Immuno-compromised COVID-19 patients being treated with glucocorticoids like Dexamethasone for prolonged periods had led to the surge of mucormycosis. Mucor spores proliferate and spread faster in COVID afflicted persons. In India, more than 51,775 cases and 4300 deaths due to COVID-associated mucormycosis were reported till date. The Government of J&K declared an epidemic of COVID-19 associated mucormycosis under Sect. 2 of the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897. In the backdrop of current COVID scenario, it becomes imperative to study the etiological factors, occurrence of causative agents and aerosolisation of the Mucor spores from the environmental samples leading to mucormycosis. The present study was undertaken to check the presence of Mucor spores in the environment so as to find the reinforcing sources of COVID associated mucormycosis. We isolated three strains of Mucor species: Mucor circinelloides and two Mucor hiemalis species, from environmental samples (air, soil and water), all having a positive relevance to mucormycosis. This is the first study on the presence of mucormycosis causing Mucor species in Kashmir environment. In this study, some pathogenicity marker tests were performed to detect the virulence of these fungal strains such as Anti-fungal susceptibility test (AST), biofilm formation and heat stress test. The in vitro antifungal susceptibility of these species showed the major zone of inhibition by Amphotericin B (Amph) and Nystatin (NS), whereas, Fluconazole (FLC) showed no activity. Biofilm was formed by both Mucor species which was confirmed by crystal violet assay (CV) with positive absorbance readings in microplate reader. Under heat stress, pathogenicity marker test was performed in which both species formed considerable aseptate hyphal growth and small scattered spores. During SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) analysis, both the species of Mucor were observed with intact sporangia producing several sporangiospores, whose size dimorphism is linked to its virulence. Thus, augmented knowledge of the epidemiology and clinical presentations of these Mucor species may prevent environmental exposure of immune-compromised patients post-COVID and improve early diagnosis and treatment.

In recent years, several empirical and semiempirical relationships have been proposed to predict the small-strain shear modulus of unsaturated fine-grained soils along different hydraulic and mechanical loadings paths. However, a major deficiency of these relationships is the absence of a coupled linkage between hydraulic and mechanical processes that occur in unsaturated conditions. Specifically, the void ratio and effective stress are considered uncoupled, and changes in soil volume are rarely considered when implementing soil water retention curves in these equations. This study aims to address these deficiencies by discussing the coupled effect of hydraulic and mechanical processes in unsaturated soils and presenting a semiempirical model to predict the small-strain shear modulus, Gmax, of unsaturated low plasticity soils subjected to volume and effective stress changes along different mechanical and hydraulic stress paths. Predictions from this model and three other recently proposed models in the literature are compared with experimental results obtained from a series of suction-controlled bender element tests on silty soil specimens to validate the proposed model. The comparison reveals that the model proposed in this study provides more consistent predictions of the small-strain shear modulus during hydraulic hysteresis, as well as different paths of loading and unloading.

As a non-destructive technique, ground penetrating radar (GPR) is extensively used for detecting underground pipelines. To find out the distribution of underground pipelines and avoid the damage for them. In this paper, the underground pipelines with different materials were simulated using gprMax, i.e., concrete, copper, iron, and PVC pipelines. Peplinski's semi-empirical soil was taken into account to ensure that the soil environment more closely real conditions. In order to get clearer and highlight echo signals, the average method was used. A discussion about different kinds of pipelines B-scan profile to analyze the electromagnetic properties of the microwave propagation in underground media. At last, a comparative analysis was conducted on the B-scan images of the four-pipeline model under uniform soil and simulated soil conditions to evaluate the impact of different soil conditions on the echo signals. Through analyzing the electromagnetic characteristics of underground pipelines to verify the advantages of ground penetrating radar in the measurement of underground pipelines.

Studies of the lunar surface from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data have played a prominent role in the exploration of the lunar surface in recent times. This study uses data from SAR sensors from three Moon missions: Chandrayaan-1 Mini-SAR, Lunar Recon-naissance Orbiter (LRO) Mini-RF and Chandrayaan-2 Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR). DFSAR sensor is the first of its kind to operate at L-band and S-band in fully and hybrid polarimetric modes. Due to the availability of only L-band data out of the two bands (L-and S-band) for the study site, this study only used DFSAR's L-band data. The dielectric characterization and polarimetric analysis of the lunar north polar crater Hermite-A was performed in this study using Chandrayaan-1 Mini-SAR, LRO Mini-RF and Chandrayaan-2 DFSAR data. Hermite-A lies in the Permanently Shadowed Region (PSR) of the lunar north pole and whose PSR ID is NP_879520_3076780. Because of its location within the PSR of the lunar north pole, the Hermite-A makes an ideal candidate for a probable location of water-ice deposits. This work utilizes S-band hybrid polarimetric data of Mini-SAR and Mini-RF and L -band fully polarimetric data of DFSAR for the lunar north polar crater Hermite-A. This study characterizes the scattering mechanisms from three decomposition techniques of Hybrid Polarimetry namely m-delta, m-chi, and m-alpha decompositions, and for fully polari-metric data Barnes decomposition technique was applied which is based on wave dichotomy. Eigenvector and Eigenvalue-based decom-position model (H-A-Alpha decomposition) was also applied to characterize the scattering behavior of the crater. This study utilizes the hybrid-pol and fully polarimetric data-based Integral Equation Model (IEM) to retrieve the values of dielectric constant for Hermite-A crater. The dielectric constant values for the Hermite-A crater from Chandrayaan-1 Mini-SAR and LRO Mini-RF are similar, which goes further in establishing the presence of water-ice in the region. The values of the dielectric constant for Chandrayaan-2 in some regions of the crater especially on the left side of the crater is also around 3 but overall the range is relatively higher than the com-pact/hybrid polarimetric data. The dielectric characterization and polarimetric analysis of the Hermite-A indicatively illustrate that the crater may have surface ice clusters in its walls and on some areas of the crater floor, which can be explored in the future from the synergistic use of remote sensing data and in-situ experiments to confirm the presence of the surface ice clusters.(c) 2022 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The high circular polarization ratio (CPR) was found in the permanently shaded region (PSR) of the Moon poles by Mini -SAR and Mini-RF remote sensing. That is considered as a sign of the presence of water ice. However, high CPR depend on the scattering of rough surface for the lunar surface and the scattering of dihedral angle between distributed rocks are investigated in many studies. In this paper, the surface of the moon and rock in the regolith is regarded as rough surfaces of different roughness. The integral equation method (IEM) and vector radiative transfer (VRT) method are used to analyze the double-bounce scattering between the moon surface and rock surface in the regolith. In order to calculate a larger range of surface roughness scattering models, the Fresnel reflection coefficient of a transition function is presented to modify the IEM. It can be used to obtain the effect of different roughness on CPR.

The climate effects of black carbon (BC) aerosols are sensitive to BC size distributions and this sensitivity over China is studied using a regional climate model, namely RIEMS2.0. A new size-resolved scheme is developed based on observational data. The simulated BC concentrations with the new scheme are better compared with the observation than the previous uniform scheme, which is likely to overestimate BC concentrations, radiative forcings, and warming effects in many regions of China due to its simple assumption on BC size. The simulation with the size-resolved scheme suggests a reduction of the all-sky radiative forcing of BC at the top of atmosphere (TOA) by 0-0.25 W m(-2) over the most study domain. Correspondingly, the warming effect of BC is weakened by -0.04 to -0.16 K over most parts of South China and North China. The difference in BC-induced precipitation between the two schemes varies irregularly from region to region, ranging from -2.8 to 2.8 mm d(-1). With the size-resolved scheme, the BC radiative properties and the climate effects are reassessed and the means (ranges) over the study domain are summarized as follows. The annual mean surface concentration of BC is 0.88 mu g/m(3), ranging from 1 to 8 mu g/m(3) over North China and Central China. The all-sky and clear-sky radiative forcings of BC at the TOA are 0.43 and 0.39 W/m(2), respectively. Over most parts of Southwest China, Central China, and North China, the BC warming effect prevails, with enhanced temperature of 0.04-028 K. BC aerosols usually enhance precipitation in South China and North China, ranging from 0.40 to 2.8 mm d(-1). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Regional Integrated Environmental Model System (RIEMS2.0) and the emission data of 2006 and 2020 were used to simulate the distributions and climate effects of anthropogenic aerosols sulfate, nitrate, black carbon and organic carbon for the entire year of 2006. The results show that: (1)The regional average column burdens of sulfate in 2006 are the largest among the anthropogenic aerosols, followed by organic carbon, nitrate, and black carbon, with the regional average value of 6.0, 4.0, 1.3 and 0.3 mg/m(2), respectively. (2)The regional average radiative forcing (RF) of sulfate, nitrate, organic, and black carbon are -1.32, -0.60, -0.40, and 0.28 W/m(2), respectively. The negative RF of sulfate, nitrate, and organic carbon are larger than the positive RF of black carbon. The net RF of anthropogenic aerosol is -1.96 W/m(2). (3) The radiative effects and temperature change caused by anthropogenic aerosols are sensitive to emission inventory. The column burdens and climate effects of anthropogenic aerosols are strongly influenced by the emission scenarios. In future, the larger emission intensity may cause more considerable negative RF, temperature drop and precipitation reduction.

As part of the development work of the Chinese new regional climate model (RIEMS), the radiative process of black carbon (BC) aerosols has been introduced into the original radiative procedures of RIEMS, and the transport model of BC aerosols has also been established and combined with the RIEMS model. Using the new model system, the distribution of black carbon aerosols and their radiative effect over the China region are investigated. The influences of BC aerosole on the atmospheric radiative transfer and on the air temperature, land surface temperature, and total rainfall are analyzed. It is found that BC aerosols induce a positive radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), which is dominated by shortwave radiative forcing. The maximum radiative forcing occurs in North China in July and in South China in April. At the same time, negative radiative forcing is observed on the surface. Based on the radiative forcing comparison between clear sky and cloudy sky, it is found that cloud can enforce the TOA positive radiative forcing and decrease the negative surface radiative forcing. The responses of the climate system in July to the radiative forcing due to BC aerosols are the decrease in the air temperature in the middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang River and Huaihe area and most areas of South China, and the weak increase or decrease in air temperature over North China. The total rainfall in the middle and lower reaches of the Changjiang River area is increased, but it decreased in North China in July.