Multi-criteria assessment to screen climate smart rice establishment techniques in coastal rice production system of India

Introduction: Conventional rice production techniques are less economical and more vulnerable to sustainable utilization of farm resources as well as significantly contributed GHGs to atmosphere. Methods: In order to assess the best rice production system for coastal areas, six rice production techniques were evaluated, including SRI-AWD (system of rice intensification with alternate wetting and drying (AWD)), DSR-CF (direct seeded rice with continuous flooding (CF)), DSR-AWD (direct seeded rice with AWD), TPR-CF (transplanted rice with CF), TPR-AWD (transplanted rice with AWD), and FPR-CF (farmer practice with CF). The performance of these technologies was assessed using indicators such as rice productivity, energy balance, GWP (global warming potential), soil health indicators, and profitability. Finally, using these indicators, a climate smartness index (CSI) was calculated. Results and discussion: Rice grown with SRI-AWD method had 54.8 % higher CSI over FPR-CF, and also give 24.5 to 28.3% higher CSI for DSR and TPR as well. There evaluations based on the climate smartness index can provide cleaner and more sustainable rice production and can be used as guiding principle for policy makers.publishedVersio

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Engineering an ultrafine intermetallic eutectic ternary alloy for high strength and high temperature applications

We introduce a novel material based on microstructural engineering of intermetallics at an ultrafine scale. A unique microstructure was developed in a ternary alloy composition (Ni-12?at.% Al-11?at.% Zr) containing two coupled intermetallic phases (Ni3Al and Ni5Zr) consisting of colonies with interconnected lamellae that degenerate into irregular morphologies during growth. This architecture exhibits excellent high temperature microstructural stability, exceptional high strength with adequate tensile ductility at room temperature, and outstanding cyclic oxidation resistance.by Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, Ankush Kashiwar, Sanjit Bhowmick, K.C Hari Kumar, Kamanio Chattopadhyay and Dipankar Banerje

Embedded wafer level packages with laterally placed and vertically stacked thin dies

Two embedded micro wafer level packages (EMWLP) with (1) laterally placed and (2) vertically stacked thin dies are designed and developed. 3D stacking of thin dies is illustrated as progressive miniaturization driver for multi-chip EMWLP. Both the developed packages have dimensions of 10mm × 10mm × 0.4mm and solder ball pitch of 0.4mm. As part of the work several key processes like thin die stacking, 8 inch wafer encapsulation using compression molding, low temperature dielectric with processing temperature less than 200 °C have been developed. The developed EMWLP components successfully pass 1000 air to air thermal cycling (-40 to 125 °C), unbiased highly accelerated stress testing (HAST) and moisture sensitivity level (MSL3) tests. Developed EMWLP also show good board level TC (> 1000 cycles) and drop test reliability results. Integration of thin film passives like inductors and capacitors are also demonstrated on EMWLP platform. Developed thin film passives show a higher Q factor when compared to passives on high resistivity silicon platform. Thermo-mechanical simulation studies on developed EMWLP demonstrate that systemic control over die, RDL and package thicknesses can lead to designs withimproved mechanical reliability. © 2009 IEEE

Annealing induced effect on the physical properties of ion-beam sputtered 0.5 Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3 – 0.5 (Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3-δ ferroelectric thin films

This work reports thermal annealing induced effect on the structural, optical, chemical and ferroelectric properties of ion-beam sputtered lead-free ferroelectric 0.5 Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3 – 0.5 (Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3-δ (0.5BZT–0.5BCT) thin films. X-ray diffraction studies reveal that the tetragonality increases with the annealing temperature (Ta), while photoluminescence and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies confirm that this effect is associated with the annihilation of the oxygen vacancies as well as changes in the Ba2+ coordination. The films annealed at 750 °C show a remarkable remnant polarization of Pr = 45.0 μC/cm2, with a coercive field of 32 kV/cm. The temperature dependence of the spontaneous polarization of the 0.5BZT–0.5BCT film reveals a mean field behavior of the polarization and the fatigue study reveals that Pr only decreases 3% after passing 109 cycles. Therefore the high remnant polarization and its high Pr stability make these films as promising candidates for memory applicationsPortuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding Contract UID/FIS/04650/2013; (ii) Project Norte-070124-FEDER-000070 Nanomateriais Multifuncionais. The author J.P.B.S. is grateful for financial support through the FCT Grant SFRH/BPD/92896/2013. The authors acknowledge the CERIC-ERIC Consortium for access to experimental facilities and financial support under proposal CERIC-ERIC-20167010. The author K.C. Sekhar acknowledge UGC and DST-SERB, Govt. of India for the funds through the grant no. F.4-5(59-FRP/2014(BSR)) and ECR/2017/000068info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Effects of oxygen partial pressure on the ferroelectric properties of pulsed laser deposited Ba0.8Sr0.2TiO3 thin films

The Ba0.8Sr0.2TiO3 thin films were grown on the Pt–Si substrate at 700 °C by using a pulsed laser deposition technique at different oxygen partial pressure (PO2) in the range of 1–20 Pa and their properties were investigated. It is observed that the PO2 during the deposition plays an important role on the tetragonal distortion ratio, surface morphology, dielectric permittivity, ferroelectric polarization, switching response, and leakage currents of the films. With an increase in PO2, the in-plane strain for the BST films changes from tensile to compressive. The films grown at 7.5 Pa show the optimum dielectric and ferroelectric properties and also exhibit the good polarization stability. It is assumed that a reasonable compressive strain, increasing the ionic displacement, and thus promotes the in-plane polarization in the field direction, could improve the dielectric permittivity. The butterfly features of the capacitance–voltage (C–V ) characteristics and the bell shape curve in polarization current were attributed to the domain reversal process. The effect of pulse amplitude on the polarization reversal behavior of the BST films grown at PO2 of 7.5 Pa was studied. The peak value of the polarization current shows exponential dependence on the electric field.The authors, J.P.B.S. thanks FCT for the financial support (grant SFRH/BD/44861/2008). K. C. S. thanks FCT for the Post-doc grant (SFRH/BPD/68489/2010). This work has been partially funded by: (i) FEDER through the COMPETE Program and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Project PEST-C/FIS/UI607/2011; and (ii) European COST Actions MP0901-NanoTP and MP0903-NanoAlloy