Wetland flora of Uttara Kannada

Uttara Kannada with its luxuriant tropical climate coupled with heavy rainfall harbours a large number of seasonal wetlands, which are inhabited by diverse wetland plants. These wetland plants are of diverse habitats as they may be aquatic, semiaquatic or of moist soils. Different localities were selected throughout the district and studied for their species composition, diversity, richness across different habitats, families, etc. Many wetland plants were found to be endemic and endangered having many economical uses due to their medicinal properties, edibility, etc.

Environment Education for Ecosystem Conservation

Conservation of natural resources through sustainable ecosystem management and development is the key to our secured future. The management of ecosystem involves inventorying and monitoring, and applying integrated technologies, methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches for its conservation. Hence, now it is even more critical than ever before for the humans to be environmentally literate. To realise this vision, both ecological and environmental education must become a fundamental part of the education system at all levels of education. Currently, it is even more critical than ever before for the humankind as a whole to have a clear understanding of environmental concerns and to follow sustainable development practices. The degradation of our environment is linked to continuing problems of pollution, loss of forest, solid waste disposal, and issues related to economic productivity and national as well as ecological security. Environmental management has gained momentum in the recent years with the initiatives focussing on managing environmental hazards and preventing possible disasters. Environmental issues make better sense, when one can understand them in the context of one’s own cognitive sphere. Environmental education focusing on real-world contexts and issues often begins close to home, encouraging learners to understand and forge connections with their immediate surroundings. The awareness, knowledge, and skills needed for these local connections and understandings provide a base for moving out into larger systems, broader issues, and a more sophisticated comprehension of causes, connections, and consequences. Environmental Education Programme at CES in collaboration with Karnataka Environment Research Foundation (KERF) referred as ‘Know your Ecosystem’ focuses on the importance of investigating the ecosystems within the context of human influences, incorporating an examination of ecology, economics, culture, political structure, and social equity as well as natural processes and systems. The ultimate goal of environment education is to develop an environmentally literate public. It needs to address the connection between our conception and practice of education and our relationship as human cultures to life-sustaining ecological systems. For each environmental issue there are many perspectives and much uncertainty. Environmental education cultivates the ability to recognise uncertainty, envision alternative scenarios, and adapt to changing conditions and information. These knowledge, skills, and mindset translate into a citizenry who is better equipped to address its common problems and take advantage of opportunities, whether environmental concerns are involved or not.

Health Monitoring Of Composite Structures Based On Acoustic Wave Sensing Using Fiber Optic Sensors

Structural Health Monitoring has gained wide acceptance in the recent past as a means to monitor a structure and provide an early warning of an unsafe condition using real-time data. Utilization of structurally integrated, distributed sensors to monitor the health of a structure through accurate interpretation of sensor signals and real-time data processing can greatly reduce the inspection burden. The rapid improvement of the Fiber Optic Sensor technology for strain, vibration, ultrasonic and acoustic emission measurements in recent times makes it feasible alternative to the traditional strain gauges, PVDF and conventional Piezoelectric sensors used for Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Optical fiber-based sensors offer advantages over conventional strain gauges, and PZT devices in terms of size, ease of embedment, immunity from electromagnetic interference (EMI) and potential for multiplexing a number of sensors. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the acoustic wave sensing using Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometric (EFPI) sensor on a GFRP composite laminates. For this purpose experiments have been carried out initially for strain measurement with Fiber Optic Sensors on GFRP laminates with intentionally introduced holes of different sizes as defects. The results obtained from these experiments are presented in this paper. Numerical modeling has been carried out to obtain the relationship between the defect size and strain.

Vapor pressure and dissociation energy of (In2O)

The vapor pressure of pure liquid indium, and the sum of pressures of (In) and (In2O) species over the condensed phase mixture {In} + , contained in a silica vessel, have been measured by Knudsen effusion and Langmuir free vaporization methods in the temperatue range 600 to 950°C. Mass spectrometric studies reported in the literature show that (In) and (In2O) are the important species in the vapor phase over the {In} + ; mixture. The vapor pressure of (In2O) corresponding to the reaction, deduced from the present measurements is given by the equation, The “apparent evaporation coefficient” for the condensed phase mixture is approximately 0.8. The energy for the dissociation (In2O) molecule into atoms calculated from the above equation is D°0 = 180.0 (± 1.0) kcal mol−1.

Polynomial Approximation, Local Polynomial convexity, and Degenerate CR Singularities- II

We provide some conditions for the graph of a Holder-continuous function on (D) over bar, where (D) over bar is a closed disk in C, to be polynomially convex. Almost all sufficient conditions known to date - provided the function (say F) is smooth - arise from versions of the Weierstrass Approximation Theorem on (D) over bar. These conditions often fail to yield any conclusion if rank(R)DF is not maximal on a sufficiently large subset of (D) over bar. We bypass this difficulty by introducing a technique that relies on the interplay of certain plurisubharmonic functions. This technique also allows us to make some observations on the polynomial hull of a graph in C(2) at an isolated complex tangency.

Aquatic Ecosystems: Conservation, Restoration and Management

Aquatic Ecosystems perform numerous valuable environmental functions. They recycle nutrients, purify water, recharge ground water, augment and maintain stream flow, and provide habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna and recreation for people. A rapid population increase accompanied by unplanned developmental works has led to the pollution of surface waters due to residential, agricultural, commercial and industrial wastes/effluents and decline in the number of water bodies. Increased demands for drainage of wetlands have been accommodated by channelisation, resulting in further loss of stream habitat, which has led to aquatic organisms becoming extinct or imperiled in increasing numbers and to the impairment of many beneficial uses of water, including drinking, swimming and fishing. Various anthropogenic activities have altered the physical, chemical and biological processes within aquatic ecosystems. An integrated and accelerated effort toward environmental restoration and preservation is needed to stop further degradation of these fragile ecosystems. Failure to restore these ecosystems will result in sharply increased environmental costs later, in the extinction of species or ecosystem types, and in permanent ecological damage.

Magnetic Field Dependence of Entropy And Specific Heat of YBa2Cu3O7-delta Superconductors

The change in thermodynamic quantities (e. g., entropy, specific heat etc.) by the application of magnetic field in the case of the high-T-c superconductor YBCO system is examined phenomenological by the Ginzburg-Landau theory of anisotropic type-II superconductors. An expression for the change in the entropy (Delta S) and change in specific heat (Delta C) in a magnetic field for any general orientation of an applied magnetic field B-a with respect to the crystallographic c-axis is obtained. The observed large reduction of specific heat anomaly just below the superconducting transition and the observed variation of entropy with magnetic field are explained quantitatively.

Soil aggressivity consideration for laying petroleum pipelines

The magnitude and volume of transportation of petroleum products (both crude and finished products) has necessitated constructing dedicated pipelines from the refineries to the various consumer centers. The present status and scenario of pipeline transportation has been briefly described. Published literatures covering geotechnical engineering aspects, especially corrosion studies for pipelines are scanty. Available literature has been summarized. Main topic includes soil resistivity survey, classification based on resistivity and various parameters of chemical analysis. Detailed analysis has been carried out from the data generated through field investigation and laboratory tests on soil samples obtained from different locations along the two selected pipeline route where they are to be constructed. Typical data has been analysed for aggressivity. Summary of aggressivity analysis has been presented for the two field cases and modification has been suggested for existing practice.

Frequency response analysis of layered ground in Ahmedabad during Bhuj earthquake

This paper presents the results of seismic response analysis of layered ground in Ahmedabad City during the earthquake in Bhuj on 26(th) January 2001. An attempt has been made to understand the reasons for the failure of multistoreyed buildings founded on soft alluvial deposits in Ahmedabad. Standard Penetration test at a site very close to the Sabarmati river belt was carried out for geotechnical investigations. The program SHAKE91, widely used in the field of earthquake engineering for computing the seismic response of horizontally layered soil deposits, was used to analyse the soil profile at the selected site considering the ground as one dimensional layered elastic system. The ground accelerations recorded at the ground floor of the Regional Passport Staff Quarters building, which is very close to the investigated site, was used as input motion. Also, Finite Element Analysis was carried out for different configurations of multistorey building frames for evaluating their natural frequencies and is compared with the predominant frequency of the layered soil system. The results reveal that the varying degree of damage to multistorey buildings in the close proximity of Sabarmati river area was essentially due to the large amplification of the ground and the near resonance condition.

Patent intelligence and its implications for patent productivity

The prevailing hypercompetitive environment has made it essential for organizations to gather competitive intelligence from environmental scanning. The knowledge gained leads to organizational learning, which stimulates increased patent productivity. This paper highlights five practices that aid in developing patenting intelligence and empirically verifies to what extent this organizational learning leads to knowledge gains and financial gains realized from consequent higher patent productivity. The model is validated based on the perceptions of professionals with patenting experience from two of the most aggressively patenting sectors in today’s economy, viz., IT and pharmaceutical sectors (n=119). The key finding of our study suggests that although organizational learning from environmental scanning exists, the application of this knowledge for increasing patent productivity lacks due appreciation. This missing link in strategic analysis and strategy implementation has serious implications for managers which are briefly discussed in this paper.

A sharable instructable agent for information filtering

In this paper we present an information filtering agent called sharable instructable information filtering agent (SIIFA). It adopted the approach of sharable instructable agents. SIIFA provides comprehensible and flexible interaction to represent and filter the documents. The representation scheme in SIIFA is personalized. It, either fully or partly, can be shared among the users of the stream while not revealing their interests and can be easily edited. SIIFA is evaluated on the comp.ai.neural-nets Usent newsgroup documents and compared with the vector space method.

Suite of tools for statistical N-gram language modeling for pattern mining in whole genome sequences

Genome sequences contain a number of patterns that have biomedical significance. Repetitive sequences of various kinds are a primary component of most of the genomic sequence patterns. We extended the suffix-array based Biological Language Modeling Toolkit to compute n-gram frequencies as well as n-gram language-model based perplexity in windows over the whole genome sequence to find biologically relevant patterns. We present the suite of tools and their application for analysis on whole human genome sequence.

Conformational dynamics of HIV-1 protease: a comparative molecular dynamics simulation study with multiple amber force fields

Flap dynamics of HIV-1 protease (HIV-pr) controls the entry of inhibitors and substrates to the active site. Dynamical models from previous simulations are not all consistent with each other and not all are supported by the NMR results. In the present work, the er effect of force field on the dynamics of HIV-pr is investigated by MD simulations using three AMBER force fields ff99, ff99SB, and ff03. The generalized order parameters for amide backbone are calculated from the three force fields and compared with the NMR S2 values. We found that the ff99SB and ff03 force field calculated order parameters agree reasonably well with the NMR S2 values, whereas ff99 calculated values deviate most from the NMR order parameters. Stereochemical geometry of protein models from each force field also agrees well with the remarks from NMR S2 values. However, between ff99SB and ff03, there are several differences, most notably in the loop regions. It is found that these loops are, in general, more flexible in the ff03 force field. This results in a larger active site cavity in the simulation with the ff03 force field. The effect of this difference in computer-aided drug design against flexible receptors is discussed.

3-MANIFOLD GROUPS, KÄHLER GROUPS AND COMPLEX SURFACES

Let G be a Kahler group admitting a short exact sequence 1 -> N -> G -> Q -> 1 where N is finitely generated. (i) Then Q cannot be non-nilpotent solvable. (ii) Suppose in addition that Q satisfies one of the following: (a) Q admits a discrete faithful non-elementary action on H-n for some n >= 2. (b) Q admits a discrete faithful non-elementary minimal action on a simplicial tree with more than two ends. (c) Q admits a (strong-stable) cut R such that the intersection of all conjugates of R is trivial. Then G is virtually a surface group. It follows that if Q is infinite, not virtually cyclic, and is the fundamental group of some closed 3-manifold, then Q contains as a finite index subgroup either a finite index subgroup of the three-dimensional Heisenberg group or the fundamental group of the Cartesian product of a closed oriented surface of positive genus and the circle. As a corollary, we obtain a new proof of a theorem of Dimca and Suciu in Which 3-manifold groups are Kahler groups? J. Eur. Math. Soc. 11 (2009) 521-528] by taking N to be the trivial group. If instead, G is the fundamental group of a compact complex surface, and N is finitely presented, then we show that Q must contain the fundamental group of a Seifert-fibered 3-manifold as a finite index subgroup, and G contains as a finite index subgroup the fundamental group of an elliptic fibration. We also give an example showing that the relation of quasi-isometry does not preserve Kahler groups. This gives a negative answer to a question of Gromov which asks whether Kahler groups can be characterized by their asymptotic geometry.

Phase synchronization in brain networks derived from correlation between probabilities of recurrences in functional MRI data

It is increasingly being recognized that resting state brain connectivity derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is an important marker of brain function both in healthy and clinical populations. Though linear correlation has been extensively used to characterize brain connectivity, it is limited to detecting first order dependencies. In this study, we propose a framework where in phase synchronization (PS) between brain regions is characterized using a new metric ``correlation between probabilities of recurrence'' (CPR) and subsequent graph-theoretic analysis of the ensuing networks. We applied this method to resting state fMRI data obtained from human subjects with and without administration of propofol anesthetic. Our results showed decreased PS during anesthesia and a biologically more plausible community structure using CPR rather than linear correlation. We conclude that CPR provides an attractive nonparametric method for modeling interactions in brain networks as compared to standard correlation for obtaining physiologically meaningful insights about brain function.