Abstract

Stress has a significant mental health problem of the 21st century. The number of people suffering from stress is increasing rapidly. Thus, easy-to-use, inexpensive, and accurate biomarkers are needed to detect stress during its inception. Early detection of stress-related diseases allows people to access health-care services and leads to the development of new therapies. Thus, for the early detection of stress, a biomarker would be beneficial. We aim to find if there are significant differences between stressed and non-stressed groups of participants and which brain region gets impacted during stress. We conducted experiments to acquire EEG signals to identify the most significant brain region that gets affected due to stress. This research investigates if Higuchi Fractal Dimension (HFD) extracted from EEG signals can act as potential stress biomarkers. A gamified mobile application, known as Color Word and Memory Test (CWMT), was developed, inspired by the well-known Stroop Test, to elicit mental stress at two different difficulty levels. A MUSE headband with four EEG sensors (TP9, AF7, AF8, TP10) was used to collect the EEG signals at the two difficulty levels. The Higuchi Fractal Dimension (HFD) was extracted from EEG signals acquired from 32 participants while they were exposed to stress stimuli (using the proposed CWMT application) and we then performed three experimental analyses, i.e., Analysis I, II and III. Analysis I was performed on all the 32 participants performing low and high difficulty tasks on CWMT application. Analysis II was performed on sub-groups of participants. These sub-groups were made based on score obtained by participants while using CWMT application. Analysis II aimed to find the most significantly impacted brain region during stress. For Analysis III, we used the same sub-groups as Analysis II and it aimed to identify any differences between the left and right hemispheres during stress. We conducted the statistical analysis, and p-values were calculated between the two groups (non-stressed and stressed) to detect EEG channels and brain frequency significantly associated with stress. We performed three experimental analyses (Analysis I and II are intra-hemisphere, and analysis III is inter-hemisphere). In Analysis I, we inferred that beta and alpha frequencies from the AF8 region of the brain are affected during stress. In Analysis II, we inferred that beta waves from the AF8 region are a characteristic indicator of stress. In Analysis III, we identified significant differences between the left and right parts of the brain during stress. We found a significant difference (p<0.05) between HFD value in stress and non-stressed groups in the AF8 region. Our results indicated that stressed patients have a significantly higher value of HFD in the frontal areas.

Abstract

A number of anthropogenic and natural disasters that have impacted the fragile ecosystems of the Baratang group of islands in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, resulting in the degradation and depletion of their natural environment and biodiversity, have been identified. It is found that, in the early 20th century, the resources of the archipelago, especially Baratang Island, were exploited for infrastructure and plantations, resulting in a decrease in forest cover and an increase in anthropogenically transformed landscapes. However, the most recent available information on land use (LU) and land cover is only from 2013. This study aims to understand the dynamics of LU and land cover change in the Baratang Island group using multitemporal satellite data for 1976, 1993, 2004, 2014, and 2023. Using visual interpretation techniques, spatial and temporal change maps were created to represent the different LU and land cover features in the study area. An analysis of these maps revealed an interesting trend: there is an increase in forest area with a simultaneous decrease in settlements and agricultural land, which contradicts the findings of previous studies. This work has identified several factors contributing to this trend, namely natural regeneration, a reduction in logging and human activities, government policies and laws, and the implementation of conservation measures by the forest department. However, the evidence on mangrove decline attributed to both human activities and natural disasters is consistent with the results of other studies. This study emphasizes the importance of regularly monitoring the island’s landscape dynamics to understand changes in LU and land cover and to take appropriate conservation measures.

Abstract

Urbanization, driven by technological advancements, has brought about improved connectivity and efficiency, especially with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Smart cities use these innovations to manage resources better and enhance resident’s quality of life. However, implementing smart city initiatives comes with challenges like monitoring, maintaining, and testing urban infrastructure. Digital Twin (DT) entails the connection of physical facilities or devices with their digital counterparts, facilitating real-time monitoring, manipulation, and predictive analysis of their behavior. This concept offers a virtual replica of assets, processes, and systems, enabling insights into their real-time performance and predictive behaviors. By simulating real-world scenarios, DT aids in planning maintenance activities and conducting comprehensive testing, thereby enhancing the resilience and efficiency of smart city systems. Particularly in the context of managing water networks, DT technology holds significant promise. Visualization capabilities provide intuitive insights into the system’s behavior, facilitating informed decision-making. This visualization, coupled with actuation capabilities, enables control actions based on predictive analytics and optimization algorithms, allowing for proactive management of water resources and infrastructure. To this end, in this paper, we present the architecture of WaterTwin, a DT developed for water quality networks in smart city systems. We demonstrate our approach through the use of a water quality network at the smart city living lab, IIIT Hyderabad campus.

Abstract

Integration challenges of perovskites-based ferroelectrics increased the focus on usage of non-perovskites for the design of Negative Capacitance (NC) FETs. To meet the sub-60mV/decade subthreshold swing without compromising the on-state performance in advanced nodes, integration of Ferroelectric layer in the gate stack of a lateral Heterojunction Tunnel FET(HTFET) is an optimum choice. Ferroelectric materials when stabilized, exhibit hysteresis-free negative capacitance characteristics that improve the subthreshold swing and thereby the on-state performance TFET. In this work we explored the CMOS compatible non-perovskites based ferroelectrics, such as doped Hafnium oxide (HfO2), and Hafnium Zirconium oxide (HZO2), for designing Staggered gap Heterojunction Ferroelectric TFETs(He-FeTFET), for low power logic applications. Using SILVACO TCAD, a commercial Technology CAD software, an exhaustive simulation study is made tuning the device parameters, to achieve a hysteresis-free steeper switching with sub-60 mV/decade subthreshold swing without compromising the on-state performance and to achieve very low leakage, of the order of sub-fA. The material system, dopings of the device and the thickness of the ferroelectric layer, necessary to achieve a point subthreshold-swing of lesser than 10 mV/decade and large on-to-off current ratio (Ion/Ioff ) ≈ 1010 for the He-FeTFET are presented and performance is compared with a plain HTFET.

Abstract

The language acquisition skills are predominant during childhood. Due to the lack of resources, a gap often arises in the language communication abilities of students. To bridge this gap, it is necessary to consider automatic methods for improving the children language skills. Our IIITH Ucchar e-Sudharak web based tool, deployed in a real environment, helps schoolgoing children to practice English reading skills with a teacher in the loop. The choice of English as the target language is strategic, given its status as a global lingua franca. Within the tool, children are provided with class and chapter-specific English sentences for practice tailored by their teachers. During practice sessions, the tool provides real-time feedback in the form of sentence and word-level scores, which are computed by comparing against teacher (expert) audio recordings. These scores offer insights into word-level pronunciation correctness and sentence-level quality by measuring fluency. Moreover, the tool provides a key feature where teachers can assign specific sentences to individual students and assess their performance. This functionality empowers teachers to personalize their instruction, catering to the specific needs of each student. As far as we know, this is a one-of-a-kind tool specifically designed to meet the needs of school-going children.

Abstract

In this paper, we tackle a new and challenging problem of text-driven generation of 3D garments with high-quality textures. We propose "WordRobe", a novel framework for the generation of unposed & textured 3D garment meshes from user-friendly text prompts. We achieve this by first learning a latent representation of 3D garments using a novel coarse-to-fine training strategy and a loss for latent disentanglement, promoting better latent interpolation. Subsequently, we align the garment latent space to the CLIP embedding space in a weakly supervised manner, enabling text-driven 3D garment generation and editing. For appearance modeling, we leverage the zero-shot generation capability of ControlNet to synthesize view-consistent texture maps in a single feed-forward inference step, thereby drastically decreasing the generation time as compared to existing methods. We demonstrate superior performance over current SOTAs for learning 3D garment latent space, garment interpolation, and text-driven texture synthesis, supported by quantitative evaluation and qualitative user study. The unposed 3D garment meshes generated using WordRobe can be directly fed to standard cloth simulation & animation pipelines without any post-processing.

Abstract

Urban stormwater management involves strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of urban runoff. These strategies aim to reduce flood risk and enhance the environmental values and sustainability of urban water systems. But the effective urban stormwater management is highly dependent on the factors such as spatial variability of urban watershed characteristics as well as the scale of the area under consideration. This insight has prompted increasing utilization of physically based urban watershed models such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Stormwater Management Model (SWMM). Thus, in this study we utilized SWMM for modeling the dynamic runoff response in a stormwater zone of Hyderabad, India. The study results are validated for a particular observed 48-hour storm event occurred on 3rd and 4th of October 2015. Five years (2010-2014) of hourly rainfall data have been used to estimate the design storms with 2, 5, 10, and 25 years return periods using Gumbel distribution. The results indicate that the existing drainage system is insufficient to withstand the generated runoff by the design storm of 2-year return period and causes notable flooding. The water elevation profile generated from the initial node, representing the beginning of the drainage system, to the outfall indicates that the flooding occurred at the outfall during the peak precipitation event. Also, the hydrographs which were developed through SWMM at different links and outfalls are crucial in designing the sumps or ponds and determining pump capacities, aiding in effective stormwater management practices.

Abstract

Wireless body area network (WBAN) communica- tions in 400 MHz Medical Device Radio-communication (MedRa- dio) band seek wearable and implantable sensor nodes with extremely small antennas for reduced form factor. However, it is very challenging to shrink the 400 MHz antenna dimensions to sub-cm region for the conventional 50 Ω transmitters (TX) due to large wavelength. Thus there is a strong need to investigate extremely small, unconventional radiating elements with alternate TX topologies. In this work, we utilize extremely small surface mount inductors (SML) as a radiating element in non-50 Ω MedRadio band TX and present detailed fundamental analysis and models for its radiating-zone boundaries and corresponding path losses. To validate the proposed theory, simulation and measurement results of path loss of a cylindrical SML (1.2mm × 8.5mm) have been also presented, which show congruence with analytical models within ≤ 3 dB.

Abstract

The majority of the materials that survive from ancient Egyptian material culture are made of stones that were utilized for construction, jewellery, ornamentation, and practical purposes. These primarily originated from the Eastern and Nile Valley Deserts (some from the Western Desert as well), where more than 200 quarries dating from the Late Predynastic to the Late Roman periods have been found. These span around 3500 years. Up until the Late Period, when iron tools took the place of stone tools, the harder stones (almost all volcanic and metamorphic rocks, silicified sandstone, and chert) were mined using stone tools with the help of fire settings and wood levers. During the Dynastic Period, the softer stones (mostly limestone, sandstone, and quartzite) were removed using copper and then bronze picks and chisels; by the end of the Late Period, iron tools had once more taken the place of the earlier ones. The bigger blocks of quarried stone were hauled on sledges, typically over built roads, and possibly pushed by teams of men to the building sites or the Nile River for shipping until the Greco-Roman Period, when appropriate roads and wagons tough enough to carry them appeared. In addition to serving as supplies of stone, old quarries are also important archaeological sites that contain ruins and other cultural artifacts. Their unique viewpoint on life in ancient Egypt makes them worthy of study and preservation. The current study provides a thorough overview of the quarrying techniques used by the ancient Egyptians to differentiate between “soft-stones” (limestone, sandstone, travertine, anhydrite, gypsum, and soapstone) and “hardstones”, which are essentially igneous and metamorphic rocks plus silicified sandstone and chert.

Abstract

Ṣuġhrā Humāyūñ Mirzā (1884–1958) was a reformer, journalist, writer and traveller from the erstwhile princely state of Haidarābād, Dakkan. She wrote prolifically and used her fiction and non-fiction as a vehicle for her reformist ideas and objectives. However, scholarly focus on Ṣuġhrā Begum’s reformist work alone risks dismissal of her literary creativity and innovation. This paper aims to address this gap through an analysis of the narrative and stylistic features of Ṣuġhrā Begum’s Urdū novel, Mohinī (1929). I suggest a reading of this text on its own terms, i.e. one that emerges from the text and the motivations of its author, rather than through measurements with standard—usually Western—yardsticks or other assumptions about Ṣuġhrā Begum’s ostensibly singular priorities. Instead, I argue that Mohinī should be read in the context of the development of the Urdū novel, which was taking shape through the encounter between Western modes of representation made prominent through colonialism and existing Indian storytelling traditions, such as the qiṣṣāh. In the process, this paper expands the scholarship on this writer by offering a study of the creative features of her fiction and calls for the imagination of South Asian and wider Persianate print realisms that are not bound by rationalist epistemologies and encapsulate broader systems of knowledge.