Atmospheric CO2 source and sink patterns over the Indian region

In this paper we examine CO2 emission hot spots and sink regions over India as identified from global model simulations during the period 2000–2009. CO2 emission hot spots overlap with locations of densely clustered thermal power plants, coal mines and other industrial and urban centres; CO2 sink regions coincide with the locations of dense forest. Fossil fuel CO2 emissions are compared with two bottom-up inventories: the Regional Emission inventories in ASia (REAS v1.11; 2000–2009) and the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR v4.2) (2000–2009). Estimated fossil fuel emissions over the hot spot region are  ∼  500–950 gC m−2 yr−1 as obtained from the global model simulation, EDGAR v4.2 and REAS v1.11 emission inventory. Simulated total fluxes show increasing trends, from 1.39 ± 1.01 % yr−1 (19.8 ± 1.9 TgC yr−1) to 6.7 ± 0.54 % yr−1 (97 ± 12 TgC yr−1) over the hot spot regions and decreasing trends of −0.95 ± 1.51 % yr−1 (−1 ± 2 TgC yr−1) to −5.7 ± 2.89 % yr−1 (−2.3 ± 2 TgC yr−1) over the sink regions. Model-simulated terrestrial ecosystem fluxes show decreasing trends (increasing CO2 uptake) over the sink regions. Decreasing trends in terrestrial ecosystem fluxes imply that forest cover is increasing, which is consistent with India State of Forest Report (2009). Fossil fuel emissions show statistically significant increasing trends in all the data sets considered in this study. Estimated trend in simulated total fluxes over the Indian region is  ∼  4.72 ± 2.25 % yr−1 (25.6 TgC yr−1) which is slightly higher than global growth rate  ∼  3.1 % yr−1 during 2000–2010

Variations in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and its association with rainfall and vegetation over India

In this paper we have studied variability and growth rate of surface observed atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) concentrations over Cape Rama, west coast of India and its association with rainfall and vegetation over this region. Cape Rama is a maritime site which experiences a seasonal reversal wind pattern receiving air masses having marine (continental) signatures during summer (winter) monsoon season. This study reveals that summer monsoon (JJAS) precipitation and monthly values of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the season are well correlated. Negative correlations are seen with CO2 concentrations of concurrent months of the season as well as subsequent months. However the magnitudes of correlation coefficients are decreased till hot pre-monsoon season (MAM). Annual cycle and interannual variability show negative relationship between CO2 concentration and vegetation over the region. CO2 concentration shows increasing trend and NDVI shows decreasing trend. However, the magnitude of increasing trend of CO2 concentration is higher. Amplitude of decreasing phase of vegetation is higher than the amplitude of increasing phase. Though the results show certain link between CO2 and climate variability, further examination with dense and longer data may be needed to confirm the result

Green information quality and green brand evaluation: the moderating effects of eco-label credibility and consumer knowledge

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of three green information quality dimensions &ndash; persuasiveness, completeness and credibility &ndash; on green brand evaluation and whether this is mediated by green brand credibility. It also examines the moderating effects of eco-label credibility and consumer knowledge on green information quality dimensions and green brand credibility relationships.&nbsp;&nbsp;Design/methodology/approachUsing a structured questionnaire on environmentally-friendly electrical goods/electronics, cosmetic and apparel product advertisements, involving an elaboration task, this study collected usable data from 1,282 Indian consumers across 50 cities. It also undertook an assessment for three different product groups using structural equation modelling to examine proposed hypotheses and assessed moderated mediation using the Hays process model.FindingsThe study indicates that: green brand credibility mediates the effects of green information quality dimensions on green brand evaluation; consumer knowledge moderates the effects of persuasiveness and completeness on green brand credibility and eco-label credibility moderates the effects of persuasiveness and credibility on green brand credibility.Research limitations/implications&nbsp;In green information processing, this study supports the relevance of the elaboration likelihood model and the mediation effect of green brand credibility. It also presents evidence that credible eco-labels enhance green information processing. While the results are broadly consistent across the three product categories, the results may only generalizable to the environmentally-aware urban populations.Practical implications&nbsp;Help brand managers to design advertisements that add brand credibility in environmentally-aware urban markets.Originality/valueIt helps to define green information quality and the interacting effects of eco-label credibility and consumer knowledge in green information processing.</div

Medical image colorization for better visualization and segmentation

Medical images contain precious anatomical information for clinical procedures. Improved understanding of medical modality may contribute significantly in arena of medical image analysis. This paper investigates enhancement of monochromatic medical modality into colorized images. Improving the contrast of anatomical structures facilitates precise segmentation. The proposed framework starts with pre-processing to remove noise and improve edge information. Then colour information is embedded to each pixel of a subject image. A resulting image has a potential to portray better anatomical information than a conventional monochromatic image. To evaluate the performance of colorized medical modality, the structural similarity index and the peak signal to noise ratio are computed. Supremacy of proposed colorization is validated by segmentation experiments and compared with greyscale monochromatic images

Combined artificial bee colony algorithm and machine learning techniques for prediction of online consumer repurchase intention

A novel paradigm in the service sector i.e. services through the web is a progressive mechanism for rendering offerings over diverse environments. Internet provides huge opportunities for companies to provide personalized online services to their customers. But prompt novel web services introduction may unfavorably affect the quality and user gratification. Subsequently, prediction of the consumer intention is of supreme importance in selecting the web services for an application. The aim of study is to predict online consumer repurchase intention and to achieve this objective a hybrid approach which a combination of machine learning techniques and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm has been used. The study is divided into three phases. Initially, shopping mall and consumer characteristic’s for repurchase intention has been identified through extensive literature review. Secondly, ABC has been used to determine the feature selection of consumers’ characteristics and shopping malls’ attributes (with > 0.1 threshold value) for the prediction model. Finally, validation using K-fold cross has been employed to measure the best classification model robustness. The classification models viz., Decision Trees (C5.0), AdaBoost, Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Neural Network (NN), are utilized for prediction of consumer purchase intention. Performance evaluation of identified models on training-testing partitions (70-30%) of the data set, shows that AdaBoost method outperforms other classification models with sensitivity and accuracy of 0.95 and 97.58% respectively, on testing data set. This study is a revolutionary attempt that considers both, shopping mall and consumer characteristics in examine the consumer purchase intention.N/

Observation of the Baryonic Flavor-Changing Neutral Current Decay Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu-

We report the first observation of the baryonic flavor-changing neutral current decay Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu- with 24 signal events and a statistical significance of 5.8 Gaussian standard deviations. This measurement uses ppbar collisions data sample corresponding to 6.8fb-1 at sqrt{s}=1.96TeV collected by the CDF II detector at the Tevatron collider. The total and differential branching ratios for Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu- are measured. We find B(Lambda_b -> Lambda mu+ mu-) = [1.73+-0.42(stat)+-0.55(syst)] x 10^{-6}. We also report the first measurement of the differential branching ratio of B_s -> phi mu+ mu- using 49 signal events. In addition, we report branching ratios for B+ -> K+ mu+ mu-, B0 -> K0 mu+ mu-, and B -> K*(892) mu+ mu- decays.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

The importance of service quality in British Muslim’s choice of an Islamic or non-Islamic bank account

Using an extended SERVQUAL model, this study identifies and compares the importance of service quality to Muslim consumers with an Islamic or non-Islamic bank account in a non-Muslim country, Britain. Eight group discussions and survey with 300 Muslims were conducted. Five dimensions of service quality were identified, i.e. Responsiveness, Credibility, Islamic Tangibles, Accessibility and Reputation. These differ in structure and content from the original SERVQUAL developed in the west and the subsequent CARTER model constructed in a Muslim country. In addition, significant differences were found in the importance rating of items by respondents holding an account with an Islamic bank compared to those with a non-Islamic bank account. This study is one of the first to identify and compare the importance of service quality between Islamic and non-Islamic bank account holders in a western non-Muslim country. The results advance our understanding of the impact of culture on SERVQUAL. The study provides insight into Muslims’ bank choice and helps bank managers of both Islamic and non-Islamic banks to focus their attention on the service quality dimensions that matter most to Muslim customers

Studies of the Decay B+- -> D_CP K+-

We report studies of the decay B+- -> D_CP K+-, where D_CP denotes neutral D mesons that decay to CP eigenstates. The analysis is based on a 29.1/fb data sample of collected at the \Upsilon(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric e+ e- storage ring. Ratios of branching fractions of Cabibbo-suppressed to Cabibbo-favored processes involving D_CP are determined to be B(B- -> D_1 K-)/B(B- -> D_1 pi-)=0.125 +- 0.036 +- 0.010 and B(B- -> D_2 K-)/B(B- -> D_2 pi-)=0.119 +- 0.028 +- 0.006, where indices 1 and 2 represent the CP=+1 and CP=-1 eigenstates of the D0 - anti D0 system, respectively. We also extract the partial rate asymmetries for B+- -> D_CP K+-, finding A_1 = 0.29 +- 0.26 +- 0.05 and A_2 = -0.22 +- 0.24 +- 0.04.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Thienoisoindigo-Based Semiconductor Nanowires Assembled with 2-Bromobenzaldehyde via Both Halogen and Chalcogen Bonding

We fabricated nanowires of a conjugated oligomer and applied them to organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). The supramolecular assemblies of a thienoisoindigo-based small molecular organic semiconductor (TIIG-Bz) were prepared by co-precipitation with 2-bromobenzaldehyde (2-BBA) via a combination of halogen bonding (XB) between the bromide in 2-BBA and electron-donor groups in TIIG-Bz, and chalcogen bonding (CB) between the aldehyde in 2-BBA and sulfur in TIIG-Bz. It was found that 2-BBA could be incorporated into the conjugated planes of TIIG-Bz via XB and CB pairs, thereby increasing the pi - pi stacking area between the conjugated planes. As a result, the driving force for one-dimensional growth of the supramolecular assemblies via pi - pi stacking was significantly enhanced. TIIG-Bz/2-BBA nanowires were used to fabricate OFETs, showing significantly enhanced charge transfer mobility compared to OFETs based on pure TIIG-Bz thin films and nanowires, which demonstrates the benefit of nanowire fabrication using 2-BB