Measurements
We take this opportunity to submit two projects under Measurement. The first project measures the size of the bands on a gel doc slide. The software is written in Python, has minimum requirements and is easy to use. It gives the band sizes in the specified lanes as the output. Efficient differentiation between closely grouped bands has been achieved and the band size is determined with reference to a standard ladder.This software produces incredibly accurate results,greatly reducing the human error involved in the detection of band sizes.The second project presents "gEco" as a graded colorimetric scale for differentiation between different concentrations of noxious gases and harmful chemicals. The color changes according to the concentration of the input chemical. It uses two colors for the extremes (0 and max) which allow us to specify the concentration using a quantized scale that we have provided. Apart from these, we have also collected and measured the pollution level in air (during the festival of diwali) and drinking water from several samples in the immediate surroundings over a period of time, which proved the need for "gEco" as the saviour of the society.
Air Pollution Check
As technology advances, Mankind gets its sources to survive with the cost to its health. The industrial revolution in the mid 19th century instigated new sources of different pollutants that pollute our ambient environment. Our society started realizing the fact, that this evolution is the root cause for the tide of pollutants flowing into our planet’s ecosystem. Different movements and acts began to emerge stating the consequences of water and air pollution and pledging to curb it. Out of these movements emerged acts like the Clean Air Act (1970) and Clean Water Act (1972).
Discussing some statistics in India, 6.2 million premature deaths were caused by air pollution in 2010. In Delhi, one death takes place every hour due to air pollution. The Global Burden of Disease 2013 says that outer air pollution is the largest killer in India after blood pressure, indoor air pollution and poor nutrition. Every 3rd person in India lives in an area that has noxious levels of Sulphur dioxide, Nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter larger than 10 microns (PM10) in size. India’s Central Pollution Control Board monitored 180 cities in India in 2012 and among these cities, only 2 - Malappuram and Pathanamthitta met the criteria of low air pollution.
The Earth Science department at IISER Mohali under the guidance of Dr. Vinayak Sinha measures air pollution around Diwali Celebrations. As shown by the graph and barcharts (given below) the air quality has been very low as pollutant levels have been high.
It appears that the measures put in place to check emissions from fire crackers this year (e.g. Sulphur dioxide and particulate matter) were not effective. As the time series suggests, people burst crackers in both larger measure as well as beyond the officially permissible hours (06:30-09:30 pm). In fact, if meteorological conditions had not been favourable in terms of ventilation of the emissions, the air quality could have been twice as bad.
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"gEco" as a Graded Colorimetric Scale
The second project presents "gEco" as a graded colorimetric scale for differentiating between different concentrations of noxious gases and harmful chemicals. The color changes according to the concentration of the input chemical. To demonstrate, different simulation were done for two chromophore and single chromophore.
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Software
We seek to automate the process of reading gel doc slides and give reliable band sizes as outputs in a comprehensible format with an easy-to-use software. A manual mode has also developed for graphical analysis to ease detection of fainter bands that are too close to each other to differentiate using one's eyes. The software requires minimal resources: a few Python modules, any gel doc machine and a variety of standard ladders. The main difficulty of differentiating very closely spaced bands, due to the inefficiency of human eyes, is done away with in this module. Furthermore, we are also working on introducing machine learning in the software to give better accuracy in this regard and also to detect extremely faint bands. The software will help students and researchers to automate the mundane and routine task of reading gel doc slides.
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