S-2: Options for the Pakistan Navy

Around noon on 26 July 2009, Gurushuran Kaur, the wife of the Indian prime minister, broke a single coconut on the hull of a submarine in the fifteen- meter-deep Matsya dry dock at Visakhapatnam (also known as Vizag). The occasion marked the formal launch of India’s first indigenously built submarine, a six-thousand-ton nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) known as S-2—also as the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) and, more commonly, by its future name, INS Arihant(destroyer of the enemy).2 The launch ended for In- dia a journey stretching over three decades since the inauguration of the ATV program and including an eleven-year construction period

Impact of Awareness Campaign on the Knowledge of Risk Factors of HIV & AIDS among Students of University of Gujrat, Pakistan

Background: Individuals of age 15-25 years are at highest risk of HIV/AIDS due to presence of high risk behavior. Public health professionals are of the view that educational intervention are more successful in improving knowledge attitudes and preventive practices among the young rather than abstinence only intervention. The aim of this study was to access the knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS of students of University of Gujrat, Gujrat and to find the effect of imparting education on these parameters. Methodology: pre-post quasi experimental study design conducted at University of Gujrat, Pakistan in the year 2015-2016. A sample size of 370 students was taken. A pre-structured self-administered questionnaire was used as a study tool, privacy and anonymity of the respondents were maintained. A comprehensive lecture and educational session was carried out that delivered information regarding HIV/AIDS disease nature, modes of transmission, myths associated with HIV/AIDS, and other disease facts. After an interval of three weeks the same questionnaire again got filled from the same students. The pre-intervention knowledge was compared to the post educational intervention one. Obtained data were evaluated by using SPSS version 20. Results were considered significant at p value of less than 0.05. Results: The student of UOG had fairly moderate knowledge of HIV/AIDS that was significantly modified (p≤0.01) after educational conditioning. And there was clear presence of will to disseminate HIV information, so that not only themselves but also their family member can be protected from this deadly infection. Conclusion: Educational intervention statistically significantly conditioned students knowledge of HIV/AIDS

Protecting the Warriors of COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysing the Mental Health of the Healthcare Workers

Purpose: The research objective was to critically analyze the prevalence of any kind of mental health problem among healthcare workers (HCWs) and to investigate the factors affecting the mental health of HCWs and how they impact their mental health. Design/methodology/approach: The data was collected using a structured questionnaire from the health care workers working in the leading hospitals from the Muscat region in Oman. The questionnaires were sent to more than 300 healthcare workers out of which only 202 of them filled and returned.  The analysis was carried out using Smart Partial Least Squares (PLS). Findings: The study revealed that during the pandemic, HCWs were having the typical symptoms of anxiety such as nervousness, difficulty in concentrating, restlessness, and too much fear for everything. They also had the symptoms of Depression such as frustration and no interest in doing things, feeling no energy to carry out their routines, and worrying about everything. They underwent the PTSD symptom of getting disturbing thoughts and memories.  The results also revealed that the HCWs were constantly living under stress, frustration, and pressure which was directly affecting their routines and practices. Their frustration and stress were unnoticed and ignored as they continued treating the patients eventually. Research limitations/implications: It is recommended that the concerned authorities should understand the psychological issues of the HCWs and provide appropriate facilities, training, and moral support. They can be motivated through lectures. Working hours and the number of patients can be reduced. Training for mental stress reliefs and more precautionary equipment should be provided to them to effectively fight against COVID-19. Social Implications: The mental health of healthcare professionals is imminent and cannot be ignored.  The study helps the authorities in charge of HCWs to take appropriate and immediate action to observe and reduce anxiety and depression among those working in the frontline. Further, the timely logistic support, Pay raise, bonuses or rewards, expanded vacation time, and the full equipment for safety from COVID-19 could avoid such mental disturbances. Originality / Value: There is no study on the mental health of HCWs in Oman. Due to lockdown and social boycotting, online surveys were the only available option left. Data were obtained from those HCWs who were computer literate and from a few health care institutes only. The study can be extended to include HCWs from other institutes as well

Chromosome Descrambling Order Analysis in ciliates

Ciliates are a type of unicellular eukaryotic organism that has two types of nuclei within each cell; one is called the macronucleus (MAC) and the other is known as the micronucleus (MIC). During mating, ciliates exchange their MIC, destroy their own MAC, and create a new MAC from the genetic material of their new MIC. The process of developing a new MAC from the exchanged new MIC is known as gene assembly in ciliates, and it consists of a massive amount of DNA excision from the micronucleus, and the rearrangement of the rest of the DNA sequences. During the gene assembly process, the DNA segments that get eliminated are known as internal eliminated segments (IESs), and the remaining DNA segments that are rearranged in an order that is correct for creating proteins, are called macronuclear destined segments (MDSs). A topic of interest is to predict the correct order to descramble a gene or chromosomal segment. A prediction can be made based on the principle of parsimony, whereby the smallest sequence of operations is likely close to the actual number of operations that occurred. Interestingly, the order of MDSs in the newly assembled 22,354 Oxytricha trifallax MIC chromosome fragments provides evidence that multiple parallel recombinations occur, where the structure of the chromosomes allows for interleaving between two sections of the developing macronuclear chromosome in a manner that can be captured with a common string operation called the shuffle operation (the shuffle operation on two strings results in a new string by weaving together the first two, while preserving the order within each string). Thus, we studied four similar systems involving applications of shuffle to see how the minimum number of operations needed to assemble differs between the types. Two algorithms for each of the first two systems have been implemented that are both shown to be optimal. And, for the third and fourth systems, four and two heuristic algorithms, respectively, have been implemented. The results from these algorithms revealed that, in most cases, the third system gives the minimum number of applications of shuffle to descramble, but whether the best implemented algorithm for the third system is optimal or not remains an open question. The best implemented algorithm for the third system showed that 96.63% of the scrambled micronuclear chromosome fragments of Oxytricha trifallax can be descrambled by only 1 or 2 applications of shuffle. This small number of steps lends theoretical evidence that some structural component is enforcing an alignment of segments in a shuffle-like fashion, and then parallel recombination is taking place to enable MDS rearrangement and IES elimination. Another problem of interest is to classify segments of the MIC into MDSs and IESs; this is the second topic of the thesis, and is a matter of determining the right "class label", i.e. MDS or IES, on each nucleotide. Thus, training data of labelled input sequences was used with hidden Markov models (HMMs), which is a well-known supervised machine learning classification algorithm. HMMs of first-, second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-order have been implemented. The accuracy of the classification was verified through 10-fold cross validation. Results from this work show that an HMM is more likely to fail to accurately classify micronuclear chromosomes without having some additional knowledge

Influence of single and multiple dry bands on critical flashover voltage of silicone rubber outdoor insulators: simulation and experimental study

Dry band formation on the surface of outdoor insulators is one of the main reasons leading to flashover and power outages. In this paper, a dynamic arc model is proposed for single and multiple dry bands configuration to predict the critical flashover voltage for silicone rubber outdoor insulators. An arc is modelled as a time dependent impedance consisting of a Resistor Inductor Capacitor (RLC) circuit. The effect of dry band location and existence of multiple dry bands on critical flashover voltage is investigated. To validate the proposed model, experiments were conducted in a climate chamber under controlled environmental conditions on rectangular silicone rubber sheets polluted using improved solid layer method based on IEC 60,507. Tests were conducted at different dry band configurations and pollution severity levels. A good correlation was found between experimental results and simulation results. This model can provide a good foundation for the development of mathematical models for station post insulators having multiple dry and clean bands and can be used in the design and selection of outdoor insulators for polluted conditions

Goods and services tax (GST) in India: Prospect for states

Goods and services tax (GST) is a broad based and a single comprehensive tax levied at every stage of the production and distribution chain with applicable set-off in respect of the tax remitted at previous stages. It is basically a tax on final consumption integrates the union excise duties, custom duties, services tax and state VAT. Presently around 140 countries have adopted the GST pattern, including India. The GST would be beneficial for the consumers as it reduces the final burden of taxation. For Government it leads the reduction of tax compliance efforts and administrative costs and for business units it leads transparency, complete set-off and removal of cascading effect of taxation. It is in this background that the present paper tries to explain the significance of GST in India and its prospects for states to generate revenue and ensure transparency in tax structure. This paper is organized into seven sections. Section two presents justification for dual structure of GST in India. The third part presents the rate structure under GST work in India. The fourth segment is concerned with the working of GST in India. The fifth part shows the international experiences of GST at state level in India. The seventh and final part is related to conclusion and policy recommendations

CR-warped product submanifolds of locally conformal Kaehler manifolds

In the present paper characterizations in terms of the canonical structures P and F on a CR-submanifold of a locally conformal Kaehler manifold are worked out under which the sub manifold reduces to a CR-warped product submanifold