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Hydrophobic materials are those which repel water molecules, the use of such material on aircraft surfaces can produce lower drag and higher lift compared to smooth finished surfaces, as the potential of reducing skin friction drag is much higher compared to other types of drag. The CFD studies for partly coated hydrophobic were carried out using ANSYS FLUENT software for different angles of attack such as 0°, 5°, 8°, 10°, 12°, 15° for various configurations such as No-Slip, Top-Slip, Rear-Slip and Bottom-Slip. Experiments were carried out with low-speed wind tunnel for the above angle of attack at 15 ms. The agreement between the computational results and experimental results is good. The results showed that out of all the four different configurations Bottom-Slip showed promising results. It provides a significant lift increase at lower angles. This is because the creation of the Laminar Separation Bubble near the trailing edge is delayed.

This study is dedicated to extracting distinctive features from ECG graph images, which are vital for detecting myocardial infarction or heart attacks due to the variations observed in ECG signal images within ECG report images. These features serve as significant indicators for distinguishing between various cardiac conditions. The utilization of diverse machine learning techniques simplifies and expedites the diagnostic process considerably. These methods leverage the unique features extracted from ECG signal images to make the diagnosis more straightforward and quicker, reducing the time needed for evaluation. The authors identify and employ a set of 10 distinct features extracted from the ECG signal images. These features are subsequently applied to various classification algorithms to evaluate their effectiveness in diagnosing heart conditions. Among the classifiers tested, the Gradient Boosting Classifier (GBC) stands out as the most efficient, achieving an impressive test accuracy rate of 88.79%. This underscores the potential of machine learning in accurately identifying various heart conditions, including myocardial infarction. The findings of this study hold significant clinical importance. The application of the gradient-boosting classifier, along with the extracted features from ECG signal images, demonstrates a promising avenue for enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of heart attack diagnosis. This can be instrumental for medical professionals in making timely and precise diagnoses, potentially leading to improved patient outcomes.

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The SMEs are essential players in the development of innovativeness, effectiveness, entrepreneurship and the institution of a valuable revolutionary system for developing nations. Cloud computing is a growing trend in India; however, the Indian SMEs are not well aware of the benefits of this technology. The vast SME population in the industrial state of Karnataka also needs to get acquainted with cloud computing for amending their growth and effectiveness besides staying ahead in the competition on the global as well as the national front. This includes the elements of management of technology and innovation such as adaptation as upgradation. This study aims to find the impact of business factors, economic performance and environmental performance that challenges the SMEs for cloud computing adoption. This is a survey-based study with 410 SME respondents from Karnataka. The multiple linear regression analysis is employed to achieve the objectives of the study. Findings indicate that adopting the technology of cloud computing benefits the SMEs of Karnataka to overcome the business challenges they face germane to their businesses. It was found that the technological, organizational, environmental performance and the economic performance factors were positively related to each other, emphasizing the importance of these factors.

This paper is a comparative case study about seismic fragility surfaces of a railway-bridge pier considering with and without soil–structure interaction effect. The probability of exceedance of damage by the piers is the primary concern of this study's fragility analysis. Lateral stiffness and horizontal stiffness are calculated layer-wise based on the soil profile. The study also focused on single parameters such as pier tip, base absolute maximum displacement, and spectral acceleration. Considering the bridge selected, a modal analysis was performed through nonlinear time-history analysis with a set of scaled real recorded ground motions data applicable for the study location to capture the actual characteristics of motion that may be experienced by the structure. Empirical relationships were established between pier tip, base displacement, and rotation with spectral acceleration by the multiple linear regression method. The first case showed the effect of soil overpowers the fragility curves. Fragility surfaces were generated for the second case, considering both without and with soil–structure interaction effect. The result shows that the soil–structure interaction effect reduces the probability of damage and the effect depends on soil type. However, the variation is marginal in soft soil. The pier tip and base rotation become a decisive guiding factor for without soil effect; however, rotation effects become more while considering soil effect, but the pier tip and base displacement show opposite results. However, the soil provides more stiffness and stability to the structure to resist seismic forces. The study could be enhanced if the soil properties are altered and the analysis performed for higher magnitude seismic excitations.

Dementia is an eurodegenerative disorder, which causes significant disability, especially among the elderly population worldwide. The affected person shows a progressive cognitive decline, which interferes with the independence in performing the activities of daily living. Other than the cognitive domain, the patient tends to have neuropsychiatric, behavioral, sensorimotor, speech, and language-related issues. It is expected that the global burden of the disease will rise with more people entering the geriatric age group. By 2050 close, to 140 million people will be living with one or the other type of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease contributes to more than 60% of cases worldwide, followed by vascular dementia.Pharmacotherapy has a limited role to play in the treatment, and at present, no drug is available, which can halt or reverse the progress of the disease. World Health Organization has mandated rehabilitation as a core recommendation in the global action plan on the public health response to dementia. Rehabilitation services are widely recognized as a practical framework to maximize independence and community participation in dementia care. The rehabilitation program is customized to achieve the desired goals, as each person has different experiences, preferences, motivations, strengths, and requirements based on type, course, and severity of the illness. It is an interdisciplinary-team approach with the involvement of several health care professionals. This article reviews the existing literature and outlines the effective rehabilitation strategies concisely in dementia care.

Pandemics like COVID-19 result in a disruption in the lifestyle and buying pattern of a consumer and adversely impact the global economy. Consumer purchase of country’s own brand and the products manufactured in their own country plays a vital role in the GDP of that country and help in revival of the country’s economy. This study focuses on understanding the factors that influence consumer’s buying behaviour and model these factors to understand the causal relationship using partial least square-structural equation modelling. An online survey which was carried out between 30 March 2020 and 18 April 2020. A total of 367 responses were collected during this period. Findings of the study indicate that economic nationalism, lockdown sentiments and sustainable approach (LSSA), and product-specific ethnocentric behaviour (PSEB) tendency significantly influence the willingness to buy country’s own brands and products. Present study results reveal that during pandemic consumers have realized the importance of hygiene products, environment-friendly products, regional (local) products, and satisfaction beyond shopping; these factors determine their willingness to buy Indian brands (WBIB)/made-in-India products. Further, post lockdown and post COVID era, consumers feel that buying Indian-made products and encouraging others to buy them would impact and revive the Indian economy constructively. It was also found that the influence of factors such as economic nationalism, LSSA, and PSEB on the WBIB is mediated by attitude towards foreign products. The findings of the study can aid marketing managers in planning appropriate promotion strategies to stimulate ethnocentric tendency, and cues can be provided to invoke a sense of economic nationalism in consumers when they buy products or services.

Public transportation has become one of the cornerstones of a country’s infrastructure development. In particular, road transportation plays a critical role in developing countries, as large numbers of people use bus transportation as the means to commute between one place to another for work, home, visiting friends, trips etc. Ensuring the service quality in this service, therefore, is crucial. There are limited scientific studies, however, on the service quality of intercity passenger transport in India, especially with regard to infrastructure aspects. In this paper the cause effect relationship model of service quality in relation with overall satisfaction of intercity bus transport is attempted. Results demonstrate three types of passenger profile emerging from the data (K-means clustering). According to findings of the study, the service quality dimension such as empathy, information reliability, luggage assurance, responsiveness, service time reliability, external tangibles and tangibles exhibit the cause effect relationship with respect to overall satisfaction of passengers with technology mediation. It also indicates that, Technology alleviates the influence of responsiveness and environmental dimensions on overall satisfaction. A comprehensive service quality model is built, consisting of core service quality dimensions and external dimension such as technology, policy and road infrastructure for intercity bus transport, a contribution is made to public transport literature. This helps the intercity transport organizations to devise a strategy for service quality for competitive edge.

This study was carried out to assess the possibility of reclamation of a closed landfill site located at Mavallipura near Bangalore, India. The existing liner system at this site had not completely prevented leachate migration to the underlying aquifers, which required management and control to avoid adverse impact on the surrounding environment. Batch leaching tests and column tests were conducted to estimate the migration rates of different contaminants through soil. The transport rates thus obtained were used as input to the fluidyn-Pollusol model to assess the leachate migration from the landfill. This model may be useful in analysing leachate migration from the landfill and its associated environmental impacts, particularly on groundwater wells and surface water ponds downstream of the site. The results indicated that landfill leachate leakage had a significant effect on the quality of surrounding water bodies.

The safety of the environment from the industrial sludge has become a serious concern in India with the rapid increase in industrialization. The indiscriminate disposal of sludge from industries leads to the soil, groundwater and surface water pollutions. To avoid the high costs associated with the disposal of large volumes of sludge, it can be used in some building materials or can be used as fertilizer. As the accumulation of heavy metals in plants causes a threat to living beings, it has to be pretreated to remove heavy metals from the sludge to the required level before its application to soils. The heavy metals from the sludge can be reduced/separated by washing with a suitable fluid. In the present study, column leaching tests were conducted with five leaching solutions, i.e., distilled water, 0.1 N HCl, 0.1 N EDTA, 0.1 N HCl + 0.1 N EDTA and 0.1 N FeCl3to know their removal efficiencies of heavy metal ions of Cu, Zn, Ni, Cd, Pb, Fe and Cr present in the industrial sludge. It was observed that distilled water was able to remove only few metal ions Cu, Zn and Ni in lesser quantities. 0.1 N HCl has removed Cd, Cu, Zn and Ni ions with a removal efficiency of 50%. With 0.1 N EDTA, the metal ions Cd, Cu and Zn have attained a removal efficiency of 80% and other metals have attained almost 50%. Using 0.1 N HCl + 0.1 N EDTA and 0.1 N FeCl3, all the heavy metals were leached out with removal efficiencies of (different metals) 71–98%. From this study, it was found that 0.1 N HCl + 0.1 N EDTA and 0.1 N FeCl3were the most suitable solutions to remove heavy metals from the industrial sludge. Using the results of column leaching tests, the migration rates of different metal ions were determined which are used to design the soil washing program at the site to treat the similar sludge.

This paper discusses the effects of a potential leachate leakage from a municipal solid waste landfill, situated at Mavallipura, Bangalore, India, on the surrounding water bodies. The landfill area is spread over an area of about 100 acres that began accepting waste from 2005. MSW was deposited in non-engineered manner that has resulting in steep and unstable slopes, leachate accumulation within the MSW mass, and leachate runoff into nearby water bodies such as ponds and open wells. The current study investigates the physicochemical characterization of landfill leachate and nearby water bodies. The batch leach tests were conducted to know the heavy metal concentrations in the contaminated soil. A series of column tests were also conducted to estimate the migration rates of different contaminants through the soil. Furthermore, these transport parameters were considered as input for fluidyn-POLLUSOL model to estimate the migration of leachate from the landfill site to the surrounding water bodies.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills have been widely constructed around the world for proper dispose of MSW. Geotechnical properties of MSW are difficult to determine because the heterogeneity, wide variation in particle size distribution and time dependent degradation. Knowledge of geotechnical properties of MSW is essential for the design and operation of landfills. Geotechnical properties of the MSW from landfills is very limited. The design of MSW landfills requires the selection of representative MSW material properties. Static and dynamic properties of emplaced MSW from landfill sites at Bangalore, India are evaluated. A comprehensive field and laboratory studies are conducted on MSW disposed at Mavallipura landfills that are in operation for about 12 years. Laboratory studies included: waste composition, water content, hydraulic conductivity, shear behavior for evaluation of static MSW properties. Field measurements included: cyclic plate load test and geophysical testing (multichannel analysis of surface waves) to assess the dynamic MSW properties at landfill site. Also, results obtained from cyclic plate load test is compared with numerical simulation like PLAXIS 2D. In additional, this paper presents a method for extrapolation of Vs30for MSW site where subsurface data does not extend to a depth of 30 m. Based on the detailed field and laboratory test data, characterization of the small strain shear modulus and the shear wave velocity of MSW is an integral component of various seismic analyses, including site classification, analysis seismic response of landfill. The results in this study will provide guidance in the design and operation of the landfills in India.

The pattern variations in the ECG signal image, i.e., the ECG report image, help to identify the myocardial infarction. This paper enlightens us regarding very effective preprocessing techniques to get structured and very clean data for the feature selection and feature extraction process. This study extracts unique features from ECG graph images. The different machine-learning methods make the diagnosis very simple and easy within less time. Particularly, variation in the output of electrodes 2nd and 3rd will intimate heart attack, and the remaining electrodes will also show variations, respectively. The authors obtained 14 features and applied them to the present classifiers giving more efficient results, among which GBC showed 98.79% of test accuracy. Finally, the gradient boosting classifier was able to identify different heart attacks effectively.

To predict the rate of settlement of municipal solid waste specimens (MSW), it is essential to estimate the value of the coefficient of consolidation (Cv) using laboratory consolidation test results. Literature suggests that the various empirical curve-fitting methods used for assessing Cvare Casagrande’s logarithm of time fitting method and Taylor’s square root of time fitting method for the same test data. Both methods are derived from the time factor and degree of consolidation (T–U) relationship and corresponding laboratory time–compression (T–δ) relationship. For different types of wastes and loading conditions, the shapes of curves vary considerably, and the validity of these approaches is not established. In all these cases, the estimation of the Cvposes a serious problem. To overcome the above difficulties, the rectangular hyperbola method is used, in this article, to determine the Cvby U–Tor tversus δrelationship. Earlier, this method was used for different coefficient of consolidation values of time for completion of different percentages of consolidation. It is found that the calculated values of Cvare found to be more reliable when the time for 60 % of consolidation is taken. The estimated Cvvalues from the rectangular hyperbola method lie between the existing standard methods of Casagrande’s and Taylor’s. The rectangular hyperbola method is simple and can be used for all shapes of time–compression curves, and the specific advantage of this method is that the initial compression need not be known and is devised to separate the initial, primary, and secondary compression for any load increment.

In this study, the vibration analysis of a laminated composite magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) sandwich beam is presented. The governing differential equations of motion of a sandwich beam embedding a MRE layer as core layer and laminated composite beams as the face layers are presented in a finite element formulation. The validity of the developed finite element formulation is demonstrated by comparing results in terms of the natural frequencies derived from the present finite element formulation with those in the available literature. Various parametric studies are also performed to investigate the effect of a magnetic field on the variation of the natural frequencies and loss factors of the MR elastomer composite sandwich beam under various boundary conditions. Furthermore, the effect of the thickness of the MR elastomer layer on the variation of the natural frequencies and loss factors are studied. The study suggested that the natural frequency increases with increasing magnetic field, irrespective of the boundary conditions.

Steel fibre-reinforced concrete (SFRC) has shown better performance behaviour with respect to the post-crack strength and in restricting the crack width and its propagation. Studies on behaviour of SFRC under repeated loading are a significant work. Behaviour of reinforced concrete structures during ground excitations in the form of earthquake forces could be significantly improved by addition of steel fibres in suitable dosage. Fibre type, aspect ratio, and dosage of fibres significantly influence the behaviour of steel fibre-reinforced concrete. Here, the work carried by various researchers with respect to the studies on the behaviour of SFRC under monotonic and cyclic stress in compression is presented. An experimental investigation on stress–strain characteristics of SFRC under monotonic loading in compression was carried, comprising M20 grade concrete, hooked-end steel fibres (l= 50 mm, diameter = 1 mm), and varying fibre dosages of 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, and 1.75% by volume of concrete. The stress–strain characteristics arrived based on the above experimental studies were compared with theoretical stress–strain characteristics, based on the equations proposed in literature. This served in understanding the behaviour of SFRC with respect to their stress–strain characteristics using experimental studies and by theoretical models, and analyse the extent of agreement and acceptance.

Patients frequently present with suspected pancreatic neoplasm based on a focal pancreatic lesion on computed tomographic (CT) scan/magnetic resonance image (MRI) but without obstructive jaundice. We evaluated the performance characteristics of endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) in this patient subset.

•The 1:2 CT-complex has been obtained in acetonitrile solvent.•The spectral characterization of CT-complex has been confirmed.•Strong DNA interaction with CT-complex has been studied.•Catalytic activity of CT-complex has been studied in homogeneous phase.•DFT study has been used to explore the Donor-Acceptor interaction.

In this work, z-axis controlled electro-discharge machine is used to machine D2 die steel. Tungsten powder is used as powder in dielectric medium in order to boost the material removal rate (MRR) in powder mixed electro-discharge machining (PMEDM). Input characteristics used in this process are applied current, pulse on time and pulse off time. The influence of tungsten powders in dielectric medium is studied and the result shows that there is significant improvement in the MRR as the main objective is to boost MRR. Taguchi techniques are carried out to optimize the input characteristics and ANOVA table is used to describe the individual performance of the process parameters. The optimal conditions obtained are validated with the confirmation experiments.

A 14-year-old boy presented to our hospital with a chief complaint of difficulty in opening his mouth and a burning sensation on eating spicy food. The oral mucosa showed generalized diffused blanching and he was unable to protrude his tongue. For 6 years he had habitually chewed gutkha – a mixture of betel nut and tobacco for several minutes a day. This oral submucous fibrosis condition is very rare in young patients. The case highlights the link between oral submucous fibrosis and the regular use of areca nut (gutkha) products in a young boy.