'Enhancing the Employability of Students’ Passing from Technical Institutions

India has the world’s second largest education system and provides one of the largest pool of skilled manpower. In the recent years, the problem of under-employment or rather unemployment among technical and professional engineering graduates & diploma pass outs is a cause of serious concern. Substandard Institutes are producing mere graduates & diploma holders instead of technically sound and competent professionals as intended. These pass outs are either under- employed or if employed, they do not fulfill or meet out the expectations of Industries or organizations. There is immediate need to take few corrective measures by the academic coordinators, policy makers and management of the institutes associated in providing technical manpower to the industries system; otherwise India will face an explosion of unemployed technical graduates/diploma holders. The world of academia will have to understand the nerve of Industries/organizations and require producing true professionals instead of mere graduates/diploma holders. The paper principally focuses on the multiple ways and means with suggested strategies for the technical teachers as well as institutions to plan, practice and administer such innovations in to their daily instructions, so as to fulfill the gap to a large exten

Energy storage and management in supercapacitors for application in piezoelectric energy harvesting systems

Electrical double layer capacitors (supercapacitors) were fabricated using activated carbon as the active material and polyvinylidine fluoride (PVDF) as a binder with a suitable conductive additive (MWCNTs) together in an optimized ratio. The supercapacitor cells were assembled using an aqueous solution of 0.5M Na2SO4 as the electrolyte. These cells had an average capacitance of 1.7F each as measured by the constant current charging method. The two electrode symmetric cell had a specific capacitance of 23.05 F/g. The fabrication methodology has been discussed as well as the potential applications of the supercapacitor in piezoelectric element based energy harvesting systems have been elucidate

Terminal Imido Complexes of the Groups 9–11: Electronic Structure and Developments in the Last Decade

We thank the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (Liebig fellowship for D.M.), the German-American Fulbright Commission (Fulbright-Cottrell Award for D.M.) as well as the Bavarian Equal Opportunities Sponsorship – Realization of Equal Opportunities for Women in Research and Teaching (fellowship for A.G.) for financial support. We thank the RRZ Erlangen for computational resources

Stock assessment and management options for whelks along south-eastern Arabian Sea

Two species of whelks viz., Babylonia spirata and Babylonia zeylanica belonging to the family Buccinidae are commercially fished from Kollam, south-west coast of India, since early 1990’s and are exported from India under the trade name ‘Baigai’. The species is present all through the year in the fishing grounds, caught as by-catch in shrimp trawlers and is a targeted fishery from April to June, when more than 50% of the annual whelk catch is taken. B. zeylanica dominates the whelk catch (61% of the annual catch). The average catch rate in the modified trawlers for whelk was 400 kg unit-1 day-1. Following the von Bertalanffy growth function, asymptotic length and growth rate were estimated as 68.7 mm and 1.08 respectively for B. spirata and as 76 mm and 1.15 respectively for B. zeylanica. The L50 estimated for B. spirata and B. zeylanica were 35.2 and 41.7 mm respectively. The optimum length of capture and mean generation time were 40 mm and 0.55 years for B. spirata and 44 mm and 0.48 years for B. zeylanica respectively. The annual mean length of B. spirata showed an increase from 37.4 mm in 2001 to 40.1 mm in 2002 and multiple cohorts have been observed. The relative yield-per-recruit analysis shows that, present rate of exploitation of B. spirata has reached the optimum and that of B. zeylanica has nearly attained the optimum. The faster growth rate, early maturity and continuous breeding behaviour explain the sustained fishery of B. spirata and B. zeylanica under a high fishing pressure along Kollam coast

EFFECT OF IMIDACLOPRID INSECTICIDE RESIDUE ON BIOCHEMICAL PARAMETERS IN POTATOES AND ITS ESTIMATION BY HPLC

Pesticides are known to interfere with the biochemical processes of plants, lowering their food quality. The effects of imidacloprid insecticide (a very commonly used pesticide on vegetables) on some biochemical quality control parameters and some enzyme systems (CAT, PPO and POD) were studied. Estimation of imidacloprid residues in potatoes was done by HPLC. It was observed that insecticide treated potatoes have considerable amount of imidacloprid 0.35 mg/kg at the time of harvesting. Washing potatoes with tap water and boiling for 20min. decreased residue up to 33% and 80% respectively. It was also found that the imidacloprid insecticide treatment decreased the reducing sugar, total phenols, ortho-dihydroxy phenols and ascorbic acid contents of potatoes but increased the total protein content and enzyme (catalase, peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase) activity. Keywords: Imidacloprid, potato, HPLC, biochemical parameters, enzyme activit

Maximizing the Number of Spatial Nulls with Minimum Sensors

In this paper, we attempt to unify two array processing frameworks viz, Acoustic Vector Sensor (AVS) and two level nested array to enhance the Degrees of Freedom (DoF) significantly beyond the limit that is attained by a Uniform Linear Hydrophone Array (ULA) with specified number of sensors. The major focus is to design a line array architecture which provides high resolution unambiguous bearing estimation with increased number of spatial nulls to mitigate the multiple interferences in a deep ocean scenario. AVS can provide more information about the propagating acoustic field intensity vector by simultaneously measuring the acoustic pressure along with tri-axial particle velocity components. In this work, we have developed Nested AVS array (NAVS) ocean data model to demonstrate the performance enhancement. Conventional and MVDR spatial filters are used as the response function to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture. Simulation results show significant improvement in performance viz, increase of DoF, and localization of more number of acoustic sources and high resolution bearing estimation with reduced side lobe level

INLINE ELASTICITY MEASURE OF TEXTILE USING ANN

In this paper, we propose a technique to measure the Elasticity Modulus of the textile material using flex LVDT. Elasticity modulus is measured indirectly by measuring stiffness of the material first. The material whose stiffness is to be measured is subjected to a known force and the deflection caused in the material due to applied load is measured using the LVDT. Here the whole measurement is done dynamically without halting the manufacturing line of process. The output of LVDT is AC voltage. AC-DC converter is used to convert the AC output voltage of LVDT to DC output voltage. This is cascaded to the ANN block programmed on the LabVIEW platform. The results show that the proposed technique has achieved its proposed objectives

Mlh2 is an accessory factor for DNA mismatch repair in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the essential mismatch repair (MMR) endonuclease Mlh1-Pms1 forms foci promoted by Msh2-Msh6 or Msh2-Msh3 in response to mispaired bases. Here we analyzed the Mlh1-Mlh2 complex, whose role in MMR has been unclear. Mlh1-Mlh2 formed foci that often colocalized with and had a longer lifetime than Mlh1-Pms1 foci. Mlh1-Mlh2 foci were similar to Mlh1-Pms1 foci: they required mispair recognition by Msh2-Msh6, increased in response to increased mispairs or downstream defects in MMR, and formed after induction of DNA damage by phleomycin but not double-stranded breaks by I-SceI. Mlh1-Mlh2 could be recruited to mispair-containing DNA in vitro by either Msh2-Msh6 or Msh2-Msh3. Deletion of MLH2 caused a synergistic increase in mutation rate in combination with deletion of MSH6 or reduced expression of Pms1. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that the S. cerevisiae Mlh2 protein and the mammalian PMS1 protein are homologs. These results support a hypothesis that Mlh1-Mlh2 is a non-essential accessory factor that acts to enhance the activity of Mlh1-Pms1