Development and evaluation of plastic based solar still for production of distilled water

Solar still was developed and evaluated at Department of Renewable Energy Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Dediapada. The average yield of distilled water in developed solar still varied from 1055-1498 ml/m 2 -day during winter and summer where as in already developed still varied 1350 to 1550 ml /m 2 day . Thermal efficiency of developed solar still was found as 20 per cent .The physicochemical analysis was carried out to examine the effect of distillation on tap water. A drastic reduction in the TDS, Chlorides, Calcium hardness and magnesium hardness, dissolved silica was observed through solar distillation. The payback period of the unit was only 6 months and after that period the unit produced net profit. The manufacturing cost of this developed solar still was only Rs. 1640/- which was totally manufactured in plastic material so no any corrosive material came in contact for changing the property of distilled water as output. Cleaning of solar still could be easily carried out by just removing the w shape dome of developed device which cannot be possible in available solar still in market

Design, development and demonstration of a Shallow solar tunnel dryer for non-electrified areas

This paper presents the design, construction and performance evaluation of a shallow solar tunnel dryer for agro and industrial products. In the shallow solar tunnel dryer, there are three separate units viz.: an air heating unit, drying unit and air diversion unit. Total area of the solar tunnel dryer was 21 m². The heated air from a separate solar air heating zone is passed through a product bed, and at the same time, the drying tunnel bed absorbs solar energy directly through the transparent UV stabilized plastic sheet used as covering material. This dryer was not required any external sources of the power to operate the electrical fan. The system was designed to operate at a temperature of 50 to 60oC. The system was installed at the institute and initial testing was conducted. After that the system was also demonstrated at the actual potential user’s site. The results obtained during the test period revealed that the temperatures inside the tunnel drying zone and solar air heating zone were much higher than the ambient air temperature during most hours of the day-light. The temperature rise inside the drying tunnel was up to 67.4°C at peak hour’s period (noon). The drying rat e and thermal efficiency of the collector were 1.73 kg/h and 26.0% respectively. The high outlet temperature indicated the scope of loading the dryer further

A study of role of doppler in gestational hypertension and perinatal outcome

Background: Hypertensive disorder of pregnancy is one of the most common complications that affect the human pregnancy. Hence it is important to identify women at risk of developing gestational hypertension or preeclampsia, its early diagnosis and subsequent consequences due to uteroplacental insufficiency with help of Doppler ultrasound, to improve perinatal outcome. The objective of this study was to study the application of Doppler ultrasound with analysis of blood flow velocity waveform in gestational hypertension and to examine and study the perinatal outcome in pregnancy with altered Doppler indices.Methods: A prospective study was carried out in 50 antenatal patients diagnosed to have gestational hypertension during a period of 12 months to evaluate the role of color Doppler imaging in gestational hypertension in patients more than 28 weeks of gestation, the initial scan was performed immediately after the diagnosis. This study analyzed the blood flow in umbilical artery, maternal uterine artery and fetal middle cerebral artery using Doppler ultrasound.Results: In this study approximately 76% of cases were found in 20-30 years group. 58% showed abnormal umbilical artery Doppler while 42% women had normal umbilical artery Doppler. In this study 23 cases had cerebro-placental index 1. Cases with cerebro-placental index <1 had various complications like preterm delivery, low birth weight, increased chances of still birth, intra uterine death (IUD), increased NICU admission. In this study 31 cases had abnormal uterine artery Doppler which accounts for 62% of total cases, while 38% had normal uterine artery Doppler.Conclusions: Doppler ultrasound can reliably predict any adverse fetal outcome in hypertensive pregnancies and can be a useful tool for decision making in appropriate timing of intervention for delivery

Bivariate tt-distribution for transition matrix elements in Breit-Wigner to Gaussian domains of interacting particle systems

Interacting many-particle systems with a mean-field one body part plus a chaos generating random two-body interaction having strength $\lambda$, exhibit Poisson to GOE and Breit-Wigner (BW) to Gaussian transitions in level fluctuations and strength functions with transition points marked by $\lambda=\lambda_c$ and $\lambda=\lambda_F$, respectively; $\lambda_F >> \lambda_c$. For these systems theory for matrix elements of one-body transition operators is available, as valid in the Gaussian domain, with $\lambda > \lambda_F$, in terms of orbitals occupation numbers, level densities and an integral involving a bivariate Gaussian in the initial and final energies. Here we show that, using bivariate $t$-distribution, the theory extends below from the Gaussian regime to the BW regime up to $\lambda=\lambda_c$. This is well tested in numerical calculations for six spinless fermions in twelve single particle states.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Influence of peripartum dietary supplementation of choline and fat in protected form on production performance of Gir cows

In this experiment, the effects of supplementing choline and fat in rumen protected form during peripartum period on feed intake, milk production and composition of Gir cows were studied. Twenty four Gir cows of 1st to 3rd parity were used from 30 days pre-partum through 60 days post-partum and randomly assigned to four equal treatment groups (n=6) on the basis of their parity, body weight and previous lactation yield. Control diet was fed to cows in group T1 (control). Additionally, rumen protected choline (RPC) @45 g/d in group T2; rumen protected fat (RPF) 80 g/d in group T3 and RPC @45 g/d + RPF @80 g/d in group T4 were supplemented along with control diet. The treatments significantly affected dry mater intake (DMI) and milk production of cows. DMI was increased in the cows fed with RPC as compared to control. Milk yield, 4% fat-corrected milk, solid-corrected milk and energy- corrected milk were higher in the cows fed with RPC and RPF alone or in combination, as compared to control. No synergistic effect was observed with these supplements on DMI or milk production. None of these supplements influenced the milk composition significantly, however yield of milk fat, protein and lactose were higher in all the nutrient supplemented cows compared to control. Net return over feed cost was higher in supplemented cows compared to control. Results indicated that supplementation of RPC or RPF can improve feed intake and productive performance of Gir cows for overall economic benefits

Random matrix ensembles with random interactions: Results for EGUE(2)-SU(4)

We introduce in this paper embedded Gaussian unitary ensemble of random matrices, for $m$ fermions in $\Omega$ number of single particle orbits, generated by random two-body interactions that are SU(4) scalar, called EGUE(2)-SU(4). Here the SU(4) algebra corresponds to Wigner's supermultiplet SU(4) symmetry in nuclei. Formulation based on Wigner-Racah algebra of the embedding algebra $U(4\Omega) \supset U(\Omega) \otimes SU(4)$ allows for analytical treatment of this ensemble and using this analytical formulas are derived for the covariances in energy centroids and spectral variances. It is found that these covariances increase in magnitude as we go from EGUE(2) to EGUE(2)-\cs to EGUE(2)-SU(4) implying that symmetries may be responsible for chaos in finite interacting quantum systems.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, some formulas in Table 1 corrected, Table 1 changed to Table 1 and 2, Fig. 2 modifie

Very high frequency gravitational wave background in the universe

Astrophysical sources of high frequency gravitational radiation are considered in association with a new interest to very sensitive HFGW receivers required for the laboratory GW Hertz experiment. A special attention is paid to the phenomenon of primordial black holes evaporation. They act like black body to all kinds of radiation, including gravitons, and, therefore, emit an equilibrium spectrum of gravitons during its evaporation. Limit on the density of high frequency gravitons in the Universe is obtained, and possibilities of their detection are briefly discussed.Comment: 14 page

Expression of Regulatory Platelet MicroRNAs in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

Background: Increased platelet activation in sickle cell disease (SCD) contributes to a state of hypercoagulability and confers a risk of thromboembolic complications. The role for post-transcriptional regulation of the platelet transcriptome by microRNAs (miRNAs) in SCD has not been previously explored. This is the first study to determine whether platelets from SCD exhibit an altered miRNA expression profile. Methods and Findings: We analyzed the expression of miRNAs isolated from platelets from a primary cohort (SCD = 19, controls = 10) and a validation cohort (SCD = 7, controls = 7) by hybridizing to the Agilent miRNA microarrays. A dramatic difference in miRNA expression profiles between patients and controls was noted in both cohorts separately. A total of 40 differentially expressed platelet miRNAs were identified as common in both cohorts (p-value 0.05, fold change>2) with 24 miRNAs downregulated. Interestingly, 14 of the 24 downregulated miRNAs were members of three families - miR-329, miR-376 and miR-154 - which localized to the epigenetically regulated, maternally imprinted chromosome 14q32 region. We validated the downregulated miRNAs, miR-376a and miR-409-3p, and an upregulated miR-1225-3p using qRT-PCR. Over-expression of the miR-1225-3p in the Meg01 cells was followed by mRNA expression profiling to identify mRNA targets. This resulted in significant transcriptional repression of 1605 transcripts. A combinatorial approach using Meg01 mRNA expression profiles following miR-1225-3p overexpression, a computational prediction analysis of miRNA target sequences and a previously published set of differentially expressed platelet transcripts from SCD patients, identified three novel platelet mRNA targets: PBXIP1, PLAGL2 and PHF20L1. Conclusions: We have identified significant differences in functionally active platelet miRNAs in patients with SCD as compared to controls. These data provide an important inventory of differentially expressed miRNAs in SCD patients and an experimental framework for future studies of miRNAs as regulators of biological pathways in platelets. © 2013 Jain et al

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal