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In India presently, 145 existing Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) contribute about 70% of the total energy requirement and produce approximately 184 million metric tons of fly ash per year, which is projected to exceed 440 million metric tons per annum by 2030. This quantity of fly ash generated poses significant environmental problems, besides occupying large areas of land for its dumping, requiring appropriate measures for its safe disposal and gainful utilization on sustainable basis. Based on the field demonstration work carried out on the bulk utilization of pond ash in agriculture and forestry sectors under different agro-climatic conditions and soil types for the last two decades, it has been well established that pond ash has significant potential for utilization as liming agent, soil conditioner, source of plant nutrients and also for boosting the growth and yield of a variety of crops. Some field scale studies carried out especially in the waste/alkaline lands of State Agriculture Research Farm and farmers' fields are discussed in the present paper for the development of artificial neural network (ANN) for the correlation of crop yields and plant nutrients. As such, the influence of major plant nutrients viz. N, P, K, Ca, Mg and S on the yield of wheat crops cultivated in different soil types and agro-climatic conditions is discussed. Furthermore, an attempt has also been made to develop a three-layer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) model. Satisfactorily enough, it has been found that the predictions of the developed ANN model are in quite good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current technical scenario of the world, the importance of Intellectual Properties is growing at a fast pace in the business, education and the publishing industry particularly for those who have utilised the power of the internet to access any data, anytime, anywhere. The protection of copyright has therefore become a major concern in the said domain scenario since the theft of textual contents known as 'Plagiarism' has emerged as a major menace. For this, a software plagiarism detection tool was developed earlier by us to find contents of a newly created work to be copyrighted in regard to what of its portions have been plagiarised and to what extent along with from which source whether from a local repository/database or from resources available over the internet. In the present paper, it has been used to analyse what way plagiarism would have infested the technical creativity of a typical newly established institute of higher education and research in IT, ECE, MBA, etc. had there been no such plagiarism detection tool available at all. The analysis is presented for arriving at overall scenario of plagiarism found in MTech thesis works, research papers, the book chapters written by faculty members and the research papers received in a couple of International Conferences organised by the institute etc. It is concluded that about 8.7% works manifested plagiarism of 20% or more in an institute just established almost a decade back. The tool has made profound impact in controlling plagiarism in the institute finally to reach almost zero level by fully revealing the contents plagiarised along with their sources. Guidelines have been arrived and reported here first time to advise the young authors how to mitigate the problem of plagiarism and thus assure that all the copyrightable works of the institute become free from plagiarism before they leave the station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the developing countries are characterized by capital deficit economies. This usually leaves their professional economists unprepared to evolve policies, to fight constraints, to deal with the most pressing economic problems of the hour. These economies, therefore naturally pick up sectors requiring less capital. One such recognized sector is Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Use of ICT for research subjects has lately evolved for enhanced designs in many sectors - computer aided drawings for civil structures, simulation software drug designs are a few examples. This research paper aims to investigate quantitative training patents and research publications data to explore the picture of a developing economy, ie India, where the ICT sector has witnessed a path of continuous growth. The analysis of the said data has been carried out to visualize the innovative strength of India by calculating its 'Relative Specialization Strength', 'Horizontal Specialization Strength' and 'Vertical Specialization Strength'. The results show that India is comparatively strong in Vertical Specialization, possibly due to collaboration in providing R&D with other problem-oriented solutions in advanced countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal contains various organic and inorganic substances including trace quantities of the heavy metals. Therefore, the combustion of coals releases some of the ultimately to the environment of some heavy metals elements in the form of their oxides and in a redistribution of these heavy metals in the surface soil and water bodies, particularly in the vicinity of coal-fired power plants. The fly ash and pond ash of different thermal power stations of India were mixed with soil at different doses separately to compare their impact on crop produce and soil. The present study deals with the presence of the heavy metals in the coal ash and its movement through the amendment of coal ash to the soil and crop produce. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In India, presently 85 existing thermal power plants (TPPs) produce 118 million metric tons of fly ash per year, which is projected to exceed 170 and 440 million metric tons/year by Years 2012 and 2030, respectively. This huge quantity of fly ash not only poses the problems of environmental concerns but occupies large areas of land for its dumping, which needs urgent and appropriate measures for its safe disposal and gainful utilization on sustainable basis. Based on the detailed study on the bulk utilization of pond ash in agriculture and forestry sectors under different agroclimatic conditions and soil types for last 2 decades, it has been found that pond ash has a very good potential for the utilization on bulk scale as liming agent, soil conditioner, source of essential plant nutrients, and also for boosting the growth and yields of a variety of crops and growth performance of plant species. Some field-scale studies carried out especially in the wastelands of State Agriculture Research Farm and farmers' fields are discussed in the present paper. The influence of critical parameters on the yield of wheat crops cultivated in different soil types and agroclimatic conditions is discussed. Further, an attempt has been made to develop a threelayer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) model, which is inherently trained using error back-propagation algorithm. The results evince that the predictions from the ANN model are in good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the field observations, thereby validating the applicability and accuracy of the developed ANN model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural radioactivity depends primarily on the geological and geographical conditions, and appears at different levels in the soils. Coal contains various organic and inorganic substances including trace quantities of the naturally occurring radionuclides, which are of human health concern. The combustion of coals releases natural radioactive elements in the form of their oxides to the environment. In view of the current researches on fly ash (FA) applications as soil ameliorants, the present study deals with the presence of the natural radionuclides (226Ra, 232Th and 40K) in the coal ash and their mobilisation through the amendment of coal ash to the soil and crop produce. The study shows the variation in the content of radionuclides in soil, FA and crop produce depending on types of soil and FA, mobilisation of the radionuclides from soil/FA to the plant and interactions between radionuclides and soil, etc. The content of the radionuclides in the soil, FA and crop produce is within the permissible limits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In India, thermal power plants presently produce of coal ash per annum, which is projected to exceed per annum by 2030. This huge quantity of coal ash not only has tremendous environmental concerns but also occupies large areas of land for its dumping, requiring urgent and appropriate measures for its safe disposal and gainful utilization on sustainable basis. In addition, reclamation of a vast area of wasteland for agriculture and forestry is another challenge for the country's fast-growing population. The Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research has carried out a detailed study on the bulk utilization of coal ash in agriculture and forestry sectors under different agroclimatic conditions and soil types for last two decades. The demonstration studies for the popularization purpose were carried out in the waste/alkaline lands of farmers' fields and the results of such investigations are reported in this paper. The productivity of various crops grown in the ash-amended treatments substantially showed increased yield (20-45%) over control, with noticeable increase in the nutrient content of crop produce, early maturity of the crops grown, and improvement in the nutrient status/biological activity of the soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an efficient preprocessing module has been described which focuses on building a trademark database that can be used for developing a trademark retrieval system. The preprocessing module focuses on noise removal from the trademark images using an adaptive filtering technique using Wiener filters, followed by Karhunen-Loève transform that makes the trademark search process rotation invariant by rotating the object along positive y direction. Since the registered trademarks are huge in number and will increase invariantly in the future it will be strenuous for the search system to search for similarity in such huge database. Intention was to reduce the search space hence fuzzy clustering has been applied. All these preprocessing steps make a retrieval system more efficient and reduce computation cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing demand for water in domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors necessitates exploitation of water either in the form of groundwater or from natural resources. To safeguard the long-term sustainability of water resources and their utilization, the quality of water has to be periodically monitored and determined for various characteristics, especially when the sources are polluted, such as Damodar river. Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFR), Dhanbad, is carrying out research work on coal and its utilization and associated environmental concerns. The blood stream of life for the whole Jharia Coalfield is none other than the river Damodar. CIMFR's campus also depends exclusively on river Damodar for meeting its demand of drinking water. This study is a general survey toward the characteristics of Damodar river water, with special emphasis on the pollutant parameters, and evaluation of the treatment process being carried out at the institute for potability. Damodar river water is indeed affected by the disposal of the wastes without any pre-treatment by different coal-based industries established in its basin. The quantity of dissolved and suspended solids, total hardness, chemical oxygen demand, and coliform bacterial count are higher in Damodar water due to the disposal of the waste/effluents from coal-washing plants, coke ovens, cement, and other industries, but well within the permissible limit which is probably attributable to the high-carrying capacity of the river. The river is still not that much affected as it is usually apprehended, and it can be well utilized for potable and domestic purposes after simple treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal is one of the most abundant and important energy resources of the world. It plays crucial role in defining the economy of a nation. After mining, coal has to be processed to remove the impurities in the form of mineral matter. A large volume of impurities such as tailing and solid wastes are discarded during beneficiation of coal in coal beneficiation plants. The entire processes involved in coal preparation, starting from unloading of the raw coal to the loading of processed coal, would liberate particulate matters that would ultimately settle on the soil at varying distances, depending on the prevailing wind direction, particle size, and density. This is likely to affect the biology of the soil under such stresses. Soil samples collected from the contaminated and control sites were analyzed for pH, EC, soil organic carbon (SOC), mineralizable N, soil respiration, and soil enzymes like dehydrogenase, catalase, peroxidase and phenol oxidase. The biological parameters were found to be severely altered due to coal contamination. Based on principal component analysis, soil peroxidase was observed to be the most sensitive indicator that would be considered as biomarkers for coal contaminated soils. A high level Ni concentration was observed in contaminated soils than control. The prevalence of diseases like gastrointestinal disorder and asthma was more among the inhabitants of industrial site than control. Morbidity rate was higher in contaminated sites, besides the problems of general weakness, blurred vision, body pain, and cracked foot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fly ash, a solid waste being generated during power generation in thermal power plants, contains most of the plant nutrients in sufficient quantities, which holds great promise for its bulk use in agriculture as a soil conditioner for reclamation of acidic soil and as a source of plant nutrients for the deficient soils. The beneficial inherent properties of fly ash prompted us to study its effect on the growth of different root crops under green house conditions. The present article deals with yield of various root crops grown with fly ash and mass balance of the trace elements in soil, fly ash, and crop produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reported in the present article are the results of investigations on the biosolubilization of a low-rank coal, viz. lignite (from Neyveli, Tamil Nadu, India) into humic acid. The solubilization of lignite was effected at ambient temperature and pressure with the aid of some potent fungal strains isolated from soil samples collected from Neyveli lignite mines. The isolated fungal microbes were characterized and studied under controlled conditions for optimum solubilization of lignite. Of the isolated fungal strains, Aspergillus fumigatus showed maximum (22.3%, w/w) solubilization, as contrasted with other isolated microbes, e.g., Fusarium udum, Fusarium solani, Aspergillus oryzae, and Aspergillus sydowii, which showed much less solubilization, being in the range of 4.5-16.8% (w/w). The process parameters were optimized in respect of media, initial pH, incubation period, and substrate concentration for maximum yield of the product. The solubilization becoming constant after a certain dose of lignite (10 g/100 ml) has been explained on the basis of non-availability of the surface area on the lignite particles owing to clogging/blockage of pores by the debris of dead cells and their metabolites. It could also be attributed to the broth becoming too dense, thereby inhibiting the growth and propagation of the microbial cells or possibly due to inhibition by the substrate at higher doses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose, To investigate alterations in the proteoglycan (PG) and glycosaminoglycan (GAG) content of the aqueous humour in patients with pseudoexfoliation syndrome (PEX). Materials and methods. Aqueous humor samples were obtained during cataract surgery from nineteen patients bearing PEX features and twenty-three age-matched normal controls. Protein and IgG were quantified densitometrically after their electrophoretic separation. Collagen type EX, 3-sulphoglucuronic acid (HNK-1 epitope), biglycan and heparan sulphate proteoglycans were detected in Western and dot blots by using specific monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). The immunochemical analysis was performed in native aqueous humour or after degradation of the glycosaminoglycans with chondroitinases. Results. Degradation of the samples with chondroitinases ABC, AC and B revealed that, in the aqueous humour from PEX eyes, collagen type IX and biglycan had a more dermatan sulphate than did normal eyes. In addition, more HNK-1 epitope was observed in PEX eyes, which after similar enzymatic treatment was found to be located mainly in dermatan sulphate sequences. 3-sulphoglucuronic acid was a constituent of the GAG chains of the collagen type IX. We found that the electrophoretic mobility of the bands of collagen type IX and HNK-1 epitope was exactly the same in the aqueous humour of normal and PEX samples; both migrated as four bands at 120, 113, 92.6 and 56kDa, The PGs bearing heparan sulphate were found only in normal samples. Other PGs were not detected. Conclusion. Because no significant difference was observed in the concentration of albumin and IgG in PEX and normal samples, the blood-aqueous barrier was probably not significantly compromised in PEX patients with cataract but without open-angle glaucoma. The results support the hypothesis that the pathogenesis of PEX can be linked to disturbed metabolism of GAGs and PGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]