Abstract

Timely agro-advisory service and efficient risk mitigation mechanisms can provide stableincome to the farmers. To provide timely agro-advisory service, e-Sagu systemhas beendeveloped by IIIT-Hyderabad and Media Lab Asia. It is an IT-based personalized agro-advisorysystemwhich is being developedto provide high-qualitypersonalized (farm-specific) agricultural expert adviceto each and everyfarmin a timely manner at thefarmer’s door-step without farmer asking a question. The results show that significantbenefits have flowntothe farmers interms of reducedinputs andenhancedyield.Regarding risk mitigation, the agri-insurance schemes around the worldwhether anadvanced or a developing nation like India are suffering due to catastrophic losses,covariate risks, asymmetric information and lack of quality data. These problems maypose a serious threat to the survival of the implementing agencies unless the there is aneffective monitoring systemin place, with enough man power and robust infrastructure.In this paper we explain how agri-insurance schemes can be effectively implemented ontop of eSagu system. The agri-insurance scheme can bevery cost-effective as it can useresources and processes of eSagu system. Also, as eSagu provides quality and reliabledata at farmlevel,the problemof asymmetric information can be effectively hedged.Most important, eSagualsoimproves the performance offormal risk mitigationmechanisms through farm-specific agro-advisory and monitoring system.

Abstract

Biological systems function with the aid of large number of proteins involved in complex network of chemical reactions. Interfering with the expression of proteins native or foreign leads to overall changes in the functioning of the biological systems . Manipulating the expression of proteins responsible for the manifestation of diseases has therefore been an interesting area for alternative efficient therapautic possibilities. Proteins are expressed from the correspondig genes involving the trancription and translation of messenger RNAs . Interfering with these RNA has emerged as an effective method of silencing unwanted genes. This project deals with designing effective methods for gene silencing through RNA Interference. RNA interference (RNAi) has emerged as an effective method of silencing gene expression in eukaryotic cells. This technology allows scientists to study the phenotypic effect of reducing expression levels of individual genes, and essentially negates the arduous task of producing single gene knockout or dominant negative expressing cell lines. RNAi has very quickly been utilized both in basic science and medical research. Among its many applications are the characterization and regulation of gene function, signaling pathway analysis and target validation. The potential therapeutic value of RNAi is indicated in recent studies showing that the RNAi pathway is functional in mice and is effective against a variety of infectious diseases including HIV and Hepatitis B. Since the early work describing the use of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) for post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) by Fire and Mello and the application of short interfering RNA (siRNA) to induce specific gene suppression in mammalian cells by Elbashir et al., there has been a flurry of RNAi-related developments and applications. The vast number of recent scientific journal articles, the scramble for intellectual property, and the formation of multiple biotechnology tools, kits, reagents and therapeutics companies all reflect the power and popularity of this technique. In 2002, Science voted RNAi scientific breakthrough of the year. This paper talks about a novel method of finding efficient siRNA targets on the mRNA sequences. It consists of two parts. In the first part program was written to select suitable targets based on the Elbashir's guidelines. In the second part involves prediction of secondary structure of siRNA antisense strands of the targets predicted in the first part and also the secondary structure of the mRNA sequence, and using these results to further filter the targets.

Abstract

Noncanonical base pairs in RNA have strong structural and functional implications but are currently not considered for secondary structure predictions. We present results of comparative ab initio studies of stabilities and interaction energies for the three standard and 24 selected unusual RNA base pairs reported in the literature. Hydrogen added models of isolated base pairs, with heavy atoms frozen in their away from equilibrium geometries, built from coordinates extracted from NDB, were geometry optimized using HF/6-31G** basis set, both before and after unfreezing the heavy atoms. Interaction energies, including BSSE and deformation energy corrections, were calculated, compared with respective single point MP2 energies, and correlated with occurrence frequencies and with types and geometries of hydrogen bonding interactions. Systems having two or more N-HO/N hydrogen bonds had reasonable interaction energies which correlated well with respective occurrence frequencies and highlighted the possibility of some of them playing important roles in improved secondary structure prediction methods. Several of the remaining base pairs with one N-HO/N and/or one C-HO/N interactions respectively, had poor interaction energies and negligible occurrences. High geometry variations on optimization of some of these were suggestive of their conformational switch like characteristics.

Abstract

We present a computationally simple and general purpose scheme for the detection of all salient object contours in real images. The scheme is inspired by the mechanism of surround influence that is exhibited in 80% of neurons in the primary visual cortex of primates. It is based on the observation that the local context of a contour significantly affects the global saliency of the contour. The proposed scheme consists of two steps: first find the edge response at all points in an image using gradient computation and in the second step modulate the edge response at a point by the response in its surround. In this paper, we present the results of implementing this scheme using a Sobel edge operator followed by a mask operation for the surround influence. The proposed scheme has been tested successfully on a large set of images. The performance of the proposed detector compares favourably both computationally and qualitatively, in comparison with another contour detector which is also based on surround influence. Hence, the proposed scheme can serve as a low cost preprocessing step for high level tasks such shape based recognition and image retrieval.

Abstract

Automatic identification of a script in a given document image facilitates many important applications such as automatic archiving of multilingual documents, searching online archives of document images and for the selection of script specific OCR in a multilingual environment. In this paper, we present a scheme to identify different Indian scripts from a document image. This scheme employs hierarchical classification which uses features consistent with human perception. Such features are extracted from the responses of a multi-channel log-Gabor filter bank, designed at an optimal scale and multiple orientations. In the first stage, the classifier groups the scripts into five major classes using global features. At the next stage, a sub-classification is performed based on script-specific features. All features are extracted globally from a given text block which does not require any complex and reliable segmentation of the document image into lines and characters. Thus the proposed scheme is efficient and can be used for many practical applications which require processing large volumes of data. The scheme has been tested on 10 Indian scripts and found to be robust to skew generated in the process of scanning and relatively insensitive to change in font size. This proposed system achieves an overall classification accuracy of 97.11% on a large testing data set. These results serve to establish the utility of global approach to classification of scripts.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of perfectly reliable message transmission(PRMT) and perfectly secure message transmission(PSMT) between a sender S and a receiver R in a synchronous network, where S and R are connected by n vertex disjoint paths called wires, each of which facilitates bidirectional communication. We assume that atmost t of these wires are under the control of adversary. We present two-phase-bit optimal PRMT protocol considering Byzantine adversary as well as mixed adversary. We also present a three phase PRMT protocol which reliably sends a message containing l field elements by overall communicating O(l) field elements. This is a significant improvement over the PRMT protocol proposed in [10] to achieve the same task which takes log(t) phases. We also present a three-phase-bit-optimal PSMT protocol which securely sends a message consisting of t field elements by communicating O(t 2) field elements.

Abstract

We consider the problem of reliable message transmission between two synchronous players connected by n wires, some t< n 2 of which may be faulty. We show how to get reliability “for free”—reliable transmission of b bits involves a total communication of only O (b) bits, when b is large enough. We also construct an efficient Perfectly Secure Message Transmission Protocol.

Abstract

We provide a complete characterization of directed networks in which probabilistic reliable communication is possible. We also outline a round optimal protocol for the same.

Abstract

We consider perfect verifiable secret sharing (VSS) in a synchronous network of n processors (players) where a designated player called the dealer wishes to distribute a secret s among the players in a way that no t of them obtain any information, but any t + 1 players obtain full information about the secret. The round complexity of a VSS protocol is defined as the number of rounds performed in the sharing phase. Gennaro, Ishai, Kushilevitz and Rabin showed that three rounds are necessary and sufficient when n > 3t. Sufficiency, however, was only demonstrated by means of an inefficient (i.e., exponential-time) protocol, and the construction of an efficient three-round protocol was left as an open problem. In this paper, we present an efficient three-round protocol for VSS. The solution is based on a three-round solution of so-called weak verifiable secret sharing (WSS), for which we also prove that three rounds is a lower bound. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that one round is sufficient for WSS when n > 4t, and that VSS can be achieved in 1 + ε amortized rounds (for any ε > 0 ) when n>3t.

Abstract

When an active bedrock fault ruptures, the movement along the fault propagates through the overlying soil and produces zones of intense shear. If the fault movement propagates upto or near the ground surface, the damage to constructed facilities due to faulting, in conjunction with that induced by strong ground motion, can be significant. This paper contributes to the understanding of the response of soil deposits to the underlying bedrock fault displacement. In the conventional attenuation relationship, peak ground acceleration shows maximum value at the closest distance from the fault. However, in the real observations, sometimes it is found that the damage near to the surface fault is not maximum, instead it is high little away from the surface rupture zone. To understand the above-mentioned response of soil deposits, we attempted to develop a new application to Applied Element Method (AEM) by modeling the fault rupture zone. In this, we study the behavior of dip-slip faults. The effect of the slip velocity on the ground motion is studied first and then the attenuation of PGA in the near fault zone is studied. Effect of the material properties is also discussed.