25,132 research outputs found
Interview with Lolitika Mandal
No full textLolitika Mandal is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali. Her research has contributed to a global understanding of how blood cells develop. In this interview, she shares her experiences and insights on the life of a scientist
Was the Mandal Commission Right? Living Standard Differences between Backward Classes and Other Social Groups in India
No full textAffirmative action has been at the heart of public policies towards the socially disadvantaged in India. Compensatory discrimination policies which have been adopted for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) since independence were recommended for Other Backward Classes (OBC) by the Mandal Commission established by the Indian government in 1979. We examine why OBC have lower living standards, as measured by per capita household consumption expenditures, relative to the mainstream population, and whether these reasons are similar to those observed for SC and ST. We find that while the causes of the living standard gap for the OBC are broadly similar to those for the SC and ST, the role of educational attainment in explaining the gap is higher in imporatnce for the OBC.
Was the Mandal Commission Right? Living Standard Differences between Backward Classes and Other Social Groups in India
No full textAffirmative action has been at the heart of public policies towards the socially disadvantaged in India. Compensatory discrimination policies which have been adopted for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) since independence were recommended for Other Backward Classes (OBC) by the Mandal Commission established by the Indian government in 1979. We examine why OBC have lower living standards, as measured by per capita household consumption expenditures, relative to the mainstream population, and whether these reasons are similar to those observed for SC and ST. We find that while the causes of the living standard gap for the OBC are broadly similar to those for the SC and ST, the role of educational attainment in explaining the gap is higher in importance for the OBC.living standards, caste, reservation policy, decomposition
Constitutional Validity of Implementation of Mandal Commission Recommendations
No full textThe author argues that the Government action on the Mandal Commission is constitutionally valid. It does not in any way violate any of the Fundamental Rights let alone Articles 14, 15 and 16. However, the author concedes, considering the volatile situation at hand and the instability writ large in the political scenario, it is difficult to be certain as to how the Supreme Court will react. The author maintains that it is possible to uphold the Mandal Commission government action by focusing on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Articles 14, 15 and 16 as three provisions form part of one code, each embodying a different facet of the guarantee of equality. (Editor’s abstract.
Constitutional Validity of Implementation of Mandal Commission Recommendations
No full textThe author argues that the Government action on the Mandal Commission is constitutionally valid. It does not in any way violate any of the Fundamental Rights let alone Articles 14, 15 and 16. However, the author concedes, considering the volatile situation at hand and the instability writ large in the political scenario, it is difficult to be certain as to how the Supreme Court will react. The author maintains that it is possible to uphold the Mandal Commission government action by focusing on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Articles 14, 15 and 16 as three provisions form part of one code, each embodying a different facet of the guarantee of equality. (Editor’s abstract.
Expression of Na+/D-glucose cotransport in Xenopus laevis oocytes by injection of poly(A)+ RNA isolated from lobster (Homarus americanus) hepatopancreas
No full textXenopus laevis oocytes were used for expression and characterization of lobster (Homarus americanus) hepatopancreas Na(+)-dependent D-glucose transport activity. Poly(A)(+) RNA from the whole hepatopancreatic tissue was injected and transport activity was assayed by alpha-D-[2-(3)H] glucose. Injection of lobster hepatopancreatic poly(A)(+) RNA resulted in a dose (1-20 ng) and time (1-5 days) dependent increase of Na(+)-dependent D-glucose uptake. Kinetics of Na(+)-dependent glucose transport was a hyperbolic function (K(m)=0.47+/-0.04 mM) of external D-glucose concentration and a sigmoidal function (K(Na)=68.32+/-1.57 mM; Hill coefficient=2.22+/-0.09) of external Na(+) concentration. In addition, Na(+)-dependent D-glucose uptake was significantly inhibited by both (0.1-0.5 mM) phloridzin and (0.1-0.5 mM) methyl-alpha-D-glucopyranoside. After size fractionation through a sucrose density gradient, poly(A)(+) RNA fractions with an average length of 2-4 kb induced a twofold increase in Na(+)-dependent phloridzin-inhibited D-glucose uptake as compared to total poly(A)(+) RNA-induced uptake. The results of this study provide the functional basis to screen lobster hepatopancreatic cDNA libraries for clones encoding putative and still not known crustacean SGLT-type Na(+)/glucose co-transporter(s)
Software for Implementing the Sequential Elimination of Level Combinations Algorithm
No full textGenetic algorithms (GAs) are a popular technology to search for an optimum in a large search space. Using new concepts of forbidden array and weighted mutation, Mandal, Wu, and Johnson (2006) used elements of GAs to introduce a new global optimization technique called sequential elimination of level combinations (SELC), that efficiently finds optimums. A SAS macro, and MATLAB and R functions are developed to implement the SELC algorithm.
Hypogastrura Mandal & Arbea 2019, incertae sedis
No full textSpecies of <i>Hypogastrura incertae sedis</i> <p> 10. (*) <i>Hypogastrura sonapani</i> Baijal, 1958. Only known from type locality in Seri Icefall, Sonapani glacier, Purana KoksarNal, Indian Himalaya. According to the original description, the only characters known for this species are: retinaculum with 4+4 teeth, anal spines absent, body with short chaetae, mucro rounded apically, empodial appendage short with broad basal lamella and tibiotarsi without knobbed tenent hairs. These characters do not allow us to include this species in either group known within the genus Hypogastrura.</p> <p> 11. (*) <i>Hypogastrura temarpurensis</i> Tyagi & Baijal, 1982. Only known from type locality in Temarpur, Bijnordistt, India. According to the original description, the only characters known for this species are: anal spines absent, body with macro and microchaetae, mucro long, pointed with simple inner lamella, empodial appendage short with narrow basal lamella and tibiotarsi with one knobbed tenent hair. These characters do not allow us to include this species in either group known within the genus Hyp <i>ogastrura</i>.</p>Published as part of <i>Mandal, Guru Pada & Arbea, Javier, 2019, Critical Checklist of the Indian species of Hypogastrura (Collembola: Hypogastruridae) with a description of a new species from Satkosia Wild Life Sanctuary, pp. 279-290 in Zootaxa 4608 (2)</i> on page 281, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4608.2.5, <a href="http://zenodo.org/record/3055822">http://zenodo.org/record/3055822</a>
A lightweight mutual and transitive authentication mechanism for IoT network
No full textIoT devices are typically authenticated directly by gateways present in the network. However, in large and complex IoT systems like the smart city or smart industry which consist of thousands of connected devices, it may not be always feasible to be directly connected to the gateway while it may be possible to be connected to another device. Therefore, already authenticated devices should facilitate the new device to get authenticated by the gateway. To address this issue, the existing protocols use multiple authentication protocols based on different cryptography techniques, which are difficult to implement and manage in resource constrained IoT devices. In this paper, we propose a Transitive device authentication protocol based on the Chebyshev polynomial. The transitive authentication protocol utilizes the session key established in the mutual authentication between the intermediate device and gateway. Both the mutual authentication and transitive authentication protocols are relying on the same preregistration and authentication mechanism. To ensure the security of the proposed authentication protocol, detailed security analysis is carried out, and the secure session key establishment is verified using the BAN logic. Moreover, the proposed protocol is tested against crucial attacks in the Scyther tool. These formal analyses and Scyther attack simulation show that the proposed protocol is capable of withstanding critical attacks. Finally, to verify the efficiency, the protocol implementation is experimentally compared with similar approaches studied in the literature. The results show that the proposed protocol offers better performance, providing significantly lower response time, handshake duration, memory utilization, and energy consumption
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