Electrochemical Infiltration of Laser Sintered Preforms with Metals

The proposed work deals with room temperature infiltration of selective laser sintered preforms with metals. The approach adopted for carrying out room temperature infiltration was adaptation and modification of electrochemical deposition techniques. Electroless deposition and Electrolytic deposition processes were modified in order to carry out metal ion infiltration and their deposition on the walls of the interconnected pores. The electrolytic infiltration process was modified by inserting a conductive graphite cathode in the center in order to attract positive nickel ions through the interconnected porous network and hence deposit them on the walls of the pores. One of the major advantages of electrochemical infiltration is the lower processing temperature. Low temperature reduces both energy consumption and associated carbon-footprint and also minimizes undesirable structural changes. Both conductive and non-conductive preforms can be electrochemically infiltrated and MMCs produced by this method have potential for use in structural applications. This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Grant DMI-0522176.Mechanical Engineerin

A study on the enhancement of sonochemical degradation of eosin B using other advanced oxidation processes

Eosin B is a xanthenes dye and is a derivate of fluorescein. The efficacy of sonochemical degradation coupled with other advanced oxidation process (AOP’s) has been studied for eosin B degradation in aqueous solution. The study compares the effects of H2O2 concentration, saturating gas (argon, N2, and O2), temperature and pH (3–11). Furthermore, kinetic comparison and a figure of merit for the electrical energy consumption were carried out for the degradation under combination of different AOP’s. Higher rate constant was obtained under Ar as a saturating gas and higher mineralization rate was found under acidic condition. It was also observed that rate constant decreases with the increase in temperature. The kinetic analysis indicate that of all the degrading setups used, the US + O3 was fastest in decomposing the eosin B, whereas, in energy consumption scale, UV + H2O2 was found to be the most efficient

ProAlignNet : Unsupervised Learning for Progressively Aligning Noisy Contours

Contour shape alignment is a fundamental but challenging problem in computer vision, especially when the observations are partial, noisy, and largely misaligned. Recent ConvNet-based architectures that were proposed to align image structures tend to fail with contour representation of shapes, mostly due to the use of proximity-insensitive pixel-wise similarity measures as loss functions in their training processes. This work presents a novel ConvNet, "ProAlignNet" that accounts for large scale misalignments and complex transformations between the contour shapes. It infers the warp parameters in a multi-scale fashion with progressively increasing complex transformations over increasing scales. It learns --without supervision-- to align contours, agnostic to noise and missing parts, by training with a novel loss function which is derived an upperbound of a proximity-sensitive and local shape-dependent similarity metric that uses classical Morphological Chamfer Distance Transform. We evaluate the reliability of these proposals on a simulated MNIST noisy contours dataset via some basic sanity check experiments. Next, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed models in two real-world applications of (i) aligning geo-parcel data to aerial image maps and (ii) refining coarsely annotated segmentation labels. In both applications, the proposed models consistently perform superior to state-of-the-art methods.Comment: Accepted at CVPR 202

Spatio-temporal Analysis of Open Waste Dumping Sites Using Google Earth : A Case Study of Kharagpur City, India

Google Earth provides high-resolution satellite images over a long period of historical time period which can be used to study land use/land cover (LULC) changes in any area over an extended period of time. In this study, Google Earth Pro was used to identify problems with current locations of solid waste dumping sites and conduct a time-series analysis of the areas occupied by waste dumping sites in Kharagpur city. Five dumping locations were studied of which three are official dumping sites, one is an illegal dumping site and the last one is an official dumping site which was cleaned in 2015. Satellite images of the same dumping locations were taken to evaluate changes in the areas of the dumping sites from 2010 to 2017. The results of the study show that most of the sites are situated very close to an airbase runway, railway line, residential area or highway/road which is in contravention of regulations. Time-series analysis shows that the sizes of all dumps have varied significantly with respect to time except for the unauthorized dumping site. The reasons behind the fluctuations in area are frequent burning of garbage and partial clean-up of the site due to local complaints. The methodology used in this study can be extended to an entire city or even several cities to find problems related to the existing illegal or official waste dumping site within a specific time period.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Use of amorphous TiO2 deposited on cotton by sol-gel process for de-colorization of direct dye solutions in presence of UV radiation

In this investigation, decolorization of a direct dye solution catalysed by TiO2 coated on a cotton fabric by sol- gel route in presence of UV radiation has been studied. Effect of various process and material parameters like initial dye solution concentration, treatment time and temperature, stirring rate and construction of fabric on dye decolorization extent has been studied. It is observed that with a starting dye solution concentration of 0.1 g/L, almost 80% dye removal can be achieved. It is not possible to improve the decolorization extent beyond 80% by any combination of parameters. X-ray diffraction studies reveal that the form of TiO2 deposited on cotton fabric is not crystalline but amorphous in nature. While the UV radiation intensity and the fabric construction influence the dye decolorization, the treatment temperature and stirring rate do not have much bearing on decolorizing efficiency

Environmental Impacts of Sandstone Quarrying and Its Waste : A Case Study of Jodhpur, India

Google Earth provides high resolution satellite images over a long period of time which can be used in various environmental and climate studies. In the present study, Google Earth was used to evaluate incremental trends in the quarrying area and associated environmental impacts. Keru region near Jodhpur city, India was selected as the study area for the present study. Time series analysis was done from 1990 to 2016 to evaluate increments in the quarrying area. After 2007, recently built stone cutting units and dumping locations were also observed. Land degradation around the quarrying zone was also quantified from 2007 to 2016 using Google Earth imagery. After time series analysis, extensive site survey was also done to check and verify different quarrying and dumping practices in the study area and their effect on the environment. The results of the time series analysis show 4.55 times increment in study area from 1990 to 2016, with a linear relationship between increment in study area along with emergence of new cutting units and waste dumping sites. Since 2007, about 71.4 hectare of agricultural land was destroyed due to quarrying activities out of which 24.3% of the land is now assimilated in sandstone quarries. Results of the site survey show that major reasons for onsite and nearby environmental degradation were use of improper machinery and vehicles; haphazard and unsystematic quarrying over a long period of time; and dumping of quarry waste.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Metabolic syndrome in patients with chronic plaque psoriatic disease: a case-control study from western Uttar Pradesh, India

Background: Various studies on psoriasis and metabolic syndrome have shown a large variation in their results. An increasing frequency is imposing a substantial burden on the overall health of psoriasis patients that needs to be appropriately foreseen and addressed. Aim of this study was to study various aspects of metabolic syndrome in patients with chronic plaque psoriatic disease in northern Indian region.Methods: A cohort of patients registering for treatment of chronic plaque psoriasis at Dermatology outpatients’ department formed the study population. Detailed history was captured. General physical examination was carried out. A thorough cutaneous examination was undertaken which captured details on type, distribution and arrangement of primary lesions and secondary changes in patients. After overnight fasting, venous blood samples were collected from the subjects and were analysed for serum glucose, triglyceride and HDL-cholesterol. Results: Metabolic syndrome in psoriasis was associated with higher age. Gender wise male preponderance was observed. Among the psoriasis cases, 64% had metabolic syndrome whereas among the control subjects 48% had the condition (p-value 0.158). The mean for serum triglyceride level for psoriasis patients (159.42 mg/dL) was higher than controls (144.25 mg/dL). Forty six percent of cases fulfilled elevated triglycerides ≥150 mg/dl as a criterion of metabolic syndrome, compared to 40% of controls. Conclusions: We observed a higher frequency of metabolic syndrome among psoriasis cases in a northern Indian population. An association of dyslipidemia with psoriasis was also noted. Routine screening of the condition to facilitate early diagnosis and treatment should be undertaken

Simultaneous adsorption and biodegradation of reactive dyes using jatropha deoiled cakes

© BEIESP. Endemic pollution problems due to discharge of wastewaters are affecting all the aspects of human life. The poor quality effluents coming from industries is destroying the fragile ecosystem, leading to various apprehensions amongst researchers and scientific communities. Treatment of wastewaters have become an urgent need of the society, which cannot be ignored. Incineration, absorption on solid matrices and biological treatment are some of the effluent treatment methods available. These methods, however, have their own disadvantages. This work explores the application of jatropha deoiled cakes on the concurrent adsorption and biological degradation of reactive dyes. Reactive blue, reactive yellow, reactive red were used for the experiments. The combined experiments were tested for effect of glucose concentrations as well as initial concentrations. Glucose concentrations of 1 g/l, 2 g/l and 3 g/l were taken. All the dyes were varied from 100 ppm to 600 ppm. It was observed that combined degradation yielded higher degradation compared to biological degradation alone. The degradation rate varied with the variation of glucose concentration and it also varied with the initial concentration