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Animal-Assisted Therapy for the Promotion of Social Competence: a Conceptual Framework
Developmental disorders have a substantial effect on the social competence of children affecting their overall psychosocial functioning. Social competence entails the process of being socially mature by establishing stable and adaptive patterns of social behavior. Animal-assisted therapy, as an alternative treatment modality, has offered some new prospects for improving social cognition. This conceptual paper, thus, attempts to throw light on how animal-assisted therapy can help improve social competence. The paper draws its knowledge from the existing theories and empirical work done to propose a conceptual framework that can enhance social competence by incorporating therapy animals. It can be concluded that animal-assisted therapy has found to improve different dimensions crucial for development of social competence. This further suggests the dire need to explore the effectiveness of human-animal interactions by utilizing it for improving social competence. 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. -
COVID-19 pandemic and preparedness of teachers for online synchronous classes
COVID-19 pandemic has forced educational institutes to shut down, and teachers are compelled to adopt technology ardently so that the teaching-learning process does not suffer. Gradually, it is being realised that synchronous online classes are required to enhance the teaching-learning experience. The major challenge in India is the lack of preparedness of the teachers, as most teachers have little experience with technology. Nevertheless, they have to adapt themselves quickly. However, to effectively use technology for synchronous online teaching, teachers have to be technology ready and proficient with utilising the platform used for online classes. This study attempts to understand the impact of teachers preparedness on the use of online platforms for synchronous teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper integrates the technology readiness index (TRI) and technology acceptance model (TAM), also known as the TR and acceptance model (TRAM), to investigate the phenomenon mentioned above. Copyright 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. -
Distillery effluent valorization through cost effective production of polyhydroxyalkanoate: optimization and characterization
The devastating effect of fossil plastics in the biosphere has tuned the concern for bioplastic production in the last few decades. Polyhydroxyalkanoate, a biopolyester, has a wide range of applications as they impose positive societal impact by being biodegradable and void of any ill-effects when used in vivo. Despite their eco-friendly nature, the outreach of PHA is bounded in industrial scale as the overall expense is highly comparable to conventional plastics. Therefore, in an attempt to attain a feasible production, the present study aims at utilizing raw distillery effluent for PHA production using Bacillus subtilis NCDC 0671. Different dilutions of spent wash (5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%) were assessed for PHA production in the modified medium among which 10% showed maximum PHA accumulation. Furthermore, statistical optimization by response surface methodology enhanced PHA synthesis to 6.3g/L which is 3.3-fold increases. FTIR and NMR characterization of the biopolymer from the optimized medium was similar to the previous literature which provides a promising approach for cost effective production. 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. -
Impact of Brexit on bond yields and volatility spillover across France, Germany, UK, USA, and India's debt markets
Britain's decision to exit the EU lead to disruptions in global markets. This study investigates the change in the return and volatility spillover pattern due to the repercussions of the Brexit vote between the US, France, the UK, Germany, and India's 10-year government bond yields by applying the VAR and GARCH-BEKK models. The findings demonstrate a substantial rise in the return spillover to India and USA 10-year government bond yields following the Brexit vote compared to the pre-Brexit vote era. In addition, the results showed evidence of unidirectional volatility spillover from India to France, bidirectional volatility spillover between the USA and India, and unidirectional volatility spillover from the UK to India 10-year government bond market post-Brexit vote. However, there was no interconnection between these markets before the Brexit vote. Therefore, the Brexit vote did affect and significantly increased the linkage between the US, France, the UK, and India's 10-year government bond market. The increase in correlation in India-US, India-UK, and India-France's 10-year government bond markets will help predict and have an important implication for hedgers, decision-makers, and portfolio managers if similar political events occur in the future. Sangeetha G. Nagarakatte, Natchimuthu Natchimuthu, 2022. -
Blockchain Technology in the Fashion Industry: Virtual Propinquity to Business
The concept of fashion has been coupled with technology, where technology has become the protagonist. The transparency between an organization and a customer works as a catalyst, and the customer has taken a more mainstream role. With blockchain technology, companies can reconnect with customers and customers can track the journey of a product from its raw materials to the finished goods. The primary focus of the study is on services and data collected from the following sectors, namely fashion, apparel, and online platforms. The authors main goals are (1) to illustrate an overview of how big data is transforming the service industry, especially the fashion and design sector, and (2) to present various mechanisms adopted in the service industry. The study aims to investigate a model that fits through EXT-TAM and uses additional attributes of blockchain technology with a special reference to fashion apparel. The findings of this study depict a model, where PEOU, PU, and attitude are the major constructs and present a win-win scenario for both the customer and the organization. 2022 Authors. All rights reserved. -
Efficient detection of faults and false data injection attacks in smart grid using a reconfigurable Kalman filter
The distribution denial of service (DDoS) attack, fault data injection attack (FDIA) and random attack is reduced. The monitoring and security of smart grid systems are improved using reconfigurable Kalman filter. Methods: A sinusoidal voltage signal with random Gaussian noise is applied to the Reconfigurable Euclidean detector (RED) evaluator. The MATLAB function randn() has been used to produce sequence distribution channel noise with mean value zero to analysed the amplitude variation with respect to evolution state variable. The detector noise rate is analysed with respect to threshold. The detection rate of various attacks such as DDOS, Random and false data injection attacks is also analysed. The proposed mathematical model is effectively reconstructed to frame the original sinusoidal signal from the evaluator state variable using reconfigurable Euclidean detectors. 2022, Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. -
AGGRESSION AS A PREDICTOR OF GENERAL WELL-BEING AMONG PUBLIC HEALTH WORKERS
Social atrocities and discrimination make sanitary workers vulnerable to aggression which in turn disrupts their well-being. The issues concerning the psychological health of sanitary workers have been addressed less by researchers. The present study aimed to assess the level of aggression and general well-being among sanitary workers. An aggression questionnaire, consisting of four dimensions, namely physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility was used. The PGI general well-being measure and personal profile sheet consisting of socio-demographic details was given to 150 sanitary workers who were selected through purposive sampling method. The dimensions of aggression- anger and hostility were negatively correlated with the general well-being of the participants. Amongst the four dimensions of aggression, anger is found to be the predictor of general well-being. 2022 Australasian College of Health Service Management. All right reserved. -
Irrigation water policies for sustainable groundwater management in irrigated northwestern plains of India
Increasing global water shortage emphasizes the need for demand-side water management policies, especially in the agriculture sector, being the largest consumer of freshwater. Such policies are relevant in India, where groundwater depletion may have severe implications at various socio-economic levels. In this study, using mathe-matical modelling, we assess the feasibility of two alter-native irrigation water pricing policies (i) uniform wa-ter pricing policy and (ii) differentiated water pricing policy, wherein farmers growing less water-requiring crops (<4488 m3/ha) get an incentive for saving water, while those growing water-intensive crops pay for it. Us-ing a case study of Punjab, the breadbasket and one of the fastest groundwater-depleting states in India, alter-native cropping patterns are also suggested. The findings reveal that the current rate of groundwater withdrawal could not sustain agricultural intensification in the state. Although optimization of resource allocation has the pote-ntial to save water by 8%, this alone is unlikely to break the ricewheat mono-cropping pattern in Punjab. The analysis of two different volumetric irrigation water pricing policies shows that differentiated water pricing would be more effective in halting groundwater deple-tion in the state. However, adequate investment in irri-gation water supply infrastructure, mainly for installing water meters, is required to implement the policy. 2022, Current Science. All Rights Reserved. -
Regarding Deeper Properties of the Fractional Order Kundu-Eckhaus Equation and Massive Thirring Model
In this paper, the fractional natural decomposition method (FNDM) is employed to find the solution for the Kundu-Eckhaus equation and coupled fractional differential equations describing the massive Thirring model. The massive Thirring model consists of a system of two nonlinear complex differential equations, and it plays a dynamic role in quantum field theory. The fractional derivative is considered in the Caputo sense, and the projected algorithm is a graceful mixture of Adomian decomposition scheme with natural transform technique. In order to illustrate and validate the efficiency of the future technique, we analyzed projected phenomena in terms of fractional order. Moreover, the behaviour of the obtained solution has been captured for diverse fractional order. The obtained results elucidate that the projected technique is easy to implement and very effective to analyze the behaviour of complex nonlinear differential equations of fractional order arising in the connected areas of science and engineering. 2022 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved. -
Perceived Discrimination of Old Settlers in Sikkim
The old settlers in Sikkim are a community of mainland Indians whose ancestors had settled at least 15 years before the merger with India in 1975. At present, the total population of the community is less than three thousand individuals, comprising various ethnicities. This qualitative study focuses on the perceived discrimination of the old settlers, who form a demographic minority in the state. Data was collected using telephonic interviews from a sample of 11 old settlers. Thematic analysis indicated racial differences between the northeasterner indigenous community and mainland Indian old settlers as a major reason for perceived discrimination. The participants expressed the experience of negative emotional reactions, such as anger and disappointment, when they faced discrimination. The participants also felt betrayed by the government of India because they did not receive adequate protection for their rights when their identity in Sikkim changed from foreigners to citizens. Reactions to discrimination included migrating out of the state, experiencing negative emotions such as anger, disappointment and fear, and learned helplessness. 2022 Bhasker Malu, Santhosh Kareepadath Rajan, Nikhita Jindal, Aishwarya Thakur, Tanvi Raghuram. -
Pricing and content Netflixs dilemma in India
Learning outcomes: The learning outcomes of this study are as follows:1. Analyze the pricing strategy followed by Netflix in India;2. Examine the challenges faced by media companies, including over-the-top (OTT) service providers, in developing content for target consumers in emerging markets; and3. Evaluate the dynamics of the Indian OTT industry and understand the effect of external and internal factors on the growth of Netflix in India. Case overview/synopsis: This case discusses the dilemma faced by Netflix in India regarding pricing and content. Netflix was accused of hurting the religious and political sentiments of Indians by broadcasting bold shows such as Sacred Games and A Suitable Boy. Netflix is caught in a dilemma between its pursuit to achieve its target of achieving 100 million subscribers from India versus continuing its profitable high pricing strategy. Another key dilemma is regarding the streaming of attractive bold content which may occasionally hurt the religious/political sentiments of some Indians or stream only safe content which may be deemed as boring by its young target audience. Complexity academic level: Undergraduate and postgraduate students studying Marketing courses in Commerce and Business Management streams can use this case. Supplementary materials: Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code: CSS 8: Marketing. 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited. -
Effortless and beneficial processing of natural languages using transformers
Natural Language Processing plays a vital role in our day-to-day life. Deep learning models for NLP help make human life easier as computers can think, talk, and interact like humans. Applications of the NLP models can be seen in many domains, especially in machine translation and psychology. This paper briefly reviews the different transformer models and the advantages of using an Encoder-Decoder language translator model. The article focuses on the need for sequence-to-sequence language-translation models like BERT, RoBERTa, and XLNet, along with their components. 2022 Taru Publications. -
Predicting customer churn: A systematic literature review
Churn prediction is an active topic for research and machine learning approaches have made significant contributions in this domain. Models built to address customer churn, aim to identify customers who are at a high risk of terminating services offered by a company. Hence, an effective machine learning model indirectly contributes to the revenue growth of an organization, by identifying at risk customers, well in advance. This improves the success rate of retention campaigns and reduces costs associated with churn. The aim of this study is to explore the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques used in churn prediction. A systematic literature review, that is driven by 5 research questions and rigorous quality assessment criteria, is presented. There are 38 primary studies that are selected out of 420 studies published between 2018 and 2021. The review identifies popular machine learning techniques used in churn prediction and provides directions for future research. Firstly, the study finds that churn models lack generalization capability across industry domains. Hence, it identifies a need for researchers to explore techniques that extend beyond model experimentation, to improve efficiency of classifiers across domains. Secondly, it is observed that the traditional approaches to churn prediction depend significantly on demographic, product-usage, and revenue features alone. However, recent papers have integrated social network analysis-related features in churn models and achieved satisfactory results. Furthermore, there is a lack of scientific work that utilizes information-rich content of customer-company-interaction instances via email, chat conversations and other means. This area is the least explored. Thirdly, there is scope to investigate the effect of hybrid sampling strategies on model performance. This has not been extensively evaluated in literature. Lastly, there is no formal guideline on correct evaluation parameters to be used for models applied on imbalanced churn datasets. This is a grey area that requires greater attention. 2022 Taru Publications. -
Rain of Life, Rain of Music: Music as Life Power in Indian Thought and Contemporary Musical Traditions
Conceived as a life force, rain has a significant place in Indian thought. Sanskrit and vernacular literary and religious texts, as well as visual arts, emphasise its auspiciousness and importance in human life. Additionally, through the use of poetical images and metaphors, these texts and images associate rain with music and identify thunder with drums. Through the analysis of compositions from the repertoire of different drums such as the dhrupad pakh?vaj, the mi??vu of K?tiy???a? Sanskrit theatre, and the ritual music of Brahmanical temples of Kerala, this article studies the association of drumming with rain as a symbol of life force, consciousness and enlightenment. 2022 South Asian Studies Association of Australia. -
FUZZY MODULARITY AND FUZZY COMPLEMENTS IN FUZZY LATTICES
In this paper, we study the concept of fuzzy modularity in fuzzy lattices. We also define a fuzzy Birkhoff lattice and study fuzzy complements in fuzzy lattices. We prove that the notions of a right and a left complement coincide in a fuzzy lattice I??k University, Department of Mathematics, 2022; all rights reserved -
Cultural Violence, Violent Gendering, and Abjection: Discourses on Sites of Violence through Trans Womens Narratives from India
The conventional cultural construct of gender and sexuality embedded in the dichotomous paradigm makes it challenging for people with queer and trans identities to fit into an assigned social role. Violent gendering takes place where women are seen as secondorder beings, disciplined and controlled by men, the first-order beings. The process of feminization and femininity is linked to women, which fixates on the idea that one is born a woman rather than one becomes a woman. This violent process of acculturation to these set norms comes with a lot of vulnerability for trans people in the form of abiding by the parameters of femininity and the threat of physical violence against their intersecting and transitioning bodies. Kristevas conception of abjection can be used to understand the discriminatory behavior against outcasts whose sexual or gender practices fall outside of the normative standards and conventions. At the same time, cultural violence, which Charlotte Bunch (2015) describes, is the culturally embedded practice and assumption of domination over women in virtually all societies. She also emphasizes that there is a need to understand that all violence against women is supported by cultural attitudes, which she argues is the real cultural challenge of violence. Keeping in perspective the idea put forth by Bunch, this article critically examines the violence reinforced by culture, and the process of gendering, with a central focus on the intersectional experiences of trans bodies as abject between gender, sex, and culture. This leads to the systematic violence enacted upon them by the invisible disciplinarians. The article considers 21st-century trans womens narratives, Laxmi Narayan Tripathis Me Hijra, Me Laxmi (2015) and Red Lipstick: The Men in my Life (2016). This article contextualizes and situates trans narratives, which provide insight into how trans womens bodies are seen as abject and have gone through the violent process of gendering and culturing 2022 Journal of International Womens Studies -
Cardiovascular Disease Prediction through Ensembled Transfer Learning on Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) cause more deaths worldwide than most of the other diseases. The diagnosis of cardiovascular disease from Magnetic Resonance Imaging plays a major role in the medical field. The technological revolution contributed a lot to increase the effectiveness of CVD diagnosis. Many Artificial Intelligence methods using Deep Learning models are available to assist the cardiologist in the diagnosis of CVD from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). In this study, we leverage on the merits of deep learning, transfer learning, and ensemble voting to improve the accuracy of Artificial Intelligence-based CVD detection. VGG16, MobileNetV2, and InceptionV3, trained on ImageNet, are the models used and the dataset is the Automatic Cardiac Diagnosis Challenge dataset. We customized the classification layers of all three models to suit the CVD detection problem. The results from these models are ensembled using the soft-voting and hard-voting approaches. Test accuracies obtained are 97.94% and 98.08% from hard-voting and soft-voting respectively. The experimental results demonstrated that the ensemble of outputs from transfer learning-based Deep Learning models produces much improved results for CVD diagnosis from MRI images. 2022 Sibu Cyriac, Sivakumar R. and Nidhin Raju. This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. -
Impact of Livelihood Strategies on the Dependence on Agriculture in Arid Regions of Andhra Pradesh, India
The livelihood risks tend to change households capital, assets, or resources by impacting the value of their asset portfolio. This study attempts to understand various risks and how these risks affect the farming communitys livelihoods in the designated areas. Also, this research attempts to understand the relationships between risks and livelihood capital to develop effective measures to improve their well-being and suggest various policies to help farmers cope with these risks in the most effective ways. The study used a sample of 827 farmers from Andhra Pradesh, India. The ordinal logistic regression findings revealed that knowledge capital (knowledge on nutrient deficiency, disease and pests and access to information), social capital (community membership and access to natural resources and services) and financial capitals have a significant impact on the selection of livelihood strategies. 2022 Management Development Institute. -
Transmit Range Adjustment Using Artificial Intelligence for Enhancement of Location Privacy and Data Security in Service Location Protocol of VANET
IoT or the internet of things is the talk of the town topic being researched in the field of information technology for more than decade. It is being in deployment stage in various developing economics, to enable driverless automobiles in the field of VANET. It helps in preventing crashes and provides urgent medical assistance in emergency case. Data security and location privacy are becoming of most importance in present IT scenario. Unauthorized access to location information of vehicles may pose a significant security threat. So, it is necessary to secure the location information of the vehicle. The proposed work aims at enhancement of location privacy data security in service location protocol of VANET'S. The primary techniques to be employed include artificial intelligence-based RF range approximation for transmission range adjustment and receive RF strength based distance estimation for trusted node location perimeters approximation, dynamic adjustment of silence period of OBU (on based unit) in conjunction with radio/RF interrupt. The unauthorized access to location information of vehicles and need of its privacy is the motivation for this work. 2022 Shivkant Kaushik et al. -
Determinants of Quality of Life in Women with Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review
The morbidity and mortality rates associated with breast cancer are a major public health concern globally. The resulting impairment in the patients quality of life (QOL) affects their health, symptoms, and well-being in physical, social, psychological, environmental, and sexual functioning. The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature addressing the determinants of QOL in breast cancer patients. A search of 6 electronic medical databases was undertaken. Employing a rigorous systematic protocol, eligible articles were analyzed and a total of 22 studies that met all eligibility criteria were included in the systematic review. The total sample size was 7,041 women ranging from 30 to 66 years. The determinants of QOL were found to cluster into 10 areas. These include the degree of pain, type and stage of cancer treatment, medical health, cognitive and behavioural factors, emotional health, physical activity and appearance, social factors, age and menopausal status, education and employment status, and ethnicity and religion. The types of breast cancer treatment and psychological parameters were the most common determinants of QOL in breast cancer patients. These insights can help formulate proactive interventions that can be used by patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals to build protective capacities and alleviate challenges to ensure superior quality of life in women with breast cancer. 2022,Journal of International Women''s Studies. All Rights Reserved.