Operationalizing FSM regulations at city level: a case study of Warangal, India

Warangal is the first city in India to introduce and operationalize Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) regulation. Evidence based advocacy, leadership at city level, citizen awareness campaigns, capacity building of stakeholders particularly the mechanised desludging operators, extensive use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools for monitoring have played an important role in operationalizing the regulation. The City government through FSM regulation has successfully introduced : a) empanelment and training of masons (as toilet builders) to ensure toilets are built as per design principles, b) site inspection by the sanitation team prior to issuance of building plan approval, c) licences to operate mechanised desludging and service level agreement with private operators d) usage of personal protective equipment by the desludging operators e) a mobile app in vernacular language for record keeping on desludging f) a dedicated helpline for citizens to seek support on FSM operations and g) awareness campaigns on safe FSM and scheduled desludging. Lessons from Warangal are being scaled up through introduction of State level FSM regulation and operational guidelines

Observing access control policies using scrabble games

Access control is concerned with the policies that manage data sharing activities. Access control plays a crucial role in application areas such as education, health and business. However, most programming languages and programming environments do not naturally provide support for implementing access control policies requiring access control policies for systems to be coded as part of the development effort. Access control management policies are high-level features so having to involve a computer programmer during deployment stages for making changes to policies is costly. In this paper, we present an abstraction of access control management policies in the form of extended scrabble in its rules. The needs of access control policies program construct for supporting this game are examined. New relevant program constructs are then incorporated into JACIE (Java-based Authoring language for Collaborative Interactive Environments). The usefulness of these program construct are being demonstrated through the extended scrabble

Managing access control policy from end user perspective in collaborative environment

Currently, collaborative environments offer unlimited data sharing for users. Data owners are poorly involved in handling their data for such environment when it deals with data policy. Normally, data access control policy consists of a resource and authorization descriptions which are assigned by the administrator. It is the responsibility of the administrator to set and specify the policy for application services. The policy details are massive and complex for administrator to handle where most of the times there will be cases of unreview services. This paper proposes a framework that allows data owners to provision policies for storing and managing their shared data with third parties. By adapting RBAC model and adding owner's interest on permissions for data operations and objects, the proposed framework will facilitate data access control whereby owners have the freedom to set their own data access policy

Acoustic emission studies for characterization of fatigue crack growth behavior in HSLA steel

<div><p></p><p>High strength low alloy (HSLA) steels are a group of low carbon steels and used in oil and gas pipelines, automotive components, offshore structures and shipbuilding. Fatigue crack growth (FCG) characteristics of a HSLA steel have been studied at two different stress ratios (<i>R</i> = 0.3 and 0.5). Acoustic emission (AE) signals generated during the FCG tests have been used to understand the FCG processes. The AE signals were captured by mounting two piezoelectric sensors on compact tension specimens in liner location configuration. The AE generated in stage II of the linear Paris region of FCG has been attributed to the presence of two sub-stages with two different slopes. The AE generated at higher values of stress intensity factor is found to be useful to identify the transition from stage II to stage III of the FCG. AE location analysis has provided support for increased damage at the crack tip for higher stress ratio. The peak stress intensity (<i>K</i>_max) values at the crack tip have shown good correlation with the transitions from stage IIa to stage IIb and stage II to stage III of the FCG for the two stress ratios.</p></div

Potential of natural repellents methylanthranilate and anthraquinone applied on maize seeds and seedlings against house sparrow (Passer domesticus) in captivity

<div><p>Abstract Various bird pests caused severe economic losses to valuable crops and fruit orchards all over the world. Among the birds, house sparrow is also considered to cause heavy plunder, not only to seeds of crops but also seedlings especially in organic farming. In present study two bird repellents, methylanthranilate and anthraquinone tested against house sparrows on maize seeds and seedlings in aviary conditions. Trial group in aviary-I, the treated maize seeds and seedlings with different doses of both bird repellents, control group in aviary-II, untreated seeds and seedlings were provided for three hours in the early morning. In each aviary, two closed circuit cameras were also installed to monitor the behavioral responses against different concentrations of both chemical repellents. Statistical analysis showed that there existed highly significant (P<0.01) variations among the trial and control groups for seeds and seedlings. By comparing both repellents, significant (P<0.05) differences were detected and anthraquinone showed better efficacy when compared to methylanthranilate, but in maize seedlings both repellents equal repellent properties. Non-significant (P>0.05) differences were observed in different grading of both natural chemical repellents for maize seeds while significant (P<0.05) variations were noticed for maize seedlings when provided to sparrows. By videotaped behavior sparrows presented manifest head juddering and feather upsetting activities by consumption of treated seeds and seedlings with higher concentrations of both natural bird repellents.</p></div

Correction: The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study.

The arcOGEN Consortium should be listed as an author of this article. They contributed to the genome-wide association study results presented in this work. They should be listed in the author byline at position 292 and affiliated with The Arthritis Research UK Osteoarthritis Genetics Consortium. They should also be included in the footnote designating consortia which is underneath the author affiliation list in the PDF version of the article, and in the S2 Text. Please view the correct S2 Text below, containing correct consortia members. S2 Text. Consortia members and extended acknowledgments. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006166.s001 (DOCX) [This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005378.]