Muonless Events in ICAL at INO

The primary physics signal events in the ICAL at INO are the ${\nu}_{\mu}$ charged current (CC) interactions with a well defined muon track. Apart from these events, ICAL can also detect other types of neutrino interactions, i.e. the electron neutrino charged current interactions and the neutral current events. It is possible to have a dataset containing mostly ${\nu}_e$CC events, by imposing appropriate selection cuts on the events. The ${\nu}_{\mu}$ CC and the neutral current events form the background to these events. This study uses the Monte Carlo generated neutrino events, to design the necessary selection cuts to obtain a ${\nu}_e$ CC rich dataset. An optimized set of constraints are developed which balance the need for improving the purity of the sample and having a large enough event sample. Depending on the constraints used, one can obtain a neutrino data sample, with the purity of ${\nu}_e$ events varying between 55% to 70%.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

The 'Nowhere' Children: Patriarchy and the Role of Girls in India's Rural Economy

The paper is motivated by an apparent paradox – boys seem to participate more both in the labour market and in school than girls. This pattern breaks down once we take the household work done by girls into account. In this paper, we find that there is symmetry between the factors that make women’s contribution to the household economy less ‘visible’ than men’s and the factors that reduce girl’s involvement in outside work. Both are related to the kind of sociocultural environment in which households operate in India. Analysing the School, Work and household chores options for girls, we find that the kinship system prevalent in different regions as well as amongst different religions and castes is a significant determinant of these choices. In addition, we find that increases in household income do not decrease the probability of girls doing household chores, reinforcing our conclusion that non-economic factors are important. Our results confirm, once again, that while daughter’s labour complements mother’s work within family enterprises, it substitutes for mothers in household chores when the mother works outside the home.Child work, Girl child, kinship systems, patriarchy, household chores, India

Testing LSND at long-baseline neutrino experiments

Recently it was suggested that two very different mass-squared differences play a role in atmospheric neutrino oscillations. The larger of these also accounts for the LSND result and the smaller of these also drives the solar neutrino oscillations. We consider the predictions of this scheme for long-baseline experiments. We find that high statistics experiments, such as MINOS, can observe a clean signal for this scheme, which is clearly distinguishable from the usual scheme of atmospheric neutrino oscillations driven by a single mass-squared difference.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

The need for an early anti-neutrino run of NOvA

The moderately large value of \ty, measured recently by reactor experiments, is very welcome news for the future neutrino experiments. In particular, the \nova experiment, with 3 years each of $\nu$ and \anu runs, will be able to determine the mass hierarchy if one of the following two favourable combinations is true: normal hierarchy with -180^\circ \leq \dcp \leq 0 or inverted hierarchy with 0\leq \dcp \leq 180^\circ. In this report, we study the hierarchy reach of the first 3 years of \nova data. Since \sin^2 2 \tz is measured to be non-maximal, \tz can be either in the lower or higher octant. Pure $\nu$ data is affected by \ty-hierarchy and octant-hierarchy degeneracies, which limit the hierarchy sensitivity of such data. A combination of $\nu$ and \anu data is not subject to these degeneracies and hence has much better hierarchy discrimination capability. We find that, with a 3 year $\nu$ run, hierarchy determination is possible for only two of the four octant-hierarchy combinations. Equal 1.5 year runs in $\nu$ and \anu modes give good hierarchy sensitivity for all the four combinations

Non-Zero θ13\theta_{13} and δCP\delta_{CP} in a Neutrino Mass Model with A4A_4 Symmetry

In this paper, we consider a neutrino mass model based on $A_4$ symmetry. The spontaneous symmetry breaking in this model is chosen to obtain tribimaximal mixing in the neutrino sector. We introduce $Z_2 \times Z_2$ invariant perturbations in this model which can give rise to acceptable values of $\theta_{13}$ and $\delta_{CP}$. Perturbation in the charged lepton sector alone can lead to viable values of $\theta_{13}$, but cannot generate $\delta_{CP}$. Perturbation in the neutrino sector alone can lead to acceptable $\theta_{13}$ and maximal CP violation. By adjusting the magnitudes of perturbations in both sectors, it is possible to obtain any value of $\delta_{CP}$.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

A Genetic Algorithm with Design of Experiments Approach to Predict the Optimal Process Parameters for FDM

This paper describes a Genetic Algorithm (GA) with Design of Experiments (DoE) approach to predict the optimized surface roughness and porosity characteristics of the parts produced using ABS material on stratasys FDM 2000 machine. The Mathematical Model (MM) was developed by using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). It is to predict and investigate the influence of selected process parameters namely slice thickness, road width, liquefier temperature and air gap and their interactions on the surface roughness and porosity. The developed MM is the fitness function in GA in order to find out the optimal sets of process parameters and to predict the corresponding surface quality characteristics. These results have been validated and the experimental results after GA are found to be in conformance with the predicted process parameters.Mechanical Engineerin