Changing patterns of ‘Black’ bus subsidies in the apartheid city, 1944–19861)

Bus fare subsidy, the difference between an economic fare charged by a bus operator and the amount paid by Black passengers, has played a vital role in the formation of the apartheid city in South Africa. Until 1986 employers paid transport levies on a weekly or monthly basis whilst the Government budgeted the contribution through Department of Transport vote. Transport subsidies reveals that subsidies were used to foster and facilitate the spatial organisation of urban areas. Subsidies were strongly associated with the geographical dislocation of Black communities from the centre of urban areas to the urban periphery. Subsidies first affected Black male workers in Johannesburg and a few geographical areas but were later extended to include African women, Coloureds and Indians. The theme that emerges from this paper is that the state used subsidies as one of the myriad strategies excluding Blacks politically, controlling them socially and making them dependent economically.     

Attenuation of electrons flux penetrating through the lower ionosphere

The angular variation of elastic and inelastic scattering cross-sections has been calculated and used to study the energy deposition by precipitating electrons with the help of Monte Carlo Method. Monoenergetic, power law electron spectrum with isotropic and monodinational incidence starting at an altitude of 300 km have been used to obtain the angular and energy distributions at certain height intervals. In these calculations constant magnetic field has been used.     

Hook whistlers observed at low latitude ground station Varanasi

Employing the Haselgrove ray tracing equations and a diffusive equilibrium model of the ionosphere, the propagation characteristics of hook whistlers recorded at low-latitude ground station Varanasi (geomag. lat., 16°6′.N) are discussed. It is shown that the two traces of the hook whistlers are caused by the VLF waves radiated from the return stroke of a lightning discharge which after penetrating the ionosphere at two different entry points, propagated to the opposite hemisphere in the whistler mode and were received at 16 geomagnetic latitude. Further the crossing of ray paths for the same frequency leads to the explanation of the hook whistler. The lower and higher cut-off frequencies are explained in terms of their deviating away from the bunch of the recorded whistler waves and crossing of ray paths for the same frequency.     

Role of non-thermal electrons on the generation of X-ray and EUV lines in solar flares

The energy and angular distributions of electrons have been studied by combining small angle scatterings using analytical treatment with large angle collisions using Monte Caroo calculations as a function of column density for initially power-law electron distributions and incidence angles of 0, 30, and 60°. Using these distributions the X-ray and EUV line flux as a function of column density has been computed. The flux increases with increase in column density. At the initial column densities the contribution of non-thermal electrons for the production of line flux is negligible. However, it becomes significant at intermediate column densities at which the electron energy and angular distributions have non-Maxwellian nature. X-ray and EUV flux have also been calculated as a function of electron spectral index at a fixed column density. It falls steeply with increase in spectral index. The calculated flux is compared with the observations.     

Impact of landslide size and settings on landslide scaling relationship: a study from the Himalayan regions of India

Landslides - The reliable landslide hazard assessment entails a robust understanding of frequency-magnitude analysis of the landslide inventory. Previous studies proposed that the landslide...     

A non-linear and non-stationary perspective for downscaling mean monthly temperature: a wavelet coupled second order Volterra model

This study presents a multiscale framework for downscaling of the General Circulation Model (GCM) outputs to the mean monthly temperature at regional scale using a wavelet based Second order Voltera (SoV) model. The models are developed using the reanalysis climatic data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and are validated using the simulated climatic dataset from the Can CM4 GCM for five locations in the Krishna river basin, India. K-means clustering, based on the multiscale wavelet entropy of the predictors, is used for obtaining the clusters of the input climatic variables. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to obtain the representative variables from each cluster. These input variables are then used to develop a wavelet based multiscale model using Second order Volterra approach to simulate observed mean monthly temperature for the selected locations in the basin. These models are called W-P-SoV models in this paper. For the purpose of comparison, linear multi-resolution models are developed using Multiple Linear regression (MLR) and are called W-P MLR models. The performance of the models is further compared with other Wavelet-PCA based models coupled with Multiple linear regression models (P-MLR) and Artificial Neural Networks (P-ANN), and, stand-alone MLR and ANN to establish the superiority of the proposed approach. The results indicate that the performance of the wavelet based models is superior in terms of downscaling accuracy when compared with the other models used.     

Role of nonthermal electrons in the heating of solar atmosphere during flares

Evolution of electron energy distributions have been studied by combining small-angle scattering with analytical treatment of large-angle collision using the Monte-Carlo technique. By use of these, the distributions and energy loss have been calculated as functions of column density, the heating functions have been calculated at different depths of the solar atmosphere. From the heating functions, an increase in temperature produced by the electrons at different column densities has been computed. It is found that rise in temperature increases with an increase in incident electron energy.     

Hard X-rays from solar flares — time characteristics in correlation with energy and angular distributions of electrons

Fine time variation of hard X-rays has been explained in terms of a spread in the angle of incidence of the source electrons in non-thermal thick-target model for bremsstrahlung generation. The electron energy and angular distributions have been calculated by combining small angle scatterings using analytical treatment with a large angle collision using Monte Carlo calculations as a function of column density. The incidence angles of electrons are taken as 0, 30, and 60°. Using the Bethe-Heitler cross section and the above calculated electron distributions, the bremsstrahlung flux for different photon energies as a function of column density has been studied. The computed X-ray pulse as a function of column density has been converted into time profile. It corresponds well with the observed fine time structure. The calculated spectra of X-rays at the peak and valley are also consistent with the observations. The variation of photon flux with time has also been computed for photon energies 20, 50, and 100 keV for 90 and 180° observation angles together with the changes in spectral shapes of photon energy spectrum at different times for 90 and 180° observation angles.     

Very low frequency (VLF) hiss in Jupiter's magnetosphere

The particle energy required to generate the observed VLF hiss in the Jovian magnetosphere has been computed under longitudinal and transverse resonance condition. It is shown that the minimum energy required by electrons to generate VLF hiss under the longitudinal resonance condition lies in the range of 100eV–1keV for the wave frequencies of 2–10 kHz, while the corresponding energy range for the transverse resonance condition for the same frequency range comes out to be 8 keV–40 keV. Further, the average radiated power by the erenkov process in the Jupiter's magnetosphere atL=5.6 Rj by electrons of energy 10 eV, 100 eV, and 1 keV for the wave frequency of 5 kHz has also been computed.     

Changing patterns of ‘Black’ bus subsidies in the apartheid city, 1944–19861)

Bus fare subsidy, the difference between an economic fare charged by a bus operator and the amount paid by Black passengers, has played a vital role in the formation of the apartheid city in South Africa. Until 1986 employers paid transport levies on a weekly or monthly basis whilst the Government budgeted the contribution through Department of Transport vote. Transport subsidies reveals that subsidies were used to foster and facilitate the spatial organisation of urban areas. Subsidies were strongly associated with the geographical dislocation of Black communities from the centre of urban areas to the urban periphery. Subsidies first affected Black male workers in Johannesburg and a few geographical areas but were later extended to include African women, Coloureds and Indians. The theme that emerges from this paper is that the state used subsidies as one of the myriad strategies excluding Blacks politically, controlling them socially and making them dependent economically.