Landslide Investigation at Phata Village on Rudraprayag-Kedarnath Road, Uttaranchal — A Case Study

Phata village on the Guptakashi-Gaurikund road in the Mandakini valley of Garhwal Himalaya was affected by a major landslide on 16th July 2001 due to heavy rainfall. The debris flow not only swept away several houses but it also claimed 15 lives. A detailed landslide investigation was carried out to assess the present stability condition. Geotechnical investigation was carried out to determine the soil properties. Seismic refraction survey to determine the overburden thickness was also carried out using Engineering Seismograph. Slope stability analysis was carried out to ascertain the existing stability of the slope. It was found that with rise in pore pressure the slope is marginally stable. The seismic stability analysis showed that seismicity of the order of 0.15g may trigger slips on the slope. The human settlement on the downhill slope may get effected in the eventuality of slide due to seismicity or rain. The paper presents the results of the geological and geotechnical studies which helped to assess the present stability condition

Social Interactions vs Revisions, What is important for Promotion in Wikipedia?

In epistemic community, people are said to be selected on their knowledge contribution to the project (articles, codes, etc.) However, the socialization process is an important factor for inclusion, sustainability as a contributor, and promotion. Finally, what does matter to be promoted? being a good contributor? being a good animator? knowing the boss? We explore this question looking at the process of election for administrator in the English Wikipedia community. We modeled the candidates according to their revisions and/or social attributes. These attributes are used to construct a predictive model of promotion success, based on the candidates's past behavior, computed thanks to a random forest algorithm. Our model combining knowledge contribution variables and social networking variables successfully explain 78% of the results which is better than the former models. It also helps to refine the criterion for election. If the number of knowledge contributions is the most important element, social interactions come close second to explain the election. But being connected with the future peers (the admins) can make the difference between success and failure, making this epistemic community a very social community too

Alignment of smectic mesogens over engineered surfaces

The alignment of smectic C* liquid crystals (LCs) has been manipulated over and near different surfaces such as bare glass, indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass, patterned glass, and near spacers. The LC sample cell is made of one ITO coated glass plate and other having striped ITO with a Mylar spacer maintaining a finite cell gap between them. Laser scribing is used to make striped ITO, while the scribed area results in the formation of the patterned glass surface. The geometry of the cell is such that overlapped ITO lie in the middle and spacers are placed in the two extreme corners of the cell. The alignment of LC is found to be homeotropic over the ITO coated glass, while it is planar near the spacer. Interestingly, a transition from homeotropic to planar is observed while moving away from the middle towards either corner of the cell. The origin of both types of alignment in the same cell has been explained by considering the difference in the surface energy of different surfaces. This work renders new advancement towards the manipulation of LC alignment using different surfaces and interfaces for advanced electro-optical and photonic devices based on LCs

Transgressive Segregation Analysis in F3 Generation in MUNG BEAN [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek]

The present investigation was conducted to evaluate twelve crosses of mungbean genotypes for eleven characters to access the magnitude of genetic variability and to understand the heritable component of variation for grain yield and its component traits. All the 12 crosses were grown in compact family block design with three replications in each of two environments during kharif, 2022. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the families for grain yield and all other traits in both the environments. On the other hand, differences among the progenies within a family varied from character to character and environment (E1) to environment (E2).  In each of the crosses under study, the seed yield per plant was transgressed simultaneously with one or several other characters. Interestingly, some important and rare transgressive segregants, though low in frequency, were picked up in different crosses. In addition, there were several such combinations of characters in which seed yield per plant was transgressed in conjugation with transgression with other agronomic characters. The details of these rare and critical transgressive segregants are presented in Table 4. In E1 the promising transgressive segregants identified were C2P5-7, C2P5-13, C1P4-2, C11P5-6, C11P5-10, C7P4-12, C7P4-13, C3P2-2, C3P2-3, C3P2-5. In E2 the promising transgressive segregants identified were C1P4-10, C1P1-6, C1P5-6, C1P5-10, C12P5-5, C12P1-14, C7P5-7, C11P5-6, C11P5-7, C11P5-10, C10P5-12. The majority of the individuals, whenever increasing parent seed yield per plant was transgressed; there was simultaneous transgression for one or more other yield contributing characters like clusters per plant, pods per cluster, pods per plant, pod length and primary branches per plant, plant height

Effects of Hypoxanthine Substitution in Peptide Nucleic Acids Targeting <i>KRAS2</i> Oncogenic mRNA Molecules: Theory and Experiment

Genetic disorders can arise from single base substitutions in a single gene. A single base substitution for wild type guanine in the twelfth codon of <i>KRAS2</i> mRNA occurs frequently to initiate lung, pancreatic, and colon cancer. We have observed single base mismatch specificity in radioimaging of mutant <i>KRAS2</i> mRNA in tumors in mice by <i>in vivo</i> hybridization with radiolabeled peptide nucleic acid (PNA) dodecamers. We hypothesized that multimutant specificity could be achieved with a PNA dodecamer incorporating hypoxanthine, which can form Watson–Crick base pairs with adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil. Using molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations, we show that hypoxanthine substitutions in PNAs are tolerated in <i>KRAS2</i> RNA:PNA duplexes where wild type guanine is replaced by mutant uracil or adenine in RNA. To validate our predictions, we synthesized PNA dodecamers with hypoxanthine, and then measured the thermal stability of RNA:PNA duplexes. Circular dichroism thermal melting results showed that hypoxanthine-containing PNAs are more stable in duplexes where hypoxanthine-adenine and hypoxanthine-uracil base pairs are formed than single mismatch duplexes or duplexes containing hypoxanthine-guanine opposition