Contribution of forest fire ash and plant litter decay on stream dissolved composition in a sub-humid tropical watershed (Mule Hole, Southern India)

The current understanding of wildfire effects on water chemistry is limited by the quantification of the elemental dissolution rates from ash and element release rate from the plant litter, as well as quantification of the specific ash contribution to stream water chemistry. The main objective of the study was to provide such knowledge through combination of experimental modelling, field data and end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) of wildfire impact on a watershed scale. The study concerns watershed effects of fire in the Indian subcontinent, a region that is typically not well represented in the fire science literature. In plant litter ash, major elements are either hosted in readily-soluble phases (K, Mg) such as salts, carbonates and oxides or in less-soluble carrier-phases (Si, Ca) such as amorphous silica, quartz and calcite. Accordingly, elemental release rates, inferred from ash leaching experiments in batch reactor, indicated that the element release into solution followed the order K > Mg > Na > Si > Ca. Experiments on plant litter leaching in mixed-flow reactor indicated two dissolution regimes: rapid, over the week and slower over the month. The mean dissolution rates at steady-state (R-ss) indicated that the release of major elements from plant litter followed the order Ca > Si > Cl > Mg > K > Na. R-ss for Si and Ca for tree leaves and herbaceous species are similar to those reported for boreal and European tree species and are higher than that from the dissolution of soil clay minerals. This identifies tropical plant litters as important source of Si and Ca for tropical surface waters. In the wildfire-impacted year 2004, the EMMA indicated that the streamflow composition (Ca, K, Mg, Na, Si, Cl) was controlled by four main sources: rainwater, throughfall, ash leaching and soil solution. The influence of the ash end-member was maximal early in the rainy season (the two first storm events) and decreased later in the rainy season, when the stream was dominated by the throughfall end-member. The contribution of plant litter decay to the streamwater composition for a year not impacted by wildfire is significant with estimated solute fluxes originating from this decay greatly exceed, for most major elements, the annual elemental dissolved fluxes at the Mule Hole watershed outlet. This highlighted the importance of solute retention and vegetation back uptake processes within the soil profile. Overall, the fire increased the mobility and export of major elements from the soils to the stream. It also shifted the vegetation-related contribution to the elemental fluxes at the watershed outlet from long-term (seasonal) to short-term (daily to monthly). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fabrication and characterization of sub 100 nm period polymer gratings for photonics applications

We report on the fabrication of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) nanogratings on silicon (Si) and glass substrates using electron beam lithography technique. Various aspects of proximity corrections using Monte Carlo simulation have been discussed. The fabrication process parameters such as proximity gap of exposure, exposure dosage and developing conditions have been optimized for high-density PMMA nanogratings structure on Si and glass substrates. Electron beam exposure is adjusted in such a way that PMMA acts as a negative tone resist and at the same time resolution loss due to proximity effect is minimum. Both reflection and transmission-type, nanometre period gratings have been fabricated and their diffraction characteristics are evaluated.

Exclusive Detection of Sub-Nanomolar Levels of Palladium(II) in Water: An Excellent Probe for Multiple Applications

A new colorimetric probe has been developed for the detection and estimation of Pd-II at sub-nanomolar concentrations. The probe consisted of rhodamine (signaling unit), which was linked with a bis-picolyl moiety (binding site) through a phenyl ring. Pd-II induced opening of the spirolactam ring of the probe with the generation of a prominent pink color. The excellent selectivity of the probe towards Pd-II over Pd-0 or Rh-II ensured its potential utility for the detection of residual palladium contamination in pharma-ceutical drugs and in Pd-catalyzed reactions. The probe showed a ``turn-on'' (bright yellow) fluorescence upon the addition of Pd-II, which made it suitable for the detection of Pd contaminants in mammalian cells.

Observation of photobleaching and intensity dependent kinetics in Ge22As22Se56 thin films under sub-bandgap light illumination

We experimentally demonstrate photobleaching (PB) in Ge22As22Se56 thin films, when illuminated with a diode pumped solid state laser (DPSSL) of wavelength 671 nm, which is far below the optical bandgap of the sample. Interestingly, we found that PB is a slow process and occurs even at moderate pump beam intensity of 0.2 W/cm(2), however the kinetics remain rather different.

Modified Einstein's gravity as a possible missing link between sub- and super-Chandrasekhar type Ia supernovae

We explore the effect of modification to Einstein's gravity in white dwarfs for the first time in the literature, to the best of our knowledge. This leads to significantly sub- and super-Chandrasekhar limiting masses of white dwarfs, determined by a single model parameter. On the other hand, type Ia supernovae (SNeIa), a key to unravel the evolutionary history of the universe, are believed to be triggered in white dwarfs having mass close to the Chandrasekhar limit. However, observations of several peculiar, under- and over-luminous SNeIa argue for exploding masses widely different from this limit. We argue that explosions of the modified gravity induced sub- and super-Chandrasekhar limiting mass white dwarfs result in under- and over-luminous SNeIa respectively, thus unifying these two apparently disjoint sub-classes and, hence, serving as a missing link. Our discovery raises two fundamental questions. Is the Chandrasekhar limit unique? Is Einstein's gravity the ultimate theory for understanding astronomical phenomena? Both the answers appear to be no!

Robust Whisper Activity Detection Using Long-Term Log Energy Variation of Sub-Band Signal

The goal in the whisper activity detection (WAD) is to find the whispered speech segments in a given noisy recording of whispered speech. Since whispering lacks the periodic glottal excitation, it resembles an unvoiced speech. This noise-like nature of the whispered speech makes WAD a more challenging task compared to a typical voice activity detection (VAD) problem. In this paper, we propose a feature based on the long term variation of the logarithm of the short-time sub-band signal energy for WAD. We also propose an automatic sub-band selection algorithm to maximally discriminate noisy whisper from noise. Experiments with eight noise types in four different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions show that, for most of the noises, the performance of the proposed WAD scheme is significantly better than that of the existing VAD schemes and whisper detection schemes when used for WAD.

Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics of Two-Dimensional Parabolized Stability Equations

特征分析表明：对原始扰动量的抛物化稳定性方程组(PSE),它在亚超音速区分别具有椭圆和抛物特性,给出PSE特征对马赫数的依赖关系,阐明PSE仅把信息对流-扩散传播特性抛物化,而保留了信息对流-扰动传播特性,因此PSE应称为扩散抛物化稳定性方程(DPSE)。

Estudio epidemiológico de la prevalencia de mastitis Sub. clínica en el ganado reina en la finca Santa Rosa (UNA) en época de lluvia

El presente trabajo investigativo se llevó a cabo en la finca Santa Rosa de la UNA. Con el objetivo de determinar la prevalencia de mastitis subclínica en condiciones tradicional de ordeño, en el Ganado Criollo Reina, se evaluó un total de 290 muestras de, durante un periodo de seis meses de Mayo a Octubre del dos mil cinco (2005). Para conocer la prevalencia de mastitis en el ganado Reina, se realizó una prueba de diagnóstico individual utilizando para esto la prueba de California Mastitis Test (CMT). Los resultados de la prueba CMT muestran que de 290 pruebas realizadas que corresponden al mismo número de vacas, 118 resultaron positivas, al menos con una cruz en uno de sus cuartos mamarios, representando un 41% de esto un 35% mastitis subclínica un 5.1% de mastitis clínica y un 59% de negatividad, este hato es considerado, como una unidad AFECTADA. Se observó que en los diferentes muestreos se presentaron un mayor porcentaje de reacción positiva en los el muestreo numero 12 (70.58) y el muestreo número 8 (58.33%) y el muestreo numero 11 (54.28). Los resultados obtenidos en relación al grado de intensidad, tomando en cuenta los parámetros, indican que del total de la población examinada en términos porcentuales el 4.13% está representada por tres cruces (+++), el 6.03% representada por dos cruces (++) y el 11.37% representada por una cruz (+), para un total de 21.53%. Los cuartos anteriores presentaron mayor prevalencia por mastitis con un 49.30"/o y el más afectado fue el Anterior Derecho (AD) con el 24.82 % reaccionaron positivos. El parto número cinco (- 1.2772). Del factor periodo de lactancia (PERL) este resulto significativos, observándose una tendencia marcada a mayor afectación para el periodo de lactancia cinco presento mayor afectación por mastitis seguido del periodo uno.

A Bayesian wavelet-based multidimensional deconvolution with sub-band emphasis

This paper proposes a new algorithm for waveletbased multidimensional image deconvolution which employs subband-dependent minimization and the dual-tree complex wavelet transform in an iterative Bayesian framework. In addition, this algorithm employs a new prior instead of the popular ℓ1 norm, and is thus able to embed a learning scheme during the iteration which helps it to achieve better deconvolution results and faster convergence. © 2008 IEEE.

Computation of stress intensity factors by the sub-region mixed finite element method of lines

Based on the sub-region generalized variational principle, a sub-region mixed version of the newly-developed semi-analytical 'finite element method of lines' (FEMOL) is proposed in this paper for accurate and efficient computation of stress intensity factors (SIFs) of two-dimensional notches/cracks. The circular regions surrounding notch/crack tips are taken as the complementary energy region in which a number of leading terms of singular solutions for stresses are used, with the sought SIFs being among the unknown coefficients. The rest of the arbitrary domain is taken as the potential energy region in which FEMOL is applied to obtain approximate displacements. A mixed system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and algebraic equations is derived via the sub-region generalized variational principle. A singularity removal technique that eliminates the stress parameters from the mixed equation system eventually yields a standard FEMOL ODE system, the solution of which is no longer singular and is simply and efficiently obtained using a standard general-purpose ODE solver. A number of numerical examples, including bi-material notches/cracks in anti-plane and plane elasticity, are given to show the generally excellent performance of the proposed method.