Gender Gap in Education - An Indian Human Capital Formation Concern

The divergence in gender counts amongst all countries has caused unrest in multinational platforms almost a decade ago Gender equality and women empowerment is the third goal amongst eight most concerning causes as per united nation s millennium development goals After years of policy intervention socio-economic situations have diverged to an extent that new goals and impact studies are required for further improvements India has shown one of the best results in addressing all eight goals However inequality within Indian states has increased remarkably The backwardness of women from these states is due to gender gap in almost all aspect of socio economic study The concept of gender equality has been gaining importance as the subordinate status of women in relation to men has been seen in almost every facets of life This research work describes discrepancy in educational policies employment initiatives and social norms which keep a larger portion of population deprived of rights Policy recommendation of women empowerment and social restructuring is provided in the last segmen

Separability of State Trajectories and its Applications to Security of Cyber-Physical Systems

This article studies a fundamental problem of security of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). We focus on a class of attacks where some of the actuators could be malicious while all the sensors are considered to be honest. We introduce a novel idea of separability of state trajectories that are generated by the honest and corrupt actuators, and establish its connection to the security of CPSs in the context of detecting the presence of malicious actuators (if any,) in the system. As a defense strategy to guard the CPS against malicious attacks, we focus on the mechanism of perturbing the pre-determined control action by injecting a certain class of random process by the honest actuators called private excitation, which is assumed to have a known distribution. As primary contributions we give sufficient conditions for the existence and non-existence of a separator for linear time-invariant stochastic systems, under the assumption that the policies are randomized-Markovian and randomized history dependent. Several technical aspects of the established results are discussed extensively.Comment: 26 page

Advances in nanoplasmonic biosensors for clinical applications

Biomarkers are unquestionable biological indicators for diagnosis and therapeutic interventions providing appropriate classification of a wide range of health disorders and risk factors. Nonetheless, detection and quantification of biomarkers need to be tested with sufficient reliability by robust analytical methods in order to assure clinical performance in health care settings. Since the analytical performance is determined by the sensitivity and specificity of the method employed, techniques have been intensively refined in order to avoid misinterpretation of results and undesirable bias. Although biomarkers can be detected with the existing analytical techniques, to reproducibly quantify them in decentralized settings or remote locations with the required accuracy is still a challenge. Currently, only a few point-of-care devices for biomarkers evaluation are commercially available. Thus, more focused research efforts are needed to overcome those limitations in order to provide universal patient-centered care platforms. To this end, plasmonic biosensors can be conveniently used as portable diagnostic devices for attaining timely and cost-effective clinical outcomes. The development of enhanced performances based on nanoplasmonics technology opens the way for sensor miniaturization, multiplexing and point of care testing. This review covers recent advances and applications of plasmonic and nanoplasmonic biosensors intended for biomarker diagnosis in the clinical practice, including cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. The review specially focuses on: (i) recent progress in plasmonics developments including the design of singular nanostructured surfaces, (ii) novel chemical functionalization strategies for the appropriate incorporation of the bioreceptors and (iii) plasmonic applications as real operative devices in the clinical field. Future prospects in the use of nanoplasmonic sensor platforms for personalised quantification and management of biomarkers directly in body fluids will also be discussed.SIICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MINECO (Grant No. SEV-2013- 0295) and EPISENS project (TEC2012-34280)

Automatic Signboard Recognition in Low Quality Night Images

An essential requirement for driver assistance systems and autonomous driving technology is implementing a robust system for detecting and recognizing traffic signs. This system enables the vehicle to autonomously analyze the environment and make appropriate decisions regarding its movement, even when operating at higher frame rates. However, traffic sign images captured in inadequate lighting and adverse weather conditions are poorly visible, blurred, faded, and damaged. Consequently, the recognition of traffic signs in such circumstances becomes inherently difficult. This paper addressed the challenges of recognizing traffic signs from images captured in low light, noise, and blurriness. To achieve this goal, a two-step methodology has been employed. The first step involves enhancing traffic sign images by applying a modified MIRNet model and producing enhanced images. In the second step, the Yolov4 model recognizes the traffic signs in an unconstrained environment. The proposed method has achieved 5.40% increment in [email protected] for low quality images on Yolov4. The overall [email protected] of 96.75% has been achieved on the GTSRB dataset. It has also attained [email protected] of 100% on the GTSDB dataset for the broad categories, comparable with the state-of-the-art work.Comment: 13 pages, CVIP 202

Assessment of diversity in the genus Berberis L. (Berberidaceae) in Pindari Valley, Uttarakhand

Pindari Valley, a part of the buffer zone of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, is situated in Uttarakhand and covers an area of about 339.36 km2. The genus Berberis L. comprises of ca 622 taxa distributed worldwide, 55 taxa in India out of which 32 taxa are reported from Uttarakhand. Ongoing studies on the floristic diversity of Pindari Valley in Uttarakhand revealed a total of 12 species of Berberis viz. B. affinis, B. asiatica, B. aristata, B. chitria, B. canadensis, B. floribunda, B. glaucocarpa, B. jaeschkeana, B. kunawurensis, B. lycium, B. pseudumbellata and B. umbellata from the Valley, which represents highest diversity in Uttarakhand. A brief description, updated nomenclature, key to the species, phenology, habitat, distribution, IUCN conservation status and representative photographs are provided in the present communication

Documentation of ethnomedicinal plants for the treatment of skin diseases from Pangi valley, Western Himalaya

The present study deals with the systematic documentation of medicinal plants utilized by the indigenous inhabitants of Pangi valley to treat various skin problems. A total of 61 plant species belonging to 56 genera and 30 families have been found to be useful in the treatment of wounds (30 sp.), boils (27 sp.), cuts (24 sp.), burns (17 sp.), itching and pimples (05 sp. each), skin eruption, leukoderma and eczema (03 sp. each), pus removal, injuries (02 sp. each), skin pigmentation (01 sp.), etc. A table is provided including their botanical names, families, local names, habitat, altitude range, life form, nativity, threat status, uses, parts used and mode of preparation