). Using a size-resolved wet scavenging parametrisation, the amount of BC on snow due to wet scavenging is estimated as 29 mg kg (1 for an accumulated snow depth of 27 cm. For the range of 10Á200 mg kg(1 of BC in snow, the diurnally averaged forcing due to snow darkening has been found to vary from 0.87 to 10.2 W m (2 for fresh snow and from 2.6 to 28.1 W m (2 for the aged snow, which is significantly higher than the DRF. The direct and surface albedo radiative forcing could lead to significant warming over the Himalayas during pre-monsoon.

The pattern of strain accumulation and its release during earthquakes along the eastern Himalayan syntaxis is unclear due to its structural complexity and lack of primary surface signatures associated with large-to-great earthquakes. This led to a consensus that these earthquakes occurred on blind faults. Toward understanding this issue, palaeoseismic trenching was conducted across a ~3.1 m high fault scarp preserved along the mountain front at Pasighat (95.33°E, 28.07°N). Multi-proxy radiometric dating employed to the stratigraphic units and detrital charcoals obtained from the trench exposures provide chronological constraint on the discovered palaeoearthquake surface rupture clearly suggesting that the 15th August, 1950 Tibet-Assam earthquake (Mw ~ 8.6) did break the eastern Himalayan front producing a co-seismic slip of 5.5 ± 0.7 meters. This study corroborates the first instance in using post-bomb radiogenic isotopes to help identify an earthquake rupture.

Myconanotechnology is an emerging field, where fungi can be harnessed for the synthesis of nanomaterials or nanostructures with desirable shape and size. Though myconanotechnology is in its infancy, potential applications provide exciting waves of transformation in agriculture and fascinate microbiologists and other researchers to contribute in providing incremental solutions through green chemistry approaches for advancing food security. In this article, we provide a brief overview of the research efforts on the mycogenic synthesis of nanoparticles with particular emphasis on mechanisms and potential applications in agriculture and allied sectors.

Imparting controllable flexural rigidity into a material system is one of the key motivations for the design of intelligent materials for structural applications. In this direction, shape memory alloy (SMA) reinforced polymer composites have enormous potentials for active shape and vibration control of systems related to aerospace, automobile, and energy harvesting applications. The primary motivation of reinforcing SMA wires into a composite is to actively change the composite stiffness or elasticity through thermo-mechanical as well as electrical/magnetic stimulation. The SMA -reinforced hybrid composites are found to be able to adapt their shape, which may also improve the specific strength, vibration damping, and self-healing capability by utilizing shape memory effect and pseudoelastic behavior of the SMA. In this paper, we intend to provide a comprehensive review of all SMA -reinforced composites available today in the open literature and a critical assessment of the technology. Currently, shape memory alloys in the form of long fibers (wires), ribbons, short fibers, and particles are used for hybridizing the reinforcements in composites. Continuous SMA fiber embedded composites are generally used for shape control of structures. However, it has difficulty in obtaining suitable interfacial characteristics required for actuation. The discontinuous SMA embedded composites have scope for modifying such active properties. The work presented here gives an overview of the concepts of design, development, and modeling of continuous and discontinuous shape memory alloy embedded composites for advanced smart composites.

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