Water for food production in Sub-Saharan Africa

Water control is an essential requirement if food and energy crises in Africa are to be resolved on a sustainable basis. The paper reviews the problems and prospects associated with the expansion of irrigation in Africa, where experiences with large and medium scale water management have been of comparatively recent origin. The present status of water development and management issues are approached carefully and cautiously, they can make an important and lasting contribution to the resolution of Africa's food crisis.     

Geophysical anomalies associated with uranium mineralization from Beldih mine, South Purulia Shear Zone, India

Beldih mine at the central part of the South Purulia Shear Zone (SPSZ) has been reported with low grade uranium-bearing formation within quartz-magnetite-apatite host in kaolinized formation. Therefore, the present integrated geophysical study with gravity, magnetic, radiometric, very low frequency electromagnetic (VLF) and gradient resistivity profiling methods around the known mineralized zones aimed at identifying the exact geophysical signatures and lateral extent of these uranium mineralization bands. The closely spaced gravity-magnetic contours over the low to high anomaly transition zones of Bouguer, reduced-to-pole magnetic, and trend surface separated residual gravity-magnetic anomaly maps indicate the possibility of high altered zone(s) along NW-SE direction at the central part of the study area. High current density plots of VLF method and the low resistive zones in gradient resistivity study depict the coincidence with low gravity, moderately high magnetic and low resistivity anomalies at the same locations. Moderate high radioactive zones have also been observed over these locations. This also suggests the existence of radioactive mineralization over this region. Along profile P2, drilled borehole data revealed the presence of uranium mineralization at a depth of ～100 m. The vertical projection of this mineralization band also identified as low gravity, low resistivity and high magnetic anomaly zone. Thus, the application of integrated geophysical techniques supported by geological information successfully recognized the nature of geophysical signatures associated with the uranium mineralization of this region. This enhances the scope of further integrated geophysical investigations in the unexplored regions of SPSZ.     

River bank erosion control by soil nailing

A study has been done for analysing soil nailed cuts with circular type wedge failure by friction circle method. Various parameters such as nail length, nail diameter, nail inclination, wall inclination and angle of internal friction of soil have been considered to determine the factor of safety of nailed open cuts. The study shows that for cohesionless soil nailed cut, factor of safety increase with increase of parameters like angle of internal friction of soil, length of nail (L) versus height of cut (H) ratio, cohesion of soil and nail inclination (upto 15°) with horizontal. The study revealed that nails grouted with cement perform better than driven nails. A case study further confirms the analytical findings. Received 7 October     

Solution of a transfer equation by a Modified Spherical Harmonic Method in a thin anisotropically scattering atmosphere

Wan, Wilson and Sen (1986) have examined the scope of Modified Spherical Harmonic Method in a plane medium scattering anisotropically. They have used the phase functionp(µ, µ) = 1 +aµµ. In this paper, the Transfer Equation has been solved by the Modified Spherical Harmonic Method using the phase functionp(µ, µ) = 1 + ₁ P ₁(µ)P ₁(µ) + ₂)P ₂(µ)P ₂(µ) and a few sets of numerical solution have been predicted for three different cases.     

Abundance enhancements of silicon to iron in solar energetic particles and their implications

Differential energy spectra of low abundant elements between silicon and iron of energetic solar particles (SEP) in the August 4, 1972 event were measured in the energy region of 10 to 40 MeV amu^–1 using rocket-borne Lexan detectors. The relative abundances of elements were determined and abundance enhancements, i.e., SEP/photospheric ratios, and their energy dependence were derived in 10–40 MeV amu^–1 interval. It is found that there are four types of abundance enhancements as a function of energy as follows: (a) silicon, iron, and calcium show fairly strong energy dependence which decreases with increasing energy and at 20–40 MeV amu^–1 reaches photospheric values; (b) in case of sulphur enhancement factors are independent of energy and the values are close to unity; (c) argon shows energy independent enhancements of about 3 to 4 in 10–40 MeV amu^–1; (d) titanium and chromium show weakly energy-dependent, but very high abundance enhancement factor of about 10 to 40. These features are to be understood in terms of the atomic properties of these elements and on the physical conditions in the accelerating region. These are important not only for solar phenomena but also to gain insight into the abundance enhancements of cosmic-ray heavy nuclei.on leave from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India.     

Synthesis of seismicity studies for western Alaska

An examination of the Alaskan earthquake catalogs revealed that from 1928 through 1965, twelve earthquakes of magnitudes (M) in the range 5.6 to 7.3 were located in and around Seward Peninsula region of western Alaska. Moreover, a number of earthquakes of M < 5.0 were found to distribute over the same area. Further investigation of the seismicity employing a local seismographic network in the above area showed a higher level of onshore and offshore seismic activity than had been previously recognized. A number of clusters of earthquakes have been identified. Some of them are located in the epicentral areas of past strong earthquakes (M > 5.5) and some are located in areas traversed by mapped faults. The nature of the seismicity as identified with the local network data is primarily crustal over the entire study area. Investigation of focal mechanisms of isolated strong earthquakes or clusters of small earthquakes show normal faulting as the dominant mode of strain energy release in the western part of Alaska. Moreover, in areas lying, approximately, south and north of Kotzebue Sound, the principal components of horizontal stresses tend to orient in the NW-SE and WNW-ESE directions, respectively.     

On the origin of the low energy cosmic rays from stellar sources

The model of stellar origin of the anomalous component in the low energy cosmic rays for He to Fe ions observed in space vehicles is studied in the light of recent results. The model of heliospheric origin by Fisket al which has several attractive features cannot explain the long-term variations of intensity observed during 1974 to 1978 as pointed out by Nagashima and Morishita. The stellar origin model of Durgaprasad and Biswas, on the other hand, can easily account for the sudden appearance of the anomalous component in 1972 and its large decrease in intensity in 1978 on the basis of polarity reversal of the solar magnetic field as discussed by Nagashima and Morishita (1980). In this work, we show that in the stellar model energetic ions of He, C, N, O, etc. could originate in O-type stars which manifest very strong stellar wind with mass loss rate of 3·10^?6 M_⊙ per year. These have terminal velocities of about 1200 to 4000 km/sec and are typically a few times their escape velocity. These velocities correspond to ion energies of 10 to 100 keV/amu. These ions are in partly ionised state and are accelerated in the interstellar shock fronts to about 1 to 50 MeV/amu and thus account for the observed anomalous component of low energy cosmic rays.     

Solitons and Lie group analysis to an extended quantum Zakharov–Kuznetsov equation

In this paper, complete geometric symmetry of extended quantum Zakharov–Kuznetsov (QZK) equation are investigated. All of the geometric vector fields for the new extended QZK equation are presented. At the same time, a plethora of exact solutions are obtained by the application of the group theorem. In addition, 1-soliton solution of the extended QZK equation with power law nonlinearity is obtained by the aid of traveling wave hypothesis with the necessary constraints in place for the existence of the soliton.