Planning from the Bottom up:

Planning from the Bottom up highlights the gap between the official rhetoric and the political reality of democratic decentralisation and bottom-up planning using an in-depth study of the metropolitan planning process in Kolkata, India. The key issue addressed here is how elected officials at different governmental levels, professional planners, and ordinary citizens interact in the process of metropolitan planning, and which players dominate the process. The focus is on the dynamic interactions between planners and the operation of the political process that shapes this reality. This book illustrates that there are differences in the real motives for the state to pursue decentralisation and what it claims to be behind its decentralisation policy and that the planning process is unlikely to be truly bottom-up if power is concentrated within any one political party. It also depicts how external funding, either from international agencies or higher levels of government, has the potential to force change in the local and regional structures of decision-making so that the voices of ordinary people can be included in public decision-making; for the effective implementation of bottom-up approaches to metropolitan planning the planning bureaucracy needs to be independent of the political class and bottom-up planning requires that planning capacity be built from a grassroots level. This requires devolution of both responsibilities and means/resources to carry out those responsibilities to the lowest level of planning

Drivers of Urban Sprawl in Urbanizing China – A Political Ecology Analysis

Chinese cities have undergone a process of urbanization that has resulted in significant urban sprawl in the past 20 years. This paper uses the \u27ecology of actors\u27 framework to analyze the interactions between various state, market and civil society players that result in excessive land conversion from agricultural to urban use. The paper shows that under the existing institutional setting, the interests of most actors involved in the process are aligned towards greater land development and growth. The more land is developed, the more land lease revenue for the local government, the more profit for developers, and the more opportunities for compensation for farmers. Planning actors have been powerless to apply long term planning principles. There is a need to change the underlying rules of the game so that environmental impacts of land conversion are fully taken into account in the future economic calculations of actors involved in the process

An efficient quantum-classical hybrid algorithm for distorted alphanumeric character identification

An algorithm for image processing is proposed. The proposed algorithm, which can be viewed as a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm, can transform a low-resolution bitonal image of a character from the set of alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9) into a high-resolution image. The quantum part of the proposed algorithm fruitfully utilizes a variant of Grover's search algorithm, known as the fixed point search algorithm. Further, the quantum part of the algorithm is simulated using CQASM and the advantage of the algorithm is established through the complexity analysis. Additional analysis has also revealed that this scheme for optical character recognition (OCR) leads to high confidence value and generally works in a more efficient manner compared to the existing classical, quantum, and hybrid algorithms for a similar task.Comment: A quantum-assisted algorithm for optical character recognition (OCR) is proposed using fixed point Grover's algorith

Tm-Yb doped optical fiber performance with variation of host-glass composition

The fabrication process of Thulium-Ytterbium doped optical fiber comprising different host glass through the Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition (MCVD) coupled with solution doping technique is presented. The material and optical performance of different fibers are compared with special emphasis on their lasing efficiency for 2 µm application

A novel compound β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside isolated from Azadirachta indica effectively induces apoptosis in leukemic cells by targeting G0/G1 populations

Azadirachta indica, popularly known as ‘Neem’, is a very important plant in the Ayurveda system of medicine. It is known toprevent about 40 types of diseases in home-practice. A previous report showed that the methanolic extract of this plant can effectively control the proliferation of leukemia cells. Therefore, this research focuses on searching for a new molecule with potent anti-leukemic property. Ethanolic extract was prepared from the dried leaves. Four bio-molecules were isolated viz. rutin, isoquercetin, quercetrin and β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside from the ethanolic extract by repeated column chromatography and HPLC. Quercetrin structures of the isolated molecules were confirmed by Mass, 1HNMR, 13C NMR spectra analysis. MTT assay revealed that β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucosideeffectively reduced the proliferation of MOLT 4 leukemic cells in a dose and time dependent manner. DAPI staining with confocal microscopy indicated that β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside efficiently induced nuclear DNA fragmentation in MOLT 4 cells. Finally, flow cytometry after PI staining showed that the compound has potential to check the cell cycle progression at sub G1 phase. In summary, we can conclude that β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside has potential to be good therapeutic drug in leukemia treatment in future

A novel compound β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside isolated from Azadirachta indica effectively induces apoptosis in leukemic cells by targeting G0/G1 populations

27-32Azadirachta indica, popularly known as ‘Neem’, is an important plant in the Ayurveda system of medicine. It is known to prevent about at least 40 types of diseases in home-practice. A previous report showed that the methanolic extract of this plant can effectively control proliferation of leukemia cells. Here, we explored the eEthanolic extract dried neem leaves for a new molecule with potent anti-leukemic property.Four biomolecules were isolated viz. rutin, isoquercetin, quercetrin and β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside from the ethanolic extract by repeated column chromatography and HPLC.Quercetrin structures of the isolated molecules were confirmed by Mass, 1HNMR, 13C NMR spectra analysis. MTT assay revealed that β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside effectively reduced the proliferation of MOLT 4 leukemic cells in a dose and time dependent manner. DAPI staining with confocal microscopy indicated that β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside efficiently induced nuclear DNA fragmentation in MOLT 4 cells. Finally, flow cytometry after PI staining showed that the compound has potential to check the cell cycle progression at sub G1 phase. With the available results, it can be concluded that β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucoside has potential to be good therapeutic drug in leukemia treatment

Ethnic Diversity, Social Norms and Elite Capture: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia

Elite capture is a natural concern regarding decentralisation. We highlight the effects of ethnic diversity and social norms on the extent of such capture. Ethnic diversity, through differences in the preference for public goods, facilitates capture. However, this may be counteracted by social norms which promote cooperative behaviour within communities. We test these theoretical predictions using community-level data from the 1997 and 2007 Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) rounds with fiscal decentralisation being implemented in between. We exploit a particular institutional feature of Indonesian communities | namely, the observance of traditional "Adat" laws to proxy coordination across ethnic groups. Overall, we find that ethnic diversity depresses community-level development spending after decentralisation, particularly where Adat laws (which promote an ethic of mutual co-operation) are not followed. The opposite is observed for spending on non-developmental items