274 research outputs found
Sarpanch raj: is the President all powerful?
No full textThe policy of mandated representation (reservation) for disadvantaged social groups in Indian village councils or Gram Panchayats has been the subject of numerous studies. The implicit, and often unstated, assumption that underlies most of these studies is that the president of the council is the only one who wields effective power. However, the Gram Panchayat is comprised of several elected representatives, each of whom represents a village; and, in principle, a voting mechanism governs decision making within the Gram Panchayat. In this context, the focus on the president as the de-facto decision maker is equivalent to assuming a model of �Sarpanch Raj,� or a model of local government where the president (Sarpanch) dominates the council. This model is typically based on the premise that the president of the council possesses �either on account of her informal powers or on account of her formal agenda setting powers- the de-facto power to dominate. However, whether these informal or formal powers of the president translate into such de facto power may well depend on other factors, such as local power structures. Indeed, extensive anecdotal evidence suggest that presidents elected on reserved seats�i.e. members of the disadvantaged Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), and women �face considerable difficulties when they are situated amid representatives who come from powerful castes or belong to the local elite. Whether a Sarpanch Raj is indeed the de facto model of local governance in India is therefore an unanswered empirical question. This paper examines the question of Sarpanch Raj, using a unique data set from 80 Gram Panchayats and 225 villages in the Indian state of Karnataka. We exploit the design of the policy of mandated representation in order examine whether the Sarpanch Raj model is robust to the inclusion of elected representatives of the village council. The model of Sarpanch Raj is critically examined in the context of two key mandates of the Gram Panchayat: public good provision, and the targeting of household-level benefits under various anti poverty programs. The results suggest that the president is not the sole decision maker of the council, and that the council is in fact a more broad-based body where the voices of other elected village representatives matter. Decision making in the council is, however, not one among equals. In particular, the results suggest that the effectiveness of Scheduled Caste representatives depends on the caste of the president.Affirmative action, Decentralization, gram panchayat, local government, Political economy, political reservation, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs),
sj-docx-1-smo-10.1177_20503121211056437 – Supplemental material for Socio-demographic variables related to self-esteem, psychological stress and health-related quality of life among older adults: A cross-sectional study in Kavrepalanchowk district of Nepal
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-smo-10.1177_20503121211056437 for Socio-demographic variables related to self-esteem, psychological stress and health-related quality of life among older adults: A cross-sectional study in Kavrepalanchowk district of Nepal by Kshitij Karki, Amrita Sapkota, Shannon Jajko and Devendra Raj Singh in SAGE Open Medicine</p
Cover Story piece on the author and his wife, Amrita, who recently and unsucce
No full textCover Story piece on the author and his wife, Amrita, who recently and unsuccessfully auditioned with Dee Cooke, a modeling agent from Belgrade
Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia: A Conversation Among Artemis Christinaki, Amrita Narayanan, and Avgi Saketopoulou
No full textThis transcribed conversation of an online dialogue between Artemis Christinaki, Amrita Narayanan, and Avgi Saketopoulou introduces readers to Saketopoulou’s recently published book, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia. With astute questions and through a series of probing observations, Christinaki and Narayanan engage the author, opening up crucial dimensions of psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, and politics. The exchange tracks the three main signifiers of the book, risk, race, and traumatophilia, and articulates Saketopoulou’s critical concern with the traumatophobic logics rippling through the field. What emerges is a rich discussion of how Saketopoulou’s three terms work within psychoanalysis and the risks, opportunities, and challenges they unfurl in the clinic and in the broader field of psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies.<br/
Investigation of the Use of Zr-89, Radiolabeled Desferrioxamine Conjugated Antibodies in Imaging Her2 Positive Breast Cancer
No full textMentor: Suzanne Lapi
From the Washington University Undergraduate Research Digest: WUURD, Volume 8, Issue 1, Fall 2012. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research, Joy Zalis Kiefer Director of Undergraduate Research and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences
Imaging Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 with Radiolabeled Antibodies in Preclinical Cancer Models
No full textMentor: Suzanne Lapi
From the Washington University Undergraduate Research Digest: WUURD, Volume 9, Issue 1, Fall 2013. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research.
Joy Zalis Kiefer Director of Undergraduate Research and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences
Dynamic Super Round Based Distributed Task Scheduling for UAV Networks
No full textNetworks of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are emerging in many application domains, e.g., military surveillance. To perform collaborative tasks, the involved UAVs exchange several types of information, e.g., sensor data and commands. The major question here is how to schedule the tasks under dynamic traffic flows to provide network services. Existing solutions use the Round-Robin Strategy (RRS), where the tasks are scheduled statistically by dividing the time into fixed-length rounds. However, the RRS wastes significant network and device resources due to task scheduling in each round. This paper proposes DROVE – a novel clustering approach that allows the UAVs for dynamic task scheduling. However, determining the task scheduling is crucial, as it significantly affects several network parameters, e.g., throughput. Therefore, we devise the problem of distributed task scheduling under dynamic traffic flow scenarios to optimize the throughput. We propose a clustering task scheduling algorithm to serve dynamic traffic flows. Particularly, we integrate the dynamic traffic flows into the Lyapunov drift analysis framework, and determine the throughput optimality of our proposed scheduling algorithm. We perform extensive simulations to validate the effectiveness of DROVE. The results show that DROVE outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions in terms of energy consumption, clustering overhead, throughput, end-to-end delay, flow success rate and packet drop rate. </p
Amrita Nandy. Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women
No full textIn Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childless Women the author wishes to shed light on gender roles and gendered structures in ideas and practices of motherhood and (non-) mothering in (North) India across “institutions, experience and agency” through a feminist post-structuralist perspective. Struck by her own uncertainty about motherhood despite the apparent ubiquity and compulsions of pro-natalism and the naturalization of women as mothers, Amrita Nandy selected the theme for her d..
Reliable unicast and geocast protocols in underwater inter-vehicle communications
No full textUnderwater networks are envisioned to enable several applications for oceanographic data collection, environmental monitoring, navigation and tactical surveillance. Many applications make use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) equipped with underwater sensors. Underwater communication links are based on acoustic wireless technology, which poses challenges due to the unique underwater environment such as high propagation delays, high bit error rates, and temporary losses of connectivity caused by multipath and fading phenomena. For data collection and monitoring tasks, underwater vehicles can either periodically send the measured data to the surface station (sink) or the sink can initiate a query to the sensors asking for the information of interest. The former case is reduced to unicasting, where the data is sent periodically by nodes to a specific destination, i.e., the surface station. In the later case, query dissemination can involve either broadcasting or geocasting technique, depending on whether the query is sent to all the nodes, or a subset of nodes based on location respectively. As broadcasting can be viewed as a special case of geocasting, geocast protocols provide a general routing scheme for query dissemination. In either of the cases, reliability is a crucial factor for underwater communications.
Reliability, especially in a mobile environment, is a major concern due to network dynamics. Due to the high propagation delays involved in underwater communications, we do not consider transport solutions for reliable communications. Rather, we consider the lower layers for ensuring reliability. In this work, three versions of unicasting and geocasting protocols have been proposed, which integrate Medium Access Control (MAC) and routing functionalities and leverage different levels of neighbor knowledge for making optimum routing decisions. Performance evaluation has been done for unicast protocols in terms of different end-to-end metrics for static and mobile scenarios with an aim of finding an optimal level of neighbor knowledge required in either of these scenarios. It is observed that based on different end-to-end metrics considered, one version of unicast protocol outperforms the other. Thus, based on the application requirements and scenarios considered, an optimum level of neighbor knowledge can be utilized for periodic data delivery from nodes to the surface station.M.S.Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62)
Fabrication and osmosis-mediated dynamics of a plant-inspired, fluid-filled, soft actuator
No full textNon-vascular plant tissues constitute a special class of poroelastic solids where closed cells encapsulate the fluid. The fluid can diffuse through the semi-permeable cell walls, thereby changing the cell volume, stretching the cell wall, and consequently changing the hydrostatic pressure in the cells. The presence of this hydrostatic pressure, also known as the turgor pressure, imparts structural stiffness to the plant tissue while a systematic control of the turgor pressure drives the macroscale motion. Some examples of macroscale motion in plants are the snap closing of a Venus flytrap, the circadian opening and closing of flower petals, and the movement of plants towards sunlight or water. These osmosis-mediated motions are very energetically dense and efficient, hence provide excellent natural models for engineering inspiration.
Leveraging this deformation-inducing mechanism for practical applications requires an understanding of the parameters governing the constitutive response of these materials. While classical poroelasticity theory can capture the composite response, its assumptions of an interconnected porous network and immiscible fluid-solid phases miss the underlying physics in plant tissues. Therefore, to provide a model system and therein to elucidate enhancements in performance associated with controlled variations in concentration, wall mechanical response, or mesostructure of closed-cell, fluid-filled, osmolyte-driven active materials, I fabricate and characterize synthetic plant tissue analogs (PTAs).
I create these analogs by encapsulating micron-sized saltwater droplets within thin Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) walls at concentrations of over 80% water by volume. The semipermeability of PDMS permits the diffusion of water while retaining the salt. In a water bath, PTAs can swell to reach a state of equilibrium governed by the initial salt concentration and cell wall mechanical response. In particular, equilibrium swelling is governed by the limiting stretch of the PDMS walls. Because of their closed-cell structure and ability to sustain high internal pressures, PTAs maintain or increase their stiffness upon swelling. This behavior is in direct contrast to similar high water-content, osmotic-pressure-driven actuating materials, like hydrogels. As a proof of concept, I demonstrate that PTAs exhibit an actuation force at least 10 times higher than typical hydrogels. Therefore, PTAs hold the potential to be used as soft actuators in biomedical applications which demand high force and structural support.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2023-08-01The student, Amrita Kataruka, accepted the attached license on 2021-07-06 at 17:07.The student, Amrita Kataruka, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2021-07-06 at 17:42.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2021-07-09 at 13:30.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #16773 on 2022-01-12 at 13:03:58Made available in DSpace on 2022-01-12T22:54:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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