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Human language is a unique mental entity. It is a system of symbols that greatly enhances the ability of humans to represent aspects of the world, to think and to communicate with each other. Studies from many diverse disciplines show that language has a complex structure and that its use involves many diverse interacting psychological operations (Caplan, 1992). Functional communication involving the language code helps us to accomplish specific goals, such as to inform others, relate to events not in our immediate physical environments, to reason, to update our knowledge of the world, to think privately and so on. Language is made up of socially shared rules that include what words mean. Components of the language are grouped under the ‘form’ (phonology, morphology, syntax) ‘content’ (semantics) and ‘use’ (pragmatics). The study highlights the need to carry out more research in this area for better understanding of language acquisition among these children in order to develop both assessment and intervention programmes. Presently, the lack of acquisition data has hinged the development of any standardized test in Kannada. Hence, the present study aims to explore Pragmatics in Kannada speaking children with the objective of analysing the data among these children across 4 to 6 years of age. The results suggest that all TD group have well developed pragmatic skills by 4 to 6 years and they are still acquiring some skills.

Landfilling is one of the indispensable parts of solid waste management in various countries. Solid waste disposed of in landfill sites provides nutrients for the proliferation of pathogenic microbes which are aerosolized into the atmosphere due to the local meteorology and various waste disposal activities. Bioaerosols released from landfill sites can create health issues for employees and adjoining public. The present study offers an overview of the microbial diversity reported in the air samples collected from various landfill sites worldwide. This paper also discusses other aspects, including effect of meteorological conditions on the bioaerosol concentrations, sampling techniques, bioaerosol exposure and potential health impacts. Analysis of literature concluded that landfill air is dominated by microbial dust or various pathogenic microbes like Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium perfringens, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus and Aspergillus fumigatus. The bioaerosols present in the landfill environment are of respirable sizes and can penetrate deep into lower respiratory systems and trigger respiratory symptoms and chronic pulmonary diseases. Most studies reported higher bioaerosol concentrations in spring and summer as higher temperature and relative humidity provide a favourable environment for survival and multiplication of microbes. Landfill workers involved in solid waste disposal activities are at the highest risk of exposure to these bioaerosols due to their proximity to solid waste and as they practise minimum personal safety and hygiene measures during working hours. Workers are recommended to use personal protective equipment and practise hygiene to reduce the impact of occupational exposure to bioaerosols.

Purpose Real-time implementation of sophisticated algorithms on robotic systems demands a rewarding interface between hardware and software components. Individual robot manufacturers have dedicated controllers and languages. However, robot operation would require either the knowledge of additional software or expensive add-on installations for effective communication between the robot controller and the computation software. This paper aims to present a novel method of interfacing the commercial robot controllers with most widely used simulation platform, e.g. MATLAB in real-time with a demonstration of visual predictive controller. Design/methodology/approach A remote personal computer (PC), running MATLAB, is connected with the IRC5 controller of an ABB robotic arm through the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). FTP server on the IRC5 responds to a request from an FTP client (MATLAB) on a remote computer. MATLAB provides the basic platform for programming and control algorithm development. The controlled output is transferred to the robot controller through Ethernet port as files and, thereby, the proposed scheme ensures connection and control of the robot using the control algorithms developed by the researchers without the additional cost of buying add-on packages or mastering vendor-specific programming languages. Findings New control strategies and contrivances can be developed with numerous conditions and constraints in simulation platforms. When the results are to be implemented in real-time systems, the proposed method helps to establish a simple, fast and cost-effective communication with commercial robot controllers for validating the real-time performance of the developed control algorithm. Practical implications The proposed method is used for real-time implementation of visual servo control with predictive controller, for accurate pick-and-place application with different initial conditions. The same strategy has been proven effective in supervisory control using two cameras and artificial neural network-based visual control of robotic manipulators. Originality/value This paper elaborates a real-time example using visual servoing for researchers working with industrial robots, enabling them to understand and explore the possibilities of robot communication.

Purpose This paper aims to improve the performance of a two-camera robotic feedback system designed for automatic pick and place application by modifying its velocity profile during switching of control. Design/methodology/approach Cooperation of global and local vision sensors ensures visibility of the target for a two-camera robotic system. The master camera, monitoring the workspace, guides the robot such that image-based visual servoing (IBVS) by the eye-in-hand camera transcends its inherent shortcomings. A hybrid control law steers the robot until the system switches to IBVS in a region proven for its asymptotic stability and convergence through a qualitative overview of the scheme. Complementary gain factors can ensure a smooth transition in velocity during switching considering the versatility and range of the workspace. Findings The proposed strategy is verified through simulation studies and implemented on a 6-DOF industrial robot ABB IRB 1200 to validate the practicality of adaptive gain approach while switching in a hybrid visual feedback system. This approach can be extended to any control problem with uneven switching surfaces or coarse/fine controllers which are subjected to discrete time events. Practical implications In complex workspace where robots operate in parallel with other robots/humans and share workspaces, the supervisory control scheme ensures convergence. This study proves that hybrid control laws are more effective than conventional approaches in unstructured environments and visibility constraints can be overcome by the integration of multiple vision sensors. Originality/value The supervisory control is designed to combine the visual feedback data from eye-in-hand and eye-to-hand sensors. A gain adaptive approach smoothens the velocity characteristics of the end-effector while switching the control from master camera to the end-effector camera.

In India, the flower or temple waste engendered from various sources also gets commingled with the municipal/urban solid waste or directly disposed of in the river. India is in the second position after China for flower waste generation worldwide. The high organic content of flower waste can be used to develop nutrient-rich compost that can further be used for the growth of plants. However, bulking agents (dry leaves/sawdust/coco-peat) and microbes (culture/manure) can affect composting. Thus, the prime objective of this study was to understand the effect of sawdust and cow dung manure on composting process. Two earthen pots were prepared with a 70%:10%:20% ratio of flower waste: cow dung manure: and sawdust, respectively. The other two pots with 70%:20%:10% ratio of flower waste: cow dung manure: and sawdust, respectively. An earthen pot with 100 % flower waste (control experiment) was also analysed throughout the study. The variation in temperature, moisture content, pH, conductivity, volatile content, ash, CO2 evolution, phosphate, and Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen (TKN) was monitored to achieve the objective of the whole study. The presence of sawdust was observed to be important by arresting leachate and maintaining aeration in the waste mixture, but cow dung manure also played a significant role in making more microbes and nutrients available for speeding up the process. The control experiment showed lump formation in the waste mixture due to excessive moisture development. Stable, mature, and nutrient-rich compost was obtained at the end of the composting process.

openaire: EC/H2020/824109/EU//EMP We demonstrate a fabrication scheme for clean suspended structures using chemical-vapor-deposition-grown graphene and a dry transfer method on lift-off-resist-coated substrates to facilitate suspended graphene nanoelectronic devices for technological applications. It encompasses the demands for scalable fabrication as well as for ultra-fast response due to weak coupling to environment. The fabricated devices exhibited initially a weak field-effect response with substantial positive (p) doping which transformed into weak negative (n) doping upon current annealing at the temperature of 4 K. With increased annealing current, n-doping gradually decreased while the Dirac peak position approached zero in gate voltage. An ultra-low residual charge density of 9 × 108 cm-2 and a mobility of 1.9 × 105 cm2 V-1 s-1 were observed. Our samples display clear Fabry-Pérot (FP) conductance oscillation which indicates ballistic electron transport. The spacings of the FP oscillations are found to depend on the charge density in a manner that agrees with theoretical modeling based on Klein tunneling of Dirac particles. The ultra-low residual charge, the FP oscillations with density dependent period, and the high mobility prove the excellent quality of our suspended graphene devices. Owing to its simplicity, scalability and robustness, this fabrication scheme enhances possibilities for production of suspended, high-quality, two-dimensional-material structures for novel electronic applications.

The study aimed to assess dyslipidemia pattern including role of non HDL cholesterol (non HDLc) in ischemic strokes. A retrospec-tive descriptive was conducted on 80 patients who were admitted to Osmania General Hospital between May 2013 and May 2015 with new onset of stroke. A detailed history, physical examination and outcome details were collected from the hospital medical rec-ords. Data such as fasting lipid profile was noted, non HDLc was calculated, computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain reports were collected from medical records. Among enrolled patients, 55 were males and 25 were females. Age distribution: 60 years, n=26. Dyslipidemia as per ATP III guidelines was present in 92.5% cases (n = 74). In our study, high LDL was found in 16 cases (21.62%), high total cholesterol in 16 cases (21.6%), low HDL in 57 cases (77%), high triglycerides in 13 cases (17.56%) and elevated non HDLc (>130mg/dl) in 28 patients (37.8%). Risk factors for stroke present were hypertension (n=48, 60%), diabe-tes (n=18, 22.5%), both diabetes and hypertension (n=15, 18.75%), smoking (n=33, 41.25%), alcoholism (n=32, 40%) and more than 2 risk factors were present in 28.75% (n=23). Total number of deaths was 05%. To conclude, most of the patients were having low HDL (

With a view to evaluating the effects and interactions of three influential factors, turbidity, pH and dissolved oxygen (DO), on the efficiency of solar water disinfection process, response surface methodology (RSM) based on Box–Behnken design was employed. Total coliform (TC) removal and heterotrophic plate count (HPC) removal were used as response factors. The RSM models were developed based on the experimental results of four-hour solar exposure in polyethylene terephthalate bottles. The measured and predicted removals were close to each other. Though the HPC removal and TC removal showed similar trends, the HPC removal was much lower (40–66%) compared to TC removal (68–97%) for the conditions studied. The results showed that turbidity up to certain levels (10–20 NTU) did not adversely impact the bacterial removal. In the range studied (6.0–9.5), pH showed little influence on the removals. While bacterial inactivation showed significant reduction at low DO levels, increasing DO beyond a certain...

The biosand filter (BSF), an intermittently operated household slow sand filter, is one of the commonly used household water purification methods in the rural areas of developing countries. In this study, long-duration tests were conducted in the laboratory to investigate the influence of two important operating parameters, namely the pause period (idle time) and the charge volume on the performance of BSF by using full-scale BSFs. The filters were charged daily with 20 or 40 L of tap water spiked with Escherichia coli or sewage with different pause periods. Results indicated that during the ripening (maturation) of the filter, which took about one month, E. coli removal was low, with an average value

In recent years, response surface methodology (RSM) has been used for modelling and optimising a variety of water and wastewater treatment processes. RSM is a collection of mathematical and statistical techniques for building models, evaluating the effects of several variables, and obtaining the values of process variables that produce desirable values of the response. This paper reviews the recent information on the use of RSM in different water and wastewater treatment processes. The theoretical principles and steps for its application are first described. The recent investigations on its application in coagulation–flocculation, adsorption, advanced oxidation processes, electro-chemical processes and disinfection are reviewed. The limitations of the methodology are highlighted. Attempts made to improve the RSM by combining it with other modelling techniques are also described.

Vision-based systems increase the flexibility of industrial automation applications by providing non-touching sensory information for processing and feedback. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) help such conformities through prediction in overcoming nonlinear computational spaces. They transform multiple possibilities of outcomes or regions of uncertainty posed by the system components towards solution spaces. Trained networks impart a certain level of intelligence to robotic systems. This paper discusses two applications of machine vision. The 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) robotic assembly provides an accurate cutting of soft materials with visual guidance using pixel elimination. The 6-DOF robot combines visual guidance from a supervisory camera and visual feedback from an attached camera. Using a switching approach in the control strategy, pick and place applications are carried out. With the inclusion of ANN to make the strategies intelligent, both the systems performed better with regard to computational time and convergence. The networks make use of the extracted image features from the scene for different applications. Simulation and experimental results validate the proposed schemes and show the effectiveness of ANN in machine vision applications.