Effect of Curing On the Strength Behaviour of Lime-Fly Ashexpansive Soil Mixes

Expansive soils occupying almost 3 lakh km2 in the Indian subcontinent found to be highly problematic due to their extensive swelling and shrinkage nature. This rapid volume change leads to upliftment of foundations, differential settlements, heaving, rutting, etc. on the overlying structures. Concerning with the above problems an effective, economical and long-term method lime stabilisation was selected. In this work it is attempted to study the effect of curing period on the strength behaviour expansive soil treated with lime and fly ash by conducting triaxial shear (UU) test for 0, 3, 7, 14, 28 days with some twenty different proportions

Documents matches "Temperature- and pressure-dependent Study of 35Cl NQR Frequency and Spin Lattice Relaxation Time in 2,3-dichloroanisole

The temperature and pressure dependence of 35Cl NQR frequency and spin lattice relaxation time (T1) were investigated in 2,3-dichloroanisole. Two NQR signals were observed throughout the temperature and pressure range studied. T1 were measured in the temperature range from 77 to 300 K and from atmospheric pressure to 5 kbar. Relaxation was found to be due to the torsional motion of the molecule and also reorientation of motion of the CH3 group. T1 versus temperature data were analyzed on the basis of Woessner and Gutowsky model, and the activation energy for the reorientation of the CH3 group was estimated. The temperature dependence of the average torsional lifetimes of the molecules and the transition probabilities were also obtained.NQR frequency shows a nonlinear behavior with pressure, indicating both dynamic and static effects of pressure. The pressure coefficients were observed to be positive for both the lines. A thermodynamic analysis of the data was carried out to determine the constant volume temperature coefficients of the NQR frequency. The variation of spin lattice time with pressure was very small, showing that the relaxation is mainly due to the torsional motions of the molecules

Bearing Capacity of A Strip Footing Resting On Treated And Untreated Soils

Expansive soils are highly susceptible to volumetric changes leading to rapid loss in the bearing capacity of footings resting on them. Among several techniques available to treat expansive soils, lime or fly ash stabilization gained prominence during the past few decades due to its abundance and adaptability. Chemical stabilization is widely used to treat expansive soils as it develops base exchange and cementation processes between clay particles.When expansive soils are treated with chemicals, it is essential to obtain the load-settlement response of footing resting on stabilized ground. In this study, Finite Element Analysis is performed using the commercial software, PLAXIS 2D, to obtain the load-settlement response of a strip footing resting on untreated and treated expansive soil. The bearing capacity of strip footing resting on treated soil is found to be about 150% higher than that of footing resting on untreated soil

Composition of Binary Compressed Sensing Matrices

In the recent past, various methods have been proposed to construct deterministic compressed sensing (CS) matrices. Of interest has been the construction of binary sensing matrices as they are useful for multiplierless and faster dimensionality reduction. In most of these binary constructions, the matrix size depends on primes or their powers. In this study, we propose a composition rule which exploits sparsity and block structure of existing binary CS matrices to construct matrices of general size. We also show that these matrices satisfy optimal theoretical guarantees and have similar density compared to matrices obtained using Kronecker product. Simulation work shows that the synthesized matrices provide comparable results against Gaussian random matrices

Saccharin test of mucociliary clearance in Kartagener's syndrome

Saccharin test is a method for estimating mucociliary clearance in the upper respiratory passage. Its application in a clinically diagnosed patient with Kartagener's syndrome is reported

Cassava haplotype map highlights fixation of deleterious mutations during clonal propagation

Article purchased; Published online: 17 April 2017Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is an important staple food crop in Africa and South America; however, ubiquitous deleterious mutations may severely decrease its fitness. To evaluate these deleterious mutations, we constructed a cassava haplotype map through deep sequencing 241 diverse accessions and identified >28 million segregating variants. We found that (i) although domestication has modified starch and ketone metabolism pathways to allow for human consumption, the concomitant bottleneck and clonal propagation have resulted in a large proportion of fixed deleterious amino acid changes, increased the number of deleterious alleles by 26%, and shifted the mutational burden toward common variants; (ii) deleterious mutations have been ineffectively purged, owing to limited recombination in the cassava genome; (iii) recent breeding efforts have maintained yield by masking the most damaging recessive mutations in the heterozygous state but have been unable to purge the mutation burden; such purging should be a key target in future cassava breeding

Genome-wide association and prediction reveals genetic architecture of cassava mosaic disease resistance and prospects for rapid genetic improvement

Published: 13 May 2016Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a crucial, under-researched crop feeding millions worldwide, especially in Africa. Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) has plagued production in Africa for over a century. Biparental mapping studies suggest primarily a single major gene mediates resistance. To investigate this genetic architecture, we conducted the first genome-wide association mapping study in cassava with up to 6128 genotyping-by-sequenced African breeding lines and 42,113 reference genome-mapped single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. We found a single region on chromosome 8 that accounts for 30 to 66% of genetic resistance in the African cassava germplasm. Thirteen additional regions with small effects were also identified. Further dissection of the major quantitative trait locus (QTL) on chromosome 8 revealed the presence of two possibly epistatic loci and/or multiple resistance alleles, which may account for the difference between moderate and strong disease resistances in the germplasm. Search of potential candidate genes in the major QTL region identified two peroxidases and one thioredoxin. Finally, we found genomic prediction accuracy of 0.53 to 0.58 suggesting that genomic selection (GS) will be effective both for improving resistance in breeding populations and identifying highly resistant clones as varieties

Cluster Analysis of Wine Market Segmentation – A Consumer Based Study in the Mid-Atlantic USA

The U.S. wine market has been steadily increasing over the past 15 years. The number of wineries has increased from 2688 in 1999 to 8862 in 2016. About 7% of all those wineries are located in the Mid-Atlantic region, which includes New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. However, competition has been rising as the market is growing. Many foreign wine companies from Europe, South America, and Oceania, are either selling or planning to sell their products to the fast-growing U.S. wine market. It is important to promote local wine industry in the U.S. In this connection, this study has attempted to predict the segment of Mid-Atlantic wine market - based on purchasing behavior, attitudes, and social demographic attributes. A Cluster Analysis used to segment the Mid-Atlantic wine market into four clusters namely Class 1 Detractors, Class 2 Enthusiasts, Class 3 Neutral and Class 4 Advocators. Class 1. Detractors are the cluster that is the most unlikely to buy local wine. Neatly, 67.4% of Detractors indicated that they had never obtained local wine before. 2. Enthusiasts and Class 4 Advocators are the target market of Mid-Atlantic local wineries and hence we should pay more attention to these two market segments. 74.5% of Class 2 indicated that they had bought wine from the Mid-Atlantic wine region. About 60% of Class 4 Advocators stated that they had purchased local wine before. The characteristics of Class 4 are very similar to Class 2. The chance of Class 3 Neutral to buy local wine is 50/50. They drink and buy wine more frequently than consumers in other clusters. Typically, we do not recommend Mid-Atlantic wineries to target this market segment, unless they want to expand their market beyond Class 2 and Class 4. The assessment of perception of consumers will help the producers, wholesalers, and retailers to target ultimate consumers and specific market segments

Annual variation in the levels of transcripts of sex-specific genes in the mantle of the common mussel, Mytilus edulis

Mytilus species are used as sentinels for the assessment of environmental health but sex or stage in the reproduction cycle is rarely considered even though both parameters are likely to influence responses to pollution. We have validated the use of a qPCR assay for sex identification and related the levels of transcripts to the reproductive cycle. A temporal study of mantle of Mytilus edulis found transcripts of male-specific vitelline coat lysin (VCL) and female-specific vitelline envelope receptor for lysin (VERL) could identify sex over a complete year. The levels of VCL/VERL were proportional to the numbers of sperm/ova and are indicative of the stage of the reproductive cycle. Maximal levels of VCL and VERL were found in February 2009 declining to minima between July - August before increasing and re-attaining a peak in February 2010. Water temperature may influence these transitions since they coincide with minimal water temperature in February and maximal temperature in August. An identical pattern of variation was found for a cryptic female-specific transcript (H5) but a very different pattern was observed for oestrogen receptor 2 (ER2). ER2 varied in a sex-specific way with male > female for most of the cycle, with a female maxima in July and a male maxima in December. Using artificially spawned animals, the transcripts for VCL, VERL and H5 were shown to be present in gametes and thus their disappearance from mantle is indicative of spawning. VCL and VERL are present at equivalent levels in February and July-August but during gametogenesis (August to January) and spawning (March to June) VCL is present at lower relative amounts than VERL. This may indicate sex-specific control mechanisms for these processes and highlight a potential pressure point leading to reduced reproductive output if environmental factors cause asynchrony to gamete maturation or release