Identification of drought‐vulnerable areas using NOAA AVHRR data

Drought is a recurring phenomenon in many parts of India, bringing significant water shortages, economic losses and adverse social consequences. The western regions of India (Rajasthan and Gujarat provinces) have suffered with severe droughts several times in the past. In this study meteorological and satellite data were used for monitoring drought in the southern part of Rajasthan. Monthly rainfall data from six stations were used to derive the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) series of satellite was used for calculating brightness temperature (BT), the Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) and the Water Supplying Vegetation Index (WSVI). BT was converted to the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) and the Temperature Condition Index (TCI), which are useful indices for the estimation of vegetation health and drought monitoring. The analysis was carried out for a period of four years (2002–2005) and from the SPI analysis it was observed that 2002 was a drought year. On the basis of the satellite‐based indices, the study area was divided into categories of extreme, severe, moderate and slight drought and normal condition. We found that in 2002 all of the area under study was affected by drought with greater intensity, mostly classed as extreme and severe drought conditions. An analysis was carried out of the study area divided into four zones on the basis of rainfall distribution, soil characteristics, cropping patterns and other physical characteristics. This analysis revealed that zone 1 was the most drought‐prone area in all four years; zone 4 was the next area most affected by severe drought, followed by zones 2 and 3, which were less affected by drought conditions.     

Assessment of service exposed boiler tubes

Boiler tubes in power plants have finite life because of prolonged exposure to high temperature, stress and aggressive environment. Service-exposed platen superheater and reheater tubes (148,900 h) made of 2.25Cr-1 Mo steels in a 120 MW boiler of a thermal power plant were evaluated for remnant life. The investigation included hot tensile tests, hardness measurement, dimensional measurement, microscopy and creep tests. Experimentally determined yield and ultimate tensile strength, and estimated 10,000–100,000 h rupture strength in the temperature range 520–580 °C, exhibited a decreasing trend with increasing temperature. Microstructural study did not reveal any significant degradation in terms of creep cavities, cracks, graphitization, etc. Analysis of tensile and stress rupture data revealed that although there was degradation of the tubes due to prolonged service exposure in terms of the ultimate tensile strength values, stress rupture plots showed that the service exposed superheater and reheater tubes could remain in service for a length of more than 10 years at the operating hoop stress of 40 MPa/540 °C, provided no localised damage in the form of cracks or dents develop.     

Finite element analysis of femoral components paper III – hip joints

Finite element analysis of the hip implant is conducted in this paper for representative femoral cross-section geometries and development of stress in the presence of bone cement is elucidated. Differences in cement stresses generated by varying implant cross-sections were compared with conventional features derived from representative implants. The analysis was performed under idealized implant assemblies by constraining the implant movement in the assembly. The cross-sections and implant geometries used are generic and intended to be representative of available geometries. This paper is a part of student research projects, prepared from a series of activities in biomedical implant research currently underway at Ohio Northern and Arkansas Tech Universities.     

Structural and electrical properties of TlLiWO4 ceramics

Abstracts are not published in this journal     

Multi-objective particle swarm optimisation based integrated production inventory routing planning for efficient perishable food logistics operations

Sustainable and efficient food supply chain has become an essential component of one’s life. The model proposed in this paper is deeply linked to people's quality of life as a result of which there is a large incentive to fulfil customer demands through it. This proposed model can enhance food quality by making the best possible food quality accessible to customers, construct a sustainable logistics system considering its environmental impact and ensure the customer demand to be fulfilled as fast as possible. In this paper, an extended model is examined that builds a unified planning problem for efficient food logistics operations where four important objectives are viewed: minimising the total expense of the system, maximising the average food quality along with the minimisation of the amount of CO₂ emissions in transportation along with production and total weighted delivery lead time minimisation. A four objective mixed integer linear programming model for intelligent food logistics system is developed in the paper. The optimisation of the formulated mathematical model is proposed using a modified multi-objective particle swarm optimisation algorithm with multiple social structures: MO-GLNPSO (Multi-Objective Global Local Near-Neighbour Particle Swarm Optimisation). Computational results of a case study on a given dataset as well as on multiple small, medium and large-scale datasets followed by sensitivity analysis show the potency and effectiveness of the introduced method. Lastly, there has been a scope for future study displayed which would lead to the further progress of these types of models.     

Microwave mediated rapid synthesis of chitosan

Chitosan is synthesized by deacetylating chitin with NaOH solution under microwave irradiation. The process describes a rapid synthesis procedure in comparison to conventional methods. The microwave-synthesized chitosan was characterized by Ninhydrin test, Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements. The experimental results show that the degree of deacetylation increased with increasing irradiation time. A degree of deacetylation of 85.3% was achieved after irradiating chitin with 45% NaOH solution in a microwave for 5.5 min at 900-watt power. This method can be very useful for synthesizing low molecular weight chitosan with rapid and clean chemistry.     

Growth, optical transmission and X-ray photoemission studies of BaB2O4 single crystals

Beta barium borate (-BBO) crystals have been grown by the top seeded solution growth technique (TSSG) using Na₂O as a flux. The crystals exhibited high transparency and the absence of inclusions and found to have sodium contamination in the range 150 to 230 p.p.m. The effect of this contamination on some crystal properties of interest has been investigated. The presence of impurities causes optical absorption below 550 nm in BBO crystals of both and -phases. X-ray photo emission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements performed on these crystals show that sodium gives rise to a measurable shift in the binding energies of the constituent ions. Further, the results show that Na⁺ ions enter into the lattice substitutionally and provide charge trapping sites close to the band edge.