Market integration, competitiveness and efficiency in urban vs. rural markets: male and female flower trading farms in West Bengal

[This paper seeks to measure the magnitude of inter temporal and spatial variations in the prices of flower crop between same type of marketing institutions as well as different types of marketing institutions and to assess the competitiveness and efficiency of marketing in the rural and urban trade markets of flower crops in West Bengal in Indian context where female act as important marketing agents. This study suggests that trade market for most of flower crops are not efficient in the area we studied. However, price per unit for all flower crops is lower in village level markets, and female marketing agents offer lower price for all flower crops in all types of markets. Also, the marketing efficiency for some flower crops is somewhat higher for female marketing agentsInter-temporal and spatial price variation ; Modified marketing efficiency ; Urban and rural markets; Female and male flower marketing farms

Household decision-making in agricultural labour household: a case study of West Bengal

This paper focuses on theoretical issues of gender related to household decision making and examines its empirical validity on agricultural labour households in the context of a particular region of West Bengal. The study suggests that a woman‟s choice and rationality differ significantly from a man‟s. The loci of patriarchal power determines how, where, when and who make the choice. Unlike unitary household model, collective household model, in which a household consists of individuals each of whom is characterized by particular preference, and among whom a collective decision making takes place, seems to be more general. Further, a large unexplained component of intra-occupational wage difference between man and woman is likely to indicate gender discrimination in the intra occupational labour market in which both men and women of a household participate.collective household model,gender discrimination ,agricultural labour

CELL SURFACE REGULATORY IMMUNE TARGETS IN ANAPLASTIC THYROID CANCER

Thyroid cancer incidence is increasing at an alarming rate almost trebling every decade. 52,070 new cases of thyroid cancer (14,260 in men and 37,810 in women) were diagnosed in 2019 with an estimated death toll of 2170. Although most thyroid tumors are treatable and has good prognosis, anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) is extremely aggressive with a grim poor prognosis of 6-9 months post diagnosis. ATC is completely refractory to mainstream therapies. In our study, immunohistochemical analyses of ATC tissues confirmed a T cell inflamed “hot” tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) as evidenced by presence of CD3+ and CD8+ T cells. This kind of tumors are amenable to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. This therapeutic avenue is unexplored in ATC. In this study, we explored the feasibility of a combination therapy of small molecule inhibitor and ICB in ATC. We used an in vitro model system representative of papillary (TPC-1, K1, BCPAP), anaplastic (8505C, T238, SW1736, HTh74), follicular (CGTH-W-1) thyroid cancer and Nthy-ori-3-1 as normal thyroid follicular cell. The cells were screened for expression of 29 immune checkpoint molecules by qRT PCR. We noted a higher expression of HVEM, BTLA, CD160 in ATC cell lines compared to the rest. Expression level of HVEM was more than 30-fold higher in ATC compared to the other cell lines on average. immunocytochemistry, western blot and flow cytometry analyses confirmed expression of these proteins in ATC. Additionally, HVEM had highest surface expression in ATC. HVEM is a member of TNFRSF which acts as a bidirectional switch by interacting with BTLA, CD160 and LIGHT in a cis or trans manner. Given xxiii the T cell inflamed hot TIME in ATC, expression of HVEM on tumor cells was suggestive of a possibility of complex crosstalk of HVEM with inflammatory cytokines. Increased transcription and solubilization of HVEM were observed in ATC cell lines in response to pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-8 and TNFα. Our study also indicates that HVEM is inducible by IFNγ as evidenced by more than 5-fold increase in HVEM transcription in response to the cytokine. Our study reports for the first time, a tumor intrinsic stress induced MAPK signaling transduced by HVEM upon interaction with soluble LIGHT. Induction of pJNK and p-c-Jun was indicative of increased proliferative potential of these cells triggered by this interaction. HVEM/LIGHT interaction also triggered nuclear translocation of NFB in ATC. Silencing HVEM in 8505C by CRISPRi highly dampened proliferative and invasive potential of the cells signifying possible tumor intrinsic function of HVEM in ATC. BRAFV600E is a common mutation in ATC which is largely responsible for remodeling of TIME and is a prominent candidate for targeted therapy. Unfortunately, emergence of resistance is extremely common. BRAFV600E inhibitor PLX4032 resistant ATC cell lines were generated in this study, and their immune phenotypes were profiled. PLX4032 resistant cells had activation of alternate signaling molecules rescuing BRAFV600E inhibition and had dramatically higher expression of HVEM, BTLA and CD160 compared to the sensitive phenotype. The surface expression of HVEM persisted in resistant cells after combination therapy with PLX4032 and trametinib. Altogether, our studies provide evidence for T cell inflamed TIME in ATC along with expression of immune checkpoint proteins HVEM, BTLA and CD160 in ATC. We also discovered active tumor intrinsic signaling transduced by HVEM/LIGHT interaction in ATC and the persistent xxiv expression of these immune checkpoint molecules in case of BRAFV600Ei resistant ATC. We propose that a combination of small molecule inhibitor targeting downstream effectors of MAPK pathway and antagonistic antibodies targeting HVEM/BTLA axis might provide a viable therapeutic avenue for ATC patients

On the Permanence of Vertices in Network Communities

Despite the prevalence of community detection algorithms, relatively less work has been done on understanding whether a network is indeed modular and how resilient the community structure is under perturbations. To address this issue, we propose a new vertex-based metric called "permanence", that can quantitatively give an estimate of the community-like structure of the network. The central idea of permanence is based on the observation that the strength of membership of a vertex to a community depends upon the following two factors: (i) the distribution of external connectivity of the vertex to individual communities and not the total external connectivity, and (ii) the strength of its internal connectivity and not just the total internal edges. In this paper, we demonstrate that compared to other metrics, permanence provides (i) a more accurate estimate of a derived community structure to the ground-truth community and (ii) is more sensitive to perturbations in the network. As a by-product of this study, we have also developed a community detection algorithm based on maximizing permanence. For a modular network structure, the results of our algorithm match well with ground-truth communities.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 8 tables, Accepted in 20th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Minin

Prevalence study of common environmental allergens in children with asthma and allergic rhinitis in Kolkata: A hospital-based study

Background: Studies evaluating the role of skin prick testing (SPT) as the sole testing technique in children below 12 years of age involving a broader and more relevant group of aero- and food-allergens in this part of India are still lacking. Objectives: To identify the commonly prevalent environmental allergens by SPT in children with asthma as per British Thoracic Society and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network Criteria and allergic rhinitis (AR) as per British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology Criteria attending the OPD of a tertiary care pediatric unit in the eastern part of India. Methods: Testing of inhalant and food allergens by SPT in children from 4 to 12 years age group with asthma and AR satisfying the inclusion criteria. Results: Total 106 children (70 males and 36 females) were included in the study. Study of inhalant allergens in asthmatic patients revealed the highest positivity for house dust mite followed by male cockroach and among food allergens, highest positivity for egg/egg products, followed by milk/milk products. Study of inhalant allergens in asthmatic patients with coexistent AR revealed the highest positivity for house dust mite, cockroach male and female and among food allergens, highest for milk/milk products, egg/egg products, banana, and mustard. Conclusions: In Kolkata, in the eastern part of the country, among the asthmatic children of 4-12 years age group, the most common inhalant allergens were house dust mite and cockroach, whereas the common food allergens identified were milk and milk products, egg and egg products, and mustard