Determinants and Impact of Migration on Rural Poor: A Case-study of Asansol, an Industrial Zone of West Bengal

Migration, a continuous process of economic development, is an integral part of human history, involves relatively permanent, semi-permanent shift of residence from original place to destination. Migration is mainly caused by push factors at destination ( like higher wage, higher income, better job availability, better education, health etc. ) and pull factors ( like low income, low wage,lack of employment opportunity, drought, natural calamities etc. ) with the origin. But the present scenario reveals the fact that the distress and vulnerable conditions of rural poor are forced them to move out of their origin and go far off places in search of alternative livelihood. In this context, our present study tries to make an attempt to examine the main factors responsible for migration in Asansol. We select Asansol as destination place because being next to Kolkata, it is an industrial belt, many people come to Asansol from different parts of West Bengal and neighbour states e.g. Bihar, Jhankhand, UP as well in search of new jobs. We have taken interviews of 160 migrants in our survey area on the basis of Random Sampling Method. Another motive of our present study is to analysis the present status of the migrants after coming in Asansol. We take the help of different tables, percentage and also OLS technique and Wilcoxon Signed Ranked Test as the statistical tools for analyzing our results

Reproductive Work in the Global South: Lived Experiences and Social Relations of Commercial Surrogacy in India

This article investigates reproductive work in the Global South which thrives on the commodification of women’s reproductive bodies under local-global reproductive hierarchies, appropriating the process of reproduction for production. Through a qualitative study of commercial surrogacy in north India, it examines the lived experiences of surrogates within the capitalist social relations they are embedded in. Conceptualizing surrogacy as reproductive labour which contributes to value generation, the article assesses labour relations at the workplace, for example hostels where surrogates ‘live and work’, and the mechanisms of recruitment, contracting and control which function through dense networks of social and material relations between various stakeholders. The weak bargaining power of surrogates and the immense power of fertility clinics and agents are compounded by the lack of effective regulation and state’s prohibitionist policy. The article argues for protecting the rights of surrogates as workers rather than the recent ban on surrogacy imposed in India

Drone based herbicide application in greengram (Vigna radiata)

An experiment was conducted during winter (rabi) season of 2023 at Anbil Dharmalingam Agricultural College and Research Institute, (Tamil Nadu Agricultural University), Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu to assess the effect of drone based herbicide application in greengram. Results showed that drones could be effectively used for spraying of pre-emergence herbicide to control weeds and increase the yield of greengram. Further, application of pendimethalin 0.75 kg/ha with spray fluid of 60 litre/ha precisely through drones controlled the weeds effectively (WCE of 81.8%), increased grain yield, saved herbicide dose and spray fluid to the tune of 6.9%, 25% and 88% respectively than manual spray of pendimethalin 1.0 kg/ha with spray fluid of 500 litre/ ha. Thus, application of pendimethalin 0.75 kg/ha with spray fluid of 60 litre/ha was considered as the optimum dosage and spray fluid for drone spray to control weeds, increase grain yield and profit in greengram, considering the reduced dose of herbicide as well as the labour scarce situation

Recommender System for the Efficient Treatment of COVID-19 Using a Convolutional Neural Network Model and Image Similarity

Background: Hospitals face a significant problem meeting patients' medical needs during epidemics, especially when the number of patients increases rapidly, as seen during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This study designs a treatment recommender system (RS) for the efficient management of human capital and resources such as doctors, medicines, and resources in hospitals. We hypothesize that a deep learning framework, when combined with search paradigms in an image framework, can make the RS very efficient. Methodology: This study uses a Convolutional neural network (CNN) model for the feature extraction of the images and discovers the most similar patients. The input queries patients from the hospital database with similar chest X-ray images. It uses a similarity metric for the similarity computation of the images. Results: This methodology recommends the doctors, medicines, and resources associated with similar patients to a COVID-19 patients being admitted to the hospital. The performance of the proposed RS is verified with five different feature extraction CNN models and four similarity measures. The proposed RS with a ResNet-50 CNN feature extraction model and Maxwell-Boltzmann similarity is found to be a proper framework for treatment recommendation with a mean average precision of more than 0.90 for threshold similarities in the range of 0.7 to 0.9 and an average highest cosine similarity of more than 0.95. Conclusions: Overall, an RS with a CNN model and image similarity is proven as an efficient tool for the proper management of resources during the peak period of pandemics and can be adopted in clinical settings

Valence Band Electronic Structure of Azobenzene-Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles

Azobenzenes (Azo) represent a class of organic compounds composed of two phenyl rings linked by an N=N double bond that exhibit photoisomerization, i.e. change in conformation upon UV or visible light illumination. Photoisomerization in Azo is of high yield and reversible, which is why these molecules can act as molecular photoswitches in various biomedical and energy conversion applications. However, a broader application of Azo, particularly in biomedicine, requires lower energy of photoisomerization that falls further into visible or even NIR range. In our study, selected azobenzenes were conjugated to the surface of bare gold nanoparticles (Au NP) to obtain functional hybrid nanosystems in which photoisomerization of Azo can occur upon excitation of surface plasmon in Au NP. To understand the nature of the process, the valence band structure of Azo-functionalized Au NP was investigated by synchrotron radiation VUV aerosol photoemission spectroscopy. The results demonstrate that the overlap between the valence bands of Azo and Au NP is significant to allow for chare transfer process between the components in the nanosystem.XVI Photonics Workshop : Book of abstracts; March 12-15, 2023; Kopaonik, Serbi