Aeroacoustics of supersonic jet flows from contoured and solid/porous conical plug-nozzles

The results of an experimental study of the acoustic far-field, the shock associated noise, and the nature of the repetitive shock structure of supersonic jet flows issuing from plug-nozzles having externally-expanded plugs with pointed termination operated at a range of supercritical pressure ratios Xi approaching 2 to 4.5 are reported. The plug of one of these plug-nozzles was contoured. The other plug-nozzles had short conical plugs with either a solid surface or a combination of solid/porous surface of different porosities. The contoured and the uncontoured plug-nozzles had the same throat area and the same annulus-radius ratio K = R sub p/R sub N = 0.43. As the result of modifications of the shock structure, the acoustic performance of improperly expanded jet flows of an externally-expanded short uncontoured plug of an appropriate geometry with suitably perforated plug and a pointed termination, is shown to approach the acoustic performance of a shock-free supersonic jet issuing from an equivalent externally-expanded contoured plug-nozzle

Star Clusters in the Magellanic Clouds-1: Parameterisation and Classification of 1072 Clusters in the LMC

We have introduced a semi-automated quantitative method to estimate the age and reddening of 1072 star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) III survey data. This study brings out 308 newly parameterised clusters. In a first of its kind, the LMC clusters are classified into groups based on richness/mass as very poor, poor, moderate and rich clusters, similar to the classification scheme of open clusters in the Galaxy. A major cluster formation episode is found to happen at 125 +- 25 Myr in the inner LMC. The bar region of the LMC appears prominently in the age range 60 - 250 Myr and is found to have a relatively higher concentration of poor and moderate clusters. The eastern and the western ends of the bar are found to form clusters initially, which later propagates to the central part. We demonstrate that there is a significant difference in the distribution of clusters as a function of mass, using a movie based on the propagation (in space and time) of cluster formation in various groups. The importance of including the low mass clusters in the cluster formation history is demonstrated. The catalog with parameters, classification, and cleaned and isochrone fitted CMDs of 1072 clusters, which are available as online material, can be further used to understand the hierarchical formation of clusters in selected regions of the LMC.Comment: 19 pages, 19figures, published in MNRAS on August 16, 2016 Supplementary material is available in the MNRAS websit

An Efficient Multistage Fusion Approach for Smartphone Security Analysis

Android smartphone ecosystem is inundated with innumerable applications mainly developed by third party contenders leading to high vulnerability of these devices. In addition, proliferation of smartphone usage along with their potential applications in diverse field entice malware community to develop new malwares to attack these devices. In order to overcome these issues, an android malware detection framework is proposed wherein an efficient multistage fusion approach is introduced. For this, a robust unified feature vector is created by fusion of transformed feature matrices corresponding to multi-cue using non-linear graph based cross-diffusion. Unified feature is further subjected to multiple classifiers to obtain their classification scores. Classifier scores are further optimally fused employing Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT). Strength of suggested model is assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively by ten-fold cross-validation on the benchmarked datasets. On an average of outcome, we achieved detection accuracy of 98.97% and F-measure of 0.9936.&nbsp

A Novel Traffic Based Framework for Smartphone Security Analysis

Android Operating system (OS) has grown into the most predominant smartphone platform due to its flexibility and open source characteristics. Because of its openness, it has become prone to numerous attackers and malware designers who are constantly trying to elicit confidential information by articulating a plethora of attacks through these designed malwares. Detection of these malwares to protect the smartphone is the core function of the smartphone security analysis. This paper proposes a novel traffic-based framework that exploits the network traffic features to detect these malwares. Here, a unified feature (UF) is created by graph-based cross-diffusion of generated order and sparse matrices corresponding to the network traffic features. Generated unified feature is then given to three classifiers to get corresponding classifier scores. The robustness of the suggested framework when evaluated on the standard datasets outperforms contemporary techniques to achieve an average accuracy of 98.74 per cent

The Dielectric Response of La0.5Ca0.5-xSrxMnO3 (0.1 <= x <= 0.4) Manganites with Different Magnetic Ground States

The dielectric behavior of half doped manganites La0.5Ca0.5-xSrxMnO3 (0.1 \leq \times \leq 0.4) with varying magnetic ground states has been studied. The real part of relative permittivity as a function of temperature {\epsilon}^'(T), exhibits a maximum around the ferromagnetic (TC) and charge ordering transition (TCO) temperatures accompanied with high dielectric losses. The activation energies obtained for x = 0.1 and 0.3 samples below TCO are the same ~ 0.12eV, whereas the relaxation time constant varies in the range 2.8 \times 10-9 s - 6.03 \times 10-11 s. In contrast to samples having x \leq 0.3, for x = 0.4 doping the dielectric permittivity exhibits a strong temperature dependence in the vicinity of magnetic phase transitions. This behavior may be correlated with the presence of competing magnetic interactions (magnetic polarons) close to the magnetic transitions.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, To appear in Journal of Applied Physic

Utilizing GRACE and GLDAS data for estimating groundwater storage variability over the Krishna Basin

Groundwater is utilized intensively as a source of fresh water for irrigation and human needs. Hence, it is necessary to monitor groundwater storage for water security of the region in the future. The present study aims to evaluate the groundwater resource over the Krishna basin in South India. The basin comprises of 210 major and medium irrigation projects, which makes it important to evaluate the groundwater balance for a sustainable groundwater draft. This study evaluates the trend in groundwater anomaly derived from GRACE mascon product. Results indicate that the Krishna basin is subjected to a strong decline in groundwater at a rate of 0.34&thinsp;cm per year. Further, the study explores the seasonality of precipitation and its effect on groundwater by adopting an entropy-based approach. Results indicate the combined effect of delay in precipitation to attain peak and reduced duration of the wet season as a primary reason for the decline in the groundwater storage. The result shows that the reduction in groundwater storage affects the evapotranspiration over the region

Perceptual and Acoustical assessment of voice in children with cleft lip and palate

BACKGROUND: The speech of individuals with cleft lip and palate is primarily characterized by nasality of oral speech because of cleft and or velopharyngeal dysfunction. OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study is to investigate the acoustical assessment and perceptual rating measurements in cleft lip and palate children. METHODS: The study participants included 30 children with cleft lip and palate in the age range of 4 to 12 years. Prior parental consent was obtained for the inclusion of their children in the study. Speech samples of all the l the participants were recorded. Prerecorded speech samples of the individuals of the CLP groups were mixed and randomized and played,using headphone conditions in a quiet room. The SLPs speech language pathologists rated the nasality of the participant. Samples given for perceptual evaluation are 15 phonation samples of /ă/, /ɪ/ and /ŭ/ vowels vowel, 15 conversation samples and 30 subjects (3 oral sentences each so total 90 sentences). RESULTS: For the Phonation sample, SLP must evaluate the presence of hypernasality by Wilcoksons nasality scale. Acoustic analysis was done using PRAAT software. The spectral and temporal parameters were measured. The Kappa coefficient was 0.88 for inter-rater reliability for nasality rating scale, 0.82 for speech intelligibility,1.02 for speech understandability,1.00 for speech acceptability, which suggests substantial agreement between the raters for four different rating scales. CONCLUSION: Thus, to conclude in children with cleft lip and palate both acoustical and perceptual evaluation plays an important role while assessing the speech domain by using different kinds of speech stimuli