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Development and validation of an intimate relationship security scale
Relationships form an integral part of our lives, a key function being attachment. While newlineromantic relationships have mainly been studied with attachment theories as the basis,collectivistic cultures like India emphasize on togetherness more than individualism. To understand and measure security in any intimate relationship, a tool was developed, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods. An initial thematic analysis helped develop a basic model of relationship security that guided item generation. Items were developed to help newlinemeasure the newly operationalized construct, using stakeholders, literature review and social media. 520 participants, including both, marital and pre-marital and 7 experts, helped cut down the 206 item pool to (in the first phase of data collection) to 84 items. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted the second time on a sample of 486 participants that further narrowed down the scale to 58 items. The final confirmatory factor analysis, using SPSS AMOS, involved data collected from 408 participants. Validity, Reliability analysis and norms were developed for the final scale of 43 items. -
Sustainable tourism development through community based waste management in backwater destinations of kerala
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, (2002) solid waste newlinemanagement is a great challenge in many tourist destinations because improperly managed solid waste can threaten the environment as well as the life of the local community. Sewage waste and plastic material from tourism houseboats are increasing the pollution in the backwaters of south Kerala. These days it is not completely proper for touristic activities because of their physical and morphological attributes. This can lead to unsustainable negative impact on the backwater (Iskander and El 2014).Therefore this study was seeking to understand the influence of community based waste management towards the sustainable tourism development in the backwaters of south Kerala. The research adopted a descriptive research design. The study consists of three newlinecategories of stakeholders. Public sector, Private sector, and Local community. Public Sector stakeholders include Hotel Officials, Resorts officials and houseboat officials. Private sector stakeholder includes the government representative of concerned backwater destination. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), SEM Modelling are the various statistical techniques used in this study. Cross-case analysis was used to analyse newlinethe qualitative aspects of the research study. This study also develops and test a community based waste management model for newlinesustainable tourism development and considered the influence of factors on community support, community involvement, perceived benefits and perceived cost. The structural model indicates that increasing perceived benefits and decreasing perceived cost from backwater tourism would help to enhance community involvement and support for newlinesustainable tourism development in the backwaters of south Kerala. -
Effect of crude oil price changes on macro economy and capital market of India
Oil symbolizes an important role in the global economy. Crude oil or petroleum is an indispensable and a contributing factor for any economy. Several international crude oil price benchmarks (Brent, WTI, OPEC and so on) have always been tested through empirical studies to established certain cause-effect newlinerelationship and to determine their predictability. However, literature evidence is limited to Indian basket. Moreover, the need for forecasting this benchmark has newlinenot been acknowledged by the scholars. International crude oil price of Indian newlinebasket, also termed as Indian basket crude oil price, is the base of any petroleum newlineproduct pricing in India. Importing crude oil enhance the trade deficit of the nation. The present scenario of the global petroleum industry and the relationship among the major oil-producing and exporting countries are vulnerable. This situation increases the supply-side risk for the major oil-importing countries like India. In this state of affairs, it is vital to find out the factors that influence this price benchmark to reduce uncertainty. This research work aims to provide a holistic picture of the international crude oil price of Indian basket, considering the present scenario of the oil industry and lack of scholarly work on this field. Where on one side, the external factors affecting crude oil price has been determined, on the other hand how Indian economy and capital market is affected newlineby this price change have been found out. Triangulation method under a mixed approach has been adopted for this research work where quantitative and qualitative data collection have been run simultaneously. The time frame of the quantitative data collection is April, 2000 to March, 2018 and the frequency is newlinemonthly. Twenty experts have been interviewed to capture the qualitative aspects associated with the models. Four models have been proposed to execute the objectives. -
Noise removal feature enhancement and speech recognition techniques for artificial larynx transducer speech
Speech impediments are the state of difficulty for a person to speak comfortably. These impediments make the spoken speech distorted and they are generally categorized as disordered speech. The quality of disordered speech is poor as clarity, intelligibility and naturalness is missing. In most type of disordered speech the voice is natural and produced by the vocal system of the human being. The vocal system includes the organ called as Larynx placed in the upper part of the neck. This organ has the vocal folds that contribute for pitch variation and volume of the speech. This organ will be malfunctioning some time or will be removed because of cancer. In both the case in order to restore speech, an external device called Artificial Larynx Transducer (ALT) is used to produce the sound. It is a small handheld battery operated device and is used for decades to obtain the audible speech for people who lost their speech because of removal of larynx. The quality of speech and its intelligibility of AL speakers have not improved for decades. The reason for poor quality is constant vibration of ALT, direct sound from ALT and pressure offered to produce the vibration. newlineSo in this research the nature of the speech produced from ALT is analyzed, a possible enhancement of the parameter is done and a recognition technique of the spoken word with the help of trained data is done. Here the approach followed to tackle the problem of poor quality in AL speech involves both speech enhancement and recognizer technique development. When it is looked as enhancement problem noise region localization, noise estimation and noise suppression methods were adopted. In the process of parameter enhancement, pitch frequency estimation and improvement is implemented. When it is looked as recognition problem the parameters pitch frequency, formant frequency, glottal excitation, spectral tilt, coefficients are extracted. As formant frequency is a sensitive parameter, its estimation was done using Recurrent Neural network. -
Anomaly detection in online social media
Online Social Media (OSM) is a platform where users post opinions, discussions, product reviews, random thoughts, advertisements, comment exchanges and status updates.These platforms help in text mining applications such as prediction of election results, newlinestudying global mood trends, public perception of a national concern or an issue, mining of public health knowledge, detecting epidemics and business analytics. These newlineapplications also present some research challenges like personal data stealing, community phishing, hate speeches, spreading misconceptions, cyber bullying and terror attack planning. Some of these challenges are anomalies or outliers which don t conform with the majority ones. The anomalies focused in this research work are behavioral and content anomalies. Data preprocessing for textual data from OSM plays an important role for creation of the Vector Space Model (VSM) which is used as an input for behavioral and content anomaly models. The contents posted by the public in OSM is written using natural language and sometimes may not follow the formal communication mode. It has lexical, newlinesemantic and syntactic ambiguities and becomes a challenging task to extract accurate information and discover logical patterns during the text mining process. Some of the commonly used methods for text mining are, Bag of Words (BoW), N-grams and Term newlineFrequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). Few limitations of these techniques newlineare, high dimensional sparse feature vectors, missing contextual meaning, presence of newlineweak features and Part of Speech ambiguity. In this research study, an improvised Feature Engineering model is proposed which is a combination of Forward Scan Trigrams and weighted TF-IDF to address the creation of an efficient Vector Space Model (VSM). This proposed model is used with an improvised Feature Hashing technique to address the removal of weak features. -
Graphene and graphene enhanced nanomaterials from biological precursors synthesis characterization and proliferant applications
Graphene family materials with non-photocatalytic biocidal properties are highly sought after in the field of biomedicine and nanobiotechnology. But the applications of graphene-based materials were often hampered by their high production cost, low yield, non-renewable precursors, harmful processing newlinetechniques, etc. In this context, this study presented the successful usage of biomass materials as sustainable feedstock for the production of graphene derivatives. Five raw materials of biological origin namely, coconut shell, wood, sugarcane bagasse, Colocasia esculenta leaves and Nelumbo nucifera leaves, were investigated. The graphitized forms of the above materials were newlineused as precursors for the graphene nanomaterial synthesis. They were chemically oxidized and functionalized with tin oxide nanoparticles to form the composite. Nano-systems obtained using an identical chemical route from a universal source of carbon nanomaterials, namely carbon black, were also newlinestudied for the purpose of validation and comparison. The synthesis protocols adopted for the preparation of graphene-based materials were devoid of hazardous reducing agents or byproducts. The products obtained after each stage of treatment were characterized with the help of various spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. newlineEven though structural properties of all the precursors appeared to be broadly the same, a variation in their morphology and defect density was discerned. Various analyses revealed the formation of graphene oxide domains with distinct dimensions after the oxidative treatment. An increase in defect newlinedensity was also observed due to the intercalation of oxygen groups to the carbon layers. Post composite formation, a distribution of ultrafine tin oxide newlinenanoparticles on the graphene surface was observed. The distribution of oxygen newlinefunctionalities on the carbon backbone were found to play a major role in governing the dispersal of tin oxide particles during the nanocomposite formation. -
Spatio temporal crime analysis and forecasting using social media data
Now a days, people communicate, share ideas, and interact through social media platforms. It has given us an ability to talk about career interests, post videos, and pictures for sharing with others. The data present in social media enables the analysis of various human aspects. The social media data and domain is used for crime analysis, customer behaviour analysis, and healthcare analysis provides much information useful to predict human behaviours. Crime is the most common social problem faced in a developing country. In developing countries like India, crime plays a detrimental role in economic growth and prosperity. With the increase in delinquencies, law enforcement needs to deploy limited resources optimally to protect citizens. Crime affects the reputation of a nation and the quality of life of its citizens. Crime also affects the economy of the country, increasing the financial burden of the government due to the need for expenditure in the police force and judicial system. Various initiatives are taken by law enforcement to reduce the crime rate. An example of these initiatives includes an accurate and real-time prediction of crime occurrences. Crime analytics and prediction have lengthily studied among research analytics communities. In recent years, crime knowledge from one of a kind heterogeneous source (Twitter, News Feeds, Facebook, Instagram and so forth.) have given enormous opportunities to the research group to comfortably study crime pattern and prediction duties in specific real knowledge. Data mining and predictive analytics provide the best options for the same. Law enforcement organizations are increasingly looking to use data from social media such as Facebook, Newsfeeds, Twitter, etc. investing in research in this area. Using the intelligence gained through these data, the agencies can identify future incidents and plan for active patrolling. -
Health diagnosis of mango trees using image processing techniques
A Mango disease detection artificial intelligent model needs robust and effective newlinefeature extraction methods. The machine vision system has been designed for the newlineidentification of disease in plants from color leaf images. The research done proposes newlinenovel algorithms to extract color features Pseudo Color Regions and Texture Features newlineusing Pseudo Color Co-Occurrence Matrix. A new Mango dataset has been created and newlinealgorithms tested on it. An artificial intelligence model has also been created and tested on an existing disease dataset of Apple and Tomato plants. Results were compared with existing methods in the literature. The effectiveness of each statistical function was studied in classifying the pattern using a Support Vector Machine. For textures that are newlinedifferent like smooth new leaves, dry leaves, growth a Gray Level Co-occurrence based newlinestatistics was effective but values failed to discriminate in certain diseases. The proposed and implemented novel method which uses second-order statistics on a pseudo-color-based co-occurrence matrix has resulted in better classification. Pseudo Color Region feature is created using a novel intermediate data structure and found to be more effective than hue-based color features. It identifies dots, spots, patches and regions of different colors on the leaf and uses that as a feature vector to classify plant diseases. This generic method can be applied for early disease detection for plants and help farmers take corrective measures to avoid loss of yield. -
A mixed methods study on factors associated with relapse of alcohol use disorder
Background: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is one of the most concerning mental health issues in India. According to the recent survey, Magnitude of Substance Use in India, 2019, 160 million of the countrys population consumes alcohol. About 35.6% are problem drinkers among those who drink, of which 18% are alcohol dependent. Despite the greater understanding of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and the scientific advancements in treatment, relapse remains to be the main challenge in managing AUD. This study aimed at investigating various factors associated with relapse of AUD and presenting an in-depth understanding of it. Methods: A Sequential Explanatory Mixed Methods design was used. In the quantitative phase, 72 relapsed individuals with AUD currently undergoing treatment were compared with 72 individuals previously treated for AUD who maintain total abstinence for a minimum period of one year. Relapsed participants were selected from three private de-addiction centers in Bangalore and abstaining participants were recruited from various Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Bangalore. The relapsed and sober groups were matched on gender, AUD diagnosis, and previous inpatient alcohol de-addiction treatment. Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised was used to assess the personality profiles of the participants. A sociodemographic and clinical information form was also used to collect data. Six participants were selected purposively from the same sample for in-depth interviews. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS and NVivo for quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. The study protocol was approved by the institutional ethics committee. Results: Bivariate analyses showed a significant difference in Novelty Seeking, Persistence, Self-Directedness, and Self-Transcendence traits between the relapsed and sober participants. Results also suggested that reported use of other substances, post- discharge follow-ups, and living with drinking or drug-using individuals are significantly associated with relapse. Logistic regression displayed incomplete treatment, use of other substances, and no post-discharge follow-up as predictors of relapse. The qualitative thematic analysis revealed preparedness, motivation, personal exceptionalism, meaning and purpose, and social and interpersonal as the main relapse-related themes. Conclusions: The findings highlight the importance of treatment engagement, discharge planning, aftercare, and special attention to those presenting with multiple substance use. It also displays a few culture-specific aspects to be considered during treatment, such as preparing the individuals entering treatment to effectively engage, assessing and working with their motivation, and addressing the relationship dynamics. -
Role of healthcare quality in improving patients satisfaction at private hospitals in karnataka India
Healthcare is known as the treatment, diagnosis, and prevention from disease, newlineinjury, illness and other types of mental and physical losses in human beings (Pallipedia, 2009). Governments, insurers, consumers and healthcare delivery systems are involved in a continuous tug of war situation across the world and trying to meet increased demand for healthcare services, reducing the cost of service and healthcare quality improvements. Quality was already an area of attention for some time in healthcare, but recently the focus has been shifted towards quality majorly to reform entire healthcare. Therefore, in the present study healthcare quality has been focused. The main objective of this study is to investigate the role of healthcare quality in improving patient s satisfaction at private hospitals in Karnataka, India. The research has been designed as analytical research and used survey method for conducting the research. Primary data collection was done using structured questionnaire from respondents. For this study target population was private corporate multispecialty hospitals situated in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Multistage proportionate sampling was used for data collection. Data analysis was done using SPSS and AMOS. The results and findings of the study confirmed that the main influencers of newlinepatient s satisfaction and perceived service quality were six latent constructs: safety, newlinetimeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, patient centeredness and equitability. The model of patient s satisfaction with integrated framework revealed the relationships between independent and dependent variables and gave insights into interplay between the construct relationships. Study suggested practical significance of each construct and also raised a need for more holistic view of the model. Hence results of the study provided valuable insights for the management of private healthcare institutions. -
Design of new access control structure for provenance based on secret sharing
Access control is one of the important elements in providing confidentiality to the secured data. Access specifiers helps us understand degree of rights given to the users in utilizing data records in a right manner. Tampering the records by unauthorized parties is a high concern in secure communication. Tamper detection plays an important role in trouble shooting an issue associated with network/ host intrusion scenario. The advances in information technology have driven the modern world to focus on the Web for digital information. People across the globe rely on the internet for all the data from generic information to distribution of personal data over heterogeneous networks. Technology has grown so wide to an extent, where almost all of the financial transactions are taking place through online portals. On the other hand, there has been high rise in the security threats towards users confidential data. This information is however shared by the online users while performing financial transaction in e-commerce portals. In order to maintain security mechanism over the untrusted networks various authentication techniques available in this regard. All these security procedures are said to be stubborn and adequate on contextual basis, on the other hand over a period of time the intruders would find out ways to break into systems. Data theft and intrusion into the information systems would increase on a daily basis if defensive measures are not in place. In this concern a new mechanism for securing the data using majority voting concept is proposed. Majority voting for securing the provenance data is applied. Provenance data is data of origin, genesis data and often observed as sensitive data. Provenance is a record of events, timestamps, versions, transformations occurred for the data of interest. Elicitation of an entity's genesis is termed provenance. This understanding is called as data provenance for data objects and their relationships. In most of the cases provenance data is tend to be sensitive, and a small variation or regulation paves way to changes to entire lineage of the connected data. This origin needs to be protected and only approved parties should have right to use the data. Specific description or classification of an instance's historical record or data object is called data provenance. It has many implications in different disciplines in terms of its significance for the acquisition of data flow mechanisms. Personal control of data privacy is a common scenario and various solutions towards security exists. In this regard a unique model is proposed where control of data and its related allies is available with several bodies but however not one; and if access control is to be permitted for a cause based on context, all the entities holding their right keys will have to agree and share on a common platform for accessing the data. Combining these shares in a peculiar pattern allows the grant for accessing data. The method of allocating controls to multiple bodies and allowing grants based on the combination of stakes is called a mechanism for secret sharing. Share separation may be derived from the concept of visual encryption methodology We integrate concepts of secret sharing and provenance to provide an indigenous solution for parameters of information security namely confidentiality, integrity and availability. It is with the availability of exceptional wireless internet access in mobile motivated situations, users and usage data has become massive with respect to media. For example, financial related operations carried out over online platforms by users in many ways were found insecure and unauthenticated. Procedure with appropriate algorithms are available for safe data communication in various modes, however lacks to attain high accuracy and performance with regards to the basic goals of security; confidentiality, integrity, availability at a significant level. Security is the main aspect of any communications among untrusted networks in the current world. Sincere gratitude to many researchers for their tremendous contributions to effective security algorithms despite various threats that compromise the computer systems vulnerabilities. The origin of the data, i.e., by which the transaction thread was created, is the pertinent question to be answered while the financial operation is finalized. This definition of 'data antiquity ' has received good interest from researchers in different fields for many decades and is often termed as data provenance. However, security in provenance has made some progress with recent research, particularly in the field of cyber security. This study emphases on the safety characteristics of data provenance with a distinctive cryptographic approach. The combination of these principles produces unique results for safeguarding the genesis data. -
Sentencing Framework in the Administration of Criminal Justice in India :
This Thesis aims at having uniformity while sentencing the accused in respect of similar newlineoffences by various criminal courts. It is submitted that, in India, there is no separate sentencing Act which provides for the sentencing of the accused. It is submitted that the present thesis also recommends for the post sentencing/research process and administration of Criminal Justice through courts and supervisory power of the court over the executive after newlinethe conviction of the accused and during the pre-trial detention. Emphasis is also laid on newlineBails Act which is required to be legislated in the administration of Criminal Justice in India. The said Bails Act and Sentencing Act are very much in force in different common law countries such as New Zealand, UK, and USA. Similar legislations are the need of hour in the present day for administration of Criminal justice in India. The thesis also aims at highlighting the disparity of Sentencing by the different Criminal Courts in India. There are instances where length of detention itself is held to be sufficient, mitigating grounds are taken into consideration, and the accused is being given set-off for the period that he has already newlineundergone. The administration of post-sentencing process, more particularly probation is also being highlighted. The need for probation is also being highlighted, so also the requirement of plea bargaining being more popularised. The grant of parole by the executive in ignorance of conviction order is also critically analysed. Reforms are suggested for the better administration of criminal justice with special reference to sentencing. -
Antimagic labeling and its variations in graphs
Graph theory is a branch of discrete Mathematics with its results having significant applications in many areas of computing, social, and natural sciences. Graph labeling is one of the fascinating areas of graph theory with wide-ranging applications. The concept was first introduced in the 1960s where the vertices and edges are assigned real values or newlinesubsets of a set subject to certain conditions. The labeling dealt in the thesis is edge labeling basically, that is, assigning a label to the edges of the graph. Depending on the conditions applied in labeling give way to magic, super-magic, antimagic labelings. Hartsfield and Ringel introduced the notion of antimagic labeling in the year 1990. In this thesis, three variations in graph labeling are dealt namely, equitable antimagic labeling, equitable difference labeling and extension of equitable irregular labeling with an introduction of k-equitable irregular labeling. For a given graph G = (V,E), an equitable antimagic labeling (EAL) of G is a bijective edge-labeling f: E(G) and#8594; {1,2,3,...,m = |E(G)|} such that |W_f (u)-W_f (v)| and#8804; 1 for any pair of adjacent vertices u and v of G, where W_f (v) is the sum of the labels of the edges incident with the vertex v. A graph admitting an EAL is called an equitable antimagic graph (EAG). In Chapter 2, we initiate a study of this new edge labeling of graphs. A diand#64256;erence labeling of a graph G is realized by assigning distinct integer values to each vertex and then associating with each edge, the absolute diand#64256;erence of those values assigned to its end vertices. That is, it is an injective function f: V(G) and#8594; N together with function f^*: E(G) and#8594; N deand#64257;ned by f^* (uv)=|f(u)-f(v)|for any edge uv in G. The function f^* is called the weight function induced by f. An irregular labeling f: E(G) and#8594; N with the property that S_f (u) and#8800; S_f (v) for any two vertices u and v of G, where S_f (u) denotes the sum of the labels of the edges incident with the vertex u. The sum S_f (u) is called the vertex sum of u under f. -
Study of triple diffusive convection in non newtonian liquids
This thesis presents the study of triple diffusive convection in two nonNewtonian liquids couple stress liquid and viscoelastic liquid of type Oldroyd-B in the presence of external constraints like rotation, gravity modulation and temperature modulation. Linear stability analysis provides the stability condition of stationary and oscillatory convection and the resultant eigen function describes the newlineconvective flow. However, linear analysis can neither help to examine the rate newlineof heat and mass transfer nor provides information on the convection newlineamplitudes. Therefore, it is also important to do nonlinear analysis. In view of newlinethis, all the problems considered in this thesis are studied for both linear and newlinenonlinear cases. The eigen value arising in the linear case for the problems newlinewithout modulation is solved by normal mode technique whereas for the problems with modulation is solved by perturbation method by adopting Venezian approach. The nonlinear study is done by using Ginzburg Landau newlinemodel for the problems with couple stress liquid whereas the nonlinear study is done by truncated representation of Fourier series by Lorenz model for the problems with viscoelastic Oldroyd-B liquid. The present study has wide range of applications in material processing, solidification of alloys, underground spreading of chemical pollutants, petroleum reservoirs, cooling of electronic devices, thermal insulation newlinematerial, crystal growth, transport of chemical substances, solar receivers, newlineinjection moulding, chemical industries, nuclear industries, bioengineering, newlineoceanography, meteorology, astrophysics, geophysics and so on. The extensive description of wide-ranging applications of triple diffusive convection in non-Newtonian liquids is accountable for the motivation of this thesis. The following four problems are carried out in this thesis: (i) EFFECT OF ROTATION ON TRIPLE DIFFUSIVE CONVECTION IN COUPLE STRESS LIQUID The effect of rotation on triple diffusive convection in couple newlinestress liquid is considered. -
Broken Romantic Relationships: Self-Forgiveness and Attitude Towards Marriage among Emerging Adults
he main aim of the study is to understand the relation between self- forgiveness and attitudes towards marriage, among emerging adults (18-25year olds) who have had a broken romantic relationship using the mixed method explanatory sequential research design. In Phase 1 of the study, 385 College students, (males and females) who had a romantic relationship breakup, were administered the tools for the quantitative part, using google survey, after receiving their consent. The data was subjected to statistical analysis. In Phase 2, an in-depth interview of five males and five females who volunteered, were interviewed in depth using a semi structured interview schedule, for a deeper understanding of the information obtained in Phase 1. The session that was of 60- 90 minutes duration was audio recorded and the data was subjected to Thematic Network Analysis. Findings of Phase 1 study indicates that there is a significant positive correlation between self- forgiveness and attitude towards marriage, except the financial aspect of marriage. Attitude towards marriage and forgiveness varied, based on certain aspects of the romantic relationship. Gender differences are present in certain aspects of attitude towards marriage. There is a positive and significant moderating role of gender in the relationship between dimensions of forgiveness with attitudes towards marriage. The relationship between self-forgiveness and intent to marry is positive and significant, especially for females. In Phase 2 of the study, finding suggests that the romantic breakup which follows a systematic pattern, can be traumatic. Individuals are languishing post breakup as they are unable to forget or forgive the unresolved issues related to the breakup which affects attitude towards marriage. Difficulty forgiving oneself, one s ex-partner and the experience is indicated. -
Insurance coverage framework for assisted reproductive treatments for women
Giving birth to a child is considered as one of the purest and highest forms of giving by any human being. The harsh reality is that not all men and women can reproduce. Some remain childless their entire life. Infertility hurts both men and women, but women more. Women continue to face social stigma of not bearing a child and go through stress, anxiety, and depression (Donkar, 2007; Widge, 2002; Reissman, 2000). One of the most significant contributions of Medical Science is the invention of Assisted Reproductive Technology Treatments that help infertile couples to conceive. India has been a pioneer in adapting to this technology and since 1978 many couples have been able to give birth to a child. Unfortunately, these treatments are expensive. Infact, the high treatment cost is the predominant source of anxiety in patients going through these treatments across the world (Iaconelli, 2013). There are instances where, couples leave the treatment, mid way as they are not able to arrange more money (Brennan et al., 2006). However, countries like Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, Belgium, and Japan, to name a few have included these treatments under their Government health insurance policy, whereas countries such as UK, USA, and Singapore have their Private Health insurance companies covering them. In comparison with its western counterparts, India is far behind in using Insurance as a method to finance Assisted Reproductive treatments. A preliminary study indicated two things- The resistance from the Insurance company's side in venturing into a product of this sort and secondly, unavailability of an insurance framework to guide them to venture into such a product. Thus, study began with the sole intention of creating an Insurance framework for assisted Reproductive Treatments particularly for women. A Qualitative Methodology has been adapted for the study. As a first step, infertility treatment polices from developed and developing countries were gathered and analyzed to extract the components of the drafting an Assisted re productive Treatment policy framework. Using these components, interview schedules were made to solicit information from the three different stakeholders. In-depth face to face interviews with 13 Doctors, 12 Patients, and 10 Insurers were conducted and data was further analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis Method as prescribed by Olle Rudolf Holsti in 1968 and refined by Downe-Wamboltdt in 1992. The concepts of reduction, distillation, and condensation as prescribed by Olle Findahl in 1981, Stephen Cavanagh in 1997, and Paul Atkinknson in 1996 have been used. The results pave the way for the proposed framework. This framework can be used as a guide by Insurance companies in defining the disease, designing the value proposition, entry and exit age, coverage as per stage of treatment, designing the proposal form to solicit information from the insured, arriving at the sum Insured, drafting conditions and exclusions of the policy, pricing, and promotional aspects, mitigation of moral hazards and claims management. The framework suggests a model that can benefit patients to avail insurance at a nominal price. -
A Study on emotional labour and job embeddedness amongst the frontline employees in hotel industry in bangalore
In various studies, researchers have pointed out that there exists a high turnover in the hotel industry. It is also found that employees in the hotel industry practice high emotional labor. However, the researcher, wanted to understand if people leave the industry or the organisation and how emotional labor plays positively in this phenomena. It was also curious to understand if Pride in work and Social Intelligence plays a role between Emotional Labor and Job newlineEmbeddedness. The present study investigated the emotional labor along with pride in work and social intelligence, experienced by employees of different hotels as a factor affecting their Job Embeddedness. A descriptive study was conducted using self-administered questionnaires among 341 frontline employees of different five-star and five-star deluxe hotels of Bangalore. newlineThe results exhibited a significant impact of Emotional Labor, Pride-in-Work, Social Intelligence on Job Embeddedness as well as significant differences in perceptions of variables based on demographic factors of the employees. The implications and suggestions for the hotel industry were discussed in the study. -
Improvised process model for prediction of software development effort by integration of risk
Software development involves usage of a finite quantum of resources in accordance with the estimated effort and schedule. The newlineSoftware Development Lifecycle comprises activities pertaining to software engineering. The software engineering activities could be carried out using any of the various models available in practice. The newlineprocess of estimating size and effort accurately is vital in a software project since it could influence the success of the project. However, the realistic estimation of time and resources required for a project newlinecontinues to be a challenge. Risks exist in any software project, and hence Risk management is required to be considered across various processes throughout the project. The risks could be quantified by newlinearriving at the risk score based on the probability of occurrence of the risk and its impact. This research focused on the aspect that risk factors need to be considered in software effort estimation. A total of 503 newlinesoftware projects were considered, and from this dataset, projects which had risk score information were extracted and utilized for further analysis. This research work proposed an improvised effort estimation process by including risk scores in the standard estimation process. It also analysed the relationship existing between risk score in the project and other parameters considered in the effort estimation process. Regression analysis that was done on the dataset revealed an improvement in the model fitment by inclusion of risk score. An ensemble machine learning approach was utilized through deployment of Extreme Gradient Boosting algorithm. This algorithm was chosen newlineafter a model selection process by comparing various algorithmic models. The results indicated a better model fit by including risk as one of the parameters in the effort estimation process. A validation for the newlineproposed risk-integrated effort estimation model was done through responses from industry practitioners to a research instrument. -
The vision of kuriakose elias chavara on family wellbeing and its actualization in the family apostolate of congregation of the mother of carmel
Family is the abode where the society takes birth and it is the pillar where the nation finds its strength. Kuriakose Elias Chavara a man of immense astuteness and novel thoughts had lofty apparition and great concern for the families. He was born on 10th February 1805, in the village of Kainakary in Kerala, India. At the age of 24 he was ordained as a religious priest. His being was highly committed for people and for the welfare of the society. He believed that strengthening of the individual can lead to formation of stable families which in turn can empower the society. He was a social reformer who stood for the marginalized, an innovative educationist who opened the school for low caste, an eminent spiritual leader who renewed the face of the church, popularized the press, media and founded two religious congregations for men and women. At the age of 66, 1871 January 3rd he left for his heavenly abode. On 23rd November 2014 he was canonized as saint by the Catholic Church. The present study The vision of Kuriakose Elias Chavara on family wellbeing and its actualization in the family apostolate of Congregation of the Mother of Carmel is an attempt to explore the vision of Chavara on family wellbeing and its relevance in the present era. Qualitative approach is employed and the data is collected through key informant interview and interview methods. The different aspect of Chavara s family wellbeing is explored mainly by reviewing the literature. Hermeneutic approach is used to interpret the literature. By analyzing the official documents of the congregation the actualization of his vision in the family apostolate is explored. The relevance of his views is explored through an interview with nine families from three different parts of Kerala. The influence of Chavara vision on family apostolate of Chavara and its implementation are investigated through the document analysis and key informant interview with members of the congregation. -
Influence of behavioural traits on investment decisions
Behavioural traits exhibited by individual investors play a vital role in the investment decisions made by the investor. In this research, the researcher has identified the different behavioural traits shown by different individual investors by their unique characteristics. The study was conducted on a sample size of 811 individual investors from different parts of Bengaluru. The study classified the investment decisions into four aspects and also identified whether investment decisions vary significantlly due to demographic factors. The study further developed a model which explains the linkages between behavioural traits to investment attitude and investment attitude to investment decisions. Review of literature revealed that there exists a gap in the studies in behavioural finance showing the linkages between an investor's behavioural traits and investment attitude and investment decisions. Even though many research happened to identify the personality traits of individual investors, no significant attempt was made to study the linkage between behavioural traits on investment decisions. In this study, an attempt was made to show how individual investors behavioural traits can affect the investment attitude and how investment attitude can affect the investment decision of an individual investor. Result of the study indicated that behavioural traits influences the investment decisions of individual investors. The model developed in the study also proved a linkage between behavioural traits , investment attitude and investment decisions of individual investors with the moderating effect of demograpic factors.