Micellar-polymer for enhanced oil recovery for Upper Assam Basin

One of the major enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes is chemical flooding especially for the depleted reservoirs. Chemical flooding involves injection of various chemicals like surfactant, alkali, polymer etc. to the aqueous media. Bhogpara and Nahorkatiya are two depleted reservoirs of upper Assam basin where chemical flooding can be done to recover the trapped oil that cannot be recovered by conventional flooding process. Micellar-polymer (MP) flooding involves injection of micelle and polymer to the aqueous phase to reduce interfacial tension and polymer is added to control the mobility of the solution, which helps in increasing both displacement and volumetric sweep efficiency and thereby leads to enhanced oil recovery. This work represents the use of black liquor as micelle or surfactant that is a waste product of Nowgong Paper Mills, Jagiroad, Assam, which is more efficient than the synthetic surfactants. The present study examines the effect of MP flooding through the porous media of two depleted oil fields of upper Assam basin i.e. Bhogpara and Nahorkatiya for MP EOR. This work also compares the present MP flood with the earlier work done on surfactant (S) flooding. It was experimentally determined that the MP flood is more efficient EOR process for Bhogpara and Nahorkatiya reservoirs. The study will pertain to the comprehensive interfacial tension (IFT) study and the displacement mechanism in conventional core samples

Potential of Archimedes Screw Turbine in Rural India Electrification: a Review

With the growing population of India, the demand for energy consumption is increasing. For the overall development of a region, especially remote areas, electricity is of prime importance. Production of electricity in large scale can further lead to various effects like environmental pollution, climate change and it is also costly. Thus the need for a socio-economic energy conversion to electricity is of prime importance for a sustainable development. India has a huge potential in the Hydro to generate 2,50,000 MW. An Archimedes Screw Turbine that was earlier used as a pump can give a very good solution in harnessing water potential. It rotates as water flows through it, rotating the generator\u27s prime mover connected to it. Archimedes Screw turbines operate at a low head of 0.8m to 10 m and relatively lower flow rate than the other turbines and more cost effective and are highly efficient. The AST is quite a new form of electricity generation practice which has been implemented in different countries along with India. Thus the electrification scenario in rural areas can be improved specially where there is a continuous flow of a river or canal by the installation of the low-cost socio-economic AST

E-connectivity Infrastructure and Usage of Software Applications by Gram Panchayats

The study was conducted to assess the e-connectivity infrastructure available in the Gram Panchayat (Village council) and analyze the software applications adopted by the Gram Panchayats. The study area was three blocks of Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu viz., Karamadai, Periyanaickenpalayam and Thondamuthur. A total of 36 Gram Panchayat presidents formed the sample. The study revealed that all the Gram Panchayats from three blocks were well equipped with e-connectivity, Because of this the respondents were able to adopt the software applications for reducing paper work in the Gram Panchayat

Inheritance study and stable sources of maydis leaf blight (Cochliobolus heterostrophus) resistance in tropical maize germplasm

Maydis leaf blight (MLB), a serious foliar fungal disease of maize, may cause up to 40% losses in yield. The present studies were undertaken to identify the stable sources of MLB resistance, its inheritance study, and testing of MLB resistance linked markers from diverse background in the Indian adapted tropical maize genotypes. A set of 112 inbred lines were screened under artificially created epiphytotics conditions at three hotspot locations. Analysis across multi-locations revealed significant effects of genotypes and environments, and non-significant effects due to genotypes × environment interaction on disease incidence. A total of 25 inbred lines with stable resistance were identified across multi-locations. Inheritance of resistance was studied in six F1s and two F2s of resistant and susceptible parents. The null hypothesis of segregation of resistance and susceptible for mono and digenic ratios in two F2 populations was rejected by Chi-square test. The non-significant differences among the reciprocal crosses depicted the complete control of nuclear genome for MLB resistance. Partial dominance in F1s and normal distribution pattern in F2s of resistant and susceptible parents suggested polygenic nature of MLB resistance. Correlation studies in F2 populations exhibited significant negative correlation between disease score and days to flowering. Five simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers, found associated to MLB resistance in different studies were unable to differentiate amongst MLB resistance and susceptible parents in our study. This emphasizes the need of fine mapping for MLB resistance in Indian germplasm. The identified stable sources of resistance and information on inheritance study can be used further in strengthening of resistance breeding against MLB

Macro and Micro-fungi mediated synthesis of Silver

Silver nanoparticles of size ranging from 1 ∼ 100 nm are petite metallic colloidal particles, with its applications in diagnostics, biomarkers, imaging, cell labeling and drug delivery. Fungus-mediated synthesis of silver nanoparticles is an ecofriendly andgreen process with a comparatively simpler downstream processing. In the presentstudy, the ability of macrofungi and pine stand soil fungi was evaluated for their ability tosynthesize both extracellular as well as intracellular silver nanoparticles. When the macroand microfungi were challenged with 1 mM silver nitrate, colour change of the cell freefiltrates indicated the formation of silver nanoparticles. The presence of silvernanoparticles was confirmed by Surface Plasmon Resonance absorption band in visiblewavelength visualized every 24h upto 72h.Silver nanoparticles are known to possess asharp peak in a range of 400-450 nm and peaks observed at 457nm, 403nm and 414nm bymushroom support their synthesis in comparison to that of 349nm by soil fungi.Transmission Electron Microscopic analysis of the silver nanoparticles revealed thenanorange, dimensions and structural conformation ofbio synthesized nanoparticles.Synergistic study of the synthesized nanoparticles revealed a significant antibacterialactivity against four pathogens viz. MTCC 730 (Escherichia coli), MTCC 1925(Streptococcus pyogenes), MTCC 96 (Staphylococcus aureus) and MTCC 430 (Bacilluscereus).Additionally, the silver nanoparticles inhibited the growth of the yeastpathogen MTCC 183 (Candida albicans) which showed synergistic enhancement inactivity along with flucanazole. The fungal samples were analyzed for phytochemicalconstituents who led to reduction of silver nitrate into nanoparticles. The results obtainedindicated that the experimental voucher fungus are more competent than soil fungi insynthesizing silver nanoparticles and can be used a potent natural antibacterial source forvarious pharmaceutical and textile applications

MAC: A Meta-Learning Approach for Feature Learning and Recombination

Optimization-based meta-learning aims to learn an initialization so that a new unseen task can be learned within a few gradient updates. Model Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML) is a benchmark algorithm comprising two optimization loops. The inner loop is dedicated to learning a new task and the outer loop leads to meta-initialization. However, ANIL (almost no inner loop) algorithm shows that feature reuse is an alternative to rapid learning in MAML. Thus, the meta-initialization phase makes MAML primed for feature reuse and obviates the need for rapid learning. Contrary to ANIL, we hypothesize that there may be a need to learn new features during meta-testing. A new unseen task from non-similar distribution would necessitate rapid learning in addition reuse and recombination of existing features. In this paper, we invoke the width-depth duality of neural networks, wherein, we increase the width of the network by adding extra computational units (ACU). The ACUs enable the learning of new atomic features in the meta-testing task, and the associated increased width facilitates information propagation in the forwarding pass. The newly learnt features combine with existing features in the last layer for meta-learning. Experimental results show that our proposed MAC method outperformed existing ANIL algorithm for non-similar task distribution by approximately 13% (5-shot task setting)Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 2 graph