Flyash Geopolymer Concrete as Future Concrete

Demand for concrete as construction material is on the increase so as the production of cement. It is estimated that ~6-8% of total CO2 is generated from construction industry. To reduce the concrete industry‟s carbon footprint, blended cements are in use in the market. The research trend is directed towards more eco-friendly concrete such as geopolymer. Recently the focus of research has been shifted on use of fly ash for geopolymerisation. This is based on the alumino-silicate composition of fly ash, it‟s easy availability, better flow ability and improved durability. The chemical composition of geopolymer is similar to that of zeolite, but amorphous in microstructure. Flyash-based geopolymer concrete show excellent short and long-term properties. The properties and uses of geopolymers are being explored in many scientific and industrial disciplines like modern inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, colloid chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and in all types of engineering process technologies. The current paper presents scope of flyash based geopolymer concrete as future concrete, summarizes and critically analyses the most important research findings

Stretching force dependent transitions in single stranded DNA

Mechanical properties of DNA, in particular their stretch dependent extension and their loop formation characteristics, have been recognized as an effective probe for understanding the possible biochemical role played by them in a living cell. Single stranded DNA (ssDNA), which, till recently was presumed to be an simple flexible polymer continues to spring surprises. Synthetic ssDNA, like polydA (polydeoxyadenosines) has revealed an intriguing force-extension (FX) behavior exhibiting two plateaus, absent in polydT (polydeoxythymidines) for example. Loop closing time in polydA had also been found to scale exponentially with inverse temperature, unexpected from generic models of homopolymers. Here we present a new model for polydA which incorporates both a helix-coil transition and a over-stretching transition, accounting for the two plateaus. Using transfer matrix calculation and Monte-Carlo simulation we show that the model reproduces different sets of experimental observations, quantitatively. It also predicts interesting reentrant behavior in the temperature-extension characteristics of polydA, which is yet to be verified experimentally.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Two Distributed Algorithms for E-ticket Validation Protocols for Mobile Clients

The e-ticket (electronic ticket) validation problem has relevance in mobile computing environment because of the multiple submission of a ticket that is possible due to intermittent disconnections and mobility of hosts. Here, we propose protocols that are not only sensitive to disconnection but also to location. One of the proposed protocols is the variant of the distributed protocol proposed by Pedone (2000) for Internet users. This shows that a distributed protocol for static network can be restructured for distributed computation in a mobile computing environment. We have also proposed another protocol that uses a hierarchical location database of mobile hosts (Pitoura and Samaras, 2001)

RDD2022: A multi-national image dataset for automatic Road Damage Detection

The data article describes the Road Damage Dataset, RDD2022, which comprises 47,420 road images from six countries, Japan, India, the Czech Republic, Norway, the United States, and China. The images have been annotated with more than 55,000 instances of road damage. Four types of road damage, namely longitudinal cracks, transverse cracks, alligator cracks, and potholes, are captured in the dataset. The annotated dataset is envisioned for developing deep learning-based methods to detect and classify road damage automatically. The dataset has been released as a part of the Crowd sensing-based Road Damage Detection Challenge (CRDDC2022). The challenge CRDDC2022 invites researchers from across the globe to propose solutions for automatic road damage detection in multiple countries. The municipalities and road agencies may utilize the RDD2022 dataset, and the models trained using RDD2022 for low-cost automatic monitoring of road conditions. Further, computer vision and machine learning researchers may use the dataset to benchmark the performance of different algorithms for other image-based applications of the same type (classification, object detection, etc.).Comment: 16 pages, 20 figures, IEEE BigData Cup - Crowdsensing-based Road damage detection challenge (CRDDC'2022

Characterization of tin-plated steel

Tinplating on steel is a useful industrial process extensively used for food packaging. Cold-rolled annealed steel coated with tin gives the steel corrosion resistance property and a beautiful luster. Tinplating on steel is a complex process where rolled and annealed steel sheets are cleaned with acid to remove rust, grease, or oil from the surface. Pure tin is electrodeposited on this freshly prepared surface after the electrodeposition of tin on the steel strip; the surface becomes lustrous, the color of pure tin appears, and the finish is called matte. Very often, the flowing heat treatment is just about the tin melting point of 232°C–265°C. After electrodeposition, pure tin deposits on the steel surface; however, a chemical reaction between tin and iron occurs during the brightening treatment. This process results in iron–tin intermetallic formation; their orientation grain structure and orientation of substrate steel all have a synergistic effect on the final properties of tin-coated steel. In the present study, an attempt has been made to study this parameter in detail. A total of five commercially produced tin-plated steel have been selected for the present purpose, and both tin coating and substrate steel have been thoroughly characterized by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the crystallographic texture point of view; however, the best result has been discussed in this paper. The different phases of tin and the iron–tin compound have been identified using XRD, X-ray, and a texture goniometer that are used to find out the crystallographic texture observed in the presence of FeSn2, FeSn, and Sn in tin coating; the volume fraction of these phases is observed to vary from one sample to another. This variation may affect tinplating steel’s final property, which can be studied in the future work

Crowdsensing-based Road Damage Detection Challenge (CRDDC-2022)

This paper summarizes the Crowdsensing-based Road Damage Detection Challenge (CRDDC), a Big Data Cup organized as a part of the IEEE International Conference on Big Data'2022. The Big Data Cup challenges involve a released dataset and a well-defined problem with clear evaluation metrics. The challenges run on a data competition platform that maintains a real-time online evaluation system for the participants. In the presented case, the data constitute 47,420 road images collected from India, Japan, the Czech Republic, Norway, the United States, and China to propose methods for automatically detecting road damages in these countries. More than 60 teams from 19 countries registered for this competition. The submitted solutions were evaluated using five leaderboards based on performance for unseen test images from the aforementioned six countries. This paper encapsulates the top 11 solutions proposed by these teams. The best-performing model utilizes ensemble learning based on YOLO and Faster-RCNN series models to yield an F1 score of 76% for test data combined from all 6 countries. The paper concludes with a comparison of current and past challenges and provides direction for the future.Comment: 9 pages 2 figures 5 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2011.0874

The miRNAome of \u3cem\u3eCatharanthus roseus\u3c/em\u3e: Identification, Expression Analysis, and Potential Roles of MicroRNAs in Regulation of Terpenoid Indole Alkaloid Biosynthesis

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate numerous crucial biological processes in plants. However, information is limited on their involvement in the biosynthesis of specialized metabolites in plants, including Catharanthus roseus that produces a number of pharmaceutically valuable, bioactive terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs). Using small RNA-sequencing, we identified 181 conserved and 173 novel miRNAs (cro-miRNAs) in C. roseus seedlings. Genome-wide expression analysis revealed that a set of cro-miRNAs are differentially regulated in response to methyl jasmonate (MeJA). In silico target prediction identified 519 potential cro-miRNA targets that include several auxin response factors (ARFs). The presence of cleaved transcripts of miRNA-targeted ARFs in C. roseus cells was confirmed by Poly(A) Polymerase-Mediated Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends (PPM-RACE). We showed that auxin (indole acetic acid, IAA) repressed the expression of key TIA pathway genes in C. roseus seedlings. Moreover, we demonstrated that a miRNA-regulated ARF, CrARF16, binds to the promoters of key TIA pathway genes and repress their expression. The C. roseus miRNAome reported here provides a comprehensive account of the cro-miRNA populations, as well as their abundance and expression profiles in response to MeJA. In addition, our findings underscore the importance of miRNAs in posttranscriptional control of the biosynthesis of specialized metabolites