A Story of Life, Love, and Death

Graduate Winner: 2nd Place, 2011. 24th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competitio

Regional Disparity in E-Tailing Adoption: An Empirical Analysis from Districts of India

The retail boom in developing countries across the world has been fuelled by the rising dominance of e-tailing, an increasingly preferred domain for many start-up businesses. New e-tailers typically start their operations in metropolitan cities, and then expand to other developing areas. An important decision that businesses make during expansion is the choice of region – which area to target next? It is commonly observed that different regions in a country, especially large, vary in their tendencies to adopt e-tailing services. Using empirical analysis, this paper attempts to understand the region-specific characteristics which can account for these variations. Combining the classical Diffusion of Innovations Theory and the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity framework of consumer behavior, we hypothesize the relationships between various regional-level people related attributes and e-tailing adoption behavior. To gauge e-tailing levels of different regions, we use primary data from India Post on packages delivered in April-May 2016 across Indian districts, for a specific e-tailing company operating in India. OLS regression is used to statistically determine the intensity of the relationship between various socio-economic indicators and the level of e-tailing in respective districts. Results demonstrate a significant influence of regional-level technological access, learning readiness, personal transport availability, and economic status, but no impact of financial services access on e-tailing adoption. The model can be further developed to classify regions based on e-tailing consumption potential which can immensely help new e-tailers with their expansion strategies

Quantum phase properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states

Quantum phase properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states (and a set of quantum states which can be obtained as the limiting cases of these states) are investigated from a number of perspectives, and it is shown that the quantum phase properties are dependent on the quantum state engineering operations performed. Specifically, the analytic expressions for quantum phase distributions and angular $Q$ distribution as well as measures of quantum phase fluctuation and phase dispersion are obtained. The uniform phase distribution of the initial Fock states is observed to be transformed by the unitary operation (i.e., displacement operator) into non-Gaussian shape, except for the initial vacuum state. It is observed that the phase distribution is symmetric with respect to the phase of the displacement parameter and becomes progressively narrower as its amplitude increases. The non-unitary (photon addition/subtraction) operations make it even narrower in contrast to the Fock parameter, which leads to broadness. The photon subtraction is observed to be a more powerful quantum state engineering tool in comparison to the photon addition. Further, one of the quantum phase fluctuation parameters is found to reveal the existence of antibunching in both the engineered quantum states under consideration. Finally, the relevance of the engineered quantum states in the quantum phase estimation is also discussed, and photon added displaced Fock state is shown to be preferable for the task.Comment: Quantum phase properties of an engineered quantum state has been studied from various perspective

Lower- and higher-order nonclassical properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states

Nonclassical properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states have been studied using various witnesses of lower- and higher-order nonclassicality. Compact analytic expressions are obtained for the nonclassicality witnesses. Using those expressions, it is established that these states and the states that can be obtained as their limiting cases (except coherent states) are highly nonclassical as they show the existence of lower- and higher-order antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics, in addition to the nonclassical features revealed through the Mandel $Q_M$ parameter, zeros of Q function, Klyshko's criterion, and Agarwal-Tara criterion. Further, some comparison between the nonclassicality of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states have been performed using witnesses of nonclassicality. This has established that between the two types of non-Gaussianity inducing operations (i.e., photon addition and subtraction) used here, photon addition influences the nonclassical properties more strongly. Further, optical designs for the generation of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states from squeezed vacuum state have also been proposed.Comment: A comparative study of the nonclassicality present in photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states shows photon addition is generally preferable nonclassicality inducing operation, while subtraction also has advantage in some cases over additio

Infrared image identification method of substation equipment fault under weak supervision

This study presents a weakly supervised method for identifying faults in infrared images of substation equipment. It utilizes the Faster RCNN model for equipment identification, enhancing detection accuracy through modifications to the model's network structure and parameters. The method is exemplified through the analysis of infrared images captured by inspection robots at substations. Performance is validated against manually marked results, demonstrating that the proposed algorithm significantly enhances the accuracy of fault identification across various equipment types

Bounds for the regularity of product of edge ideals

Let $I$ and $J$ be edge ideals in a polynomial ring $R = \mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$ with $I \subseteq J$. In this paper, we obtain a general upper and lower bound for the Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of $IJ$ in terms of certain invariants associated with $I$ and $J$. Using these results, we explicitly compute the regularity of $IJ$ for several classes of edge ideals. Let $J_1,\ldots,J_d$ be edge ideals in a polynomial ring $R$ with $J_1 \subseteq \cdots \subseteq J_d$. Finally, we compute the precise expression for the regularity of $J_1 J_2\cdots J_d$ when $d \in \{3,4\}$ and $J_d$ is the edge ideal of complete graph.Comment: Pages 11, 1 figur

Digitized archive of the Kodaikanal images: Representative results of solar cycle variation from sunspot area determination

Photographic images are valuable data resources for studying long term changes in the solar magnetic field and its influence on the Earth's climate and weather. We digitized more than 100 years of white light images stored in photographic plates and films that are available at Kodaikanal observatory starting from 1904. The digitized images were calibrated for relative plate density and aligned in such a way that the solar north is in upward direction. A semi-automated sunspot detection technique was used to identify the sunspots on the digitized images. In addition to describing the calibration procedure and availability of the data, we here present preliminary results on the sunspot area measurements and their variation with time. The results show that the white-light images have a uniform spatial resolution throughout the 90 years of observations. However, the contrast of the images decreases from 1968 onwards. The images are circular and do not show any major geometrical distortions. The measured monthly averaged sunspot areas closely match the Greenwich sunspot area over the four solar cycles studied here. The yearly averaged sunspot area shows a high degree of correlation with the Greenwich sunspot area. Though the monthly averaged sunspot number shows a good correlation with the monthly averaged sunspot areas, there is a slight anti-correlation between the two during solar maximum The Kodaikanal data archive is hosted at http://kso.iiap.res.in. The long time sequence of the Kodaikanal white light images provides a consistent data set for sunspot areas and other proxies. Many studies can be performed using Kodaikanal data alone without requiring intercalibration between different data sources.Comment: 9 pages, A&A(accepted

A randomized interventional study on clinico-surgical outcome of vaginal hysterectomy with hydro dissection versus without hydro dissection

Background: Hysterectomy is one of the most common gynaecological surgeries performed worldwide. The common indications for hysterectomy are benign like symptomatic uterine leiomyomas, endometriosis etc. We compare clinico-surgical outcome of vaginal hysterectomy with hydro dissection versus without hydro dissection. Methods: Women attending Gynae OPD or admitted was included in study and 30 cases taken in each group. Group A: Vaginal hysterectomy with hydro dissection. Hydro Dissection was done by about 50 ml to 100 ml of saline was infiltrated under pressure all around the cervix, just under vaginal mucosa below the bladder sulcus. Group B: Vaginal hysterectomy without hydro dissection. Results: The mean age of cases in Group-A was 49.63±8.91 yrs and in Group-B was 48.03±5.39 yrs was uniform. The mean operative time in Group-A was 49.07±6.46 min and in Group-B was 53.40±5.87 min which was statistically significant (p-value = 0.009). The mean intraoperative blood loss in Group-A was 89.77±6.49 ml and in Group-B was 97.67±12.93 ml which was statistically significant (p-value = 0.005). The mean level of change in Hb was 0.70±0.29 gm/dl in Group-A and was 1.01 ± 0.43 gm/dl in Group-B, which was statistically significant (p-value = 0.002). Conclusions: Hydro dissection with saline in vaginal hysterectomy is associated with significant reduction in duration of surgery, blood loss and lower mean level of change in Hb

A comparative study of sublingual versus oral misoprostol following oral mifepristone for second trimester termination of pregnancy

Background: The objective of this study is to assess the effectualness and safety of sublingual versus oral misoprostol following oral mifepristone for second trimester termination of pregnancy.Methods: This institution based contingent study was conducted on 220 women requesting for mid-trimester termination of pregnancy between 12-20 weeks with legal indication as per Govt. MTP act. After excluding the women as per exclusion criteria, they were randomly allocated into two groups (Group A Sublingual, Group B Oral), the women received 200 mg oral mifepristone followed by sublingual or oral misoprostol 400µg three hourly for a maximum of 5 doses 48 hours later. The course of misoprostol was reiterated if women failed to abort in 24 hours.Results: The mean induction-abortion interval of Group-A and Group -B was 4.02±1.39 hours and 6.44±1.79 hours respectively. The mean dose of misoprostol in Group–A and Group-B was 680±220.4µg and 1003.6±274.9µg. Hence mean Induction-abortion interval and dose were shortened in  Group-A as compare to Group-B (p <0.05). There was 100% success rate noticed via both routes. Evacuation was done in 4 (3.64%) women in Group-B as compare to only 1 (0.91%) in Group-A . The acceptability was significantly more in Group-B (100%) as compare Group-A (52.73%), probably because of unpleasant taste of sublingual misoprostol. All side effects (Nausea, pain, headache, and diarrhea) were common in both the Groups, only fever was significantly more common in sublingual group as compare to oral group (p<0.05).Conclusions: From present study authors conclude that, sublingual misoprostol when combined with mifepristone is effective for medical abortion in second trimester in terms of effectualness, endurability and success rate than oral route