Implementing section - 6b of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act 2004, prohibiting the sale around educational institutions using technology based software - safe zone

Background and challenges to implementation Section 6b of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA)-2004 and Article 16 of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) insists on restricting the access and availability of tobacco products to children as one of the supply reduction measures. Several countries have taken initiatives restricting the sale of tobacco products near Educational Institutions (EIs) and in India it is prohibited around 100 meter radius. However, the implementation has become a major challenge as it is difficult to map the distance between EIs and tobacco outlets, and to prove the shop keepers that they are evading the law. To address this issue, an android based application called Safe Zone is designed. Intervention or response Safe Zone is a Software tool that helps to identify tobacco outlets in and around EI. The technology used was Google MAP API, Google Maps, HTML5 / CSS3 / Java Script, GPS - Global Positioning System and GPRS - Data connection, Geo-coordinates algorithm. The details of the software are given as Figure 1. Results and lessons learnt This software gets your current GPS location and finds all EIs within 100 meter radius nearby and flags us along with the distance. It can show us the precise DISPLACEMENT between given shop and given EI locations. This software works in almost all smart phones that have GPS and GPRS - data connection. [The internals of the software] Conclusions and key recommendations This can be customized and used in any country based on their respective country law. It will help the Social activists, Government officials and Law Enforcement officers, who wants to enforce the Law of the Land in creating safe zone to take evidence based actions to curtail the sale of tobacco in the EI zones and General Public who wants to check whether their kid's school/ home is located in a tobacco free zone or not

Cellular Automata Model for Mixed Traffic Flow with Lane Changing Behavior

Indian cities are seen with predominantly mixed traffic plying on the streets. Modeling the mixed traffic involving vehicles characterised of different speed, length, and width is a challenging issue. Based on the finer cell system of cellular automata (CA) models, this paper proposes to evaluate the mixed traffic behavior with cars and motorcycles for intermediate lane width, which is more common in Indian cities. The maximum car flow is observed (even with the presence of motorcycles) in the results which is higher than the Na-Sch model for cars. This increase is mainly due to the changing behavior. The car flow decreases as the density of the motorcycle increases. Furthermore, the paper proposes to evaluate the effect of lane change behavior on the speed and flow of the traffic stream using the fundamental diagrams of speed flow density curves. The simulation result suggests that lane change probability has little effect on the speed and flow of the traffic stream

Performance Evaluation of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Maintaining and enhancing public transit services in Indian cities is important to meet rapidly-growing mass mobility needs. Indian cities rely predominantly on buses for public transportation, and issues of performance measurement and efficiency analyses for bus companies have been gaining significance due to severe operational stress and financial constraints in which these bus companies provide service to people. In public transportation, multiple parameters are involved that influence the efficiency of operation. This study measures the performance of premium bus services operated by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) using data envelopment analysis. This approach enabled the identification of opportunities for improvement at the bus depot and route levels. The analysis indicates that most depots are efficient, but some routes have significant opportunities for improvement

Performance Evaluation of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis

Maintaining and enhancing public transit services in Indian cities is important to meet rapidly-growing mass mobility needs. Indian cities rely predominantly on buses for public transportation, and issues of performance measurement and efficiency analyses for bus companies have been gaining significance due to severe operational stress and financial constraints in which these bus companies provide service to people. In public transportation, multiple parameters are involved that influence the efficiency of operation. This study measures the performance of premium bus services operated by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) using data envelopment analysis. This approach enabled the identification of opportunities for improvement at the bus depot and route levels. The analysis indicates that most depots are efficient, but some routes have significant opportunities for improvement

Temperature and pressure dependence of direct current electrical resistivity in the sodium oxide-​zinc oxide-​boron oxide glass system

Two series of glasses were prepd. with compns. xNa2O, yZnO, (100 - x - y)​B2O3 and (30 - x)​Na2O, xZnO, 70B2O3 (mol​%)​. The temp. dependence of the d.c. resistivity was detd. from room temp. to ∼700 K. In both series of glasses, a simple Arrhenius type of temp. dependence was obsd. However, the resistivity of the binary alkali glass increased steeply by 2 orders of magnitude with the addn. of even a small quantity of ZnO and remained virtually unaffected by further addn. of ZnO. No resistivity max. was obsd. (due to the mixed cation effect) at any Na​/(Na + Zn) ratio. The resistivity (≤80 kbar) decreased gradually with increasing pressure in Na2O-​B2O3 but increased with increasing pressure with the addn. of ZnO, attaining a fairly well-​defined max. and then slowly decreasing until leveling off at still higher pressures. The resistivity max. had a marked dependence on the ZnO content. These results are probably due to the B anomaly

Temperature and pressure dependence of direct current electrical resistivity in the Na2O-ZnO-B2O3 glass system

Two series of glasses were prepared, xNa2O, yZnO, 100 - x - yB2O3 and 30 - xNa2O, xZnO, 70B2O3 (mol). The temperature dependence of the direct current resistivity was measured from room temperature to about 700 K and in both series of glasses we observed a simple Arrhenius type of temperature dependence. However, the resistivity of the binary alkali glass increased steeply by as much as two orders of magnitude with the addition of even a small quantity of ZnO and remained virtually unaffected by further addition of ZnO. The resistivity decreases gradually with increasing pressure in Na2O-B2O3 but increases with increasing pressure with the addition of ZnO

Temperature and pressure dependence of direct current electrical resistivity in the Na2O-ZnO-B2O3 glass system

Two series of glasses were prepared, xNa2O, yZnO, 100 - x - yB2O3 and 30 - xNa2O, xZnO, 70B2O3 (mol%). The temperature dependence of the direct current resistivity was measured from room temperature to about 700 K and in both series of glasses we observed a simple Arrhenius type of temperature dependence. However, the resistivity of the binary alkali glass increased steeply by as much as two orders of magnitude with the addition of even a small quantity of ZnO and remained virtually unaffected by further addition of ZnO. The resistivity decreases gradually with increasing pressure in Na2O-B2O3 but increases with increasing pressure with the addition of ZnO