Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Department of Mechanical Engineering

World University root node

Proceedings of the 21st National and 10th ISHMT-ASME Heat and Mass Transfer {\ldots}

An Inverse Analysis for Estimation of Thermal Conductivity of Orthotropic Composite Medium Using Artificial Neural Network

Microfabric plays an important role in the engineering behavior of soils. Although many studies are available in the literature on the effect of microfabric on the static behavior of soils, the effect on the cyclic behavior is less understood. In the present study, samples with different microfabric were prepared in the laboratory by reconstituting commercially available kaolin clay with different pore fluids under a consolidation pressure of 100 kPa. Consolidated undrained triaxial tests were carried out on these samples under static and cyclic loading conditions. Dispersed samples were found to have monotonic stress-strain behavior with a peak deviatoric stress and higher peak undrained shear strength than the flocculated samples. However, the dispersed samples were found to offer less resistance to cyclic loading. When subjected to cyclic loading, dispersed samples failed within a few cycles under a cyclic stress ratio (defined as the ratio of cyclic deviatoric stress to the undrained shear strength) close to 0.6, whereas in flocculated samples, sudden failure was not observed even at a higher cyclic stress ratio of 0.9, although strains and pore pressures accumulated to higher values. Postcyclic monotonic tests conducted on samples that did not fail under cyclic loading showed an apparent overconsolidation effect caused by cyclic loading in a similar manner, as reported in the literature. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Department of Civil Engineering

Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering

Effect of microfabric on undrained static and cyclic behavior of kaolin clay

Annual Conference of the ASABE

Sensitivity analysis of stream flow generation parameters of SWAT model

In this paper, a new method for station keeping of underactuated underwater robots in the presence of underwater currents and external disturbances is proposed. Three small additional thrusters are introduced for station keeping purpose which are less power consuming and are actuated only during the station keeping mode. These thrusters are located in such a way that the generated forces and torque are enough to compensate the underwater currents and disturbances. Station keeping thrusters' locations and directions are nearly optimized using Taguchi's robust design method. The effect of additional thrusters on robot tracking control performance is investigated and the results are presented. The effectiveness of the proposed configuration is demonstrated with the help of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations using an experimental autonomous underwater robot. The underwater current effect on the corresponding motions of the underwater robot is investigated and some interesting phenomena with respect to different underwater current amplitudes and directions are observed. Robustness of the proposed configuration is also investigated. © 2011 DAAAM International Vienna.

International Journal of Simulation Modelling

Investigations on the dynamic station keeping of an underactuated autonomous underwater robot

The mitotic spindle is an important intermediate structure in eukaryotic cell division, in which each of a pair of duplicated chromosomes is attached through microtubules to centrosomal bodies located close to the two poles of the dividing cell. Several mechanisms are at work toward the formation of the spindle, one of which is the 'capture' of chromosome pairs, held together by kinetochores, by randomly searching microtubules. Although the entire cell cycle can be up to 24 hours long, the mitotic phase typically takes only less than an hour. How does the cell keep the duration of mitosis within this limit? Previous theoretical studies have suggested that the chromosome search and capture is optimized by tuning the microtubule dynamic parameters to minimize the search time. In this paper, we examine this conjecture. We compute the mean search time for a single target by microtubules from a single nucleating site, using a systematic and rigorous theoretical approach, for arbitrary kinetic parameters. The result is extended to multiple targets and nucleating sites by physical arguments. Estimates of mitotic time scales are then obtained for different cells using experimental data. In yeast and mammalian cells, the observed changes in microtubule kinetics between interphase and mitosis are beneficial in reducing the search time. In Xenopus extracts, by contrast, the opposite effect is observed, in agreement with the current understanding that large cells use additional mechanisms to regulate the duration of the mitotic phase. © 2011 Society for Mathematical Biology.

Department of Physics

Fulltext

Bulletin of Mathematical Biology

A First-Passage-Time Theory for Search and Capture of Chromosomes by Microtubules in Mitosis

Detailed three-dimensional CFD simulations involving flow and combustion chemistry are used to study the effect of swirl induced by re-entrant piston bowl geometries on pollutant emissions from a single-cylinder diesel engine. The baseline engine configuration consists of a hemispherical piston bowl and an injector with finite sac volume. The first iteration involved using a torroidal, slightly re-entrant bowl geometry and a sac-less injector. Pollutant emission measurements indicated a reduction in emissions with this modification. Simulations on both configurations were then conducted to understand the effect of the changes. The simulation results indicate that the selected piston bowl geometry could actually be reducing the in-cylinder swirl and turbulence and the emission reduction may be entirely due to the introduction of the sac-less injector. In-cylinder air motion was then studied in a number of combustion chamber geometries and a geometry which produced the highest in-cylinder swirl and Turbulence Kinetic Energy (TKE) around the compression top dead centre (TDC) was identified. The optimal nature of this re-entrant piston bowl geometry is confirmed by detailed combustion simulations and emission predictions. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.

Applied energy

High swirl-inducing piston bowls in small diesel engines for emission reduction

Biological Sciences and Engineering

Nature Reviews Microbiology

World Rabies Day: A prime role for veterinarians in rabies control

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) may impede cancer vaccine efficacy in hematologic malignancies and cancer. CCR4 antagonists, an emergent class of Treg inhibitor, have been shown to block recruitment of Tregs mediated by CCL22 and CCL17. Our aim was to demonstrate the ability of a CCR4 antagonist (a small chemical molecule identified in silico) when combined with vaccines to break peripheral tolerance controlled by Tregs, a prerequisite for the induction of CD8+ T cells against self Ags. Immunization of transgenic or normal mice expressing tumor-associated self Ags (Her2/neu, OVA, gp100) with a CCR4 antagonist combined with various vaccines led to the induction of effector CD8+ T cells and partial inhibition of tumor growth expressing self Ags in both prophylactic and therapeutic settings. The CCR4 antagonist was more efficient than cyclophosphamide to elicit anti-self CD8+ T cells. We also showed that the population of Tregs expressing CCR4 corresponded to memory (CD44high) and activated (ICOS+) Tregs, an important population to be targeted to modulate Treg activity. CCR4 antagonist represents a competitive class of Treg inhibitor able to induce functional anti-self CD8+ T cells and tumor growth inhibition when combined with vaccines. High expression of CCR4 on human Tregs also supports the clinical development of this strategy. © 2011 by The American Society of Hematology.

Blood

ACCR4 antagonist combined with vaccines induces antigen-specific CD8 + T cells and tumor immunity against self antigens

A structural chameleon: A porous layered carbon material (PLC) containing nanographene domains was prepared by graphitizing glucose within the nanoscopic voids of an aminoclay template. The size of the pores in the PLC was altered reversibly by a mesoscale order-disorder transformation brought about by an applied mechanical force (see picture). This pore flexibility was exploited for the size-selective separation of dye molecules. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Department of Chemistry

Angewandte Chemie - International Edition

Observation of pore-switching behavior in porous layered carbon through a mesoscale order-disorder transformation

A π-electron rich supramolecular polymer as an efficient fluorescent sensor for electron deficient nitroaromatic explosives has been synthesized, and the role of H-bonding in dramatic amplification of sensitivity/fluorescence quenching efficiency in the solid state has been established. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011.