•Design and development of Solar Bubble dryer (SBD) and Solar Tunnel Dryer (STD).•Performance evaluation of Solar Bubble dryer and Solar Tunnel Dryer.•Economics analysis of SBD and STD.•Regression ...analysis through ANN Modelling for drying kinetics prediction.•Effect of temperature on moisture content and drying rate in different drying methods.
The development and performance evaluation of a solar Bubble drier (SBD) for drying agricultural produce are presented in this study. In order to evaluate the solar bubble dryer's performance in terms of drying characteristics and end-product economics, it was compared to the solar tunnel dryer (STD). A solar tunnel dryer is a structure with a tunnel-like shape that is covered in UV-stabilized polythene sheet so that industrial and agricultural items can be dried off. While there was no load, the maximum temperatures inside the solar bubble dryer and solar tunnel dryer were 56.25 and 49.30 °C, respectively. When there was a full load, the maximum temperatures inside the dryer were 49.55 and 33.20 °C, respectively. For solar bubble dryers, the average final moisture content ranged from 13.07±0.335 % to 18.74±0.716 % (w.b.), while for solar tunnel dryers, it ranged from 13.60±0.575 % to 20.60±0.751 % (w.b.). The mean drying rate also varied depending on the drying air temperature and air flow mode, ranging from 0.081±0.020 to 0.006±0.005 kg/kg dm-h for solar bubble dryers and 0.056±0.025 to 0.005±0.002 kg/kg dm-h for solar tunnel dryers. The thermal efficiency of the developed dryer was found to be 58.39% for solar bubble dryers and 48.09% for solar tunnel dryers, which are significantly higher than that of other general Sun drying (36%). However, the drying rate varied between 0.081 to 0.006 g of water evaporated per g of dry matter per hour when solar bubble dryer was adopted and 0.014 to 0.007 g for solar tunnel dryer. Economic analysis showed that the SBD and STD had payback periods of 3.23 and 2.54 years, respectively. However, the cost of drying came lower for the SBD than the STD, which were Rs. 1.51 per kg and Rs. 1.76 per kg.
Abstract
Background
Malaria is a major public health problem in India and accounts for about 88% of malaria burden in South-East Asia. India alone accounted for 2% of total malaria cases globally. ...Anti-malarial drug resistance is one of the major problems for malaria control and elimination programme. Artemether-lumefantrine (AL) is the first-line treatment of uncomplicated
Plasmodium falciparum
in north eastern states of India since 2013 after confirming the resistance against sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. In the present study, therapeutic efficacy of artemether-lumefantrine and
k13
polymorphism was assessed in uncomplicated
P. falciparum
malaria.
Methods
This study was conducted at four community health centres located in Koraput district of Odisha, Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh and Gondia district of Maharashtra state. Patients with uncomplicated
P. falciparum
malaria were administered with fixed dose combination (6 doses) of artemether-lumefantrine for 3 days and clinical and parasitological response was recorded up to 28 days as per World Health Organization protocol. Nucleotide sequencing of
msp1
and
msp2
gene was performed to differentiate between recrudescence and reinfection. Amplification and sequencing of
k13
propeller gene region covering codon 450–680 was also carried out to identify the polymorphism.
Results
A total 376 malaria patients who fulfilled the enrolment criteria as well as consented for the study were enrolled. Total 356 patients were followed up successfully up to 28 days. Overall, the adequate clinical and parasitological response was 98.9% and 99.4% with and without PCR correction respectively. No case of early treatment failure was observed. However, four cases (1.1%) of late parasitological failure were found from the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh. Genotyping of
msp1
and
msp2
confirmed 2 cases each of recrudescence and reinfection, respectively. Mutation analysis of k13 propeller gene showed one non-synonymous mutation Q613H in one isolate from Bastar.
Conclusions
The study results showed that artemether-lumefantrine is highly effective in the treatment of uncomplicated
P. falciparum
malaria among all age groups. No functional mutation in
k13
was found in the study area. The data from this study will be helpful in implementation of artemether-lumefantrine in case of treatment failure by artesunate plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine.
In the Indian state of Odisha, rice-based system productivity is poor due to: (i) low rice yield in the monsoon (wet) season (2–4 t ha−1 compared to 6–8 t ha−1 in Punjab or Haryana); and (ii) limited ...cropping during the post-monsoon (dry) season (59% of the wet season rice area is left fallow in the dry season).
Our study identifies strategies for increasing rice-based system productivity through: (i) alternative crop establishment methods in the wet season (Dry-Direct Seeded Rice or DSR, and mechanical puddled transplanted rice or PTR-M) to traditional methods such as broadcasting followed by post-emergence tillage (locally known as beushening) and manual random puddled transplanted rice (PTR-R); (ii) to identify rice-fallow areas suitable for pulse and oilseed cultivation in the dry season; and (iii) to evaluate the performance of short-duration pulses (green gram, Vigna radiata; black gram, Vigna mungo), and oilseeds (Brassica rapa var. toria, Helianthus annuus) in rice-fallow areas in the dry season.
On-farm experiments were conducted between 2017 and 2019 in three districts of Odisha (Bhadrak, Cuttack and Mayurbhanj) to evaluate DSR compared to beushening and PTR-R; and PTR-M compared to PTR-R and manual line puddled transplanted rice (PTR-L) in the wet season. The data from Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Sentinel-1satellite sensors was used to identify rice-fallow areas, and the daily SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) L-band soil moisture was used for mapping suitable rice-fallow areas for growing pulses and oilseeds. Short duration crops were evaluated in suitable rice-fallow areas.
In the wet season, DSR (range −4 to + 53%) had a significant effect on rice yield over beushening. Similarly, PTR-M consistently increased rice yield by 16–26% over PTR-R, and by 5–23% over PTR-L. In the dry season, pulse crops (green gram and black gram) performed well compared to Indian mustard under rainfed cultivation. However, under irrigated conditions, dry-season rice yield was more productive than the rice equivalent yield of green gram, black gram and sunflower. We found that 1.03 M ha (i.e., ∼50%) of total rice-fallow areas of 2.1 M ha were suitable for growing short duration green gram and black gram in the dry season.
We conclude that system productivity and cropping intensity can be increased by adoption of DSR and PTR-M in the wet season, and growing of green gram and black gram in the dry season.
Odisha state can potentially produce an additional 0.67 million tonnes pulses if suitable rice-fallow areas are brought under green gram and black gram cultivation in the dry the season.
•Rice-based system productivity is poor due to low rice yield in the wet season and limited cropping in the dry season.•Rice yield can be improved by adoption of direct seeded rice and mechanical transplanted rice•Rice-fallow area in Odisha is 2.1 M ha, and 50% (1.03 M ha) of them are suitable for growing short duration crops.•Pulses such as green gram and black gram can be grown in rice-fallow areas in rainfed condition.
We use a large N-body simulation to examine the detectability of H i in emission at redshift z≃ 1, and the constraints imposed by current observations on the neutral hydrogen mass function of ...galaxies at this epoch. We consider three different models for populating dark matter haloes with H i, designed to encompass uncertainties at this redshift. These models are consistent with recent observations of the detection of H i in emission at z≃ 0.8. Whilst detection of 21-cm emission from individual haloes requires extremely long integrations with existing radio interferometers, such as the Giant Meter Radio Telescope (GMRT), we show that the stacked 21-cm signal from a large number of haloes can be easily detected. However, the stacking procedure requires accurate redshifts of galaxies. We show that radio observations of the field of the Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe 2 (DEEP2) spectroscopic galaxy redshift survey should allow detection of the H i mass function at the 5-12σ level in the mass range 1011.4
h
−1 M⊙≤M
halo≤ 1012.5
h
−1 M⊙, with a moderate amount of observation time. Assuming a larger noise level that corresponds to an upper bound for the expected noise for the GMRT, the detection significance for the H i mass function is still at the 1.7-3σ level. We find that optically undetected satellite galaxies enhance the H i emission profile of the parent halo, leading to broader wings as well as a higher peak signal in the stacked profile of a large number of haloes. We show that it is in principle possible to discern the contribution of undetected satellites to the total H i signal, even though cosmic variance limitation make this challenging for some of our models.
The meson spectra provide insight into the particle production mechanism and interaction in the hadronic and quark gluon plasma (QGP) phases. The detailed study of systematics of meson spectra is ...important also because it acts as ingredient for estimating the hadronic decay backgrounds in the photon, single lepton and dilepton spectra which are the penetrating probes of quark gluon plasma. In this work, we parameterize experimentally measured pion spectra and then obtain the spectra of other light mesons using a property known as \(m_T\) scaling. The \(m_{T}\) scaled spectra for each meson is compared with experimental data for p+p, d+Au and Au+Au systems at \(\surd s_{NN} \) = 200 GeV. The agreement of the \(m_{T}\) scaled and experimental data shapes are excellent in most cases and their fitted relative normalization gives ratio of meson to pion \(m_T\) spectra. These ratios are useful to obtain the hadronic decay contribution in photonic and leptonic channels but also point to the quantitative changes in the dynamics of the heavy ion collision over p+p collisions. It is shown that, the particles with charm contents behave differently as compared to pions in d+Au systems and particles either with strange or charm contents behave differently from pions in Au+Au systems. For Au+Au system, three centrality classes have been studied which reveal that for the particles like kaon and \(\phi\), peripheral collision data is better reproduced as compared to central and their relative ratios with pions also increase as the collisions become more central.
Phys. Rev. C 109, 054910 (2024) The PHENIX experiment has performed a systematic study of identified
charged-hadron ($\pi^\pm$, $K^\pm$, $p$, $\bar{p}$) production at midrapidity
in $p$$+$Al, ...$^3$He$+$Au, Cu$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV and
U$+$U collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=193$ GeV. Identified charged-hadron
invariant transverse-momentum ($p_T$) and transverse-mass ($m_T$) spectra are
presented and interpreted in terms of radially expanding thermalized systems.
The particle ratios of $K/\pi$ and $p/\pi$ have been measured in different
centrality ranges of large (Cu$+$Au, U$+$U) and small ($p$$+$Al, $^3$He$+$Au)
collision systems. The values of $K/\pi$ ratios measured in all considered
collision systems were found to be consistent with those measured in $p$$+$$p$
collisions. However the values of $p/\pi$ ratios measured in large collision
systems reach the values of $\approx0.6$, which is $\approx2$ times larger than
in $p$$+$$p$ collisions. These results can be qualitatively understood in terms
of the baryon enhancement expected from hadronization by recombination.
Identified charged-hadron nuclear-modification factors ($R_{AB}$) are also
presented. Enhancement of proton $R_{AB}$ values over meson $R_{AB}$ values was
observed in central $^3$He$+$Au, Cu$+$Au, and U$+$U collisions. The proton
$R_{AB}$ values measured in $p$$+$Al collision system were found to be
consistent with $R_{AB}$ values of $\phi$, $\pi^\pm$, $K^\pm$, and $\pi^0$
mesons, which may indicate that the size of the system produced in $p$$+$Al
collisions is too small for recombination to cause a noticeable increase in
proton production.
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