Youth employment and unemployment in India

Increase in the share of youth population due to demographic `dividend' or the `youth bulge' seems to be one of the sources of future economic growth in India. Although with increase in school and college enrolment rates, the proportion of youth in the labour force has been declining, their high proportions in the labour force indicate that the problem of youth unemployment and underemployment would remain a serious policy issue for many more years to come in India. In this context, this paper examines the employment and unemployment situation of the youth in India during the last two-and-half decades viz., 1983 to 2007-08. It analyses the trends in labour force and workforce participation rates, unemployment, joblessness, working poor, growth and employment elasticities etc. The paper also offers policy recommendations for increasing productive employment and reduction in unemployment for the youth. The poor employability of the workforce would hamper the advantages due to demographic dividend if measures are not taken to improve the educational attainment and skill development of the youth.Youth Employment, unemployment, skill development, joblessness, demographic dividend, literacy, school education, vocational training

The Canadian Mobile Servicing System for Space Station Servicing

The Mobile Servicing System (MSS) concept is being developed as the Canadian contribution to the Space Station Program. The MSS is a major element of the servicing architecture in the Space Station Program and complements the role of U.S. developed Servicing Facility on the Station. This paper describes the servicing functions performed by MSS. These functions include servicing of attached payloads as well as assembly and maintenance of the Station. Robotic servicing requirements have also been addressed. The architecture and concepts of MSS and its constituent systems are described

Dark Energy and the Statistical Study of the Observed Image Separations of the Multiply Imaged Systems in the CLASS Statistical Sample

The present day observations favour a universe which is flat, accelerated and composed of $\sim 1/3$ matter (baryonic + dark) and $\sim 2/3$ of a negative pressure component, usually referred to as dark energy or quintessence. The Cosmic Lens All Sky Survey (CLASS), the largest radio-selected galactic mass scale gravitational lens search project to date, has resulted in the largest sample suitable for statistical analyses. In the work presented here, we exploit observed image separations of the multiply imaged lensed radio sources in the sample. We use two different tests: (1) image separation distribution function $n(\Delta\theta)$ of the lensed radio sources and (2) {\dtheta}_{\mathrm{pred}} vs {\dtheta}_{\mathrm{obs}} as observational tools to constrain the cosmological parameters $w$ and \Om. The results are in concordance with the bounds imposed by other cosmological tests.Comment: 20 pages latex; Modified " Results and Discussion " section, new references adde

Determining the CP properties of the Higgs boson

The search and the probe of the fundamental properties of Higgs boson(s) and, in particular, the determination of their charge conjugation and parity (CP) quantum numbers, is one of the main tasks of future high-energy colliders. We demonstrate that the CP properties of a Standard Model-like Higgs particle can be unambiguously assessed by measuring just the total cross section and the top polarization in associated Higgs production with top quark pairs in e+e- collisions.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, uses axodraw (style file included in the submission

Four Zero Texture Fermion Mass Matrices in SO(10) GUT

We attempt the integration of the phenomenologically successful four zero texture of fermion mass matrices with the renormalizable SO(10) GUT. The resulting scenario is found to be highly predictive. Firstly, we examine the phenomenological implications of a class of the lepton mass matrices with parallel texture structures and obtain interesting constraints on the parameters of the charged lepton and the neutrino mass matrices. We combine these phenomenological constraints with the constraints obtained from SO(10) GUT to reduce the number of the free parameters and to further constrain the allowed ranges of the free parameters. The solar/atmospheric mixing angles obtained in this analysis are in fairly good agreement with the data.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl