University and College Profiles available on Indian Research Information Network System (IRINS): A Comparative Study

Indian Research Information Network System (IRINS) is a research information management system that provides details of publications and citations by researchers in academic and research institutes in India. It is an undisputed fact that the productivity of researchers is not uniform within and beyond institutions. A quantitative study was formulated to compare the productivity of researchers within and between categories of central university, state university, deemed university, private university, and college. The coefficient of variation (C.V.) and coefficient of range (C.R.) was measured to know about dispersions among data of publications, patents, Scopus citations, and Crossref citations. It was found that central universities and state universities have a higher number of publications and citations whereas colleges have less number of the same. Private universities have less number of publications, however better than colleges in case of citations. Deemed universities have the highest dispersion within the group. It is suggested to increase subscriptions of quality resources in the colleges and private universities and upgrade library services to enhance the quality and quantity of publications by researchers there

Status of automation in special libraries and information centers of Gwalior: a survey

Paper has been published in Proceedings of the National Conference on Information Management in Digital Libraries held on 2-4 August, 2006, organized by central library, IIT Kharagpur.The study presents the status of automation in special libraries and information centers of Gwalior District in Madhya Pradesh. Aims at understanding and analyzing the various problems faced by the authorities and the staff during the process of automation. The methodology adopted for the present study is survey using a structured questionnaire. The lack of staff, hesitancy and lack of attitude towards automation and unsatisfactory library software problems are the major hindrances to speedy automation. However, 50% of special libraries opting for automation show that the libraries have a mind to adapt to the new changes and the other libraries will follow the suit.Central Librar

DECENTRALIZED PLANNING IN AN INDIAN STATE: AN EXPLORATORY EXERCISE

In India, the idea of decentralized planning gained momentum after the country became independent in 1947 but its rudimentary practice was not completely unknown before 1947. In post-independent India a number of government committees and commissions had recommended for introduction of decentralized planning at different points of time. The most remarkable event in this regard were twin Constitutional amendments which clarified the role of local bodies and institutionalized participation of the people which signaled what is often called a paradigmatic change. The amendments gave decentralized planning constitutional sanction and sanctity, and provided a model of planning for the whole country. In this paper, an attempt has been made to capture the different phases in the evolution of the decentralized planning processes in India as a backdrop and to assess and analyze the experiences of introduction of decentralized planning in one state of the Union of Indian states called West Bengal. It is one of the states where the exercise was done through active participation of people sought to be achieved through institutional structures created in the villages. This paper tries to make use of the available secondary data to arrive at some of the major conclusions and to justify the contentions made. Reference has also been made to some limited field work which was done through village survey. The authors have also highlighted some of the key emerging issues which call for further research. It also seeks to explores what could be the probable lessons  the developing countries in general, and India, in particular. 

Development of Adaptive Threshold and Data Smoothening Algorithm for GPR Imaging

There are many approaches available to separate the background and foreground in image processing applications. Currently, researchers are focusing on wavelet De-noising, curvelet threshold, Edge Histogram Descriptor threshold, Otsu thresholding, recursive thresholding and adaptive progressive thresholding. In fixed and predictable background conditions, above techniques separate background and foreground efficiently. In a common scenario, background reference is blind due to soil surface moisture content and its non-linearity. There are many methodologies proposed from time to time by researchers to solve this blind reference background separation. But challenges still now remain, because there are two major problems in ground penetrating radar imaging such as targets like ground enhances the false alarm and non-metallic target detection, where the threshold decision is a critical task. In this paper, a novel real time blind adaptive threshold algorithm is proposed for ground penetrating radar image processing. The blind threshold was decided to use normal random variable variance and image data variance. Further, the image was smoothened by random variance ratio to image data variance. Experimental results showed satisfactory results for the background separation and smoothening the targeted image data with the proposed algorithm

Development of Scale and Rotation Invariant Neural Network based Technique for Detection of Dielectric Contrast Concealed Targets with Millimeter Wave System

The detection of concealed targets beneath a person’s clothing from standoff distance is an important task for protection and the security of a person in a crowded place like shopping malls, airports and playground stadium, etc. The detection capability of the concealed weapon depends on a lot of factors likes, a collection of back scattered data, dielectric property and a thickness of covering cloths, the hidden object, standoff distance and the probability of false alarm owing to objectionable substances. Though active millimeter wave systems have used to detect weapons under cloths, but still more attention is required to detect the target likes a gun, knife, and matchbox. To observe such problems, active V-band (59 GHz- 61 GHz) MMW radar with the help of artificial neural network (ANN) has been demonstrated for non-metallic as well as metallic concealed target detection. To validate ANN, the signature of predefined targets is matched with the signature of validated data with the help of the correlation coefficient. The proposed technique has good capability to distinguish concealed targets under various cloths.

On Topology Optimization with Elliptical Masks and Honeycomb Tessellation with Explicit Length Scale Constraints

Topology optimization using gradient search with negative and positive elliptical masks and honeycomb tessellation is presented. Through a novel skeletonization algorithm for topologies defined using filled and void hexagonal cells/elements, explicit minimum and maximum length scales are imposed on solid states in the solutions. An analytical example is presented which suggests that for a skeletonized topology, optimal solutions may not always exist for any specified volume fraction, minimum and maximum length scales, and that there may exist implicit interdependence between them. A Sequence for Length Scale (SLS) methodology is proposed wherein solutions are sought by specifying only the minimum and maximum length scales with volume fraction getting determined systematically. Through four benchmark problems in small deformation topology optimization, it is demonstrated that solutions by-and-large satisfy the length scale constraints though the latter may get violated at certain local sites. The proposed approach seems promising, noting especially that solutions, if rendered perfectly {\it black and white} with minimum length scale explicitly imposed and boundaries smoothened, are quite close in performance compared to the parent topologies. Attaining {\it volume distributed} topologies, wherein members are more or less of the same thickness, may also be possible with the proposed approach.Comment: 31 pages, 22 figure

Technique for crossing and advancing multiple generations for mungbean (Vigna radiata L.)

Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) Wilczek (2n=2×=22) is an important grain legume cultivated in South-east Asia, Africa, South America and Australia (Shanmugasundram 2007). About 90% of mungbean production occurs in South Asia, where India is the largest producer. It is consumed in various forms like, seed as a good source of easily digested dietary proteins and amino acids. Young pods and sprouts are consumed as vegetable for vitamin and mineral supplement (Engel 1977). Its plant parts are used as fodder for animal and green manure to improve soil health in rice-wheat cropping system (Sharma et al. 1995; Bhuiyan et al. 2009; Yaqub et al. 2010). It is grown as a sole crop as well as a major component in various cropping systems owing to its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen, rapid growth, and early maturity. Mungbean being a photo insensitive crop is grown in a wide range of climatic variations (Tiwari and Ramanujam 1976) and ideal for catch, inter and relay cropping in many countries (Ali et al. 2000). Because of wide adoptability at various temperature ranges, this crop is likely to be most suitable under currently rising global temperatur

STUDY TO COMPARE THE THERAPEUTIC EFFICACY OF N-ACETYL CYSTEINE AND COMBINATION OF N-ACETYL CYSTEINE AND TAURINE IN PROTEINURIA IN DIABETIC NEPHROPATHY

Objective: Proteinuria is an established risk factor for progressive damage of kidney. This proteinuria can be effectively controlled by drugs that interrupt the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system. However, the efficacy of N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) and taurine in prevention of diabetic nephropathy (DN) is uncertain. The role of NAC and taurine in reducing of proteinuria in patients with DN was studied.Methods: The present study was undertaken in the Postgraduate Department of Medicine of S.N. Medical College, Agra. A total of 60 patients of diabetes mellitus with evidence of nephropathy were included in the study. Twenty patients were given placebo medication (Group P), 20 patients received NAC (Group A), and remaining 20 received a combination of NAC and taurine (Group B). Each group was further subdivided according to the urinary albumin excretion in 24 hrs. Subgroup 1 - Urinary albumin excretion between 30 and 300 mg/24 hrs. Subgroup 2 - Urinary albumin excretion >300 mg/24 hrs. The stastical analysis used Student's t-test.Results: On comparison, in both microalbuminuria and macroalbuminuria patients divided into three groups; the difference in magnitude of increase in proteinuria (after NAC, NAC with taurine, and placebo administration) over 24 weeks of the study period was statistically insignificant.Conclusions: In this study, there was no significant difference of proteinuria before and after NAC administration, and also in our study, there was no significant difference of proteinuria before and after taurine administration.Keywords: Albuminuria, Diabetic nephropathy, N-acetyl cysteine, Taurine

The Impact of Blockchain on the Healthcare Environment

Bitcoin was the first electronic payment system to truly exploit the power of blockchain technology. There is currently the problem of health information inequality and health information leakage. Physicians should conduct essential routine work that wastes hu-man and financial resources and delays treatment processes. Blockchain provides a trust-free and cost-reducing solution to manage and secure valuable health information. The aim of this study is to discuss research into blockchain healthcare applications. It addresses the management of medical data, as well as the sharing of medical infor-mation, the sharing of images, and the management of logs. We also discuss papers that overlap with other fields, such as the Internet of Things, information management, drug monitoring along their supply chain, and aspects of security and privacy. Finally, we analyze and compare the research papers in the medical area and also summarize the strategies used in healthcare with their pros and cons