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Background: The solid wastes and the wastewater (effluent) generated in the pulp and paper industry can be used to improve the soil fertility. However, the cation concentration in these residues can influence the bioavailability of some nutrients and soil properties. The objective of this study is to experiment the availability of the cations namely Ca, Mg, Na and K in laboratory (column) and the field. Methods: An experiment with PVC column was carried out in the laboratory to study the availability of cations as influenced by 13 irrigations with papermill effluent vis-à-vis in a field experiment in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 2019-2020. Result: The pH, EC and the concentration of the cations were higher in the field soil compared to the column soil barring magnesium. This may be due to the clogging of pores resulting in decreased infiltration in field soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a quantitative and qualitative dimensions of congenital heart defect (CHD) research output in India, based on publications data (1335) indexed in Scopus database during 2000-19. CHD research registered 10.0% growth, averaged 7.07 citations per paper, contributed 3.04% share to the global output and constitute 13.48% share of India's research as international collaborative. CHD research is skewed as top 10 countries account for 83.23% of global output. India ranks as the 10th most productive country in the world. The distribution of CHD research by type of research reveal that Tetralogy of Fallout accounted for the highest share (34.31% share), followed by Aortic Stenosis (30.41%), Atrial Septal Defects (28.16%), Ventricular Septal Defects (26.22%), etc. AIIMS - New Delhi, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Coimbatore and PGIMER - Chandigarh lead the country as the most productive organizations (with 222, 73 and 64 papers). Besides, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Coimbatore (33.88 and 4.79), SCTIMST - Trivandrum (30.73 and 4.35) and Institute of Medical Sciences, BHU, Varanasi (17.20 and 2.43) lead the country as the most impactful organizations in terms of citation per paper and relative citation index. B. Airan, A. Saxena and S. Talwar have been the most productive authors (with 63, 63 and 59 papers) and P. Khairy (16.31 and 2.31), B. Vaidyanathan (14.3 and 2.03) and R.K. Kumar (10.53 and 1.49) have been the most impactful authors. Indian Heart Journal, Annals of Pediatric Cardiology (84 papers) and Annals of Cardiac Anaesian (53 papers) topped the list of most productive journals (with 110, 84 and 53 papers). International Journal of Cardiology (18.62), Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions (16.64) and Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia (11.65) leads in ranking in terms of citation per paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Second International Conference on Advances in Plasma Science and Technology (ICAPST-21) was held during May 27–29, in 2021, at the Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India. As Dr. K. Navaneetha Pandiyaraj, the Organizing Chair of the Conference, states in the Preface of the conference’s Book of Abstracts: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Conference on Advances in Plasma Science and Technology (ICAPST-20) was held for the first time on February 12–14, 2020. The host institution was the Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India. As Dr. K. Navaneetha Pandiyaraj, the Organizing Chair of the Conference, states in the Preface of the conference’s Book of Abstracts: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientometrics analysis the quantitative as well as the qualitative aspects of scientific parameters for better understanding of the mechanism of research activities. The paper attempts to present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the publication output of Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore. Data have been collected from the Scopus database for the period 1997 to 2020. Among the 2110 papers published in the span of 24 years, the highest numbers of 404 papers were published in 2018 and 2019. 1792 papers (85.3%) were published during the last ten years from 2011 to 2020. Journal is the most preferred channel of publication with 1665 papers. This study reveals that Kumaraguru College of Technology has largely contributed to research in Science, Engineering and Technology and the publication output of faculty has increased considerably during the recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good scientific writing must be characterized by clear expression, conciseness, accuracy, and perhaps most importantly, honesty. Unfortunately, modern scientific research often takes place within all sorts of constraints and competing pressures. As a result, a portion of the scientific literature, whether generated by students of science or by seasoned professionals, is likely to be deficient in one or more of the above components. The present study attempted to present the positive and negative attitudes towards Plagiarism and examine the Subjective norms on plagiarism activities. Attitudes toward Plagiarism questionnaire was developed, with good psychometric characteristics. TPB is a relevant predictive model of academic dishonesty that explains behavior as a final act anticipated by logical thinking. Simple random sampling adopted for the study to collect data from the students, research scholars and faculty members of Arts and Science colleges in Coimbatore. The present study results show positive, negative and subjectivity norms attitudes of PG students. Research Scholars and faculty members towards plagiarism. Faculty members were relatively better informed and against plagiarism compared to post graduates. There by highlighting the need to address the issue of plagiarism among students. If the carry out of plagiarism is not in use care of, scientific research turns into a mere repetition of previous papers and lacks uniqueness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulses are an important protein source for vegetarian people across the world and they have a great potential to improve the human health, contribute to global food and nutritional security. Variety of pulses were grown in India with 25% of global production and 27% of global consumption. Though India is the largest pulses producer in the world, it imports around 3.5 million tons annually to meet the ever-increasing requirement. Less adoption of improved Agro techniques, low fertile soils and unpredictable environment conditions are major factor for low production of pulses. As a results of increasing population, the projected pulses requirement will be 32 million tons by 2030 which necessitate annual growth rate of 4.2%. With adoption of suitable agronomic strategies, the productivity has to be enhanced to meet the demand. This review work was done at Department of Agronomy, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Collected review and research papers were screened from various data base like TNAU e library, ARCC journals, google scholar, research gate and scopus used to write this paper. This review article documented information gathered on importance of pulses, area, production and productivity of pulses. Nipping is important agronomic practices that removes the apical bud dominance and promotes the lateral growth which turn better maintenance of source and sink relationship and enhance the pulses yield. Influence of nipping on growth and yield of various pluses crops has been discussed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The primary objectives were to determine the proportion of modern menstrual method (MMM) users among college going women in Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu; and to estimate the unmet needs associated with use of MMMs in comparison with other menstrual hygiene methods (MHMs). We also assessed the factors that determine MMM use among college going women. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among college going women in Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, India between October 2022 and January 2023 using a purpose predesigned, pretested, semi-structured proforma that included validated Menstrual Practice Needs Scale (MPNS-36). Results: Only 1.4% of the study participants used MMMs – menstrual cups (1.3%) and tampons (0.1%). Sanitary pads were the most common MHM of choice (96.3%); of which majority (98.6%) used disposable pads and more than half (50.4%) used non-biodegradable pads. Importantly, one in six (16.5%) were not aware of nature of sanitary pads (biodegradable or nonbiodegradable) used. The unmet needs associated with MMMs (menstrual cups and tampons) were significantly lower than that for other MHMs (including sanitary pads), in particular, the unmet material and home environment needs, unmet material reliability concerns, unmet reuse needs and unmet reuse insecurity. However, we found no significant difference between MMMs, sanitary pads and other MHMs in terms of unmet transport, college environment, change and disposal insecurity needs. The significant predictors of use of MMMs were age (more than 21 years of age), residence (urban), type of stay (off campus including home), socioeconomic status (upper), fathers' and mothers' education (high school and above), and presence of personal income. Discussions with friends (or peers) both before and after menarche regarding menstruation resulted in higher adoption of modern menstrual methods. Conclusion: MMMs provided comparative advantage with lesser unmet needs for material reliability and reuse insecurity concerns, particularly in home environment. However, none of the MHMs fulfilled the user expectations for transport and disposal insecurity concerns, particularly outdoors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicular ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) play a significant role in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Design. Intelligent Transportation Systems are the first mandatory requirements for any smart city. Researchers are vigorously working on ITSs for smart cities and so VANETs have received a lot of attention. In VANETs, Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) message transmissions are carried out using wireless access technologies like IEEE 802.11p and IEEE 1609 WAVE family of standards. The crucial challenge in the implementation of VANETs involves the task of deciding the routing protocol because unlike MANETs, handover in VANETs is extremely high. In this paper, a novel routing technique, One Caption for 3 Nodes (1C3N) algorithm is proposed. This algorithm is implemented along with other topology-based existing routing protocols for the implementation of VANETs in the Coimbatore-Urban Area (Indian Smart City). The performance evaluation is carried out by comparing metrics like goodput, Overhead, Packet delivery ratio (PDR), Packet loss ratio (PLR) and end-toend delay for four existing VANET routing protocols. The results show that a proper combination of packet loss model with routing protocol enhances the goodput and reduces the overhead for a fixed VANET. It is observed that the proposed 1C3N routing technique provides 60-65% better goodput than the other four algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hair salons use many hair products that have toxic chemicals in them. These toxic chemicals include volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, and particulate matter. Daily exposure to these pollutants causes severe health issues in the long run. This study aims to find the concentration of the air pollutants such as PM1, PM2.5, PM10, TVOC, CO2, and formaldehyde in four hair salons located in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. In this paper, we propose an IoT-based air quality monitoring system with integrated sensors to monitor the concentration of air pollutants remotely via ThingSpeak data analytics cloud platform in hair salons. The maximum 15 min average concentration values of PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 were 128, 154, and 169 µg/m3 respectively. The TVOC levels exhibited a rapid increase of about 80–90% during facials and hair gel application and a peak value of about 5248.25 ppb was measured at salon 2. Also, weekend and weekday comparison is done. It was found that the weekend concentrations of the measured pollutants are comparatively higher than weekday concentrations. After analyzing the pollutant concentration, the effects of primary health parameters such as blood pressure and pulse rate of the hairdressers are measured. One-third of the hairdressers displayed high blood pressure values with a maximum of 161/104 which falls under stage 2 hypertension. Also, secondary parameters such as temperature, humidity, ventilation type, and number of customers are also measured. From the overall analysis, it is suggested that adequate ventilation and regulated product usage are said to reduce the effects of indoor air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, the most imperative issue ascends in conventional technique is the unevenness in the configuration of climatic conditions (occasional precipitation, soil disintegration and so on) because of which the efficiency is diminished to a noteworthy degree. Another real disservice is these gadgets are yet to reach in the Indian market. The mindfulness is inadequate in the Indian farmers. To decide the dirt ripeness and profiling he needs to movement to adjacent agriculture based on turmeric cultivation focuses, which might possibly be available. The data in regards to the dirt conditions are not adequately utilized by the Indian farmers. The main objective of the study is to analyse the level of awareness among farmers about IoT in marketing process. For this purpose a sample of 75 was collected from the farmers of Coimbatore region based on random sampling method were percentage analysis, one way Anova, multiple regression and Kruskal Wallis test were used as samples to analyse the data. The conclusion is that the respondents don't have awareness towards access to web for IoT in marketing, display of notices/circulars through news papers by the government, checking availability of Books/lend out and the respondents (farmers) also have a negative opinion towards the process of IoT in marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insecticide applications are typically being carried out with traditional manual spraying equipment in redgram, which leads to inadequate control of insects due to higher crop height. The modern deployment of tractor-drawn spray machines causes serious damage to the crop. In this connection, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) spray technology has great potential for precise insecticide application in redgram crops. One of the important machine parameters influencing droplet deposition and drift characteristics in UAV sprayers is downwash airflow generated by a multi-rotor propeller. A field experiment was carried out at the redgram research field (N11.01, E76.92), Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, during 2021–2022 to study the spray drift and deposition characteristics of an autonomous UAV sprayer. The Imidacloprid (a.i. 17.8SL) insecticide mixed with water in a ratio of 1 mL per liter was sprayed with a UAV sprayer. Water-sensitive paper samples were kept at upper, middle, and bottom positions on the leaves, and data were analyzed for the spray droplet size, deposition rate, droplet density, and area coverage both in target and non-target areas using Spray Deposit Scanner software. UAV spray droplet deposition rate (2.93 ± 0.17, 2.01 ± 0.08, and 2.21 ± 0.162.38 μL cm−2), droplet density (47 ± 4.04, 53 ± 3.61, and 52 ± 8.74 droplets cm−2), and area coverage (15.72 ± 0.39, 16.60 ± 0.71, and 14.99 ± 0.39%) were highest in the upper layer as compared to the middle layer (droplet deposition rate: 1.21 ± 0.08, 1.07 ± 0.03, and 0.77 ± 0.02 μL cm−2; droplet density: 42 ± 2.52, 43 ± 8.50, and 38 ± 2.52 droplets cm−2; area coverage: 10.95 ± 0.81, 11.22 ± 0.56, and 8.57 ± 0.44%) and bottom layer (droplet deposition rate: 0.41 ± 0.06, 0.35 ± 0.03, and 0.33 ± 0.03 μL cm−2; droplet density: 22 ± 4.36, 17 ± 3.51, and 19 ± 4.51 droplets cm−2; area coverage: 2.78 ± 0.29, 2.95 ± 0.45, and 2.46 ± 0.20%, respectively). In the spray drift test, there was a higher droplet deposition rate (1.63 ± 0.09, 1.93 ± 0.05, and 1.82 ± 0.06 μL cm−2), area coverage (14.40 ± 0.07, 17.54 ± 0.36, and 16.42 ± 0.30%), and droplet density (46 ± 3.61, 54 ± 2.08, and 45 ± 3.21 No's cm−2) in the target area as compared to the non-target area (droplet deposition rate: 0.88 ± 0.02, 0.46 ± 0.03, 0.22 ± 0.05, and 0.00 μL cm−2; droplet density: 23 ± 1.53, 11 ± 2.08, 6 ± 1.53, and 0.00 droplets cm−2; area coverage: 7.58 ± 0.34, 4.41 ± 0.19, 2.16 ± 0.05, and 0.00%, respectively), which may have been due to the downwash airflow produced by the multi-rotor propeller of the UAV sprayer. Finally, the UAV-based spraying technology results showed that the downwash air produced by the six-rotor propeller improved the penetrability of insecticide to crop leaves and led to a higher droplet deposition rate, droplet density, area coverage, and droplet penetrability on the upper layer, middle layer, and bottom layer of the plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Indian Tourism Statistics Report 2018, 20 million tourists across the world are expected to tour India. Though at pinnacle, Indian tourism industry requires accelerated research on branding the destinations in the global context, which not only elevates the brand value of the destinations but also boost local economies and Foreign Direct Investments. This paper is a part of a major research and aims at understanding whether emerging spiritual attractions in the district of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India, create a potential space for branding the destination as spiritual destination. Data was gathered from 448 tourists through a structured questionnaire and SPSS has been employed for analyzing and deriving the findings. An interpretation has been made based on the results derived from Cross-Tabulation and Analysis of Variance. One of the most notable findings is: Coimbatore is also perceived as a spiritual destination by different nationals. It is critical to note that the destination also possesses other image aspects. However, for specifying the objective as to whether the selected geographical location is also perceived as spiritual destination, this paper has portrayed the aspect of spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is a weedy lignocellulosic material which represents the best substrate for the production of bioethanol in tropical countries due to its more availability and more biomass yield. For the fermentation and bioethanol production from water hyacinth, the different bacterial and fungal inoculants were used. Water hyacinth was obtained from ukkadam-valankulam lake, Coimbatore. These leaves were washed properly to remove soil and contaminants and dried for 3 hours at 120 ℃. It was grained into a fine powder and sieved using 1.5 μm in diameter nylon sieve. The sieved material was cultured using different microbial culture such as Aspergillus oryzae, Aspergillus niger and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. After 21 days incubation, the culture was distilled using rotary vacuum evaporator and the produced bioethanol was analyzed by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) technique. The previous report showed, less yield only obtained using water hyacinth, potato peels, cassava peel and millet husks but this study produced highest yield using water hyacinth. This study indicated that water hyacinth is mostly available aquatic plant for the production of ethanol. The aim of current work is to understand the usage of water hyacinth as main substrate for bioethanol production using fungal inoculum. The microbial inoculants used for current study reported more potential for the production of bioethanol. This current work gives more economical value to water hyacinths and it can be cleared from all the waterways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather forecasting become important tool for the planning of everyday farming activities, particularly the medium range weather forecast is highly required to reduce both input and production loss. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University is providing block level medium range weather forecast for next six days with Weather Research Forecast (WRF) Model and having accuracy of 50 -70 per cent, varies with season. An attempt was made at Agro Climate Research Centre, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 2019-21 to improve the accuracy of medium range rainfall forecast over different Agro Climate Zones of Tamil Nadu state by increasing the resolution from block level (9 km) to village level (3km) and altering the microphysics options in WRF v 4.2.1. The performance study tested four microphysics schemes viz., Kessler, WSM3, WSM5 and WSM6 for all the four seasons of 2020. The results obtained for the Southern Zone (SZ) is discussed in this paper and study concluded that the performance of high resolution village level (3km) rainfall forecast at Southern Agro Climatic Zone of Tamil Nadu generated from WRFv4.2.1 model was best with the WSM3 microphysics scheme followed by Kessler scheme, WSM5 and WSM6. Between the major rainfall seasons, Forecast Accuracy Index (FAI) was higher in NEM (0.56 to 0.73) than SWM (0.38 to 0.70), whereas the Forecast Usability Percent (FUP) was almost similar during both the South West Monsoon (SWM, 53.0 to 81.4) and North East Monsoon (NEM, 52.9 to 85.9). There was overestimation observed irrespective of season and microphysics options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many reinforced concrete frame buildings were developed and constructed in Coimbatore zone III before 2002. In 2002, the seismic code IS 1893 was updated. As a result, structures constructed earlier in 2002 do not meet the codal criterion. The majority of structures through infilled walls were nondesigned with infills in consideration. This paper goals to appraise seismic exposure of an advanced reinforced present concrete building with infilled and without infilled frames. A pushover analysis was used to conduct this analysis. According to ATC40, the analysis shows the comportment levels of several building components for various stated concert objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is considered one of the most superabundant resources on the earth that covers 75% of the entire earth's surface, yet numerous countries face problem due to water shortage. Desalination is considered the most efficient process to overcome this rising clean water demand. Solar energy is considered one of the efficient and finest resources to refine brackish water. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel black widow particle swarm optimization–based deep neural network approach to enhance the water productivity from a solar still. The main intension of the proposed BWPSO–based DNN approach is to enhance the performances of DNN by employing BWPSO for optimal water production. Here, the optimal weight of the DNN is determined by utilizing the BWPSO algorithm. The solar still is incorporated with a straight tube and spiral tube solar water collector. In addition to this, the study based on solar still and their experimental analysis is carried out in Coimbatore city located in Tamil Nadu. The evaluation is conducted for various parameters, namely glass temperature, average evaporation temperature, inlet and outlet temperature, water temperature, air temperature, yield, solar intensity, wind velocity, RMSE, MAE, MRE, and ECR, to determine the effectiveness of the system. Also, comparative analysis is made and the evaluation results reveal that the proposed approach outperforms various other approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operating temperature of the photovoltaic (PV) cell is essential in converting the renewable radiant energy emitted by the sun into direct current to meet various energy demands. It should be remembered that the photovoltaic efficiency and temperature of the solar PV cell are indirectly proportional. The performance of the PV module can be greatly enriched by minimizing the operating temperature of the semiconducting PV cells, and this is accomplished by removing the surplus heat from the PV module. This paper proposes a novel sandwich- glazed photovoltaic (SGPV) module as an alternative to the standard PV module for overheating protection and assessment of the photovoltaic, thermal, and overall efficiency of the sandwich-glazed photovoltaic thermal (SGPV/T) system. Effects on photovoltaic efficiency and temperature distribution in the SGPV/T system and the standard PV module are also compared. Furthermore, the programmed electrical and thermal models are simulated using MATLAB for comparative analysis. Experiments were conducted in India under the climatic conditions prevailing at Coimbatore (latitude: 11.10ºN; longitude: 76.96ºE). Subsequently, the performance and outlet water temperature of the SGPV/T system are significantly improved with an average photovoltaic, thermal, and overall efficiency of 9.67, 41.34, and 66.78%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The markets in India today are swamped with a extensive range of competitive products and offers, range of consumer attitudes and preferences, increase of brands. Leisure time and luxury markets have explosion in the new millennium. Modern lifestyle changes and shifts in psychographic inclination have resulted in demand for novel and innovative range of branded products and services. In such a condition understanding consumer behavior has become more composite for marketing mix, segmentation and to expand new dimensions in consumer orientation in a changing environment. Brand preferences are frequently studied by attempt to study and identify the loyal consumers. This paper presents a study of reason for change in brand preferences. The study considered 500 respondents from Coimbatore city, Tamil Nadu, India. Systematic sampling method has been used to select the sample and questionnaire is used to collect the data. The study found that the consumers are ready to change their brand preference. The main reason for change in brand preference is sales offers and discounts provided by the manufacturers. It is suggested that the manufacturers and marketers should concentrate and predict the consumers mind to retain their brand image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the performance of a single slope solar still has been improved using graphite plate fins and magnets (GPF-MSS) in the basin and compared with conventional solar still (CSS) under the same climate conditions. The experiments have been carried out at Coimbatore city in India during the summer months of 2019. The energy and exergy performances of solar stills have been assessed under the influence of solar irradiation, ambient temperature, and wind velocity. The economic and environmental benefits were evaluated for the period of 10 years. The quality of productivity collected was measured and compared with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The results showed that the productivity, energy, and exergy efficiency of GPF-MSS were improved by 19.6%, 21.4%, and 18.1%, respectively, when compared to CSS. The exergy destruction in basin was reduced significantly in GPF-MSS due to sensible heat absorption by graphite plate fins and magnets when compared to CSS. The payback period of GPF-MSS and CSS was estimated as 3.4 and 3.6 months, respectively. The enviro-economic analysis revealed that the net CO2 emissions of GPF-MSS and CSS were estimated as 14.1 tons and 8.42 tons, respectively. The carbon credits earned for GPF-MSS and CSS were estimated as 338.4 USD and 202.1 USD, respectively. The quality of distillate obtained from both the solar stills has met the requirements of BIS. Graphical abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale secondary data show that water access is improving in Indian slums; however, women still need to procure water from multiple sources. Based on field research conducted in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, this paper examines the everyday negotiations that urban women from slums undertake at different water sources. The study finds that women depend on street taps, water vendors, water tankers, and in-house connections in varying degrees. The results show variation in negotiations that women engage in at multiple sites and sources. These variations have emerged as a result of the characteristics of the water sources and household-level water storage capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, fluoride geochemistry and health risk of groundwater in Coimbatore district is studied. The order of dominance of ions were HCO3 > Cl > SO4 > CO3 and Na > Ca > Mg > K. Alkaline groundwater and the dominance of HCO3 and Na is favourable for the fluoride enrichment. Around 46% of the samples, N–NE regions, have F− higher than permissible limit of 1.5 mg/L. Pink granites, charnockite and gneisses in lithology is the possible origin of F−. However, NO3 vs F plot shows positive trend in some samples, indicating anthropogenic inputs of F−. Correlation plots of F− was trending positive with pH, HCO3 and Na and but negative for Ca, indicating the control of these ions in F− mobility. This result is supported by undersaturation of fluorite and supersaturation of carbonates. Four significant principal components were derived, which have explained 87% of the total variation. PC1 has high factor loadings for EC, Ca, Mg Na, Cl, SO4, NO3 indicating both natural and anthropogenic influences. PC2, PC3 and PC4 have higher loading for pH and HCO3, K and HCO3 and F−, respectively, indicating geogenic factors in the F− enrichment. Human health risk assessment (HHRA) by ingestion and dermal pathways were calculated using Hazard Quotient HQ and Hazard Index (HI). 27% of males, 36% of females and 39% of the children have HI > 1, posing noncarcinogenic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research paper is based on income, employment and saving patterns of internal migrant women workers in the construction industry, with special reference to Coimbatore city of Tamil Nadu state in India. The women workers face several problems such as wage discrimination, sexual harassment and poor sanitation in the study area. Sanitation is one of the most environment quality issues linked with population growth. Access to bathroom and restroom facilities is strong indicators. In the study, it was found that 82.4 percent of the construction workers suffer from this problem. The main objective of the study is socio-economic status, income, employment and saving patterns. The study is based on primary data collected using a pre-tested interview schedule. As the information of migrant women workers in the construction sector is not known, 100 migrant women workers were approached as respondents from each of the five zones of Coimbatore City, based on convenient sampling method. But for want of complete set of information, the response of 22 respondents was dropped and the sample size stood at 478. The study reveals that migrant women workers were working on an average five days a week and eight hours a day. In the case of current wage per day, the average wage was found to be Rs. 391. The same was Rs. 132.24 per day at their native place (before migration). On an average, migrant woman workers are saving Rs. 844.87 per month. The wage level of the migrant women workers before the migration was very low compared to the prevailing wage rate of the migrated locality. The lower wage rate in the native place was the reason for women workers to opt for migration for getting higher wage rate. Hence, the wage rate is the dominant factor responsible for the migration of women workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic factors are contaminating crystalline aquifers more rapidly than natural sources and affecting human health in many states in India. Since a large population depends on untreated groundwater, identifying the sources of this contamination and assessing the related human health risk are essential to ensure a good-quality water supply. Nitrate is one of the most widespread means of groundwater contamination in many parts of India. Coimbatore and Tirupur districts are the most rapidly growing industrial urban areas in southern India. This paper deals with nitrate contamination and possible health risks for children and adults in the Coimbatore and Tirupur districts based on 93 groundwater samples. To achieve this goal, classical hydrochemical and deterministic hazard identification methods coupled with spatial mapping technologies were applied. A wide variation in nitrate concentration, between 1 and 415 mg/L, was observed, with 37% of the samples exceeding the WHO permissible limit of 50 mg/L. The distinct concentrations of nitrate and other ions observed spatially can be attributed to the diverse geochemical and land use settings in the study area. The bivariate plots of NO3 with other ions suggested that the principal origin of nitrate in this study is related to the excess application of fertilizers and sewages. The spatial variation of NO3, in comparison with the land use map, confirmed these results. The values of hazard quotient (HQ) via ingestion exceeded the critical value, one in 40% in males, 42% in females, and 45% in children. However, HQ values via oral pathways are within one and pose no exposure risk. Thus, the hazard index corresponds to HQingestion only. The health risk was in the increasing order of male>female>children, and shows that body weight is the most critical factor that is influencing the health impact to children as compared to adults. The spatial variation of hazard index values showed that groundwater quality is highly polluted with NO3 in the north and northeastern parts of the study area, mainly due to intensive agricultural practices, and poses critical health concerns. Considering the increasing population and higher dependencies on groundwater, immediate and sufficient measures are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new method for the annotation of multispectral satellite images based on image segmentation is proposed in this paper. This method performs the multispectral image annotation by incorporating a modified locally excitatory globally inhibitory oscillatory network (LEGION) algorithm and cascaded support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Initially, images in the training set are represented with semantic concepts. The testing image is segmented into various image regions based on the color information. Segmented image regions are classified using cascaded SVM classifier based on the probabilities of semantic classes. Experiments are conducted on multispectral images of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India and the result validates the effectiveness of the proposed image annotation algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This empirical paper intends to understand the tourists' motivation towards visiting Coimbatore. Also, the study focuses on the influence of tourists' personal factors such as gender, age categories, education profile, occupation, nationality, monthly income, and marital status on their motivation. Growing global competition, expanding the horizons of motives and the need for destination marketers to lucratively position and rebrand their destinations are the consideration for this study. Convenient sampling method was adopted, where a structured questionnaire containing the necessary constructs measuring the motivation factors, including the tourists' sociodemographic characteristics, was floated to 570 tourists. After removing the improper responses, 448 responses were considered for the analysis. With the help of SPSS, Mean Calculation was used to understand the tourists distinct motives and Multivariate Analysis of Variance was used to understand the impact of tourists' personal factors on their motivation. The most influential motivation found among the tourists was adventure, fun and entertainment, besides experience and knowledge. Also, some motivation factors were found significant with tourists' personal factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today’s scenario, online shopping is playing an important role in the life of human because time is precious for every people. People have become very busy in their work and they are unable to make their shopping daily. In this article we are going to discuss regarding the preference of organic food products through online shopping (Basha, 2014)1. Awareness of organic products has been increasing steadily and Consumers are started to prefer organic food products because they are healthy, safety and environmental friendly (Brijesh Sivathanu, 2015)2. Consumer of organic food products are willing to purchase organic products through online shopping due to the time and travel constraints (Ramesh, 2015)10. In this paper the researcher has collected the sample size of 80 and tools used for the analysis are percentage analysis, chi- square analysis and Anova. The result of the study is found that the consumers are purchasing the organic food products through online shopping, especially for the health purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the dichotomous world of sanitation management in Coimbatore, India. Sanitation management is a process of safely managing and disposing human excreta and wastewater. As it flows from the private sphere to the public, many actors have social aspirations and discriminate according to class, thus maintaining a dichotomous world – the purity (clean, orderly, simple, and aesthetically appealing) and the pollution (filthy, dirty, poor, complex) – in their everyday struggle to manage. The paper examines the micro-politics of actors using the lens of 'purity and pollution' as they engage in managing sanitation in Coimbatore. It combines semi-structured, and in-depth interviews with sanitation workers, government officials and private companies. The paper reveals that government and international agencies take a narrow view of sanitation management, embeds its approach on the stigmatic practice, and adopts a backdoor form of governance in the city. The lens of purity and pollution reveals structurally distinct, mutually reinforcing, and dynamic approaches by actors to keep sanitation a 'matter out of place' and limit opportunities to professionalize the workers. It calls for an inclusive sanitation governance that do not separate between the imported sanitation fixtures and the socially embedded practices, rather contextualises sanitation management practices. • Sanitation management has been a 'matter out of place' for development. • The paper applies a 'purity and pollution' lens to understand sanitation. • It reveals the social stigma, cost-sensitivity, and backdoor sanitation governance. • It calls for a paradigm shift in the approach to sanitation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies recalling ability of child that motivates children to recall advertisements. A quantitative approach was used to collect data from over 150 respondents. The respondents were selected on the basis of school students under the age of 3-10. The results reveals that advertisements are a very effective tool in motivating in recalling advertisements. This paper also examines slogan recall among elementary school children within the context of memory development. Results indicate that slogan recall is positively related to age and to media exposure. The study aims at focusing on the recall effectiveness of television advertisements of children in Coimbatore city. Over a decade, most of the advertisements are directed towards children and they directly/indirectly influence their buying behavior. Children usually do not make brand choices at the time of advertising exposure rather it is the Memory of the advertising messages that influence children. Recall importance stems from the fact that recall measures some aspect of this memory of the advertising. Advertisements provide more information about a product that can be set into memory if the child is familiar with the attention values used in the advertisement because this allows the child to generate any cue from memory to recall the advertisements. The results of this study reveal that TV advertisements attract the attention of the children and the recall effectiveness is significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surgery is a particularly potent stressor and the detrimental effects of stress on people undergoing any surgery is indisputable. When left unchecked, the pre-surgery stress adversely impacts people's physical and psychological well-being, and may even evolve into severe pathological states. Therefore, it is essential to identify levels of preoperative stress in surgical patients. This paper focuses on developing an automatic pre-surgery stress detection scheme based on electrodermal activity (EDA). The measurement set up involves a wrist wearable that monitors EDA of a subject continuously in the most non-invasive and unobtrusive manner. Data were collected from 41 subjects [17 females and 24 males, age: 54.8 $\pm$ 16.8 years (mean $\pm$ SD)], who subsequently underwent different surgical procedures at the Sri Ramakrishna Hospital, Coimbatore, India. A supervised machine learning algorithm that detects motion artifacts in the recorded EDA data was developed. It yielded an accuracy of 97.83% on a new user dataset. The clean EDA data were further analyzed to determine low, moderate, and high levels of stress. A novel localized supervised learning scheme based on the adaptive partitioning of the dataset was adopted for stress detection. Consequently, the interindividual variability in the EDA due to person-specific factors such as the sweat gland density and skin thickness, which may lead to erroneous classification, could be eliminated. The scheme yielded a classification accuracy of 85.06% on a new user dataset and proved to be more effective than the general supervised classification model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In recent years, the multilingual content over the internet has grown exponentially together with the evolution of the internet. The usage of multilingual content is excluded from the regional language users because of the language barrier. So, machine translation between languages is the only possible solution to make these contents available for regional language users. Machine translation is the process of translating a text from one language to another. The machine translation system has been investigated well already in English and other European languages. However, it is still a nascent stage for Indian languages. This paper presents an overview of the Machine Translation in Indian Languages shared task conducted on September 7–8, 2017, at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India. This machine translation shared task in Indian languages is mainly focused on the development of English-Tamil, English-Hindi, English-Malayalam and English-Punjabi language pairs. This shared task aims at the following objectives: (a) to examine the state-of-the-art machine translation systems when translating from English to Indian languages; (b) to investigate the challenges faced in translating between English to Indian languages; (c) to create an open-source parallel corpus for Indian languages, which is lacking. Evaluating machine translation output is another challenging task especially for Indian languages. In this shared task, we have evaluated the participant's outputs with the help of human annotators. As far as we know, this is the first shared task which depends completely on the human evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian economy is expected to be the third largest by 2028. This sets the pace for various sectors, including the tourism sector. It is highly important to understand the existing tourists' behavior and perception towards destinations. The paper understands the impact of tourists' sociodemographic characteristics on perceived destination image, both cognitive and affective. This work has been extracted from a major research work on destination image with Coimbatore as the tourist destination. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire from 448 tourists and SPSS has been used for analyzing the data. Interpretation has been made based on multivariate analysis. The major findings are that sociodemographic characteristics such as age, education, occupation and income of tourists significantly influence perceived destination image. The most important image aspects of the destination have been examined and listed for the purpose of informing the destination marketers during strategic planning on branding the destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper deals with the experimental thermodynamic analysis of a forced convection solar air heater using pin-fin absorber plate and compared with the standard flat absorber plate. The experiments were carried out during the months of February 2018 and March 2018 at Coimbatore city in India. The performance parameters such as, outlet air temperature, energy efficiency, thermohydraulic efficiency, and exergy efficiency are used for performance comparisons. The results showed that the pin-fin absorber plate has about 17 °C higher outlet air temperature when compared to the flat absorber plate. The energy efficiency of a forced convection solar air heater using pin-fin absorber plate was found to be 3% to 12% higher when compared to flat absorber plate with 2% to 11% higher exergy efficiency. The results confirmed that forced convection solar air heaters using pin-fin absorber plate is having significant performance improvement in thermodynamic performance with minimum pressure drop across the air heater duct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coimbatore is one of the leading tier two cities in India. Vehicles in this city are increasing day by day. The VANET is a self-organizing network between vehicles. There are so many interesting issues in VANET. So many routing protocols are already availing in the market. In this paper, we put forward an adaptive quality of service (QoS) based smart routing for VANETs with ant colony optimization algorithm find a smart route in Coimbatore city. This smart routing protocol is to adaptively choose the connections in the various available nodes, through which data packets clearance to reach the destination. The selected smart route should fulfill with the QoS constraints and satisfy the best QoS in terms of three metrics, namely connectivity, probability, packet delivery ratio and delay. The AQRV and Ant colony algorithm was simulated. The comparative result was studied at various optimal positions in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This study aims to bring out the extent of usage and perceived effectiveness of HRM practices in the manufacturing sector of Coimbatore, an important industrial city in Tamilnadu. Design/Methodology/Approach -- The study used a structured questionnaire to collect data on the prevailing HRM practices in the region. The HR managers of selected companies across the region were asked to fill the questionnaire, which contained descriptive questions to bring out the HRM functions in a detailed manner. Descriptive statistics was used to bring out the extent of usage of HRM practices in the region. Findings -- The paper found that the regional industries have given due care to implement formal HRM practices and have focused on training programs and social responsibility activities. However, they were on a low profile in certain critical aspects of HRM like career planning, workers participation in management and transparent compensation metrics for employees. It also found that the industries perceived their HRM practices to be effective in achieving their business objectives. Research Limitations/Implications -- Only a few direct interviews were possible, which limited the researcher from probing into the details of the practices. Originality/Value -- This paper shows the influence of context on HRM and implies to the HR managers that they should always design their HRM practices according to their context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification and systematic monitoring of water spread regions using remote sensing techniques necessitates precise temporal resolution datasets. Landsat data are one of the most popular data sources that provides satellite derived images of the Earth's surface for examining the satellite-based indices of a specific region. In the present research study, Normalized Difference Water Index is employed to identify the surface area of 11 system and non-system lakes in a part of Coimbatore region over the time span of 32 years (1990–2022). Based on the analysis, the water spread region in 1990 is seen to be 13.01 ha which gradually increased to 435.17 ha in 2022. This clearly indicates that there is substantial difference in the rainfall statistics over the years. Computations for cross-validation are done using other indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Build-up Index (NDBI). A 500 m buffer is created and calculated for vegetation and built-up indices like Chinna kulam 1 and 2, Kumaraswamy Lake, Valankulam, Singanallur and Sengulam lakes which show the decreasing trend of NDVI. Simultaneously, NDBI increased in 2000, which shows that measures were taken to tackle the encroachment of lakes in the city and the concerted efforts of the Governmental authorities and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were fruitful. A decreasing trend is noted in NDBI during 2011 and 2020. The microclimatic conditions and advection current of waterbodies along with boating facilities and parks in some lakes offer city dwellers a tranquil recreational area with respite from vehicular pollution and heat generation from the concrete jungle. This study will be helpful in facilitating policy decisions for future planning and sustainable development of water bodies. It will also be beneficial in devising rehabilitation measures for irrigation tanks and will aid in bringing about agrarian stability of tanks in urban locales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the possible effects of climate change on sorghum in the western zone (WZ) comprising Coimbatore, Tirupur, and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu. The DSSAT crop simulation model was used to simulate sorghum yields with considering various planting dates and amounts of fertilizer application. The downscaled CCSM4 climate model data was utilized for the historical baseline period spanning from 1991 to 2020, as well as for future pridicted data from 2021 to 2099, under the RCP 4.5 scenarios. The key findings indicate that there is a projected yield decline range of -1.3% to -12.5% for the near century (2021-2040), -6.2% to -23.7% for the mid-century (2041-2070), and -12.6% to -30.5% for the end century (2071-2099). The sorghum yield experiences a high decrease at the end of the century (276.83 kg ha-1), mid-century (178.16 kg ha-1), and lastly in the near century (89.4 kg ha-1). The study revealed that a enhanced fertilizer application can have a minor positive effect on sorghum productivity. The study underscores the significant threat that climate change poses to food security in Tamil Nadu and emphasizes the need for adaptation strategies to protect agricultural productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptability and significant economic value of the neem tree are well-known, as it can flourish in a variety of environmental conditions. While the neem seed production is highly sensitive to prevailing weather conditions during the reproductive phase and flowering behaviour of the tree. A study was conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore in 2023 with the primary objective of validating the weather influence on neem seed production using the logics of physiological responses, as a continuation of research conducted the previous year (2022). During the pre-flowering and flowering stages, diverse weather conditions led to notable changes in the physiological traits of neem trees, which displayed varying patterns of flowering. Trees that flowered consistently showed elevated levels of indole acetic acid (IAA) oxidase, relative water content, and nitrate reductase compared to those that lacked flowers or produced intermittently. In the flowering stage, the neem trees responded positively in terms of physiological aspects like IAA oxidase, relative water content, nitrate reductase, and exhibited lower proline levels, which can be attributed to the optimal maximum temperature, rainfall, and soil moisture. Proline levels rose during the pre-flowering stage due to soil moisture deficits but fell during the flowering stage with the onset of rain. These physiological changes, driven by climatic factors, are likely to enhance the flowering, fruiting, and overall yield of neem trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intercropping presents an opportunity to optimise land use and resource efficiency in cotton cultivation, particularly for small and marginal farmers facing climate-related challenges and rising input costs. This study explores the potential of intercropping short-duration vegetables with cotton to transform this production system into a more economically viable and sustainable one. The study was conducted in the Cotton Department of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore during the winter irrigated season, from August to January, in both 2020 and 2021. The growth, yield parameters, equivalent yield (3645 and 4234 kg ha−1), and net return (Rs. 123,434 ha−1 and Rs. 154,034 ha−1) were higher in the intercropping system with the paired row planting of Bt cotton with two rows of cluster bean. Upon comparing sole cropping and the paired row method of planting, it was found that adopting the paired row system of planting Bt cotton with two rows of cluster bean was highly profitable in all aspects of crop production. Therefore, the adoption of paired row cropping systems with compatible intercrops that promote synergistic effects on the main crop should be considered for enhancing overall productivity, as well as sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Financial System is becoming more and more complex and dynamic as the changes are taking place in the business environment. Small finance bank are a type of niche banks in India. The aim behind these banks is to provide financial inclusion to those sections of the economy not being served by other banks and financial institutions. Microfinance is a form of money lending or banking service that is offered to low earning individuals or rural poor. It tries to evaluate the role of developing the microfinance circle with special reference to ESAF microfinance, which is one of the leading microfinance institutions in Tamilnadu. This paper describes the awareness and perception of customers of ESAF in different parts of Tamilnadu. Social Banking provide banking for the poor population, working for their developmental needs, providing them with easy formal credit, minimal requirements to open accounts, ease of access and friendly staff etc. Banking system in which banks subsidize the provision of banking services to poor and the orientation is towards serving the mass is known as social banking. The main foreground of ESAF is the spotlight they give to small entrepreneurs. They should work towards making society free of poverty and thereby increasing living standards by giving them to opportunities to join mainstream banking. This present study was led with an essential goal to examine the different determinants and fulfilment level on social focuses of social banks in India. This examine study was led distinctly in ESAF SFB of Coimbatore District in Tamilnadu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]