Does the market kill bad ideas? An institutional comparision of committees and markets in network industries

The paper analyzes the problem of protocol coordination between two firms, where one firm has private information about its own protocol. The institutional characteristics of the market and the class of strategies adopted by the firms admit multiple equilibria in the market. Of these, one particular equilibrium has an interior information revelation cutoff for the firm with private information. This demonstrates that the market might not be able to "kill bad ideas", but it does "reward good ideas". In contrast, the institutional design of the committee ensures that the same class of strategies gives rise to a unique equilibrium in the committee, with the informed firm revealing all private information. The committee game results generalize easily to multiple periods as well as to multiple firms and is robust to an exit option. The market game result holds for a certain range of parameter values for multiple firms.Networks, standardization, coordination, asymmetric information, institutional design

Sonic Layer Depth estimated from XBT temperatures and climatological salinities

Sonic layer depth (SLD) plays an important role in antisubmarine warfare in terms of identifying the shadow zones for submarine safe parking. SLD is estimated from sound velocity profiles (SVP) which is in turn obtained from temperature and salinity (T/S) profiles. Given the limited availability of salinity data in comparison to temperature, SVPs need to be obtained from alternate methods. In the present work, to make use of voluminous temperature data sets from XBT, CTD and other source for estimating SLD, we propose a method of utilizing XBT measurements and World Ocean Atlas climatological salinities to compute SVP and then extract SLD. This approach is demonstrated by utilizing T/S data from Argo floats in the Arabian Sea (40° – 80° E and 0 – 30° N). SLD is estimated from SVP obtained from Argo T/S profiles first and again by replacing the Argo salinity with climatological salinity. It is found that in more than 90% of cases, SLD matched exactly, with the root mean square deviation ranging from 3 – 12 m with an average of 7 m

Model Predictive Control

This project thesis provides a brief overview of Model Predictive Control (MPC).A brief history of industrial model predictive control technology has been presented first followed by a some concepts like the receding horizon, moves etc. which form the basis of the MPC. It follows the Optimization problem which ultimately leads to the description of the Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC).The MPC presented in this report is based on DMC. After this the application summary and the limitations of the existing technology has been discussed and the next generation MPC, with an emphasis on potential business and research opportunities has been reviewed. Finally in the last part we generate Matlab code to implement basic model predictive controller and introduce noise into the model. We have also taken up some case studies like Swimming pool water temperature control and helicopter flight control etc. by applying the MPC controller on these models

Finding Home: Diasporic Community Building in a Rural U.S. Town

A substantial Indian immigrant population in the U.S. resides beyond the major metropolitan areas. Yet studies on Indian diaspora are focused on big cities, with relatively limited literature on diasporic communities in the smaller cities and towns. This study addresses this gap by understanding how the diasporic ‘Indian’ community in a small U.S. (rural-University) town makes sense of the Indian culture and forms a sense of community, without having the cultural resources of big cities. It explores the way gender, religion, age, race and ethnicity are negotiated in the creation of a ‘home away from home’, and the way cultural importation, negotiation and meaning-making happen in the creation of diasporic communities. The study uses a combination of semi-structured interviews and multi-sited ethnography. The findings suggest that the ‘Indian’ family members ‘have a stake’ in actively investing in community building through both formal and informal processes; both religious and secular tools and a certain re-imagination of the culture ‘back home’ are employed by the community to bind itself together; and that gender of the participants and the racial dynamics within the host society play a role in this process of community formation. However, despite the concerted efforts of the community members, lines of dissidence are active along gender, age, religious practices and ethnic/regional cultural identity of the individuals. Also, an elaborate process of mothers ‘doing culture’ for their children and the simultaneous prescription and proscription of certain activities and roles for the children, serve to suture the community together, just as they have the potential to act as fault lines within the community

Seroprevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in HIV infected cases and its association with CD4 count in Silchar medical college and hospital

Background: Toxoplasmosis caused by the intracellular coccidian parasite Toxoplasma gondii is one the most common AIDS defining condition in HIV infection. It may produce fatal consequences if gains upper hand in immunocompromised states like HIV infection or due to reactivation of latent disease or new infection. Toxoplasma encephalitis, affecting 15-40% of world’s PLHIV, is the most common opportunistic parasitic co-morbidity conventionally when CD4 count falls below 200/µl. But there has also been reports of asymptomatic toxoplasma IgG seropositivity in PLHIV with CD4 count in the range of 200-500/µl. This study was carried out to find the prevalence of Toxoplasma IgG seropositivity and to determine the association of Toxoplasma gondii seropositivity with CD4 count in HIV infected cases in south Assam. Methods: The 200 HIV infected cases with CD4 count <500/µl attending ICTC, ART centre and various clinical departments were screened by Toxoplasma IgG ELISA over 1 year. Result: It was found that 94 HIV infected cases were seropositive for Toxoplasma IgG and in which CD4 count was significantly less than 200/µl in 54% cases and in the range of 200-500/µl in remaining 46% cases. Conclusions: This sero-surveillance revealed anti-Toxoplasma gondii IgG in 47% cases. IgG seropositivity was significantly higher in cases on ART and in females with history of first trimester abortion. The finding of this study calls for initiation of prophylaxis against Toxoplasma routinely even in HIV cases of this region with CD4count in 200-500/µl range as quite good proportion of Toxoplasma seropositive HIV cases have CD4 count in this range apart from the conventionally vulnerable group with CD4 count below 200/µl

Speaker Recognition using Supra-segmental Level Excitation Information

Speaker specific information present in the excitation signal is mostly viewed from sub-segmental, segmental and supra-segmental levels. In this work, the supra-segmental level information is explored for recognizing speakers. Earlier study has shown that, combined use of pitch and epoch strength vectors provides useful supra-segmental information. However, the speaker recognition accuracy achieved by supra-segmental level feature is relatively poor than other levels source information. May be the modulation information present at the supra-segmental level of the excitation signal is not manifested properly in pith and epoch strength vectors. We propose a method to model the supra-segmental level modulation information from residual mel frequency cepstral coefficient (R-MFCC) trajectories. The evidences from R-MFCC trajectories combined with pitch and epoch strength vectors are proposed to represent supra-segmental information. Experimental results show that compared to pitch and epoch strength vectors, the proposed approach provides relatively improved performance. Further, the proposed supra-segmental level information is relatively more complimentary to other levels information

Effect of response method in participants with sensorineural hearing loss

Background:Aim of the study was to compare the speed of response, false-alarm rate, and subject preference of different response methods i.e. raising a hand, using response switch, and oral response mode for measuring pure-tone thresholds.Methods:Forty five participants (female-21 and 24 male) were included in the study with sensorineural hearing loss of various degree. Response method order was randomly assigned to 3 different sessions. Air-conduction thresholds were mea­sured thrice for each participant in octave intervals between 250 Hz and 8000 Hz. The 2nd and 3rd session were performed for different response method on a different day but within 2 weeks of the 1st session.Results:Difference in the time was noted when compared with the extent of time required to complete the test for each response method. On an average, using the push­button method took 3.02 to 3.42 minutes less than using hand-raise or verbal response methods. There was also a significant participant preference for using the response button. No significant difference between response method for thresh­old level and number of false positives (P = 0.15) was found.Conclusion:This study supports the use of the response button when measuring auditory thresholds for sensorineural hearing loss.

Characterization of Rhizobium sp (SAR-5) isolated from root nodule of Acacia mangium L.

The use of efficient strain of Rhizobium is of prime importance for optimum N2 harvest through legumes. The present investigation on microsymbiont associated with root nodulation of Acacia mangium L., an important forest species having wider adaptability. Certain biochemical and molecular techniques were used to characterize the microsymbiont. The 16S rRNA sequence was submitted to NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) with an assigned accession number as MH 661260 (SAR-5). The dendrogram revealed that the strain MH 661260 (SAR-5) was Rhizobium alamii, exhibiting maximum similarity with Rhizobium mesosinicum strain: NR 043548. The maximum indole acetic acid (89.00 μg/mL) was produced by metabolizing glucose followed by fructose (70.4 μg/mL), mannitol (55.8 μg/mL), lactose (51.4 μg/mL), sucrose (46.2 μg/mL), starch (39.6 μg/mL), galactose (30.6 μg/mL) and maltose (26.4 μg/mL) and the least (16.5 μg/mL) was recorded in control. The plateau stage of growth was attained after 36 h of inoculation, but the exopolysaccharides (EPS) production was the highest (112 μg/mL) at 48 h after inoculation, thereafter reduced in yeast extract mineral medium. The most preferable carbon, nitrogen, and vitamin for EPS production were maltose, L-asparagine, and L-ascorbic acid, respectively and the least preferable were sucrose, KNO3, and riboflavin, respectively. The isolate (SAR-5) could survive in the pH range of 6 to 8 and the salinity level up to 3% NaCl in laboratory conditions