Preparation and Characterisation of Novel Polymer Bound Phenolic Antioxidants and Its Use in Natural Rubber

ABSTRACT: Phenol was chemically attached to low molecular weight chlorinated polyisobutylene and stearic acid respectively. These phenolic antioxidants were characterised by IR, 1H NMR and TGA. The efficiency and permanence of these bound antioxidants were compared with conventional antioxidants in natural rubber vulcanisates. The vulcanisates showed comparable ageing resistance in comparison to vulcanisates containing conventional antioxidants. The presence of liquid polymer bound phenol reduce the amount of plasticiser required for compounding.

Synthesis,Characterisation and Uses of Polymer-bound Antioxidants

Department of Polymer Science and Rubber Technology,Cochin University of Science and Technology

Studies on Pseudoscalar Meson Bound States and Semileptonic Decays in a Relativistic Potential Model

In this thesis quark-antiquark bound states are considered using a relativistic two-body equation for Dirac particles. The mass spectrum of mesons includes bound states involving two heavy quarks or one heavy and one light quark. In order to analyse these states within a unified formalism, it is desirable to have a two-fermion equation that limits to one body Dirac equation with a static interaction for the light quark when the other particle's mass tends to infinity. A suitable two-body equation has been developed by Mandelzweig and Wallace. This equation is solved in momentum space and is used to describe the complete spectrum of mesons. The potential used in this work contains a short range one-gluon exchange interaction and a long range linear confining and constant potential terms. This model is used to investigate the decay processes of heavy mesons. Semileptonic decays are more tractable since there is no final state interactions between the leptons and hadrons that would otherwise complicate the situation. Studies on B and D meson decays are helpful to understand the nonperturbative strong interactions of heavy mesons, which in turn is useful to extract the details of weak interaction process. Calculation of form factors of these semileptonic decays of pseudo scalar mesons are also presented.

Characterization of Probability Distributions by Variance Bounds and its Applications

Department of Statistics, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Continuum bound states as surface states of a finite periodic system

We discuss the relation between continuum bound states (CBSs) localized on a defect, and surface states of a finite periodic system. We model an experiment of Capasso et al. [F. Capasso, C. Sirtori, J. Faist, D. L. Sivco, S-N. G. Chu, and A. Y. Cho, Nature (London) 358, 565 (1992)] using the transfer-matrix method. We compute the rate for intrasubband transitions from the ground state to the CBS and derive a sum rule. Finally we show how to improve the confinement of a CBS while keeping the energy fixed.

Studies on Polymer Bound Antioxidants

The primary aim of this work has been to prepare efficient and cost effective polymer bound antioxidants by direct’ attachment of conventional antioxidants to a modified polymer. Due to the importance and easy availability of natural rubber in Kerala, it is proposed to make use of low molecular weight natural rubber as the polymer substrate for binding the antioxidant in most cases. The molecular weight of such low molecular weight natural rubber can be easily manipulated by varying the time of mastication, UV—irradiation etc. Further, the bound antioxidant may also get vulcanized during the vulcanization of the elastomer to which it is added, making the antioxidant non—volatile and non extractable. Several methods are proposed to be investigated for attaching the antioxidant to the low molecular weight natural rubber such as modified Friedel-Craft's alkylation reaction, binding during UV—irradiation, binding during aggressive mastication etc. The efficiency of such rubber bound antioxidants is proposed to be compared with that of conventional antioxidants in terms of volatility, extractability in solvents, ageing resistance etc. Naturally occuring antioxidants such as cardanol, are also proposed to be modified by binding them to low molecular weight natural rubber. The study is undertaken with the intention of generating a class of bound antioxidants which can be used in elastomers for aggressive and long term application.

Characterizations of Life Distributions Using Conditional Expectations of Doubly (Interval) Truncated Random Variables

In this article, we study reliability measures such as geometric vitality function and conditional Shannon’s measures of uncertainty proposed by Ebrahimi (1996) and Sankaran and Gupta (1999), respectively, for the doubly (interval) truncated random variables. In survival analysis and reliability engineering, these measures play a significant role in studying the various characteristics of a system/component when it fails between two time points. The interrelationships among these uncertainty measures for various distributions are derived and proved characterization theorems arising out of them

Characterizations of Bivariate Models Using Some Dynamic Conditional Information Divergence Measures

In this article, we study some relevant information divergence measures viz. Renyi divergence and Kerridge’s inaccuracy measures. These measures are extended to conditionally specifiedmodels and they are used to characterize some bivariate distributions using the concepts of weighted and proportional hazard rate models. Moreover, some bounds are obtained for these measures using the likelihood ratio order

Conditional compositional biplots: theory and application

The biplot has proved to be a powerful descriptive and analytical tool in many areas of applications of statistics. For compositional data the necessary theoretical adaptation has been provided, with illustrative applications, by Aitchison (1990) and Aitchison and Greenacre (2002). These papers were restricted to the interpretation of simple compositional data sets. In many situations the problem has to be described in some form of conditional modelling. For example, in a clinical trial where interest is in how patients’ steroid metabolite compositions may change as a result of different treatment regimes, interest is in relating the compositions after treatment to the compositions before treatment and the nature of the treatments applied. To study this through a biplot technique requires the development of some form of conditional compositional biplot. This is the purpose of this paper. We choose as a motivating application an analysis of the 1992 US President ial Election, where interest may be in how the three-part composition, the percentage division among the three candidates - Bush, Clinton and Perot - of the presidential vote in each state, depends on the ethnic composition and on the urban-rural composition of the state. The methodology of conditional compositional biplots is first developed and a detailed interpretation of the 1992 US Presidential Election provided. We use a second application involving the conditional variability of tektite mineral compositions with respect to major oxide compositions to demonstrate some hazards of simplistic interpretation of biplots. Finally we conjecture on further possible applications of conditional compositional biplots

On the design of education conditional cash transfer programs and non education outcomes: the case of teenage pregnancy

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the effect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school performance reduces teenage pregnancy; the program can increase teenage pregnancy if it does not condition on school performance. Then, using an original data base, we estimate the causal impact on teenage pregnancy of two education CCTs implemented in Bogot´a (Subsidio Educativo, SE, and Familias en Acci´on, FA); both programs differ particularly on whether school success is a condition for renewal or not. We show that SE has negative average effect on teenage pregnancy while FA has a null average effect. We also find that SE has either null or no effect for adolescents in all age and grade groups while FA has positive, null or negative effects for adolescents in different age and grade groups. Since SE conditions renewal on school success and FA does not, we can argue that the empirical results are consistent with the predictions of our model and that conditioning renewal of the subsidy on school success crucially determines the effect of the subsidy on teenage pregnancy

Dynamic conditional correlation in Latin-American asset markets

In this paper we reviewed the models of volatility for a group of five Latin American countries, mainly motivated by the recent periods of financial turbulence. Our results based on high frequency data suggest that Dynamic multivariate models are more powerful to study the volatilities of asset returns than Constant Conditional Correlation models. For the group of countries included, we identified that domestic volatilities of asset markets have been increasing; but the co-volatility of the region is still moderate.

Outward bound. 'Salto hacia fuera'.

Unidad didáctica sobre lengua inglesa, como segundo idioma, dirigido al alumnado de primer curso de bachillerato. Esta formado por dos volúmenes: uno para el profesor, guía donde se recogen los objetivos, metodología y los núcleos temáticos; y otro para el alumno, con materiales y actividades a realizar para la comprensión y aprendizaje de la lengua.

Helping immigrants identify as 'university-bound students' : unexpected difficulties in teaching the hidden curriculum. 'Ayudar a los inmigrantes a identificarse como 'estudiantes con destino a la universidad' : dificultades inesperadas en la enseñanza del currículo oculto'.

Monográfico con el título: 'Identidad y educación'. Resumen basado en el de la publicación