Fear of crime is one of the prime concerns for people apart from traffic related safety and comfort while waiting at the bus stops. The major determinants of fear of crime include socio- demographic variables, direct and indirect victimisation, physical and social incivilities, and the physical environmental cues. The environmental cues that influence the fear of crime are created mainly by the planning, design and detailing of built environment and landscape features. In bus stop environments the features of the street segment in which the bus stop is located contribute to the environmental cues in addition to the features of the bus shelter and the surrounding built environment. The association between fear of crime of people at bus stops during night hours and features of street segments such as width of the road, street lighting, landscape elements such as trees and street hardware, on-street parking and pedestrian traffic were investigated in this study. Street characteristics of selected bus stops in Tiruchirappalli were recorded and the people waiting at the bus stops were interviewed to assess the fear of crime. Features such as street lighting, on-street parking and pedestrian traffic were found to be associated with fear of crime, whereas significant associations could not be established in case of street width, trees and street hardware from the results of the analyses using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and t-tests.

The activity on the development of the structural ceramic materials silicon nitride and sialons is highlighted. Special emphasis has been given to explore new methods and to develop low cost processes for the synthesis of these materials. An analysis of the oxygen content in various samples of a-silicon nitride has been made to show how the bulk oxygen content can vary depending on the method of preparation .