Prediction of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall using a state-of-the-art coupled ocean-atmosphere model

A state-of-the-art model of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system, the climate forecast system (CFS), from the National Centres for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), USA, has been ported onto the PARAM Padma parallel computing system at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Bangalore and retrospective predictions for the summer monsoon (June-September) season of 2009 have been generated, using five initial conditions for the atmosphere and one initial condition for the ocean for May 2009. Whereas a large deficit in the Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR; June-September) was experienced over the Indian region (with the all-India rainfall deficit by 22% of the average), the ensemble average prediction was for above-average rainfall during the summer monsoon. The retrospective predictions of ISMR with CFS from NCEP for 1981-2008 have been analysed. The retrospective predictions from NCEP for the summer monsoon of 1994 and that from CDAC for 2009 have been compared with the simulations for each of the seasons with the stand-alone atmospheric component of the model, the global forecast system (GFS), and observations. It has been shown that the simulation with GFS for 2009 showed deficit rainfall as observed. The large error in the prediction for the monsoon of 2009 can be attributed to a positive Indian Ocean Dipole event seen in the prediction from July onwards, which was not present in the observations. This suggests that the error could be reduced with improvement of the ocean model over the equatorial Indian Ocean.

Microstructure evolution during solidification of DRMMCs (discontinuously reinforced metal matrix composites): State of art

Distribution of particle reinforcements in cast composites is determined by the morphology of the solidification front. Interestingly, during solidification, the morphology of the interface is intrinsically affected by the presence of dispersed reinforcements. Thus the dispersoid distribution and length scale of matrix microstructure is a result of the interplay between these two. A proper combination of material and process parameters can be used to obtain composites with tailored microstructures. This requires the generation of a broad data base and optimization of the complete solidification process. The length scale of soldification microtructure has a large influence on the mechanical properties of the composites. This presentation addresses the concept of a particle distribution map which can help in predicting particle distribution under different solidification conditions Future research directions have also been indicated.

Music and symbolic dynamics: the science behind an art

Music signals comprise of atomic notes drawn from a musical scale. The creation of musical sequences often involves splicing the notes in a constrained way resulting in aesthetically appealing patterns. We develop an approach for music signal representation based on symbolic dynamics by translating the lexicographic rules over a musical scale to constraints on a Markov chain. This source representation is useful for machine based music synthesis, in a way, similar to a musician producing original music. In order to mathematically quantify user listening experience, we study the correlation between the max-entropic rate of a musical scale and the subjective aesthetic component. We present our analysis with examples from the south Indian classical music system.

Automatic Tonic Identification in Indian Art Music: Approaches and Evaluation

The tonic is a fundamental concept in Indian art music. It is the base pitch, which an artist chooses in order to construct the melodies during a rg(a) rendition, and all accompanying instruments are tuned using the tonic pitch. Consequently, tonic identification is a fundamental task for most computational analyses of Indian art music, such as intonation analysis, melodic motif analysis and rg recognition. In this paper we review existing approaches for tonic identification in Indian art music and evaluate them on six diverse datasets for a thorough comparison and analysis. We study the performance of each method in different contexts such as the presence/absence of additional metadata, the quality of audio data, the duration of audio data, music tradition (Hindustani/Carnatic) and the gender of the singer (male/female). We show that the approaches that combine multi-pitch analysis with machine learning provide the best performance in most cases (90% identification accuracy on average), and are robust across the aforementioned contexts compared to the approaches based on expert knowledge. In addition, we also show that the performance of the latter can be improved when additional metadata is available to further constrain the problem. Finally, we present a detailed error analysis of each method, providing further insights into the advantages and limitations of the methods.

Progress in tuberculosis vaccine development and host-directed therapies-a state of the art review

Tuberculosis continues to kill 1.4 million people annually. During the past 5 years, an alarming increase in the number of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis has been noted, particularly in eastern Europe, Asia, and southern Africa. Treatment outcomes with available treatment regimens for drug-resistant tuberculosis are poor. Although substantial progress in drug development for tuberculosis has been made, scientific progress towards development of interventions for prevention and improvement of drug treatment outcomes have lagged behind. Innovative interventions are therefore needed to combat the growing pandemic of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. Novel adjunct treatments are needed to accomplish improved cure rates for multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. A novel, safe, widely applicable, and more effective vaccine against tuberculosis is also desperately sought to achieve disease control. The quest to develop a universally protective vaccine for tuberculosis continues. So far, research and development of tuberculosis vaccines has resulted in almost 20 candidates at different stages of the clinical trial pipeline. Host-directed therapies are now being developed to refocus the anti-Mycobacterium tuberculosis-directed immune responses towards the host; a strategy that could be especially beneficial for patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. As we are running short of canonical tuberculosis drugs, more attention should be given to host-directed preventive and therapeutic intervention measures.