Gendered Dimensions of Trade: Evidence from Arunachal Pradesh, India

International trade has traditionally played an essential role in driving women-centric economic empowerment. Women’s participation as owners or managers has remained consistently low over the years. In India's case, a previous study conducted by UNDP revealed that women entrepreneurs preferred engaging in informal cross-border business as it was less risky with no tax burdens and their discomfort in dealing with male customs officials (UNDP, 2016). One of the critical limitations of active business engagement is socio-economic and cultural restriction, especially at the grassroots level. The case in Arunachal Pradesh is no different, as the concept of entrepreneurship of women in this field is a relatively recent phenomenon. In Arunachal Pradesh, the market is mainly controlled by women, yet women's participation in small and medium enterprises is less in number. In this context, the current paper discusses the nature of women entrepreneurs’ role in Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and cross-border trade. It unveils the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Arunachal Pradesh and along with industrial and policy-related bottlenecks. The discussion is based on the primary data collected from the women-led/managed/owned MSMEs to study the gender dimensions of trade in Arunachal Pradesh. The findings of the study are that women entrepreneurship primarily gravitates around smaller-sized firms, with most women-led enterprises accounting for micro-enterprises in the formal sector. Like elsewhere in Arunachal Pradesh too, there remain socio-economic and cultural restrictions, especially at the grassroots level. Women lag in terms of awareness about import and export, technology, and dedicated bank accounts. &nbsp

A Bibliometric Perspective Survey of IoT controlled AI based Swarm robots

Robotics is the ­new-age domain of technology that deals with bringing a collaboration of all disciplines of sciences and engineering to create a mechanical machine that may or may not work entirely independently but definitely focuses on making human lives much easier. It has repeatedly shown its ability to change lives at home and in the industry. As the field of robotics research grows and reaches new worlds, the military is one area where advances can have a significant impact, and the government is aware of this. Military technology has come a long way from the days where soldiers had to walk into traps, putting their own lives in danger for their fellow soldiers, to today, when soldiers have robots walk into the same traps with possibility and result of zero human casualties. High-risk military operations such as mine detection, bomb defusing, fighter pilot aviation, and entering enemy territory without complete knowledge of what is to come are all tasks that can be programmed in a way that makes them accustomed to scenarios like these, either by intensive machine learning algorithms or artificially intelligent robot systems. Military soldiers are human capital; they are not self-driving robots; they are living beings with emotions, fears, and weaknesses, and they will almost always be unreliable as compared to computers and robots. They are easily affected by environmental effects and are vulnerable to external influences. The government\u27s costs for deployed troops, such as training and salaries, are extremely high. As a result, the solution is to build AI robots for defence operations that can sense, collect data by observing surroundings as any human soldier would, and report it back to a workstation where it can be used for strategy building and planning on what the next step should be during a mission, thus making the army better prepared for any kind of trouble that might be on their way. In this paper, the survey and bibliometric analysis of AI-based IoT managed Swarm Robots from the Scopus repository is discussed, which analyses research by area, notable authors, organizations, funding agencies and countries. Statistical analysis of literature published as journals, articles and papers that aids in understanding the global influence of publication is called Bibliometric analysis. This paper is a thorough analysis of 84 research papers as obtained from the Scopus repository on the 3rd of April 2021. GPS Visualizer, Gephi, wordcloud, and ScienceScape are open source softwares used in the visualization review. As previously mentioned, the visualization assists in a quick and easy interpretation of the different viewpoints in a particular study domain pursuit

Cystic lung tuberculosis in children: A series of five cases

Frequent imaging manifestations of pulmonary tuberculosis are airspace or interstitial nodules with or without tree-in-bud nodules, consolidation, cavitation, ground glass opacity, miliary nodules, lymphadenopathy and pleural effusion. It is unusual to encounter cystic changes in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis, and these findings should be differentiated from other cystic lung diseases. This case series describes five cases of cystic lung disease in children with tuberculosis (TB) with illustrative chest radiography and CT findings. Contribution: The manuscript highlights the need to consider tuberculosis as a possible cause of acquired cystic lung disease in appropriate clinical settings, particularly in endemic regions

Isolation and Taxonomic Characterization of Novel Haloarchaeal Isolates From Indian Solar Saltern: A Brief Review on Distribution of Bacteriorhodopsins and V-Type ATPases in Haloarchaea

Haloarchaea inhabit high salinity environments worldwide. They are a potentially rich source of crucial biomolecules like carotenoids and industrially useful proteins. However, diversity in haloarchaea present in Indian high salinity environments is poorly studied. In the present study, we isolated 12 haloarchaeal strains from hypersaline Kottakuppam, Tamil Nadu solar saltern in India. 16S rRNA based taxonomic characterization of these isolates suggested that nine of them are novel strains that belong to genera Haloarcula, Halomicrobium, and Haloferax. Transmission electron microscopy suggests the polymorphic nature of these haloarchaeal isolates. Most of the haloarchaeal species are known to be high producers of carotenoids. We were able to isolate carotenoids from all these 12 isolates. The UV-Vis spectroscopy-based analysis suggests that bacterioruberin and lycopene are the major carotenoids produced by these isolates. Based on the visual inspection of the purified carotenoids, the isolates were classified into two broad categories i.e., yellow and orange, attributed to the differences in the ratio of bacterioruberin and lycopene as confirmed by the UV-Vis spectral analysis. Using a PCR-based screening assay, we were able to detect the presence of the bacteriorhodopsin gene (bop) in 11 isolates. We performed whole-genome sequencing for three bop positive and one bop negative haloarchaeal isolates. Whole-genome sequencing, followed by pan-genome analysis identified multiple unique genes involved in various biological functions. We also successfully cloned, expressed, and purified functional recombinant bacteriorhodopsin (BR) from one of the isolates using Escherichia coli as an expression host. BR has light-driven proton pumping activity resulting in the proton gradient across the membrane, which is utilized by V-Type ATPases to produce ATP. We analyzed the distribution of bop and other accessory genes involved in functional BR expression and ATP synthesis in all the representative haloarchaeal species. Our bioinformatics-based analysis of all the sequenced members of genus Haloarcula suggests that bop, if present, is usually inserted between the genes coding for B and D subunits of the V-type ATPases operon. This study provides new insights into the genomic variations in haloarchaea and reports expression of new BR variant having good expression in functional form in E. coli

Metabolic Syndrome: a challenging health Issue in highly urbanized Union Territory of north India

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>1. To determine the prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome in adults aged 18 years and above in Chandigarh, India. 2. To determine the socio-demographic factors associated with MS. 3. To determine the agreement between IDF (International Diabetes federation definition) and ATP-III (National Cholesterol Education Program Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults criteria).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a community based cross-sectional study, total 605 subjects aged 18 yrs and above were studied using multistage random sampling.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome was estimated by using IDF and ATP-III criteria. By IDF, Metabolic Syndrome was found in 287 (47.4%) subjects and it was more prevalent among females 171 (59.6%) as compared to males 116 (40.4%). By applying ATP-III overall prevalence was less i.e. 233 (38.5%) but again its prevalence was more among females 141 (44.8%) than males 116 (39.5%). Higher socioeconomic status, sedentary occupation and high body mass index were significantly associated with Metabolic Syndrome.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Metabolic Syndrome is a major health problem in the region and proper emphasis should be given on its prevention and control.</p

Risk of secondhand smoke exposure and severity of COVID-19 infection: multicenter case–control study

IntroductionExposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) is an established causal risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and chronic lung disease. Numerous studies have evaluated the role of tobacco in COVID-19 infection, severity, and mortality but missed the opportunity to assess the role of SHS. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine whether SHS is an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection, severity, mortality, and other co-morbidities.MethodologyMulticentric case–control study was conducted across six states in India. Severe COVID-19 patients were chosen as our study cases, and mild and moderate COVID-19 as control were evaluated for exposure to SHS. The sample size was calculated using Epi-info version 7. A neighborhood-matching technique was utilized to address ecological variability and enhance comparability between cases and controls, considering age and sex as additional matching criteria. The binary logistic regression model was used to measure the association, and the results were presented using an adjusted odds ratio. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 24 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).ResultsA total of 672 cases of severe COVID-19 and 681 controls of mild and moderate COVID-19 were recruited in this study. The adjusted odds ratio (AOR) for SHS exposure at home was 3.03 (CI 95%: 2.29–4.02) compared to mild/moderate COVID-19, while SHS exposure at the workplace had odds of 2.19 (CI 95%: 1.43–3.35). Other factors significantly related to the severity of COVID-19 were a history of COVID-19 vaccination before illness, body mass index (BMI), and attached kitchen at home.DiscussionThe results of this study suggest that cumulative exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke is an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness. More studies with the use of biomarkers and quantification of SHS exposure in the future are needed

An assessment of the implementation of the CYCC under the Child Justice Act 75 of 2008.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, PietermaritzburgNo abstract provided.No proper title page