Harnessing India’s Demographic Dividend through Skilling: Challenges and Way Forward

The ‘demographic dividend’ provides India with strong advantages for achieving high rates of growth powered by an enlarging working age population. This represents a huge opportunity for the country to increase productivity by investing in the skills of the working age population. A vast majority of who have limited access to education and training; are either inactive or engaged in low-skilled work in the informal economy. India’s demography therefore, presents a potential danger also; if the labour market is not made more inclusive through a balanced approach to human capital development, the consequences of demographic failure could be grave. To capitalize on the demographic bulge, the Government has undertaken a number of policy initiatives, programmatic and systemic interventions. Efforts are being made to equip youth with the skills required by today’s industries and address the demand & supply gaps, but this is turning out to be a daunting task. In this context, the present article analyses the current state of education, skills development and employment for Indian youth and discusses some major challenges India faces while implementing different initiatives and strategies for developing a robust skilling ecosystem. The article also highlights certain emerging issues which merit immediate policy attention if skill development is to be a means for achieving inclusive development

Prediction of indoor temperature in an institutional building

The importance of predicting building indoor temperature is inevitable to execute an effective energy management strategy in an institutional building. An accurate prediction of building indoor temperature not only contributes to improved thermal comfort conditions but also has a role in building heating and cooling energy conservation. To predict the indoor temperature accurately, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been used in this study because of its performance superiority to deal with the time-series data as cited in past studies. Network architecture is the most important part of ANN for predicting accurately without overfitting the data. In this study, as a part of determining the optimal network architecture, important input parameters related to the output has been sorted out first. Next, prediction models have been developed for building indoor temperature using real data. Initially, spring season of Australia was selected for data collection. During model development three different training algorithms have been used and the performance of these training algorithms has been evaluated in this study based on prediction accuracy, generalization capability and iteration time to train the algorithm. From results Lovenberg-Marquardt has been found the best-suited training algorithm for short-term prediction of indoor space temperature. Afterwards, residual analysis has been used as a technique to verify the validation result. Finally, the result has been justified by applying a similar approach to another building case and using two different weather data-sets of two different seasons: summer and winter of Australia

“PREVALENCE OF SHOULDER PAIN IN PETROL PUMP WORKERS”

Shoulder pain (SP) is the most common problem in workers exposed to repetitive shoulder activity in their occupation. The petrol pump workers, who have repetitive activities of shoulder joint by picking and keeping the nozzle at petrol pump station.  This repetitive activity increases the demand on the muscles, ligaments, soft tissues of musculoskeletal system. This activity is carried out in standing posture. So the purpose of the present study is to know the prevalence of shoulder pain in petrol pump workers. So, the aim of the present study the prevalence of shoulder pain in petrol pump workers. A Observational –Cross sectional study done on 100 Petrol Pump Workers selected randomly with the job profile of filling the fuel with nozzle in vehicles 20 – 40 years of age  working since > 6months, without any shoulder injury, trauma and  neurological musculoskeletal problem. Questionnaire was prepared and validated. Non Parametric Test Were Applied. In this study only 49% Petrol Pump Workers people had shoulder pain where as 51% did not shoulder pain had. The study shows that Petrol Pump workers ageing from 31 – 40 years who have experience of profession more than 5 years often suffer from shoulder pain which may be associated with repetitive activity of shoulder and faulty posture while working

Enhanced regeneration in explants of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) with the treatment of coconut water

A standardized protocol was developed to enhance the in vitro regeneration efficiency of five varieties of tomato from hypocotyls and leaf disc with the involvement of coconut water. Different concentrations of IAA and kinetin were used alone and in combination with 12% of coconut water.Significant differences for regeneration, time taken to regenerate and number of leaf primordial were observed for different treatments, type of explant, use of coconut water and also among varieties. Higher regeneration was obtained in Avinash followed by Roma and Rio Grande. Maximum regeneration 95.75% was obtained with 0.5 mgL-1 of IAA, 1.5 mgL-1 Kinetin along with 12% coconut water in Avinash and hypocotyl was proved to be better for regeneration than leaf discs. The inclusionof coconut water in the media significantly reduced the number of days taken for callus induction leading to regeneration, as compared to media without coconut water. Significant increase in number of shoot primordial was observed in hypocotyls as well as in leaf disc derived calli with the addition of coconut water. Plants obtained were transferred to the glass house in small pots of compost and higher frequency of survival was observed from plantlets obtained with the addition of coconut water

Remediation of wastewater by biosynthesized manganese oxide nanoparticles and its effects on development of wheat seedlings

IntroductionNanoparticles play a vital role in environmental remediation on a global scale. In recent years, there has been an increasing demand to utilize nanoparticles in wastewater treatment due to their remarkable physiochemical properties.MethodsIn the current study, manganese oxide nanoparticles (MnO-NPs) were synthesized from the Bacillus flexus strain and characterized by UV/Vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.ResultsThe objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of biosynthesized MnO-NPs to treat wastewater. Results showed the photocatalytic degradation and adsorption potential of MnO-NPs for chemical oxygen demand, sulfate, and phosphate were 79%, 64%, and 64.5%, respectively, depicting the potential of MnO-NPs to effectively reduce pollutants in wastewater. The treated wastewater was further utilized for the cultivation of wheat seedlings through a pot experiment. It was observed that the application of treated wastewater showed a significant increase in growth, physiological, and antioxidant attributes. However, the application of treated wastewater led to a significant decrease in oxidative stress by 40%.DiscussionIt can be concluded that the application of MnO-NPs is a promising choice to treat wastewater as it has the potential to enhance the growth, physiological, and antioxidant activities of wheat seedlings

RNA Structural Dynamics As Captured by Molecular Simulations: A Comprehensive Overview

With both catalytic and genetic functions, ribonucleic acid (RNA) is perhaps the most pluripotent chemical species in molecular biology, and its functions are intimately linked to its structure and dynamics. Computer simulations, and in particular atomistic molecular dynamics (MD), allow structural dynamics of biomolecular systems to be investigated with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution. We here provide a comprehensive overview of the fast-developing field of MD simulations of RNA molecules. We begin with an in-depth, evaluatory coverage of the most fundamental methodological challenges that set the basis for the future development of the field, in particular, the current developments and inherent physical limitations of the atomistic force fields and the recent advances in a broad spectrum of enhanced sampling methods. We also survey the closely related field of coarse-grained modeling of RNA systems. After dealing with the methodological aspects, we provide an exhaustive overview of the available RNA simulation literature, ranging from studies of the smallest RNA oligonucleotides to investigations of the entire ribosome. Our review encompasses tetranucleotides, tetraloops, a number of small RNA motifs, A-helix RNA, kissing-loop complexes, the TAR RNA element, the decoding center and other important regions of the ribosome, as well as assorted others systems. Extended sections are devoted to RNA-ion interactions, ribozymes, riboswitches, and protein/RNA complexes. Our overview is written for as broad of an audience as possible, aiming to provide a much-needed interdisciplinary bridge between computation and experiment, together with a perspective on the future of the field

Technological advancement of energy management facility of institutional buildings: A case study

An efficient energy management system in commercial/institutional buildings can reduce energy consumption and operational cost and provide a comfortable and healthy indoor environment. However, without incorporating energy-efficient technologies and analysing the resulting performance the building energy management system may not provide effective control over energy consumption and the indoor environmental conditions. To verify system performance, it is necessary to study the building energy efficiency, examine building indoor environment and investigate existing operational strategies. This can eventually give the actual energy scenario of the building exploring problems existing within the system and opportunities for further upgrade paths that are both technologically and economically sustainable. To get the actual scenario of building energy management facilities, an institutional building of Murdoch University, Australia that incorporated state of the art technologies in the last two decades will be studied in this paper. Through this case study analysis salient information is revealed that will bring benefits to the energy management personnel as well as researchers in this area

Tuning approach of dynamic control strategy of temperature set-point for existing commercial buildings

Indoor environmental parameters especially the air temperature have substantial effect on energy consumption in commercial buildings and indoor thermal comfort. This study presents a tuning approach of dynamic control strategy of temperature set-point with a view to improving occupants' thermal comfort while simultaneously minimizing energy consumption. To determine optimum temperature set-points in response to ambient conditions, this study investigates the thermal comfort conditions of a commercial building based on real time series data. To quantify thermal environmental conditions for human occupancy, this study uses the graphical comfort zone method proposed by ASHRAE Standard 55-2017 through a rigorous analysis. Based on this analysis the study narrows down the comfort range in the context of seasonal variations and proposes tuning the Master Temperature Set-Points (MTSP) with 4.8°C variable linear band between upper and lower temperatures dependent on a simple algorithm. This re-setting strategy of temperature set-point ultimately offers extended lower and upper boundary limit for variable linear band. Extension of linear band for MTSP reduces the gap between temperature set-point and outdoor temperature which ultimately offers less heating and cooling energy consumption. Results show that implementation of this proposed approach would lead to monthly 2707.94 kWh energy savings either from heating or cooling or both during winter and summer season