Calibration for measurements of droplet size distributions of ground based clouds - a laboratory investigation

Water droplets of varying sizes, released through an atomizer, were collected on glass slides coated with uniform layers of magnesium oxide or carbon soot and silicone oil. Assuming that the droplets retain their original shapes in the oil film, calibrations were obtained for their spreading on oxide and soot layers of known thickness. The calibrations have been further applied to evaluate droplet size distributions of ground-based clouds

A study of the chemical components of aerosols and snow in the Kashmir region.

Atmospheric aerosols in surface air were sampled for a total period of 2 weeks, from February 25 to March 11, 1971, during the winter season, at Gulmarg and Srinagar. Snow samples were also collected on days of snow occurrence during the period. Aerosols were sampled using cascade impactor and millipore filter assembly. Samples collected through impactor were categorized into hygroscopic and non-hygroscopic nuclei while chloride, ice-forming and total nuclei were evaluated from millipore filters.Analysis of the aerosol data showed higher counts for all the nuclei at Srinagar with respect to Gulmarg. Fractions of chloride, hygroscopic and ice-forming nuclei among the total nuclei were larger at Gulmarg. Aerosol counts during the days were higher as compared to the corresponding night values. All the chemical constituents, except Cl−, gradually reduced from the initial to the end stage of the snowfall. Snow sample from Srinagar indicated higher cation concentrations. Variations of aerosols under different weather conditions have been discusse

An artificial neural network model for optimization of finished goods inventory

In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) model is developed to determine the optimum level of finished goods inventory as a function of product demand, setup, holding, and material costs. The model selects a feed-forward back-propagation ANN with four inputs, ten hidden neurons and one output as the optimum network. The model is tested with a manufacturing industry data and the results indicate that the model can be used to forecast finished goods inventory level in response to the model parameters. Overall, the model can be applied for optimization of finished goods inventory for any manufacturing enterprise in a competitive business environment. © 2011Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved

People’s perception on agricultural vulnerabilities to climate change and SLR in Bangladesh: adaptation strategies and explanatory variables

The objective of this research is to evaluate people’s perception on vulnerabilities of agriculture and to explore effective adaptation options with identifying the underlying demographic, socio-economic and other relevant variables that influence the adaptation strategies in the sea level rise (SLR) hazard induced coastal areas of Bangladesh. The study finds that climate change and induced SLR are emerging threats to coastal agriculture of Bangladesh; hence, farmers are applying different adaptation strategies to reduce the vulnerabilities of coastal agriculture. Selection of effective adaptation strategies to vulnerabilities of agriculture depends not only on the magnitude, intensity and the impacts of climate change and SLR, but also perceptions and types of farmer, land, educational level, indigenous knowledge about adaptation, locational advantages, external support, community awareness and sharing of different effective mechanisms among the farmers. Effective adaptation strategies with high perceptions have significant influence to reduce the vulnerabilities of agriculture considering the adverse impacts of climate change and SLR. In time of extreme climatic hazards when a great loss in agriculture hamper the coastal agrobased economy, different effective indigenous local adaptation strategies through farmer awareness and community co-operation become vital for minimizing the impact of climatic hazards and reducing the vulnerabilities of coastal agriculture.Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 8 (1): 70-78, June, 201

Experimental investigation of the influence of electric field on the collision - coalescence of water drops

Laboratory experiments were conducted on the collision-coalescence of pairs of water drops of equal size, in two oil media (kerosene and mustard), with and without external vertical electric field (F). The radii of the water drops used were in the range 1.6 to 1.7 mm and the external electric field varied from 0 to 375 V cm-'. Collision frequencies were determined for various combinations of mean lateral (X)a nd mean vertical (Z) separations of the drop pairs as fixed combinations of X and Z could not be reproduced in any given set of experiments due to the limitations of the mechanical set up of the apparatu

The Future of Manufacturing Global Value Chains, Smart Specialization and Flexibility!

© 2018, Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management. The future manufacturing and global value chain will be highly dominated by technological and business innovations to cope with the accelerating pace of changes in consumer behaviour and global business environment. This editorial for the special issue “The future of manufacturing: global value chains, smart specialization and flexibility” enriches the topic of future of manufacturing operations and supply chain management literature. In the line with the theme, this special issue publishes five articles that clearly articulate the emerging thematic discussions

Managing supply disruption in a three-tier supply chain with multiple suppliers and retailers

© 2014 IEEE. In this paper, a supply disruption management model is introduced in a three-tier supply chain with multiple suppliers and retailers, where the system may face sudden disruption in its raw material supply. At first, we formulated a mathematical model for ideal conditions and then reformulated it to revise the supply, production and delivery plan after the occurrence of a disruption, for a future period, to recover from the disruption. Here, the objective is to minimize the total cost during the recovery time window while being subject to supply, capacity, demand, and delivery constraints. We have also proposed an efficient heuristic to solve the model and the results have been compared, with another established solution approach, for a good number of randomly generated test problems. The comparison showed the consistent performance of our developed heuristic. This paper also presents some numerical examples to explain the usefulness of the proposed approach

A quantitative model for disruption mitigation in a supply chain

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. In this paper, a three-stage supply chain network, with multiple manufacturing plants, distribution centers and retailers, is considered. For this supply chain system we develop three different approaches, (i) an ideal plan for an infinite planning horizon and an updated plan if there are any changes in the data, (ii) a predictive mitigation planning approach for managing predictive demand changes, which can be predicted in advance by using an appropriate tool, and (iii) a reactive mitigation plan, on a real-time basis, for managing sudden production disruptions, which cannot be predicted in advance. In predictive mitigation planning, we develop a fuzzy inference system (FIS) tool to predict the changes in future demand over the base forecast and the supply chain plan is revised accordingly well in advance. In reactive mitigation planning, we formulate a quantitative model for revising production and distribution plans, over a finite future planning period, while minimizing the total supply chain cost. We also consider a series of sudden disruptions, where a new disruption may or may not affect the recovery plans of earlier disruptions and which consequently require plans to be revised after the occurrence of each disruption on a real-time basis. An efficient heuristic, capable of dealing with sudden production disruptions on a real-time basis, is developed. We compare the heuristic results with those obtained from the LINGO optimization software for a good number of randomly generated test problems. Also, some numerical examples are presented to explain both the usefulness and advantages of the proposed approaches

Discussion of “Reclaimed Lignin-Stabilized Silty Soil: Undrained Shear Strength, Atterberg Limits, and Microstructure Characteristics” by T. Zhang, G. Cai and S. Li

The discussers read with interest the recent paper by Zhang et al. (2018), which reports on the investigation of the effects of 0–12% lignin additive on some index and shear strength properties of a silty soil material. The use of the fall-cone device to study undrained shear strength variation with moisture content is pleasing to see and shows how the approach is useful for this purpose: namely the study of undrained strength variation. We wish to make the following comments regarding some of the underlying assumptions in the paper by way of offering some other explanations and interpretations for the results obtained