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Weather is a phenomenon that describes the present atmospheric conditions like temperature, wind direction, humidity etc. over a geographical location. Weather monitoring involves use of high configuration computer system that require high amount of power and expenditure for installation and maintenance. In the present work we have developed a low cost IoT based system to monitor weather conditions of a location. This system is limited in its geographical radius but its low cost reliable features make it possible to use such a series of systems instead of just one to monitor weather conditions over a large pheriphery.

Electrical power grid has witnessed continuous changes over the past century but phenomenal developments are visible in the last two decades or so. The demand of 24x7x365 power supply, and development in socio-economic status of individuals and nations the demand of electrical power hence grid complexity is rising. Moreover shifting to renewables has opened a whole new can of worms. The conventional approach of grid management is unable to cater the needs of such a complex demand and supply needs. The present work is an approach addressing various modalities, modes of operation and management of smart grids. This includes demand side management in household and non-household scenarios, ICT and cyber security concerns.

Biometric characteristics helps to recognize an individual among others. Each individual has a unique biometric feature. So, an automated system is designed to recognize an individual. In today’s growing AI development, biometric recognition is applied in many security systems. One of oldest and widely used authentic biometric methodology is fingerprint recognition. Many fingerprint recognition algorithms are designed and developed in order to reduce error rate and to improve accuracy. In this paper, a comprehensive review is presented on various techniques used for fingerprint recognition system along with their performance and their limitations. The purpose of this paper is to review various recent work on the fingerprint recognition system, to explain step by step the steps for recognizing fingerprints, and to provide summaries of the fingerprint databases with functionality

Anaerobically treated molasses-based distilleries spent wash is a major source of terrestrial and aquatic pollution due to the mixture of the various unknown organometallic compounds in discharged waste. The nature of pollutants present in effluent has to be characterized prior to the evaluation of their fate in the environment at various tropic levels. The absorption maxima (λmax) were obtained at 295 nm of pollutants present in spent wash which indicated that melanoidins are a major colorant along with other organic compounds. Abundantly identified compounds with GC–MS in effluent were found: 1,2,4,5-tetrahydro-2-methyl-3H-2-benzazepine-3-one, 6-(trifluoromethyl)-1H-imidazole [4,5-c] pyridine, 4,6-di-t-butyl-1H, 3H-thieno[3,4-c] thiophene, butanoic acid, trimethylsilyl ester, silane, (dodecyloxy)trimethylsilyl ester, 4-styryl [2,2] paracyclophane, 4-(p-cumylphenoxy) phthalonitrile, hexadecanoic acid, trimethylsilyl ester, butyl ester, and squalene. Some of these compounds are known with mutagenic and androgenic properties. The toxicity test of post-methanated distillery effluent (PMDE) showed direct toxic effects on catfish (Heteropneustes fossilis) even at 1% (v/v) concentration and caused degeneration of primary and secondary lamellae of the gill and the epithelial layer. Further, higher concentrations between 5 and 10% of PMDE showed loss of primary and secondary lamellae of gills, and liver catalase activity was also increased dramatically in H. fossilis, indicating the generation of oxidative free radicals. Similarly, inhibition of α-amylase activities in germinating Zea mays L. (Maize) seeds was also noted at 10% PMDE. This study confirmed the environmental toxicity of effluent with freshwater fish and Zea mays seeds.

This study aimed to assess the heavy metals accumulation patterns by some native plants such as Achyranthus aspera L., Amaranthus viridis, Basella alba L., Sesbania bispinosa, Pedalium murex L., and Momordica doica, which have been traditionally employed for medicinal and food purposes. The plants were grown on complex distillery waste containing a mixture of organometallic compounds. Results revealed bioaccumulation of Mn, Cd, Fe, Cr, Cu, As, Se, Mo, and Co in their roots, shoots, and leaves in levels higher than the surrounding sludge. A. aspera was noted as root accumulator for Mn (16.95 mg kg−1), Zn (30.12 mg kg−1), Fe (240.40 mg kg−1), Co (3.19 mg kg−1), while Se (4.07 mg kg−1), Mo (4.36 mg kg−1), was accumulated selectively in the shoot of the plant. Similarly, S. bispinosa, P. murex, and M. doica were found as root accumulators for Mn, Fe, and Ni. A. viridis accumulated Cd, Zn, and Cu in the shoot and leaves of the plant. The high bioconcentration factors (BCF) and translocation factors (TF) observed in these native plants (>1) suggested their tendency to hyperaccumulate heavy metals. The findings highlighted that these plants as a potential metal accumulator may pose health hazards and deteriorate the medicinal property if grown on such wastes.

Complex wastewater discharge from alcohol distilleries is one of the major sources of water and soil pollution, and the degradation of this effluent is a very challenging task. Distillery wastewater retains a high content of heavy metals as well as inorganic and organic compounds, which are difficult to remove due to their solubility in water or the presence of persistent and recalcitrant compounds. In recent decades, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have constituted important, efficient, promising, catalytic, and environmentally friendly treatment technology designed for the remediation of recalcitrant pollutants from industrial wastewaters. AOPs include ozonation, ultraviolet irradiation-based processes, Fenton oxidation, photo-Fenton oxidation, electrochemical remediation, sonolysis, photocatalytic technology, and various combinations of these technologies. This chapter delineates the advanced oxidation processes currently used for the remediation of untreated and partially treated distillery wastewater; controversial issues in pollutant degradation mechanisms are also discussed. Further, the principles, chemical performances, reaction mechanisms, and pros and cons of advanced oxidation processes in the degradation of some organic compounds of distillery wastewater are discussed. The authors also discuss issues associated with practical wastewater treatment and offer suggestions for the direction for future research.

The adaptation of any microorganism is morphological or biochemical changes required to survive in their ecological niches. This indicates the evolutionary process of bacterial communities, where the individual organism becomes better suited to live in its habitat. The bacterial communities have a broad range of adaptations due to their unique cell membrane properties and versatile nutritional behavior. It may be thermophiles, psychrophiles, acidophiles, halophiles, alkalophiles, and barophiles. To maintain the variable environmental conditions bacterial cell membrane protein modification plays a crucial role in controlling their function. The genome sequence of various psychrophiles revealed the function of the cell membrane with an increased proportion of polyunsaturated and branched fatty acids to increase the fluidity at low temperature and the presence of cold shock proteins are also believed to increase translational efficiency by destabilizing secondary structure of mRNA. The plant strategies for growth and phytoremediation at the polluted site involved various biochemical mechanisms for the amelioration of environmental pollutants. The mechanism of plant strategies is regulated through the production of glutathione, phytochelatins, metallothioneins, and various organic acids. Therefore the plant may adopt phytoextraction, phytostabilization, phytovolatilization, or rhizofiltration strategies based on the nature of pollutants and plant species. The phytoextraction process is mediated by the combined action of bacteria and plants due to secretion of some organic acids from plant and bacteria facilitating plant growth and transpiration mechanism. Consequently, various heavy metals are accumulated in the plant from complex organometallic wastes. The siderophores production for nutrient availability to plant is also a unique strategy of stress environment as a result of plant and bacterial interaction.

Environmental contamination (soil, water, and air) due to rampant industrialization, anthropogenic activities is a pertinacious problem and continues to be a burden to human and animal health in some parts of the world. Microbial communities are complex biological assemblies and play an integral and often unique role in ecosystem functions, whose study has been difficult for a long time because a large fraction of the species is unknown. Understanding the structure and composition of complex microbial communities and their responses to environmental perturbations, such as toxic contamination, climate change, and land-use changes, is critical for prediction, maintenance, and restoration of desirable ecosystem functions. Effective 16S rRNA genes based unbiased high-throughput “omics” approaches including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, metabolomics, interactomics, and fluxomics have been developed and applied for analyzing detailed knowledge of microbial community structure and function and quantitative measurements of various biological molecules in a high-throughput manner, thus allowing a better determination of their variation between different biological states on a genomic scale. In the present chapter, we discussed numerous advanced omics approaches that help to comprehend and explore the structural and functional aspects of the microbial communities in response to different environmental pollutants and presented some success stories by using these approaches.

Water, air, and soil pollution are becoming a major concern of the entire world due to rapid industrialization, economic growth, urbanization, increase in population, unsuitable and nonaffordable treatment technologies, and inadequate waste management practices. The safe disposal of solid waste mismanagement is a global issue in terms of environmental contamination and economic sustainability, which requires integrated assessments and holistic approaches for its solution. Landfills remain the main method of solid waste disposal and management in developed and developing countries. However, the major environmental challenges associated with the sustainable management of landfills are the surface and groundwater contamination and greenhouse gases and odor emissions. Phytocapping is an eco-friendly, cost-effective, and sustainable techniques to cover old landfill/dumpsites and to cap new landfills, with an objective to minimize leachate generation by reducing water infiltration into waste and to mitigate greenhouse emission and odor. The present chapter provides an overview of the role and mechanism of phytocapping technology for environmental cleanup.

Contamination of water and soil by toxic heavy metals and organic compounds, through natural and rapid industrial processes, due to its serious consequences on human health, agricultural crop production, and aquatic ecosystem has become a worldwide environmental problem. Therefore, the remediation of polluted soil and water has become an increasingly pressing issue worldwide. Conventional procedures to deal with the polluted environments are expensive, time-consuming and dependent on a complex group of techniques and equipment availability. Moreover, these techniques are not feasible at large due to generation of a huge amount of toxic sludge and other secondary pollutants. Alternatively, phytoremediation is an attractive, effective and, emerging eco-friendly technology that uses plants and their associated microorganisms to reduce and or degrade environmental pollutants from the contaminated sites. However, phytoremediation of numerous organic contaminants often proves not ideal because plants and their root-associated microorganisms only partially degrade these toxic compounds. In addition, the presence of toxic compounds in contaminated matrices can also affect the overall system performances by reducing the plant growth or by inhibiting the natural decay process. To tackle these issues, phytoaugmentation is considered to be a promising technology for the remediation of contaminated soil and wastewater as well. The present book chapter provides a view of the recent progress made toward the role of rhizospheric and endophytic bacteria in phytoaugmentation technology and presents their potential applications for cleanup of contaminated soil, domestic and industrial wastewater. Future, future prospects for phytoaugmentation have also been discussed for sustainable development.

Signaling among rhizobacteria and other soil microorganisms is an important mechanism to ensure a successful symbiotic relationship with their phytobionts. Quorum-sensing involves signaling molecules that provide essential networks for communication in the rhizosphere. These signaling molecules relay inter-and-intra-species information that coordinates and controls behavior in mixed communities, and the expression of these signaling molecules changes in response to the chemical cues. The diverse signaling molecules released in the rhizospheric zone affect the structural and physical heterogeneity of the soil and the quantity and identity of rhizobacteria. In general, rhizospheric signaling mechanisms can be categorized into three major types (i) plant to microorganisms signaling through low molecular weight molecules secreted by plants; (ii) interspecies and intraspecies microbial signaling, chiefly through quorum-sensing molecules; and (iii) microorganisms to plant signaling by microbially produced compounds. This review presents knowledge on the signaling molecules of the rhizosphere based on the above three mechanisms. The chemical nature of root exudates and their roles in attracting metabolically active rhizobacteria; the chemical properties of autoinducers secreted by rhizobacteria and their functions in intra- and inter-species interactions, including biofilm formation in the rhizosphere; and influence of quorum sensing on the root architecture, plant defense and biotic and abiotic stress responses, and gene expression are examined. The review provides a thorough understanding of rhizobacteria signaling and will help to develop novel strategies for agriculture, such as the novel use of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria to enhance crops growth and quorum quenching technique to fight against plant pathogens.

Melanoidins are the randomly polymerized condensed anionic, non-enzymatic product of maillard reaction between amino and carbonyl group at elevated temperature. It occurs particularly during the food processing and wastewater released from distilleries and various fermented industries. Their synthesis is influenced by several factors because they alter the reaction path and change the product composition. Moreover, melanoidins have been known to be beneficial at low concentrations in food products due to their several properties in a biological system. But, when they are released into the environment at a high concentration from fermentation industries they cause a serious threat to land and aquatic ecosystem. This review encompasses the detailed chemical reaction of melanoidin synthesis and its functional properties to various substances present in nature with implications to its impact on the environment and their role in maintaining the nutritional and flavoring properties in food products.

This chapter discusses plant growth–promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) and bioremediation of industrial waste. It is suggested that PGPR help plant growth not only via classically defined mechanisms (e.g., solubilization of insoluble nutrients, production of plant growth hormones, etc.) but also by mitigating the harmful effects of toxic pollutants grossly accumulated in the soil and groundwater. In the plant-microbial world, the association of PGPR with plants can be exploited for benefits not only for the associated organisms but also for the ecosystem. The eco-friendly approaches inspire a wide range of exploitation of beneficial agriculturally important bacteria and have led to improved nutrient uptake. They play a major role in improving soil fertility. They also play a very important role during remediation of bacterial-assisted phytoremediation of various pollutants present in industrial waste. Beneficial PGPR also play a key role in agricultural approaches through quorum sensing in their biofilm mode. The in vitro production of biofilm PGPR can be used to give increased crop yields and pollutants degradation through a range of plant growth mechanisms. The roots with attached microbial biofilms significantly contribute to soil fertility and bioremediation.

According to a survey, heating and cooling loads are major contributors of the total consuming components in residential sector. With increasing demand-supply ratios and deficiency to produce sufficiently, residential loads need to be optimized. Heating/cooling loads comprise mainly of thermostatic control, which are used to manoeuvre operation times of these devices. Operating times and hence power aggregate in turn helps achieve load management targets and thereby serve as ancillary service (AS) to the power grid. In this work, a distributed averaging protocol is used to achieve desired power aggregate set by the utility using steady-state de-synchronization. The model is articulated for homogeneous, heterogeneous as well as population of thermostatically controlled loads and the results are verified using computer program.

The paper highlights the importance of parliamentary systems and democracy in tackling the presenteconomic challenges throughout the world. The paper has a special focus on India as a specific-case. Maintaining high economic growth, by improving public health facilities, NPAs’ ofbanks, infrastructure, and tax reform. Despite impressive economic growth trends in recent decades, the country is still relatively poor.The Indian Constitutional makers designed a democratic form of government to chooserepresentatives. The institution of electedlegislatures is core to democracy. These institutions provide a forum to find broadlyacceptable paths to complex problems throughdiscussion and negotiation by peoplerepresenting different interests, perspectivesand ideologies. Our democracy rests on the belief of citizens that Parliament will performthis function. The cost of not permittingParliament to function can be enormous as itputs this belief at risk and thus, attacks thefoundations on which our democracy is built.&nbsp

Optimization problem is which mainly focuses on finding feasible solution out of all possible solutions. Travelling salesman problem belongs to this one. As it is not possible to find its solution in definite polynomial time that is why it is considered as one of the NP-hard problem. This paper utilizes the optimization capability of genetic algorithm to find the feasible solution for TSP. The algorithm starts with the calculation of Euclidean distance between the towns to be visited by the salesman. Initial chromosome pool is generated using value encoding. Then best fit chromosomes are selected by applying roulette wheel selection which then goes through m-point crossover. Now we apply interchange mutation on the offsprings generated before. Now this whole process is repeated until the convergence of genetic algorithm.

The conventional grid and power system infrastructure is monitored using a centralized approach. Wherein remote terminal units are governed using a master control facility. In the wake of dispersed generations where every consumer is also becoming a producer with solar powered PV panels or wind, managing power is becoming a difficult task. This situation can become unmanageable in an event of cyber-attack on a smart grid.The objective of this paper is to use Block Chain Technology (BCT) to manage data of a power system. Initially, we will consider an attack on a switch of SMIB and issues arising out of it. Then we model two more cases where, BCT will aid in management of power.

Smart buildings are the need of the day with increasing demand-supply ratios and considerable deficiency to generate them. In any modern nonindustrial infrastructure, these demands mainly comprise thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs), which can be maneuvered. TCLs, such as air-conditioners, heaters, and refrigerators, are ubiquitous and their operating times can be controlled to achieve desired aggregate power. This power aggregation, in turn, helps achieve load management targets and thereby serves as an ancillary service (AS) to the power grid. In this work, a distributed averaging protocol is used to achieve the desired power aggregate set by the utility using steady-state desynchronization. The results are verified using a computer program for a homogeneous and heterogeneous population of TCLs. Furthermore, a load following scenario has been implemented using the utility as a reference. Apart from providing a significant AS to the power grid, the proposed idea also helps reduce the amplitude of power system oscillations imparted by the TCLs. Hardware-based results are obtained to verify its implementation feasibility in real-time.

We present a fast algorithm for corner detection, exploiting the local features (i.e. intensities of neighbourhood pixels) around a pixel. The proposed method is simple to implement but is efficient enough to give results comparable to that of the state-of-the-art corner detectors. The algorithm is shown to detect corners in a given image using a learning-based framework. The algorithm simply takes the differences of the intensities of candidate pixel and pixels around its neighbourhood and processes them further to make the similar pixels look even more similar and distinct pixels even more distinct. This task is achieved by effectively training a random forest in order to classify whether the candidate pixel is a corner or not. We compare the results with several state-of-the-art techniques for corner detection and show the effectiveness of the proposed method.