Community water management and agricultural extension services: effects, impacts and perceptions in the coastal zone of Bangladesh

The coastal region of Bangladesh is prone to natural disasters and these events are expected to worsen as a result of climate change. Combined with anthropogenic factors, these events challenge livelihood opportunities, especially crop production. Waterlogging, tidal activity and the lack of proper drainage facilities are major constraints to agricultural production in these areas. The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) tested, at pilot scale, the combination of innovative agricultural technologies with improved water management to overcome these challenges. This report assesses this intervention by observing the effects, measuring the short-term impacts and understanding the perceptions. The results highlight the need to integrate the interventions into the local context, and acknowledge that institutions and markets need to mature to harness the benefits from innovations. It also underlines the potential of multi-scale interventions combining plot-level and farmer-led innovations, community management and rehabilitation of large schemes

Ceramic products from fly ash Global perspectives

This paper gives a glimpse of various emerging global techniques for the production of different value added ceramic materials from fly ash viz_ glassy materials, porcelains, refractories etc. The efforts undertaken by CFRI in this regard have also been highlighted

Nature of the spiral state, electric polarisation and magnetic transitions in Sr-doped YBaCuFeO5_5: A first-principles study

Contradictory results on the ferroelectric response of type II multiferroic YBaCuFeO$_{5}$, in its incommensurate phase, has of late, opened up a lively debate. There are ambiguous reports on the nature of the spiral magnetic state. Using first-principles DFT calculations for the parent compound within LSDA+U+SO approximation, the multiferroic response and the nature of spiral state is revealed. The helical spiral is found to be more stable below the transition temperature as spins prefer to lie in ab plane. The Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction and the spin current mechanism were earlier invoked to account for the electric polarisation in this system. However, the DM interaction is found to be absent, spin current mechanism is not valid in the helical spiral state and there is no electric polarisation thereof. These results are in good agreement with the recent single-crystal data. We also investigate the magnetic transitions in YBa$_{1-x}$Sr$_x$CuFeO$_5$ for the entire range $0\le x\le 1$ of doping. The exchange interactions are estimated as a function of doping and a quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculation on an effective spin Hamiltonian shows that the paramagnetic to commensurate phase transition temperature increases with doping till $x=0.5$ and decreases beyond. Our observations are consistent with experimental findings.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Magnetic and orbital order in overdoped bilayer manganites

The magnetic and orbital orders for the bilayer manganites in the doping region $0.5 < x <1.0$ have been investigated from a model that incorporates the two $e_g$ orbitals at each Mn site, the inter-orbital Coulomb interaction and lattice distortions. The usual double exchange operates via the $e_g$ orbitals. It is shown that such a model reproduces much of the phase diagram recently obtained for the bilayer systems in this range of doping. The C-type phase with ($\pi,0,\pi$) spin order seen by Ling et al. appears as a natural consequence of the layered geometry and is stabilised by the static distortions of the system. The orbital order is shown to drive the magnetic order while the anisotropic hopping across the $e_g$ orbitals, layered nature of the underlying structure and associated static distortions largely determine the orbital arrangements.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

A Typical Magnetohydrodynamic Flow of a Viscous Incompressible Fluid Between a Parallel Flat Wall and a Wavy Wall : Constant Suction Through the Former Wall

A magnetohydrodynamic flow of a viscous, incompressible and slightly conducting fluid is developed between a parallel flat wall and a wavy wall whereas at the same time fluid is continuously sucked through the flat wall with a constant suction velocity. The velocity and temperature distribution are determined alongwith the pressure gradient and co-efficient of skin friction

Searching for an elusive charged Higgs at the Large Hadron Collider

We study the signals for a "fermiophobic" charged Higgs boson present in an extension of the standard model with an additional Higgs doublet and right handed neutrinos, responsible for generating Dirac-type neutrino masses. We study the pair production of the charged Higgs at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which can be relatively light and still allowed by experimental data. The charged Higgs decays dominantly into a $W$ boson and a very light neutral scalar present in the model, which decays invisibly and passes undetected. We find that the signal for such a charged Higgs is overwhelmed by the standard model background and will prove elusive at the 8 TeV run of the LHC. We present a cut-flow based analysis to pinpoint a search strategy at the 14 TeV run of the LHC which can achieve a signal significance of 5$\sigma$ for a given mass range of the charged Higgs.Comment: 23 pages, 19 figures, 3 table

First-Principles Correlated Approach to the Normal State of Strontium Ruthenate

The interplay between multiple bands, sizable multi-band electronic correlations and strong spin-orbit coupling may conspire in selecting a rather unusual unconventional pairing symmetry in layered Sr$_{2}$RuO$_{4}$. This mandates a detailed revisit of the normal state and, in particular, the $T$-dependent incoherence-coherence crossover. Using a modern first-principles correlated view, we study this issue in the actual structure of Sr$_{2}$RuO$_{4}$ and present a unified and quantitative description of a range of unusual physical responses in the normal state. Armed with these, we propose that a new and important element, that of dominant multi-orbital charge fluctuations in a Hund's metal, may be a primary pair glue for unconventional superconductivity. Thereby we establish a connection between the normal state responses and superconductivity in this system.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure