A STUDY ON THE RISK-ADJUSTED PERFORMANCE OF MUTUAL FUNDS INDUSTRY IN INDIA

Investing through mutual funds has gained interest in recent years as it offers optimal risk adjusted returns to investors. The Indian market is no exception and has witnessed a multifold growth in mutual funds over the years. As of 2016, the Indian market is crowded with over two thousand mutual fund schemes, each promising higher returns compared to their peers. This comes as a challenge for an ordinary investor to select the best portfolio to invest making it critical to analyse the performance of these funds. While understanding and analysing the historical performance of mutual funds do not guarantee future performance, however, this may give an idea of how the fund is likely to perform in different market conditions. In this research we address multiple research issues. These include measuring the performance of selected mutual schemes on the basis of risk and return and compare the performance of these selected schemes with benchmark index to see whether the scheme is outperforming or underperforming the benchmark. We also rank funds on the basis of performance and suggest strategies to invest in a mutual fund and therefore, our findings have significant relevance for investing public

Towards a Smart World: Hazard Levels for Monitoring of Autonomous Vehicles’ Swarms

This work explores the creation of quantifiable indices to monitor the safe operations and movement of families of autonomous vehicles (AV) in restricted highway-like environments. Specifically, this work will explore the creation of ad-hoc rules for monitoring lateral and longitudinal movement of multiple AVs based on behavior that mimics swarm and flock movement (or particle swarm motion). This exploratory work is sponsored by the Emerging Leader Seed grant program of the Mineta Transportation Institute and aims at investigating feasibility of adaptation of particle swarm motion to control families of autonomous vehicles. Specifically, it explores how particle swarm approaches can be augmented by setting safety thresholds and fail-safe mechanisms to avoid collisions in off-nominal situations. This concept leverages the integration of the notion of hazard and danger levels (i.e., measures of the “closeness” to a given accident scenario, typically used in robotics) with the concept of safety distance and separation/collision avoidance for ground vehicles. A draft of implementation of four hazard level functions indicates that safety thresholds can be set up to autonomously trigger lateral and longitudinal motion control based on three main rules respectively based on speed, heading, and braking distance to steer the vehicle and maintain separation/avoid collisions in families of autonomous vehicles. The concepts here presented can be used to set up a high-level framework for developing artificial intelligence algorithms that can serve as back-up to standard machine learning approaches for control and steering of autonomous vehicles. Although there are no constraints on the concept’s implementation, it is expected that this work would be most relevant for highly-automated Level 4 and Level 5 vehicles, capable of communicating with each other and in the presence of a monitoring ground control center for the operations of the swarm

Analysis of Disengagements in Semi-Autonomous Vehicles: Drivers’ Takeover Performance and Operational Implications

This report analyzes the reactions of human drivers placed in simulated Autonomous Technology disengagement scenarios. The study was executed in a human-in-the-loop setting, within a high-fidelity integrated car simulator capable of handling both manual and autonomous driving. A population of 40 individuals was tested, with metrics for control takeover quantification given by: i) response times (considering inputs of steering, throttle, and braking); ii) vehicle drift from the lane centerline after takeover as well as overall (integral) drift over an S-turn curve compared to a baseline obtained in manual driving; and iii) accuracy metrics to quantify human factors associated with the simulation experiment. Independent variables considered for the study were the age of the driver, the speed at the time of disengagement, and the time at which the disengagement occurred (i.e., how long automation was engaged for). The study shows that changes in the vehicle speed significantly affect all the variables investigated, pointing to the importance of setting up thresholds for maximum operational speed of vehicles driven in autonomous mode when the human driver serves as back-up. The results shows that the establishment of an operational threshold could reduce the maximum drift and lead to better control during takeover, perhaps warranting a lower speed limit than conventional vehicles. With regards to the age variable, neither the response times analysis nor the drift analysis provide support for any claim to limit the age of drivers of semi-autonomous vehicles

Factors associated with induced second trimester abortion at a tertiary level hospital of Uttarakhand region: a 6-year retrospective study

Background: Despite the liberalization of the abortion services since the early 1970s in India, access to safe abortion services remains limited for the vast majority of Indian women particularly from rural areas. Second trimester abortions have different indications and associated with increased maternal morbidity and mortality as compared to the first trimester abortions.Methods: This study was a retrospective study conducted from the January 2014 to December 2019 at obstetrics and genecology department of Shri Guru Ram Rai Institute of Medical and Health Sciences, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. All patients of 12 weeks to 20 weeks of confirmed gestational age were given medical method of second trimester abortion. Data was collected and analyzed regarding demographic features, gestational age, indications, and induction-abortion interval and post abortion contraceptive methods accepted by patient.Results: During this study period a total of 180 patients had second trimester abortion at study institute. Maximum number of patients 69 (38.3%) were of 25-30 years of age group and 161 (85%) patients were of Hindu religion. Major indication was failure of contraception (42.8%) and congenital anomalies in the fetus (45.6%). There was one case of failed medical abortion in which emergency hysterectomy was done for undiagnosed adherent placenta. All patients were compliant of using contraceptive methods after the abortion because of recent medical and mental stress and majority 82 (45.6%) of the patients preferred oral combined contraceptive pills.Conclusions: Apart from congenital anomalies rest all indications can be reduced if women in our country are empowered to control their fertility, get education to become more aware and provided with social security

An integrated computational approach of molecular dynamics simulations, receptor binding studies and pharmacophore mapping analysis in search of potent inhibitors against tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is an infectious chronic disease caused by obligate pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis that affects millions of people worldwide. Although many first and second line drugs are available for its treatment, but their irrational use has adversely lead to the emerging cases of multiple drug resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. Therefore, there is an intense need to develop novel potent analogues for its treatment. This has prompted us to develop potent analogues against TB. The Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome provides us with number of validated targets to combat against TB. Study of Mtb genome disclosed six epoxide hydrolases (A to F) which convert harmful epoxide into diols and act as a potential drug target for rational drug design. Our current strategy is to develop such analogues which inhibits epoxide hydrolase enzyme present in Mtb genome. To achieve this, we adopted an integrated computational approach involving QSAR, pharmacophore mapping, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation studies. The approach envisaged vital information about the role of molecular descriptors, essential pharmacophoric features and binding energy for compounds to bind into the active site of epoxide hydrolase. Molecular docking analysis revealed that analogues exhibited significant binding to Mtb epoxide hydrolase. Further, three docked complexes 2s, 37s and 15s with high, moderate and low docking scores respectively were selected for molecular dynamics simulation studies. RMSD analysis revealed that all complexes are stable with average RMSD below 2 Å throughout the 10 ns simulations. The B-factor analysis showed that the active site residues of epoxide hydrolase are flexible enough to interact with inhibitor. Moreover, to confirm the binding of these urea derivatives, MM-GBSA binding energy analysis were performed. The calculations showed that 37s has more binding affinity (ΔGtotal = −52.24 kcal/mol) towards epoxide hydrolase compared to 2s (ΔGtotal = −51.70 kcal/mol) and 15s (ΔGtotal = −49.97 kcal/mol). The structural features inferred in our study may provide the future directions to the scientists towards the discovery of new chemical entity exhibiting anti-TB property.AICTE and Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/JMGM2019-08-01hj2018Plant Production and Soil Scienc

Use of an adipocyte model to study the transcriptional adaptation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to store and degrade host fat

During its persistence in the infected host, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) accumulates host-derived fatty acids in intracytoplasmic lipid inclusions as triacylglycerols which serve primarily as carbon and energy reserves. The Mtb genome codes for more than 15 triacylglycerol synthases, 24 lipase/esterases, and seven cutinase-like proteins. Hence, we looked at the expression of the corresponding genes in intracellular bacilli persisting amidst the host triacylglycerols. We used the Mtb infected murine adipocyte model to ensure persistence and transcripts were quantified using real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Dormancy and glyoxylate metabolism was confirmed by the upregulated expression of dosR and icl, respectively, by intra-adipocyte bacilli compared with in vitro growing bacilli. The study revealed that tgs1, tgs2, Rv3371, and mycolyltransferase Ag85A are the predominant triacylglycerol synthases, while lipF, lipH, lipJ, lipK, lipN, lipV, lipX, lipY, culp5, culp7, and culp6 are the predominant lipases/esterases used by Mtb for the storage and degradation of host-derived fat. Moreover, it was observed that many of these enzymes are used by Mtb during active replication rather than during nonreplicating persistence, indicating their probable function in cell wall synthesis

Application of adaptive Savitzky–Golay filter for EEG signal processing

A Savitzky–Golay filter typically requires pre-determined values of order and frame size for its fabrication. Generally, a random hit-and-trial method or prior experience is required to determine the suitable values of design parameters. However, the proposed adaptive Savitzky–Golay filter aims to provide a generic framework for optimal design of filter vis-à-vis the order and frame size of the filter. The algorithm uses all the possible combinations of these parameters in a certain range and the correlation coefficient is evaluated in each case to measure the filter efficiency. The parameters which provide the highest correlation coefficient are considered for filter design. In this paper the relative advantages of adaptive Savitzky–Golay filter over the standard models are also discussed. The proposed adaptive model of Savitzky–Golay filter is successfully tested for EEG signal processing

EEG Signal Enhancement Using OWA Filter

Biomedical signal monitoring and recording are an integral part of medical diagnosis and treatment control mechanisms. For this, enhanced signals with appropriate peak preservation are required. The OWA (OrderedWeighted Aggregation) Filter used in this paper helps in non-linear signal filtering and preservation of peaks for accurate medical diagnosis. Weights are an important aspect of the OWA filter, the Gaussian method and the KDE (Kernel Density Estimation) function are used to obtain a precise output which helps in filtering the signal. This filter is further compared with another non-linear filter that is the median filter to understand the compatibility and the preciseness of the filter in a much deeper sense. OWA | filter | peak | kernel density estimation | probability density | EPD (Estimated Probability Density