The Iron Pillar at Delhi

The massive Iron Pillar located in South Delhi has been an object of considerable interest to modern scientists and technologists for two main reasons viz., the amazing technology by which a metallic object weighing nearly seven tons could be fabricated over fifteen centuries ago and the phenomenal corrosion resistance displayed by this ancient monument despite exposure to sun, rain, wind and dust for so long. In this paper all available material on this metallurgical marvel is examined scientifically and systematically and an attempt made to answer such questions as are likely to arise in the minds of discern-ing visitors to this impressive monument. The following important conclusions are arrived at: (1) Date of Erec-tion : 370-375 A.D., (2) Date of the Inscription : 380-385 A.D., (3) Mode of Fabrication.: Hammer forging and welding ball of hot pasty iron in many steps, and (4) Reasons for Restlessness : Il4any viz., unusual chemical composition, protective oxide film, favourable Delhi climate and slag particles at grain boundaries

Padina boergessenii ameliorates carbon tetrachloride induced nephrotoxicity in Wistar rats

AbstractThis research investigates the ameliorative effect of brown alga Padina boergessenii against CCl4-induced nephrotoxicity in rats. Twenty-four Wistar albino rats were divided into four groups as follows: control group (saline), CCl4 group, CCl4+P. boergessenii extract group and P. boergessenii extract alone group. At the end of the experimental period, the animals are sacrificed and tissue samples (kidney) were collected. CCl4 at a dose of 2mL/kg, administered subcutaneously, produced significantly decreased activities of glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT). Histopathological examinations showed massive centrilobular necrosis and fat accumulation in CCl4-induced animals. In the protective test, especially in animals pretreated with P. boergessenii (150mg/kg) extract, there was a significant increase in antioxidant enzyme levels although there was no sign of abnormality in the kidney of rats pretreated with extract as evidenced by histopathological sections against CCl4-induced decrease of lipid peroxidation (TBARS). The ameliorative effect may be due to the presence of various bioactive compounds in alga. These results suggest that an extract of P. boergessenii is able to significantly alleviate the nephrotoxicity induced by CCl4 in Wistar rats

Organizational factors and total quality management - an empirical study

The level of awareness of Total Quality Management (TQM) has increased considerably over the last few years. Different sets of organizational requirements are prescribed by quality management gurus and practitioners for the effective practice of TQM. These requirements do not seem to have been formulated on the basis of systematic empirical research. Many researchers point out that tacit factors, e.g. employee empowerment, open culture and executive commitment, and not TQM tools and techniques alone, could drive TQM success, and that organizations would need to acquire these factors to stay successful. Many TQM advocates have also suggested that a conducive organizational environment would be essential for an effective practice of TQM. However, they did not offer any empirical evidence. There appears to be no empirical study reported in the literature that could establish a relation between TQM and organizational factors. The objective of this paper is to describe an empirical research on TQM conducted in Indian business units carried out recently by considering some organizational factors, e.g. quality of work life, organizational climate and communication. The methodology and findings are discussed in detail

Compiling Path Expressions into VLSI Circuits

Path expressions were originally proposed by Campbell and Haberman [2] as a mechanism for process synchronization at the monitor level in software.. Not unexpectedly, they also provided notation for specifying the behavior of asynchronous circuits. Motivated by these potential applications, we investigate how to directly translate path expressions into hardware. Our implementation is complicated in the case of multiple path expressions by the need for synchronization on event names that are common to more than one path. However, since events are inherently asynchronous in our model, all of our circuits must be self-timed. Nevertheless, the circuits produced by our construction have area proportional to N*log(N) where N is the total length of the multiple path expression under consideration. This bound holds regardless of the number of individual paths or the degree of synchronization between paths. Furthermore, if the structure of the path expression allows partitioning. the circuit can be layed out in a distributed fashion without additional area overhead

Mineral Composition of Marine Macroalgae from Mandapam Coastal Regions; Southeast Coast of India

The present study focused on the trace metal and mineral composition analysis of various seaweeds such as Chlorophyceae (Cladophora glomerata, Ulva reticulata, Halimeda macroloba, H.tuna), Phaeophyceae (Dictyota dichotoma, Padina pavonica) Rhodophyceae (Gracilaria crassa, Gelidiella acerosa, Hypnea musciformis) collected from Mandapam coastal regions, Southeast coast of India. Among these groups of seaweeds, U. reticulata belonging to the Chlorophyceae showed the maximum contents of mineral elements such as chromium, copper, and magnesium. H.tuna observed the minimum level of mineral content such as cobalt, iron, magnesium, manganese, nickel, lead and zinc

Influence of crystallite shape on particle size broadening of Debye-Scherrer reflections

Formulae for the Scherrer constant Kβ, the variance Scherrer constant Kω and the taper parameter Lω for crystals having the external shapes of a triangular prism, a square prism, a hexagonal prism and a cylinder have been obtained in terms of the reflection indices and proportionality factors,viz., the ratio of the height of the crystal to the square root of its basal area and the ratio of the two lattice constants of the unit cell. The numerical values of Kβ, Kω and Lω have also been computed for direct application in particular cases

Tools and pipelines for BioNano data: molecule assembly pipeline and FASTA super scaffolding tool

Citation: Shelton, J. M., Coleman, M. C., Hemdon, N., Lu, N. Y., Lam, E. T., Anantharaman, T., . . . Brown, S. J. (2015). Tools and pipelines for BioNano data: molecule assembly pipeline and FASTA super scaffolding tool. Bmc Genomics, 16, 16. doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1911-8Background: Genome assembly remains an unsolved problem. Assembly projects face a range of hurdles that confound assembly. Thus a variety of tools and approaches are needed to improve draft genomes. Results: We used a custom assembly workflow to optimize consensus genome map assembly, resulting in an assembly equal to the estimated length of the Tribolium castaneum genome and with an N50 of more than 1 Mb. We used this map for super scaffolding the T. castaneum sequence assembly, more than tripling its N50 with the program Stitch. Conclusions: In this article we present software that leverages consensus genome maps assembled from extremely long single molecule maps to increase the contiguity of sequence assemblies. We report the results of applying these tools to validate and improve a 7x Sanger draft of the T. castaneum genome

Monitoring of Noctiluca Bloom in Mandapam and Keelakarai Coastal Waters; Southeast Coast of India

Monitoring the Harmful Algal Blooms was carried out during July to December 2008 in Mandapam and Keelakarai coastal waters of Tamil Nadu, Southeast coast of India. In the month of October several fishes and shellfishes were died due to Noctiluca blooms along these two areas. The present investigation the following species of phyto and zooplankton were found to be common; phytoplankton such as Coscinodiscus sp., Skeletonema costatum, Bacillaria paradoxa, Thallassiothrix frauenfeldii, T. longisima, Leptocylindrus sp., and  zooplankton such as Paracalanus parvus, Acrocalanus gracilis, Pseudodiaptomus serricautatus, Rhincalanus cornutus, R. nasutus, Euterpina acutifrons, Nannocalanus minor, Eucalanus attenuates, E. crassus, Fish larvae, Fish eggs, Barnacle nauplii, Bivalve larvae, Gastropod larvae, Copepod nauplii  and Mysis larvae. The hydrobiological parameters also analysed during bloom and after blooms; the dissolved oxygen (2.6 – 4.9µM L-1) nutrients varied between nitrate (0.66 – 1.01µM L-1) nitrite (0.11 – 0.21µM L-1) phosphate (0.51 – 0.86µM L-1) and silicate (0.81 – 4.2µM L-1)

The constitution and structure of manganese-gallium alloys

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