Statistical relationships among meteorological parameters could significantly improve the understanding of climate dynamics and predictability in the Himalayan foothills, where the anthropogenic emissions are increasing and 3-D models have limitations in resolving highly complex topography. Here, we calculate the Predictability Indices (PI) of pressure (PIp), temperature (PIt) and rainfall (PIr) at two low-altitude (Pantnagar, Dehradun) and two high-altitude (Tehri and Mukteshwar) stations in the Himalayan foothills, by considering the observational time series of temperature, pressure and rainfall as a multi-dimensional array and applying the fractal theory. Fractal dimension demonstrated significant variations from station-to-station with the values relatively closer to unity at high-altitude sites indicating better climate predictability, as compared to those over the low-altitude stations in the Himalayan foothills. Long-term computations (2005-2014) for Dehradun observations further revealed strong inter-annual variations in the climate predictability. Pressure and temperature at Dehradun are found to be reasonably predictable (PIp >0.5 throughout the year, PIt values of up to 0.93). However, temperature predictability was lower during July (PIt = 0.43) and the inter-annual variability (1-standard deviation) in this month is also found to be very high (0.29) than those during other months (0.11-0.18) at Dehradun. The predictability index for rainfall (P-r) is found to be up to 0.5 during summer-Monsoon, however its lower values (0.16-0.34) during other months suggest that the rainfall is less predictable as compared to the temperature and pressure. Hence, fractal based analysis on an array consisting of numerous meteorological variables (dependent or independent of each other) may be utilized as a tool to understand the predictability of either of the meteorological variables, in order to assure the utility of a statistical model over the dynamical model before employing it for the prediction of meteorological conditions at an observational site.

In this paper, a robust image watermarking technique has been proposed based on the combination of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and discrete cosine transform (DCT). SVM regression model has been incorporated for geometric distortion correction to achieve improved robustness against de-synchronization attacks such as rotation, translation etc. Low order Pseudo Zernike (PZ) moments have used as a feature vector in SVM regression model. The 3-level DWT transformed DCT coefficients are modified to embed a binary bit. The performance of algorithm has been observed against both intentional and non-intentional attacks. The scheme provides an average imperceptibility of around 42.45 dB. The effect of rotation and translation attack has been estimated using trained SVM regression model. The robustness against de-synchronization attack is performed after correcting the attacked watermarked images. The experimental results show that the algorithm provides adequate robustness against both the geometric and non-geometric attacks.

One of the classical signs described during cardiac catheterisation in aortic stenosis is the “Prussian helmet” sign. In “pure” …

Primary malignant mesenchymal tumours of the greater omentum are rare. We report a 40-year old man with a painless abdominal lump of two months duration. At laparotomy, the mass was found to be arising from the greater omentum. A near-total omentectomy was done. Histological examination of the resected tumour revealed features consistent with malignant fibrous histiocytoma.

Two-dimensional axisymmetric, reacting viscous flow over blunt projectiles is computed to study shock induced combustion at Mach 5.11 and Mach 6.46 in hydrogen-air mixture. A finite-difference, shock-fitting method is used to solve the complete set of Navier Stokes and species conservation equations. In this approach, the bow shock represents a boundary of the computational domain and is treated as a discontinuity across which Rankine-Hugoniot conditions are applied. All interior details of the flow such as compression waves, reaction front, and the wall boundary layer are captured automatically in the solution. Since shock-fitting approach reduces the amount of artificial dissipation, all the intricate details of the flow are captured much more clearly than has been possible with the shock-capturing approach. This has allowed an improved understanding of the physics of shock-induced combustion over blunt projectiles and the numerical results can now be explained more readily with one dimensional wave-interaction model than before.

A general formulation is presented to investigate the transient radiative interaction in nongray absorbing-emitting species between two parallel plates. Depending on the desired sophistication and accuracy, any nongray absorption model from the line-by-line models to the wide-band model correlations can be employed in the formulation to investigate the radiative interaction. Special attention is directed to investigate the radiative interaction in a system initially at a uniform reference temperature when the temperature of the bottom plate is reduced suddenly to a lower but constant temperature. The interaction is considered for the case of radiative equilibrium as well as for combined radiation and conduction. General as weU as limiting forms of the governing equations are presented, and solutions are obtained numerically by employing the method of variation of parameters. Specific results are obtained for CO, CO2, H2O, and OH. The information on species H2O and OH is of special interest for the proposed scramjet engine application. The results demonstrate the relative ability of different species for radiative interactions.