Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Tall and not so Tall Women of India

New studies are increasingly appearing based on historical data across the world that better socio-economic status is associated with taller men and women. This study based on a recent Indian data analyses the variations in height among adult women. The main findings show that regional level differences in mean heights are prominent and contiguous regions show similar mean heights after controlling for socio-economic differences. Women from weaker socio-economic groups are shorter and so are women in rural areas though the rural-urban gap disappears after controlling for socio-economic variations. Women who have had at least one child during teenage have lower average heights but this difference is not statistically significant once differences in education are accounted for.

The Changing Pattern of Undernutrition in India: A Comparative Analysis across Regions

calories, consumption, poverty, India

Is There a Role for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding

The focus of this essay is to enquire as to what role UNECE can play in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The historic role of the UNECE in bridging the East-West divide and guiding the transition process of the former planned economies is testimony to the importance of this type of activity. During the transition process, political and economic systems often had to be recreated from scratch and sometimes in newly formed nation States. The lessons learned during this process, especially regarding the importance of good governance, provide the basis of the UNECE’s contribution to conflict prevention and post-conflict peacebuilding. The regional significance of peacebuilding and thus the role of a regional body such as UNECE is stressed by explaining that conflicts usually have major transboundary impacts such as migration, environmental degradation, disrupted transportation corridors, or broken trade links. The authors also provide an overview of the institutional initiatives that are being developed within the various UN agencies and other international organizations emphasizing their activities in South-east Europe and Central Asia. The essay ends by considering the future role of UNECE in creating a framework convention or standards, on the basis of agreed principles for post-conflict governance.Peace building, Europe, transition economies, institutional cooperation

Spaced seeds improve k-mer-based metagenomic classification

Metagenomics is a powerful approach to study genetic content of environmental samples that has been strongly promoted by NGS technologies. To cope with massive data involved in modern metagenomic projects, recent tools [4, 39] rely on the analysis of k-mers shared between the read to be classified and sampled reference genomes. Within this general framework, we show in this work that spaced seeds provide a significant improvement of classification accuracy as opposed to traditional contiguous k-mers. We support this thesis through a series a different computational experiments, including simulations of large-scale metagenomic projects. Scripts and programs used in this study, as well as supplementary material, are available from http://github.com/gregorykucherov/spaced-seeds-for-metagenomics.Comment: 23 page

Vulnerability to Globalization in India: Relative Rankings of States Using Fuzzy Models

globalization, vulnerability, fuzzy inference systems, India

Automated tester permits precise calibration of pressure transducers from 0 to 1050 psi

Automated portable checker allows last-minute calibration of pressure transducers before testing. It uses a pressure console and equipment that can produce test pressures of 0-1050 psi. The console can be connected to other apparatus for measurement and visual display of the electrical output

Identification and Mitigation of NLOS based on Channel Information Rules for Indoor UWB Localization

Indoor localization is an emerging technology that can be utilized for developing products and services for commercial usage, public safety, military applications and so forth. Commercially it can be applied to track children, people with special needs, help navigate blind people, locate equipment, mobile robots, etc. The objective of this thesis is to enable an indoor mobile vehicle to determine its location and thereby making it capable of autonomous localization under Non-light of sight (NLOS) conditions. The solution developed is based on Ultra Wideband (UWB) based Indoor Positioning System (IPS) in the building. The proposed method increases robustness, scalability, and accuracy of location. The out of the box system of DecaWave TREK1000 provides tag tracking features but has no method to detect and mitigate location inaccuracies due to the multipath effect from physical obstacles found in an indoor environment. This NLOS condition causes ranges to be positively biased, hence the wrong location is reported. Our approach to deal with the NLOS problem is based on the use of Rules Classifier, which is based on channel information. Once better range readings are achieved, approximate location is calculated based on Time of Flight (TOF). Moreover, the proposed rule based IPS can be easily implemented on hardware due to the low complexity. The measurement results, which was obtained using the proposed mitigation algorithm, show considerable improvements in the accuracy of the location estimation which can be used in different IPS applications requiring centimeter level precision. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated experimentally using an indoor positioning platform in a laboratory environment, and is shown to be significantly better than conventional approaches. The maximum positioning error is reduced to 15 cm for NLOS using both an offline and real time tracking algorithm extended from the proposed approach

Random Network Behaviour of Protein Structures

Geometric and structural constraints greatly restrict the selection of folds adapted by protein backbones, and yet, folded proteins show an astounding diversity in functionality. For structure to have any bearing on function, it is thus imperative that, apart from the protein backbone, other tunable degrees of freedom be accountable. Here, we focus on side-chain interactions, which non-covalently link amino acids in folded proteins to form a network structure. At a coarse-grained level, we show that the network conforms remarkably well to realizations of random graphs and displays associated percolation behavior. Thus, within the rigid framework of the protein backbone that restricts the structure space, the side-chain interactions exhibit an element of randomness, which account for the functional flexibility and diversity shown by proteins. However, at a finer level, the network exhibits deviations from these random graphs which, as we demonstrate for a few specific examples, reflect the intrinsic uniqueness in the structure and stability, and perhaps specificity in the functioning of biological proteins.Comment: Expanded version available in Molecular BioSystem

Histoplasma capsulatum Infection in an Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Patient Receiving Voriconazole Prophylaxis

Histoplasma capsulatum infection is a rare complication in the allogeneic stem cell transplant patients. Minimal guidance exists on how to appropriately manage histoplasmosis in these patients. We report a patient who developed Histoplasma pneumonia while receiving voriconazole prophylaxis at a therapeutic trough level. The patient experienced significant clinical improvement after initiation of itraconazole pharmacotherapy. We recommend a lower threshold for evaluation for histoplasmosis in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients who live in endemic regions, regardless of their antifungal prophylactic regimen