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In this study, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabric has been treated with trichloroacetic acid-methylene chloride (TCA-MC) to modify its functional properties by altering the structure. TCA-MC interacts with both amorphous and crystalline regions of PET and alters the structure (solvent-induced-polymer modification), which directly affects the functional properties of PET fabrics. Five different concentrations (0.5, 1, 3, 5 and 10%) of TCA-MC at 1, 3 and 5 min are used to treat two fabric structures, viz 100% micro polyester fabric and 100 % texturized polyester fabric. The physical properties and wettability of the treated samples are investigated, and the results are statistically analyzed. The results reveal that TCA-MC alters the structure of polyester, with the degree of modification determined by TCA-MC concentration and treatment time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Periodontal ligament cells (PDLC) respond to the application of mechanical forces by releasing various molecules that participate in bone remodeling. Whether these cellular reactions take place at the same rate in adolescent and adult patients is not known. In this study, we aimed to evaluate differences in genetic expression, if any, between the release of various inflammatory mediators from PDLC in adolescent and adult patients before and after the application of orthodontic forces.Methods: Forty subjects with bimaxillary dentoalveolar protrusion requiring extraction of first premolars for orthodontic treatment were selected and divided into 2 groups. Group A included 20 adolescents (aged 12-20 years), and group B included 20 adults (aged 35-50 years). Then, 35-50 g of force were applied to the maxillary first premolars, and teeth were extracted at different periods: pretreatment (control group), 7 days, 14 days, and 28 days (experimental group). The periodontal ligament was scraped from the middle third of the root, and the beta-galactosidase assay was performed in the control group. RNA extraction, DNase treatment, quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and complementary DNA synthesis were performed in the experimental group.Results: Adult PDLC exhibited senescent changes through increased beta-galactosidase activity. The increase in the inflammatory response and bone resorption in adult patients was evident by increased prostaglandin E2, IL1B, and acid phosphatase mRNA expression levels. Controlled bone formation response by adolescent PDLC was evident from increased ALP and BGLAP mRNA levels and a balanced receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-Β ligand/OPG ratio.Conclusions: The study could identify the reasons behind the differential response of adolescent and adult PDLC to orthodontic mechanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A family of geophysical lineaments have been identified in ∼15,000 km 2 in central Kerala between 9°30′N to 10°45′N and 76°00′E to 77°30′E, integrating geophysical data with geological and geomorphological features. The characteristics of these lineaments in the magnetic and gravity fields and their derivatives have been analysed. The evolution of the lineaments has been traced to the temporal phases of global evolution of the region. A group of these faults have formed by reactivation of the deep-seated distensional fractures associated with and accompanying dyke emplacements during the episodic breakup of Gondwana at ∼90 and 65 Ma under distinctive mantle thermal regimes. It is possible that reactivation of these distensional faults may have started during the cooling interval of time between the two distensions in the 90 and 65 Ma and post 65 Ma periods and later in the Cenozoic, when the lineaments were enlarged to their present dimension, possibly under the influence of forces that led to the uplift of the western Ghats. These may extend down to the crust-mantle interface. A cluster of younger geophysical lineaments has been generated by reactivation along the weak planes of transformation of the charnockitic rocks of the Precambrian. They seem to have a strike-slip character. They are devoid of any dyke association and were formed on a cold crust. They may be confined to the upper-middle crust. They were generated in the high intensity intra-plate palaeo-stress fields of the triple forces arising from (1) the back-thrust from the Himalayan Collision; (2) the impact of epeirogenic forces and related isostatic uplift of the Western Ghats and (3) the flexural isostatic uplifts due to surface loads of late Mesozoic basaltic lavas and Cenozoic sedimentation in the coastal rifted basins in late Cenozoic, probably in the time span of 20 Ma to the present, when the palaeostress fields were most intense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polysemy in verbs is a challenging problem in linguistics as well as in natural language processing (NLP). Verbs are the most polysemous words among all the grammatical categories. The polysemy leads to word sense ambiguity. Resolving polysemy in verbs requires certain steps leading to word sense disambiguation (WSD). The paper makes use of the methodology proposed by Rumshisky Anna (2008). The result of the method is encouraging. Further improvement can be done by making use of other knowledge sources like wordNet, dictionary and ontothesaurus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nouns are modified by noun modifiers. English makes use of pre and post modifiers. Tamil makes use of pre modifiers only. The pre modifiers in Tamil could be phrasal or clausal in nature. The phrasal modifiers include determiners, possessive nouns, possessive pronouns, attributive adjectives, participial adjectives, nouns and appositive noun phrases. Postpositional noun modifiers are absent in Tamil. The clausal modifiers are adjectival participle or relative participle clauses. The clausal modifiers are referred here as noun modifying expressions and they are the target of this paper. There are two kinds of noun modifying expressions. They are correlative relative clause and relative participle clause. The correlative relative clause has two parts: the first part containing a finite verb suffixed by the interrogative suffix -oo is called modifying part and the second part containing the modified noun or noun phrase is called head. The relative participle clause contains a verb in relative participle or adjectival participle form. The relative participle clause can modify a noun which belongs to the verb in relative participle form or it can modify a noun which does not belong to the verb in the relative participle form. The fist types of nouns are called argument nouns and the second type of nouns are called non-argument nouns. Not all the non-argument nouns can occupy the head position. There are constrains on the heads of the noun modifying expressions. Only a set of nouns which is capable of expressing or abstracting or objectivizing the information contained in the relative participle clause can occupy the head position. There are noun modifying expressions with finite clauses and they are linked to the head noun by en-complementizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a supervised prepositional ambiguity resolution method for machine translation models in which the target language is Tamil and source language is English. We restrict our transfer ambiguity resolution problem with few prepositions only. This resolution method is based on supervised models which exploit collocation occurrences and linguistic information as features. This attempt will rectify the challenges in handling prepositions in English to Tamil automatic translation system. The preliminary results obtained from the evaluation shows that the proposed method is suitable for preposition resolution problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tree adjoining grammars (TAGs) are mildly context sensitive formalisms used mainly in modelling natural languages. Usage and research on these psycho linguistic formalisms have been erratic in the past decade, due to its demanding construction and difficulty to parse. However, they represent promising future for formalism based NLP in multilingual scenarios. In this paper we demonstrate basic synchronous Tree adjoining grammar for English-Tamil language pair that can be used readily for machine translation. We have also developed a multithreaded chart parser that gives ambiguous deep structures and a par dependency structure known as TAG derivation. Furthermore we then focus on a model for training this TAG for each language using a large corpus of text through a map reduce frequency count model in spark and estimation of various probabilistic parameters for the grammar trees thereafter; these parameters can be used to perform statistical parsing on the trained grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the difficulties faced by English teachers in teaching adverbials to Tamil speaking learners of English language. It also focuses on the similarities and dissimilarities in the adverbials of Tamil and English languages. It also present exercises to help the students to improve the use of adverbials and also the teachers to improve their teaching strategies.

Work on Malayalam WordNet was initiated in Amrita Vishvavidya Peetam, Coimbatore in December, 2011 as a part of the project entitled "Development of Dravidian WordNet: An Integrated WordNet for Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam", funded by Department of Information Technology, MCIT, Govt. of India. The main objective of the project is to build WordNets for Dravidian languages by making use of the already built Hindi WordNet under the project scheme IndowordNet. Hindi WordNet has been built based on Princeton English WordNet which is a component of EuroWordNet. The main objective of EuroWordNet is to develop an extensive and high quality of multilingual database with WordNets for several languages (mainly European Languages such as French, German, Czech, Italian, etc.) in a cost-effective manner. On similar line, IndoWordNet is being built for Indian languages. Malayalam WordNet is a component of Dravidian WordNet which in turn is the component of IndoWordNet. Malayalam WordNet is an online lexical database. It is useful for many applications of Natural Language Processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses approaches to the resolution of lexical ambiguity in Tamil language. The three basic types of lexical ambiguity are category ambiguity, ambiguity due to homography and ambiguity due to ploysemy. The resolution of ambiguity is known as the central problem in language comprehension as well as natural language processing applications. Resolving lexical ambiguity can involve different kinds of information such as word-specific information and contextual information.

Learning English language is highly needed for knowledge, employment and uplift of social status. Students in rural Andhra Pradesh join the degree college without the basic proficiency in English and leave the college without acquiring the communication skills to use in day to day affairs. The current state of methodology followed in teaching English is to be blamed. To teach required skills of English by making the learning interesting, simple strategies are suggested which include motivating the students by the teachers by adopting motivational strategies. Reading programmes are to be conducted for enhancing the communication skills. Increased use of humour in English class enlivens the students and the group discussions are initiated for the over all improvement of student's English language skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quiz concerning adverbials is presented.

The article deals with the problems areas for Tamil speaking people studying the English language. It notes that Tamil speaking people usually make mistakes in placing the adverbials in English sentences. It states that Tamil speaking people add the word not to negative adverbs. They also use imitative words to intensify the meaning of the sentence.

The article presents examples of adverbs of manner, time and place in Tamil and English languages taken from a short story in "Kumutham."

The article deals with the similarities and dissimilarities between adverbials in Tamil and English languages. It notes that both languages have adverbials formed by inflection and tense changes according to the adverbials. It cites the in English adverbials of time occurs in the final position while Tamil adverbials of time can occur in all the three positions.

The article presents information on adverbials in English language. Topics discussed include adverbs, prepositional phrases, finite clauses, non-finite clauses., verbless clauses and noun phrases. Also mentioned are adverbial positions such as front, mid and end, time adverbials, functions of adverbials, and adverb as complement of preposition.

The article deals presents information on the adverbial forms and their meanings in Tamil language. These include the adverbial modifier of manner such as Nangu and Kuurndu, adverbials of degree such as Niraiya and Satru, and adverbials of place such as Ingu and Angu. Also mentioned are adverbial of time and adverbial of purpose.

The article presents information on the adverbials in Tamil language. Topics discussed include the adverbials of degree, the adverbials of place such as Ingu, Angu and Meelee, and the adverbials of time such as Indru, Naalai and Appolluthu. Also mentioned are the adverbial of purpose, adverbial of position and adverb of manner.

This paper articulates and discusses the principles of Learner-centric Teaching and how it differs from Teacher-centric Learning. It suggests that the Learner-centric teaching is the most effective method as it engages students working in and solving real-world problems in a meaningful context with the guidance of the teacher. The learning activities are closely aligned with the learning outcomes. This method of teaching involves all students by creating interest and results in effective learning outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: India is spending about 1.25 lakh crore rupees to protect iron structure from rust every year. The USA is spending about 12 lakh crore rupees every year for the same purpose. Generally, iron suface is protected by applying a special paint coating at regular intervals. This method of protection involves more chemicals and most of them are toxic in nature which cause several environmental hazards. Therefore, a preliminary study was under taken to find out the possibility of involving biotechnological method(s) to remove iron rust and protect the metal from further rust formation. A fungal-based technique was developed through which aerosol particulate matter was generated. A set of rusty iron mesh (1mm) was exposed to the aerosol particulate matter for a period of time. The rusty iron mesh which not exposed to the aerosol particulate was kept as control. The result revealed that the rust on rusty metals was removed (derusted) and the metal surface became brilliant white due to the deposition of aerosol particles, which inturn protected the metal from rust formation for about fifteen years in natural condition, However, the control metal lost its original shape and structure gradually by deterioration. As this new biological method offers a long-term solution for rust problem it can be tried in a big way. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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This paper investigates the aspect-ratio locking of the isoparametric 8-node quadrilateral (QUAD8) element. An important finding is that, if finite element solution is carried out with in exact arithmetic (i.e., with no truncation and round off errors), the locking tendency of the element is completely avoided even for aspect-ratios as high as 100000. The current finite element codes mostly use floating point arithmetic. Thus, they can only avoid this locking for aspect-ratios up to 100 or 1000. A novel method is proposed in the paper to avoid aspect-ratio locking in floating point computations. In this method, the offending terms of the strain-displacement matrix (i.e., B-matrix) are multiplied by suitable scaling factors to avoid ill-conditioning of stiffness matrix. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the method. The examples reveal that aspect-ratio locking is avoided even for aspect-ratios as high as 100000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching English language and literature is an uphill task in Libyan universities. Not only are the students first generation learners but they have also been affected by the pull of their mother tongue and special writing style. The experience of a foreign teacher in the universities of Libya is challenging and enriching as well. Lack of interest and motivation and competitive spirit on the part of students, non-availability of study materials, books, journals and news papers, absence of scholarly ambience and some of the blocks which hinder the process of learning the English language. However, there are also special attributes found in them such as their amazing memory power, communicative English, their eagerness to listen to stories their sense of humour, etc. Teaching English could be a rewarding experience in Libya if the teacher is imbibed with understanding, appreciation, encouragement and the skills for using appropriate, pragmatic teaching strategies so that the inherent talents of students could be brought out and enhanced. Hence, this paper focuses on the pragmatic approach to the teaching English to the Libyan students at the university level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present scenario of environmental consciousness, the new quality requirements not only emphasize on the intrinsic functionality and long service life of the product but also a production process that is environment-friendly. Therefore, research on environment-friendly antimicrobial agents based on natural products for textile application is gaining Worldwide interest. This paper reports a comprehensive review on natural product based bioactive agents such as chitosan, natural dyes, neem extract and other herbal products for antimicrobial finishing of textile substrates. Different classes of active ingredients found in extracts of natural products and their mechanism of antimicrobial action have been presented. The major challenges and the future potential of application of natural products on textiles have also been critically reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion plays a major role in wet processing of textile materials, from preparation to final finishing operations to transport the chemicals from reaction bath and to bring out the byproducts back to the process bath. Diffusion becomes more important when the reaction system involves high molecular weight reactants in the system. In the case of enzyme assisted processing of textile materials, mechanical agitations are often employed, additionally, to improve efficiency by improving the diffusions in the system. An attempt has been made in this study to quantify the amount of improvements that can be reaslised due to mechanical agitations in various enzyme assisted processing like desizing, scouring using proteases, pectinases and biopolishing using cellulases and the study reveals the ability of additional mechanical actions employed in these processes to improve efficiency to different extents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the study "The Unsymmetric Finite Element Formulation and Variational Incorrectness," by G. Prathap et al. which concludes that although the elements based on unsymmetric formulation work well under mesh distortions, the formulation is variationally incorrect. Also noted is the contradiction to the conclusion that the unsymmetric formulation is variationally correct yet does not give the best-fit approximation to the exact solution. The graphical representation of orthogonality conditions is presented.

The paper aims to focuses on the Morphological complexity in Tamil language from the point of view of POS tagging. Nouns get inflected for number and cases. Verbs get inflected for various inflections which include tense, finite and non-finite suffixes. Verbs are adjectivalized and adverbialized. Also verbs and adjectives are nominalized by means of certain nominalizers. Adjectives and adverbs do not inflect. Many post-positions in Tamil are from nominal and verbal sources. So, many times we need to depend on syntactic function or context to decide upon whether one is a noun or adjective or adverb or post position. This leads to the complexity of Tamil in POS tagging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on programs that lead to the technological development of Tamil language. The Indian Department of Electronics had conducted training Courses on Natural Language Processing through selected institutions throughout India and paved way to technological development of Tamil. It funded Machine Translation programs among Indian languages and between English and Indian languages. Anna University K B Chandrashekar Research Centre at Cennai has prepared a tool which works on Tamil corpus and gives statistical information in terms of number of word forms, number of words or word tokens and number of lines and paragraph in a text.

The article examines the art of parsing in Tamil language. Parsing is actually related to the automatic analysis of texts according to a grammar. Parsing is used to refer to practice of assigning syntactic structure to a text. It is usually performed after basic morphosyntactic categories which have been identified in a text.

Abstract: The study region forms the western part of the Madurai block (southern block) and shares several lithological characteristics of the Proterozoic exhumed South Indian Granulite Terrain (SGT). The crustal structure of the area has been derived from gravity data, constrained partly by aeromagnetic data. The Bouguer anomaly map of the region prepared based on detailed gravity observations shows a number of features (i) the Periyar lineament separates two distinctly different gravity fields, one, a high gravity gradient tending to be positive towards the coast in south west and significant gravity lows ranging from −85 to as low as −150 mGal in the NE covering a large part of the Periyar plateau (ii) within the broad gravity low, three localised circular anomalies of considerable amplitude occur in the region of Munnar granite. A magnetic low region in the central part coincides with the area of retrogressed charnockites and the major lineaments suggestive of a genetic link and considerable downward extent. The crustal models indicate that the upper layer containing exhumed lower crustal rocks (2.76 gm/cc) is almost homogeneous, most part of the gravity field resulting from variations in intracrustal layers of decharnockitised hornblendic gneisses and granite bodies. Below it, a denser layer (2.85 gm/cc) of unknown composition exists with Moho depth ranging from 36 to 41 km. The structure below the region is compared with that of two other segments of the SGT from which it differs markedly. The Wynad plateau forming the western part of the Northern Block of the SGT is characterised by a heterogeneity due to the presence of contrasting crustal blocks on either side of the Bavali shear zone, possibly a westward extension of the Moyar shear zone and presence of high density material in the mid-to-lower crustal portions. The crust below the Kuppam–Palani transect has a distinctive four-layer structure with a mid-crustal low density layer. The differences in crustal structure are consistent with the different tectonic settings of the three regions discussed in the paper. It is suggested that the crustal structure below the Kuppam–Palani transect corridor is not representative of the SGT as a whole, an aspect of great relevance to intra-continental comparisons and trans-continental reconstructions of continent configurations of the Gondwanaland. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]