Cross-correlation-aided transport in stochastically driven accretion flows

The origin of linear instability resulting in rotating sheared accretion flows has remained a controversial subject for a long time. While some explanations of such non-normal transient growth of disturbances in the Rayleigh stable limit were available for magnetized accretion flows, similar instabilities in the absence of magnetic perturbations remained unexplained. This dichotomy was resolved in two recent publications by Chattopadhyay and co-workers Mukhopadhyay and Chattopadhyay, J. Phys. A 46, 035501 (2013); Nath et al., Phys. Rev. E 88, 013010 (2013)] where it was shown that such instabilities, especially for nonmagnetized accretion flows, were introduced through interaction of the inherent stochastic noise in the system (even a ``cold'' accretion flow at 3000Kis too ``hot'' in the statistical parlance and is capable of inducing strong thermal modes) with the underlying Taylor-Couette flow profiles. Both studies, however, excluded the additional energy influx (or efflux) that could result from nonzero cross correlation of a noise perturbing the velocity flow, say, with the noise that is driving the vorticity flow (or equivalently the magnetic field and magnetic vorticity flow dynamics). Through the introduction of such a time symmetry violating effect, in this article we show that nonzero noise cross correlations essentially renormalize the strength of temporal correlations. Apart from an overall boost in the energy rate (both for spatial and temporal correlations, and hence in the ensemble averaged energy spectra), this results in mutual competition in growth rates of affected variables often resulting in suppression of oscillating Alfven waves at small times while leading to faster saturations at relatively longer time scales. The effects are seen to be more pronounced with magnetic field fluxes where the noise cross correlation magnifies the strength of the field concerned. Another remarkable feature noted specifically for the autocorrelation functions is the removal of energy degeneracy in the temporal profiles of fast growing non-normal modes leading to faster saturation with minimum oscillations. These results, including those presented in the previous two publications, now convincingly explain subcritical transition to turbulence in the linear limit for all possible situations that could now serve as the benchmark for nonlinear stability studies in Keplerian accretion disks.

Modelling ternary effects on antiphase boundary energy of Ni3Al

The shearing of ordered gamma' precipitates by matrix dislocations results in the formation of antiphase boundaries (APB) in Ni-base superalloys. The APB energy is an important source of order-strengthening in disk and blade alloys where Ti and Ta substitute for Al in gamma'. While the importance of APB energy is well-acknowledged, the effect of alloying on APB energy is not fully understood. In the present study, the effect of Ti and Ta additions on the {111} and {010} APB energies was probed via electronic structure calculations. Results suggest that at low levels of Ti/Ta, APB energies on either plane increases with alloying. However, at higher Ti/Ta levels, the APB energies decrease with alloying. These trends understood by accounting for nearest neighbour violations about the APB and additionally, invoking the effect of precipitate composition on the energy penalty of the violations. We propose an Environment Dependent Nearest Neighbour Bond (EDNNB) model that predicts APB energies that are in close agreement to calculated values.

PriDyn: Enabling Differentiated I/O Services in Cloud Using Dynamic Priorities

Virtualization is one of the key enabling technologies for Cloud computing. Although it facilitates improved utilization of resources, virtualization can lead to performance degradation due to the sharing of physical resources like CPU, memory, network interfaces, disk controllers, etc. Multi-tenancy can cause highly unpredictable performance for concurrent I/O applications running inside virtual machines that share local disk storage in Cloud. Disk I/O requests in a typical Cloud setup may have varied requirements in terms of latency and throughput as they arise from a range of heterogeneous applications having diverse performance goals. This necessitates providing differential performance services to different I/O applications. In this paper, we present PriDyn, a novel scheduling framework which is designed to consider I/O performance metrics of applications such as acceptable latency and convert them to an appropriate priority value for disk access based on the current system state. This framework aims to provide differentiated I/O service to various applications and ensures predictable performance for critical applications in multi-tenant Cloud environment. We demonstrate through experimental validations on real world I/O traces that this framework achieves appreciable enhancements in I/O performance, indicating that this approach is a promising step towards enabling QoS guarantees on Cloud storage.

Characterization of friction at three contact pairs by photoelastic Isotropic point (IP)

Friction coefficient between a circular-disk periphery and V-block surface was determined by introducing the concept of isotropic point (IP) in isochromatic field of the disk under three-point symmetric loading. IP position on the symmetry axis depends on active coefficient of friction during experiment. We extend this work to asymmetric loading of circular disk in which case two frictional contact pairs out of three loading contacts, independently control the unconstrained IP location. Photoelastic experiment is conducted on particular case of asymmetric three-point loading of circular disk. Basics of digital image processing are used to extract few essential parameters from experimental image, particularly IP location. Analytical solution by Flamant for half plane with a concentrated load, is utilized to derive stress components for required loading configurations of the disk. IP is observed, in analytical simulations of three-point asymmetric normal loading, to move from vertical axis to the boundary along an ellipse-like curve. When friction is included in the analysis, IP approaches the center with increase in loading friction and it goes away with increase in support friction. With all these insights, using experimental IP information, friction angles at three contact pairs of circular disk under asymmetric loading, are determined.

Environmental monitoring of bacterial contamination and antibiotic resistance patterns of the fecal coliforms isolated from Cauvery River, a major drinking water source in Karnataka, India

The present study focuses prudent elucidation of microbial pollution and antibiotic sensitivity profiling of the fecal coliforms isolated from River Cauvery, a major drinking water source in Karnataka, India. Water samples were collected from ten hotspots during the year 2011-2012. The physiochemical characteristics and microbial count of water samples collected from most of the hotspots exhibited greater biological oxygen demand and bacterial count especially coliforms in comparison with control samples (p <= 0.01). The antibiotic sensitivity testing was performed using 48 antibiotics against the bacterial isolates by disk-diffusion assay. The current study showed that out of 848 bacterial isolates, 93.51 % (n=793) of the isolates were found to be multidrug-resistant to most of the current generation antibiotics. Among the major isolates, 96.46 % (n=273) of the isolates were found to be multidrug-resistant to 30 antibiotics and they were identified to be Escherichia coli by 16S rDNA gene sequencing. Similarly, 93.85 % (n=107), 94.49 % (n=103), and 90.22 % (n=157) of the isolates exhibited multiple drug resistance to 32, 40, and 37 antibiotics, and they were identified to be Enterobacter cloacae, Pseudomonas trivialis, and Shigella sonnei, respectively. The molecular studies suggested the prevalence of blaTEM genes in all the four isolates and dhfr gene in Escherichia coli and Sh. sonnei. Analogously, most of the other Gram-negative bacteria were found to be multidrug-resistant and the Gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus spp. isolated from the water samples were found to be methicillin and vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is probably the first study elucidating the bacterial pollution and antibiotic sensitivity profiling of fecal coliforms isolated from River Cauvery, Karnataka, India.

HYDROMAGNETICS OF ADVECTIVE ACCRETION FLOWS AROUND BLACK HOLES: REMOVAL OF ANGULAR MOMENTUM BY LARGE-SCALE MAGNETIC STRESSES

We show that the removal of angular momentum is possible in the presence of large-scale magnetic stresses in geometrically thick, advective, sub-Keplerian accretion flows around black holes in steady state, in the complete absence of alpha-viscosity. The efficiency of such an angular momentum transfer could be equivalent to that of alpha-viscosity with alpha = 0.01-0.08. Nevertheless, the required field is well below its equipartition value, leading to a magnetically stable disk flow. This is essentially important in order to describe the hard spectral state of the sources when the flow is non/sub-Keplerian. We show in our simpler 1.5 dimensional, vertically averaged disk model that the larger the vertical-gradient of the azimuthal component of the magnetic field is, the stronger the rate of angular momentum transfer becomes, which in turn may lead to a faster rate of outflowing matter. Finding efficient angular momentum transfer in black hole disks via magnetic stresses alone, is very interesting when the generic origin of alpha-viscosity is still being explored.

Physical Layer Data Fusion Via Distributed Co-Phasing With General Signal Constellations

This paper studies a pilot-assisted physical layer data fusion technique known as Distributed Co-Phasing (DCP). In this two-phase scheme, the sensors first estimate the channel to the fusion center (FC) using pilots sent by the latter; and then they simultaneously transmit their common data by pre-rotating them by the estimated channel phase, thereby achieving physical layer data fusion. First, by analyzing the symmetric mutual information of the system, it is shown that the use of higher order constellations (HOC) can improve the throughput of DCP compared to the binary signaling considered heretofore. Using an HOC in the DCP setting requires the estimation of the composite DCP channel at the FC for data decoding. To this end, two blind algorithms are proposed: 1) power method, and 2) modified K-means algorithm. The latter algorithm is shown to be computationally efficient and converges significantly faster than the conventional K-means algorithm. Analytical expressions for the probability of error are derived, and it is found that even at moderate to low SNRs, the modified K-means algorithm achieves a probability of error comparable to that achievable with a perfect channel estimate at the FC, while requiring no pilot symbols to be transmitted from the sensor nodes. Also, the problem of signal corruption due to imperfect DCP is investigated, and constellation shaping to minimize the probability of signal corruption is proposed and analyzed. The analysis is validated, and the promising performance of DCP for energy-efficient physical layer data fusion is illustrated, using Monte Carlo simulations.

On Locally Gabriel Geometric Graphs

Let be a set of points in the plane. A geometric graph on is said to be locally Gabriel if for every edge in , the Euclidean disk with the segment joining and as diameter does not contain any points of that are neighbors of or in . A locally Gabriel graph(LGG) is a generalization of Gabriel graph and is motivated by applications in wireless networks. Unlike a Gabriel graph, there is no unique LGG on a given point set since no edge in a LGG is necessarily included or excluded. Thus the edge set of the graph can be customized to optimize certain network parameters depending on the application. The unit distance graph(UDG), introduced by Erdos, is also a LGG. In this paper, we show the following combinatorial bounds on edge complexity and independent sets of LGG: (i) For any , there exists LGG with edges. This improves upon the previous best bound of . (ii) For various subclasses of convex point sets, we show tight linear bounds on the maximum edge complexity of LGG. (iii) For any LGG on any point set, there exists an independent set of size .

Wear Behavior of Cooling Slope Rheocast A356 Al Alloy

In the present study, the dry sliding wear behavior of rheocast A356 Al alloys, cast using a cooling slope, as well as gravity cast A356 Al alloy have been investigated at a low sliding speed of 1ms(-1), against a hardened EN 31 disk at different loads. The wear mechanism involves microcutting-abrasion and adhesion at lower load for all of the alloys studied in the present work. On the other hand, at higher load, mainly adhesive wear along with oxide formation is observed for gravity cast A356 Al alloy and rheocast A356 Al alloy, cast using a 45 degrees slope angle. Unlike other alloys, 60 degrees slope rheocast A356 Al alloy is found to undergo mainly abrasive wear at higher load. Accordingly, the rheocast sample, cast using a 60 degrees cooling slope, exhibits a remarkably lower wear rate at higher load compared to gravity cast and 45 degrees slope rheocast samples. This is attributed to the dominance of abrasive wear at higher load in the case of rheocast A356 Al alloy cast using a 60 degrees slope. The presence of finer and more spherical primary Al grain morphology is found to resist adhesive wear in case of 60 degrees cooling slope processed rheocast alloy and thereby delay the transition of the wear regime from normal wear to severe wear.

Identification of dominant modes in random dynamical and aeroelastic systems

Identification of dominant modes is an important step in studying linearly vibrating systems, including flow-induced vibrations. In the presence of uncertainty, when some of the system parameters and the external excitation are modeled as random quantities, this step becomes more difficult. This work is aimed at giving a systematic treatment to this end. The ability to capture the time averaged kinetic energy is chosen as the primary criterion for selection of modes. Accordingly, a methodology is proposed based on the overlap of probability density functions (pdf) of the natural and excitation frequencies, proximity of the natural frequencies of the mean or baseline system, modal participation factor, and stochastic variation of mode shapes in terms of the modes of the baseline system - termed here as statistical modal overlapping. The probabilistic descriptors of the natural frequencies and mode shapes are found by solving a random eigenvalue problem. Three distinct vibration scenarios are considered: (i) undamped arid damped free vibrations of a bladed disk assembly, (ii) forced vibration of a building, and (iii) flutter of a bridge model. Through numerical studies, it is observed that the proposed methodology gives an accurate selection of modes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Turbulent states and their transitions in mathematical models for ventricular tissue: The effects of random interstitial fibroblasts

We study the dynamical behaviors of two types of spiral-and scroll-wave turbulence states, respectively, in two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) mathematical models, of human, ventricular, myocyte cells that are attached to randomly distributed interstitial fibroblasts; these turbulence states are promoted by (a) the steep slope of the action-potential-duration-restitution (APDR) plot or (b) early afterdepolarizations (EADs). Our single-cell study shows that (1) the myocyte-fibroblast (MF) coupling G(j) and (2) the number N-f of fibroblasts in an MF unit lower the steepness of the APDR slope and eliminate the EAD behaviors of myocytes; we explore the pacing dependence of such EAD suppression. In our 2D simulations, we observe that a spiral-turbulence (ST) state evolves into a state with a single, rotating spiral (RS) if either (a) G(j) is large or (b) the maximum possible number of fibroblasts per myocyte N-f(max) is large. We also observe that the minimum value of G(j), for the transition from the ST to the RS state, decreases as N-f(max) increases. We find that, for the steep-APDR-induced ST state, once the MF coupling suppresses ST, the rotation period of a spiral in the RS state increases as (1) G(j) increases, with fixed N-f(max), and (2) N-f(max) increases, with fixed G(j). We obtain the boundary between ST and RS stability regions in the N-f(max)-G(j) plane. In particular, for low values of N-f(max), the value of G(j), at the ST-RS boundary, depends on the realization of the randomly distributed fibroblasts; this dependence decreases as N-f(max) increases. Our 3D studies show a similar transition from scroll-wave turbulence to a single, rotating, scroll-wave state because of the MF coupling. We examine the experimental implications of our study and propose that the suppression (a) of the steep slope of the APDR or (b) EADs can eliminate spiral-and scroll-wave turbulence in heterogeneous cardiac tissue, which has randomly distributed fibroblasts.

Digital image analysis around isotropic points for photoelastic pattern recognition

Fringe tracking and fringe order assignment have become the central topics of current research in digital photoelasticity. Isotropic points (IPs) appearing in low fringe order zones are often either overlooked or entirely missed in conventional as well as digital photoelasticity. We aim to highlight image processing for characterizing IPs in an isochromatic fringe field. By resorting to a global analytical solution of a circular disk, sensitivity of IPs to small changes in far-field loading on the disk is highlighted. A local theory supplements the global closed-form solutions of three-, four-, and six-point loading configurations of circular disk. The local theoretical concepts developed in this paper are demonstrated through digital image analysis of isochromatics in circular disks subjected to three-and four-point loads. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

DOES THE CHEMOTHERMAL INSTABILITY HAVE ANY ROLE IN THE FRAGMENTATION OF PRIMORDIAL GAS

The collapse of the primordial gas in the density regime similar to 10(8)-10(10) cm(-3) is controlled by the three-body H-2 formation process, in which the gas can cool faster than free-fall time-a condition proposed as the chemothermal instability. We investigate how the heating and cooling rates are affected during the rapid transformation of atomic to molecular hydrogen. With a detailed study of the heating and cooling balance in a 3D simulation of Pop III collapse, we follow the chemical and thermal evolution of the primordial gas in two dark matter minihalos. The inclusion of sink particles in modified Gadget-2 smoothed particle hydrodynamics code allows us to investigate the long-term evolution of the disk that fragments into several clumps. We find that the sum of all the cooling rates is less than the total heating rate after including the contribution from the compressional heating (pdV). The increasing cooling rate during the rapid increase of the molecular fraction is offset by the unavoidable heating due to gas contraction. We conclude that fragmentation occurs because H-2 cooling, the heating due to H-2 formation and compressional heating together set a density and temperature structure in the disk that favors fragmentation, not the chemothermal instability.

General relativity and relativistic astrophysics

Einstein established the theory of general relativity and the corresponding field equation in 1915 and its vacuum solutions were obtained by Schwarzschild and Kerr for, respectively, static and rotating black holes, in 1916 and 1963, respectively. They are, however, still playing an indispensable role, even after 100 years of their original discovery, to explain high energy astrophysical phenomena. Application of the solutions of Einstein's equation to resolve astrophysical phenomena has formed an important branch, namely relativistic astrophysics. I devote this article to enlightening some of the current astrophysical problems based on general relativity. However, there seem to be some issues with regard to explaining certain astrophysical phenomena based on Einstein's theory alone. I show that Einstein's theory and its modified form, both are necessary to explain modern astrophysical processes, in particular, those related to compact objects.

A real-time coherent dedispersion pipeline for the giant metrewave radio telescope

A fully real-time coherent dedispersion system has been developed for the pulsar back-end at the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). The dedispersion pipeline uses the single phased array voltage beam produced by the existing GMRT software back-end (GSB) to produce coherently dedispersed intensity output in real time, for the currently operational bandwidths of 16 MHz and 32 MHz. Provision has also been made to coherently dedisperse voltage beam data from observations recorded on disk. We discuss the design and implementation of the real-time coherent dedispersion system, describing the steps carried out to optimise the performance of the pipeline. Presently functioning on an Intel Xeon X5550 CPU equipped with a NVIDIA Tesla C2075 GPU, the pipeline allows dispersion free, high time resolution data to be obtained in real-time. We illustrate the significant improvements over the existing incoherent dedispersion system at the GMRT, and present some preliminary results obtained from studies of pulsars using this system, demonstrating its potential as a useful tool for low frequency pulsar observations. We describe the salient features of our implementation, comparing it with other recently developed real-time coherent dedispersion systems. This implementation of a real-time coherent dedispersion pipeline for a large, low frequency array instrument like the GMRT, will enable long-term observing programs using coherent dedispersion to be carried out routinely at the observatory. We also outline the possible improvements for such a pipeline, including prospects for the upgraded GMRT which will have bandwidths about ten times larger than at present.