Devyani Khobragade Incident : A Legal Analysis in the Light of International Law

Devyani Khobragade is serving as an officer in the Indian Foreign Service. She joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1999.[1]She has been also posted in Germany, Italy and Pakistan.[2] In 2012, she was posted as Deputy Consul General to the Consulate General of India in New York . She handled women's affairs as well as political and economic issues. While she was serving as an Indian Deputy Consul General in New York, she was arrested by US law enforcement agencies for making false statements on a visa application for her housekeeper. The question that led to a major diplomatic standoff between India and the United States whether according to international law especially Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relation of 1961, she should have got the immunities from the judicial proceedings or not that was brought against her. [3] After a long Diplomatic battle between India and Us government on January 20, 2014 she was taken back to India and posted to New Delhi as director of the Development Partnership Administration (DPA), an agency formed in 2013 at the Ministry of External Affairs to handle India’s projects overseas.[4] [1] Gowen, Annie (20 December 2013). "Who is Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat at the center of the firestorm?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 January 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-devyani-khobragade-advocated-for-womens-rights-but-underpaid-her-nanny/2013/12/20/13e23688-69a2-11e3-8b5b-a77187b716a3_story.html [2] "10 things about IFS officer Devyani Khobragade: Her family, passion and favourite Hollywood actor". babus of india. December 14, 2013. Retrieved 7 January 2014. http://www.babusofindia.com/2013/12/10-things-about-ifs-officer-devyani.html [3] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Who-is-Devyani-Khobragade/articleshow/27659238.cms?referral=PM,Last  accessed on 29.06.2014 [4] Roy, Shubhajit (January 20, 2014). "Devyani likely to head MEA’s overseas projects department". Indian Express. Retrieved January 20, 2014. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/devyani-likely-to-head-meas-overseas-projects-department

Novel packet scheduling algorithm based on cross component carrier in LTE-advanced network with carrier aggregation

LTE-Advanced provides considerably higher data rates than the early releases of LTE. The carrier aggregation CA) technology allows scalable expansion of effective bandwidth provided to user equipment (UE) through simultaneous utilization of radio resources across multiple carriers. In this paper we propose a new packet scheduling (PS) criterion algorithm that charmingly satisfies the fairness among the different kinds of UEs by designing a weighting factor to proportional fair (PF) packet scheduling (PS) algorithms, while enhancing their throughput performance. The proposed PS algorithm is implemented and validated in a PS module for LTE\LTE-Advanced via system level simulations. Results show that PS-modified algorithms achieve higher throughput for both LTE and LTE-Advanced UEs

Evaluation of antihyperglycemic activities of Bangladeshi medicinal plant Cinnamomum tamala Leaf extracts in alloxan treated Albino Rats

Background: Diabetic mellitus is a multifactorial disorder associated with its devastating consequences has assumed epidemic proportion in Bangladesh.Methods: The study evaluates the anti-hyperglycemic activity of the aqueous extracts of C. tamala (CTLEt) leaves in blood glucose of albino rats. Type II diabetes mellitus was induced by injecting alloxan at the concentration of 100mg/kg body weight in male albino rats. The diabetic rats were administered orally with aqueous CTLEt at the amount of 1.0ml, 1.5ml and 2.0ml with lab diet and glibenclamide (5mg/kg of body weight). Then blood glucose levels were estimated in all groups after 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 18 hours of the treatment with CTLEt and a known antidiabetic drug glibenclamide.Results: A comparison was made between the action of CTLEt and glibenclamide. Blood glucose levels of the CTLEt on 18th hours of the study were 8.6 to 5.1mmol/L (1ml CTLEt with lab diet), 10.4 to 4.9mmol/L (1.5ml CTLEt with lab diet), 14.7 to 4.3mmol/L (2.0ml CTLEt with lab diet) in comparison of diabetic control (9.5 to 8.5, 8.7 to 7.8, 7.7 to 7.1mmol/L) and glibenclamide (13.9 to 6.5, 16.3 to 6.1, 9.5 to 5.1mmol/L). Among the sample level, the 2.0ml CTLEt showed a higher efficiency of hypoglycemic effect on alloxan induced diabetic rats.Conclusions: Till date, there is no specific experimental work in Bangladesh about the evolution of antidiabetic activity of C. tamala plant in animal model. Further studies should be undertaken to find out the molecular mechanism of the leaf powder of C. tamala medicinal plant

Removal of Heavy Metals from Stormwater Using Porous Concrete Pavement

This study aimed to investigate the heavy metals, i.e. Cu, Pb, Ni, and Zn removal efficiency from stormwater runoff of a porous concrete pavement (PCP). A model of PCP was designed with the porosity and co-efficient of permeability of the pavement were 27.2% and 1.83 cm/sec, respectively. Artificial stormwater containing heavy metals are passed through the pavement at a constant rainfall rate to mimic the stormwater rainfall-runoff condition. The artificial stormwater infiltrated through the pavement were then collected at two different pavement layers at different time instances. From the experimental investigations, it is observed that Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn concentrations are significantly reduced in the treated stormwater. At the first collection point which is located below the sub-base layer and coarse sand layer of the pavement, the concentrations of Cu, Pb and Zn reduced 56%, 67% and 93% respectively compared to their initial concentration, Ni concentration reduced only 20%. At the second collection point which is located below the coarse and fine sand layers beneath the pavement, the concentrations of Cu, Pb, Zn, and Ni are reduced 92%, 89%, 100%, 100%, respectively

Evaluation of antihyperglycemic activities of Bangladeshi medicinal plant Cinnamomum tamala Leaf extracts in alloxan treated Albino Rats

Background: Diabetic mellitus is a multifactorial disorder associated with its devastating consequences has assumed epidemic proportion in Bangladesh.Methods: The study evaluates the anti-hyperglycemic activity of the aqueous extracts of C. tamala (CTLEt) leaves in blood glucose of albino rats. Type II diabetes mellitus was induced by injecting alloxan at the concentration of 100mg/kg body weight in male albino rats. The diabetic rats were administered orally with aqueous CTLEt at the amount of 1.0ml, 1.5ml and 2.0ml with lab diet and glibenclamide (5mg/kg of body weight). Then blood glucose levels were estimated in all groups after 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours and 18 hours of the treatment with CTLEt and a known antidiabetic drug glibenclamide.Results: A comparison was made between the action of CTLEt and glibenclamide. Blood glucose levels of the CTLEt on 18th hours of the study were 8.6 to 5.1mmol/L (1ml CTLEt with lab diet), 10.4 to 4.9mmol/L (1.5ml CTLEt with lab diet), 14.7 to 4.3mmol/L (2.0ml CTLEt with lab diet) in comparison of diabetic control (9.5 to 8.5, 8.7 to 7.8, 7.7 to 7.1mmol/L) and glibenclamide (13.9 to 6.5, 16.3 to 6.1, 9.5 to 5.1mmol/L). Among the sample level, the 2.0ml CTLEt showed a higher efficiency of hypoglycemic effect on alloxan induced diabetic rats.Conclusions: Till date, there is no specific experimental work in Bangladesh about the evolution of antidiabetic activity of C. tamala plant in animal model. Further studies should be undertaken to find out the molecular mechanism of the leaf powder of C. tamala medicinal plant

Radio resource scheduling in LTE-advanced system with carrier aggregation

This study attaches the downlink radio resource allocation problem in the LTE-Advanced system by introducing an enhanced cross component carrier proportional fair algorithm. The importance of the study comes from the fact that almost all prior studies were not able to create a balance between the throughput and fairness of the system to optimize its efficiency. Therefore, this study attempts to overcome this difficulty by proposing an enhanced cross component carrier proportional fair algorithm in order to maximize the system throughput while at the same time maintaining fairness of radio resource allocation among all UEs. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm exceeds the previous studies, which involves that the enhancement of the algorithm manages to guarantee a balance between increasing the average system throughput and maintaining good fairness among all UEs

Comparative Review on the Aqueous Zinc-Ion Batteries (AZIBs) and Flexible Zinc-Ion Batteries (FZIBs)

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been considered an easily accessible battery technology because of their low weight, cheapness, etc. Unfortunately, they have significant drawbacks, such as flammability and scarcity of lithium. Since the components of zinc-ion batteries are nonflammable, nontoxic, and cheap, AZIBs could be a suitable replacement for LIBs. In this article, the advantages and drawbacks of AZIBs over other energy storage devices are briefly discussed. This review focused on the cathode materials and electrolytes for AZIBs. In addition, we discussed the approaches to improve the electrochemical performance of zinc batteries. Here, we also discussed the polymer gel electrolytes and the electrodes for flexible zinc-ion batteries (FZIBs). Moreover, we have outlined the importance of temperature and additives in a flexible zinc-ion battery. Finally, we have discussed anode materials for both AZIBs and FZIBs. This review has summarized the advantages and disadvantages of AZIBs and FZIBs for future applications in commercial battery technology

An Experimental and first-principles study of the effect of B/N doping in TiO2 thin films for visible light photo-catalysis

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Thin films of TiO2 and boron-nitrogen (B/N) co-doped TiO2 on glass substrates have been prepared by a simple sol-gel dip coating route. Titanium (IV) isopropoxide, boric acid and urea have been used as titanium, boron and nitrogen sources, respectively. The films were characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and UV-vis spectroscopy. The TiO2 thin films with co-doping of different B/N atomic ratios (0.27-20.89) showed better photo-catalytic degradation ability of methylene blue compared to that of bare-TiO2 under visible light. The TiO2 film doped with the highest atomic concentration of N showed repeatedly the best photocatalytic performance. The high activity of co-doped TiO2 thin films toward organic degradation can be related to the stronger absorption observed in the UV-vis region, red shift in adsorption edges and surface acidity induced by B/N doping. Furthermore, several atomic models for B/N doping have been used to investigate the effect of doping on electronic structure and density of states of TiO2 through ab-initio density functional theory calculations. The computational study suggested a significant narrowing of the band gap due to the formation of midgap states and the shift of Fermi-level for the interstitial N model supporting the experimental results. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Enhancement resource scheduling algorithm in LTE-Advanced network with multiple component carriers

The LTE-Advanced transmission bandwidth can be expanded by Carrier Aggregation (CA), where CA technology expands effective bandwidth supported to user equipment (UE) by utilizing of radio resources across multiple carriers. This paper proposes novel packet scheduling (PS) condition algorithm that attractively enhances the average system throughput by designing a weighting factor to modified largest weighted delay first PS algorithm. The novel algorithm is implemented in a PS module for LTE-Advanced via system level simulations. The results demonstrate that the effectiveness of Enhanced M-LWDF algorithm in improving throughput

Dealer-customer partnership in rice production demonstration: Assessment of private extension system in Bangladesh

Traditional public extension worker-farmer cooperation in rice production demonstration is not working efficiently, therefore, private partnership-based demonstration has been attempted to introduce as its alternative very recently involving dealer-customer farmer. The study evaluated the private extension services rendered through dealer-customer farmer cooperation in Bangladesh. Thirty-three rice seed dealers and ninety-two customer farmers formed the samples for the study. Face-to-face interviews were employed as a quantitative method while focus group discussion was used as a qualitative method in the present study. Involving in the private rice production demonstration approach, customer farmers indicated high profit, greater involvement in decision-making, and improved marketing skills as the major advantages; while the dealers stressed the benefit received by the small farmers, improvement in their decision-making capacity and increased local rice production. However, the slow distribution of inputs during the production period was a weakness in the arrangement, which was mostly because of the dealers' lack of understanding of the customer farmers’ needs. The private extension system being a new concept in the country may be observed over a period and gradually extended to the nooks and crannies of the country