Assessment of Tsunami Preparedness in East Coast of India through Mock drill conducted on 26 September, 2015

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami resulted in catastrophic losses of life and property and demonstrated how destructive the tsunamis can be. In India, the tsunami took away nearly 16,000 lives of the people living in the coastal areas and caused lot of damage to the property. The reason for such a great loss to lives and property is due to lack of awareness and preparedness to tsunamis. Keeping this in view and to avoid further future losses, the Government of India has established the Indian Tsunami Early Warning System at INCOIS, Hyderabad under the Ministry of Earth Sciences. While a tsunami cannot be prevented, its impact can be mitigated through community and emergency preparedness, timely warnings, effective response, and public education. The Tsunami drills evaluates the ability of warning centre and disaster offices to respond to a tsunami. The drills not only emphasize the testing of communications from warning centre to its stakeholders, but also provide an opportunity for testing national/state/local chains of command and decision-making, including the alerting and evacuation of people from selected coastal communitie

Intermediate Asymptotics of the Kerr Quasinormal Spectrum

We study analytically the quasinormal mode spectrum of near-extremal (rotating) Kerr black holes. We find an analytic expression for these black-hole resonances in terms of the black-hole physical parameters: its Bekenstein-Hawking temperature T_{BH} and its horizon's angular velocity \Omega, which is valid in the intermediate asymptotic regime 1<<\omega<<1/T_{BH}.Comment: 4 page

The admissible tsunamigenic source region of 24 September 2013 land-based earthquake application of backward ray tracing technique

A minor tsunami of about 50 cm was generated along the coast of Qurayat near Makran subduction zone in the Arabian Sea due to the 24 September 2013 Pakistan earthquake of magnitude 7.6 Mw(mB),although its source was ~200 km far inland of the Makran trench. The real time sea level observation network in the Arabian Sea recorded minor tsunami arrivals. In an attempt to explain the mechanism of this unusual tsunami, we use backward ray tracing technique to map the admissible region of tsunamigenic source. Basically, in this technique the ray equations are integrated starting from the specific locations of tsunami observations, in all possible directions. The known travel time of the initial waves to the respective tide gauges and tsunami buoys is used in this method. Backward wave front is constructed by joining all endpoints of the rays from each of the locations. The region where the envelope of all backward wave fronts converges is considered as the source of the tsunami, which is ~470 km from the earthquake epicentre with the location at 24.8 N and 61.5E. The admissible region identified is an undersea section between Chabahar and Gwadar, where a mud island had appeared subsequent to this earthquake. Convergence of the tsunami source zone and location of the mud island suggest that the sudden uplift must have caused the tsunam

Assessment of Tsunami Preparedness in East Coast of India through Mega Mock Tsunami Drill conducted on 24 November 2017

Though tsunamis are infrequent, the death toll from tsunamis is huge compared with other natural disasters. The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami resulted in disastrous loss of life and property. The major challenge with tsunamis is that they are infrequent, which requires great persistence in sustaining the process of capacity building and preparedness. Because of this infrequency, instruction through tsunami mock drills is the best way to train coastal communities to prepare for devastating actual events. The situational awareness and ability to respond quickly is best achieved through pre-event education and mock drills. The Tsunami mock drills evaluates the ability of warning centre and disaster offices to respond to a tsunami. The drills also educate the public on: where they would receive the official warnings, by which means, what those warnings indicate, how to understand them, and what they need to do in response. INCOIS in collaboration with MHA and NDMA has conducted mega mock tsunami mock drill on 24 November, 2017 to East coast of India. Disaster Management Organisations of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal participated in the drill. They took the drill to community level and executed evacuations at different villages. The average elapsed time achieved from time of receipt of warning to activating the public notification systems was 30 minutes. This is great achievement compared with previous mock drills as it has substantially improved, though the involvement of communities was at huge level. The Tsunami mock drill was very successful which enhanced the awareness and preparedness among the coastal people of East Coast of Indi

Perturbations of Dark Matter Gravity

Until recently the study of the gravitational field of dark matter was primarily concerned with its local effects on the motion of stars in galaxies and galaxy clusters. On the other hand, the WMAP experiment has shown that the gravitational field produced by dark matter amplifies the higher acoustic modes of the CMBR power spectrum, more intensely than the gravitational field of baryons. Such a wide range of experimental evidences from cosmology to local gravity suggests the necessity of a comprehensive analysis of the dark matter gravitational field per se, regardless of any other attributes that dark matter may eventually possess. In this paper we introduce and apply Nash's theory of perturbative geometry to the study of the dark matter gravitational field alone, in a higher-dimensional framework. It is shown that the dark matter gravitational perturbations in the early universe can be explained by the extrinsic curvature of the standard cosmology. Together with the estimated presence of massive neutrinos, such geometric perturbation is compatible not only with the observed power spectrum in the WMAP experiment but also with the most recent data on the accelerated expansion of the universe. It is possible that the same structure formation exists locally, such as in the cases of young galaxies or in cluster collisions. In most other cases it seems to have ceased when the extrinsic curvature becomes negligible, leading to Einstein's equations in four dimensions. The slow motion of stars in galaxies and the motion of plasma substructures in nearly colliding clusters are calculated with the geodesic equation for a slowly moving object in a gravitational field of arbitrary strength.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Genetic comorbidity between major depression and cardiometabolic traits, stratified by age at onset of major depression

It is imperative to understand the specific and shared etiologies of major depression and cardio-metabolic disease, as both traits are frequently comorbid and each represents a major burden to society. This study examined whether there is a genetic association between major depression and cardio-metabolic traits and if this association is stratified by age at onset for major depression. Polygenic risk scores analysis and linkage disequilibrium score regression was performed to examine whether differences in shared genetic etiology exist between depression case control status (N cases = 40,940, N controls = 67,532), earlier (N = 15,844), and later onset depression (N = 15,800) with body mass index, coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes in 11 data sets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Generation Scotland, and UK Biobank. All cardio-metabolic polygenic risk scores were associated with depression status. Significant genetic correlations were found between depression and body mass index, coronary artery disease, and type 2 diabetes. Higher polygenic risk for body mass index, coronary artery disease, and type 2 diabetes was associated with both early and later onset depression, while higher polygenic risk for stroke was associated with later onset depression only. Significant genetic correlations were found between body mass index and later onset depression, and between coronary artery disease and both early and late onset depression. The phenotypic associations between major depression and cardio-metabolic traits may partly reflect their overlapping genetic etiology irrespective of the age depression first presents

Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective

BACKGROUND: Depleted uranium is being used increasingly often as a component of munitions in military conflicts. Military personnel, civilians and the DU munitions producers are being exposed to the DU aerosols that are generated. METHODS: We reviewed toxicological data on both natural and depleted uranium. We included peer reviewed studies and gray literature on birth malformations due to natural and depleted uranium. Our approach was to assess the "weight of evidence" with respect to teratogenicity of depleted uranium. RESULTS: Animal studies firmly support the possibility that DU is a teratogen. While the detailed pathways by which environmental DU can be internalized and reach reproductive cells are not yet fully elucidated, again, the evidence supports plausibility. To date, human epidemiological data include case examples, disease registry records, a case-control study and prospective longitudinal studies. DISCUSSION: The two most significant challenges to establishing a causal pathway between (human) parental DU exposure and the birth of offspring with defects are: i) distinguishing the role of DU from that of exposure to other potential teratogens; ii) documentation on the individual level of extent of parental DU exposure. Studies that use biomarkers, none yet reported, can help address the latter challenge. Thoughtful triangulation of the results of multiple studies (epidemiological and other) of DU teratogenicity contributes to disentangling the roles of various potentially teratogenic parental exposures. This paper is just such an endeavor. CONCLUSION: In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU

First-order formalism for dark energy and dust

This work deals with first-order formalism for dark energy and dust in standard cosmology, for models described by real scalar field in the presence of dust in spatially flat space. The field dynamics may be standard or tachyonic, and we show how the equations of motion can be solved by first-order differential equations. We investigate a model to illustrate how the dustlike matter may affect the cosmic evolution using this framework.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; title changed, new author included, discussions extended, references added, version to appear in EPJ

Assessment of the Reliability of the Indian Tsunami Early Warning System

This paper analyses the reliability of the Indian Tsunami Early Warning System (ITEWS), comprising a 24 × 7 manned and automated center capable of monitoring the seismic, open sea water level and coastal tide levels and disseminating tsunami bulletins with the aid of proven prerun scenario models during a tsunamigenic earthquake. Since its inception in 2007, the ITEWS has undergone technological maturity with reliability as the prime objective. The system is expected to be in operation throughout the year and alerting the entire Indian Ocean rim countries in the event of a tsunami. Based on International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61508 standards and field failure data, quantitative reliability modeling is done for the subsystems, and it is found that the seismic network, tsunami buoy network, and distress information dissemination systems conform to Safety Integrity Level SIL4, while tide gauge stations conform to SIL4 with a maintenance interval of 45 days. In case of the tsunami buoy network, the failure of one tsunami buoy degrades the network to SIL3 and needs to be restored within 8 months. The study provides confidence on ITEWS’s reliable support to tsunami early warning

Laser surface hardening of austempered (bainitic) ball bearing steel

This study concerns laser surface hardening (LSH) of austempered SAE 52100 steel to enhance hardness and wear resistance. Following LSH with selected laser parameters, surface microstructure and mechanical properties were evaluated by optical/scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, hardness measurement and wear studies, and thermal profile modeling. The results suggest that LSH could develop residual compressive stress and high hardness and wear resistance in this steel without affecting the bainitic core