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Supply of sustainable water is a priority for urbanization of the country. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is recommended to enhance the groundwater resources, but finding the favorable site for MAR is quite challenging, particularly, in urbanized karst terrains because of highly heterogeneous and anisotropic properties of carbonate aquifers. The expansion along Naya Raipur is posing a severe threat to its groundwater resources by altering the hydrological framework in the area. In this work, we characterize the unsaturated zone for finding potential pathways for MAR in karst terrain of central India by using hydro-geophysical techniques. Sub-surface geophysical investigations including electrical sounding and profiling, captured the shallow surface of the area to the depth of around 40 m. The Wenner–Schlumberger and gradient methods could decipher strong lateral and vertical anomalies. The low resistivity in the unsaturated zone, as compared to the high resistivity of limestone bedrock is the main path for infiltration. The low resistivity anomalies in the 2D inverted sections might be water filled conduits or solution channels with uncertain geometry. Hydrogeological heterogeneity based on geophysical data helped to locate the favourable zones for construction of MAR structures. The Chokra Nala in the Telibandha area of Raipur is the favorable zone along which MAR could be more effective in replenishing the groundwater. The Telibandha lake area with the indication of the presence of hidden mafic dyke later intruding the limestone after its deposition, was also inferred from the geophysical data. Highlights: Characterizing the unsaturated zone for finding potential pathways for MAR in karst terrain using hydro-geophysical techniques. Establishing MAR along the solution channels, conduits and fracture network. 3D fracture system in limestone from 2D ERT profiles. Mapping hydrogeological heterogeneity based on geophysical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medical images often suffer from intensity inhomogeneity and therefore they are difficult to segment using the conventional image segmentation approaches. In this work an image segmentation approach is being presented, in which the region scalable fitting energy is variable for the regions inside and outside the contours. The energy term is defined along the two sides of the contour, by considering different scale parameters for the foreground and background regions. Two fitting functions are used to approximate the intensities of the foreground and background regions. The proposed method is able to deal with intensity inhomogeneity as a Gaussian kernel function has been used in the energy formulation. The kernel function is used to assign weights to the intensity values during energy formulation. Different scale parameters are used for the kernel function for background and foreground regions. The proposed method proves to be robust as it has the self-regularization capability, partial differential equations have been discretized by approximations and the method does not require computationally expensive re-initialization procedure. The proposed method is capable of efficiently segmenting the human metaspread chromosome images that suffer from intensity inhomogeneity. The chromosomes that have very low contrast with the background or the group of chromosomes that appear to be nearly touching each other are segmented correctly from the metaspread images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raipur of Chhattisgarh state, central India, is facing water problems due to rapid urbanization and altered hydrological processes despite adequate rainfall. Deteriorated surface water, diminished recharge and elevated pumping have reduced water availability in the region. Therefore, proper measures like managed aquifer recharge (MAR) need to be successfully implemented to conserve rain water for long-term sustainability. Hydrogeological data, combined with geophysical investigations lead to the construction of a conceptual model of the Chandi limestone aquifer for this purpose. The results indicate that the compact and massive limestone has negligible primary porosity, but solution weathering (karstification) has developed secondary pores at variable depths that favour recharge, groundwater storage and movement. The study helped to locate potential recharge sites that have significance in optimizing MAR structures such as check dams and injection wells. The hydrogeological model has a great significance in managing these complex and heterogeneous aquifers for better future water supply in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human chromosome metaspread images are used to generate the karyogram that is used for the diagnosis of the genetic defects. The genetic defects occur due to variation in either the structure of the chromosomes or the number of chromosomes present in the cell. The human chromosome metaspread image selection process is very critical in the karyogram generation task. It is very tedious and time-consuming process and is generally done manually by an expert cytogeneticist. The manual selection results may be biased, and it is possible that the whole search space is not explored to find the best metaspread image. The mood of the cytogeneticist will also greatly affect the selection results. So there is a strong need to automate the process of human chromosome metaspread image selection process. The proposed approach ranks the metaspread images based upon the quality score that is calculated using the count of the chromosomes of various orientations present in the metaspread image. The ranking has been done based upon ordinal ranking process, wherein a unique rank is assigned to each image based upon a set of rules. The rule base aids in the tiebreaking process in case the same quality score is derived for more than one metaspread image. The decision-making process of the expert cytogeneticist has been emulated by using a set of if-then rules. The proposed technique helps to select the best metaspread image, by exploring the complete set of images that can be used for the karyogram generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genetic defects in the humans are uncovered by studying the chromosomes, as they are the genetic information carriers. They are non-rigid objects and they appear in different orientations when they are imaged. To find out the genetic defects, the chromosomes are pre-processed so that they are not touching, overlapping, and bent, and the noise is also discarded. The presence of bends, overlaps, or touches makes it difficult to uncover the genetic abnormalities. So there is a need for development of an efficient technique to classify the segmented chromosomes into different types and then pre-process them in order to correct their orientation. In this work, a hybrid classification technique based upon correlation-based feature selection and classification via regression approach, which will classify the segmented chromosomes into five categories viz; straight, overlapping, bent, touching, or noise is presented. The performance evaluation has been done using 1592 segmented chromosomes from Advance Digital Imaging Research data set. The over-all accuracy of 94.78 % has been obtained for the five class problem. The performance of the proposed classifier has been compared with Bayes Net, Naïve Bayes, Radial Bias Feed Forward Network, and k-nearest-neighbour classifiers. Based upon this categorization, different pre-processing techniques will be applied to correct the orientation of the chromosomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The karyotype is analyzed to detect the genetic abnormalities. It is generated by arranging the chromosomes after extracting them from the metaphase chromosome images. The chromosomes are non-rigid bodies that contain the genetic information of an individual. The metaphase chromosome image spread contains the chromosomes, but these chromosomes are not distinct bodies; they can either be individual chromosomes or be touching one another; they may be bent or even may be overlapping and thus forming a cluster of chromosomes. The extraction of chromosomes from these touching and overlapping chromosomes is a very tedious process. The segmentation of a random metaphase chromosome image may not give us correct and accurate results. Therefore, before taking up a metaphase chromosome image for analysis, it must be analyzed for the orientation of the chromosomes it contains. The various reported methods for metaphase chromosome image selection for automatic karyotype generation are compared in this paper. After analysis, it has been concluded that each metaphase chromosome image selection method has its advantages and disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents semi-analytical mathematical model to estimate unsteady groundwater recharge resulting from variable depth of water in a large water body, influenced by time variant inflows and outflows. The model has been derived by integrating Hantush's () analytical expression for water table rise due to recharge from a rectangular spreading basin into the water balance equation of the water body. The model has been applied to a test study site in Raipur (India) for assessing viability of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) from a lake located on an area dominated by the massive limestone formation. The components of the water balance equation have been carried out by the comprehensive analysis of the hydrological and hydrogeological aspects of the lake. The hydrological components include analysis of rainfall-runoff, evaporation rate, lake water quality and the hydrogeological components include aquifer characterization, parameters estimate, ambient groundwater level and quality. The time variant depth of water resulting from the interaction of water balance components, computed using the model, has been compared with the measured data and found a satisfactory match, as revealed from RMSE analysis. Compared to the inflows and lake storages, the recharge rates from the lake found very less, which ranged between 3.75 and 4.82 mm/day for depth of water ranged between 2.5 and 3.36 m. The lake water quality indicated contamination by bacteriological parameters (viz. Fecal coliform and Total coliform), turbidity and COD, exceeding the permissible limit of drinking water standards (). The aquifer formations below the lakebed and around possess thick limestone formation - a limiting factor for MAR-ASTR proposition, and hence no engineered hydrogeological intervention has been found viable to enhance the recharge rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]