The Effect of Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Aid and International Remittance on Economic Growth in South Asian Countries

The total amount of money sent from the developed world to the developing world has always been increasing with no signs to slowing down. Foreign aid and remittance are at its highest levels ever recorded. Even with these large sums of money transfer, there still seem to be no consensus among economists regarding the effectiveness of external development finance and foreign exchange earnings (Foreign Direct Investment, foreign aid or remittance) in promoting economic growth. This paper attempts to identify an econometric model that properly portrays this relationship and analyze the effect of external development finance and foreign exchange earnings on economic growth in South Asia. A Fixed Effect panel model is developed using data of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka ranging from 1960 to 2014. These findings suggest that only remittance have a consistent positive effect on growth, where as Foreign Direct Investment and foreign aid have varying effect dependent upon model specification

Content Analysis of the Library Webpages of Educational Colleges in Goa

In this digital era of abundant information production, there is an increase in demand of high - quality digital information. With the greater demand from users to serve their information needs, the job of the librarian has become critical in terms of delivering services to its patrons. The content richness of the website is the key factor to attract users and facilitate them in navigating through its web pages. These websites are playing a key role in helping students and faculty to carry out their study and academic work. Thus the need arises to continuously evaluate these web pages to keep them updated or use. This study evaluates 25 selected educational college library web pages in Goa from the usability perspective. For this study 9 main parameters were used to evaluate library web pages. The checklist was made for measuring its various dimensions regarding its usability, validity, efficiency and, effectiveness. The results showed that the web pages are partially usable and hence there is a need to improve their usability. The study further suggested evaluating these web pages to check the relevancy and validity of the information available on the web page. The study revealed that most of the college websites provide an Online Public Access Catalogue but none of the websites mention the availability of plagiarism checking facilities. The study has shown that web pages are lagging in exploiting the potential of the library portal. It also suggests keeping the web page updated as it is frequently used by college students and faculty. This study is capable of providing a basic framework that can be used to design and improve academic library web pages

To scrutinize the Status of Library Staff in the High School Libraries in Goa

Few studies have reported the status of high school libraries from Goa. Keeping the importance of early education the present study highlights major issues through qualitative as well as quantitative methods. This study focuses on the library staff of High school libraries, their qualification and pay scale. Librarians in High schools are often treated as non–teaching staff and are given office-related clerical work. The authorities have shown negligence in setting up the required standards for High school libraries in Goa. No proper guidelines are formed which could help librarians to develop their school library. It was found that the majority of the aided-High school libraries do not have a permanent school librarian. The government high schools do not have the post of a school librarian. A teacher or non-teaching staff are given authority to handle the library work. The required qualification for the post is the certificate course in library science hence the pay scale given is also much lesser and not as of the status of the teachers. Subsequently, they are not considered as same as the teachers. This study concluded by suggesting some of the measures to be taken to develop the status of the librarians as well as the libraries

Stateful metadata for big data

Large volumes of data, characterized by large variety and high update velocities, pose challenges in terms of storage, application of concurrently occurring frequent updates, and serving processes that require the most accurate version of the data simultaneously. In most current schemes, it is not possible to guarantee all of these characteristics and a relaxing one or more requirements is necessary. The present disclosure describes a scalable, easy-to-maintain metadata mechanism that is fast and efficient to update, and can provide all the above guarantees on data. The metadata maintains lightweight validity markers, and simple algebra is performed thereof to surface the most up to date and accurate data while enabling constant updates to the data in a non-blocking fashion

A Framework for Localizing and Neutralization of Jammers in Wireless Networks.

The communication in wireless networks can be severely interrupted by Jammers and information about the jammers position can help to eliminate its attack. The main approach of this paper is to localize and neutralize the jammer in the network based on the energy(JSS) and finding the new route through the network i.e., best route through the network. The best route is defined as the minimum distance in the network that a sender node selects as its boundary or next hop node Thus, in this paper we aim to design a frame work to localize multiple jammers with high accuracy and minimal error factor. An effective means is to measure the strength of jamming signals (JSS). It conceives an evaluation feedback mechanism for localizing jammer as non linear optimization problem, to quantify result close to true jammer position. This paper focuses on localizing multiple jammer considering energy(JSS) as parameter for identifying a node as a jammer and using another parameter i.e., distance between nodes along with their energy(JSS) to find a best path for the communication in a network jammed scenario. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15057

The Control of 'Sacred' Place: Conflicts Over the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodhgaya in Northern Bihar, India, from 1874 till 2012

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Novel molecular imaging of cardiovascular disease in man

Cardiovascular disease remains the commonest cause of death worldwide. The majority of deaths are caused by atherosclerotic plaque rupture with resultant myocardial infarction or stroke, or rupture of abdominal aortic aneurysms. Conventional imaging modalities have consistently failed to identify atherosclerotic plaques or aneurysms with high-risk pathological features that are at highest risk of rupture or progression. The development of modern molecular imaging techniques targeted at these features could lead to the identification of such high-risk plaques and aneurysms in vivo and guide the development of novel treatment strategies. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate whether novel molecular modalities have a role in providing new insights into biological disease processes, and identify high-risk plaques and aneurysms. Using positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT), 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose and 18F-fluoride were utilised as markers of metabolic inflammation and active calcification. Cellular inflammation was assessed using ultrasmall superparamagnetic particles of iron oxide (USPIO) enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In a prospective trial, 80 patients with myocardial infarction (n=40) and stable angina (n=40) underwent 18F-fluoride and 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET-CT, and invasive coronary angiography (Chapter 3). Intense 18F-fluoride uptake localised to recently ruptured plaque in patients with acute myocardial infarction. In patients with stable coronary artery disease, 18F-fluoride uptake identified coronary plaques with high-risk features on intravascular ultrasound. 18F-fluoride PET-CT is the first noninvasive imaging method to identify and localise ruptured and high-risk coronary plaques. Aortic vascular uptake of 18F- fluorodeoxyglucose was studied in patients with myocardial infarction and stable angina (Chapter 4). In a separate outcome of 1,003 patients enrolled in the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events, we further evaluated whether infarct size predicted recurrent coronary events. Patients with myocardial infarction had higher remote atherosclerotic tracer uptake that correlated with the degree of myocardial necrosis, and exceeded that observed in patients with stable coronary disease. The outcome cohort demonstrated that patients with higher degree of myocardial necrosis had the highest risk of early recurrent myocardial infarction. This supports the hypothesis that acute myocardial infarction exacerbates systemic atherosclerotic inflammation and remote plaque destabilization: myocardial infarction begets myocardial infarction. In a prospective imaging cohort, the role inflammation and calcification was assessed in 63 patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms and 19 age and sex matched patients with atherosclerosis (Chapter 5). Compared to non-aneurysmal segments, enhanced inflammation and calcification was observed within the wall of aortic aneurysmal segments. In comparison to matched controls with atherosclerosis, the entire aorta in those with aortic aneurysm appears more highly inflamed, suggesting presence of a global aortopathy rather than a disease confined only to the abdominal region of the aorta. Aortic aneurysms have greater active inflammation and calcification than atherosclerotic controls suggesting a more intense, destructive and transmural pathological process. A subgroup of fifteen patients with aortic aneurysms underwent imaging with both PET-CT with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose, and T2*- weighted MRI before and 24 h after administration of USPIO (Chapter 6). Whilst there was a moderate correlation between the two tracers, there were distinct differences in the pattern and distribution of uptake suggesting a differential detection of macrophage glycolytic and phagocytic activity respectively. These studies provide novel insights into vascular biological processes involved in the initiation, progression and rupture of atherosclerotic plaques and aortic aneurysms. Future longitudinal studies are needed to establish whether these techniques have a role in improving the clinical management and treatment of patients with coronary artery disease and aortic aneurysms

ANALYSES OF DEFORMATION IN VISCOELASTIC SANDWICH COMPOSITES SUBJECT TO MOISTURE DIFFUSION

Sandwich composites with polymer foam core are currently used in load-bearing components in buildings and naval structures due to their high strength to weight and stiffness to weight ratios, excellent thermal insulation, and ease of manufacturing. During their service time, sandwich composites are exposed to various external mechanical and hygro-thermal stimuli. It is known that the constituent properties of the sandwich composites are greatly influenced by the temperature and moisture fields. For example extreme temperature changes and humid environmental conditions can significantly degrade the stiffness and strength of the polymer foam core. This study analyzes the effect of moisture diffusion on the deformation of viscoelastic sandwich composites, which are composed of orthotropic fiber-reinforced laminated skins and viscoelastic polymeric foam core. It is assumed that the elastic and time-dependent (transient) moduli at any particular location in the foam core depend on the moisture concentration at that location. Sequentially coupled analyses of moisture diffusion and deformation are performed to predict overall performance of the studied viscoelastic sandwich systems. A time and moisture dependent constitutive model is used for the polymer foam core. A time-integration algorithm is developed to link this constitutive model to finite element (FE) analyses framework. The overall time-dependent responses of the sandwich composites subject to moisture diffusion are analyzed using 2D plane strain and 3D continuum elements. A 23% increase in the transverse deformation of the viscoelastic sandwich beam is observed due to the moisture degradation. Experimental data and analytical models available in the literature are used to verify the results obtained from the FE code. Parametric studies on the effects of different diffusivity ratios of skin and core materials on stress, strain and displacement fields have been analyzed. At the initial times the effect of moisture on the field variables is found to be most pronounced in the case with the highest diffusivity ratio. Contributions of moisture dependent elastic and the time-dependent moduli to the overall stress, strain and displacement field have been studied. The structural analysis of the sandwich composite under combined moisture diffusion and mechanical loading for two kinds of problems using FE method is performed to complete the study