Role of Agroforestry Trees in Sustaining Livelihood: A Case of Communities in Western Himalayas

Nagar, Bhuvnesh,Rawat, Sushma,Kumar, Munesh Institute of Forest Science 2017 Journal of Forest Science Vol.33 No.2

Trees at farm are considered as one of the option to reduce poverty of smallholders by contributing to livelihood security and resilience to climate change. A perception based study was conducted to assess the cultural importance of tree species suitable for practicing agroforestry in randomly selected agroforestry-dominated villages in Alaknanda valley of Western Himalayas during 2015-16. Semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data on the provisioning services of major agroforestry tree species in randomly surveyed 87 households. Based on cultural importance (CI) index value, the most suitable agroforestry tree species was Morus alba (3.32) followed by Celtis australis (3.22), Mangifera indica (3.01), Grewia optiva (2.79), Toona ciliata (2.22), Bauhinia variegata (2.08), Leucaena leucocephala (1.76) and Emblica officinalis (1.74). The preference of use has also been governed based on their indigenous knowledge. This study will also facilitate in evaluating the importance of provisioning services of agroforestry tree species in improving livelihood as well as facilitates smallholder's resilience to climate change in Western Himalayas.

Multibiometric Cryptosystems Based on Feature-Level Fusion

Nagar, Abhishek,Nandakumar, Karthik,Jain, Anil K. IEEE 2012 IEEE transactions on information forensics and sec Vol.7 No.1

<P>Multibiometric systems are being increasingly de- ployed in many large-scale biometric applications (e.g., FBI-IAFIS, UIDAI system in India) because they have several advantages such as lower error rates and larger population coverage compared to unibiometric systems. However, multibiometric systems require storage of multiple biometric templates (e.g., fingerprint, iris, and face) for each user, which results in increased risk to user privacy and system security. One method to protect individual templates is to store only the secure sketch generated from the corresponding template using a biometric cryptosystem. This requires storage of multiple sketches. In this paper, we propose a feature-level fusion framework to simultaneously protect multiple templates of a user as a single secure sketch. Our main contributions include: (1) practical implementation of the proposed feature-level fusion framework using two well-known biometric cryptosystems, namery,fuzzy vault and fuzzy commitment, and (2) detailed analysis of the trade-off between matching accuracy and security in the proposed multibiometric cryptosystems based on two different databases (one real and one virtual multimodal database), each containing the three most popular biometric modalities, namely, fingerprint, iris, and face. Experimental results show that both the multibiometric cryptosystems proposed here have higher security and matching performance compared to their unibiometric counterparts.</P>

Evidential Value of Automated Latent Fingerprint Comparison: An Empirical Approach

Nagar, A.,Heeseung Choi,Jain, A. K. IEEE 2012 IEEE transactions on information forensics and sec Vol.7 No.6

<P>Latent prints are routinely recovered from crime scenes and are compared with available databases of known fingerprints for identifying criminals. However, current procedures to compare latent prints to large databases of exemplar (rolled or plain) prints are prone to errors. This suggests caution in making conclusions about a suspect's identity based on a latent fingerprint comparison. A number of attempts have been made to statistically model the utility of a fingerprint comparison in making a correct accept/reject decision or its evidential value. These approaches, however, either make unrealistic assumptions about the model or they lack simple interpretation. We argue that the posterior probability of two fingerprints belonging to different fingers given their match score, referred to as the nonmatch probability (NMP), effectively captures any implicating evidence of the comparison. NMP is computed using state-of-the-art matchers and is easy to interpret. To incorporate the effect of image quality, number of minutiae, and size of the latent on NMP value, we compute the NMP vs. match score plots separately for image pairs (latent and exemplar prints) with different characteristics. Given the paucity of latent fingerprint databases in public domain, we simulate latent prints using two exemplar print databases (NIST SD-14 and Michigan State Police) by cropping regions of three different sizes. We appropriately validate this simulation using four latent databases (NIST SD-27 and three proprietary latent databases) and two state-of-the-art fingerprint matchers to compute their respective match scores. We also discuss a practical scenario where a latent examiner uses the proposed framework to compute the evidential value of a latent-exemplar print pair comparison.</P>

CR6-Interacting Factor 1 Deficiency Impairs Vascular Function by Inhibiting the Sirt1-Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Pathway

Nagar, Harsha,Jung, Saet-byel,Ryu, Min Jeong,Choi, Su-Jung,Piao, Shuyu,Song, Hee-Jung,Kang, Shin Kwang,Shin, Nara,Kim, Dong Woon,Jin, Seon-Ah,Jeong, Jin-Ok,Irani, Kaikobad,Jeon, Byeong Hwa,Shong, Minh Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers 2017 Antioxidants & Redox Signaling Vol. No.

<P>Conclusion: These findings indicate that CRIF1 plays an important role in maintaining mitochondrial and endothelial function through its effects on the SIRT1-eNOS pathway.</P>

On Testing Multisample Sphericity in the Complex Case

Nagar, D.K.,Gupta, A.K. The Korean Statistical Society 1984 Journal of the Korean Statistical Society Vol.13 No.2

In this paper, likelihood-ratio test has been derived for testing multisample sphericity in complex multivariate Gaussian populations. The $h^{th}$ moment of the test statistic is given and its exact distribution has been derived using inverse Mellin transform. Asymptotic distribution of the statistic is also given.

Distribution of Votaw's $\lambda_1$(mvc) Criterion

Nagar, D.K.,Gupta, A.K. The Korean Statistical Society 1994 Journal of the Korean Statistical Society Vol.23 No.2

In this paper, distribution of Votaw's $\lambda_1$(mvc) criterion has been obtained using inverse Mellin transform, residue theorem and properties of special functions.

Role of Mitochondrial Oxidative Stress in Sepsis

Harsha Nagar,Shuyu Piao,Cuk-Seong Kim 대한중환자의학회 2018 Acute and Critical Care Vol.33 No.2

Mitochondria are considered the power house of the cell and are an essential part of the cellular infrastructure, serving as the primary site for adenosine triphosphate production via oxidative phosphorylation. These organelles also release reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are normal byproducts of metabolism at physiological levels; however, overproduction of ROS under pathophysiological conditions is considered part of a disease process, as in sepsis. The inflammatory response inherent in sepsis initiates changes in normal mitochondrial functions that may result in organ damage. There is a complex system of interacting antioxidant defenses that normally function to combat oxidative stress and prevent damage to the mitochondria. It is widely accepted that oxidative stress-mediated injury plays an important role in the development of organ failure; however, conclusive evidence of any beneficial effect of systemic antioxidant supplementation in patients with sepsis and organ dysfunction is lacking. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that antioxidant therapy delivered specifically to the mitochondria may be useful.

Enzymatic Clarification of Fruit Juices (Apple, Pineapple, and Tomato) Using Purified Bacillus pumilus SV-85S Xylanase

Sushil Nagar,Anuradha Mittal,Vijay Kumar Gupta 한국생물공학회 2012 Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering Vol.17 No.6

The xylanase obtained from a hyper-producer Bacillus pumilus SV-85S was purified and characterized to evaluate its potential in industrial applications. Xylanase was purified to homogeneity 25.3-fold with 63.2% recovery using cation-exchange chromatography through CMSephadex C-50. The purified xylanase showed a single band on Native-PAGE and a single peak in RP-HPLC confirming its homogeneity. The purified enzyme revealed a single band on SDS-PAGE with a molecular mass of 23.6 kDa, which was confirmed with gel filtration chromatography through Sepharose 6B. The Km and Vmax of the purified xylanase was 1.0 mg/mL and 333.3 IU/mL,respectively. The temperature and pH profiles of the purified xylanase revealed that it was thermo and alkali stable. In recent years due to the overall increase in natural fruit juice consumption, juices have become important from a consumption point of view. However, raw juice is turbid and viscous which tends to settle during storage. Therefore, it must be clarified before commercialization. The efficacy of absolutely purified xylanase was studied on juice enrichment of apples (Malus domestica), pineapples (Ananas comosus L.) and tomatos (Lycopersicum esculentum). The treatment with xylanase lead to an increased juice yield by 23.53% (apple), 10.78% (pineapple), and 20.78%(tomato) as well as having a significant effect on juice clarity by an increase of % transmittance of 22.20, 19.80,and 14.30, respectively. The turbidity and viscosity was also decreased without affecting acid neutrality significantly.

Synthesis and characterization of silver nanoparticles via green route

Niharika Nagar,Shikha Jain,Pranav Kachhawah,Vijay Devra 한국화학공학회 2016 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.33 No.10

The development of competent green chemistry methods for synthesis of metal nanoparticles has become a main focus of researchers. In this study we report the green synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNps) by reduction of silver nitrate, using leaf broth of Azadirakta indica (Neem). The plant leaf broth simultaneously acts as reducing agent as well as capping agent at 30 oC. The effect of different concentration of silver ions, percentage of leaf broth and temperature on morphology of dispersed silver nanoparticles was studied. The formation of silver nanoparticles in dispersion was monitored through the analysis of absorbance spectra by UV-Visible spectrophotometer at different stages during the process of synthesis. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis revealed that silver nanoparticles were pure and monodispersed and size was ranging from 9-56 nm. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis indicates prominent bands of absorbance, which are responsible for reducing of Ag+ ions and stabilization of obtained silver nanoparticles. Results confirmed this protocol as simple, rapid, cost effective, eco-friendly and alternative conventional physical/chemical methods.

Lithium ion Battery Parameter extraction using the Physics Based Mathematical model and Neural Network method

Anshul Nagar,Jonghoon Kim 전력전자학회 2023 전력전자학술대회 논문집 Vol.2023 No.7