Impact of Urban Growth on Water Bodies - The Case of Hyderabad

Being located in the Deccan Plateau region, Hyderabad city has been dotted with a number of lakes, which formed very important component of its physical environment. With the increasing control of the State and private agencies over the years, and rapid urban sprawl of the city, many of the water bodies have been totally lost. Many have been shrunk in size while the waters of several lakes got polluted with the discharge of untreated domestic and industrial effluents. This study makes an attempt to analyse the transformation of common property resources (the lakes) into private property. The adverse consequences of the loss of water bodies are felt in the steep decline in water table and the resultant water crisis in several areas. Further, the severity of flooding that was witnessed in August 2000 was also due to a reduction in the carrying capacity of lakes and water channels. The State has not bothered to either implement the existing laws or pay attention to the suggestions of environmental organisations in this regard. The paper argues that in this process of loss of water bodies in Hyderabad, the State is as much responsible as private agencies in terms of the policies that it has formulated and the lack of ensuring legislation and implementation.Urban Growth, Water Bodies, Hyderabad

Impact of urban growth on water bodies: The case of Hyderabad

Being located in the Deccan Plateau region, Hyderabad city has been dotted with a number of lakes, which formed very important component of its physical environment. With the increasing control of the State and private agencies over the years, and rapid urban sprawl of the city, many of the water bodies have been totally lost. Many have been shrunk in size while the waters of several lakes got polluted with the discharge of untreated domestic and industrial effluents. This study makes an attempt to analyse the transformation of common property resources (the lakes) into private property. The adverse consequences of the loss of water bodies are felt in the steep decline in water table and the resultant water crisis in several areas. Further, the severity of flooding that was witnessed in August 2000 was also due to a reduction in the carrying capacity of lakes and water channels. The State has not bothered to either implement the existing laws or pay attention to the suggestions of environmental organisations in this regard. The paper argues that in this process of loss of water bodies in Hyderabad, the State is as much responsible as private agencies in terms of the policies that it has formulated and the lack of ensuring legislation and implementation.

Dean flow-coupled inertial focusing in curved channels

Passive particle focusing based on inertial microfluidics was recently introduced as a high-throughput alternative to active focusing methods that require an external force field to manipulate particles. In inertial microfluidics, dominant inertial forces cause particles to move across streamlines and occupy equilibrium positions along the faces of walls in flows through straight micro channels. In this study, we systematically analyzed the addition of secondary Dean forces by introducing curvature and show how randomly distributed particles entering a simple u-shaped curved channel are focused to a fixed lateral position exiting the curvature. We found the lateral particle focusing position to be fixed and largely independent of radius of curvature and whether particles entering the curvature are pre-focused (at equilibrium) or randomly distributed. Unlike focusing in straight channels, where focusing typically is limited to channel cross-sections in the range of particle size to create single focusing point, we report here particle focusing in a large cross-section area (channel aspect ratio 1: 10). Furthermore, we describe a simple u-shaped curved channel, with single inlet and four outlets, for filtration applications. We demonstrate continuous focusing and filtration of 10 mu m particles (with > 90% filtration efficiency) from a suspension mixture at throughputs several orders of magnitude higher than flow through straight channels (volume flow rate of 4.25ml/min). Finally, as an example of high throughput cell processing application, white blood cells were continuously processed with a filtration efficiency of 78% with maintained high viability. We expect the study will aid in the fundamental understanding of flow through curved channels and open the door for the development of a whole set of bio-analytical applications

PocketMatch: A new algorithm to compare binding sites in protein structures

Background: Recognizing similarities and deriving relationships among protein molecules is a fundamental
requirement in present-day biology. Similarities can be present at various levels which can be detected through comparison of protein sequences or their structural folds. In some cases similarities obscure at these levels could be present merely in the substructures at their binding sites. Inferring functional similarities between protein molecules by comparing their binding sites is still largely exploratory and not as yet a routine protocol. One of
the main reasons for this is the limitation in the choice of appropriate analytical tools that can compare binding sites with high sensitivity. To benefit from the enormous amount of structural data that is being rapidly accumulated, it is essential to have high throughput tools that enable large scale binding site comparison.

Results: Here we present a new algorithm PocketMatch for comparison of binding sites in a frame invariant
manner. Each binding site is represented by 90 lists of sorted distances capturing shape and chemical nature of the site. The sorted arrays are then aligned using an incremental alignment method and scored to obtain PMScores for pairs of sites. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis and an extensive validation of the algorithm have been carried out. Perturbation studies where the geometry of a given site was retained but the residue types were changed randomly, indicated that chance similarities were virtually non-existent. Our analysis also demonstrates that shape information alone is insufficient to discriminate between diverse binding sites, unless
combined with chemical nature of amino acids.

Conclusions: A new algorithm has been developed to compare binding sites in accurate, efficient and
high-throughput manner. Though the representation used is conceptually simplistic, we demonstrate that along
with the new alignment strategy used, it is sufficient to enable binding comparison with high sensitivity. Novel methodology has also been presented for validating the algorithm for accuracy and sensitivity with respect to geometry and chemical nature of the site. The method is also fast and takes about 1/250th second for one comparison on a single processor. A parallel version on BlueGene has also been implemented

Inequity in water supply and impact on the poor: the case of Hyderabad

There are significant variations in the access of households to tap water between the core city and the surrounding urban areas in Hyderabad. In the surrounding areas, a substantial proportion of the households have their source of water outside their premises. Rather than the lack of water, it is the iniquitous distribution and denial of clean drinking water to the urban poor that led to the outbreak of water-contaminated diseases on a large scale in 2003 in Hyderabad city. The two main reservoirs that are the principal sources of drinking water to the old city have been neglected over the years leading to their drying up, for the first time, in 2003. Despite untold miseries suffered by the poor, the State continues to be lukewarm to their plight, which is highlighted in this paper. Such neglect by the State is probably due to lack of mobilization by the poor to form an effective pressure group at grassroots level to lobby for basic amenities

プラズマCVDプロセスによるカーボンナノチューブの浮遊コーティング

内容の要約広島大学(Hiroshima University)博士(工学)Doctor of Engineeringdoctora

Spectral, Electrochemical and Molecular Modeling Studies of Some 3 (2 Hydroxy benzalhydrazino-4-thiazolyl)coumarins

Spectral, cyclic voltammetric and molecular modeling studies have been carried out on some 3-(2-hydroxybenzalhydrazino-4-thiozolyl)coumarins (1), to understand their solution and electrochemical characteristics. These investigations reveal structural alterations in the conjugates of their acid-base equilibria as indicated by considerable bathochromic shift in electronic spectra and changes in electron transfer properties with rise in pH. The pKa values and electrochemical data such as Ep, ip, αna, k ° h, etc., of 1 were evaluated. Further, the compound 1 is found to be good chelating ligands. Molecular modeling studies were also performed to correlate the spectral and electrochemical observations. Voltammetric analysis of 1 is also presented

SYNTHESIS, SPECTRAL AND MOLECULAR MODELING STUDIES OF COUMARIN DERIVATIVES

Objective: To synthesize the 3-{2-[N'-(1-Pyridin-2-yl-ethylidene)-hydrazino]-thiazol-4-yl} coumarins and study their spectral and molecular properties by using the spectroscopy and molecular modeling techniques.Methods: Spectroscopy and Molecular modeling techniquesResults: The spectral behavior of 3-{2-[N'-(1-Pyridin-2-yl-ethylidene)-hydrazino]-thiazol-4-yl} coumarins (1.1-1.3) in aqueous buffers of varied pH is presented. Spectrophotometry was utilized to study its proton and electron transfer characteristics with the support of molecular modeling studies. An excellent analytical method of assaying of (1.1-1.3) has been developed in Spectrophotometry at pH = 6. Molecular modeling on various acid-base conjugates of (1.1-1.3) and their several conformers has been carried out to arrive at the thermodynamic and conformational issues to correlate the spectral and electrochemical observations.Conclusion: Electron transfer (ET) has been increasingly implicated as a biochemical pathway for the pharmacologic action of a variety of biological active compounds. These studies helps to understand the active form of the biological active compounds may have a catalytic function as an intermediary in passing electrons from a donor, such as DNA, protein, or an ET chain, to an acceptor, thereby exercising an influence on normal or aberrant ET chains, ion movements, membrane potentials, and oxidative stress. The actual agent may be the biological active compounds itself or a derived metabolite, such as a metal complex, oxidative product, or protonated form

Multifaceted approach for anticipating learner performance using parameter weightage and ensemble algorithm fusion

Anticipating student performance has garnered significant attention in education research for offering early insights that enable timely interventions and personalized support, ultimately improving student success and retention rates. This research focuses on enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of student performance prediction models by employing a hybrid ensemble framework that integrates weighted feature selection with meta-learner-based approaches. A weighted feature selection method was employed to prioritize the most influential of the 23 parameters in the dataset, enhancing prediction accuracy while reducing the computational burden. These parameters were then used to build a hybrid ensemble model by combining base learners with meta-learners, systematically tuned using hyperparameter optimization. This approach aimed to further improve prediction accuracy by fusing multiple base learners, leveraging the strengths of different algorithms for more accurate predictions. The proposed hybrid model was validated across different features selected based on feature importance using random forest (RF). An accuracy of 98.38% was achieved when all 23 features were considered and an accuracy of 97.13 % was achieved when the top 10 features were used. The research highlights the significance of early prediction for prompt intervention and demonstrates how feature weighting can boost model efficacy