Application of Silica Fume and Nanosilica in Cement and Concrete - A Review

This paper reviews the recent developments and present state of the application of silica fume (micro-silica) and nano-silica for sustainable development of concrete industry. This would save not only the natural resources and energy but also protect the environment with the reduction of waste material. Limited work is done on use of nano-silica and microsilica in paste, mortar and concrete and whatever work is available is highly contradictory about their influence on mechanical strength development and durability properties. Various literatures have been reviewed to understand the influence of micro and nano-silica on fresh, hardened and microstructural properties of paste, cement mortar and concrete. Taking advantage of nanostructure and microstructure characterization tools and materials, the simultaneous and also separate optimal use of micro-silica and nano-silica will create a new concrete mixture that will result in long lasting concrete structures in the future

Concrete Mix Design Using Artificial Neural Network

Concrete mix design is a process based on sound technical principles for proportioning of ingredients in right quantities. This paper demonstrates the applicability of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) Model for approximate proportioning of concrete mixes. For ANN a trained back propagation neural network is integrated in the model to learn experimental data pertaining to predict 7, 14 and 28-day compressive strength which have been loaded into a model, containing 55 concrete mixtures. The ANN model proposed is based on 5 input parameters such as cement, sand, coarse aggregate, and water and fineness modulus. The proposed concrete mix proportion design is expected to reduce the number of trials in laboratory as well as field, saves cost of material as well as labor and also saves time as it provides higher accuracy. The concrete designed is expected to have higher durability and hence is economical

STRATEGIC REWARDS - A CASE BASED STUDY

Talent has won ’The war for talent’. The war is caused by the continuously increasing demandsupply gap for skilled workforce. Consequently, organizations face difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. Talent market is highly dynamic, since new disciplines of knowledge and skills are continuously emerging due to explosive growth of knowledge. It is resulting in rapidly changing technology and preferences and priorities of workforce in the midst of shortages. This necessitates appropriate reward system but in practice very few organizations offer attractive value proposition to their workforce. Most organizations still adhere to the conventional reward system. The traditional Rewards Management assumes money, and cash components to be the strongest motivator and the best performance incentives for employees. Higher wages/rewards have a close association with efficiency/productivity and employee turnover rates. Neo-classicists postulate equality between wages and the marginal product of labor. Higher-wages help in facing short supply of talent. Neo-classicists argue that the ’Total Factor Productivity (TFP)/Multi-factor Productivity (MFP)’ depends on investment in human capital; education and skills are the drivers of productivity of labor. It implies that the companies, especially service providers, which use manpower as the pivot, should particularly invest in human capital. This study also considers rewards as the main driver of high performance; so the companies should focus on satisfying the needs of all the employees by balancing extrinsic and intrinsic values; which is based on strategic reward system. Further, the Rewards Strategy, Business Strategy and external environment should be aligned to ensure sustainable results. Outcomes tend to diverge from desired goals if business and rewards strategy are not well aligned. ’Strategic Rewards System’ does not emerge in one go it evolves if the above conditions are satisfied. Therefore, the study traces the historical evolution of ’Strategic Rewards System’ by review of literature. This furnishes the rationale for the case study based on a Small Medium Enterprise; it provides evidence for the choice of the “Strategic Rewards System” by the organization under study. The case study assesses the relation of reward strategy with the organizational performance. The study concludes that a well-designed and a well-executed Strategic Rewards System reverses employee turnover and improves performance without a lofty budget.</jats:p

Impact of Changing Stellar and Planetary Magnetic Fields on (Exo)planetary Environments and Atmospheric Mass Loss

The magnetic activity of a star -- which modulates the stellar wind outflow -- shapes the immediate environments of orbiting planets and induces atmospheric loss thereby impacting their habitability. We perform a detailed parameter space study using three dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations to understand the effect of changing stellar wind magnetic field and planetary magnetic field strengths on planetary magnetospheric topology and atmospheric losses. It is observed that the relative strengths of stellar and planetary magnetic fields play a significant role in determining the steady state magnetospheric configuration and atmospheric erosion. When the stellar field is strengthened or the planetary field is weakened, stellar magnetic field accumulation occurs at the day-side of the planet which forces the magnetopause to shift closer to its surface. The magnetotail opens up leading to the formation of Alfv\'{e}n wings in the night-side wake region. We demonstrate how reconnection processes and wind conditions lead to the bifurcation of the magnetotail current sheet. With increasing stellar wind magnetic field strength, the day-side reconnection point approaches the planet thereby enhancing mass loss. We establish an analytic equation which successfully captures the modeled mass-loss rate variations of planets with changing magnetic field strengths. Our results are relevant for understanding how the interplay of stellar and planetary magnetism influence (exo)planetary environments and their habitability in star-planet systems with differing relative magnetic field strengths, or in a single star-planet system over the course of their evolution with age.Comment: Submitte

Essays in Labor and Development Economics

In this dissertation, I explore various fundamental challenges of inequality that developing countries continue to grapple with. The first chapter seeks to understand the role of social and cultural norms in explaining the persistent gender gaps in the labor markets. The second chapter studies how schooling decisions are made in the presence of liquidity constraints. Both the above questions are answered in the context of India. The third chapter adds to our understanding of the relationship between decision-making power within households and intimate partner violence in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite recent gains in women's educational attainment and reproductive agency, substantial gender gaps in the labor market still remain, particularly in developing countries. In my first chapter, I study the impact of culture and social norms in explaining this puzzle in the Indian setting. In particular, I examine the role of the male-breadwinner norm, which dictates that husbands should earn more than their wives. I first establish a sharp discontinuity in the distribution of the share of the wife's income at the point where the wife’s income exceeds the husband's income. I theoretically show that this pattern can be best explained by gender identity norms which make couples averse to a situation where the wife earns more than her husband. I also provide empirical evidence that this aversion has real implications for the labor market outcomes of the wife. First, the wife is less likely to participate in market activities if her potential income is likely to exceed her husband’s. Second, she earns less than her potential if she does work and can potentially out-earn her husband. Evidence from observing couples over time and bunching methods supplement these results. Moreover, these results are more pronounced in couples where the husband is making the labor market decisions of the wife and where other regressive gender norms are prevalent. My second chapter, co-authored with Dhruv Jain, studies the importance of liquidity constraints in determining the schooling decisions of households in developing countries. Evidence across developing countries suggests that parents are often credit-constrained when making schooling decisions for their children. But little is known about the severity of this constraint. In this chapter, we ask if temporary shocks to liquidity affect parents’ decisions regarding the schooling of their children. We use a shock to available cash in the economy induced by India’s 2016 demonetization to identify this effect. The policy made 86% of currency-in-circulation illegal overnight, and individuals could deposit old notes at the bank in exchange for new ones but with significant withdrawal limits. We identify the impacts of demonetization’s severity by leveraging discontinuities in banking access across Indian districts. Difference-in-discontinuity estimates show that districts that experienced more severe liquidity shock saw an increase in dropouts from private schools but no effect in free public schools, consistent with the presence of real credit constraints. Moreover, enrollments in future periods remained unchanged, suggesting a more permanent effect. The third chapter of my dissertation, co-authored with Aletheia Donald, Cheryl Doss and Markus Goldstein, studies the relationship between decision-making within households and its impact on intimate partner violence (IPV) in 12 Sub-Saharan African countries where 36% of women are affected by IPV. Using the wife’s responses to survey questions, we find that compared to joint decision-making, sole decision-making by the husband is associated with a 3.3 percentage point higher incidence of physical IPV in the last year, while sole decision-making by the wife is associated with a 10 percentage point higher incidence. Similar patterns hold for emotional and sexual violence. When we include the combined responses of the husband and wife about decision-making in the analysis, we identify joint decision-making as protective only when spouses agree that decisions are made jointly. Notably, agreement on joint decision-making is associated with lower IPV than agreement on decision-making by the husband. Constructs undergirding common IPV theories, namely attitudes towards violence, similarity of preferences, marital capital, and bargaining, do not explain the relationship. Our results are instead consistent with joint decision-making as a mechanism that allows spouses to share responsibility and mitigate conflict if the decision is later regretted

Low power VLSI design of a fir filter using dual edge triggered clocking strategy

Digital signal processing is an area of science and engineering that has developed rapidly over the past 30 years. This rapid development is a result of the significant advances in digital computer technology and integrated–circuit fabrication. DSP processors are a diverse group, most share some common features designed to support fast execution of the repetitive, numerically intensive computations characteristic of digital signal processing algorithms. The most often cited of these features is the ability to perform a multiply-accumulate operation (often called a "MAC") in a single instruction cycle. Hence in this project a DSP Processor is designed which can perform the basic DSP Operations like convolution, fourier transform and filtering. The processor designed is a simple 4-bit processor which has single data line of 8-bits and a single address bus of 16-bits. With a set of branch instructions the project DSP will operate as a CISC processor with strong math capabilities and can perform the above mentioned DSP operations. The application I have taken is the low power FIR filter using dual edge clocking strategy. It combines two novel techniques for the power reduction which is : multi stage clock gating and a symmetric two-phase level-sensitive clocking with glitch aware re-distribution of data-path registers. Simulation results confirm a 42% reduction in power over single edge triggered clocking with clock gating.Also to further reduce the power consumption the a low power latch circuit is used. Thanks to a partial pass-transistor logic, it trades time for energy, being particularly suitable for low power low-frequency applications. Simulation results confirm the power reduction. This technique discussed can be implemented to portable devices which needs longer battery life and to ASIC’

Study of cervical cytology in pap smears in a tertiary care hospital of North Maharashtra

Background: Cervical cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in females worldwide. In India cervical cancer is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Cancer of cervix is preventable, and can be diagnosed at the pre-malignant stage with adequate and repetitive cytological screening by Papanicolaou (Pap) smears. Aim of this study was to study the role of Pap smear in detecting premalignant and malignant lesions as well as non-neoplastic lesions of cervix. Methods: It is a retrospective study of 240 pap smears studied from January 2022 to June 2022 and received in pathology department of a tertiary care hospital of north Maharashtra. Samples are collected from women between 21 to 65 years presenting with some gynecological problems. Smears were reported as per the 2014 Bethesda system. Results: Out of 240 women, 216 were having normal cytology and 146 cases with inflammatory changes. 10 cases were unsatisfactory. 5 cases of ASCUS, 1 case of SCC, 2 cases of HSIL and 6 cases of LSIL were observed. Conclusions: Pap smear test is a simple, safe, noninvasive, economical OPD based procedure to detect pervasive cervical epithelial lesions. Every woman should undergo Pap test at least once in her life before the age of 45 years

Dengue in India

Dengue virus belongs to family Flaviviridae, having four serotypes that spread by the bite of infected Aedes mosquitoes. It causes a wide spectrum of illness from mild asymptomatic illness to severe fatal dengue haemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome (DHF/DSS). Approximately 2.5 billion people live in dengue-risk regions with about 100 million new cases each year worldwide. The cumulative dengue diseases burden has attained an unprecedented proportion in recent times with sharp increase in the size of human population at risk. Dengue disease presents highly complex pathophysiological, economic and ecologic problems. In India, the first epidemic of clinical dengue-like illness was recorded in Madras (now Chennai) in 1780 and the first virologically proved epidemic of dengue fever (DF) occurred in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Eastern Coast of India in 1963-1964. During the last 50 years a large number of physicians have treated and described dengue disease in India, but the scientific studies addressing various problems of dengue disease have been carried out at limited number of centres. Achievements of Indian scientists are considerable; however, a lot remain to be achieved for creating an impact. This paper briefly reviews the extent of work done by various groups of scientists in this country

Incidental retained intrauterine Lippe’s loop in 65 years old woman: a rare case report

Intrauterine contraceptive devices are a widely used method of contraception. It is cheap, easy and an effective method. The first intrauterine device was Lippe’s loop which was double S shaped trapezoid loop introduced in 1962. Nowadays, third generation intrauterine devices are used which are effective for 5 and as well as 10 years. Here we presented a rare case of first generation of intrauterine device, that was, Lippe’s loop in a 65 year old lady which was found as an incidental finding. Intrauterine device insertion without the knowledge of women can lead to the forgotten device which can adversely affect the health of women