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In the current era of knowledge-based economies and societies, access to knowledge and scientific advances is a key requirement for the scientific, technological and economic development of a country. Scientific research outcomes are often considered by many as a public good and hence it is often advocated that they should be openly and freely accessible to the scientific community and the wider society. To fulfil such aspirations, there have been several initiatives towards open access (OA), both globally and at national levels, including many important declarations and policies. India has also taken several initiatives over the last two decades to promote OA to scientific research outcomes, including putting in place mandates that require that all public funded research should be openly accessible. This article presents a quantitative analysis to understand how much of Indian research output from 2001 to 2020 is openly accessible, which in turn presents a reflection on the effectiveness of the various OA initiatives. The major OA routes adopted by Indian researchers and the subject-specific OA availability patterns are identified. Finally, the OA availability levels for funded and non-funded Indian research publications are determined. The results indicate growth in OA availability of Indian research papers, with green and gold OA routes being the preferred ones. A higher OA availability is observed in case of funded research publications. The article concludes with a brief discussion on the major patterns observed and their policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores the potential and usefulness of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies in space engineering. VR is a realistic, interactive 3D computer-created world that you can explore as if you really are there. In this work, we explored VR technology usage in space borne systems and engineering. Usually, designers use native mechanical design software like CATIA and CREO to design and analyse various systems and subsystems. System designers must also analyse system interfaces, intricacies, and alignments from all angles in an interactive and immersive fashion to foresee and avoid potential issues. Therefore, an in-house virtual reality solution is developed to understand a complex engineering sub-system/system; its assembly, dis-assembly; sectional views and perform 360-degree analysis of system/sub-systems by direct interaction in a virtual environment. This technical paper also explores the use of AR technology for various users to understand intricate engineering models and assist the crew members remotely, even in case of unavailability of proper communication. The AR application is equipped with interactive simulations and demonstrations, enabling engineers to manipulate and investigate 3D models in a mixed-reality environment. Application is designed in a generalized way to take any complex engineering model as an input. The contribution of this work to the field of space technology lies in its innovative approach and in-house developments to visualize and interact with complex models through VR and AR-based solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]