To outsource or not to outsource!

In this article we will take a look at the phenomena of outsourcing as an overarching business concept that is, in short, about contracting of a specific bit of our business to a third part organisation. Consequently, outsourcing is a natural part of the make, share or buy continuum, as illustrated in Figure 1. We would, therefore, argue that outsourcing is not a new business phenomena as it has been commonly practiced since the early times of industrialisation, even though recently it has been enjoying renewed attention fuelled by the globalising forces

Role of Panchayati Raj Institutions in Early Childhood Care Education in Himachal Pradesh- An Appraisal

Early Childhood Care Education (ECCE) is an indispensable foundation for lifelong learning and development and has critical impact of success at the primary stage of education. It is therefore becomes imperative to accord priority attention to ECCE (Govt. of India, 2012). Research has also indicated that if these early years are not supported by, or embedded in, a stimulating and enriching physical and psychosocial environment, the chances of the child’s brain developing to its full potential are considerably, and often irreversibly, reduced. The Govt.of India has emphasizes the role of panchayatiraj institution in planning and implementation of ECCE programmes. The emphasis is laid on the direct involvement of panchayatiraj institutions to oversee the management of ECCE (Govt. of India,2012). In Himachal Pradesh panchayati raj institutions have been involved in monitoring, supervision of ECCE/anganwadi centres and identification of beneficiaries (Govt. of Himachal Pradesh, 2011).Panchayats are authorise to check regularity of functioning of anganwadi centres, ensure coverage of all eligible beneficiaries, ensure the coordination with department like health and family welfare, panchayati raj and education, ensure non-formal pre-school education at anganwadi centres, improving infrastructure, ensure distribution of food and health services, construction of anganwadi centres in its areas, providing infrastructure facilities and other logistic support to facilitate implementation of the programme (Govt. of Himachal Prsdesh, 2010). It is against this background that the research was conducted to find out the role of panchayati raj institution in ECCE. The six districts of Himachal Pradesh were surveyed. The multi-staged and simple random sampling technique was used to select the 180 anganwadi workers, 120 members of gram panchayats and 60 members of panchayat samiti. The data collected was summarized into frequencies and percentage.The findings of the study revealed that the role of Panchayati Raj Institutions in supporting Anganwadi services is found to be wanting in several respects

Current requirements by electro hydrodynamic filter systems under shipboard operation conditions

An experimental study was performed to determine the current required by an ElectroHydrodynamic (EHD) filter system to clean contaminants from Diesel Engine Lubrication Oil under normal shipboard operation conditions. The amount of current at a set predetermined voltage, which together means Power, was needed in order to anticipate the power required to perform a Shipboard Site Test Evaluation of the EHD filter. The filter uses the effect of dielectrophoresis to separate contaminants from the lubrication oil. The filter operates at two thousand volts (2KV ac-rms) and thus requires substantial current to energize its electrodes. This type of Power is not normally readily available from typical power systems. In order to develop a power system for the filter, the required power, voltage and current needed to be determined. The laboratory experiments performed were conducted under typical operating conditions of the diesel lube oil. The normal operation temperature of diesel lube oil is 240 degrees Fahrenheit. Various parameters, which effect the current requirement, were examined in order to well define the current requirements for all the anticipated conditions. The parameters include temperature, voltage, frequency, flow rate, and contamination level of the oil

HiPHET: A Hybrid Approach to Translate Code Mixed Language (Hinglish) to Pure Languages (Hindi and English)

Bilingual code mixed (hybrid) languages has become very popular in India as a result of the spread of Western technology in the form of the television, the Internet and social media. Due to this increase in usage of code-mixed languages in day-to-day communication, the need for maintaining the integrity of Indian languages has arisen. As a result of this need the tool named Hinglish to Pure Hindi and English Translator was developed. The tool translated in three ways, namely, Hinglish to Pure Hindi and Pure English, Pure Hindi to Pure English and vice versa. The tool has achieved accuracy of 91% in giving Hindi sentences as output and of 84% in giving English sentences as output, where the input sentences were in Hinglish. The tool has also been compared with another similar tool in the paper

Effect of Saakshar Bharat Mission in Chamba District of Himachal Pradesh

This paper examines the effect of the Saakshar Bharat Mission- 2012 in the district Chamba of Himachal Pradesh. Saakshar Bharat Mission was launched on the International Literacy Day, 8th September, 2009. The rationale behind the programme is to create a literate society through a variety of teaching learning programme for non-literate and neo-literate adults in the age group of 15 years and above with the prime focus on women. The programme is mainly focused on women as the magnitude of illiteracy among women is very high. Only 54.16% of women are literate as per 2001 census. The programme included 365 districts. These are those districts in which the female literacy rate is found to be less than 50% according to 2001 census. In Himachal Pradesh, Chamba district has been selected for the same as the female literacy rate according to 2001 census was 48.8%. Saaskshar Bharat Mission has left positive effect on the literacy rate of Himachal Pradesh. The literacy rate of Himachal Pradesh indicates an increase of 7.30% in 2011 census. The male (5.48%) and female (9.18%) literacy rate of Himachal Pradesh also increased. The district Chamba of Himachal Pradesh indicates an increase in literacy rate by 10.28% from 2001 to 2011. The male and female literacy rate in Chamba district is increased by 7.78% to 13.29% from 2001 to 2011. As far as gender gap in district Chamba is concerned it is decreased by 5.51%

Enhancing Accuracy of Disease Prediction of KNN and Euclidean Distance using Hybrid Approach

Health monitoring is critical issue associated with now day lifestyle. Lack of time is causing serious issues corresponding to health. Proposed literature focus on this key aspect and provide mechanism to generate accurate predictions corresponding to parameters fetched from dataset. Hybrid approach of K Nearest neighbour and Euclidean distance is used for enhancement in health prediction. For demonstration dataset derived from UCI is utilized. Simulation results suggest considerable improvement over KNN and Euclidean distance mechanism during prediction

Seasonal Assessment of Heavy Metal Pollution in Tropical Mangrove Sediments (Goa, India)

Mangrove swamps along the Mandovi estuary, Goa are exposed to an influx of metal effluents from the ferromanganese mining activities.  The present study was carried out to assess the seasonal concentrations of metals in the sediments of Divar, an anthropogenically-influenced mangrove swamp in the Mandovi estuary, and compared to Tuvem along the Chapora River, a relatively pristine mangrove site. In both the sites, the average heavy metal concentration in sediments decreased in the order: Fe > Mn > Zn > Cu > Co > Pb > Cr and showed a marked seasonal variability (p< 0.001; df=2).  However, the Pollution Load Index (PLI) for Divar sediments was far greater (1.65-2.19) than that of Tuvem (0.91-1.3) reflecting the intensity of anthropogenic inputs into the ecosystem. Further, Muller geochemical index values for Divar sediments indicated that during pre and post-monsoon season, the sediments were moderately contaminated with Fe whereas at Tuvem, the sediments were below contamination levels. The comparison with Screening Quick Reference Table (SQuiRT) also revealed the poor sediment quality for Divar. The transport of ferromanganese ore along the Mandovi River could be a major source of the entry of heavy metals in this riverine system. The Effect Range- Low (ER-L) values for these elements exceeded the reference values suggesting a potential eco-toxicological risk to the benthic organisms and a possible transfer to higher trophic levels

Comparative Study of Gaussian and Nearest Mean Classifiers for Filtering Spam E-mails

The development of data-mining applications such as classification and clustering has shown the need for machine learning algorithms to be applied to large scale data. The article gives an overview of some of the most popular machine learning methods (Gaussian and Nearest Mean) and of their applicability to the problem of spam e-mail filtering. The aim of this paper is to compare and investigate the effectiveness of classifiers for filtering spam e-mails using different matrices. Since spam is increasingly becoming difficult to detect, so these automated techniques will help in saving lot of time and resources required to handle e-mail messages

Prospective study to assess functional outcomes in patients undergoing single bundle arthroscopic reconstruction of primary anterior cruciate ligament tear comparing with bone quadriceps tendon versus hamstring tendon autograft

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are one of the most common ligament injuries of knee. Arthroscopic ACL reconstruction has become the standard of care for ACL injuries in the active patient. In present study good bone quadriceps tendon (BQT) autograft and hamstring tendon (HT) autograft will be used for primary arthroscopic ACL reconstruction and its data regarding clinical and functional results will be evaluated and compared.Methods: Sixty patients underwent isolated ACL reconstruction. 30 underwent ACL reconstruction with the BQT and 30 with the HT. The same surgical technique, fixation method and postoperative protocol were used in both groups. Functional outcome in terms of International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) score, joint stability (anterior drawer, Lachman, pivot shift), anterior knee pain and isokinetic strength was evaluated.Results: IKDC score in bone quadriceps tendon and hamstring tendon group after 9 months follow up showing no statistical significance. The negative Lachman component was higher in the BQT group than in the HT group. There was no difference between groups in terms of isokinetic strength.Conclusions: Our study shows no statistically significant difference between both groups