Structural studies in the Pre-Vindhyan rocks of Rajasthan: a summary of work of the last three decades

Multiple deformation in all the Precambrian metamorphic-migmatitic rocks has been reported from Rajasthan during the last three decades. But, whereas the Aravalli Group and the Banded Gneissic Complex show similarity in the style and sequence of structures in all their details, the rocks of the Delhi Group trace a partly independent trend. Isoclinal folds of the first generation (AF1) in the rocks of the Aravalli Group had gentle westerly plunge prior to later deformations. These folds show reclined, inclined, and upright attitude as a result of coaxial upright folding (AF1a). Superposition of upright folds (AF2) of varying tightness, with axial plane striking N to NNE, has resulted in interference patterns of diverse types in the scale of maps, and deformation of earlier planar and linear structures in the scale of hand specimens. The structures of the third generation (AF3) are either open recumbent folds or reclined conjugate folds with axial planes dipping gently towards NE or SW. Structures of the last phase are upright conjugate folds (AF4) with axial planes striking NNE-SSW and E-W. The Banded Gneissic Complex (BGC) underlies the Aravalli Group with a conglomerate horizon at the contact, especially in southern Rajasthan. But, for a major part of central and southern Rajasthan, migmatites representing BGC show a structural style and sequence identical with those in the Aravalli Group. Migmatization, broadly synkinematic with the AF1 folding, suggests extensive remobilization of the basement. Very rare relict fabric athwart to and overprinted by structures of AF, generation provide tangible evidence for a basement. Although the structures of later phases in the rocks of the Delhi Group (DF3 and DF4) match with the late-phase structures in the Aravalli Group (AF3 and AF4), there is a contrast in the structural history of the early stages in the rocks of the two groups. The folds of the first generation in the Delhi Group (DF1) were recumbent to reclined with gentle plunge towards N to NNE or S to SSW. These were followed by coaxial upright folds of varying tightness (DF2). Absence of westerly trending AF1 folds in the Delhi Group, and extreme variation in plunge of the AF2 folds in contrast with the fairly constant plunge of the DF2 folds, provide evidence for an angular unconformity between the Aravalli and the Delhi Groups. Depending on the importance of flattening attendant with and following buckling during AF2 deformation, the lineations of AF1 generation show different patterns. Where the AF1 lineations are distributed in circular cones around AF2 axes because of flexural-slip folding in layered rocks with high viscosity contrast, loci of early lineations indicate that the initial orientation of the AF1 axes were subhorizontal, trending towards N280°. The orientation of the axial planes of the earlier folds has controlled the development of the later folds. In sectors where the AF, axial planes had N-S strike and gentle dips, or E-W strike with gentle to steep dips, nearly E-W horizontal compression during AF2 deformation resulted in well-developed AF2 folds. By contrast, where the AF, axial planes were striking nearly N-S with steep dips, E-W horizontal compression resulted in tightening (flattening) of the already isoclinal AF1 folds, and probably boudinage structures in some instances, without the development of any AF2 folds. A similar situation obtains when DF4 deformation is superposed on earlier structures. Where the dominant S-planes were subhorizontal, N-S compression during DF4 deformation resulted in either chevron folds with E-W striking axial plane or conjugate folds with axial plane striking NE and NW. In zones with S-planes striking E-W and dipping steeply, the N-S compression resulted in flattening of the earlier folds without development of DF4 folds

Nature of the Moyar and Bhavani shear zones, with a note on its implication on the tectonics of the southern Indian Precambrian shield

The Moyar, Bhavani and Palghat-Cauvery shear zones have figured prominently in tectonic and metamorphic syntheses in the southern Indian Precambrian shield. Implicit in these studies is the assumption that in the Moyar shear zone in particular, transport has a large strike-slip component, with a dextral displacement of as high as 70 km. Detailed structural investigations in several key sectors and reconnaissance over a large terrane cast doubt on several aspects of the accepted tectonic model. Both the Moyar and the Bhavani shear zones are steeply-dipping thrusts, with the Moyar shear in particular characterized by a predominantly dip-slip transport. Such a movement on a subvertical plane striking EW could in no way rotate the northerly 'trends' to EW ones as believed by many worker. Further, the Moyar and Bhavani shear zones are neither as extensive nor as pervasive as envisaged. Veering of the 'trends' in southern Karnataka, northern Tamil Nadu and northern Kerala is an inherent feature of the superposed fold systems here. Isoclinal folds with axial planes of diverse attitudes, overprinted by upright folds of varying tightness, have resulted in this change in 'trend'

Information fusion-based cybersecurity threat detection for intelligent transportation system

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are sophisticated systems that leverage various technologies to increase the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of transportation. By relying on wireless communication and data collected from diverse sensors, ITS is vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. With the increasing number of attacks on ITS worldwide, detecting and addressing cybersecurity threats has become critically important. This need will only intensify with the impending arrival of autonomous vehicles. One of the primary challenges is identifying critical ITS assets that require protection and understanding the vulnerabilities that cyber attackers can exploit. Additionally, creating a standard profile for ITS is challenging due to the dynamic traffic pattern, which exhibits changes in the movement of vehicles over time. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an information fusion-based cybersecurity threat detection method. Specifically, we employ the Kalman filter for noise reduction, Dempster-Shafer decision theory and Shannon’s entropy for assessing the probabilities of traffic conditions being normal, intruded, and uncertain. We utilised Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) to simulate the Melbourne CBD map and historical traffic data from the Victorian transport authority. Our simulation results reveal that information fusion with three sensor data is more effective in detecting normal traffic conditions. On the other hand, for detecting anomalies, information fusion with two sensor data is more efficient

Use of Petroleum Coke as an Additive in Metallurgical Coke Making

The use of petroleum coke as an additive in coal blends has been tested and established successfully to produce metallurgical coke of acceptable quality at JSW. The performance of coke produced from coking coal blends containing petroleum coke was successfully tested in Blast furnaces. The amount of petroleum coke that may be incorporated in the blend without impairing the coke quality considerably depends mainly on the particle size and the rheological properties of the coal blend. The addition of petroleum coke produces a decrease in Maximum Fluidity (MF) in the blend due to the liberation of low molecular weight substances during heating within the plastic range and hydrogen containing species available to generate fluidity in co carbonization system. The use of low volatile petroleum coke as an additive resulted in better yield and reduction of coke ash.The ability of petroleum coke to interact with coal during plastic stage to impart good bonding between components and maintain the coke quality to match the Blast Furnace requirements is well established through laboratory studie

Unsupervised and semi-supervised co-salient object detection via segmentation frequency statistics

In this paper, we address the detection of co-occurring salient objects (CoSOD) in an image group using frequency statistics in an unsupervised manner, which further enable us to develop a semi-supervised method. While previous works have mostly focused on fully supervised CoSOD, less attention has been allocated to detecting co-salient objects when limited segmentation annotations are available for training. Our simple yet effective unsupervised method US-CoSOD combines the object co-occurrence frequency statistics of unsupervised single-image semantic segmentations with salient foreground detections using self-supervised feature learning. For the first time, we show that a large unlabeled dataset e.g. ImageNet-1k can be effectively leveraged to significantly improve unsupervised CoSOD performance. Our unsupervised model is a great pre-training initialization for our semi-supervised model SS-CoSOD, especially when very limited labeled data is available for training. To avoid propagating erroneous signals from predictions on unlabeled data, we propose a confidence estimation module to guide our semi-supervised training. Extensive experiments on three CoSOD benchmark datasets show that both of our unsupervised and semi-supervised models outperform the corresponding state-of-the-art models by a significant margin (e.g., on the Cosal2015 dataset, our US-CoSOD model has an 8.8% F-measure gain over a SOTA unsupervised co-segmentation model and our SS-CoSOD model has an 11.81% F-measure gain over a SOTA semi-supervised CoSOD model).Comment: Accepted at IEEE WACV 202

Sedimentational, structural and migmatitic history of the Archaean Dharwar tectonic province, southern India

The earliest decipherable record of the Dharwar tectonic province is left in the 3.3 Ga old gneissic pebbles in some conglomerates of the Dharwar Group, in addition to the 3.3–3.4 Ga old gneisses in some areas. A sialic crust as the basement for Dharwar sedimentation is also indicated by the presence of quartz schists and quartzites throughout the Dharwar succession. Clean quartzites and orthoquartzite-carbonate association in the lower part of the Dharwar sequence point to relatively stable platform and shelf conditions. This is succeeded by sedimentation in a rapidly subsiding trough as indicated by the turbidite-volcanic rock association. Although conglomerates in some places point to an erosional surface at the contact between the gneisses and the Dharwar supracrustal rocks, extensive remobilization of the basement during the deformation of the cover rocks has largely blurred this interface. This has also resulted in accordant style and sequence of structures in the basement and cover rocks in a major part of the Dharwar tectonic province. Isoclinal folds with attendant axial planar schistosity, coaxial open folds, followed in turn by non-coaxial upright folds on axial planes striking nearly N-S, are decipherable both in the "basement" gneisses and the schistose cover rocks. The imprint of this sequence of superposed deformation is registered in some of the charnockitic terranes also, particularly in the Biligirirangan Hills, Shivasamudram and Arakalgud areas. The Closepet Granite, with alignment of feldspar megacrysts parallel to the axial planes of the latest folds in the adjacent schistose rocks, together with discrete veins of Closepet Granite affinity emplaced parallel to the axial planes of late folds in the Peninsular Gneiss enclaves, suggest that this granite is late-tectonic with reference to the last deformation in the Dharwar tectonic province. Enclaves of tonalite and migmatized amphibolite a few metres across, with a fabric athwart to and overprinted by the earliest structures traceable in the supracrustal rocks as well as in a major part of the Peninsular Gneiss, point to at least one deformation, an episode of migmatization and one metamorphic event preceding the first folding in the Dharwar sequence. This record of pre-Dharwar deformation and metamorphism is corroborated also by the pebbles of gneisses and schists in the conglomerates of the Dharwar Group. Volcanic rocks within the Dharwar succession as well as some of the components of the Peninsular Gneiss give ages of about 3.0 Ga. A still younger age of about 2.6 Ga is recorded in some volcanic rocks of the Dharwar sequence, a part of the Peninsular Gneiss, Closepet Granite and some charnockites. These, together with the 3.3 Ga old gneisses and 3.4 Ga old ages of zircons in some charnockites, furnish evidence for three major thermal events during the 700 million year history of the Archaean Dharwar tectonic province

Enhancing sustainability of construction projects through waste minimization

Construction activity is a critical indicator of development. As developmental activities in emerging countries are increasing, the construction industry is being viewed with increased interest as an area which needs sustainable practices. The construction industry uses 55% of the wood cut for non-fuel uses and 40 % of the world’s energy and a large proportion of the material manufactured can be traced to buildings and their construction. To make construction sustainable, all of its stages from conception to deconstruction need to be considered with the viewpoint of waste minimization. This paper looks at the execution stage of a construction project and seeks to identify the sources of waste generation at the planning and execution stage. A detailed field study and subsequent root cause analysis of the execution planning process has been done to identify the factors that lead to erratic and variable execution performance and thus create waste in the form of inventory and rework. An attempt has been made to study, categorize and quantify waste related to MEP works on building sites which typically account for about 40% of the project construction cost. The studies have incorporated expert views, interviews with on-site personnel, study of documents and actual field sampling. Based on the observations, multiple solution concepts has been proposed. The proposed solutions aim at reducing the generation of waste through better execution planning and control

Development and Evaluation of a PCR Assay for Tracking the Emergence and Dissemination of Haitian Variant ctxB in Vibrio cholerae O1 Strains Isolated from Kolkata, India

A PCR-based assay was developed to discriminate the classical, El Tor, and Haitian types of ctxB alleles. Our retrospective study using this newly developed PCR showed that Haitian ctxB first appeared in Kolkata during April 2006, and 93.3% of strains isolated during 2011 carried the new allele. Dendrogram analysis showed a pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern of the new variant strains isolated recently that was distinct from the PFGE pattern of the strains carrying classical ctxB that closely matched the 2006 to 2007 variant strains

Carotid Stenting in a Nonagenarian Patient

Carotid artery stenosis is a disabling disease in all age groups. Elderly people are more prone to recurrent strokes due to advancing age and multiple co-morbidities. Treatment options for symptomatic carotid stenosis in the very elderly are the same as in younger patients although with a higher operative risk. We describe a successful case of carotid artery stenting in a nonagenarian with symptomatic carotid artery stenosis, a subgroup for whom treatment options are rarely discussed in guidelines