MILDSum: A Novel Benchmark Dataset for Multilingual Summarization of Indian Legal Case Judgments

Automatic summarization of legal case judgments is a practically important problem that has attracted substantial research efforts in many countries. In the context of the Indian judiciary, there is an additional complexity -- Indian legal case judgments are mostly written in complex English, but a significant portion of India's population lacks command of the English language. Hence, it is crucial to summarize the legal documents in Indian languages to ensure equitable access to justice. While prior research primarily focuses on summarizing legal case judgments in their source languages, this study presents a pioneering effort toward cross-lingual summarization of English legal documents into Hindi, the most frequently spoken Indian language. We construct the first high-quality legal corpus comprising of 3,122 case judgments from prominent Indian courts in English, along with their summaries in both English and Hindi, drafted by legal practitioners. We benchmark the performance of several diverse summarization approaches on our corpus and demonstrate the need for further research in cross-lingual summarization in the legal domain.Comment: Accepted at EMNLP 2023 (Main Conference

Assessment of Anti-aging Efficacy of the Master Antioxidant Glutathione

A chief tripeptide antioxidant Glutathione (GSH) is present inside each body cell which may have a profound effect in the control of aging. The anti-aging potency of GSH and its role towards the progression of certain age-related disease is still unclear. Glutathione based articles were searched on PubMEd database since the very first study of glutathione related to its discovery in 1923 to its present status till 2016. The data was made more informative and precise by searching glutathione relevant reports on google. Those articles were selected which were indicating the association of glutathione with the progression of age-related diseases, pre-clinical and clinical studies and age-longevity effect. It was analyzed that the increased oxidative stress (elevated GSSG/GSH ratio) is responsible for the incidence of age-related diseases and different organs failure. The glutathione redox ratio (GSSG/GSH) was found to be more pro-oxidizing with aging which plays a chief role for the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and subsequently damages the macromolecular structures affecting the normal body mechanisms and functions. The clinical data has recommended that glutathione is a potent therapeutic agent for the control of age-related diseases and experimental analysis has confirmed its prominent effect in age-longevity

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Design methodology of ash dyke using geosynthetics considering hydraulic conditions

Ash dyke is an earthen embankment which is constructed at every thermal power plant for disposal of fly ash slurry. Seepage of water takes place into the dyke from the fly ash slurry. In order to control the seepage inside the dyke, conventionally ash dyke is provided with chimney and blanket drains, which required sand as a drainage material. Today sand is not often available at various sites in sufficient quantity and required quality. Hence, for dyke construction sand is transported from other locations. Transportation cost of such a huge quantity of sand from long distance can substantially increase the cost of construction. The deficit in availability of sand in dyke construction motivates to find an alternative solution. The various geosynthetics material like geotextile, geonet, geomembrane, geocomposite and perforated pipes are available. These materials are being used in various geotechnical structures like retaining wall, filter for rock toe, drainage trench for highway, liners for landfill and many more applications. In all the above structures functions performed by geosynthetics are similar to the function of chimney and blanket drain in ash dyke. The objective is to design ash dyke system such that, it does not require substantial amount of sand in dyke construction. Instead, it will use geosynthetics materials for proper functioning. Two alternative designs of ash dyke system have been proposed, and both of these have application of geosynthetics material to control the seepage in dyke body. These alternative designs are ash dyke with vertical drainage composite and ash dyke with horizontal drainage composite. The design of Ash dyke with vertical drainage composite is similar to the ash dyke with chimney drain. It consists of vertical drainage composite, drainage trench, horizontal drainage system and horizontal drainage composite. In this design a vertical drainage composite is placed at centre of the dyke to collect seepage water, which is connected to the drainage trench. A horizontal drainage system consisting of lateral pipes having initial portion perforated is connected to drainage trench, which collects seepage water from drainage trench and drain out from the dyke body. A drainage composite is also provided in downstream side of the dyke to collect seepage from foundation soil. Ash dyke with horizontal drainage composite consists of horizontal layers of drainage composite and down slope drainage system. Drainage composite in the dyke is installed in layers at different levels and top drainage composite is extended vertically up to height of fill slurry to collect seepage water. Arrangement of horizontal composite is depends upon the quantity of seepage. These drainage composites are connected to the downslope drainage system to drain out the seepage water. In both the alternate design raising of ash dyke is done by upstream method of raising. The methods proposed in this study have been developed to design each component of both the alternative ash dyke system by using the theories developed in the literature for the design of geosynthetics in above mentioned other structures. Also detailed specifications and various factors to be considered in the design of each component of ash dyke have been proposed. A step by step construction procedure for both the alternative designs has been proposed and a design example problem is solved for future reference.by Shubham SoniM.Tech

Understanding Behavioural Adaptations of Human Drivers interacting with Automated Vehicles

Advancements in technology are bringing Automated vehicles (AVs) closer to reality and it is not so far in future when these vehicles will have a significant penetration rate in our existing transport network. However, in the early phases of automation, penetration rate of these vehicles will be very low. This would lead to a mixed traffic situation where AVs will coexist and interact with other human driven vehicles (HDVs). This one to one interaction might lead to change in driving behavior of HDVs when they interact with AVs. Thus it is crucial to understand the behavioral adaptation of HDVs due to their interaction with AVs. A field test was conducted to gain insights about such behavioral adaptation focusing on gap acceptance, car following, and overtaking behavior. Furthermore, learning effet over multiple interactions with AVs, effect of positive and negative information, stress during interaction and trust in AVs were also studies. This research concludes following findings. First, significantly lower critical gaps were accepted during interaction with AVs. Second, significantly lower headways were found at the end of overtaking during interaction with AVs. Third, higher trust was reported in AV scenarios. Fourth, positive information leaded to even closer interactions with AVs in comparison to HDVs. These findings indicate the potential exploitation of AV technology by HDV-drivers.SAMENCivil Engineering | Transport and Plannin

Thermodynamic Analysis of Split Air Conditioner Using Energy and Exergy Viewpoint with Low GWP Refrigerants Alternative to R410A

In this paper, a comparative thermodynamic analysis on energy and exergy viewpoint is done on different low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants to find the possible alternative of high GWP refrigerant R410A. R410A is used nowadays in air conditioning systems due to its ozone-friendly characteristic as zero ozone depletion potential (ODP=0) but it has high GWP (GWP=1924) that leads to global warming. Now a day’s global warming is considered to be one of the critical aspects when environmental protection is taken into consideration and researchers from every corner of the globe are working to find refrigerants that not only have zero ODP but it has low GWP too. In this analysis, four prospect refrigerants namely R32, R447A, R447B, and R452B have been studied to find their suitability to replace R410A on different performance criteria as the coefficient of performance (COP), power consumption, exergy efficiency, and exergy destruction. Thermodynamic properties of the studied refrigerants have been taken from the Genetron Properties 1.4 software. The result indicates that all the studied refrigerants have better performance characteristics compared to R410A but R447A has maximum COP and exergy efficiency along with the least total exergy destruction that makes it a possible alternate of R410A