Abstract

The paper presents in brief, need & importance of enlarging the scope of outreach and creating marketing/ technology transfer department in each university and college to transfer,  knowledge and sunrise technology, from lab to field and vice-versa. Universities/colleges, both the private and government, in competitive world, will have to be enterprising in nature. They would have to enter into dialogue with industry by setting up on campus incubation centre, Research Park, Patent & IPR centre etc.

The paper illustrates the theme of technology transfer, outreach and marketing with observations from India and abroad. Experiences from western schools in this regard are quoted.  They have enriched their nations in terms of new knowledge and simultaneously augmented financial support for themselves. They earn around 25% of their budget, and thereby make education affordable, besides qualitative. In India, the links between university and industry are far too weak; the government funded universities are reported to be too stiff and inflexible. They are giving off the shelf course and syllabi prescription, regardless it is needed or not. This has resulted in mismatch, what is taught is not wanted and what is wanted is not taught.

The paper suggests that AICTE/ UGC should do benchmarking with the world best, make gap analysis and give in this respect new vector direction. This is urgent because our universities and colleges follow what these apex bodies prescribe.

Gains from making universities enterprising both to students and community are immense and far reaching.  Universities could become financially more viable and effective in their intended mission of teaching, if marketing wing is added in their frame work.

Tuition fees being collected from students can certainly come down to a certain extent, if technology transfer departments are introduced, which are found to be a profit centres.

Private institutes are too aggressive in marketing, and aided institutes are too sluggish. In either case education should remain the prime focus. The paper prescribes some precautions, so as to make most of the enterprising culture. To avoid distraction from teaching, an independent professional body consisting of alumni and industry to conduct enterprising activities is recommended.

Mobility of experts between academic world and corporate world is prescribed. They cannot become competitive unless they adopt marketing strategies to sell all that they have and needed by world economy. They have to be essentially customer focussed, fostering linkages outside, and not remain centripetal, i.e. inward looking. This is no more option but compulsion. Useful tips are added in this article for effective marketing strategy.

Abstract

Cancer has become one of the biggest threats to human life for many years, and is expected to become the leading cause of death over the next few decades. Mammography is a specific type of imaging that uses a low-dose x-ray system to examine breasts. A mammography exam, called a mammogram, is used to aid in the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer facilitated with digital mammography can increase survival rate and chances for patient's complete recovery. Early detection performed on X-ray mammography is the key to improve breast cancer prognosis by the detection of any lesions or cysts in breasts.  In this paper we have present segmentation technique based on the extraction of catchments basins through a topographic representation of the mammography breast image. We have first carried out a preprocessing step which removes or attenuates the curvilinear structures present in a mammogram and corresponding to the blood vessels, veins, milk ducts, speculations and fibrous tissue. Multiple image enhancement steps were needed to exaggerate the differences between the frequency-domain images of normal and cancerous tissues. Mathematical morphology stresses the role of “shape” in image pre-processing, segmentation and object description. In this paper, the authors describe cancer detection system based on the analysis of Mammogram, which can be used by the doctors to decide whether further biopsy is needed, or not. The system will act as a decision support system and uses image processing techniques to analyze the mammograms. The application takes the input as mammogram image and reports the presence of suspicious region, if any. The paper also presents the results of experiment conducted on a large set of mammogram images.

Abstract

Dimensional analysis consists of identifying parameters influencing any process and grouping them into a set of independent dimensionless numbers using Buckingham’s pi theorem. It is a powerful tool for correlating data obtained from experiments where each of the controlling parameters is systematically varied.

In this case study, dimensional analysis is applied to study the heap forming characteristics of the core debris generated during a Fuel Coolant Interaction (FCI) following an accident in a fast breeder reactor. The study of debris heaping behaviour on the corecatcher plate is important from recriticality concern and also from cooling considerations to ensure the safety of the reactor main vessel after the accident.  The debris heap is characterized by the static repose angle. The complete set of dimensionless groups defining the heaping phenomenon is derived. It is shown that repose angle of the heap is a function of Particle Reynold’s number (Re), Froude number(Fr) and Archimedes number (Ar) for a system with  geometry and density similitudes.

A set of experiments is conducted with lead spheres in water to mimic the heaping behaviour of core debris on corecatcher plate in sodium, their density ratio being similar. The repose angle is extracted from the digital image of the heap. From the experimental data, the functional dependence of repose angle on Re, Fr and Ar is determined and an empirical correlation is developed using regression analysis.

Abstract

Association Rule Mining (ARM) is a well-studied technique that identifies frequent itemsets from datasets and generates association rules by assuming that all items have the same significance and frequency of occurrence without considering their utility. But in a number of real-world applications such as retail marketing, medical diagnosis, client segmentation etc., utility of itemsets is based on cost, profit or revenue. Utility Mining aims to identify itemsets with highest utilities by considering profit, quantity, cost or other user preferences.

Rare items are items that occur less frequently in a transaction dataset. High Utility Itemsets may either be frequent or rare. Similarly rare itemset may be of high or low utility.

In many real-life applications, high-utility itemsets consist of rare items. Rare itemsets provide useful information in different decision-making domains, customers purchase microwave ovens or plasma televisions rarely as compared to bread, washing powder, soap etc. The former may yield more profit for the supermarket than the latter. Koh and Rountree (2005) proposed a modified apriori inverse algorithm to generate rare itemsets of user interest.

In this paper, the authors propose a High Utility Rare Itemset Mining [HURI] algorithm that uses the concept of apriori inverse, for generating high utility rare itemsets of users’ interest[Koh and Rountree (2005)]. We demonstrate the approach with a synthetic dataset. Apriori inverse is used to find only the rare itemsets. HURI is used to find those rare itemsets, which are of high utility according to users’ preferences, i.e., algorithm for generation of rare itemsets is extended to find high-utility rare itemsets.

Abstract

Removal of As(V) ion from contaminated water by biosorption using low cost tea waste (TW) biomass was investigated. The characteristic of TW as biosorbent material was analyzed by Fourier transmission infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) to assess its surface properties. The effects of pH, temperature, dosage and contact time on the biosorption were studied and analyzed with spectrophotometer at a wavelength (?) of 540 nm by crosschecking with ICP-MS in this work.  The optimum pH and temperature for the efficiency of biosorption of As(V) were found to be 4 and 35oC. Maximum uptake capacity of As(V) ion was obtained as 2.12 mg/g at initial concentration of 100 mg/l, 8 g of dosage and contact time of 8 hours, respectively. Equilibrium data were well described by the Freundlich isotherm model. The positive values of ?S° (kJ/mol.K) and ?H° (kJ/mol) indicates the endothermic nature of the biosorption process and the spontaneous nature of the sorption of As(V) ion onto TW biomass was confirmed by negative value of Go (kJ/mol).

Abstract

Aluminum silicon carbide Metal Matrix Composites (Al-MMC) are widely used in aeronautical and automobile industries due to their excellent mechanical and physical properties. However the harder reinforcement particles make machining difficult. Tool wear occurs more quickly and reduces the life of the tool. This paper presents the experimental investigation on turning A356 matrix metal reinforced with 10 % by weight of Silicon carbide (SiC) particles of grain size ranges from 24 microns to 55 microns, fabricated in house by stir casting. Fabricated samples were turned on medium duty lathe of spindle power 2 kW with Poly crystalline Diamond (PCD) inserts of 1300, 1500 and 1600 grade exposed to various cutting conditions. Parameters such as power consumed by the main spindle, specific power consumption and machined surface roughness were studied. The result shows better performance of PCD 1500 grade compared with other two grades in all aspects. It is proved that 1300 grade can be used for rough turning and 1500 grade for finish turning. PCD 1600 grade performance also very close to the PCD 1500 grade. Tool wear study also conducted for duration of 30 minutes. SEM images show the tool wear pattern.

Abstract

Cyclone separators are well known for their efficiency in separating air-solid mixture. Cyclones are often used for the removal of particles of about 10 µm or more diameters from air streams and also used for separating particles from liquids and for separating liquid droplets from gases. Cyclones can be used for heating solid particles where direct contact with gas is permitted. Since it has potential applications as heat exchangers in fertilizer, polymer powder, pharmaceutical and other industries, study of cyclone as heat exchanger is gaining attention. In present study, experiments are conducted in a cyclone heat exchanger of 160 mm diameter, using sand. The effects of solid feed rate (0.01-0.025 kg/s), cyclone inlet air velocity (5.44-9.1m/s), and particle sizes (196-725 µm) on heat transfer rate, exit solid temperature, heat transfer area and heat transfer coefficient were studied. An empirical correlation was proposed for the prediction of heat transfer coefficients based on experimental data. The heat transfer coefficients obtained by correlation in the present study were compared with literature values and it was within an error band of +10% to —8%.