POST-PULWAMA INDO-PAK CONFLICT: RECONNOITERING THE ROLE OF SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION

Terrorism has emerged as one of the major challenges for the Eurasian regional peace, security, and cooperation. Keeping these challenges in perspective, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established to eliminate the menace of terrorism, fundamentalism, and secessionism. Against this background, the main objectives of this paper are to examine how terrorism emerged as a major determining factor in the Indo-Pak relations and how the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), was failed to play its effective role in the Indo-Pak conflict given the Pulwama terror attack. For this research, descriptive and analytical methods were used and the data was collected from secondary sources. The major findings of this article are that terrorism has emerged as one of the major determinants of Indo-Pak relations and the same has become a major challenge for the SCO to resolve the issue. Against the background of terror attacks, it was anticipated that the SCO would play a crucial role to pacify the situation. However, the role played by the SCO in this situation proved marked as a Whack-a-Mole.&nbsp

Ultrasensitive interplay between ferromagnetism and superconductivity in NbGd composite thin films

A model binary hybrid system composed of a randomly distributed rare-earth ferromagnetic (Gd) part embedded in an s-wave superconducting (Nb) matrix is being manufactured to study the interplay between competing superconducting and ferromagnetic order parameters. The normal metallic to superconducting phase transition appears to be very sensitive to the magnetic counterpart and the modulation of the superconducing properties follow closely to the Abrikosov-Gorkov (AG) theory of magnetic impurity induced pair breaking mechanism. A critical concentration of Gd is obtained for the studied NbGd based composite films (CFs) above which superconductivity disappears. Besides, a magnetic ordering resembling the paramagnetic Meissner effect (PME) appears in DC magnetization measurements at temperatures close to the superconducting transition temperature. The positive magnetization related to the PME emerges upon doping Nb with Gd. The temperature dependent resistance measurements evolve in a similar fashion with the concentration of Gd as that with an external magnetic field and in both the cases, the transition curves accompany several intermediate features indicating the traces of magnetism originated either from Gd or from the external field. Finally, the signatures of magnetism appear evidently in the magnetization and transport measurements for the CFs with very low (less than 1 at. %) doping of Gd

Factoring the smart power in the India-European Union engagements: a scoping review

Power is a critical factor in several types of diplomacy. India-EU relations are a classic case of how changing geopolitics prompted diplomatic acumen. This scoping review assesses the changing relations of both partners as a manifestation of Smart Power. The dynamic relations from normative-based to pragmatic and inclusive interests based are evaluated. Their value-based relations are put under international relations theories. Their changing factors of cooperation are used to justify their smart diplomacy, where contemporary relations are less likely to be affected by multilateral interests. To solidify claims of smart power in their relations, the recent TRIPS waiver schism illuminated health diplomacy between the two regions. This health diplomacy discourse promotes smart power diplomacy between India and the EU, where new avenues of cooperation emerge despite pandemic disagreements. The article explores how hybrid power is better than soft and hard power in silos by systematically searching and selecting the existing knowledge in the contemporary context

In-Vitro Studies on the Antioxidant Assay Profiling of Root of Withania somnifera L. (Ashwagandha) Dunal: Part 2

The anti-oxidative activities of six different extracts of Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha) root, prepared in a sequential manner starting from non-polar (hexane) to polar (water) solvent, were investigated employing various established in-vitro systems that include total antioxidant activity (TAA), total reducing power (TRP), nitric oxide scavenging activity (NOSA) and lipid peroxidation inhibition activity (LPIA). Among all the extracts, methanol extract was found the most potent and additionally, its DNA damage protective efficacy was tested using pRSET-A vector system. Positive correlations were established between total polyphenolic contents (TPC) and various activities strongly suggesting that the observed activities of the extracts may be ascribed to their phenolic compounds that could be responsible, at least partly, for the observed antioxidant activities. Six main compounds viz. alkaloids, hydroxybenzene, terpene ansteroid, saponin, organic acids and flavone were identified in methanol extract using thin layer chromatography (TLC) while by employing reverse-phase high pressure liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) four polyphenols namely epicatechin (3.21 μg/g), quercetin-3-rhamnoside (1.12 μg/g), gallic acid (0.05 μg/g) and rutin hydrate (0.01 μg/g) were identified and quantified in aforementioned extract. Overall, the results of study clearly demonstrated that methanolic extract of Ashwagandha root possesses a marked antioxidant activity

Comparison of single spot urinary albumin-creatinine ratio with 24-hour urinary protein excretion in women with preeclampsia

Background: The measurement of albumin: creatinine ratio (ACR) in a spot urine sample avoids the influence of variation in urinary solute concentration and provides a more convenient and rapid method to assess protein excretion. The aim of this study was to evaluate urinary spot ACR as a new marker for proteinuria and to study its correlation and accuracy in comparison with 24-hour urinary protein.Methods: The prospective one-year study was conducted on 100 pregnant women, 18-40 years, >20 weeks gestation with a diagnosis of preeclampsia. A spot midstream urine sample was taken for detection of albuminuria by dipstick method. Another spot sample was taken for detection and calculation of spot ACR. The 24-hour urine collection was taken immediately afterward to evaluate 24-hour urinary protein excretion.Results: A positive linear relation exists between ACR and 24-hour urinary protein excretion The ROC revealed cut-off of 20.4 with 88.5% sensitivity, 75% specificity, 98.8% positive predictive value and 21.4% negative predictive value. Spot urinary ACR >20.4 correctly identified women having 24-hour urinary protein excretion in excess of 0.3 gm/DL.Conclusions: A strong correlation exists between single spot urinary ACR with 24-hour urinary protein excretion in women with preeclampsia

Audio-visual video face hallucination with frequency supervision and cross modality support by speech based lip reading loss

Recently, there has been numerous breakthroughs in face hallucination tasks. However, the task remains rather challenging in videos in comparison to the images due to inherent consistency issues. The presence of extra temporal dimension in video face hallucination makes it non-trivial to learn the facial motion through out the sequence. In order to learn these fine spatio-temporal motion details, we propose a novel cross-modal audio-visual Video Face Hallucination Generative Adversarial Network (VFH-GAN). The architecture exploits the semantic correlation of between the movement of the facial structure and the associated speech signal. Another major issue in present video based approaches is the presence of blurriness around the key facial regions such as mouth and lips - where spatial displacement is much higher in comparison to other areas. The proposed approach explicitly defines a lip reading loss to learn the fine grain motion in these facial areas. During training, GANs have potential to fit frequencies from low to high, which leads to miss the hard to synthesize frequencies. Therefore, to add salient frequency features to the network we add a frequency based loss function. The visual and the quantitative comparison with state-of-the-art shows a significant improvement in performance and efficacy

HybridSGSA: SexualGA and Simulated Annealing based Hybrid Algorithm for Grid Scheduling

Scheduling jobs on computational grids is a compute intensive problem. Existing methods are unable to perform the required breakthrough in terms of time and cost. A Grid scheduler must use the available resources efficiently, while satisfying competing and mutually conflicting goals. The grid workload may consist of multiple jobs, with varying resource requirements and quality-of-service constraints. In this paper A hybrid algorithm based on SexualGA and simulated annealing is proposed, implemented and tested which tries to minimize makespan and cummulative delay in meeting user specified deadline time. Simulation results show that proposed algorithm performs better than other hybrid genetic simulated annealing algorithms proposed earlier

Grid Enabled Architecture For DWDM Network Design And Optimization Tool

High bandwidth networks are indispensable to support the present ever increasing demand for various services on internet and to cater highly bandwidth extensive application such as video streaming and multimedia conferences. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology based optical networks provide potentially large transmission capacity that has an obvious advantage from both technical and economic perspectives.DWDM network design and optimization tools are developed to aid the designing and deployment of networks. Design tools play an important role in facilitating routing and wavelength assignment, filter placement, DCM and amplifier placement with the aim of minimizing the overall cost of network, in minimum amount of time. Designing and optimizing large networks require lot more processing power than a single desktop machine can actually provide. This scarcity of processing power results in either sub-optimal or infeasible solutions. This paper presents the grid enabled architecture for DWDM network design and optimization tool, which aims to harness the processing power of existing idle resources in an organization to quickly provide the optimized design for huge networks

Convection Affects Magnetic Turbulence in White Dwarf Accretion Disks

In this dissertation we focus on the accretion disks which surround accreting white dwarfs as they are some of the most abundant and well observed accretion disk systems. In many of these systems (e.g. dwarf novae), the accretion disk switches between a low luminosity state (quiescence) and a high luminosity state (outburst). These outbursts enable observers to place numeric constraints on the strength of turbulence (i.e. the α parameter) in these accretion disks. This dissertation focuses on results of local (stratified shearing-box) computer simulations of white dwarf accretion disks, and uses these results to gain a better theoretical understanding of these disks. As expected we find that the magnetorotational instability (MRI) is the predominant source of turbulence in these systems. However, we also find that hydrodynamic convection plays a key role as well. During the high luminosity state the disk becomes convectively unstable and the resulting convection enhances the MRI by seeding it with vertical magnetic field. This provides the first robust theoretical mechanism for enhancing turbulence only in outburst; a result required by observations. This convection also prevents the magnetic dynamo in our simulations from exhibiting the typical behavior of magnetic field reversals propagating vertically throughout the simulation. We also examine how the convection in our simulation changes the prior theoretical understanding of these disks. Specifically, we examine how these disks change luminosity over time by generating synthetic lightcurves using a modified disk instability model. These models can successfully reproduce observed outburst and quiescence durations, as well as outburst amplitudes. However, these lightcurves exhibit reflares in the decay from outburst, which are not generally observed in dwarf novae. Although, we highlight the problematic aspects of the quiescence physics in the disk instability model and MRI simulations that are responsible for this behavior

Functional outcome and incidence of avascular necrosis after two years in four part proximal humeral fractures treated by proximal humerus internal locking system

Background: Fractures of proximal humerus are not uncommon, especially in older age groups. In osteoporotic bone requiring open reduction and internal fixation, locking plates offer the advantage of increased pull out resistance of the locking head screws compared with that of conventional screws. The aim of our study was to analyse the functional outcome and incidence of avascular necrosis in four part proximal humeral fractures managed with proximal humerus locking plate.Methods: It was a retrospective study of patients with NEER’s four part proximal humerus fractures treated by proximal humerus locking plate. Patients operated at Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, Punjab, India from 1st January 2007 to 30th June 2011 was included in the study with a minimum follow up of two years. Scoring system given by Constant et al was used for evaluation of functional outcome and results were graded as Excellent (score 80-100%), good (score 60-79%), fair (constant score 40-59%) or poor (constant score 0-39%).Results: In present study, a good to excellent result was achieved in 64.2 % patients. A mean constant score of 70.6 points was observed. Only 5.6% of patients had osteonecrosis of humeral head at 2-year follow up.Conclusions: The importance of early mobilization of the shoulder joint cannot be underestimated in the final outcome of these fractures. We observed better functional outcome in the patients who started early physiotherapy and continued it at home