Snow cover, snowmelt and runoff in the Himalayan River basins

Not withstanding the seasonal vagaries of both rainfall amount and snowcover extent, the Himalayan rivers retain their basic perennial character. However, it is the component of snowmelt yield that accounts for some 60 to 70 percent of the total annual flow volumes from Hamilayan watersheds. On this large hydropotential predominantly depends the temporal performance of hydropower generation and major irrigation projects. The large scale effects of Himalayan snowcover on the hydrologic responses of a few selected catchments in western Himalayas was studied. The antecedent effects of snowcover area on long and short term meltwater yields can best be analyzed by developing appropriate hydrologic models forecasting the pattern of snowmelt as a function of variations in snowcover area. It is hoped that these models would be of practical value in the management of water resources. The predictability of meltwater for the entire snowmelt season was studied, as was the concurrent flow variation in adjacent watersheds, and their hydrologic significance. And the applicability of the Snowmelt-Runoff Model for real time forecast of daily discharges during the major part of the snowmelt season is examined

Development of CGLARE: Design, Fabrication and Characterisation

Fibre Metal Laminates (FMLs) are hybrid materials consisting of metal layers bonded to fibre-reinforced polymer layers. CGLARE is an FML developed at NAL consisting of thin aluminum foil combined with carbon-epoxy and glass-epoxy prepreg materials. CGLARE is proposed as the candidate material for the leading edges of wing and empennage of an aircraft as it has superior characteristics in terms of shape retention (due to highly linearly elastic material like carbon/epoxy), energy absorption capability (due to layered structure and plastic deformation), lightning protection (due to the presence of aluminum layers), and also due to its cost effectiveness (lightweight construction and simple production techniques). This paper describes the issues regarding the development of CGLARE such as surface preparation of aluminum foils and bonding of aluminum with glass. Tensile, Compression, ILSS and Flexure testing of ASTM standard CGLARE specimens for different layups have been done. An important design issue is the internal residual stresses built into the laminate during curing due to differential coefficients of thermal expansion of the different material systems. The paper presents these results that indicate some properties of these material systems that could be exploited for energy absorption in the leading edges of the aircraft

New dienol phytoalexins isolated from Arachis hypogaea leaves infected with Puccinia arachidis Speg.

Two dienol phytoalexins, 9-hydroxy-10,12-octadecadienoic methyl ester and 13-hydroxy-9,11-octadecadienoic methyl ester were isolated from groundnut leaves infected by P. arachidis. Extraction, purification, characterization and antifungal activity of these compounds are described and their possible role in host defences against pathogenic infections is discusse

Isolement de linolénate de méthyle, un nouveau composé fongitoxique des feuilles d'arachide (Arachis hypogaea L.) infectées par Puccinia arachidis Speg.

Le linolénate de méthyle a été isolé de feuilles d'arachide infectées naturellement par #Puccinia arachidis$. Ce produit est un composé fongitoxique nouvellement identifié chez l'arachide. Sa purification, sa caractérisation et son activité fongitoxique sont décrites et son rôle dans les réactions de défense de l'hôte contre la rouille est discuté. (Résumé d'auteur

Seaweed resources off Tamil Nadu coast: Sector III. Valinokkam - Kilakkarai

Survey of seaweed resources in deep water was carried out in the area between Valinokkam and Kilakkarai during January 1989 and March,l990 respectively. In the survey from Valinokkam to Kilakkarai 33 species of marine algae were recorded of which 8 species belong to Chlorophyta, 8 to Phaeophyta and 17 to Rhodophyta. Only one species of seagrass Halophila ovalis was recorded. Among the 200 sq Icm area surveyed, vegetation occurred only in 27.5 sq.km with a total standing crop of 2962.5 tonnes (wet wt)

Evidence for Oriented Adsorption in the Monolayers of Glassy Silica Gel & Fibrous Silica Gel (Santocel C)

553-55

Seaweed resources off Tamil nadu coast, Sector - IV Kilakkarai - Rameswaram island (Dhanushkodi

Survey of the deep water area from Kilakkarai (Appa Tivu to Rameswaram Island (Dhanushkodi) was undertaken from December 1990 to January 1991 in the IV Sector survey of Deep water Seaweed Resources off Tamil Nadu coast, which formed the last phase of the survey from Rameswaram to Kanyakumari carried out during 1986-91. An area of 417 .5 sq.km. was surveyed yielding a total biomass of 18,162.5 tons (wet) seaweeds. Out of 167 stations surveyed in 13 transects, vegetation occurred only in 12 stations. Of the 29 species of marine algae recorded 8 belonged to Chlorophyta, 8 to Phaeophyta, 12 to Rhodophyta, and I to Cyanophyta, One species of seagrass Cymodocea serrulata was also recorded. Twenty species were found in estimable quantities, of which the following 8 species were abundant: Halimeda macr%ba, Spatog/ossum asperum, Zonaria crenata, Sargassum ilicijolium, Amphiroa jragilissima, Hypnea muscijormis, Botryocladia /eplOpoda and Lyngbya majuscula with a biomass of 1325, 9775, 650, 1550, 1925,300,862.5 and 1012.5 tons (wet) respectively. The species of Hypnea and Sargassum could be exploited for the manufacture of phytochemicals

Beneficiation of Gold Ore by Flotation Column: A Pilot Scale Study

During the first phase of the study, laboratory size flotation column was installed within the premises of flotation plant of M/s BGML to study the amenability of column technology for the benefIciation of gold. Encouraged by the results, semi-commercial flotation column designed and developed by NML Madras Centre was installed in the flotation circuit to evaluate its performance and also to instil confidence. The results obtained both by laboratory and semi-commercial size flotation columns clearly indicated that the columns can perform better than the conventional cells. It was observed that high quality concentrates assaying 40 to 50 ppm of gold could be achieved by flotation column, whereas conventional cells could produce hardly 10 to 15 ppm of gold concentrates

Simplifying the mosaic description of DNA sequences

By using the Jensen-Shannon divergence, genomic DNA can be divided into compositionally distinct domains through a standard recursive segmentation procedure. Each domain, while significantly different from its neighbours, may however share compositional similarity with one or more distant (non--neighbouring) domains. We thus obtain a coarse--grained description of the given DNA string in terms of a smaller set of distinct domain labels. This yields a minimal domain description of a given DNA sequence, significantly reducing its organizational complexity. This procedure gives a new means of evaluating genomic complexity as one examines organisms ranging from bacteria to human. The mosaic organization of DNA sequences could have originated from the insertion of fragments of one genome (the parasite) inside another (the host), and we present numerical experiments that are suggestive of this scenario.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.