Projections of heat stress and associated work performance over India in response to global warming.

Summertime heat stress future projections from multi-model mean of 18 CMIP5 models show unprecedented increasing levels in the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios over India. The estimated heat stress is found to have more impact on the coastal areas of India having exposure to more frequent days of extreme caution to danger category along with the increased probability of occurrence. The explicit amount of change in temperature, increase in the duration and intensity of warm days along with the modulation in large scale circulation in future are seemingly connected to the increasing levels of heat stress over India. A decline of 30 to 40% in the work performance is projected over India by the end of the century due to the elevated heat stress levels which pose great challenges to the country policy makers to design the safety mechanisms and to protect people working under continuous extreme hot weather conditions.

An empirical method for source apportionment of black carbon aerosol: Results from Aethalometer observations at five different locations in India.

Black carbon (BC) aerosol emitted in incomplete combustion processes is known for causing warming in the climate system also poses serious health issues. Identification of the sources of BC is essential for the development of mitigation strategies to regulate their effects in changing climate. Among different observational and analytical techniques currently available, source apportionment methods based on optical measurements are relatively simple. For example, 'Aethalometer model' was developed based on Aethalometer observations. However, there are a few limitations with this model arising from assumption of wavelength and angstrom exponent pairs. We have developed an empirical method which also relies on Aethalometer observations named as 'Two alpha method' which assumes angstrom exponent from fossil fuel as 1 and estimates bio-mass fraction and angstrom exponent for bio-mass burning. This method has been applied to Aethalometer observations from five different locations (rural, semi-urban and urban) over Indian sub-continent to quantify sources of BC. Fossil fuel is found to be the major source of BC (∼70%) irrespective of the location. Collocated measurements of Carbon Monoxide (CO) over rural site correlated well with derived bio-mass fraction. Results from this study demonstrated the capabilities of empirical method and shall provide spatio-temporal variability in sources of BC if applied to more locations.

Identification, synthesis, isolation and spectral characterization of potential impurities of montelukast sodium.

During the process development of montelukast sodium, three polar impurities and one non-polar impurity with respect to montelukast sodium were detected by simple reverse phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Initially, all the four impurities were identified by the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) data and out of four impurities, three have been prepared by the synthetic method and remaining one is isolated by preparative HPLC. Based on the spectral data (IR, (1)H NMR, (13)C NMR and MS), the structure of these impurities 1-4 were characterised as 1-[[[(1R)-1-[3-[(1E)-2-(7-chloro-2-quinolinyl)ethenyl]phenyl-3-[2-(1-hydroxy-1-methylethyl)phenyl]propyl]thio]methyl]cyclopropane acetamide (impurity-1), {1-[1-{3-[2-(7-chloro-quinolin-2-yl)-vinyl]-phenyl}-3-(2-isopropenyl-phenyl)-propylsulfanylmethyl]-cyclopropyl}-acetic acid (impurity-2), 1-[[[(1R)-1-[3-[(1E)-2-(7-chloro-2-quinolinyl)ethyl]phenyl-3-[2-(1-hydroxy-1-methylethyl)phenyl]propyl]thio]methyl]cyclopropaneacetic acid (impurity-3) and 1-[[[(1R)-1-[3-[(1E)-2-(2-quinolinyl)ethenyl]phenyl-3-[2-(1-hydroxy-1-methylethyl)phenyl]propyl]thio]methyl]cyclopropaneacetic acid (impurity-4).