Impact of the South Asian Earthquake on Disabled People in the State of Jammu and Kashmir

On the morning of October 8, 2005, a devastating earthquake, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck the Kashmir region with its epicentre near Muzzafarabad in Pakistan-administrated Kashmir. It took a while for both India and Pakistan to comprehend the scale of destruction that the quake had unleashed. In the two weeks following, the quake had left over 50,000 dead on the Pakistani side of the India-Pakistan border and claimed 1,300 lives on the Indian side. A second wave of deaths was expected with the onset of the region's notorious winter. Our thoughts immediately went to what may be happening to disabled people in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, though we knew the answer, based on our bitter experiences of seeing disabled people being neglected even in the so-called normal scenarios. Our National Disability Network partner in the mountainous and violence ravaged State confirmed our fears of the “general neglect” being compounded in the wake of this calamity. With information gained from the Asian Tsunami and impending legislation on Disaster Management on the floor of Indian Parliament, we decided it was imperative to draw up the difficulties that disabled people face during natural disasters to facilitate some churning of our national consciousness and possibly a policy intervention. What follows is an account of a fact-finding mission, its findings and recommendations, on the impact of the Kashmir quake. It is a story of persistent neglect, which turns grave when calamities strike

Brownian Motion and the Black-Scholes Option Pricing Formula

The Brownian Motion of visible particles suspended in a fluid   led to one of the first accurate determination   of the mass   of the visible molecules.  Mathematical model of Brownian motion   has numerous real world applications. For instance stock market fluctuations.  The Black- Scholes  model  for calculating  the premium of  an option  was introduced  in 1973 in a paper   published in  Journal  of Political Economy  developed by three Economists –Fisher Black, Myron Scholes  and Robert Merton and  is world’s  most  well known  Option Pricing Model . In 1997 all was awarded    Nobel Prize in Economics. Keywords: Brownian  Motion, Market fluctuations, Arbitrage Theorem, Random Walk, Hitting Time, Betting

A study on the predictability of the combined effects of mixtures of anticancer drugs.

Advances in the treatment of cancer have lead to increased survival in many tumour patients. Although the use of combination chemotherapy has become an effective means of improving cancer treatment, methods to predict their combined effects systematically are not in widespread use. This study has looked at seven anticancer drugs with a variety of sites of action. These drugs were tested for their cytotoxicity in DU145 and MCF-7 cancer cells, and a mixture prepared of all seven agents combined at a mixture ratio proportional to their potency. Combined effects of this mixture were predicted using dose response curves for each component using the concepts of independent action and concentration addition. The expectation was that a mixture composed of dissimilarly acting agents should follow the independent action prediction. Instead we observed that this prediction model overestimated the combined effect and that the concentration addition prediction was found to be more accurate. A possible explanation for this phenomenon may be that although these agents display initial dissimilar sites of action, they may have similarity in their methods of promoting tumour cell death. Further study was undertaken to search for how these drugs signal for apoptosis. The cells were treated with each agent and mixture, and analysis for induction of apoptosis showed that each single agent and mixture induced increased apoptosis. Expression of the signalling proteins, p53, caspase-3 and caspase-9 were investigated for both cell lines, although expression of one protein or other was found, a common expression was not found for each drug treatment. The aspect of delivering a potentially effective combination of drugs to the tumour site was also explored and a comparison of the toxicity of a free combination of agents with a combination of agents entrapped in a liposome showed no significant difference

A study on the predictability of the combined effects of mixtures of anticancer drugs

Advances in the treatment of cancer have lead to increased survival in many tumour patients. Although the use of combination chemotherapy has become an effective means of improving cancer treatment, methods to predict their combined effects systematically are not in widespread use. This study has looked at seven anticancer drugs with a variety of sites of action. These drugs were tested for their cytotoxicity in DU145 and MCF-7 cancer cells, and a mixture prepared of all seven agents combined at a mixture ratio proportional to their potency. Combined effects of this mixture were predicted using dose response curves for each component using the concepts of independent action and concentration addition. The expectation was that a mixture composed of dissimilarly acting agents should follow the independent action prediction. Instead we observed that this prediction model overestimated the combined effect and that the concentration addition prediction was found to be more accurate. A possible explanation for this phenomenon may be that although these agents display initial dissimilar sites of action, they may have similarity in their methods of promoting tumour cell death. Further study was undertaken to search for how these drugs signal for apoptosis. The cells were treated with each agent and mixture, and analysis for induction of apoptosis showed that each single agent and mixture induced increased apoptosis. Expression of the signalling proteins, p53, caspase-3 and caspase-9 were investigated for both cell lines, although expression of one protein or other was found, a common expression was not found for each drug treatment. The aspect of delivering a potentially effective combination of drugs to the tumour site was also explored and a comparison of the toxicity of a free combination of agents with a combination of agents entrapped in a liposome showed no significant difference

Influence of polymeric additives on the melting and crystallization behavior of nylon 6,6.

The goal of this research was to find polymeric additives that would significantly decrease the rate of crystallization in nylon 6,6, in order to enhance mechanical properties indirectly. Since miscibility was essential, different classes of materials considered included amorphous and semi-crystalline nylons, and other polymers known to be compatible with polyamides. These additives were blended with nylon 6,6 using solution and melt blending techniques. The change in thermal behavior of the blends was evaluated using data obtained with a Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) and Dynamic Mechanical Thermal Analyzer (DMTA). Reduction in the crystallization temperature (T{dollar}\\sb{lcub}\\rm c{rcub}){dollar} during a non-isothermal DSC run was used as the primary criterion for judging the effectiveness of the additive. Polymers that were particularly promising included amorphous nylons--Trogamid-T and Zytel 330; nylon 6,12 and polyacrylic acid. An unusual finding was that annealing the blend in the melt state promoted additional changes in the melting and crystallization behavior. This was attributed to interchange reactions occurring between the blend components. Later work focussed on the use of nylon additives and studied the influence of the nature and amount of additive, residence time in the extruder, drying time, and the melt annealing time. Both the amorphous and semi-crystalline additives produced significant changes in the thermal behavior on melt annealing, the effect increasing with concentration. It was found that Trogamid-T was more effective in reducing the rate and extent of crystallization of nylon 6,6 when compared with nylon 6,12. The suppression in T{dollar}\\sb{lcub}\\rm c{rcub}{dollar} was more for the as-prepared Trogamid-T blends and also for samples annealed for different times. The extent of interchange reaction, measured by the depression in equilibrium melting point, was linear with respect to the annealing time. Trogamid-T blends appeared to be nearly miscible initially, with miscible blends being produced in the twin screw extruder at all concentrations. The {dollar}\\rm T\\sb{lcub}g{rcub}{dollar}-composition curve showed a positive deviation from linear additivity. The single {dollar}\\rm T\\sb{lcub}g{rcub}{dollar} decreased as a function of annealing time in the melt, with the change in {dollar}\\rm T\\sb{lcub}g{rcub}{dollar} being proportional to the additive concentration

OPTICAL ILLUMINATION WATERMARKING USING DB WAVELET

We proposed a new technology with which real world object can be prevented from illegal photographing. In optical illumination watermarking we have used Db10 wavelet to make the watermark pattern invisible to human eye and also to have 100% accuracy forreading out embedded data. Various different images have been used for generating watermark pattern of various pixel size viz. 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16. The result revealed that Db10 is effective technique to be used in optical illumination watermarking

Reactive Crisis Management Model

Crisis is an ever present threat to an organization in our society. When a crisis occurs, an organization must act immediately to protect its reputation. There is a need of wide range study of crisis management. Various models regarding crisis management have been presented by various experts. These models are mainly proactive in nature having (1) Pre Crisis phase (2) Crisis phase (3) Post Crisis phase. Crisis management is a situation-based management system that includes clear roles and responsibilities and process related organizational requirements company-wide. As we know, crisis is an uncertain event, so preparing in advance for it is probably not possible. Even in diffusion of innovation theory it is discussed that during crisis, every employee should think out of the box and come up with novel ideas to overcome hard times. In this article, an attempt has been made to prepare a reactive crisis model which suggests a way to deal with crisis at the time it occurs. In this model, the crisis management protocol should follow three steps, namely, (1) GET (2) SET (3) GO. In first step, basic information regarding the crisis should be gathered viz, cause and severity of crisis. In second step, crisis management plans and teams should be formulated keeping in view the severity of crisis and the third step should deal with the execution of formulated plans with the help of crisis management team