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The article focuses on the challenges and costs associated with adhering to specific manuscript formatting requirements imposed by journals, highlighting the significant economic burden on researchers and suggesting a pragmatic approach to ease the formatting process. Topics include the frustration of authors with time-consuming formatting, the unclear instructions from journals regarding formatting.

The article reports that Suman Chakraborty, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur won the 2022 Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science for his contributions to deepening the understanding of fluid mechanics at micro and nanoscales. Topics include examines Chakraborty's innovations have led to the development of low-cost medical devices for healthcare in resource-limited areas.

The article discusses that researchers from Nagarjuna Post Graduate College of Science and Pt Ravishankar Shukla University have collaborated with colleagues at the Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya have invented a low-cost method, smartphone-integrated paper sensor for detecting pesticides in food.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully launched its second civilian C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission onboard Earth Observation Satellite-04 (EOS-04). The SAR data monitors and measures various atmospheric features and parameters. In this paper, we report on the investigation of EOS-04 data for several atmospheric phenomena. One of the crucial parameters for studying atmospheric manifestations in SAR data is ocean surface winds and an algorithm for its retrieval has been developed using EOS-04 data. The wind speed products thus generated are evaluated using observations from the Advanced Scatterometer and subsequently used to study atmospheric phenomena like boundary layer structures. The EOS-04 SAR data is also demonstrated for studying structures associated with tropical cyclones, coupling of rain and wind imprints and distinct signatures of an atmospheric front. The study outcomes are used to interpret atmospheric phenomena and understand backscattering signals from EOS-04 SAR. This indicates the possibility and potential of a gamut of atmospheric phenomena that can be probed using EOS-04 SAR data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EOS-04 (Earth Observation Satellite-04), launched on 14 February 2022, is a follow-on mission to Indian Space Research Organisation’s first synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite RISAT-1. It is capable of imaging in either side of the track with incidence angle range from 12.2° to 55.1°. Onboard SAR system supports variety of resolution and swath requirements and can operate in various modes like StripMap, ScanSAR and Sliding Spotlight modes with various polarization combinations like linear, hybrid and full/quad polarimetry. EOS-04 is the first spaceborne SAR mission worldwide supporting full-polarimetry (FP) data acquisitions in ScanSAR modes. Availability of FP datasets in wide swath modes (ScanSAR modes) is a big step towards scientific analysis for various applications in a timebound manner. For enabling interferometric processing, EOS-04 orbits are being maintained within the baseline requirements of 500 m. EOS-04 has 17 days repetivity resulting in less temporal decorrelation to use the datasets for various deformation studies. In addition to this, analysis ready data (ARD) product, normalized radar backscatter (NRB) Gamma0 product, are introduced to minimize the user efforts for any immediate analysis. In NRB Gamma0 products, terrain induced variations particularly on hill-slopes affecting the brightness of the radar return is normalized by applying radiometric terrain correction (RTC) on SAR images. This paper discusses about the data processing aspects related to calibration, polarimetry, interferometry and NRB Gamma0 product generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitalization has brought a revolutionary change in every walk of human life, giving the average person many digital options for payment and settlement. Information communication technology enabled the transformation of our banking system from paper to virtual mode, facilitating speedy and secure fund transfers. Post-demonetization (8 November 2016), the cashless economy got a boost, and about 98% of transactions have become cashless. A cashless policy empowers industries, leading to an increase in employment opportunities and reducing cash-oriented fraud. The Reserve Bank of India- Digital Payments Index was recorded at 349.30 as of March 2022 against 304.06 for September 2021, indicating significant growth, rapid adoption and deepening of digital payment across the nation. During the financial year 2021–22, digital transactions surged to 7195 crores, with the value increasing to Rs 17.44 billion. There is a strong need to make policies for protection against cyberattacks, encourage digital literacy, and ensure adequate rural penetration of internet connectivity and banking infrastructure, with awareness among rural masses to strengthen organized indigenous markets. This article provides an insight into the cashless economy and the impact of digital innovation on India’s financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compensation serves as a post-conflict management tool for human-wildlife conflicts. In the Bannerghatta National Park (BNP) region, Karnataka, India, around 57.4% and 95% of the farmers received compensation for crop loss and cattle kill respectively. Compensation claims incurred transportation and paper costs of 60-70% and 30-40% respectively, and it took 7.6-12.3 months on average to receive compensation. Crop loss applications had the lion's share of the total applications, while the compensation paid share was relatively less in the total compensation paid. Inadequacy of compensation was a major constraint. Separate advance fund provisions for crop loss, livestock depredation, property damage and human-related losses in proportion to annual cases can prevent the delay and inadequacy of compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term experiments are essential in understanding the ecological consequences of global land use and climate change. Further, it is well established that longterm data sets are prerequisites for effective management of forest resources and biodiversity conservation. In view of this, the present study attempts to contribute to major global long-term ecological monitoring (LTEM) networks and the status of LTEM studies in India with a special focus on Indian Himalayan Region. Over the last 40 years, around 103 countries from the America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia have been engaged in LTEM studies on various aspects of biodiversity, monitoring and predicting climate change impacts in a range of ecosystems, including the mountains. The temporal distribution of past studies on the subject shows a gradual increasing pattern (3 papers in 1992) with a peak during 2021 (105 papers). The established LTEM networks across the globe provide a significant empirical basis for understanding ecosystem structure and dynamics. Literature indicates plenty of permanent monitoring plots from India, mostly from southern India, and their significant contribution to ecosystem understanding. Himalayan regions are important sites for monitoring biological and socio-ecological responses to environmental perturbations, including climate change. LTEM studies are lacking in the IHR; only a few sites have been established, mostly in alpine ecosystems. This review identifies research gaps, opportunities with respect to LTEM studies, and the possibilities for strengthening long-term research and observation in India in general and the Himalaya in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that Kiran Sharma from the BML Munjal University, Gurugram investigated patterns of retractions from 1981 to 2020 through team size and retracted citations, and she extracted retracted papers indexed by the Web of Science and found retracted publications in the database.

The field of whole genomic studies and investigations is currently focused on change-point detection. Over time, various segmentation techniques have been proposed to identify these change points. To effectively locate segments within a genome, it is helpful to pinpoint the intervals or boundaries between them, which are known as change points. By treating these change points as outliers, they can be identified. The anomalies or outliers in a dataset are the observations which are significantly different from the rest of the observations. They can be attributed to some measurement errors or properties of the data themselves. Studying the fluctuations over different segments also revealed the heterogeneity between consecutive segments. In this paper, anomaly identification approach or influential point detection has been discussed and studied in cow genome data of chromosome 25. Furthermore, the observed anomalies have been confirmed to determine whether or not they are true change points. The two-step technique resulted in the identification of change sites based on observed abnormalities and is efficient in terms of calculation time and cost. This study aims to detect any anomalies in genomic data and determine the exact points at which the data segment significantly differed from the rest of the segments. We have developed relevant R codes for data processing and applied methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital twin (DT) is the latest technology, which helps in generation of exact digital replica of the physical system. In this work, an in-house DT of a thermovacuum chamber and payload is developed. This research paper covers the development and implementation of an in-house cross-platform software application, a mobile AR app, and a Microsoft HoloLens 2 application, which provides real-time sensor data with voice control. The objective of this research is to study the potential of DT technology in real time monitoring of testing of payloads in thermovac system. Results demonstrate that the developed software applications provide a comprehensive 1 : 1 scale 3D visualization of the chamber along with essential sensor parameters for users to monitor the chamber and payload status, leading to a more effective decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A scientometric analysis was conducted to study the productivity and trend dynamics of organic farming research in India covering a period of 20 years (2002-21). The present study aims at science mapping to summarize research activity and its essential aspects. The scientometric analysis outlines the year-wise research growth pattern, prolific authors and their productivity, major contributing journals, major contributing institutions and countries along with keyword occurrences for trend dynamics of organic farming research in India. The data have been sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The most productive period was 2017-21 (44.76% of the total papers published). The growth pattern showed a gradual increase in research during the two decades. Research articles were the most common document type. About 20.11% of international co-authorship was observed in organic farming research. ICAR-based Indian Journal of Agricultural Science was the major contributing source to organic farming research. This study has the potential to benchmark organic farming research in India and play a significant catalytic role in further research in the field of organic farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India is the second largest wheat producer in the world after Russia. Wheat harvesting in the country was traditionally done using a sickle, a hand tool. However, in the last two decades, combined harvesters have been extensively used. The rapid development of mechanization has resulted in the production of dust and straw particles during the harvesting operation of wheat. These particles have severe health hazards for the machine operator. Exposure to various types of particulate matter has a variety of effects on human health. Such an effect can be minimized if the concentration of the generated particle is maintained within a permissible limit. Hence, the present study has been conducted to evaluate and categorize dust and straw particles in the workspace of a combine harvester operator during wheat harvesting. An image-processing technique was used to study a field data sample collected on sticky paper. It describes a novel method of collecting dust and straw particles while harvesting wheat. Few studies have been conducted in developing countries to analyse the characteristics of dust and wheat straw exposure of combined harvester operators. The number of dust and straw particles deposited per square millimetre was 9-12, with sizes ranging from 10 to 1400 µm. The extracted data were divided into three groups, viz. thoracic, inhalable and straw and modelled using machine learning algorithms, including support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbor. With an accuracy of 96%, SVM outperformed the other methods for categorising dust and straw particles, whereas linear discriminant analysis performed poorly with an accuracy of 88%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural and remote regions of developing economies face a serious scarcity of reliable energy supply. Focus on providing electricity through renewable and off grid energy resources is becoming increasingly popular. Off the grid or decentralized renewable energy typically considers either solar or small hydro power to fill the supply deficit and increase in demand with time is generally ignored. This paper proposes a hybrid technology mix of various renewable energy options for two remote villages located in Darma valley of Uttarakhand state in the Indian Himalayan Region. Since the villages are at an average height of 3500 m amsl, they are inaccessible during winters due to heavy snowfall. Therefore, decentralized energy could be the most cost effective solution to provide electricity. This paper estimates the energy demand of these villages and identifies the most optimum off the grid solutions, and compares it with grid connected electricity supply using hybrid optimization model for electric renewables. Micro hydro energy generation was found to be the most cost effective and techno-economically viable solution. This paper also evaluates the barriers faced by remote Himalayan villages so as to achieve reliable application of the results of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the challenges and implications of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT in scientific writing, emphasizing the need for scrutiny before submitting AI-generated text. Topics discussed include the limitations of AI in producing truly original content, potential issues with plagiarism detection, the risk of fabricated citations, and the importance of responsible disclosure when using AI in research papers.

The 'publish or perish' race among researchers force at least some of them to opt for quick outlets for publication, making them fall into the trap of predatory journals. With a strong base and history of research institutions and journals, the present study explores grooming a reasonable number of quality journals in India to tackle the menace of predatory publishing. The data presented are collected from different sources to work out the approximate minimum number of quality journals that can be strengthened using state-of-the-art technology solutions as well as internationally competitive journal editorial, review and publishing procedures. It is difficult to deal with the commercial interests of predatory publishers through academic safeguards alone. However, their negative impact can be contained through a set of action plans by various stakeholders, such as sensitizing authors about the perils of predatory publishing, training new authors about the nuances of academic publishing to facilitate their manuscripts getting accepted in good journals, strengthening Indian journals to publish more quality papers, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research articles communicate original scientific research to their target audience, shaping individual careers and ultimately, scientific paradigms themselves. Writing a high-quality manuscript requires substantial investment of time and effort, but without careful optimization, success of the final product is far from being assured. To address this, we used a meta-survey approach to identify the key determinants of a positive editorial reception. Interestingly, scientific writing and overall manuscript quality emerged as the major determinants of editorial response, irrespective of the journal background. However, writing a high-quality manuscript is often a challenging task for seasoned researchers; for a novice it might prove to be overwhelming. In recognition of this, the present article aims to streamline the manuscript development process for seamless conversion of novel experimental findings into a well-written paper. To this end, we have deconstructed the scientific writing process into seven salient steps, starting from conceptualization to final postpublication networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UAV downwash airflow pattern generated by rotor propellers is one of the significant factors influencing the characteristics of spray droplet deposition distribution. UAV sprayer and battery operated sprayer were used to study the effect of downwash airflow distribution of UAV on spray droplet deposition characteristics in a paddy field. The UAV sprayer was operated with optimized operational parameters and spray droplet characteristics, viz. spray deposition rate (µl cm-2), spray droplet size (µm), spray deposition density (No's cm-2) and spray deposition uniformity (%) were analysed using Deposit Scan software. The UAV sprayer showed better results in spray droplet deposition rate, spray coverage per unit area and spray droplet deposition densities than the conventional battery-operated manual sprayer. Additionally, it was found that the UAV sprayer increased the chemical's penetration into crop leaves, leading to higher chemical deposition on both the upper and lower layers of rice leaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agricultural sector plays a critical role in mitigating environmental sustainability challenges and climate change impacts. Agricultural research is essential for conserving genetic resources, developing nutritious and high-yielding varieties, and enhancing soil, animal, and human health without affecting the biodiversityecosystem. This paper gives an outlook on what means environmental sustainability integration possible in agricultural research through multidisciplinary partnerships. The state of agricultural research today looks at innovative approaches to support sustainable agriculture and discusses how we might use these approaches to make real strides towards environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the prevalence of Taenia solium and Taenia saginata tapeworm infections in India. It reports that researchers conducted a systematic review of numerous scientific papers and discovered that these infections were widespread among people of all age groups. It emphasizes the need for raising awareness about sanitation and livestock vaccination to combat these infections.

Trees outside forests, including agroforestry, are the major source of wood produced in India. Keeping in view their direct benefits, inter alia livelihood security, climate-resilient agriculture for small and marginal farmers, and sustained supply of quality feedstock to the industry, a multidisciplinary approach in a mission mode is suggested for optimizing the impact of various programmes initiated by the Government and private sector. This would reduce import dependency on basics like paper pulp, newsprint and timber. A natural spin-off is conservation of germplasm in the forests and increased carbon sequestration by the trees and that locked in wood products, thereby contributing to India’s international climate and land restoration commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on method based on bibliometric data for the identification of young, talented individuals in science. Topics include examines they produced a set of several potential talented individuals in the cohort of scientists who published their first paper within the five-year time period 2007–11.