LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS MODELING THROUGH INTEGRATED MARKOV, FUZZY-AHP AND CELLULAR AUTOMATA

Multi temporal land use information were derived using two decades remote sensing data and simulated for 2012 and 2020 with Cellular Automata (CA) considering scenarios, change probabilities (through Markov chain) and Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE). Agents and constraints were considered for modeling the urbanization process. Agents were nornmlized through fiizzyfication and priority weights were assigned through Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) pairwise comparison for each factor (in MCE) to derive behavior-oriented rules of transition for each land use class. Simulation shows a good agreement with the classified data. Fuzzy and AHP helped in analyzing the effects of agents of growth clearly and CA-Markov proved as a powerful tool in modelling and helped in capturing and visualizing the spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization. This provided rapid land evaluation framework with the essential insights of the urban trajectory for effective sustainable city planning.

Transverse Single Spin Asymmetries and Charmonium Production

We estimate transverse spin single spin asymmetry(TSSA) in the process e + p(up arrow) -> J/psi + X using color evaporation model of charmonium production. We take into account transverse momentum dependent(TMD) evolution of Sivers function and parton distribution function and show that the there is a reduction in the asymmetry as compared to our earlier estimates wherein the Q(2) - evolution was implemented only through DGLAP evolution of unpolarized gluon densities.

Role of supersymmetric heavy Higgs boson production in the self-coupling measurement of 125 GeV Higgs boson at the LHC

Measurement of the self-coupling of the 125 GeV Higgs boson is one of the most crucial tasks for a high luminosity run of the LHC, and it can only be measured in the di-Higgs final state. In the minimal supersymmetric standard model, heavy CP even Higgs (H) can decay into a lighter 125 GeV Higgs boson (h) and, therefore, can influence the rate of di-Higgs production. We investigate the role of single H production in the context of measuring the self-coupling of h. We have found that the H -> hh decay can change the value of Higgs (h) self-coupling substantially, in a low tan beta regime where the mass of the heavy Higgs boson lies between 250 and 600 GeV and, depending on the parameter space, it may be seen as an enhancement of the self-coupling of the 125 GeV Higgs boson.

Jet substructure and probes of CP violation in Vh production

We analyse the hVV (V = W, Z) vertex in a model independent way using Vh production. To that end, we consider possible corrections to the Standard Model Higgs Lagrangian, in the form of higher dimensional operators which parametrise the effects of new physics. In our analysis, we pay special attention to linear observables that can be used to probe CP violation in the same. By considering the associated production of a Higgs boson with a vector boson (W or Z), we use jet substructure methods to define angular observables which are sensitive to new physics effects, including an asymmetry which is linearly sensitive to the presence of CP odd effects. We demonstrate how to use these observables to place bounds on the presence of higher dimensional operators, and quantify these statements using a log likelihood analysis. Our approach allows one to probe separately the hZZ and hWW vertices, involving arbitrary combinations of BSM operators, at the Large Hadron Collider.

Production and characterization of bioflocculants for mineral processing applications

A comparative study of two bacterial strains namely, Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus firmus in the production of bioflocculants was made. The highest bioflocculant yield of 16.55 g/L was obtained from B. licheniformis (L) and 10 g/L from B. firmus (F). The bioflocculants obtained from the bacterial species were water soluble and insoluble in organic solvents. FTIR spectral analysis revealed the presence of hydroxyl, carboxyl and sugar derivatives in the bioflocculants. Thermal characterization by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) showed the crystalline transition and the melting point (T-m) at 90-100 degrees C. Effects of bioflocculant dosage and pH on the flocculation of clay fines were evaluated. Highest bioflocculation efficiency on kaolin clay suspensions was observed at an optimum bioflocculant dosage of 5 g/L. The optimum pH range for the maximum bioflocculation was at pH 7-9. Bioflocculants exhibited high efficiency in dye decolorization. The maximum Cr (VI) removal was found to be 85 % for L (bioflocculant dosage at 2 g/L). This study demonstrates that microbial bioflocculants find potential applications in mineral processing such as selective flocculation of mineral fines, decolorization of dye solutions and in the remediation of toxic metal solutions. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Simplified Mixture Design for Production of Self-Consolidating Concrete

In this work, a methodology to achieve ordinary-, medium-, and high-strength self-consolidating concrete (SCC) with and without mineral additions is proposed. The inclusion of Class F fly ash increases the density of SCC but retards the hydration rate, resulting in substantial strength gain only after 28 days. This delayed strength gain due to the use of fly ash has been considered in the mixture design model. The accuracy of the proposed mixture design model is validated with the present test data and mixture and strength data obtained from diverse sources reported in the literature.

Linking carbon metabolism to carotenoid production in mycobacteria using Raman spectroscopy

Bacteria can utilize multiple sources of carbon for growth, and for pathogenic bacteria like Mycobacterium tuberculosis, this ability is crucial for survival within the host. In addition, phenotypic changes are seen in mycobacteria grown under different carbon sources. In this study, we use Raman spectroscopy to analyze the biochemical components present in M. smegmatis cells when grown in three differently metabolized carbon sources. Our results show that carotenoid biosynthesis is enhanced when M. smegmatis is grown in glucose compared to glycerol and acetate. We demonstrate that this difference is most likely due to transcriptional upregulation of the carotenoid biosynthesis operon (crt) mediated by higher levels of the stress-responsive sigma factor SigF. Moreover, we find that increased SigF and carotenoid levels correlate with greater resistance of glucose-grown cells to oxidative stress. Thus, we demonstrate the use of Raman spectroscopy in unraveling unknown aspects of mycobacterial physiology and describe a novel effect of carbon source variation on mycobacteria.

Crystal landscape in the orcinol:4,4 `-bipyridine system: synthon modularity, polymorphism and transferability of multipole charge density parameters

Polymorphism in the orcinol: 4,4'-bipyridine cocrystal system is analyzed in terms of a robust convergent modular phenol...pyridine supramolecular synthon. Employing the Synthon Based Fragments Approach (SBFA) to transfer the multipole charge density parameters, it is demonstrated that the crystal landscape can be quantified in terms of intermolecular interaction energies in the five crystal forms so far isolated in this complex system. There are five crystal forms. The first has an open, divergent O-H...N based structure with alternating orcinol and bipyridine molecules. The other four polymorphs have different three-dimensional packing but all of them are similar at an interaction level, and are based on a modular O-H...N mediated supramolecular synthon that consists of two orcinol and two bipyridine molecules in a closed, convergent structure. The SBFA method, which depends on the modularity of synthons, provides good agreement between experiment and theory because it takes into account the supramolecular contribution to charge density. The existence of five crystal forms in this system shows that polymorphism in cocrystals need not be considered to be an unusual phenomenon. Studies of the crystal landscape could lead to an understanding of the kinetic pathways that control the crystallization processes, in other words the valleys in the landscape. These pathways are traditionally not considered in exercises pertaining to computational crystal structure prediction, which rather monitors the thermodynamics of the various stable forms in the system, in other words the peaks in the landscape.

Dynamics of Cricket Sound Production

The clever designs of natural transducers are a great source of inspiration for man-made systems. At small length scales, there are many transducers in nature that we are now beginning to understand and learn from. Here, we present an example of such a transducer that is used by field crickets to produce their characteristic song. This transducer uses two distinct components-a file of discrete teeth and a plectrum that engages intermittently to produce a series of impulses forming the loading, and an approximately triangular membrane, called the harp, that acts as a resonator and vibrates in response to the impulse-train loading. The file-and-plectrum act as a frequency multiplier taking the low wing beat frequency as the input and converting it into an impulse-train of sufficiently high frequency close to the resonant frequency of the harp. The forced vibration response results in beats producing the characteristic sound of the cricket song. With careful measurements of the harp geometry and experimental measurements of its mechanical properties (Young's modulus determined from nanoindentation tests), we construct a finite element (FE) model of the harp and carry out modal analysis to determine its natural frequency. We fine tune the model with appropriate elastic boundary conditions to match the natural frequency of the harp of a particular species-Gryllus bimaculatus. We model impulsive loading based on a loading scheme reported in literature and predict the transient response of the harp. We show that the harp indeed produces beats and its frequency content matches closely that of the recorded song. Subsequently, we use our FE model to show that the natural design is quite robust to perturbations in the file. The characteristic song frequency produced is unaffected by variations in the spacing of file-teeth and even by larger gaps. Based on the understanding of how this natural transducer works, one can design and fabricate efficient microscale acoustic devices such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) loudspeakers.

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.