EST-SSRs Provide a Good Measure of Genetic Diversity for Improvement of Gum Content in Cluster Bean

Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub., commonly known as guar is an important multipurpose arid leguminous crop of India, mainly cultivated in north-western parts of India. The pods of the guar plant grow in clusters giving guar the common name of clusterbean. It is mainly grown for feed, green fodder, vegetable and green manuring. Its seeds are also an important source of galactomannan (guar gum) which is used as a food ingredient and more recently as a neutraceutical. Guar gum is also having pharmaceutical importance and found to be effective in osteoarthritis, as artificial cervical mucus and for anticancer medicine in the treatment of colorectal cancer. Particularly in 2012, world demand for guar gum has skyrocketed and the price of guar has increased by approximately 230 per cent and even more, mainly because of increased oilfield shale gas demand. As a consequence, there has been a 75 per cent jump in exports from India, the largest guar producing country (Gresta et al., 2013) due to which India’s much neglected and little-known galactomannan became its biggest agricultural item of export. To fulfill all these purposes, the increasing demand of the guar seeds cannot be compensated by present resources. Therefore, new varieties with higher gum content are urgently needed. For this, knowledge of genetic diversity among the varieties has immense importance for plant breeders. Larger variability in the initial breeding material ensures better chances of producing new desired forms of a crop (Pathak et al., 2011). Molecular markers offer a promising tool for plant breeding efforts. SSRs are highly valued molecular markers for studying genetic diversity in crop plants. But unfortunately, clusterbean is a genomically poor crop as no genomic SSRs have been developed. Literature available on the nature and magnitude of diversity in clusterbean indicates that the studies of this kind are scanty and not properly documented. Studies were therefore, required to assess the extent of genetic variability in association with the galactomannan content using reliable EST-SSRs

Acoustic Emission Technology for High Power Microwave Radar Tubes

Microwave tubes used in high-power radar and communications systems are expensive and have an operating life of a few thousand hours. When one fails, it is generally impossible to determine the sequence of events that contributed to its failure. Previous investigators have designed microprocessor-based systems with as many as 11 sensors to monitor tube performance, provide tube protection, and record a comprehensive tube failure history. These systems are limited by the small amount of time available during the tube’s interpulse period for data buffering and fault analysis. They work well if the microwave tube is operated with 200 or fewer pulses per second. However, many tubes are operated at up to 1000 pulses per second. In this effort, an alternative nondestructive testing technique using acoustic emission (AE) was used for in-situ monitoring of normal and abnormal performance of radar tubes, including a magnetron, a klystron, and a traveling wave tube amplifier. This technique captures changes in radio frequency (RF) output pulses due to irregular operation and it is a real-time instantaneous in-situ indicator of the performance of microwave radar tubes. It also offers the possibility of developing built-in prognostic capabilities within the radar system to provide advanced warning of a system malfunction. Understanding the sequence of events leading to a tube failure allows for better maintenance, extends the operating life of the system, and results in significant cost avoidance

Automated Classification of Microwave Transmitter Failures Using Virtual Sensors

Each year, nearly $100 M is spent replacing high-power microwave tubes in the fleet. In many cases (estimated at over 25%), tubes that are operating perfectly are inadvertently replaced because there are insufficient in-situ monitoring equipment available to diagnose specific problems within the system. High-power microwave vacuum tubes used in radar or communications systems have minimal condition-based maintenance capability and no means to identify specific component failures. This chapter presents the results from a system that uses cathode current and acoustic emission sensors combined as a virtual sensor to locate and classify microwave transmitter failures. Data will be shown which differentiate the failure mode from subsystems on a radar klystron and from a communications system magnetron. The use of the integrated condition assessment system (ICAS) to acquire and track virtual sensor data will also be described. These results offer promise of a low-cost, nonintrusive system to monitor microwave transmitters, which correctly identifies component failures avoiding incorrect replacement of high-value klystrons, magnetrons, or traveling wave tubes. This advanced technique also offers the possibility of developing built-in prognostic capabilities within the radar system to provide advanced warning of a system malfunction

Collapse of non-spherically symmetric scalar field distributions

In the present work the collapse scenario of some exact non-spherical models with a minimally coupled scalar field is studied. Scalar field collapse with planar as well as toroidal, cylindrical and pseudoplanar symmetries have been investigated. It is shown that the scalar field may have collapsing modes even if it has the equation of state corresponding to that of a dark energy.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures; Accepted for publication in Gen Relativ Gravit (2011

Equilibrium configurations from gravitational collapse

We develop here a new procedure within Einstein's theory of gravity to generate equilibrium configurations that result as the final state of gravitational collapse from regular initial conditions. As a simplification, we assume that the collapsing fluid is supported only by tangential pressure. We show that the equilibrium geometries generated by this method form a subset of static solutions to the Einstein equations, and that they can either be regular or develop a naked singularity at the center. When a singularity is present, there are key differences in the properties of stable circular orbits relative to those around a Schwarzschild black hole with the same mass. Therefore, if an accretion disk is present around such a naked singularity it could be observationally distinguished from a disk around a black hole.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure. Replaced with published version, several changes made according to referee's advis

Anticipatory anti-colonial writing in R.K. Narayan's Swami and Friends and Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable

This article uses the term “anticipatory anti-colonial writing” to discuss the workings of time in R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends and Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable. Both these first novels were published in 1935 with the support of British literary personalities (Graham Greene and E.M. Forster respectively) and both feature young protagonists who, in contrasting ways, are engaged in Indian resistance to colonial rule. This study examines the difference between Narayan’s local, though ironical, resistance to the homogenizing temporal demands of empire and Anand’s awkwardly modernist, socially committed vision. I argue that a form of anticipation that explicitly looks forward to decolonization via new and transnational literary forms is a crucial feature of Untouchable that is not found in Swami and Friends, despite the latter’s anti-colonial elements. Untouchable was intended to be a “bridge between the Ganges and the Thames” and anticipates postcolonial negotiations of time that critique global inequalities and rely upon the multidirectional global connections forged by modernism

The Mean Pulse Profile of PSR J0737-3039A

General relativity predicts that the spin axes of the pulsars in the double-pulsar system (PSR J0737-3039A/B) will precess rapidly, in general leading to a change in the observed pulse profiles. We have observed this system over a one-year interval using the Parkes 64-m radio telescope at three frequencies: 680, 1390 and 3030 MHz. These data, combined with the short survey observation made two years earlier, show no evidence for significant changes in the pulse profile of PSR J0737-3039A, the 22-ms pulsar. The limit on variations of the profile 10% width is about 0.5 deg per year. These results imply an angle delta between the pulsar spin axis and the orbit normal of <~ 60 deg, consistent with recent evolutionary studies of the system. Although a wide range of system parameters remain consistent with the data, the model proposed by Jenet & Ransom (2004) can be ruled out. A non-zero ellipticity for the radiation beam gives slightly but not significantly improved fits to the data, so that a circular beam describes the data equally well within the uncertainties.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter