165 research outputs found
L’eredità della paura: Bal Keshav Thackeray (1926-2012)
No full textThe death of Bal Keshav Thackeray, in November 2012, has led several Indian journalists and intellectuals to think over the legacy of the supreme leader of the Shiv Sena to the Indian society. The present article means to identify the reasons which have let the Indian journalists describe the bequest of Thackeray to the Indian society in terms of a legacy of fear. The article deals with Thackeray's use of fear as a tool to arise consent around his social, cultural and political thinking first and, secondly, to legitimize and justify the existence and the modus operandi of the Shiv Sena. The author dwells on the way Thackeray has been able to arise and feed social and cultural fear in order to give a meaning and a sense to his political enterprise. The article argues that the most scaring aspect of Thackeray's political discourse doesn't lie in the aims pursued and in the ways they have been pursued but in the idea of social and cultural identity it is based on
Reinforcement learning using reservoir computing for soft robotic control: A bio-inspired system
Get PDFSubmission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2023-12-01The student, Keshav Shivam, accepted the attached license on 2021-12-09 at 11:12.The student, Keshav Shivam, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2021-12-09 at 11:34.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2021-12-09 at 13:34.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #17433 on 2022-04-29 at 16:10:47Made available in DSpace on 2022-04-29T21:58:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemLimitedModern approaches in machine learning and artificial intelligence are dominated by deep learning. Although inspired by the brain, these network architectures are not biologically plausible. In contrast, the reservoir computing paradigm has a single sparsely and recurrently connected hidden layer, with the linear readout layer being the only learned parameter. We apply reservoir computing in a reinforcement learning context to actuate a soft, slender muscular arm. The arm must track a moving target in a partially observable environment. Soft robots present an especially challenging test bed for reinforcement learning due to their nonlinear, continuum dynamics. We propose learning strategies for two classes of reservoirs: Echo State Networks (ESNs) built using tanh neurons and Liquid State Machines (LSMs) built using Leaky Integrate and Fire (LIF) neurons. Unlike traditional activation functions, LIF neurons provide discrete spike trains with respect to time, and LSM-like structures are found in vivo. Crucially, we prohibit any additional feedforward layers, making the reservoir the sole neural computing unit. Our ESN policy significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithm Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) and our LSM policy matches PPO. Finally, we deploy a LSM directly on neuromorphic hardware, opening up opportunities for energy efficient reinforcement learning and robotic control. End-to-end, our soft robot controlled with a spiking reservoir is a novel bio-inspired system
Novel 2-phenyl-3-{4’-[N-(4”-aminophenyl)carbamoyl]-phenyl}-quinazoline-4(3H)one-6-sulphonic acidbased mono azo reactive dyes
No full textA series of new heterocyclic mono azo reactive dyes 7a–m were prepared by diazotization of 2-phenyl-3-{4’-[N-(4”-aminophenyl)carbamoyl]-phenyl}-quinazoline-4(3H)-one-6-sulphonic acid (3) and coupling with various cyanurated coupling components 6a–m and their dyeing performance on silk, wool and cotton fibres was assessed. These dyes were found to give a variety of colour shades with very good depth and levelness on the fibres. All the compounds were identified by conventional method (IR and 1H-NMR) and elemental analyses. The percentage dye bath exhaustion on different fibres was reasonably good and acceptable. The dyed fibre showed moderate to very good fastness to light, washing and rubbing
IMPACT OF ADVANCEMENTS IN TECHNOLOGICAL AIDS IN COMMUNICATION MEDIA IN BRINGING ABOUT SOCIAL REFORMATION
No full textOptimization of Crosslinker Efficiencies Through Asymptotic Approximation and Simulation of Fick's Law Systems
Get PDFCrosslinking proteins are useful in a variety of biological systems due to their small size relative to the proteins they bind. These proteins are able to quickly diffuse through their spaces, allowing for fast mass transport equilibria and enhanced binding kinetics. Recent work has shown that cooperation among quickly, but weakly binding crosslinkers perform better than a single, tightly binding crosslinker. We first examine the role of antibodies in the cervico-vaginal mucus layer in trapping HIV outside of the body. We then examine molecular motor proteins during intracellular transport. In this work, we discuss multiple mathematical methods for examining these interactions. These include a system of population-based partial differential equations as well as a stochastic model derived from the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation. The analytical and computational theory are explored before taking physiologically relevant parameters into account. Through our models, we show that weak binding allows for better binding capabilities between crosslinkers and their targets, allowing for more crosslinkers on any given target.Bachelor of Scienc
Synthesis of 4-aminophenyl substituted indole derivatives for the instrumental analysis and molecular docking evaluation studies
No full textParameterization of element balance formulation in reactive compositional flow and transport
No full textA novel formulation for modeling nonlinear reactive-compositional transport comprising of complex phase behaviors with chemical and thermodynamic interactions is presented. The precipitation/dissolution of minerals during reactive flow in subsurface reservoirs is modeled in the newly designed simulation framework. This framework uses molar formulation with a consistent reduction of governing mass balance equations from component to element mole fractions. The thermodynamic phase behaviour is extended by including the chemical equilibrium reactions in the multiphase thermodynamic flash. This allows for a general treatment of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium in a fully couple and implicit manner. The governing component conservation equations are reduced to element conservation equations using the Equilibrium Rate Annihilation matrix. The element composition of the mixture serves as an input for these computations whereas the output is fractions of components in each phase, including solids. To solve the resulting nonlinear element based governing equations, we use the Adaptive Operator-Based Linearization (OBL) approach where the governing equations are formulated in terms of space and state-dependent parameters. The proposed framework is utilized for modeling of several challenging flow and transport problems with dissolution and precipitation reactions. This is the first time when a multiphase multicomponent flash using element fractions as an input is coupled with an element balance compositional formulation and validated for multidimensional problems of practical interest. In addition, an efficient parametrization using adaptive OBL approach improves both robustness and performance of complex reactive-compositional flow and transport.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Reservoir Engineerin
Synthesis of polyamides by energy-efficient ultrasonic-assisted direct polycondensation
No full text Four polyamides were synthesized by novel ultrasonic irradiation at 50 °C. Direct polymerization of 2-(morpholino)-4,6-bis(phenoxy-3-carboxy)-s-triazine with different diamines was conducted using a condensing agent. Synthesized polyamides were characterized by particle size distribution, solubility, density, viscosity, Fourier transform infrared spectra, 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance, thermogravimetric analysis and accelerated degradation of polyamides. All polyamides were readily soluble in polar organic solvents like N-methylpyrrolidone, N, N-dimethylacetamide and N, N-dimethylformamide at room temperature. The polyamides had inherent viscosities in the range 0.532–0.643 dL g−1 in dimethyl formamide at room temperature (30 °C) and density 1.137–1.198 g cm−3. All the polyamides showed good thermal stability under N2 atmosphere. Under accelerated condition degradation of polyamide was not observed without altering the surface morphology. </jats:p
Benefits of using remotely sensed time series data in optimizing water management decisions
No full textBig data sources can play an important role in revolutionizing the field of water resources research. Time series data with high temporal and spatial dimensions encapsulates with itself numerous factors essential for coming up with robust decisions. In this thesis, we assess one such big data source for efficient water management in the Oum Er Rbia basin, Morocco. The surface water detection technique furnished used in this thesis is found to be accurate in detecting the surface water sources and its temporal and spatial dynamics.The remotely sensed time-series data of reservoir area was used to come up with Level-Area-Storage(LAS) relationships for the five main reservoirs in the Oum Er Rbia basin. These curves were able to approximate the present set of LAS curves well. Hence, were used in place of the local LAS curves in a water allocation decision model called RIBASIM. Thus, we had two scenarios one where the local LAS curves were used to optimize reservoir operations and the other where remotely sensed LAS curves were used instead of the local LAS curves.The operating rule curves in the water allocation decision model were then optimized for the two scenarios. The optimization was done to maximize the performance of the system across three objectives: a)public water supply, b)irrigation and c)hydroelectricity generation. A trade-off between the three objective functions was then shown using parallel and scatter plots. It was observed that for the same set of LAS curves the performance across all three objectives improved post-optimization of the operating rule curves. This showed that there were rooms for improvement in the existing reservoir operating rule curves. The operating rule curves for the water allocation decision model with remotely sensed LAS curves were then optimized. The best set of operating rule curves that we got from the second optimization were then used with the local LAS curves to see how the system would perform with these operating rule curves. This gave us an idea of the feasibility of using remotely sensed data to come up with water management decisions and also to assess the benefits of using remotely sensed time-series data. Though the performance over the three objectives was not as good as the results we got by optimizing the system with local LAS curves, it was better than the system performance across the three objectives with the existing set of operating rules and local LAS curves. Thus, it can be used when there is a dearth of proper LAS curves.Besides, optimizing operating rule curves, the remotely sensed time-series data of reservoir surface area was used to assess the effects of sedimentation in the reservoir storage. It was observed that for larger reservoirs the percentage change is not much as compared to the smaller reservoirs. Apart from the size of the reservoir, more study is required to make a detailed analysis of how factors like topography and soil texture influence the rate of sedimentation. Despite its limitations, the remotely sensed time-series data of reservoir surface area can be used to perform a qualitative analysis of the rate of sedimentation and can give reservoir authorities an idea of the need for bathymetry. This can help in avoiding unnecessary bathymetries which are infeasible both economically and physically
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