Reflections on water: architectural manifestations in the historic and cultural quarter along Lake Pichola in Udaipur

The aim of this paper is to undertake a critical appreciation of the historic cultural quarter along the eastern edge of Lake Pichola in Udaipur, which is a result of its unique context with the objective of understanding the forces that underpin this development, examine its existing state, and highlight key concerns. The main issues that were highlighted include preservation of existing traditions, conservation and adaptive reuse of historic structures, sensitive and participatory planning and design, formalising of street activities, provision of infrastructure, and administrative structures to deliver the project, and organisation of awareness programs for the local community. The aim of this study is to develop a critical appreciation of the historic core and cultural quarter along the eastern edge of Lake Pichola in Udaipur, which is a result of its unique climatic, social, and topographical context, to chart the changes to this context, to draw attention to past patterns of growth. The objective is also to understand the forces that have influenced and underpin this development, examine its existing state and highlight key concerns. The study is limited to the historic core along the waterfront and its related structures along the eastern bank of Lake Pichola in Udaipur. The study demonstrated that the historic core along the lake front is a result of evolution that has been guided by dominant determinants such as its socio-economic hierarchy/structure, political, cultural, and religious factors, climate, availability of materials and technology. The overall form, settlement pattern and the massing of buildings in Udaipur are dominated by its physical attributes and in consonance with the topography and landscape, and ordered by the generative force of its land form and the lake. It is, however, subject to severe developmental and environmental pressures as a result of intense tourism related and commercial activities, unwarranted and haphazard building activities, continuous neglect of residential properties, some of the historic fabric and surviving artefacts, and poor infrastructure. If this trend were to continue, the problems will intensify manifold causing serious threat to this valuable environment, its urban spaces and exquisite edifices. Preservation of this waterfront, which plays a decisive role in solving critical urban, social and economic problems in this city, is vital. The main issues identified for consideration in this context were preservation of existing traditions, conservation of historic structures and adaptive reuse of buildings, sensitive and participatory planning and design, formalising of street activities, provision of infrastructure and administrative structures to deliver the project, and creation of awareness and understanding amongst the local communit

Flow prediction for propfan engine installation effects on transport aircraft at transonic speeds

An Euler-based method for aerodynamic analysis of turboprop transport aircraft at transonic speeds has been developed. In this method, inviscid Euler equations are solved over surface-fitted grids constructed about aircraft configurations. Propeller effects are simulated by specifying sources of momentum and energy on an actuator disc located in place of the propeller. A stripwise boundary layer procedure is included to account for the viscous effects. A preliminary version of an approach to embed the exhaust plume within the global Euler solution has also been developed for more accurate treatment of the exhaust flow. The resulting system of programs is capable of handling wing-body-nacelle-propeller configurations. The propeller disks may be tractors or pushers and may represent single or counterrotation propellers. Results from analyses of three test cases of interest (a wing alone, a wing-body-nacelle model, and a wing-nacelle-endplate model) are presented. A user's manual for executing the system of computer programs with formats of various input files, sample job decks, and sample input files is provided in appendices

When do ranulas require a cervical approach?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99101/1/lary23937.pd

Design and power estimation of booth multiplier using different adder architectures

Modern IC Technology focuses on the design of ICs considering more area optimization and low power techniques. Multiplication is a heavily used arithmetic operation that figures prominently in signal processing and scientific applications. Multiplication is a very hardware intensive subject and we as users are mostly concerned with getting low-power,smaller area and higher speed.The most important concern in classic multiplication, mostly realized by K-cycles of shifting and adding, is to speed up underlying multi-operand addition of partial products. In this project we will present the design of Booth Multiplier with different adder architectures like Ripple Carry Adder & Carry Look Ahead Adder. The time delay, area and power have been analyzed for different adders. Also multipliers have been designed for both radix-2 and radix-4. Results will show the variation of area, speed and power for different designs. Also the power estimation method gives the deeper insight into power calculation and analysis. An approach have been suggested for peak power estimation

Governance with sustainable development: Overcoming the barriers

Indian organisations often face allegations or charges of red-tapism whereby collected evidences for future planning with sustainable development become inaccessible due to a number of reasons. Whereas it is pertinent to note that, governance of a state/nation depends upon the trust of the people to receive tangible/intangible opportunities for development in the socio-economic, legal environment. When there is deficit of trust due to corrupt practices, tracing the source for decision becomes a herculean task. The authors hypothesize that the evidences collected through investigations end up being discarded or locked up and stacked in files and never is considered for relevant for future decisions. We propose to find the actionable forces who try to use ‘power’ to strategically attain their desired goals. The paper intends to discuss the role of interested groups or state actors (top bureaucratic, politicians, and business houses) who have access to such information where scientific probe could be set up and evidence gets collected for larger good of the society. The authors hypothesize that stakeholders would incrementally destroy the core evidences such that relevant information gets disjointed for future decision making and sustainable development to give themselves a raised platform to continue their power wielding. The authors intend to compare UK model of evidence generation with that of Indian model. We propose to highlight the necessary changes to formulate relevant laws and procedures with respect to evidence collection and the accessibility of information of the policy making decisions of the governments

3D printing for bio-synthetic biliary stents

Three-dimensional (3D) printing is an additive manufacturing method that holds great potential in a variety of future patient-specific medical technologies. This project validated a novel crosslinked polyvinyl alcohol (XL-PVA) 3D printed stent infused with collagen, human placental mesenchymal stem cells (PMSCs), and cholangiocytes. The biofabrication method in the present study examined 3D printing and collagen injection molding for rapid prototyping of customized living biliary stents with clinical applications in the setting of malignant and benign bile duct obstructions. XL-PVA stents showed hydrophilic swelling and addition of radiocontrast to the stent matrix improved radiographic opacity. Collagen loaded with PMSCs contracted tightly around hydrophilic stents and dense choloangiocyte coatings were verified through histology and fluorescence microscopy. It is anticipated that design elements used in these stents may enable appropriate stent placement, provide protection of the stent-stem cell matrix against bile constituents, and potentially limit biofilm development. Overall, this approach may allow physicians to create personalized bio-integrating stents for use in biliary procedures and lays a foundation for new patient-specific stent fabrication techniques

Importance of Explicit Vectorization for CPU and GPU Software Performance

Much of the current focus in high-performance computing is on multi-threading, multi-computing, and graphics processing unit (GPU) computing. However, vectorization and non-parallel optimization techniques, which can often be employed additionally, are less frequently discussed. In this paper, we present an analysis of several optimizations done on both central processing unit (CPU) and GPU implementations of a particular computationally intensive Metropolis Monte Carlo algorithm. Explicit vectorization on the CPU and the equivalent, explicit memory coalescing, on the GPU are found to be critical to achieving good performance of this algorithm in both environments. The fully-optimized CPU version achieves a 9x to 12x speedup over the original CPU version, in addition to speedup from multi-threading. This is 2x faster than the fully-optimized GPU version.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figure

The Bacillus anthracis protein MprF is required for synthesis of lysylphosphatidylglycerols and for resistance to cationic antimicrobial peptides

During inhalational anthrax, Bacillus anthracis survives and replicates in alveolar macrophages, followed by rapid invasion into the host's bloodstream, where it multiplies to cause heavy bacteremia. B. anthracis must therefore defend itself from host immune functions encountered during both the intracellular and the extracellular stages of anthrax infection. In both of these niches, cationic antimicrobial peptides are an essential component of the host's innate immune response that targets B. anthracis. However, the genetic determinants of B. anthracis contributing to resistance to these peptides are largely unknown. Here we generated Tn917 transposon mutants in the ΔANR strain (pXO1(−) pXO2(−)) of B. anthracis and screened them for altered protamine susceptibility. A protamine-sensitive mutant identified carried the transposon inserted in the BA1486 gene encoding a putative membrane protein homologous to MprF known in several gram-positive pathogens. A mutant strain with the BAS1375 gene (the orthologue of BA1486) deleted in the Sterne 34F2 strain (pXO1(+) pXO2(−)) of B. anthracis exhibited hypersusceptibility not only to protamine but also to α-helical cathelicidin LL-37 and β-sheet defensin human neutrophil peptide 1 compared to the wild-type Sterne strain. Analysis of membrane lipids using isotopic labeling demonstrated that the BAS1375 deletion mutant is unable to synthesize lysinylated phosphatidylglycerols, and this defect is rescued by genetic complementation. Further, we determined the structures of these lysylphosphatidylglycerols by using various mass spectrometric analyses. These results demonstrate that in B. anthracis a functional MprF is required for the biosynthesis of lysylphosphatidylglycerols, which is critical for resistance to cationic antimicrobial peptides