Measuring Women Empowerment in the Indian Apparel Industry

This study was aimed to develop and measure women empowerment in the Indian apparel industry. The research was designed to develop and measure the women empowerment of Indian women working in the apparel industry. Based on the Alkire-Foster methodology (Alkire & Foster, 2007), the research specifically measured the women empowerment level of women working in the Indian apparel industry and the domains that contribute to the women empowerment distributions. The results showed that the Indian female apparel workers were not empowered. Income and leadership in the community were found to contribute the most towards the empowerment of the Indian women working in the apparel industry

Key Resources of the Indian Apparel Export Firms as Described by Firm Managers

Today, India is considered as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The apparel export sector contributes hugely to this rapid economic growth. The apparel industry contributes approximately14% to Indian industrial production, 4% to the Gross Domestic Products (GDP), and 17% to the country’s export earnings (Ministry of Textiles in India, 2012). India is the sixth largest apparel exporter in the world, with exporting U.S. $14.5 billion worth of apparel in 2011 (World Trade Organization, 2013)

A shape-deformable and thermally stable solid-state electrolyte based on a plastic crystal composite polymer electrolyte for flexible/safer lithium-ion batteries

A solid-state electrolyte with reliable electrochemical performance, mechanical robustness and safety features is strongly pursued to facilitate the progress of flexible batteries. Here, we demonstrate a shape-deformable and thermally stable plastic crystal composite polymer electrolyte (denoted as "PC-CPE") as a new class of solid-state electrolyte to achieve this challenging goal. The PC-CPE is composed of UV (ultraviolet)-cured ethoxylated trimethylolpropane triacrylate (ETPTA) macromer/close-packed Al 2O3 nanoparticles (acting as the mechanical framework) and succinonitrile-mediated plastic crystal electrolyte (serving as the ionic transport channel). This chemical/structural uniqueness of the PC-CPE brings remarkable improvement in mechanical flexibility and thermal stability, as compared to conventional carbonate-based liquid electrolytes that are fluidic and volatile. In addition, the PC-CPE precursor mixture (i.e., prior to UV irradiation) with well-adjusted rheological properties, via collaboration with a UV-assisted imprint lithography technique, produces the micropatterned PC-CPE with tunable dimensions. Notably, the cell incorporating the self-standing PC-CPE, which acts as a thermally stable electrolyte and also a separator membrane, maintains stable charge/discharge behavior even after exposure to thermal shock condition (=130 ??C/0.5 h), while a control cell assembled with a carbonate-based liquid electrolyte and a polyethylene separator membrane loses electrochemical activity.close1

LayoutLM: Pre-training of Text and Layout for Document Image Understanding

Pre-training techniques have been verified successfully in a variety of NLP tasks in recent years. Despite the widespread use of pre-training models for NLP applications, they almost exclusively focus on text-level manipulation, while neglecting layout and style information that is vital for document image understanding. In this paper, we propose the \textbf{LayoutLM} to jointly model interactions between text and layout information across scanned document images, which is beneficial for a great number of real-world document image understanding tasks such as information extraction from scanned documents. Furthermore, we also leverage image features to incorporate words' visual information into LayoutLM. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that text and layout are jointly learned in a single framework for document-level pre-training. It achieves new state-of-the-art results in several downstream tasks, including form understanding (from 70.72 to 79.27), receipt understanding (from 94.02 to 95.24) and document image classification (from 93.07 to 94.42). The code and pre-trained LayoutLM models are publicly available at \url{https://aka.ms/layoutlm}.Comment: KDD 202

Pulsating flow and convective heat transfer in a cavity with inlet and outlet sections

This paper deals with the study of 2-D, laminar, pulsating flow inside a heated rectangular cavity with different aspect ratios. The cooling liquid (water with temperature dependent viscosity and thermal conductivity) comes and leaves the cavity via inlet and outlet ports. The flow topology is characterised by the large recirculation regions that exist at inner corners of the cavity. These low velocity regions cause the heat transfer to be small when compared, for instance, to that of a straight channel. We study the effect that a prescribed pulsation at the inlet port has on the cavity heat transfer. This pulsating boundary condition, of the unsteady Poiseuille type, is described by its frequency and the amplitude of the pressure gradient. The time averaged Reynolds number of the flow, based on the hydraulic diameter of the inlet channel, is 100 and we consider that the dimensionless pulsation frequency (Strouhal number) varies in the range from 0.0 to 0.4. We show that the prescribed pulsation enhances heat transfer in the cavity and that the mechanism that causes this enhancement appears to be the periodic change in the recirculation flow pattern generated by the pulsation. Regarding the quantitative extent of heat transfer recovery, we find that appropriate selection of the pulsation parameters allows for the cavity to behave like a straight channel that is the configuration with the highest Nusselt number

Yangian-invariant field theory of matrix-vector models

We extend our study of the field-theoretic description of matrix-vector models and the associated many-body problems of one dimensional particles with spin. We construct their Yangian-su(R) invariant Hamiltonian. It describes an interacting theory of a c=1 collective boson and a k=1 su(R) current algebra. When $R \geq 3$ cubic-current terms arise. Their coupling is determined by the requirement of the Yangian symmetry. The Hamiltonian can be consistently reduced to finite-dimensional subspaces of states, enabling an explicit computation of the spectrum which we illustrate in the simplest case.Comment: Extensive modifications in the construction of the spinon basis and the subsequent computations of eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Title and references modified. To appear in Nuclear Physics B. 21 pages, Late

Incentives to change: effects of performance-based financing on health workers in Zambia

Background: Performance-based financing (PBF) has been implemented in a number of countries with the aim of transforming health systems and improving maternal and child health. This paper examines the effect of PBF on health workers’ job satisfaction, motivation, and attrition in Zambia. It uses a randomized intervention/control design to evaluate before–after changes for three groups: intervention (PBF) group, control 1 (C1; enhanced financing) group, and control 2 (C2; pure control) group. Methods: Mixed methods are employed. The quantitative portion comprises of a baseline and an endline survey. The survey and sampling scheme were designed to allow for a rigorous impact evaluation of PBF or C1 on several key performance indicators. The qualitative portion seeks to explain the pathways underlying the observed differences through interviews conducted at the beginning and at the three-year mark of the PBF program. Results: Econometric analysis shows that PBF led to increased job satisfaction and decreased attrition on a subset of measures, with little effect on motivation. The C1 group also experienced some positive effects on job satisfaction. The null results of the quantitative assessment of motivation cohere with those of the qualitative assessment, which revealed that workers remain motivated by their dedication to the profession and to provide health care to the community rather than by financial incentives. The qualitative evidence also provides two explanations for higher overall job satisfaction in the C1 than in the PBF group: better working conditions and more effective supervision from the District Medical Office. The PBF group had higher satisfaction with compensation than both control groups because they have higher compensation and financial autonomy, which was intended to be part of the PBF intervention. While PBF could not address all the reasons for attrition, it did lower turnover because those health centers were staffed with qualified personnel and the personnel had role clarity. Conclusions: In Zambia, the implementation of PBF schemes brought about a significant increase in job satisfaction and a decrease in attrition, but had no significant effect on motivation. Enhanced health financing also increased stated job satisfaction

Modulation of antigen-specific T-cells as immune therapy for chronic infectious diseases and cancer

Copyright: © 2014 Li, Symonds, Miao, Sanderson and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.T-cell responses are induced by antigen presenting cells (APC) and signals from the microenvironment. Antigen persistence and inflammatory microenvironments in chronic infections and cancer can induce a tolerant state in T-cells resulting in hyporesponsiveness, loss of effector function, and weak biochemical signaling patterns in response to antigen stimulation. Although the mechanisms of T-cell tolerance induced in chronic infection and cancer may differ from those involved in tolerance to self-antigen, the impaired proliferation and production of IL-2 in response to antigen stimulation are hallmarks of all tolerant T cells. In this review, we will summarize the evidence that the immune responses change from non-self to “self”-like in chronic infection and cancer, and will provide an overview of strategies for re-balancing the immune response of antigen-specific T cells in chronic infection and cancer without affecting the homeostasis of the immune system.Arthritis Research UK and Medical Research Council UK

Silver(I) N-Heterocyclic Carbene Complexes Derived from Clotrimazole: Antiproliferative Activity and Interaction with an Artificial Membrane-Based Biosensor

With the aim of combining the potential anticancer properties of both clotrimazole, an imidazole based antifungal agent, and silver(I) N-heterocyclic carbenes, 13 novel silver(I) N-heterocyclic carbene complexes derived from clotrimazole were synthesized. The complexes were fully characterized, and the partition coefficient of each was determined to provide a measure of hydrophobicity. The antiproliferative properties of the complexes against cancerous and noncancerous cell lines found optimum cytotoxicity when the complex displays an “intermediate lipophilicity”, which describes a complex that possesses both water-soluble groups and lipophilic aromatic groups. The silver complexes were screened on a synthetic biomembrane-like device using a chip-based phospholipid-coated Pt/Hg electrode embedded in a flow cell system. The results are recorded as rapid cyclic voltammograms (RCVs), which give insight into the interactions of the complexes with a cell membrane. Interestingly the principle of “intermediate lipophilicity” also applies to the monolayer interaction to which the silver atom significantly implements an irreversibility