UNICS - An Unified Instrument Control System for Small/Medium Sized Astronomical Observatories

Although the astronomy community is witnessing an era of large telescopes, smaller and medium sized telescopes still maintain their utility being larger in numbers. In order to obtain better scientific outputs it is necessary to incorporate modern and advanced technologies to the back-end instruments and to their interfaces with the telescopes through various control processes. However often tight financial constraints on the smaller and medium size observatories limit the scope and utility of these systems. Most of the time for every new development on the telescope the back-end control systems are required to be built from scratch leading to high costs and efforts. Therefore a simple, low cost control system for small and medium size observatory needs to be developed to minimize the cost and efforts while going for the expansion of the observatory. Here we report on the development of a modern, multipurpose instrument control system UNICS (Unified Instrument Control System) to integrate the controls of various instruments and devices mounted on the telescope. UNICS consists of an embedded hardware unit called Common Control Unit (CCU) and Linux based data acquisition and User Interface. The Hardware of the CCU is built around the Atmel make ATmega 128 micro-controller and is designed with a back-plane, Master Slave architecture. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been developed based on QT and the back end application software is based on C/C++. UNICS provides feedback mechanisms which give the operator a good visibility and a quick-look display of the status and modes of instruments. UNICS is being used for regular science observations since March 2008 on 2m, f/10 IUCAA Telescope located at Girawali, Pune India.Comment: Submitted to PASP, 10 Pages, 5 figure

The effect of surveillance and appreciative inquiry on puerperal infections : a longitudinal cohort study in India

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Supported ionic liquid silica nanoparticles (SILnPs) as an efficient and recyclable heterogeneous catalyst for the dehydration of fructose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural

Supported ionic liquid nanoparticles (SILnPs) having particle size ranging from 293 ± 2 to 610 ± 11 nm have been prepared by immobilization of ionic liquid, 1-(tri-ethoxy silyl-propyl)- 3-methyl-imidazolium hydrogen sulfate (IL-HSO4) on the surface of silica nanoparticles. The catalytic activity of the prepared SILnPs was investigated for the dehydration of fructose to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) in the presence of dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) as a solvent. The reaction temperature and amount of catalyst have been optimized for dehydration of fructose over SILnPs using experimental design leading to 99.9% fructose conversion and 63.0% HMF yield using silica SILnPs (d = 610 ± 11) nm at 130.0 ◦C in 30 min reaction time. The SILnPs catalysts developed in this study present improved performances over other zeolites and strong acid ion exchange resin catalysts, and they have been efficiently and very easily recycled over seven times without any significant loss in fructose conversion and HMF yield

MHD activity induced coherent mode excitation in the edge plasma region of ADITYA-U Tokamak

In this paper, we report the excitation of coherent density and potential fluctuations induced by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) activity in the edge plasma region of ADITYA-U Tokamak. When the amplitude of the MHD mode, mainly the m/n = 2/1, increases beyond a threshold value of 0.3-0.4 %, coherent oscillations in the density and potential fluctuations are observed having the same frequency as that of the MHD mode. The mode numbers of these MHD induced density and potential fluctuations are obtained by Langmuir probes placed at different radial, poloidal, and toroidal locations in the edge plasma region. Detailed analyses of these Langmuir probe measurements reveal that the coherent mode in edge potential fluctuation has a mode structure of m/n = 2/1 whereas the edge density fluctuation has an m/n = 1/1 structure. It is further observed that beyond the threshold, the coupled power fraction scales almost linearly with the magnitude of magnetic fluctuations. Furthermore, the rise rates of the coupled power fraction for coherent modes in density and potential fluctuations are also found to be dependent on the growth rate of magnetic fluctuations. The disparate mode structures of the excited modes in density and plasma potential fluctuations suggest that the underlying mechanism for their existence is most likely due to the excitation of the global high-frequency branch of zonal flows occurring through the coupling of even harmonics of potential to the odd harmonics of pressure due to 1/R dependence of the toroidal magnetic field

Partial discharge detection in transformer using adaptive grey wolf optimizer based acoustic emission technique PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Abstract: Partial discharge (PD) occurring in the insulation systems of the transformer is an important indicator of their deterioration. Insulation degradation is a well-known source of power transformer failure. Many methods have been realized for detection and localization of PD source in the transformer. In this paper sensor based acoustic emission technique has been implemented for PD detection. To repair site of PD after detection it is very important to find the exact location of PD sources in the equipment. This paper proposed adaptive grey wolf optimizer (AGWO) algorithm for localization of PD source using acoustic emission technique. A novel bio-inspired optimization algorithm based on the hunting process of wolves in nature called the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) Algorithm. In contrast to meta-heuristics; the main feature is randomization having a relevant role in both exploration and exploitation in the optimization problem. A novel randomization technique termed adaptive technique is integrated with GWO and exercised on unconstrained test benchmark function and optimum location of PD in the transformer. Integration of new randomization adaptive technique provides potential to AGWO algorithm to attain global optimal solution and faster convergence PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT Reliable operation of the power system will be decided by the performance of major equipment in the system. The transformer is a key element in power system. The majority of the faults in power transformer are being initiated due to degradation in insulation properties; PD activity is one of them. Monitoring of PD activity is very much essential to track its progress and based on that maintenance or replacement can be planned to avoid a sudden outage of the transformer. In this paper, acoustic emission based technique has been implemented for PD detection. To find the exact location of discharge site is also equally important after detection. Adaptive GWO has been implemented to find the optimum location of PD site. After reading this paper readers will be able to understand basics of acoustic emission detection technique and about the implementation of GWO in challenging problems

Review of the book Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

by Kalpesh Josh