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The right to information act, 2005 and the media drive: Role of print media in the RTI regime /
Media is regarded as an influential and powerful medium. It is one of the superior powers in our country to make people aware of the happenings of the society. The media performs the role of a ‘watchdog’ in order to cater to the general public. This paper aims to study the media coverage that was given months before passing of the RTI bill, thereby aiming to prove that the media had a significant role in passing this bill. -
Characterization and Strength Assessment of Alkali-Activated Iron Ore Tailing Composite Bricks
The current study outlines a process for producing environmentally friendly bricks that can also compete successfully in today's highly competitive market. The use of iron ore tailings (IOT), which are typically disposed of as waste by the mining industry, is the subject of ongoing research for brick production. Bricks were made using IOT, which was obtained from iron ore mines in India's southern region. The study is based on the alkali-activation method of producing IOT bricks, which has been shown to be the most energy-efficient method of production. This is because, in contrast to the traditional method of producing bricks, the alkali-activation method emits fewer greenhouse gases. India has an abundance of iron ore deposits, which has resulted in extensive mining activities, which has resulted in an increase in waste generation, The waste is typically disposed of by being dumped in one of the dumping sites or dams near the mining area. These tailings pose a significant threat to the environment in their immediate vicinity. As a result, the use of IOT in brick manufacturing will reduce the mining industry's waste disposal burden. Furthermore, the use of IOT in the production of bricks will reduce the use of natural raw materials in the production of conventional bricks. Several types of brick composites were developed in this study by combining Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS), Flyash, and IOT with a sodium silicate solution. Each raw material is analysed using particle size analysis (PSA), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM. The newly developed IOT bricks were put through a series of tests to determine their strength and durability in accordance with Indian standards. The developed IOT bricks had a maximum compressive strength of up to 18.45N/mm2 while water absorption was not more that 12.6%. Furthermore, the bricks were subjected to a series of wetting and drying tests to determine their long-term durability in accordance with Brazilian regulations. Each of the results obtained was validated using microstructure analysis of the product that was developed. Furthermore, the study sought to determine the compression strength of alkali-activated IOT brick prisms when combined with mortar of varying strengths. Finally, it was determined that more than 50 percent of the IOT can be used in combination with GGBS, flyash, and sodium silicate solution as an alkali activator to produce high-quality bricks under ambient temperature curing conditions. -
Indicators of corporate financial distress: Evidence from India
The study aims to identify the indicators of corporate financial distress in the Indian industrial sector. The study begins by analysing the corporate bankruptcy filings and the outcomes of filings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), 2016. From the analysis of bankruptcy filings, a list of 82 publicly listed companies of industrial nature experiencing financial distress that have filed for bankruptcy under IBC is identified. Each of the 82 companies are paired with an equal number of matching financially sound companies to form a sample of 164 companies. Further, 12 variables from the annual reports of the sample companies are analysed for a period of five years immediately preceding the bankruptcy filing by the distressed companies. Simple regression analysis is employed for determining the primary indicator of corporate financial distress and logistic regression analysis is used to identify the supplementary indicator of corporate financial distress in the Indian industrial sector. The primary and the supplementary indicators are presented in the form of a two-stageprocess to form the Corporate Distress Prediction (CDP) scorecard. The recommended CDP scorecard predicts financial distress in the Indian industrial sector at an accuracy ranging between 90 percent to 100 percent during the five years of study. The major implication of the study is that it can guide the corporate stakeholders in knowing the financial health of a company. -
Evaluation of Bending Stiffness of Transmission Line Conductors
Cables are made of helically wound wires and have a wide range of engineering applications. This thesis considers the use of such cables in overhead electrical power transmission lines. The loading on such cables is generally axial pull or tension and torsion. The oscillation of the overhead power transmission lines due to the wind or static bending in any applications, newlineintroduce an additional bending load on such cable assemblies and are subjected to varying newlinebending curvatures and results in reduction in bending stiffness. The effective stiffness of the cable assembly in its bent state varies widely between two extreme newlinebehaviours a monolithic infinite friction state offering the maximum stiffness and a newlinecompletely loose wire zero friction state offering the minimum thickness. Due to the wide variation of this extreme values, the estimation of the cable stiffness at any intermittent stage of bending has been quite challenging and is under continuous refinement. Though many mathematical models are stipulated in the last seven decades in cables, seldom they consider the influence of wire forces and moments about its normal, bi-normal, and axial directions together, in any analysis and evaluated the cable response. newlineThe dominant wire force and moments about the axial directions were never missed by many newlineauthors. Though the global behavior of the cable apparently seems to be all right even with the omission of some forces/moments, the mechanism of its constituent wires needs a fully proven scientific explanation that predicts the local behavior also correctly. The ultimate response of the cable will be complete when accurate theories are attributed for the global and local newlinebehaviours. Hence, this research work addresses the complete mechanics of the helically wound cables and considers the influence of wire forces and moments, in all the three directions, together in the newlineanalysis and evaluates the cable response. -
Influence of Celebrity Endorsement on Women Consumers Purchase Decision of Lifestyle Product - A Study with Reference to the City of Bangalore
Companies have been using celebrities to promote their product and entice the consumers to buy eventually. Since decades this strategy is used by the marketers extensively to attract the consumers to buy the products. Many studies have been done in this area of marketing and most of them talk about celebrity endorsement as a consumer attention seeker. This research talks about the consumer perception about the celebrity in the advertisement and how far do the huge amount of money pumped into celebrity endorsement can be justified? The questionnaires were given to 300 women falling in the age group of 20-40 years residing in the city of Bangalore. By analyzing the data, it strongly came out that celebrity endorsers do not have any effect on the women consumers purchase decision of lifestyle products in the city of Bangalore. It was found that even if the celebrity advertisements get the attention of the women consumer, it may not necessarily convert the attention into purchase decision which depends on many other factors like quality, quantity, experience, price etc. and also one of the most important variables, it depends on the type of product. As a whole the crores of money invested celebrity endorsements cannot be justified in terms of the returns i.e. it may or may not bring a positive impact on the buying behavior of the consumers. In chapter one, the study presents an overview of marketing and consumer behavior. It explains the marketing trends and it is in this century. Then the concept of marketing gave way to the concept advertising and celebrity endorsements. It also talks about celebrity and consumer perception. Chapter two discusses about the various literature reviews relating to the current study. Many studies are citied both by foreign and Indian researchers pertaining to the present study. However, all the possible studies relating to celebrity endorsements are cited. Journals, e-magazines and books were referred. Chapter three discusses about the Research design. The questionnaires were given to 300 women falling in the age group of 20-40 years residing in the city of Bangalore. The sampling technique used here is partially judgmental convenient sampling. Chapter four discusses the analysis and interpretation of the data collected for the research with the help of different statistical and analytical tool. Chi square, F-test and Anova are the statistical tools used for this study Chapter five talk about the findings, suggestions and conclusions for the study. Scope for further study is also given in this chapter. -
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A Theoretical Study of Rayleigh-Benard Convection Problem with Realistic and Artificial Boundary Conditions
In this thesis we present linear and weakly non-linear study of Rayleigh Bard newlineconvection subject to general boundary condition, which includes both physically newlinerealistic and artifcial boundaries. A horizontal confguration is adopted, wherein newlinethe horizontal surfaces are attached to porous blocks, which allows for the inclusion newlineof rough boundaries modelled by the Robin boundary condition on velocity. The Robin boundary condition is utilised to model boundary condition on temperature as well. Adding nanoparticles to a base and#64258;uid results in an increased thermal conductivity of the base and#64258;uid. The objective of this research is to present a conducive understanding of the eand#64256;ect of nanoparticles and its enhanced thermophysical properties eand#64256;ects on the onset of convection. Eand#64256;ects of Rough Boundaries on Rayleigh-Bard Convection in Nanoand#64258;uids A linear and weakly non-linear stability analysis of Rayleigh-Bard convection in a Newtonian nanoand#64258;uid between two rough boundaries is carried out. A newlinesingle-phase description of nanoand#64258;uids is adopted in the study. Water-alumina and newlinewater-copper are nanoand#64258;uids in consideration for the study. The values of thermophysical quantities of nanoand#64258;uids are obtained using either the mixture theory or phenomenological laws. The boundary eigenvalue problem arising in the study is solved using the Maclaurin series. Also, a single-term Galerkin technique is adopted to obtain the guess value of the Rayleigh number and the wave number. Further, improved values of the Rayleigh number and the wave number are obtained using the Newton-Raphson method. The minimal Fourier series representation is used to arrive at the generalised Lorenz model. A detailed discussion is made on the eand#64256;ect newlineof rough boundaries on the onset of convection in nanoand#64258;uids. The study aims to newlinepresent a theoretical comparison between the results of the two nanoand#64258;uids considered and the destabilizing eand#64256;ect showcased by each of the nanoparticles on the onset of convection. -
Studies On Single Crystals and Thin Films of Tin Sulfide(SnS) For Photovoltaic Applications
The thesis is concerned with linear and nonlinear Rayleigh-Bard electroconvection in a horizontal porous layer. Modified Darcy law is employed to describe the fluid motion. The effect of non-classical heat conduction, chemical reaction, thermal radiation and finite amplitudes on the onset of Darcy electroconvection is considered. The findings of the problems investigated in the thesis may prove useful in heat transfer application situations with dielectric fluids as working medium. The summary of the problems addressed in the thesis is given below.Effect of non-classical heat conduction on Rayleigh-Bard newlineconvection in a horizontal layer of porous medium saturated with a dielectric fluid The method of small perturbations is used to examine the effect of non-classical heat conduction on the onset of Darcy electroconvection. Exact solutions for both stationary and oscillatory instability are obtained and known results have been deduced as limiting cases of the present study. It is shown that electroconvective instability in a Darcy porous layer is hastened by increasing the strengths of second sound and electric newlineforces and that the presence of second sound and dielectrophoretic force leads to shorter wavelength electroconvection. Further, it is found that the effect of Vadasz number is to advance the onset of oscillatory Darcy newlineelectroconvection and oscillatory instability sets in before stationary convection provided that the Vadasz number and the Cattaneo number are sufficiently large. Rayleigh-Bard convection in a horizontal layer of porous medium saturated with a chemically reacting dielectric fluid The problem of the effect of chemical reaction on the onset of Darcy electroconvection in a horizontal porous layer heated from below is newlineinvestigated. It is assumed that the fluid experiences a zero-order exothermic chemical reaction and that there exists a local thermal equilibrium between the fluid and the solid phases. -
Studies on single crystals and thin films on tin sulfide (SnS) for photovoltaic applications
There is an increasing demand for renewable energy sources due to the limited availability of fossil, risk factor associated with nuclear fuel and due to growing environmental concern. Photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion has the potential to contribute significantly to the electrical energy of the main obstacles preventing production and application on a large scale. Availability of the materials and their processing cost are the two major constraints associated with the presently leading PV technologies. Hence, cost of the electricity produced by these technologies are not yet competitive compared to the electricity produced by conventional sources. -
Portrayal of African Americans in hollywood movies released from 2006-2013 /
Racial stereotypes in American movies have mirrored our general public's predominant philosophies and have impacted our belief systems since the film business started. This study relates to the portrayal of how African Americans are projected in the certain movies from a particular time period from 2006-2013. Generalizations of blacks as lethargic, imbecilic, absurd, apprehensive, easygoing, reckless, infantile, rough, sub-human, and creature like, are widespread in today's general public. These debasing generalizations are fortified and upgraded by the negative depiction of blacks in the media. -
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. -
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Animal-Assisted Therapy : Effect on Neuropsychological Functioning, Depression and Emotion Regulation
The mere presence of a dog in a therapeutic setup is known to bring about positive newlineoutcomes, so when incorporated into therapy, dogs can bring multifarious benefits that are not entirely tapped upon. There also exist cultural differences in the perception towards and acceptance of animals which limits the generalisability of western literature. This research aimed to study the effect of animal-assisted therapy, with therapy dogs, on depression, emotional newlineregulation and neuropsychological functioning of individuals. A pretest-posttest experimental research design was used wherein 42 participants were matched and randomly divided into experimental and control groups. Both the groups received therapeutic interventions once a week, for 45 minutes, over a period of 2 months, however, only the experimental group received animal-assisted therapy. Beck Depression Inventory-II, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale newlineand NIMHANS Neuropsychology Battery were used to gauge the level of depression, emotion newlineregulation and neuropsychological functioning before and after the intervention. The findings reveal that both the experimental and control group saw a significant improvement in their level of depression and emotion regulation, however, only the experimental group showed a significant improvement in all the measured domains of neuropsychological functioning. No newlinesignificant changes were observed in the domains of neuropsychological functioning of the control group. The results help validate the animal-assisted therapy interventions provided to improve the individuals neuropsychological functioning, and emotion regulation and alleviate depression. Further implications are identified and discussed as per the results. -
Portrayal of Latin American culture and characters in hollywood /
Latin American culture is known to be rich in terms of literature, art, music and history, but is also famous for its conservative attitude. There are however, a few aspects of the Latin American culture that are stereotyped in Hollywood films like their family system, drugs, mafia, religion and society and their economic status. -
A Study on Popular Naga Cuisine and Its Representation on Instagram
Food is a very sensitive topic as it is the representation of culture that shapes identity such that any flaw in representation could result in identity confusion or identity clashes. Food culture and its meaning varies from one culture to another. Also, very often one will notice that a cuisine which is a delicacy for a community could be a taboo or unacceptable for the other. India is known for its rich diverse culture, which includes geography, lifestyle, food habits, biodiversity and more. It is commonly seen that dominant food are often presented as the national cuisine while relegating others to the margins or erasing them altogether. A society is dynamic in nature, which goes through constant social issues too. But while the society strives to solve or seek for a solution to the conventionally defined social problem it fails to count in the misrepresentation of food culture as an issue that results in identity crisis. The dependency on media has increased tremendously such that a personal opinion and views about a subject are shaped by the sources that are readily available at their convenience in the form of social media. Today the concept of food gram that is the combination of Food and Instagram is a very popular trend among netizen. Instagram is an online photo-video sharing application where popularly in these context users post food images of what they eat, with whom and where. Whereas for professional based account it is seen as a marketing forum. The representation of food culture on social media is seen as an advantage and a challenge. The food culture of the Naga Tribes of Nagaland, Northeast, is the core of the study. It aims to understand the dominant tribal representation of Naga food and seek to understand how these representations on Instagram shape perceptions about the Naga population. The researcher has adopted a theoretical framework of Representation and Semiotics. A triangulation method approach has been applied for the study in analyzing Instagram post that is hash tagged, #nagacuisine from the month of July and August 2018. How Instagram as a medium represent Naga food and how it shapes an identity for the Naga population is what this study will seek to understand. -
Establishing a service composition frame work for smart healthcare system
As the idea of location awareness has already matured and numerous applications are flooded in today???s word, the logical next step reasons out, to context-awareness. Though the idea of context-awareness has been in the research field for close to two decades, the recent advancement in Internet of Things has brought a more compelling thrust in its research. Sensor networks integrating billions of sensors and actuators will be prevalent in the near future producing big data. Filtering and analysing this data with the contextual information will yield more significant results. But deducing the context information itself poses many challenges and unresolved research problems. Context-awareness systems involve acquiring, analysing, reasoning the data and composing the services for suitable action. Service composition either by orchestrating or choreographing technique has been deployed in certain applications, however, each domain requires unique methodology. Healthcare has always been the top priority when it comes to applying novel technologies. Applying context-awareness computing in the healthcare service sector is of paramount importance. The problem context for this research lies in a cardiology speciality hospital???s Intensive Therapy Unit or the post-surgery recovery ward which has lot of scenarios emanating that involves course of actions to be delivered by the healthcare professionals depending on the context. Depending on mere human service may not be adequate. With the available advancements in technologies, it would be possible to leverage optimum service in that time critical situations, provided technology can sense the changes in context and act accordingly. The course of actions to be taken involves an amalgamation of understanding the location, presence availability, relevance of and coordination among various departments, machines and personnel. This can be summarized as ???Response??? with ???Context-Awareness???. The primarily task is to sense the context and then determine and locate the relevant services, which are distributed in the World Wide Web, to achieve a goal situation as a solution to the problem. In order to deliver such a solution we need to develop an exclusive context-aware framework. The existing frameworks will not be adequate to meet such a demanding situation and hence, the research problem is to evolve a comprehensive service composition framework for smart healthcare systems. In order to solve this problem, a use-case approach was followed. After identifying an appropriate use-case, the solution was first modelled using Automata. The concept of service automata and timed automata were fused to deliver a timed-service automaton which is appropriate to model and test the framework and algorithm for service composition. As a solution to the research problem, a composition based framework of a context-aware smart healthcare system has been presented. It will guide software developers to deploy services for critical healthcare, under the umbrella of Service Oriented Architecture. The matured concept of Automata has been tweaked to present novel timed-service automata which will enable service composition precisely for meeting the time constrained demands of modern healthcare service requirements. It has been tested with UPPAAL verification tool for validity and concurrency. A prototype has been implemented to study the validity of the established framework. Apache JMeter tool was used to test the strength of the services and engine developed based on the proposed algorithm for effective service composition. -
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. -
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Design, Analysis and Validation of Electric Vehicle Control and Safety for Different Path Profiles and Braking Conditions
Energy conservation and Environmental pollution are two major challenges today for our society. Currently, utilization of the latest technology, to reduce energy consumption and harmful emissions from vehicles, is gaining significance in the contexts related to automobile, energy and power industries. Considerations of these contexts enable us to form a more realistic newlineperspective and a need for developing fuel efficient, comfortable and affordable electric vehicles. The importance of design and development of electric vehicle (EV) is better perceived when, there is a major impact on our future society due to (i) the energy saving aspect from newlineboth the customer side on individual expenditure as well as from the national economy viewpoint and (ii) the huge benefit due to reduction of emissions from internal combustion engines using fossil fuels. EV offers the best solution which not only avoids emissions but overcome the dependency on petroleum resources as well. Due to fewer moving parts, monitoring and controlling of EV are also smooth and relatively much easier. The embedded control techniques used in EV also contribute for a better controllable, observable, predictable newlineand efficient vehicle drive. This current research work focuses mainly on Electric Vehicle Mobility and Control aspects for a deeper study. This research work addresses topics related to mathematical modelling and simulation studies for design and analysis of EV control and safety. Validations of the several case studies done during this research are supported by software tools namely MATLAB/Simulink and IPG Carmaker Virtual Driving Simulation Platform. Starting from modelling, throughout the various stages of this work, realistic vehicle parameters and specifications are considered. The newlinedifferent levels of testing, validation and trial runs of the model-based designs are also validated by software in loop and hardware in loop approaches. Automotive Safety Integrity Level B/C hardware was used for the implementation purpose. -
