• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
• /
• 제41권1호
• /
• pp.21-33
• /
• 2016

Purpose: In order to ensure that vegetable seedlings (with a soil block around their roots) are planted in an upright orientation after metering in a vegetable transplanter, they need to be dropped freely from a certain height. The walk-behind hand-tractor-powered machines do not have sufficient space to drop the seedlings from that height. In the present work, a hopper-type planting device was developed for the walk-behind hand-tractor-powered vegetable transplanter to ensure that the soil block seedlings are planted in an upright orientation. Methods: Various dimensionless terms were developed based on the dimensional analysis approach, and their effect on the planting of soil block seedlings in an upright orientation (planting efficiency) was studied. The optimum design dimensions of the hopper-type planting device were identified by the Taguchi method of optimization. Results: The ratio of the height of free fall to the sliding distance of the seedling on the surface of the hopper had the highest influence on planting efficiency. The planting efficiency was highest for plants with a height $15{\pm}2cm$. The plant handling Froude number, in interaction with the design of the hopper-type planting device, also significantly affected the planting efficiency. Of the hopper design factors, the length of the slide of the seedlings on the surface of the hopper was most important, and induced sufficient velocity and rotation to cause the seedling to fall in an upright orientation. An evaluation of the performance of the planting device under actual field conditions revealed that the planting efficiency of the developed planting device was more than 97.5%. Conclusions: As the seedlings were fed to the metering device manually, an increase in planting rate increased missed plantings. The planting device can be adopted for any vegetable transplanter in which the seedlings are allowed to drop freely from the metering device.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• 제17권6호
• /
• pp.2811-2819
• /
• 2016

Multiple genetic and environmental factors have been reported to play key role in the development of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Here, we investigated interactions of XRCC1 Arg399Gln and XRCC2 Arg188His polymorphisms and environmental factors in modulating susceptibility to NPC in Northeast India. One-hundred NPC patients, 90 first-degree relatives of patients and 120 controls were enrolled in the study. XRCC1 Arg399Gln and XRCC2 Arg188His polymorphisms were determined using PCR-RFLP, and the results were confirmed by DNA sequencing. Logistic regression (LR) and multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) approaches were applied for statistical analysis. The XRCC1 Gln/Gln genotype showed increased risk (OR=2.76; P<0.024) of NPC. However, individuals with both XRCC1 and XRCC2 polymorphic variants had 3.2 fold elevated risk (P<0.041). An enhanced risk of NPC was also observed in smoked meat (OR=4.07; P=0.004) and fermented fish consumers (OR=4.34, P=0.001), and tobacco-betel quid chewers (OR=7.00; P=0.0001) carrying XRCC1 polymorphic variants. However, smokers carrying defective XRCC1 gene showed the highest risk (OR = 7.47; P<0.0001). On MDR analysis, the best model for NPC risk was the five-factor model combination of XRCC1 variant genotype, fermented fish, smoked meat, smoking and chewing (CVC=10/10; TBA=0.636; P<0.0001); whereas in interaction entropy graphs, smoked meat and tobacco chewing showed synergistic interactions with XRCC1. These findings suggest that interaction of genetic and environmental factors might increase susceptibility to NPC in Northeast Indian populations.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
• /
• 제42권1호
• /
• pp.44-55
• /
• 2017

Background: Heat recovery is one of the prominent ways to save a considerable amount of conventional fossil fuel and minimize its adverse effects on the environment. The rotary heat exchanger is one of the most effective and efficient devices for heat recovery or heat exchanging purposes. It is a regenerative type of heat exchanger, which has been studied and used for many heat recovery purposes. However, regenerative thermal wheels have been mostly used as heat recovery systems in buildings. For modeling a rotary regenerator, it is very important to numerically consider all the factors involved, such as effectiveness, rotational speed, geometrical size and shape, and pressure drop (${\Delta}p$). In recent times, several researchers have actively studied the rotary heat exchangers, both theoretically and experimentally. Reviews: In this paper different advances in the numerical modeling of regenerative rotary heat exchangers in relation to fluid flow and heat transfer have been discussed. Researchers have indicated that the effectiveness of the regenerative rotary heat exchanger depends on various factors including, among many others, rotational speed, rotational period and combustion power. It is reported that with the increase of periodic rotation the deviation of theoretical results from the experimental result increases. The available literature indicates that regenerative heat exchangers are having relatively more effectiveness (60-80%), compared to other heat exchangers. It is also observed that the finite difference method and finite volume methods are mostly used for discretizing the heat transfer governing equations, under some assumptions. Research also indicates that for the effectiveness calculation the ${\varepsilon}-NTU$ method is the most popular and convenient.

• 천문학회지
• /
• 제52권1호
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2019

We present the results of the spectral and temporal analysis of eight X-ray point sources in five nearby (distance < 20 Mpc) galaxies observed with Chandra. For spectral analysis, an absorbed powerlaw and an absorbed diskblackbody were used as empirical models. Six sources were found to be equally fitted by both the models while two sources were better fitted by the powerlaw model. Based on model parameters, we estimate the X-ray luminosity of these sources in the energy range 0.3 - 10.0 keV, to be of the order of ${\sim}10^{39}ergs\;s^{-1}$ except for one source (X-8) with $L_X>10^{40}ergs\;s^{-1}$. Five of these maybe classified as Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with powerlaw photon index within the range, ${\Gamma}{\sim}1.63-2.63$ while the inner disk temperature, kT ~ 0.68 - 1.93 keV, when fitted with the disk blackbody model. The black hole masses harboured by the X-ray point sources were estimated using the disk blackbody model to be in the stellar mass range, however, the black hole mass of one source (X-6) lies within the range $68.37M_{\odot}{\leq}M_{BH}{\leq}176.32M_{\odot}$, which at the upper limit comes under the Intermediate mass black hole range. But if the emission is considered to be beamed by a factor ~ 5, the black hole mass reduces to ${\sim}75M_{\odot}$. The timing analysis of these sources does not show the presence of any short term variations in the kiloseconds timescales.

• 한국수학교육학회지시리즈B:순수및응용수학
• /
• 제27권4호
• /
• pp.171-186
• /
• 2020

Long back in 1972, it was shown that the sum of the squares of vertex degrees and the sum of cubes of vertex degrees of a molecular graph both have large correlations with total 𝜋-electron energy of the molecule. Later on, the sum of squares of vertex degrees was named as first Zagreb index and became one of the most studied molecular graph parameter in the field of chemical graph theory. Whereas, the other sum remained almost unnoticed until recently except for a few occasions. Thus it got the name "forgotten" index or F-index. This paper investigates extremal graphs with respect to F-index among the class of bicyclic graphs with n vertices and k pendant vertices, 0 ≤ k ≤ n - 4. As consequences, we obtain the bicyclic graphs with largest and smallest F-indices.

• Applied Microscopy
• /
• 제45권4호
• /
• pp.249-253
• /
• 2015

Microorganisms specifically groups of bacteria exhibiting physiological activities of production of acids are a major cause of concern because of their ability to induce corrosion in oil field pipelines and metal systems involved in water handling. Water Injection Stations as a means of secondary recovery from existing oil producing reservoirs, are often employed in most upstream oil and gas industries to ensure replenishment of voidage, maintenance of reservoir pressure and optimization of crude emulsion throughput. In the present study, scanning electron microscopy of macroscopic orange coloured slime formations sampled from leaking valves on the flow-lines of a Water Injection Stations of Oil India Limited revealed the presence of filamentous bacterial mats in association with diatoms. The species composition of the acidic slime formations from the sampled locations reveal the possible role of acid producing iron oxidizing bacteria (IOB) like Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in association with Gomphonema sp. in creating conditions for bio-corrosion.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
• /
• 제4권1호
• /
• pp.19-22
• /
• 2002

Rotary mountages are the best mountages among all the mountages that are used in sericultural areas. But to use this mountage more space, separate mounting hall & requires more labour to pickup the matured worms. to over come these problems, self mounting method is adopted to save the time Er labour, But the mounting rate is generally less. To accelerate the mounting rate different repellents viz; saw dust, phytoecdysone, 1% cresol with paddy husk, lime, kaolin, gormalin chaff were used in the present study. The results indicated that highest number of larvae climbed the mountage in 1% cresol with paddy husk, followed by phytoecdysone and lime. It is observed that the use of repellents at wandering stage accilerates mounting rate and did not affect the quality of the cocoons and reeling characters.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
• /
• 제42권1호
• /
• pp.62-68
• /
• 2017

Purpose: The storage life of pearl millet-based, deep fried, ready-to-eat snacks, packaged in aluminum-laminated polyethylene having a thickness of $50{\mu}m$ (with and without nitrogen) was evaluated under storage conditions of $38{\pm}2^{\circ}C$ and 90% RH. Methods: The moisture content, free fatty acids (FFA), peroxide value, and crispness of the snack were evaluated throughout the storage period. The moisture content, FFA, and peroxide value increased with an increase in storage period, but the increase was less in packages flushed with nitrogen gas. The crispness decreased with an increase in the storage period, for snacks both with and without nitrogen packages. However, the decrease was less in nitrogen-flushed packages. FFA and peroxide values were strongly correlated with the moisture content of the snack. The storage life of the snack was found to be 60 and 45 days in packages with and without nitrogen respectively. Conclusions: The snack's predicted storage life, for snacks with and without nitrogen packages, was determined as 294 and 254 days respectively.

• 한국작물학회지
• /
• 제49권2호
• /
• pp.136-140
• /
• 2004

Twenty-one lowland rice genotypes were evaluated for their stability parameters with respect to grain yield in a multi locational trial at five different sites of Eastern India viz. CRRI, Cuttack (Orissa); OUAT, Bhubaneswar (Orissa); CRS, Masodha (UP); RAU, Pusa (Bihar) and RARS, North Lakhimpur (Assam). Pooled analysis of variance reflects existence of genotype x environment interactions and contribution of both linear and nonlinear components to genotype (G) x environment (E) interactions. Through stability parameter analysis it was found that Rayda $\textrm{B}_3$, CR 778-95 and CR 661-236 were suitable for over all environments where as Sabita, OR 1334-16 and OR 1358-RGA-4 were suitable for rich environments. PSR 1209-2-3-2, CR 780-1937, Ambika, OR 877-ST-4-2 and CR 662-2211 were identified for poor environments.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• 제15권8호
• /
• pp.3721-3729
• /
• 2014

Background: Cancer is becoming the most important public health burden around the globe. As per the GLOBOCAN 2008 estimates, about 12.7 million cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths were estimated to have occurred in 2008. The burden of cancer cases for India in the year 2020 is calculated to be 1,148,757 (male 534,353; female 614,404) compared to 979,786 in 2010. The pattern of cancer incidence is varying among geographical regions, esophageal cancer for example being high in China, lung cancer in USA, and gallbladder cancer in Chile. The question remains why? Is it due to the diversity in genome pool, food habits, risk factor association and role of genetic susceptibility or some other factors associated with it? In India, the North East (NE)-India region is seeing a marked increase in cancer incidence and deaths, with a very different cancer incidence pattern compared to mainland India. The genome pool of the region is also quite distinct from the rest of India. Northeastern tribes are quite distinct from other groups; they are more closely related to East Asians than to other Indians. In this paper an attempt was made to see whether there is any similarity among the pattern of cancer incidence cases for different sites of NE-India region to South or East-Asia. Materials and Methods: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA), Pearson Correlation coefficient test was assessed to evaluate the linkage of North-East India region to other regions. A p value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: The results clearly shows that there are similarities in occurrence of cancer incidence patterns for various cancer sites of NE-India with South and East-Asian regions, which may lead to the conclusion that there might be a genetic linkage between these regions.