large set of equine serum samples.

In Vitro Production of Echioidinin, 7-O-Methywogonin from Callus Cultures of Andrographis lineata and Their Cytotoxicity on Cancer Cells

Andrographis lineata is an herbal medicinal plant used in traditional medicine as a substitute for Andrographis paniculata. Here, using mature leaf explants of A. lineata we demonstrate for the first time the callus induction established on MS medium containing 1.0 mg l(-1) IAA. Dried callus was subjected to solvent extraction with acetone. Further the acetone residue was separated by silica gel column chromatography, crystallized and characterized on the basis of nuclear magnetic resonance (proton and c13) and liquid chromatographic mass spectroscopy. This analysis revealed the occurrence of two known flavones namely, 7-O-methylwogonin (MW) and Echioidinin (ED). Furthermore, these compounds were tested for their cytotoxicity against leukemic cell line, CEM. We identify that ED and MW induced cytotoxicity in a time-and concentration-dependent manner. Further increase in the LDH release upon treatment with ED and MW further confirmed our cytotoxicity results against leukemic cell line. Strikingly, MW was more potent than ED when compared by trypan blue and MTT assays. Our results recapitulate the utility of callus cultures for the production of plant specific bioactive secondary metabolites instead of using wild plants. Together, our in vitro studies provide new insights of A. lineata callus cultures serving as a source for cancer chemotherapeutic agents.

Design of a manual press for the production of compacted stabilized soil blocks

In this paper, we discuss the design of a manually operated soil compaction machine that is being used to manufacture stabilized soil blocks (SSB). A case study of manufacturing more than three million blocks in a housing project using manually operated machines is illustrated. The paper is focussed on the design, development, and evaluation of a manually operated soil compaction machine for the production of SSB. It also details the machine design philosophy, compaction characteristics of soils, employment generation potential of small-scale stabilized soil block productions systems, and embodied energy. Static compaction of partially saturated soils was performed to generate force-displacement curves in a confined compaction process were generated. Based on the soil compaction data engineering design aspects of a toggle press are illustrated. The results of time and motion study on block production operations using manual machines are discussed. Critical path network diagrams were used for small-scale SSB production systems. Such production systems generate employment at a very low capital cost.

Quark and gluon distribution functions in a viscous quark-gluon plasma medium and dilepton production via q(q)over-bar annihilation

Viscous modifications to the thermal distributions of quark-antiquarks and gluons have been studied in a quasiparticle description of the quark-gluon-plasma medium created in relativistic heavy-ion collision experiments. The model is described in terms of quasipartons that encode the hot QCD medium effects in their respective effective fugacities. Both shear and bulk viscosities have been taken in to account in the analysis, and the modifications to thermal distributions have been obtained by modifying the energy-momentum tensor in view of the nontrivial dispersion relations for the gluons and quarks. The interactions encoded in the equation of state induce significant modifications to the thermal distributions. As an implication, the dilepton production rate in the q (q) over bar annihilation process has been investigated. The equation of state is found to have a significant impact on the dilepton production rate along with the viscosities.

MULTI-INSTRUMENT DETECTION IN POLYPHONIC MUSIC USING GAUSSIAN MIXTURE BASED FACTORIAL HMM

We formulate the problem of detecting the constituent instruments in a polyphonic music piece as a joint decoding problem. From monophonic data, parametric Gaussian Mixture Hidden Markov Models (GM-HMM) are obtained for each instrument. We propose a method to use the above models in a factorial framework, termed as Factorial GM-HMM (F-GM-HMM). The states are jointly inferred to explain the evolution of each instrument in the mixture observation sequence. The dependencies are decoupled using variational inference technique. We show that the joint time evolution of all instruments' states can be captured using F-GM-HMM. We compare performance of proposed method with that of Student's-t mixture model (tMM) and GM-HMM in an existing latent variable framework. Experiments on two to five polyphony with 8 instrument models trained on the RWC dataset, tested on RWC and TRIOS datasets show that F-GM-HMM gives an advantage over the other considered models in segments containing co-occurring instruments.

Investigations into enhanced wax production with combustion synthesized Fischer-Tropsch catalysts

Combustion synthesized (CS) cobalt catalysts deposited over two supports, alumina and silica doped alumina (SDA), were characterized and tested for its Fischer-Tropsch (FT) activity. The properties of CS catalysts were compared to catalysts synthesized by conventional impregnation method (IWI). The CS catalysts resulted in 40-70% increase in the yield of C6+ hydrocarbons compared to MI catalysts. The FT activity for CS catalysts showed formation of long chain hydrocarbon waxes (C24+) compared to the formation of middle distillates (C-10-C-20) for IWI synthesized catalysts, indicating higher hydrocarbon chain growth probability for CS catalysts. This is ascribed to the smaller crystallite sizes, increased degree of cobalt reduction and consequentially, a higher number of active metal sites, exposed over the catalyst surface. Additionally, 12-13% increase in the overall C6+ hydrocarbon yield is realized for SDA-CS catalysts, compared to Al2O3-CS catalysts. The improved performance of CS-SDA catalysts is attributed to 48% increase in cobalt dispersion compared to Al2O3 supported CS catalysts, which is again caused by the decrease in the cobalt -support interaction for SDA supports. The metal support interactions were analyzed using XPS and H-2 TPR-TPD experiments. Combustion method produced catalysts with smaller crystallite size (17-18 nm), higher degree of reduction (similar to 92%) and higher metal dispersion (16.1%) compared to the IWI method. Despite its enhanced properties, the CS catalysts require prominently higher reduction temperatures (similar to 1100-1200 K). The hydrocarbon product analysis for Al2O3 supported catalyst showed higher paraffin wax concentrations compared to SDA supported catalysts, due to the lower surface basicity of Al2O3. This work reveals the impact of the CS catalysts and the nature of support on FT activity and hydrocarbon product spectrum. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.