Rural Perspective towards Financial Inclusion

Financial Inclusion or inclusive financing is the delivery of financial services at affordable costs to sections of disadvantaged and low-income segments of society, in contrast to financial exclusion where those services are not available or affordable. For the purpose of giving such financial services in easy and convenient way government has developed many financial plans in the rural areas. These plans are helpful for people who want to access financial services. The availability of banking and payment services to the entire population without discrimination is the prime objective of this public policy. Thus the term Financial Inclusion can be defined as the process of ensuring access to financial services and timely and adequate credit where needed by vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low income groups at an affordable cost. The nations should takeover and remedy to reach the financial services to the weaker sections. So, this study has been undertaken to analyse the prospects of financial inclusion in rural areas.Keywords. Bank, Financial Services, Financial Inclusion, Rural Perspective.JEL. G20, G29, G30

Highly Collimated Jets and Wide-Angle Outflows in HH46/47: New Evidence from Spitzer IR Images

We present new details of the structure and morphology of the jets and outflows in HH46/47 as seen in Spitzer infrared images from IRAC and MIPS, reprocessed using the ``HiRes'' deconvolution technique. HiRes improves the visualization of spatial morphology by enhancing resolution (to sub-arcsec levels in IRAC bands) and removing the contaminating side lobes from bright sources. In addition to sharper views of previously reported bow shocks, we have detected: (i) the sharply-delineated cavity walls of the wide-angle biconical outflow, seen in scattered light on both sides of the protostar, (ii) several very narrow jet features at distances 400 AU to 0.1 pc from the star, and, (iii) compact emissions at MIPS 24 micron coincident with the jet heads, tracing the hottest atomic/ionic gas in the bow shocks.Comment: 11 pages, 4 Figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ(Letters

Point Process Algorithm: A New Bayesian Approach for Planet Signal Extraction with the Terrestrial Planet Finder

The capability of the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer (TPF-I) for planetary signal extraction, including both detection and spectral characterization, can be optimized by taking proper account of instrumental characteristics and astrophysical prior information. We have developed the Point Process Algorithm (PPA), a Bayesian technique for extracting planetary signals using the sine-chopped outputs of a dual nulling interferometer. It is so-called because it represents the system being observed as a set of points in a suitably-defined state space, thus providing a natural way of incorporating our prior knowledge of the compact nature of the targets of interest. It can also incorporate the spatial covariance of the exozodi as prior information which could help mitigate against false detections. Data at multiple wavelengths are used simultaneously, taking into account possible spectral variations of the planetary signals. Input parameters include the RMS measurement noise and the a priori probability of the presence of a planet. The output can be represented as an image of the intensity distribution on the sky, optimized for the detection of point sources. Previous approaches by others to the problem of planet detection for TPF-I have relied on the potentially non-robust identification of peaks in a "dirty" image, usually a correlation map. Tests with synthetic data suggest that the PPA provides greater sensitivity to faint sources than does the standard approach (correlation map + CLEAN), and will be a useful tool for optimizing the design of TPF-I.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures. AJ in press (scheduled for Nov 2006

COMPARISON OF TREATMENT OUTCOME OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF PREGNANCY INDUCED HYPERTENSION

This study was aimed to find out the differences in the pregnancy outcome of PIH women treated with the antihypertensive drugs methyldopa and nifedipine. The prospective observational study was conducted in a multi specialty hospital at Coimbatore with 161 PIH diagnosed women. Women were categorised into the no-drug group, methyldopa group, nifedipine group and methyldopa with nifedipine group. All the women were monitored from diagnosis to delivery. The maternal and neonatal data were collected and analysed. The drugs were significantly controlled the blood pressure (BP) from base to end (P<0.001). There was no significant difference in the reduction of BP between the drugs. Cesarean delivery (>90%) and preterm delivery were high across all the groups. No significant difference was seen between these groups. The AGA (Average for gestational age) babies were significantly higher with a no-drug group (83%) and lower with nifedipine group (40%). Two women were reported with HELLP syndrome in methyldopa with nifedipine group. No significant difference was found in terms of pregnancy outcome between these groups except for eclampsia and AGA. Eclampsia was affected more with 14% in methyldopa with nifedipine group. We found similar outcomes; there were no significant changes between methyldopa, nifedipine, and the no-drug treatment. The antihypertensive drugs nifedipine and methyldopa both were significantly reduced the BP. The maternal and neonatal complications were similar between these two drugs. No beneficial effect can be identified one over another

Role of herpes simplex virus 1 protein ICP47 in antigen presentation and pathogenesis

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) immunomodulatory protein, ICP47, conceals infected cells from CD8+ T cells by inhibiting the presentation of peptides on MHC class I. The mechanism by which ICP47 exerts this function is by binding to the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) protein, blocking peptide transport and loading onto MHC I molecules in the ER. The earliest studies of ICP47 supported by biochemical and in vitro observations noted marked species specificity with human but not mouse TAP being inhibited by this protein. However, later work demonstrated that ICP47 can contribute to HSV neurovirulence in mice. The discordance between biochemical and in vivo data leaves our understanding of ICP47 and its role in evading CD8+ T cells incomplete. Data from our laboratory suggested that ICP47 is likely to be expressed during the establishment and maintenance of HSV-1 latency, however, its exact function during these stages of infection is unknown. Therefore, in this study, we sought to re-visit the discrepancies discussed above and investigate the role of ICP47 during HSV-1 infection. We utilised different strains of HSV and mice, as well as an alternate infection model and unique methods to quantify the effect of ICP47 on levels of antigen presentation. In our mouse model, where HSV is confined to the peripheral nervous system, deletion of ICP47 from HSV-1 KOS did not alter lesion development, virus load, spread or reactivation. Likewise, latency was unaffected by ICP47 deficiency as determined using a sensitive Cre-marking mouse model. Further observations from the Cre-marking mouse model revealed that unlike the ICP47 promoter inserted in an ectopic locus, native promoters did not induce additional neuronal marking by Cre beyond lytic infection. We evaluated the reasons behind the difference in marking using newly generated recombinant viruses. Subsequent flank infection of ROSA26R mice with these viruses showed that the local genomic context is also important for regulation of gene expression. By contrast to our in vivo pathogenesis data, we were able to show that ICP47 does inhibit antigen presentation significantly on HSV-infected mouse cells using in vitro antigen presentation assays. However, in mouse cells, antigen presentation was ablated by 44%, compared to an 85% reduction in human cells. As CD8+ T cells have been shown to recognize very few peptide-MHC I complexes on the surface of target cells, it is important to consider the efficiency at which ICP47 inhibits human and mouse TAP. Therefore, we used mass spectrometry to identify and quantify MHC I bound peptides derived from HSV-1 during viral infection. We found that more peptide sequences were presented on mouse cells infected with ICP47 null virus compared to those infected with wild-type virus. We quantified the presentation of 14 of these peptides and the contribution of ICP47 to this process in human and mouse cells. We found that ICP47 almost entirely blocks human TAP-mediated peptide presentation, though the degree of inhibition was somewhat peptide-specific. Conversely, the effect of ICP47 on mouse TAP was far less profound, resulting in only up to five-fold reduction in MHC-peptide abundance. In conclusion, this study shows that despite significant inhibition of antigen presentation in mouse cells, ICP47 may not be an effective immune modulator in mice and suggests a need for re-evaluation of suitable mouse models

OpenFlow-based Distributed and Fault-Tolerant Software Switch Architecture

We are living in the era where each of us is connected with each other virtually across the globe. We are sharing the information electronically over the internet every second of our day. There are many networking devices involved in sending the information over the internet. They are routers, gateways, switches, PCs, laptops, handheld devices, etc. The switches are very crucial elements in delivering packets to the intended recipients. Now the networking field is moving towards Software Defined Networking and the network elements are being slowly replaced by the software applications run by OpenFlow protocols. For example the switching functionality in local area networks could be achieved with software switches like OpenvSwitch (OVS), LINC-Switch, etc. Now a days the organizations depend on the datacenters to run their services. The application servers are being run from virtual machines on the hosts to better utilize the computing resources and make the system more scalable. The application servers need to be continuously available to run the business for which they are deployed for. Software switches are used to connect virtual machines as an alternative to Top of Rack switches. If such software switch fails then the application servers will not be able to connect to its clients. This may severely impact the business serviced by the application servers, deployed on the virtual machines. For reliable data connectivity, the switching elements need to be continuously functional. There is a need for reliable and robust switches to cater the today's networking infrastructure. In this study, the software switch LINC-Switch is implemented as distributed application on multiple nodes to make it resilient to failure. The fault-tolerance is achieved by using the distribution properties of the programming language Erlang. By implementing the switch on three redundant nodes and starting the application as a distributed application, the switch will be serving its purpose very promptly by restarting it on other node in case it fails on the current node by using failover/takeover mechanisms of Erlang. The tolerance to failure of the LINC-Switch is verified with Ping based experiment on the GENI test bed and on the Xen-cluster in our Lab.Engineering Technology, Department o