Physical phenomena in containerless glass processing

Flight experiments are planned on drops containing bubbles. The experiments involve stimulating the drop via non-uniform heating and rotation. The resulting trajectories of the bubbles as well as the shapes of the drops and bubble will be videotaped and analyzed later frame-by-frame on the ground. Supporting ground based experiments are planned in the area of surface tension driven motion of bubbles, the behavior of compound drops settling in an immiscible liquid and the shapes and trajectories of large bubbles and drops in a rotating liquid. Theoretical efforts will be directed at thermocapillary migration of drops and bubbles, surfactant effects on such migration, and the behavior of compound drops

A Novel Approach to Extract High Utility Itemsets from Distributed Databases

Traditional approaches in data mining focus on support and confidence measures which are just statistics based. Support and confidence measures which are based on the frequency count of the items enable us to derive the frequent itemsets. The frequency of the items as a single factor does not represent the interestingness of the items. To enhance the process of data mining tasks based on the value of the product, several researches were conducted. It resulted in utility mining which is an emerging field of research in data mining. In the recent years various data mining approaches have been implemented in order to find the high utility itemsets. The main objective of utility mining is to identify the itemsets with highest utilities, by considering the subjectively defined utility values, as set by the user. Existing methods based on utility mining concept focus on centralized systems where the data and associated processing is pertained to a particular location. As a further step ahead we try to implement the utility mining concept in a distributed environment. In this approach we use a sophisticated way of mining high utility itemsets using a Fast Utility Mining (FUM) algorithm

The motion of bubbles inside drops in containerless processing

A theoretical model of thermocapillary bubble motion inside a drop, located in a space laboratory, due to an arbitrary axisymmetric temperature distribution on the drop surface was constructed. Typical results for the stream function and temperature fields as well as the migration velocity of the bubble were obtained in the quasistatic limit. The motion of bubbles in a rotating body of liquid was studied experimentally, and an approximate theoretical model was developed. Comparison of the experimental observations of the bubble trajectories and centering times with theoretical predictions lends qualified support to the theory

Near-infrared grating couplers for silicon nitride photonic wires

Silicon nitride is a promising high-index material for dense photonic circuits and applications in the visible-midinfrared wavelength regime. Design, fabrication, and optical characterization of silicon nitride waveguides at visible-near-infrared wavelength are presented. Finally, design and experimental results are presented for the first time for linear and focused grating couplers (GCs) at near-infrared wavelength (900 nm) for plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon nitride wires (220 x 500 nm) and compared with theoretical simulations. An experimental efficiency of 5.7 and 6.5 dB and 1-dB bandwidth of 26 and 40 nm are reported for the linear and focused GCs, respectively

Thugs and Bandits: Life and Law in Colonial and Epicolonial India

An examination of crime and criminality in colonial and postcolonial India through life-writing and the examples of Thugs and Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen

Thermocapillary migration and interactions of bubbles and drops

Results from ground-based theoretical and experimental research on the motion of bubbles and drops in a temperature gradient are described and a brief account is given of plans for a flight experiment scheduled in 1994

Heteroarotinoids : Mimics of Trans-retinoic Acid�

Chemistr

Modeling the pneumatic subsystem of a S-cam air brake system

The air brake system is one of the critical components in ensuring the safe operation of any commercial vehicle. This work is directed towards the development of a fault-free model of the pneumatic subsystem of the air brake system. This model can be used in brake control and diagnostic applications. Current enforcement inspections are done manually and hence are time consuming and subjective. The long-term objective is to develop a model-based, performance-based diagnostic system that will automate enforcement inspections and help in monitoring the condition of the air brake system. Such a diagnostic system can update the driver on the performance of the brake system during travel and with recent advancements in communication technology, this information can be remotely transferred to the brake inspection teams. Since this system is performance-based, it will eliminate the subjective nature of visual inspections. The first step in the development of such a diagnostic system is to obtain a fault-free model of the air brake system. The model of the pneumatic subsystem correlates the pressure transients in the brake chamber with the brake pedal actuation force and the brake valve plunger displacement. An experimental test bench was set up at Texas A&M University and the experimental data is used to corroborate the results obtained from the model