The research paper, "Microstructure and Properties of Welded 15CDV6 Alloy Steel", by B V R Ravi Kumar and J S Soni, studies the differences in macro and microstructure of weldments made on 15CDV6 alloy steel using gas tungsten arc welding with non-pulsed and pulsed current at frequencies of 2, 4 and 6 Hz, respectively. The study aims to improve the mechanical integrity of the weldments. Weld joint efficiency of the material at different welding process parameters has been studied and explained in terms of the microstructure of the weldment.

Skeletochronology is one of the major techniques of age determination that studies the presence of growth layers in the long bones by counting the Lines of Arrested Growth (LAG). This technique is convenient and suitable for investigating the population age structure in nature without killing animals. Many important aspects of population life history can be elucidated from such studies. In the paper, "Estimation of Age and Growth by Skeletochronology in Paddy Field Frog, Rana limnocharis", amphibian demographic investigations have been carried out by B N Andia, P K Dixit, S Behera, G Mishra and H N Behera. The growth rate, longevity, and the age at first breeding have already been clarified in populations of various amphibian species. On the basis of the results obtained on the analysis of age structure, age at first reproduction and growth pattern of those species whose local populations have been markedly declining, immediate conservation measures could be taken.

The paper, "HDL Implementation of Sine-Cosine Function Using CORDIC Algorithm in 32-Bit Floating Point Format", by Ashutosh Gupta, Manoj Duhan and Solomon Raju Kota, proposes a novel way to implement sine and cosine functions in CORDIC algorithm with efficient architectures. The Jack E Volder's CORDIC algorithm has been derived from the general equations for vector rotation and the value of sine and cosine functions have been calculated in IEEE-754-1985 standardized single precision floating point format. The algorithm has been implemented in FPGA using VHDL. The main advantage of the technique would be that the normalization scheme used reduces error and relatively long streams of data could be processed with no extra hardware.

Video indexing consists of describing the content of audiovisual sequences from a video database to allow their retrieval. This concerns television archives, digital libraries, video servers, and digital broadcasting. Video content includes characters, objects, dialogues and specific events occurring in a video. Traditional text-based retrieval methods cannot be used in video indexing due to the fact that the multimodal nature of video data makes it flabby. Although a number of techniques have been reported for shot transition detection, use of neural network as a tool has gained popularity in recent times. The paper, "Exploiting Shot Transition Detection for Video Indexing and Retrieval", by M Kalaiselvi Geetha and S Palanivel, proposes a novel algorithm to detect shot changes in a video stream using Autoassociative Neural Network (AANN). The authors conclude that detecting shots of less than two seconds duration is possible using this technique.

The field of antenna engineering is central to all wireless technologies, which plays a vital role in the successful deployment of network systems. Some of the requirements imposed on an antenna are: it should be relatively cheap and easy to manufacture; should be light weight and compact with a low profile but have a robust body; and should be environment friendly. The microstrip patch antenna fulfills these requirements, although non-relenting efforts are still on to further miniaturize the antenna. The paper, "Design of Microstrip Patch Antennas Using Neural Network", by Vivek Singh Kushwah and Geetam Singh Tomar, presents the general design of rectangular microstrip antennas, where artificial neural networks have been employed for obtaining the rectangular patch geometry with high accuracy for selective band of frequencies.

Combination of various kinds of artificial intelligence theories in application area of pattern recognition has become one of the most important ways of research in the field of intelligent information processing. Neural network shows a strong ability to solve complex problems for pattern recognition. However, use of neural network in isolation for deriving redundant information from a huge amount of data, could lead to problems, such as too complex network structure, long training time, low converging speed and long computation. The paper, "A Hybrid Approach of Neural Network and Rough Set Theory for Prediction of Fertility Rate from IVF Outcomes", by K Meena and M Durairaj, proposes a method to combine rough set theory with neural network theory and used it in prediction of fertility rate from in-vitro fertilization outcomes. A new Rough Neural Network (RNN) algorithm for the proposed hybrid approach in order to predict semen fertility rate is described. The experimental results support the improved prediction performance of the proposed algorithm.

Performance analysis systems are a specific class of computerized information systems, that support decision-making activities. This would be very useful in the comparative evaluation of maintenance strategies. The paper, "Performance Analysis of a Cattle Feed Plant", by Deepika Garg, Jai Singh and Kuldeep Kumar, presents a performance analysis system for a cattle feed plant. The system for the cattle feed plant has been developed with the help of a mathematical formulation based on birth-death Markov Process, using probabilistic approach. The system performance has been studied for various availability levels for different combinations of failures and repair rates of the subsystems making up the plant. The authors conclude that the elevator is the most critical subsystem and should be given top priority, as the effect of its failure/repair rates on the unit availability is much higher than that of other subsystems.

-- Elizabeth Zacharias
Consulting Editor