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A protoberberine alkaloid based ratiometric pH-responsive probe for the detection of diabetic ketoacidosis
Herein we report a ratiometric naturally occurring fluorescent pH probe, berberrubine (BBn) for the direct detection of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) conditions of patients having type I diabetes mellitus. The photophysical properties of the probe during pH titrations showed remarkable changes in absorption spectra where two absorption bands at 377 and 326 nm have disappeared followed by the emergence of an absorption maxima at 346 nm in highly acidic conditions. In addition, a fluorescence enhancement effect was observed in the alkaline pH, with a bathochromic shift of 33 nm. Moreover, the solution switches the color from light yellow to light pink with the change of pH from acidic to basic. A pKa value of 7.57 and a good linearity between pH 5.09.0 indicate that the probe can be used efficiently for the DKA condition, where pH variations are in the range of 67. The excellent water solubility, photostability, reversibility, and selectivity of BBn make it a potential pH sensing agent for acidic microenvironments. The reversible sensing of pH variations during DKA could be effective in primary detection and diagnosis which can assist in avoiding further complications of acidosis. 2021 Elsevier Ltd -
IndiaEuropean Union Trade Integration: An Analysis of Current and Future Trajectories
In a dynamic global environment of increased economic interdependence, nations are more than ever seeking to remove barriers to trade, despite growing trends of protectionism. In this context, India and the EU-27 have initiated talks for the establishment of a Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) in an attempt to bring their economies together. However, after 16 rounds of negotiations, the failure to conclude this agreement has raised questions regarding the benefits of the agreement to India. This study attempts to examine the current trade scenario and the effects of the proposed regional trade agreement by estimating a structural gravity model. This study employs the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator for analysing the trade-creation and trade-diversion effects of the BTIA to overcome the shortcomings of ordinary least square (OLS) estimators. For the empirical analysis, the merchandise export data from the Gravity database has been taken for a period of 19 years from 2001 to 2019. The results indicate that the BTIA could lead to trade creation and trade diversion, highlighting the need for a re-evaluation of Indias trade policy. JEL Classification: F10, F13, F14, F15, O24 2021 National Council of Applied Economic Research. -
Impact of Improved Corporate Governance and Regulations on Earnings Management PracticesAnalysis of 7 Industries from the Indian National Stock Exchange
This study investigates discretionary earnings management practices, tracing the changes over the years in selected top performing and highly liquid listed Indian firms. It empirically measures the impact of corporate governance, financial legislation and global reporting standards on the firms earnings management practices. The study analyses a sample of 712 firm-year data comprising 89 listed Indian companies across 7 different sectoral indices of the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) over 8 years (20112018). The Modified Jones model was used to compute Discretionary Accruals to measure Earnings Management based on data obtained using Bloomberg terminals. Statistical results and plots generated in Stata offer evidence that instances of earnings management have significantly reduced after the enactment of the Companies Act 2013 and the adoption of Indian Accounting standards which are converged with the IFRS. Findings suggest that services firms are engaging in relatively higher levels of earnings management compared to manufacturing firms. This study reveals the positive impact of improved corporate governance, regulation, and enforcement by significantly reducing the levels of earnings management among listed firms in India. 2021 by the authors. -
Effect of internal heat source modulations on the onset of triple diffusive convection in viscoelastic liquids
The paper aims to study the dynamic behavior of a triple diffusive system subjected to sinusoidal (trigonometric cosine) and non-sinusoidal wave forms (square, sawtooth and triangular) of internal heat source modulation. The configuration of the system is such that a layer of viscoelastic liquid is heated and salted with two solutes from below. An Oldroyd-B type model is made use for viscoelastic liquids. In order to regulate the convection onset, internal heat source modulation is applied. This investigation is modelled using a linear stability analysis where a stationary convection is preferred. Venezian approach facilitates a solution by finding the eigen values of the problem. The influence of pertinent parameters which are varied for a wide range of values have been reported. It is captured via graphs that for small values of frequency of modulation, square wave form is more stable while sawtooth wave form is more stable for an increment in the values of frequency of modulation. Further, liquids such as Newtonian, Maxwell and Rivlin-Ericksen are analysed as the limiting cases of the problem. It seems worthwhile to discuss the results of the present study as it is the first work on linear theory of different wave forms of internal heat source modulation and thus paves a way for new theoretical and experimental endeavors. 2021, National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources. All rights reserved. -
Design space exploration of optimized hybrid SVPWM techniques based on spatial region for three level VSI
The performance of a multilevel inverter depends upon design and selection of an appropriate modulation technique. Space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique offers more flexibility than other pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques. However, conventional SVPWM technique becomes more complex for multilevel inverter because of increased number of space vectors and redundant switching states. This paper presents a design space exploration method of hybrid SVPWM techniques for three level voltage source inverter (VSI) to reduce total harmonic distortion (THD) and switching loss over wide linear modulation range. A new parameter Harmonic Loss (product of weighted total harmonic distortion factor of the line voltage (Vwthd) and normalized switching loss) is introduced as an objective function, and a spatial region identification algorithm is proposed to determine the optimized switching sequences for hybrid SVPWM technique. Two optimized hybrid SVPWM techniques are proposed based on the optimized switching sequences for three level VSI. The proposed hybrid SVPWM techniques are implemented on a low cost PIC microcontroller (PIC 18F452) and applied on an experimental prototype of three phase three level VSI with an induction motor as load. The experimental results are demonstrated to validate the performance of the proposed hybrid SVPWM techniques. 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature. -
Biogenic synthesis of Pd-nanoparticles using Areca Nut Husk Extract: a greener approach to access ?-keto imides and stilbenes
An eco-friendly green method for a one-step synthesis of palladium nanoparticles and their synthetic utility are reported. Phytochemicals like amines, alcohols, and phenols present in the Areca Nut Husk extract facilitate the reduction of Pd(ii) to Pd(0). The phytochemicals serve as stabilising agents and ligands for palladium reduction and the need for an external ligand is avoided. The Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy of newly synthesized palladium nanoparticles revealed a spherical morphology. The catalytic activity of the nanoparticles was tested for 1,2-difunctionalization of ynamides, Heck coupling, denitrogenative coupling of phenylhydrazine and C-H arylation of indole. Moreover, catalyst recyclability, control experiments, mechanistic elucidation, and gram-scale synthesis are elaborated. The Royal Society of Chemistry and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 2021. -
Three dimensional mixed convection flow of hybrid casson nanofluid past a non-linear stretching surface: A modified Buongiorno's model aspects
The purpose of this study is to determine the role of mixed convection, Brownian motion, and thermophoresis in the dynamics of Casson hybrid nanofluid in a bidirectional nonlinear stretching sheet. For the flow model, a combination of Tiwari and Das models, as well as Buongiornos model, is considered. The thermophysical characteristics of Gr, TiO2, and blood are employed. With the assistance of relevant similarity transformation, the describing flow equations of a Casson hybrid nanofluid model are reformed in the form of a system with a single independent variable. The solution for these equations is obtained using the RKF-45 approach. The velocity, temperature, and concentration fields are visually developed for both linear and non-linear stretching sheets, and the implications of the major parameters are presented in detail. It is clear from the current investigation that heat and mass transfer characteristics of fluid are better in the case of linear stretching than non-linear stretching. Furthermore, the mixed convection parameter is found to enhance the fluid flow velocity. However, the trend is quite opposite in the thermal and concentration fields. Meanwhile, the increase in the yield stress caused due to the rise in the Casson parameter decreases the flow velocity. 2021 Elsevier Ltd -
Curvit: An open-source Python package to generate light curves from UVIT data
Curvit is an open-source Python package that facilitates the creation of light curves from the data collected by the Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) onboard AstroSat, Indias first multi-wavelength astronomical satellite. The input to Curvit is the calibrated events list generated by the UVIT-Payload Operation Center (UVIT-POC) and made available to the principal investigators through the Indian Space Science Data Center. The features of Curvit include: (i) automatically detecting sources and generating light curves for all the detected sources and (ii) custom generation of light curve for any particular source of interest. We present here the capabilities of Curvit and demonstrate its usability on the UVIT observations of the intermediate polar FO Aqr as an example. Curvit is publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/prajwel/curvit. 2021, Indian Academy of Sciences. -
A Fusion Based Approach for Blood Vessel Segmentation from Fundus Images by Separating Brighter Optic Disc
Abstract: In ophthalmology, blood vessel segmentation from fundus images plays a significant role in automated retinal disease screening systems. Several research papers on blood vessel segmentation suggest enhancing fundus images before segmentation significantly to improve performance. The brightness of the optic disc region in a fundus image negatively influences the enhancement of relatively darker vessel pixels. Segregation of brighter optic disc from fundus images before its enhancement is the fundamental idea behind developing the proposed framework. Initially, the optic disc is extracted from the input fundus image to form two images, one containing optical disc and the other, fundus image without optical disk. In the second stage, both the images are enhanced independently, followed by blood vessel segmentation. Finally, the segmented blood vessels from the images are fused to obtain a single image. Experiments conducted with fundus images from DRIVE, STARE, and CHASE_DB1 databases show improvement in the identification of blood vessel pixels. 2021, Pleiades Publishing, Ltd. -
A novel approach in prediction of crop production using recurrent cuckoo search optimization neural networks
Data mining is an information exploration methodology with fascinating and understand-able patterns and informative models for vast volumes of data. Agricultural productivity growth is the key to poverty alleviation. However, due to a lack of proper technical guidance in the agriculture field, crop yield differs over different years. Mining techniques were implemented in different applications, such as soil classification, rainfall prediction, and weather forecast, separately. It is proposed that an Artificial Intelligence system can combine the mined extracts of various factors such as soil, rainfall, and crop production to predict the market value to be developed. Smart analysis and a comprehensive prediction model in agriculture helps the farmer to yield the right crops at the right time. The main benefits of the proposed system are as follows: Yielding the right crop at the right time, balancing crop production, economy growth, and planning to reduce crop scarcity. Initially, the database is collected, and the input dataset is preprocessed. Feature selection is carried out followed by feature extraction techniques. The best features were then optimized using the recurrent cuckoo search optimization algorithm, then the optimized output can be given as an input for the process of classification. The classification process is conducted using the Discrete DBN? VGGNet classifier. The performance estimation is made to prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. -
Therapists Issues in Understanding Stuttering
[No abstract available] -
Bombay High Court (re)assures that copyright registration is not required to remedy infringement
Sanjay Soya Private Limited v. Narayani Trading Company, Interim Application (L) No. 5011 of 2020 and Commercial IP Suit No. 2 of 2021, High Court of Bombay, Maharashtra, judgment of 9 March 2021, by Mr. Justice G.S. Patel The Bombay High Court, in the case of Sanjay Soya Private Limited v. Narayani Trading Company, held that copyright registration is not a prerequisite to claiming relief in copyright infringement cases. The judgment clarifies the dubiety created previously by a contrary judicial opinion and aligns the Indian position with international copyright principles. 2021 The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. -
Acid Orange-7 uptake on spherical-shaped nanocarbons
Acid-dyes, typically used in textile productions, could infer poisoning harmful effects on the environment as well as on human health, if not properly treated during their disposal. Henceforth, there is an absolute necessity to achieve new efficient low-cost techniques to remove these dyes from industrial chemical waste. Here, the leaves of oil palm, which are abundant in tropical countries, were used as precursor in the development of carbon nanospheres (adsorbent) to remove hazardous acid Orange-7 (AO-7) dye (C16H11N2NaO4S). The removal efficacy of spherical-shaped nanocarbons was investigated as a function of contact period, by varying their dose (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5mg), pH (acidic, native and basic), and initial AO-7 concentration (10, 15, 20, 25 and 30?M). Amazingly, the oil palm leavesbased carbon nanospheres removed acid-dye up to an efficiency of about 99%. Pseudo second-order kinetics governs the adsorption mechanism and the RedlichPeterson isotherm model fits well to the adsorption results, with regression co-efficient close to unity. This study suggests the importance of natural biowaste-based carbon nanoparticles in sustainable recycling, within the worldwide demanded circular economy. The Author(s) 2021. -
The three-dimensional bioconvective flow of Sisko nanofluid under Robin's conditions
The proposed model investigates three-dimensional bioconvective Sisko nanofluid flow under Robin's conditions. The Sisko nanofluid has versatile implications in drilling fluids, cement slurries, waterborne coatings, and so on. Furthermore, the inclusion of gyrotactic microorganisms prevents the deposition and agglomeration of the nanoparticles in the base fluid. Buongiorno's model is included to explore the behavior of Brownian motion and thermophoretic factors. The energy and mass transmissions along with the gyrotactic microorganism density are illustrated by the partial differential expression system with Robin's conditions. These are further reframed into an ordinary differential equation system with the aid of similarity transformation. The developing model is tackled by using the MAPLE inbuilt package BVP. The nanofluid acts as a goodcooling agent for higher values of the thermophoresis parameter. Furthermore, the pseudoplastic nanofluid performs better than the dilatant nanofluid. The developed model is very useful in energy production and engineering products. 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC -
Independent partial domination
For p ? (0, 1], a set S ? V is said to p-dominate or par-tially dominate a graph G = (V, E) if|N[S]| |V | ? p. The minimum cardinality among all p-dominating sets is called the p-domination number and it is denoted by ?p(G). Analogously, the independent partial domination (ip(G)) is introduced and studied here independently and in re-lation with the classical domination. Further, the partial independent set and the partial independence number ?p(G) are defined and some of their properties are pre-sented. Finally, the partial domination chain is established as ?p(G) ? ip(G) ? ?p(G) ? ?p(G). L. Philo Nithya et al. -
Patients' Perception about the Influence of CRM Factors in Selected Health Care Units
The primary motivation behind this exploration study targets introducing a portion of the CRM ideas and components, CRM procedure to take proactive measures towards the customer to Health supplier to improve patients' satisfaction, loyalty fabricates a decent connection with patients and increment income. Patients' consideration, needs, and making associations with patients is an everyday schedule action in a well-being supplier. CRM is fundamental in this foundation customer satisfaction, the customer saw worth and customer relationship the board upgrade the relationship of the customer with the support up the general execution of the Hospital. The exploration configuration depends on quantitative examination, hence the information was gathered through an organized poll, five Likert-scales, SPSS, relapse, and SEM Model were utilized to figure out the results. This audits and distinguishes fundamental service quality, framework, the executives, and correspondence is identified with patients' satisfaction and loyalty in the private clinics in Andhra Pradesh. This investigation features the degree of service quality of the clinic services chosen by the test respondents.. This paper is an endeavour to discover connections between patients' views of customers' satisfaction and customers' loyalty and to propose ideas to have better CRM rehearses. 2021 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License -
The Jesuit educational mission in rural Chotanagpur, India: historical achievements and contemporary challenges
Jesuit schools, in particular, have been known for a long time to be centres of learning in Chotanagpur area, India, where tremendous efforts were made to achieve a high level of academic excellence; yet it appears that this legacy is not being sustained among rural, tribal, vernacular schools of Chotanagpur these days because of varied reasons. In addition, it is observed that the agents of education, namely teachers, working in these schools have ceased to represent desirable attitudes (psychological wellbeing and affective commitment) which are essential for the teaching-learning process. If Jesuits want to maintain relevant and inspirational education in Chotanagpur, then they need to discern, decide, and dedicate themselves to guarantee teachers psychological well-being and affective commitment so that teachers can become creators of the Jesuit education ethos. Against this backdrop, the present research paper discusses the scenario of Jesuit run rural schools in Chotanagpur its historical achievements and contemporary challenges. In addition, practical implications and recommendations for a better future are discussed. 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. -
Strategic positioning of tourist destinations- analyzing the role of perceived meaningfulness
This study analyzed the cognitive and affective components of destination image in the perception of foreign tourists visiting Indian destinations by exploring conceptual constructs, namely Post-visit Destination Image and Perceived Meaningfulness. The exploratory factor analysis of the responses of foreign tourists (n = 242) on items related to the major constructs significant in tourist behavior such as destination quality, perceived meaningfulness, and post-visit destination image confirmed the existence of multi-dimensional structure. Additionally, the empirical validation of the theoretical framework developed on the tenents of stimulus-organism-response paradigm with the constructs using structural equation modeling established significant relationships helpful to understand many new travel motivations. The study established that perceived meaningfulness has a significant mediating role in predicting tourist referral/revisit intentions from positive perceptions about destination quality and post-visit destination image. The observations from the study helped to identify six types of travel motivations useful in developing niche markets for positioning Indian destinations. The identified travel motivations, namely physical meaningfulness seeking, eternal meaningfulness seeking, social meaningfulness seeking, nature-loving, hospitality appreciating, and uniqueness exploring, offer directions to destination marketers to revamp destination attributes for destination marketing. 2021 The Authors -
Green synthesis of zirconium phosphate by combustion method: photocatalytic application and microwave-assisted catalytic conversion of aldehyde to nitriles
Water pollution has increased swiftly, especially the dyes from industries that have disturbed aquatic eco-system. Photocatalytic degradation (PCD) is one of the attractive methods to eliminate dyes from industrial effluents. Zirconium phosphate (ZP) nanoparticles were synthesized by combustion method using zirconyl nitrate and phosphorous pentoxide as precursors. The obtained ZP was characterized by powder X-ray diffractogram, Fourier transform infrared, scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, BrunauerEmmettTeller surface area. PCD was carried out using methylene blue as a model pollutant in aqueous medium in the presence of UV light irradiation with different concentrations of dye, catalyst and pH. Higher degradation efficiency was observed in basic medium. ZP is employed as a catalyst to form nitrides from aldehydes using different solvents with different aldehydes. Graphic abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]. 2021, Indian Academy of Sciences. -
Presence of red giant population in the foreground stellar substructure of the Small Magellanic Cloud
The eastern region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is found to have a foreground stellar substructure, which is identified as a distance bimodality (?12 kpc apart) in the previous studies using red clump (RC) stars. Interestingly, studies of red giant branch (RGB) stars in the eastern SMC indicate a bimodal radial velocity (RV) distribution. In this study, we investigate the connection between these two bimodal distributions to better understand the nature and origin of the foreground stellar substructure in the eastern SMC. We use the Gaia Early Data Release 3 astrometric data and archival RV data of RGB stars for this study. We find a bimodal RV distribution of RGB stars (separated by ?35-45 km s-1) in the eastern and south-western (SW) outer regions. The observed proper motion values of the lower and higher RV RGB components in the eastern regions are similar to those of the foreground and main-body RC stars, respectively. This suggests that the two RGB populations in the eastern region are separated by a similar distance to those of the RC stars, and the RGB stars in the lower RV component are part of the foreground substructure. Based on the differences in the distance and RV of the two components, we estimate an approximate time of formation of this substructure as 307 65 Myr ago. This is comparable with the values predicted by simulations for the recent epoch of tidal interaction between the Magellanic Clouds. Comparison of the observed properties of RGB stars, in the outer SW region, with N-body simulations shows that the higher RV component in the SW region is at a farther distance than the main body, indicating the presence of a stellar counter-bridge in the SW region of the SMC. 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.