Although offshore freshened groundwater (OFG) systems have been documented in numerous continental margins worldwide, their geometry, controls and emplacement dynamics remain poorly constrained. Here we integrate controlled-source electromagnetic, seismic reflection and borehole data with hydrological modelling to quantitatively characterise a previously unknown OFG system near Canterbury, New Zealand. The OFG system consists of one main, and two smaller, low salinity groundwater bodies. The main body extends up to 60 km from the coast and a seawater depth of 110 m. We attribute along-shelf variability in salinity to permeability heterogeneity due to permeable conduits and normal faults, and to recharge from rivers during sea level lowstands. A meteoric origin of the OFG and active groundwater migration from onshore are inferred. However, modelling results suggest that the majority of the OFG was emplaced via topographically-driven flow during sea level lowstands in the last 300 ka. Global volumetric estimates of OFG will be significantly revised if active margins, with steep coastal topographies like the Canterbury margin, are considered.

Twenty eight surface water samples were collected from fourteen sites of the West Bokaro coalfield, India. The concentration of Mn, Cu, Zn, Ni, As, Se, Al, Cr, Ba, and Fe were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for determination of seasonal fluctuations and a heavy metal pollution index (HPI). The HPI values were below the critical pollution index value of 100. Metal concentrations were higher in the pre-monsoon season as compared to the post-monsoon season. The Zn, Ni, Mn, As, Se, Al, Ba, Cu, and Cr concentrations did not exceed the desirable limits for drinking water in either season. However, at many sites, concentrations of Fe were above the desirable limit of the WHO (2006) and Indian drinking water standard (BIS 2003) in both seasons. The water that contained higher concentrations of Fe would require treatment before domestic use.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are commonly used for diagnosis of epilepsy. In this paper, we present a new methodology for EEG-based automated diagnosis of epilepsy. Our method involves detection of key points at multiple scales in EEG signals using a pyramid of difference of Gaussian filtered signals. Local binary patterns (LBPs) are computed at these key points and the histogram of these patterns are considered as the feature set, which is fed to the support vector machine (SVM) for the classification of EEG signals. The proposed methodology has been investigated for the four well-known classification problems namely, 1) normal and epileptic seizure, 2) epileptic seizure and seizure free, 3) normal, epileptic seizure, and seizure free, and 4) epileptic seizure and nonseizure EEG signals using publically available university of Bonn EEG database. Our experimental results in terms of classification accuracies have been compared with existing methods for the classification of the aforementioned problems. Further, performance evaluation on another EEG dataset shows that our approach is effective for classification of seizure and seizure-free EEG signals. The proposed methodology based on the LBP computed at key points is simple and easy to implement for real-time epileptic seizure detection.

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The hydrogeochemical study of surface water in Pratapgarh district has been carried out to assess the major ion chemistry and water quality for drinking and domestic purposes. For this purpose, twenty-five surface water samples were collected from river, ponds and canals and analysed for pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids (TDS), turbidity, hardness, major cations (Ca 2? , Mg 2? , Na ? and K ? ), major anions (HCO 3 -, F -, Cl -, NO 3 -, SO 4 2-) and dissolved silica concentration. The analytical results show mildly acidic to alkaline nature of surface water resources of Pratapgarh district. HCO 3 -and Cl -are the dominant anions, while cation chemistry is dominated by Na ? and Ca 2? . The statistical analysis and data plotted on the Piper diagram reveals that the surface water chemistry is mainly controlled by rock weathering with secondary contributions from agriculture and anthropogenic sources. Ca 2? -Mg 2? -HCO 3 -, Ca 2? -Mg 2? -Cland Na ? -HCO 3 --Cl -are the dominant hydrogeochemical facies in the surface water of the area. For quality assessment, values of analysed parameters were compared with Indian and WHO water quality standards, which shows that the concentrations of TDS, F -, NO 3 -, Na ? , Mg 2? and total hardness are exceeding the desirable limits in some water samples. Water Quality Index (WQI) is one of the most effective tools to communicate information on the quality of any water body. The computed WQI values of Pratapgarh district surface water range from 28 to 198 with an average value of 82, and more than half of the study area is under excellent to good category.

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One hundred two groundwater samples were collected from the Bokaro district of Jharkhand state, India, during the pre-and post-monsoon seasons of the year 2014-2015. In the present study, groundwater samples were analysed for pH, TDS, TH,