Essays on Social Norms and Status of Women in Northeastern India

Conventional wisdom suggests patriarchal social norms hinder the well-being and empowerment of women in the process of development. I investigate the link between social norms that define women’s status in society and spousal violence. The empirical setting is India’s Northeast, where there is substantial variation regarding patriarchal versus matriarchal customs. In my econometric analysis, I combine in- formation on ancestral social norms from a comprehensive ethnographic atlas with individual-level survey data on spousal violence. Consistent with the established economic theories, the more female-empowering variants of the persistent antediluvian social norms, such as easier divorce regime, non-residence with husband’s kin, and matrilineal descent improve women’s reservation utility and bargaining power within the extant marriages and curtail spousal violence and its acceptance. Ancestral female productive roles enhance women’s value in society and reduce spousal violence. I uncover a complete mechanism of gender disparity from fertility to morality using a novel cross-sectional dataset of 22,000 mothers and their 51,000 children from 92 aboriginal ethnic groups that combine ethnographic and environmental data to demographic data in the northeastern zone of India. Descendants from the ethnic groups with pro-women features tend to discriminate less against their daughters. In ethnic groups which value women more, a typical female child is more likely to be the last born, more likely to experience longer succeeding birth interval, more likely to be breastfed longer, and more likely to receive overall better nourishment. Contemporary female employment status does not drive these effects. Both the magnitude and statistical significance of the effects remain unaltered in regressions with contemporary female employment status. This is because the effects originate from the deep-rooted ancestral female productive roles and pro-women social norms

Equality of the Sexes and Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from Three Traditional Societies

Can gender-balanced social norms mitigate the gender differences in competitiveness that are observed in traditional patriarchic as well as in modern societies? We experimentally assess men's and women's preferences to compete in a traditional society where women and men have similar rights and entitlements alongside a patriarchic and a matrilineal society which have previously been studied. We find that, unlike in the patriarchic society, there is no significant gender difference in the inclination to compete in the gender-balanced society. We also find that women's decisions in our experiment are optimal more often than men's in the gender-balanced society - opposite to the pattern encountered in the patriarchic society. Our results highlight the importance of culture and socialization for gender differences in competitiveness and suggest that the large gender-differences in competitiveness documented for modern societies are a long-term consequence of a patriarchic heritage

Role of Multipurpose Projects on Distribution of Cropping Intensity and Canal Irrigation: A Study on DVC Projects of the Middle Damodar River Valley of West Bengal

The river valley projects with many objectives are called multipurpose project. Multipurpose project in the Damodar River played a major role not only as a flood controller but also as a source of canal irrigation. Middle and lower course of the river are the most prominent area where irrigation systems are largely controlled by DVC projects of Damodar River. Several canal systems has also developed after construction of dams in DVC project of Damodar River Valley. The study area falls under the area in between Panchet Dam and Burdwan Town. It is extended up to 23º28’ N to 23º41’N latitude and 86 º 44 ’E to 87 º 18’ E longitudes. Total length of the area is approximately 70 km. the avg. height of this area is 110 m from the sea level. To show the increase of Agricultural Land in downstream section Damodar River Basin, block wise Cropping Intensity distribution has been calculated for showing locational and temporal. In this river valley, the area under Agricultural Land has been drastically increased (15%) from 1990 to 2010 but there are slightly increase in the Built up areas. The western side of the basin have the low cropping intensity in the Burdwan District. Upper reaches are less fertile that is why production is also low and reverse condition are found in the lower reaches of the river basin area. The downstream of the river valley are pure alluvial track of the Ganga River system and this region are more fertile than the upstream region. Whole basin area is bounded with agricultural and industrial activities. Irrigation also can put impetus on the agricultural output of this valley region especially in the downstream areas of the valley. Thus the dams are severally interlinked with the human settlement and landscapes of the Damodar Valley Region. Keywords: Multipurpose DVC projects, Agriculture, Dam and Barrage, Land use/land cover change, Cropping Intensity, Damodar River Valle

FMRP Interacts with C/D Box snoRNA in the Nucleus and Regulates Ribosomal RNA Methylation

Summary: FMRP is an RNA-binding protein that is known to localize in the cytoplasm and in the nucleus. Here, we have identified an interaction of FMRP with a specific set of C/D box snoRNAs in the nucleus. C/D box snoRNAs guide 2’O methylations of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) on defined sites, and this modification regulates rRNA folding and assembly of ribosomes. 2’O methylation of rRNA is partial on several sites in human embryonic stem cells, which results in ribosomes with differential methylation patterns. FMRP-snoRNA interaction affects rRNA methylation on several of these sites, and in the absence of FMRP, differential methylation pattern of rRNA is significantly altered. We found that FMRP recognizes ribosomes carrying specific methylation patterns on rRNA and the recognition of methylation pattern by FMRP may potentially determine the translation status of its target mRNAs. Thus, FMRP integrates its function in the nucleus and in the cytoplasm. : Molecular Interaction; Stem Cells Research; Omics Subject Areas: Molecular Interaction, Stem Cells Research, Omic

Combinatorial Reverse Auction Based Scheduling In Multirate Wireless Systems

Opportunistic scheduling algorithms are effective in exploiting channel variations and maximizing system throughput in multi-rate wireless networks. However, most scheduling algorithms ignore the per-user quality of service (QoS) requirements and try to allocate resources (e.g., the time slots) among multiple users. This leads to a phenomenon commonly referred to as the exposure problem wherein the algorithms fail to satisfy the minimum slot requirements of the users due to substitutability and complementarity requirements of user slots. To eliminate this exposure problem, we propose a novel scheduling algorithm based on two-phase combinatorial reverse auction with the primary objective to maximize the number of satisfied users in the system. We also consider maximizing the system throughput as a secondary objective. In the proposed scheme, multiple users bid for the required number of time slots, and the allocations are done to satisfy the two objectives in a sequential manner. We provide an approximate solution to the proposed scheduling problem which is NP-complete. The proposed algorithm has an approximation ratio of (1 + log m) with respect to the optimal solution, where m is the number of slots in a schedule cycle. Simulation results are provided to compare the proposed scheduling algorithm with other competitive schemes. © 2007 IEEE

Nanometric chemical decomposition of infertile Himalayan soils from Uttarakhand

We present the nanometric chemical decomposition of Himalayan agricultural soils. The motivation to use this state-of-the-art material characterisation in the soil is to reduce the testing cost while increasing the efficiency of the characterisation. In India, a bulk volume of soil is still required for the characterisation of agricultural soil. The fertility of micronutrient contents and crop supply capacity vary greatly depending on soil types, crop types, ecology, and agroclimatic variability. Since total levels of micronutrients are rarely predictive of the availability of a nutrient to plants, knowledge of the differences in soil micronutrients that are available to plants is essential for the sensible management of micronutrient fertility and toxicity. In the state of Uttarakhand, low levels of micro-nutrients in the soil are frighteningly common, and this issue is made worse by the fact that many current cultivars of important crops are extremely vulnerable to low mineral levels. These baseline results are to be used to inform local farmers about the potential remedies, costs, and consequential benefits and durability. We intend not to present a generalized or generalized solution. Therefore, we limit our soil sample collections to five arc minutes (8.6 square kilometers) and document variations and heterogeneity in the chemical components of the soil. In this study, we used scanning electron microscopy to chemically deconstruct the barren Himalayan soils from Uttarakhand. Aluminium, carbon, oxygen, and silicon were identified as the primary elements that contributed more than 5% of the total weight and atomic percentage. Other elements include less than 4% of iron, titanium, nitrogen, sodium, magnesium, chloride, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, and calcium

Hierarchical Mesoporous RuO₂/Cu₂O Nanoparticle-Catalyzed Oxidative Homo/Hetero Azo-Coupling of Anilines

Herein, we have reported hierarchical mesoporous RuO₂/Cu₂O nanoparticle-catalyzed selective aerobic oxidative homo/hetero azo-coupling of anilines under oxidant/base/additive-free conditions. The synergistic effect of the individual oxides was established by the density functional theory calculations and experimental studies

Astrocytes mediate cell non-autonomous correction of aberrant firing in human FXS neurons

Summary: Pre-clinical studies of fragile X syndrome (FXS) have focused on neurons, with the role of glia remaining largely underexplored. We examined the astrocytic regulation of aberrant firing of FXS neurons derived from human pluripotent stem cells. Human FXS cortical neurons, co-cultured with human FXS astrocytes, fired frequent short-duration spontaneous bursts of action potentials compared with less frequent, longer-duration bursts of control neurons co-cultured with control astrocytes. Intriguingly, bursts fired by FXS neurons co-cultured with control astrocytes are indistinguishable from control neurons. Conversely, control neurons exhibit aberrant firing in the presence of FXS astrocytes. Thus, the astrocyte genotype determines the neuronal firing phenotype. Strikingly, astrocytic-conditioned medium, and not the physical presence of astrocytes, is capable of determining the firing phenotype. The mechanistic basis of this effect indicates that the astroglial-derived protein, S100β, restores normal firing by reversing the suppression of a persistent sodium current in FXS neurons