449 research outputs found
The long read: 68 years of Indian foreign policy by Raj Verma
No full textAs India becomes an increasingly important player on the global stage scholars have picked over different facets of India’s foreign policy in order to understand past priorities and predict future aspirations. Raj Verma assesses two new studies published this year and their contributions to the growing literature in this area. Indian Foreign Policy: An Overview. Harsh V. Pant. Manchester University Press. 2016. Engaging the World: India’s Foreign Policy Since 1947. Sumit Ganguly. Oxford University Press. 2016
Book review: heading east: security, trade and environment between India and Southeast Asia edited by Karen Stoll Farrell and Sumit Ganguly
No full textIn Heading East, editors Karen Stoll Farrell and Sumit Ganguly explore and evaluate India’s relations and political, economic, diplomatic and security relations and engagement with Southeast Asia from 1991-2015. Raj Verma finds the book a valuable read for academics and non-academics who want to familiarise themselves with India’s engagement in the region and the influence of interest groups, non-state actors and other domestic factors on India’s relations with respect to ASEAN
Book review: deadly impasse: Indo-Pakistani relations at the dawn of a new century by Sumit Ganguly
No full textKashmir has been a thorn in the side of Indo-Pakistani relations since partition and remains a highly contentious issue today. In Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century, political scientist Sumit Ganguly traces the conflict from its inception to the fallout from terrorist attacks in the 2000s. Raj Verma writes that the book is an essential read for students at all levels, as well as scholars, policymakers and government officials who want to familiarise themselves with India-Pakistan relations
Performance analysis of the WiNC2R platform:
No full textA Cognitive Radio (CR) is an intelligent transceiver device, able to support multiple technologies, dynamic re-configurability, ease of programming and collaboration with other CR devices to improve the communication efficiency. The two key requirements for an efficient CR implementation are flexibility in operation/programming and speed.
WiNC2R (Winlab Network Centric Cognitive Radio) achieves high speed of operation using its hardware platform and flexibility using its software-configurable architecture. The current WiNC2R architecture implements an 802.11a-like OFDM flow. We evaluate the WiNC2R hardware architecture to see the modularity in the architecture, separation of data and control flow and the performance in terms of latency and throughput. To test the system, the Xilinx Bus Functional Model environment, which is designed to test the IBM standard bus-architecture-based hardware systems, is used. We use a simple ALOHA protocol in the MAC layer to communicate between two WiNC2R nodes and evaluate the performance under the best-case scenario, where the performance is only hindered by the architecture itself rather than external conditions like channel state.
The results of our basic experiments showed that for a single OFDM 802.11a-like flow, the Unit Control Modules (UCM) were idle for almost 80% of the total processing time.
We then tested the WiNC2R system to study the effects of changing the frame size. It was seen that the latencies in the WiNC2R transmitter are frame-size dependent while those in the receiver mainly depend on the size of the data in the last chunk rather than the size of the whole frame. We suggest that chunk size should be 2 OFDM symbols, and chunking be moved to MAC layer for better performance. We give analytical estimates of resulting performance improvement. In the next experiment, we describe virtualization in the WiNC2R by adding more flows. We describe the steps to implement the additional flows and estimate maximum number of concurrent flows possible.
In the last analysis, we show the effect of operating clock frequency on the performance. We prove that at 250 MHz operating frequency and 2 OFDM symbols per chunk, the current WiNC2R implementation will be able to satisfy the SIFS criterion.M.S.Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-73)by Sumit Satarka
"The fruits of independence": Satyajit Ray, Indian nationhood and the spectre of empire
No full textChallenging the longstanding consensus that Satyajit Ray's work is largely free of ideological concerns and notable only for its humanistic richness, this article shows with reference to representations of British colonialism and Indian nationhood that Ray's films and stories are marked deeply and consistently by a distinctively Bengali variety of liberalism. Drawn from an ongoing biographical project, it commences with an overview of the nationalist milieu in which Ray grew up and emphasizes the preoccupation with colonialism and nationalism that marked his earliest unfilmed scripts. It then shows with case studies of Kanchanjangha (1962), Charulata (1964), First Class Kamra (First-Class Compartment, 1981), Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1970), Shatranj ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977), Agantuk (The Stranger, 1991) and Robertsoner Ruby (Robertson's Ruby, 1992) how Ray's mature work continued to combine a strongly anti-colonial viewpoint with a shifting perspective on Indian nationhood and an unequivocal commitment to cultural cosmopolitanism. Analysing how Ray articulated his ideological positions through the quintessentially liberal device of complexly staged debates that were apparently free, but in fact closed by the scenarist/director on ideologically specific notes, this article concludes that Ray's reputation as an all-forgiving, ‘everybody-has-his-reasons’ humanist is based on simplistic or even tendentious readings of his work
The Ticket to Easy Street? The Financial Consequences of Winning the Lottery
No full textA fundamental question faced by policymakers is how best to help individuals who are in financial trouble. This paper examines the consequences of the most basic approach: giving people large cash transfers. To determine whether this prevents or merely postpones bankruptcy, we exploit a unique dataset of Florida Lottery winners linked to bankruptcy records. Results show that although recipients of 150,000 are 50 percent less likely to file for bankruptcy in the two years after winning relative to small winners, they are equally more likely to file three to five years afterward. Furthermore, bankruptcy records indicate that even though the median winner of a large cash prize could have paid off all of his unsecured debt or increased equity in new or existing assets, he chose not to do either. Consequently, although we cannot be sure other recipients of financial assistance would react in the same way lottery players did, our results do suggest that some skepticism regarding the long-term effect of cash transfers may be warranted.
Clinical and Radiological Characteristics for Recurrence of Chronic Subdural Hematoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
No full textChronic subdural hematoma (cSDH) is one of the most studied clinical entities in the neurosurgical literature. Management of cSDH is complicated by its propensity to recurrence. Various factors for the development of recurrence of cSDH have been described in various clinical, epidemiological, and observational studies, yet the evidence available is limited. A systematic review and meta-analysis as per PRISMA guidelines to identify clinical and radiological factors which can predict the development of recurrence in cSDH. A total of 14 studies were included for the systematic review and meta-analysis after a comprehensive search of the online databases. Eight studies were of high methodological quality. Age, use of anticoagulants, obesity, seizure, and liver disease were found to be statistically significant clinical risk factors for the development of recurrence in cSDH. Among the radiological parameters, the internal structure of the hematoma and the width of the hematoma was found to be significant risk factor predicting the development of recurrence. Age >75 years, use of anticoagulation therapy, liver disease, and obesity were significant risk factors for cSDH recurrence. Pneumocephalus, internal architecture of hematoma, bilateral cSDH, the width of hematoma, and the presence of bilateral cSDH are important radiological parameters of the development of recurrent cSD
Compilation of Agricultural Production Data in Areas Currently in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 1901/02 to 2001/02
No full textThis paper presents estimates for agricultural production data in areas currently in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 1901/02 to 2001/02. A salient feature of these estimates is that they correspond to current international borders. The British Empire of India, which was broken up in 1947 (in the so-called "Partition" of the Indian subcontinent), covered areas of what are now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Although a rich accumulation of statistical documents is available from the colonial period, there has been no rigorous attempt to compile statistics corresponding to the current borders during a period that includes years prior to 1947. This is because the Partition broke up the Empire of India not only at the provincial level (for which data are readily available) but also at the district or lower levels of administration. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap, focusing on production in crop farming in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Since neither the states of Pakistan and Bangladesh nor the concept of such nations existed during the early decades of the twentieth century, this exercise is hypothetical to some extent. Nevertheless, because farming activities are carried out on the soil of a region irrespective of its political designation, the estimates presented in this paper could shed new light on agricultural development in the three countries over the long term.
STUDY ON IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ON SELECTED PUBLIC SECTOR ENTERPRISES IN INDIA
No full textGovernment policy measures adopted by many developing countries to reform the public sector
enterprise performances can be classified into two broad categories in terms of decision criteria taken
into consideration. The first category of reform primarily focuses on distancing the government from
ownership change and control issues of these enterprises. Partial privatization or divestment falls in this
category of change reform mechanism. The second category aims at improving the environmental change
aspects in which these enterprises operate and function. One such reform is delegation of operational
and functional autonomy to managers of publicly owned enterprises through performance contracts
and reviews. Empirical evidence on the gains of privatization versus benefits of autonomy
delegation from the developing countries that have undertaken these reforms in the past are yet
inconclusive. The present study of India spanning over two decades of panel data with a decade of data
for evaluating the post reform performance of the centrally owned enterprises, provides evidence of
significant positive impact of autonomy delegation to public enterprise management on firms
profitability. The study, however, does not find any evidence of significant impact of partial
privatization and divestment. Further the study also finds significant impact of environmental reforms
of hard-budget constraint and deregulation of sectors earlier under government domain to private
participants on the profitability performance of the public enterprises in India.environment, administration, change, public enterprises, India
Query optimization in mobile environments
No full textWe consider the issue of optimizing queries for distributed processing in mobile environment. An interesting characteristic of mobile machines is that they depend on battery as a source of energy which may not be substantial enough. Hence, the appropriate optimization criterion in a mobile environment considers both resource utilization and energy consum- ption at the mobile client.
In this scenario, the optimal plan for a query depends on the residual battery level of the mobile client and the load at the server. We approach this problem by compiling a query into a sequence of candidate plans, such that for any state of the client-server system, the optimal plan is one of the candidate plans.
A general solution is proposed by adapting the partial order dynamic programming search algorithm (p.o dp) such that the coverset of the query is the set of candidate plans. We propose two novel algorithms, namely, the linear combinations algorithm and the linearset algorithm (referred to as the linear algorithms) that compute the linearset of a query. The linear- set of a query is an approximation to the coverset returned by p.o. dp.
We show, by means of simulation, that (1) the linearset is an excellent approximation of the coverset, (2) query compilation using the linear algorithms outperform query compilation using p.o. dp by factors ranging from 2 to 9, (3) the time taken to compile queries using the linear algorithms for the general optimization criterion is at most twice the time taken by a System R* like standard query optimizer search algorithm, and (4) the run time overhead incurred by the linear algorithms technique is minimal.
The techniques presented in the paper are of general applicability to multi-criterion optimization problems in distributed databases, where each criterion is an additive metric.Technical report lcsr-tr-21
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