Management and Performance of APPLE Battery in High Temperature Environment

India's first experimental communication satellite, APPLE, carried a 12 AH Ni-Cd battery for supplying power during eclipse. Failure to deploy one of the two solar panels resulted in the battery operating in a high temperature environment, around 40 C. This also resulted in the battery being used in diurnal cycles rather than just half yearly eclipse seasons. The management and performance of the battery during its life of two years are described. An attempt to identify the probable degradation mechanisms is also made

GIS based modeling of socio-environmental impacts due to a highway development project- A case study

Infrastructure development is the basic need for economic development of a country. Highway is an important infrastructure for movement of goods and passenger traffic. In the recent years, the need for developing adequate road transportation infrastructure has been realized by Government of India and various state Governments.  Major road development projects have been formulated at national level in India. Analysis of socio-environmental impact is an essential component of environmental impact assessment (EIA) that is required for the planning of all major road projects. Most of the socio-environmental attributes are spatial in nature and for a rational assessment of these impacts it is necessary to quantify the impacts considering their spatial variations.In this paper a methodology is demonstrated with reference to a case study of highway development project in India, for the quantification of impact on individual socio-environmental attributes based on the perception of public in the influence area of the project, and the spatial variation of impacts is modeled using Geographic Information System (GIS). &nbsp

Water quality surrounding to MSW dumps of Raipur city-A case study

In India, urbanization and rapid population growth have led to degradation of environment, by increased rate of exploitation of natural resources and generation of municipal solid wastes (MSW). Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal is a big problem for most of the towns in developing countries. In India dumping of MSW on low laying area is the common practice in most of the towns. The dumping of waste in uncontrolled manner creates many kinds of problems for the surrounding environment. Ground water pollution is one of the serious effects of the MSW dumping. The assessment of impacts on ground water sources near to MSW dumps is of considerable importance in management and disposal of solid waste. The leachate may greatly affect the ground water sources near to the dumpsites. In the present study an attempt has been made to investigate the extent of impact on ground water sources namely open wells, shallow tube wells (depth less than 30 m) and deep tube wells (depth more than 50 m).  The pollution status is also monitored at varying distances from the solid waste dumping sites to investigate the trend of leachate movement in the subsoil. Water samples from different sources at different locations are assessed for physical, chemical and biological properties.&nbsp

Seasonal variation in composition and characteristics of indian municipal solid waste –A case study

In developing countries like India, rapid urbanization and uncontrolled population growth have lead to the socio-environmental problem of ill-managed municipal solid waste. Evaluating the characteristics of municipal solid waste is an important aspect of MSWM because the selection of effective management strategies depends on the types and variation in the characteristics of the waste to be managed. The focus of the present paper is to determine the variation in composition as well as characteristics of municipal solid waste for Indian conditions. A case study is presented for Raipur city to determine the seasonal variation in waste characteristics. The seasonal variation in characteristics of MSW was found to be in a wide range of 4-125 %, so for comprehensive management of this MSW, a proper combination of recycling and recovery, composting, energy generation and dumping on land should be adopted.&nbsp

Use of fly ash in black cotton soil for road construction

Waste products from various industries normally deposited in landfills, have been proposed for use as an alternate construction material. The utilization of these alternate materials needs to be encouraged for economy of construction and conservation of materials. One by-product that has shown as an alternate construction material is fly ash. In this paper an effort is made to use fly ash to stabilise soils for road construction, in order to reduce the amount of waste globally. In the present assignment, black cotton soils were stabilized with different quantities of fly ash. On the basis of preliminary investigations, it has been found that stabilization with fly ash, improves the CBR and plasticity characteristics of black cotton soils.For hydration of fly ash, the lime content is responsible, so substantial improvements in desired properties can be achieved by addition of small quantity of lime. ie2< r؇F `oF Microbiologists have come up with an important point that if genetic modification is carried out extensively, new viruses with greater potential to harm mankind may evolve anytime, and the probability of this occurring can be quite high. This form of dangerous biotechnology will only benefit largely towards the GM crop farmers in form of monetary gain. According to relevant statistics, farmers would save more than US$3.3 billion annually on herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. So come to think of it. Is it worthwhile to become the guinea pigs just to save a few bucks, while those farmers are sitting down there counting their huge earnings without inflicting any risks on themselves? While some countries have banned GMOs or placed a moratorium on their release, others are increasing both investment levels and land area devoted to cultivating genetically modified (GM) crops. In 2006, GM crops were grown commercially by 10.3 million farmers (9.3 million resource-poor small farmers in developing countries) in 22 countries, on 102 million hectares - about 4 per cent of total arable land worldwide [5] &nbsp

Dynamical instability and domain formation in a spin-1 Bose condensate

We interpret the recently observed spatial domain formation in spin-1 atomic condensates as a result of dynamical instability. Within the mean field theory, a homogeneous condensate is dynamically unstable (stable) for ferromagnetic (antiferromagnetic) atomic interactions. We find this dynamical instability naturally leads to spontaneous domain formation as observed in several recent experiments for condensates with rather small numbers of atoms. For trapped condensates, our numerical simulations compare quantitatively to the experimental results, thus largely confirming the physical insight from our analysis of the homogeneous case.Comment: RevTex4, 4 pages with 3 color eps figure, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Correlations in the properties of static and rapidly rotating compact stars

Correlations in the properties of the static compact stars (CSs) and the ones rotating with the highest observed frequency of 1122Hz are studied using a large set of equations of state (EOSs). These EOSs span various approaches and their chemical composition vary from the nucleons to hyperons and quarks in $\beta$-equilibrium. It is found that the properties of static CS, like, the maximum gravitational mass $M_{\rm max}^{\rm stat}$ and radius $R_{1.4}^{\rm stat}$ corresponding to t he canonical mass and supramassive or non-supramassive nature of the CS rotating at 1122 Hz are strongly correlated. In particular, only those EOSs yield the CS rotating at 1122Hz to be non-supramassive for which \left (\frac{M_{\rm max}^{\rm stat}}{M_\odot}\right )^{1/2} \left (\frac{10{\rm km}}{R_{1.4}^{\rm stat}})^{3/2} is greater than unity. Suitable parametric form which can be used to split the $M_{\rm max}^{\rm stat}$ $-$ $R_{1.4}^{\rm stat}$ plane into the regions of different supramassive nature of the CS rotating at 1122Hz is presented. Currently measured maximum gravitational mass 1.76$M_\odot$ of PSR J0437-4715 suggests that the CS rotating at 1122Hz can be non-supramassive provided $R_{1.4}^{\rm stat} \leqslant 12.4$ km.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, Appearing in Phys. Rev.

Bright gap solitons of atoms with repulsive interaction

We report on the first experimental observation of bright matter-wave solitons for 87Rb atoms with repulsive atom-atom interaction. This counter intuitive situation arises inside a weak periodic potential, where anomalous dispersion can be realized at the Brillouin zone boundary. If the coherent atomic wavepacket is prepared at the corresponding band edge a bright soliton is formed inside the gap. The strength of our system is the precise control of preparation and real time manipulation, allowing the systematic investigation of gap solitons.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Non-rotating and rotating neutron stars in the extended field theoretical model

We study the properties of non-rotating and rotating neutron stars for a new set of equations of state (EOSs) with different high density behaviour obtained using the extended field theoretical model. The high density behaviour for these EOSs are varied by varying the $\omega-$meson self-coupling and hyperon-meson couplings in such a way that the quality of fit to the bulk nuclear observables, nuclear matter incompressibility coefficient and hyperon-nucleon potential depths remain practically unaffected. We find that the largest value for maximum mass for the non-rotating neutron star is $2.1M_\odot$. The radius for the neutron star with canonical mass is $12.8 - 14.1$ km provided only those EOSs are considered for which maximum mass is larger than $1.6M_\odot$ as it is the lower bound on the maximum mass measured so far. Our results for the very recently discovered fastest rotating neutron star indicate that this star is supra massive with mass $1.7 - 2.7M_\odot$ and circumferential equatorial radius $12 - 19$ km.Comment: 28 pages, 12 figures. Phys. Rev. C (in press

A review paper on R&D efforts in assessing the traffic noise on highways

In rapidly urbanizing country like India, the transportation sector is growing in a fast pace and the number of vehicles on Indian roads is increasing at a rate of more than 7% per annum. This has led to over crowded roads and pollution. Transportation sector is one of the major contributors to noise in urban area, which contributes 55% of total noise on highway. In view of this, it is essential to study highway noise with respect to various causative factors. Hence, various noise prediction models have been developed, throughout the world to assess its impact on to the society and the human beings. These traffic noise prediction models differ in some respects, but the overall methodology is similar. All the noise prediction models consists of evaluating basic noise levels and making series of adjustments to take into account geometric, traffic flow, barrier data etc. In this paper, noise prediction models of U.S.A. and U.K. (FHWA and CORTON) along with the research efforts on noise in Indian context has been studied and discussed