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The violent Galwan clashes of 2020 have changed the trajectory of India–China relations. It has also compelled the Indian government and policy makers to undertake major and long-term changes to push for military modernisation. The need for a modernised, leaner, and younger military is quite eminent and the Galwan clashes have further underscored this issue. Given this backdrop, the article looks at the various changes, which the current Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has undertaken to achieve this goal. It also argues that the government is aware that these changes will need time and resources while acknowledging that the Indian side cannot continue to be reactive. India under the current leadership appears to be a very different nation than the Chinese are used to.

Plasmodial resistance to a variety of plant-based antimalarial drugs has led toward the discovery of more effective antimalarial compounds having chemical or biological origin. Since natural compounds are considered as safer drugs, in this study, yeast strains were identified and compared for the production of carotenoids that are well-known antioxidants and this metabolite was tested for its antiparasitic activity. Plasmodium falciparum3D7 strain was selected as the target parasite for evaluation of antimalarial activity of yeast carotenoids using in vitro studies. Data were analyzed by FACS (fluorescence-activated cell sorter) and counted via gold standard Giemsa-stained smears. The extracted yeast carotenoids showed a profound inhibitory effect at a concentration of 10–3µg/µl and 10−4µg/µl when compared to β- carotene as control. SYBR Green1 fluorescent dye was used to confirm the decrease in parasitaemia at given range of concentration. Egress assay results suggested that treated parasite remained stalled at schizont stage with constricted morphology and were darkly stained. Non-toxicity of carotenoids on erythrocytes and on human liver hepatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2 cells) was shown at a given concentration. This report provides strong evidence for antimalarial effects of extracted yeast carotenoids, which can be produced via a sustainable and cost-effective strategy and may be scaled up for industrial application.

B. M. Jain. 2019. South Asia Conundrum: The Great Power Gambit. Lanham, USA: Lexington Books. 171 pp. ISBN 978-1-4985-7175-3.

Drought stress remains one of the most detrimental environmental constraints that hampers plant growth and development resulting in reduced yield and leading to economic losses. Studies have highlighted the beneficial role of carbon-based nanomaterials (NMs) such as multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs), single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), graphene, fullerene, and metal-based nanoparticles (NPs) (Ag, Au, Cu, Fe2O3, TiO2, and ZnO) in plants under unfavorable conditions such as drought. NPs help plants cope with drought by improving plant growth indices and enhancing biomass. It improves water and nutrient uptake and utilization. It helps retain water by altering the cell walls and regulating stomatal closure. The photosynthetic parameters in NP-treated plants reportedly improved with the increase in pigment content and rate of photosynthesis. Due to NP exposure, the activation of enzymatic and nonenzymatic antioxidants has reportedly improved. These antioxidants play a significant role in the defense system against stress. Studies have reported the accumulation of osmolytes and secondary metabolites. Osmolytes scavenge reactive oxygen species, which can cause oxidative stress in plants. Secondary metabolites are involved in the water retention process, thus improving plant coping strategies with stress. The deleterious effects of drought stress are alleviated by reducing malondialdehyde resulting from lipid peroxidation. Reactive oxygen species accumulation is also controlled with NP treatment. Furthermore, NPs have been reported to regulate the expression of drought-responsive genes and the biosynthesis of phytohormones such as abscisic acid, auxin, gibberellin, and cytokinin, which help plants defend against drought stress. This study reviewed 72 journal articles from 192 Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and PubMed papers. In this review, we have discussed the impact of NP treatment on morphological, physio-biochemical, and molecular responses in monocot and dicot plants under drought conditions with an emphasis on NP uptake, transportation, and localization.

This study investigated the potential of oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloidesstrain (ATCC20409) for the sustainable production of microbial lipids as biodiesel feedstock and other economically important fatty acids in comparison to algal or plant-based biodiesel. The strain exhibited high lipid content (76% of dry cell weight biomass) through consolidated bioprocessing which was transesterified to produce biodiesel. Physico-chemical properties of the biodiesel produced showed that they were in accordance with ASTM standards, although few parameters such as acid value, calorific value and free fatty acid value differed to some extent, as also reported in plant-based/microalgal biodiesel. Fatty acid methyl esters analysis of biodiesel showed 50.18% unsaturated fatty acid and 49.81% saturated fatty acid. Total content of (monounsaturated fatty acid) MUFA was higher than (polyunsaturated fatty acid) PUFA, being 44.36% and 2.69%, respectively. Considering the yield and cost, lipid extracted from R. toruloidesmay become a promising alternative feed in biodiesel production.

Automatic handwritten character recognition is one of the most critical and interesting research areas in domain of pattern recognition. The problem becomes more challenging if domain is handwritten Hindi character as Hindi characters are cursive in nature and demonstrate a lot of similar features. A number of feature extraction, classification and recognition techniques have been devised and being used in this area; still the efficiency and accuracy is awaited. In this article, performance of various feed-forward neural networks is evaluated for the generalized classification of handwritten Hindi characters using various feature extraction methods. To study and analyze the performance of the selected neural networks, training and test character patterns are presented to each model and their recognition accuracy is measured. It has been analyzed that the Radial basis function network and Exact Radial basis network give highest recognition accuracy while Elman backpropagation neural network gives lowest recognition rate for most of the selected feature extraction methods.

Modular neural network overcomes the problem of monolithic structures of artificial neural networks. Generally modular neural network is an integration of smaller sub complete neural network models. Each model works independently on a sub portion of larger size pattern vectors. There are two ways of modularizing the neural network i.e. modularizing learning and modularizing structure. In this present work the modular neural network with modular learning for pattern classification of hand written Hindi alphabets is considered. In the presented approach 24 individual sub neural networks have been considered for first phase computing. In the second phase the collective outputs of first phase is presented as input to global neural network. Thus, the output of second phase presents the desired classification of the given large training set. Neural networks of first phase are trained locally for decomposed input patterns with gradient descent learning. Updated weights of the first phase are mapped to the global neural network. The global neural network is further trained for the collective output patterns of the first phase computing. Two phases of modular neural network i.e. decomposition and replication have been applied to perform the classification task. Simulation results are indicating that the complete neural network is approximated well when updated weights of first phase are combined with new weights of second phase and it generalized well when only updated weights of sub neural network of first phase are mapped to the connection strength of global neural network.

The article focuses on the emerging civil society in China. Since the early twentieth century, civil society in China has been building in a specific form, and is now being decisively shaped by the Internet and other globalising factors. Civil society is seen as a liberating tool from a totalitarian system but it can also become an instrument of control by supernatural imperialist, economic and political forces.

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42977-021-00082-4

Active management of the third stage of labor (AMTSL) is more effective in reducing postpartum hemorrhage than expectant management. Widespread implementation of AMTSL in remote and rural areas, however, is hampered by the lack of availability of an efficacious, easily administered, safe, and storable oxytocic. Two parenterally administered oxytocics, methyl ergometrine, and oxytocin, have a number of drawbacks in addition to their routes of administration. Methylergometrine is associated with the occurrence of life-threatening complications, and oxytocin requires careful handling and storage due to thermal- and photolability. In previous studies, a synthetic prostaglandin E1 analog, misoprostol has shown promise as an effective oxytocic agent. This agent is affordable, stable at room temperature, has a long-shelf, and can be administered orally or by other routes.