Global features of sea-level pressure distribution in April and July associated with contrasting situations of Indian summer monsoon

Global sea-level pressure distribution has been analysed for the months of April and July for 5 years of contrasting situations of Indian summer monsoon, comprising of two drought years (1972 and 1974), a flood year (1975) and two normal monsoon years (1970 and 1973). Mean monthly sea-level pressure data at about 400 stations have been used in the study. Prominent features of pressure departures from long-term normals have also been noted. It is observed that the month of April shows more prominent contrasting features than July. In April, the high pressure centres over USSR and the North Pacific move considerably eastward during poor monsoon years, while a breakaway cell of Icelandic Low goes deep south. Both the high pressure areas over south Indian Ocean and Australia are stronger in good monsoon years. In July, the subtropical high pressure zone over the southern Indian Ocean is stronger and the Australian high is more eastward, in good monsoon years

Report of Acoustic Test on PSLV IS.1/2L Structure

The results of acoustic conducted on PSLV IS.1/2L at Acoustic Test Facility are briefly given. It contains test set up, Instrumentation details and tables of spectral response

Recent trends in pre-monsoon daily temperature extremes over India

Extreme climate and weather events are increasingly being recognized as key aspects of climate change. Pre-monsoon season (March-May) is the hottest part of the year over almost the entire South Asian region, in which hot weather extremes including heat waves are recurring natural hazards having serious societal impacts, particularly on human health. In the present paper, recent trends in extreme temperature events for the pre-monsoon season have been studied using daily data on maximum and minimum temperatures over a well-distributed network of 121 stations for the period 1970-2005. For this purpose, time series of extreme temperature events have been constructed for India as a whole and seven homogeneous regions, viz., Western Himalaya (WH), Northwest (NW), Northeast (NE), North Central (NC), East coast (EC), West coast (WC) and Interior Peninsula (IP). In general, the frequency of occurrence of hot days and hot nights showed widespread increasing trend, while that of cold days and cold nights has shown widespread decreasing trend. The frequency of the occurrence of hot days is found to have significantly increased over EC, WC and IP, while that of cold days showed significant decreasing trend over WH and WC. The three regions EC, WC and NW showed significant increasing trend in the frequency of hot nights. For India as whole, the frequency of hot days and nights showed increasing trend while cold days and nights showed decreasing trends. Day-to-day fluctuations of pre-monsoon daily maximum and minimum temperatures have also been studied for the above regions. The results show that there is no significant change in day-to-day magnitude of fluctuations of pre-monsoon maximum and minimum temperatures. However, the results generally indicate that the daily maximum and minimum temperatures are becoming less variable within the season

Cost analysis of a coal-fired power plant using the NPV method

The present study investigates the impact of various factors affecting coal-fired power plant economics of 210 MW subcritical unit situated in north India for electricity generation. In this paper, the cost data of various units of thermal power plant in terms of power output capacity have been fitted using power law with the help of the data collected from a literature search. To have a realistic estimate of primary components or equipment, it is necessary to include the latest cost of these components. The cost analysis of the plant was carried out on the basis of total capital investment, operating cost and revenue. The total capital investment includes the total direct plant cost and total indirect plant cost. Total direct plant cost involves the cost of equipment (i.e. boiler, steam turbine, condenser, generator and auxiliary equipment including condensate extraction pump, feed water pump, etc.) and other costs associated with piping, electrical, civil works, direct installation cost, auxiliary services, instrumentation and controls, and site preparation. The total indirect plant cost includes the cost of engineering and set-up. The net present value method was adopted for the present study. The work presented in this paper is an endeavour to study the influence of some of the important parameters on the lifetime costs of a coal-fired power plant. For this purpose, parametric study with and without escalation rates for a period of 35 years plant life was evaluated. The results predicted that plant life, interest rate and the escalation rate were observed to be very sensitive on plant economics in comparison to other factors under study

Global features of upper-tropospheric zonal wind and thermal fields during anomalous monsoon situations

Global analyses of mean monthly zonal wind component and temperature at 200, 150 and 100 mb levels have been made for the region between 60°N and 60°S, for the months May through September during two poor monsoon years (1972 and 1979) and a good monsoon year (1975). Prominent and consistent contrasting features of the zonal wind and thermal fields have been identified, with reference to the monsoon performance over India. It has been noticed that the areal spreading of easterlies over the tropics and extratropics is significantly more during a good monsoon year. Shifting of the axis of the tropical easterly jet stream to a higher level and generally stronger easterlies also characterize good monsoon activity. The upper troposphere has been found to be considerably cooler during poor monsoon years

Differential temporal expression of milk miRNA during the lactation cycle of the marsupial tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii)

Lactation is a key aspect of mammalian evolution for adaptation of various reproductive strategies along different mammalian lineages. Marsupials, such as tammar wallaby, adopted a short gestation and a relatively long lactation cycle, the newborn is immature at birth and significant development occurs postnatally during lactation. Continuous changes of tammar milk composition may contribute to development and immune protection of pouch young. Here, in order to address the putative contribution of newly identified secretory milk miRNA in these processes, high throughput sequencing of miRNAs collected from tammar milk at different time points of lactation was conducted. A comparative analysis was performed to find distribution of miRNA in milk and blood serum of lactating wallaby

6D supergravity without tensor multiplets

We systematically investigate the finite set of possible gauge groups and matter content for N = 1 supergravity theories in six dimensions with no tensor multiplets, focusing on nonabelian gauge groups which are a product of SU(N) factors. We identify a number of models which obey all known low-energy consistency conditions, but which have no known string theory realization. Many of these models contain novel matter representations, suggesting possible new string theory constructions. Many of the most exotic matter structures arise in models which precisely saturate the gravitational anomaly bound on the number of hypermultiplets. Such models have a rigid symmetry structure, in the sense that there are no moduli which leave the full gauge group unbroken.Comment: 31 pages, latex; v2, v3: minor corrections, references adde

Photonic quantum state transfer between a cold atomic gas and a crystal

Interfacing fundamentally different quantum systems is key to build future hybrid quantum networks. Such heterogeneous networks offer superior capabilities compared to their homogeneous counterparts as they merge individual advantages of disparate quantum nodes in a single network architecture. However, only very few investigations on optical hybrid-interconnections have been carried out due to the high fundamental and technological challenges, which involve e.g. wavelength and bandwidth matching of the interfacing photons. Here we report the first optical quantum interconnection between two disparate matter quantum systems with photon storage capabilities. We show that a quantum state can be faithfully transferred between a cold atomic ensemble and a rare-earth doped crystal via a single photon at telecommunication wavelength, using cascaded quantum frequency conversion. We first demonstrate that quantum correlations between a photon and a single collective spin excitation in the cold atomic ensemble can be transferred onto the solid-state system. We also show that single-photon time-bin qubits generated in the cold atomic ensemble can be converted, stored and retrieved from the crystal with a conditional qubit fidelity of more than $85\%$. Our results open prospects to optically connect quantum nodes with different capabilities and represent an important step towards the realization of large-scale hybrid quantum networks

Physical properties of an Indian Ayurvedic medicine (<em>Shankh Bhasma</em>) as nano materials for its application

178-183The aim of present study is to describe Physical properties of an Indian Ayurvedic medicine (Shankh Bhasma) as nano materials for its applications. Shankh Bhasma has been synthesized by using method mentioned in an Ayurvedic text using conch shell and characterized by the modern scientific tools such as; X-ray diffractomter (XRD), Fourier Transform spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM).When we treated shankh bhasma on C. elegans and E. coli. C elegans produces more egg than normal calcium and there is no effect on E. coli. X-ray diffraction pattern and SEM analysis revealed that this Bhasma is in agglomerated nano crystalline materials and be considered as nanomedicine. An FTIR measurement reveals the bond stretching during the incineration process and found peaks of carboxylic group, Carbon with chloride and fluroide. Magnetization-Hysteresis (MH) loop study by the Vibrating sample magnetometer reveals that the di-magnetic nature of the Bhasma. Investigation of Shankh bhasma nanoparticles on C. elegen shows slightly increasing in egg production with compare to normal calcium oxide. There is not bacterial static effect was found on E.coli

Simultaneous quantification of 12 different nucleotides and nucleosides released from renal epithelium and in human urine samples using ion-pair reversed-phase HPLC

Nucleotides and nucleosides are not only involved in cellular metabolism but also act extracellularly via P1 and P2 receptors, to elicit a wide variety of physiological and pathophysiological responses through paracrine and autocrine signalling pathways. For the first time, we have used an ion-pair reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography ultraviolet (UV)-coupled method to rapidly and simultaneously quantify 12 different nucleotides and nucleosides (adenosine triphosphate, adenosine diphosphate, adenosine monophosphate, adenosine, uridine triphosphate, uridine diphosphate, uridine monophosphate, uridine, guanosine triphosphate, guanosine diphosphate, guanosine monophosphate, guanosine): (1) released from a mouse renal cell line (M1 cortical collecting duct) and (2) in human biological samples (i.e., urine). To facilitate analysis of urine samples, a solid-phase extraction step was incorporated (overall recovery rate ? 98 %). All samples were analyzed following injection (100 ?l) into a Synergi Polar-RP 80 Å (250 × 4.6 mm) reversed-phase column with a particle size of 10 ?m, protected with a guard column. A gradient elution profile was run with a mobile phase (phosphate buffer plus ion-pairing agent tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate; pH 6) in 2-30 % acetonitrile (v/v) for 35 min (including equilibration time) at 1 ml min(-1) flow rate. Eluted compounds were detected by UV absorbance at 254 nm and quantified using standard curves for nucleotide and nucleoside mixtures of known concentration. Following validation (specificity, linearity, limits of detection and quantitation, system precision, accuracy, and intermediate precision parameters), this protocol was successfully and reproducibly used to quantify picomolar to nanomolar concentrations of nucleosides and nucleotides in isotonic and hypotonic cell buffers that transiently bathed M1 cells, and urine samples from normal subjects and overactive bladder patients