2,392 research outputs found
Cryopreservation Techniques for Ram Sperm
No full textGermplasm storage and transportation in artificial insemination (AI) and other advanced technologies are facilitated by cryopreservation. In reproduction, the cryopreservation of sperm allows it to be transported across vast distances and used even after the sire's death. However, the technique of cryopreservation might damage sperm and limit their activity. Several cryobiological investigations have reported that the integrity of the sperm membrane is frequently involved in the physical and biological elements that affect sperm survival at low temperatures during the cryopreservation process. However, successful cryopreservation of ram sperm is still a work in progress because a considerable percentage of sperm do not survive the freezing and thawing process. Sperms are destroyed during cryopreservation of semen due to varying concentrations of cryoprotective chemicals and if semen is not cooled at optimal cooling rates. Hence, it is crucial to know the optimum cooling rates with freezing and thawing protocols for maximum recovery of viable and functional sperm cells for a successful cryo-freezing of ram spermatozoa. Therefore, the current study compiled and compared the research on the impact of different cryopreservation procedures, cooling rates, equilibration time, and thawing protocols on post-thaw ram semen quality
Evolution of Consumer Courts in India: The Consumers Protection Act 2019 and emerging themes of Consumer Jurisprudence —Ankur Saha and Sri Ram Khanna
No full textThis paper underlines the role of Consumer Courts in the developing consumer jurisprudence in India. It starts with the need to set up Consumer Courts under the Consumers Protection Act 1986. This Act was required in the Indian markets because the well-organized sectors of manufacturers often exploited the consumers. The procedures of Civil Courts were time consuming, expensive and had to follow complicated procedures during trials. Therefore, the Consumer Courts were conceived as alternative quasi-judicial tribunal system which were inexpensive. This law has been amended thrice earlier before being repealed and replaced by the 2019 law which has gone into legal effect from 20th July 2020 ushering in many improvements and changes. It retains the structure and jurisprudence of the Consumer Courts system. The changes in the existing Act of 1986 are mostly positive and explained. The Supreme Court and the National Commission have rendered a series of judgments on consumer law. We are covering three leading themes of consumer jurisprudence which have evolved from the law laid down by the Consumer Courts and upheld by the Supreme Court. One of the leading themes is of class action and joint action on behalf of aggrieved consumers. The second theme is the gradual widening of the types of ‘services’ which are amenable to action in consumer courts. The range of services has been considerable widened under the principle of interpretation of statutes known as ‘ejusdem generis’ as applied to its definition under this law. The third theme is the principle that one-sided agreement between the seller and the buyer which have been drafted by the seller who asks the buyer to sign on the dotted line is unenforceable against the buyer and are unfair trade practices
Evolution of Consumer Courts in India: The Consumers Protection Act 2019 and emerging themes of Consumer Jurisprudence —Ankur Saha and Sri Ram Khanna
No full textThis paper underlines the role of Consumer Courts in the developing consumer jurisprudence in India. It starts with the need to set up Consumer Courts under the Consumers Protection Act 1986. This Act was required in the Indian markets because the well-organized sectors of manufacturers often exploited the consumers. The procedures of Civil Courts were time consuming, expensive and had to follow complicated procedures during trials. Therefore, the Consumer Courts were conceived as alternative quasi-judicial tribunal system which were inexpensive. This law has been amended thrice earlier before being repealed and replaced by the 2019 law which has gone into legal effect from 20th July 2020 ushering in many improvements and changes. It retains the structure and jurisprudence of the Consumer Courts system. The changes in the existing Act of 1986 are mostly positive and explained. The Supreme Court and the National Commission have rendered a series of judgments on consumer law. We are covering three leading themes of consumer jurisprudence which have evolved from the law laid down by the Consumer Courts and upheld by the Supreme Court. One of the leading themes is of class action and joint action on behalf of aggrieved consumers. The second theme is the gradual widening of the types of ‘services’ which are amenable to action in consumer courts. The range of services has been considerable widened under the principle of interpretation of statutes known as ‘ejusdem generis’ as applied to its definition under this law. The third theme is the principle that one-sided agreement between the seller and the buyer which have been drafted by the seller who asks the buyer to sign on the dotted line is unenforceable against the buyer and are unfair trade practices
Deformation and Aerodynamic Performance of a Ram-Air Wing
No full textRam-air wings form an ever increasing market of soft fabric, air inflated wings. They are primairily used in air sports such as parachuting, paragliding and kiting. Ram-air kites may also be used for electric power generation by letting the kite pull a cable from a drum that is connected to a generator. An example if this principle is the Laddermill concept. But since ram-air wings are flexible by nature they will deform and depart from their intended design shape when they are loaded by aerodynamic forces. These deformations generally affect the performance of the wings adversely. Kites with a higher lift-to-drag ratio on the Laddermill could mean a direct increase of the energy produced per square meter of kite. Besides this benefit for the Laddermill there is a huge, world-wide market of parachuting, paragliding and kiting that can benefit from more research and a better understanding of the deformation and aerodynamic performance of ram-air wings. The goals of this thesis are to be able to point out where a ram-air kite departs from the intended design shape, to investigate how well the kite performs, to understand how the deformations affect the airflow and to make suggestions for possible improvements of the design. Since little has been published about these subjects this report will most of all form a basis for further research. This report presents a method to analyse the shape and the aerodynamics of a ram-air kite. The kite is tested in the windtunnel. Its 3D shape is captured using two techniques: photogrammetry and laser scanning. Using the geometry data the structural deformation of the wing is dissected. With computational fluid dynamics the aerodynamics of the deformed shape is analyzed. An extra result of this study is the comparison of photogrammetry and laser scanning in terms of their suitability to capture the 3D shape of the ram-air kite. A number of interesting deformations and flow features were found on the ram-air wing: - Theoretically the bumps (ballooning) and grooves on a ram-air wing hinder the spanwise flow on a 3-dimensional wing, but in practise this effect is only visible on small parts of the upper surface. - The pull of the suspension lines on the under surface and the internal construction of the wing make the upper surface of the wing deform. This results in a decrease of the upper surface curvature, especially near the nose. This curvature decrease causes a loss of lift of at least 5%. - Because the flat, 2-dimensional fabric is inflated into a 3-dimensional shape the fabric wrinkles. The wrinkles continue from the top and bottom surface into the ribs that internally connect and support the top and bottom surface. On average these wrinkles shorten the ribs in chordwise direction by 3.5%. This decreases the surface area of the wing and it makes the ribs effectively thicker. Many more details became visible with the thorough analysis of the wing’s shape. The conclusion is that the performance of the ram-air wing can be improved by changing these details. The photogrammetry measuring technique gave better results than laser scanning and is very suitable tool to make these details visible. It allows a designer to identify where the real flying shape deviates from the design shape. This can help kite designers and designers of other ram-air wings to reverse-Aerospace Engineerin
Great Expectatrics: Great Papers, Great Journals, Great Econometrics
No full textThe paper discusses alternative Research Assessment Measures (RAM), with an emphasis on the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI). The various ISI RAM that are calculated annually or updated daily are defined and analysed, including the classic 2-year impact factor (2YIF), 5-year impact factor (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor score, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, Zinfluence, and PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors). The ISI RAM data are analysed for 8 leading econometrics journals and 4 leading statistics journals. The application to econometrics can be used as a template for other areas in economics, for other scientific disciplines, and as a benchmark for newer journals in a range of disciplines. In addition to evaluating high quality research in leading econometrics journals, the paper also compares econometrics and statistics, alternative RAM, highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAM criteria, finds that several ISI RAM capture similar performance characteristics for the leading econometrics and statistics journals while the new PI-BETA criterion is not highly correlated with any of the other ISI RAM, and hence conveys additional information regarding ISI RAM, highlights major research areas in leading journals in econometrics, and discusses some likely future uses of RAM.Research assessment measures, impact factors, Immediacy, Eigenfactor score, Article influence, h-index, C3PO, Zinfluence, PI-BETA
Scientometric portrait of Ram Gopal Rastogi
No full textPublication productivity of Indian scientist (R.G. Rastogi) has been documented.
Scientometric analysis of 312 papers by Ram Gopal Rastogi published during 1954 to 1992 in various domains: (a) Luni -solar activity and quiet -time E & F- region (57); (b) Equatorial electric field and low and mid latitude iof:osphere (78); (c) Ionospheric E- region irregularities (19); (dj Ionospheric F- region irregularities (32); and (e) Magnetic disturbance effects on the equatorial low and mid latitude ionosphere (23) were analysed. Interdomainery contents and of the number of papers: a+b were 36; b+c and b+d were 20 each; b+e were 16;. c+e were 5; a+e were 3; d+e were 2; and a+d had only one publication. Highest collaborations were with H. Chandra (61), M.R. Deshpande (42), and G. Sethia (19) out of his total 97 collaborators. His highest productivity was during 1978 with 28 papers followed by 19 papers during 1977. The core journals preferred by him for publishing papers were: Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics, India, and Journal of Atomic & Terrestrial Physics, UK (59 each), followed by Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences, India (34). Most prolific title keywords with their frequencies were: Ionosphere (92); Equatorial (61); F-region (53); Equatorial electrojet region (40), and Magnetic equator (30)
Retraction Note: GraphCovidNet: A graph neural network based model for detecting COVID-19 from CT scans and X-rays of chest (Scientific Reports, (2021), 10.1038/s41598-021-87523-1)
No full textThe Editors have retracted this Article. The testing accuracy for the method reported in the Article was found to be over 99% for all datasets. However, it has been brought to the Editors’ attention after the publication of the Article that the graph labels were included as node-level attributes. These attributes were then used by the classifier to predict the graph label, violating the testing procedure, and leading to an over-estimation of the model’s classification accuracy. Ali Ahmadian and Massimiliano Ferrara disagree with this retraction. Pritam Saha, Debadyuti Mukherjee, Pawan Kumar Singh and Ram Sarkar have not responded to correspondence from the Editors about this retraction
Great Expectatrics: Great Papers, Great Journals, Great Econometrics
No full textThe paper discusses alternative Research Assessment Measures (RAM), with an emphasis on the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI). The various ISI RAM that are calculated annually or updated daily are defined and analysed, including the classic 2-year impact factor (2YIF), 5-year impact factor (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor score, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, Zinfluence, and PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors). The ISI RAM data are analysed for 8 leading econometrics journals and 4 leading statistics journals. The application to econometrics can be used as a template for other areas in economics, for other scientific disciplines, and as a benchmark for newer journals in a range of disciplines. In addition to evaluating high quality research in leading econometrics journals, the paper also compares econometrics and statistics, alternative RAM, highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAM criteria, finds that several ISI RAM capture similar performance characteristics for the leading econometrics and statistics journals while the new PI-BETA criterion is not highly correlated with any of the other ISI RAM, and hence conveys additional information regarding ISI RAM, highlights major research areas in leading journals in econometrics, and discusses some likely future uses of RAM.Research assessment measures; impact factors; Immediacy; Eigenfactor score; Article influence; h-index; C3PO; Zinfluence; PI-BETA
Steady-State Solver for a Ram-Air Kite Aeroelastic Model Based on Dynamic Relaxation
No full textWe present a computationally efficient steady-state solution method to model the aeroelastic deformation of a ram-air kite for airborne wind energy applications. The kite’s weight in comparison to the aerodynamic forces is small which justifies a quasi-steady analysis, neglecting gravitational and inertial force effects [1]. The approach is suitable to efficiently determine the deformed configuration of a ram-air kite for design and optimization purposes as found in [2]. Because of the expected large deformations and changes in the flow field, fluid-structure interaction has to be taken into account in the analysis.Wind Energ
Night-Time Stories from The Panchatantra
No full textSimilar to Arora's 101 Moral Stories of Grandpa, this hardbound book with dust-jacket has 100 pages. The T of C on 6 lists fifteen numbered stories. This book is remarkable for offering a large picture on almost every page. New to me is The Sparrows & the Tusker (51). An elephant breaks off a limb and unwittingly destroys a nest. The sparrows get help from a woodpecker, a fly, and a frog, Together they lull the elephant, blind him by pecking out his eyes, and mislead him into a deep pit he mistakes for a water-hole. It is nice to meet old friends from the Panchatantra and Kalila and Dimna tradition, and I enjoy Ram-Lakshman's art. One of the best images here is that of the lion springing into the well as the hare runs away (99). The dust-jacket is glued to the covers.This is a hardbound book (hard cover)This book has a dust jacket (book cover)Retold by Reinu Bhano
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