An assessment of the performance of different districts towards Sustainable Development targets in India

Sustainable development goals encapsulates 17 broad-based goals and 169 associated targets to reconcile among the three pillars of sustainability i.e. social, economic and environmental. In the present study, we sought to understand the performance of 641 districts ofIndiaon social, economic and environmental parameters and on the composite sustainability index as a whole. Our results suggest that there is a large regional variations in performance with districts of southern and western states outperforming northern and eastern states on sustainability index. There is a strong congruence between social and economic indicators. However, environment is still missing from the policy planning. Our results may provide a benchmark and help in micro-level planning at district level and may help in raising public and policy support, realignment and reorientation of the existing policy from the perspective of SDGs

Case study: disclosure of indirect device fingerprinting in privacy policies

Recent developments in online tracking make it harder for individuals to detect and block trackers. This is especially true for de- vice fingerprinting techniques that websites use to identify and track individual devices. Direct trackers { those that directly ask the device for identifying information { can often be blocked with browser configu- rations or other simple techniques. However, some sites have shifted to indirect tracking methods, which attempt to uniquely identify a device by asking the browser to perform a seemingly-unrelated task. One type of indirect tracking known as Canvas fingerprinting causes the browser to render a graphic recording rendering statistics as a unique identifier. Even experts find it challenging to discern some indirect fingerprinting methods. In this work, we aim to observe how indirect device fingerprint- ing methods are disclosed in privacy policies, and consider whether the disclosures are sufficient to enable website visitors to block the track- ing methods. We compare these disclosures to the disclosure of direct fingerprinting methods on the same websites. Our case study analyzes one indirect ngerprinting technique, Canvas fingerprinting. We use an existing automated detector of this fingerprint- ing technique to conservatively detect its use on Alexa Top 500 websites that cater to United States consumers, and we examine the privacy poli- cies of the resulting 28 websites. Disclosures of indirect fingerprinting vary in specificity. None described the specific methods with enough granularity to know the website used Canvas fingerprinting. Conversely, many sites did provide enough detail about usage of direct fingerprint- ing methods to allow a website visitor to reliably detect and block those techniques. We conclude that indirect fingerprinting methods are often technically difficult to detect, and are not identified with specificity in legal privacy notices. This makes indirect fingerprinting more difficult to block, and therefore risks disturbing the tentative armistice between individuals and websites currently in place for direct fingerprinting. This paper illustrates differences in fingerprinting approaches, and explains why technologists, technology lawyers, and policymakers need to appreciate the challenges of indirect fingerprinting.Accepted manuscrip

Analysis of a Compact Squeeze Film Damper with Magneto Rheological Fluid

Rotor systems play vital role in many modern day machinery such as turbines, pumps, aeroengines, gyroscopes, to name a few. Due to unavoidable unbalance in the rotor systems, there are lateral and torsional vibrations. Ignoring these effects may cause the system serious damages, which sometimes lead to catastrophic failures. Vibration level in rotor systems is acceptable within a range. Focus in this work is to minimize the vibration level to the acceptable range. One of the ways vibration level can be minimised is by means of providing damping. To accomplish this task in this work a new concept squeeze film damper is made by electro discharge machining which is compact in configuration, is filled with magneto-rheological (MR) fluid and tested out on one support of a Jeffcott rotor. This compact squeeze film damper (SFD) produces damping in a compact volume of the device compared to a conventional SFD. MR fluid is a smart fluid, for which apparent viscosity changes with the application of external magnetic field. This compact damper with MR fluid provides the variable damping force, controlled by an external magnetic field. In this work, proportional controller has been used for providing the control feedback. This MR damper is seen to reduce vibrations in steady state and transient input to the Jeffcott rotor. Parametric study for important design parameters has been done with the help of the simulation model. These controlled dampers can be used for reducing vibrations under different operating conditions and also crossing critical speed

Fretting wear characteristics of AISI 1040 steel alloy

Most of the shrink fit joints, couplings, and fasteners of machine components are generally made up of AISI 1040 steel. These components are subjected to fretting wear due to vibrations induced by machine operation. Fretting wear test on AISI 1040 steel is performed with different normal loads in ambient condition using Rtec MFT 5000 tribometer. The effect of different normal loads on coefficient of friction, slip regime and wear profile are analyzed. The result reveals that normal load has a significant effect on fretting wear performance of AISI 1040 alloy. Optical micrograph obtained from optical microscope shows that with an increase in normal load, wear depth increases and transition of slip regime from gross slip to partial slip occurs

Odd symmetry planar Hall effect: A method of detecting current-induced in-plane magnetization switching

Type-x device attracts considerable interest in the field of spintronics due to its robust spin-orbit torque (SOT) induced magnetization switching, and easy deposition technique. However, universally applicable and straightforward detection of type-X magnetization reversal is still elusive, unlike type-Z switching, which employs DC-based anomalous Hall effect measurement. Here, we, demonstrated that the odd planar Hall signal (O-PHV) exhibits an odd symmetry with the application of an external magnetic field which motivates us to develop a reading mechanism for detecting magnetization switching of in-plane magnetized type-X devices. We verified our DC-based reading mechanism in the Pt/Co/NiFe/Pt stack where a thin Co layer is inserted to create dissimilar interfaces about the NiFe layer. Remarkably, the current-induced in-plane fields are found to be significantly large in Pt/Co/NiFe/Pt stack. Further, we successfully employed the O-PHV method to detect the current-induced magnetization switching. The pure DC nature of the writing and reading mechanism of our proposed type-X detection technique through O-PHV makes it the easiest in-plane magnetization detection technique. Moreover, the high repeatability and easy detection of our proposed method will open new avenues toward in-plane SOT switching based memory devices and sensors

Physicochemical characterization and HPTLC profiling of commercially availableKabasura Kudineer Chooranam

The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic and currently, no specific vaccines or modern drugs are available to combat this contagious viral disease. Kaba sura kudineer, an official polyherbal Siddha medicine containing numerous herbal ingredients, is being practiced primarily in southern parts of India in the management of COVID-19 pandemic for boosting the respiratory system and treating fever with flu-like symptoms. The present study is carried out to scientifically validate the traditional claim and to confirm identity, quality and purity of marketed kaba sura kudineer polyherbal formulations in India. Kabasura kudineer chooranam manufactured by two different manufacturers were procured from New Delhi, India. The physicochemical characterization of the samples was carried out in accordance with the standards laid down by Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) 2018. HPTLC profiling of key ingredients including Kalmegh (Andrographis paniculata), Guduchi (Tinospora cordifolia), Pippali (Piper longum), Vasaka (Adhatoda vasica) and Lavang (Syzygium aromaticum) were also carried out in accordance with IP 2018 monographs. The chromatographic analysis showed presence of all major ingredients in both the marketed preparations and all the physicochemical properties were also found comparable among preparations. Our findings may enhance the global acceptance of Siddha medicines practiced widely in India and also used for laying down the pharmacopoeial standards of kaba sura kudineer chooranam

Physicochemical characterization and HPTLC profiling of commercially available Kabasura Kudineer Chooranam

629-637The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing viral infection and currently, limited vaccines with no post-market safety data or repurposed drugs are available to combat this contagious viral disease. Kabasura Kudineer, an official polyherbal Siddha medicine containing numerous herbal ingredients, is being practiced primarily in southern parts of India in the management of COVID-19 pandemic for boosting the respiratory system and treating fever with flu-like symptoms. The present study is carried out to scientifically validate the traditional claim and to confirm identity, quality and purity of marketed Kabasura Kudineer polyherbal formulations in India. Kabasura Kudineer Chooranam manufactured by two different manufacturers was procured from New Delhi, India. The physicochemical characterization of the samples was carried out in accordance with the standards laid down by Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP) 2018. HPTLC profiling of key ingredients including Kalmegh (Andrographis paniculata), Guduchi (Tinospora cordifolia), Pippali (Piper longum), Vasaka (Adhatoda vasica) and Lavang (Syzygium aromaticum) were also carried out in accordance with IP 2018 monographs. The chromatographic analysis showed the presence of all major ingredients in both the marketed preparations and all the physicochemical properties were also found comparable among preparations. Our findings may enhance the global acceptance of Siddha medicines practiced widely in India and also used for laying down the pharmacopoeial standards of Kabasura Kudineer Chooranam

Bit-rate allocation for multiple video streams : dual-frame video coding and competitive equilibrium methods

With the advancement of digital video technology in recent years, there has been an enormous surge in the amount of video data sent across networks. In many cases, a transmission link is shared by more than one video stream. Applications where multiple compressed video streams are transmitted simultaneously through a shared channel include direct broadcast satellite (DBS), cable TV, video- on-demand services, disaster relief response, and video surveillance. Some commercial applications are YouTube and instant video streaming by content providers, such as Netflix, where multiple streams are transmitted simultaneously, and in many cases, these streams share a common transmission channel. Recently, in cognitive radio technology, the secondary or unlicensed users share a pool of bandwidth that is temporarily going unused by the primary or licensed users. In such cases, it has been shown that joint bit-rate allocation schemes for multiple streams can perform better than an equal bit-rate allocation. In this dissertation, we consider the problem of bit-rate allocation for multiple video users sharing a common transmission channel. We consider two separate objectives for bit-rate allocation among multiple video users: (a) improving the video quality averaged across all the users, and (b) improving the video quality of each individual user, compared to the bit-rate allocation for the users when acting independently. We use dual-frame video with high-quality Long-Term Reference (LTR) frames, and propose multiplexing methods to reduce the sum of Mean Squared Error (MSE) for all the users. We make several improvements to dual-frame video coding by selecting the location and quality of LTR frames. An adaptive buffer- constrained rate-control algorithm is devised to accommodate the extra bits of the high-quality LTR frames. Multiplexing of video streams was studied under the constraint of a video encoder delay buffer. The high- quality LTR frames are offset in time among different video streams. This provides the benefit of dual-frame video coding with high-quality LTR frames while still fitting under the constraint of an output delay buffer. The multiplexing methods show considerable improvement over conventional rate control when the video streams are encoded independently, and over multiplexing methods proposed previously in the literature. While the average video quality is improved for multiple video users, such methods often rely on identifying the relative complexity of the video streams. In such methods, not all the videos benefit from the multiplexing process. Typically, the quality of high motion videos is improved at the expense of a reduction in the quality of low motion videos. We use a competitive equilibrium allocation of bit-rate to improve the quality of each individual video stream by finding trades between videos across time. A central controller collects rate-distortion information from each video user and makes a joint bit-rate allocation decision. The proposed method uses information about not only the differing complexity of the different video streams at a given instant of time, but also the differing complexity of each stream over time. Using the competitive equilibrium bit-rate allocation approach for multiple video streams, we show that all the video streams perform better or at least as well as with individual encoding. The centralized bit-rate allocation methods share the video characteristics and involve high computational complexity. In our pricing-based method, we present an informationally decentralized bit-rate allocation for multiple users where a user only needs to inform his demand to an allocator. Each user separately calculates his bit-rate demand based on his video complexity and bit- rate price, where the bit-rate price is announced by the allocator. The allocator adjusts the bit-rate price based o

Bit-rate allocation for multiple video streams : dual-frame video coding and competitive equilibrium methods

With the advancement of digital video technology in recent years, there has been an enormous surge in the amount of video data sent across networks. In many cases, a transmission link is shared by more than one video stream. Applications where multiple compressed video streams are transmitted simultaneously through a shared channel include direct broadcast satellite (DBS), cable TV, video- on-demand services, disaster relief response, and video surveillance. Some commercial applications are YouTube and instant video streaming by content providers, such as Netflix, where multiple streams are transmitted simultaneously, and in many cases, these streams share a common transmission channel. Recently, in cognitive radio technology, the secondary or unlicensed users share a pool of bandwidth that is temporarily going unused by the primary or licensed users. In such cases, it has been shown that joint bit-rate allocation schemes for multiple streams can perform better than an equal bit-rate allocation. In this dissertation, we consider the problem of bit-rate allocation for multiple video users sharing a common transmission channel. We consider two separate objectives for bit-rate allocation among multiple video users: (a) improving the video quality averaged across all the users, and (b) improving the video quality of each individual user, compared to the bit-rate allocation for the users when acting independently. We use dual-frame video with high-quality Long-Term Reference (LTR) frames, and propose multiplexing methods to reduce the sum of Mean Squared Error (MSE) for all the users. We make several improvements to dual-frame video coding by selecting the location and quality of LTR frames. An adaptive buffer- constrained rate-control algorithm is devised to accommodate the extra bits of the high-quality LTR frames. Multiplexing of video streams was studied under the constraint of a video encoder delay buffer. The high- quality LTR frames are offset in time among different video streams. This provides the benefit of dual-frame video coding with high-quality LTR frames while still fitting under the constraint of an output delay buffer. The multiplexing methods show considerable improvement over conventional rate control when the video streams are encoded independently, and over multiplexing methods proposed previously in the literature. While the average video quality is improved for multiple video users, such methods often rely on identifying the relative complexity of the video streams. In such methods, not all the videos benefit from the multiplexing process. Typically, the quality of high motion videos is improved at the expense of a reduction in the quality of low motion videos. We use a competitive equilibrium allocation of bit-rate to improve the quality of each individual video stream by finding trades between videos across time. A central controller collects rate-distortion information from each video user and makes a joint bit-rate allocation decision. The proposed method uses information about not only the differing complexity of the different video streams at a given instant of time, but also the differing complexity of each stream over time. Using the competitive equilibrium bit-rate allocation approach for multiple video streams, we show that all the video streams perform better or at least as well as with individual encoding. The centralized bit-rate allocation methods share the video characteristics and involve high computational complexity. In our pricing-based method, we present an informationally decentralized bit-rate allocation for multiple users where a user only needs to inform his demand to an allocator. Each user separately calculates his bit-rate demand based on his video complexity and bit- rate price, where the bit-rate price is announced by the allocator. The allocator adjusts the bit-rate price based o