Mission Mode Research Articles

Framework for enhancing maternal nutrition: addressing under nutrition in tribal children inhabiting Central India

AbstractOur world is transitioning into a new generation of governance with much greater emphasis on targeted actions and mission mode programmes to achieve global sustainable goals (SDG). India with its Twenty-point programme which directly maps national and state programmes to global SDGs has been pacing up for 2030 targets. One of the major programmes that has been the prime focus is Integrated Child Development Services Scheme. India ranked 103rd among 119 countries on global hunger index, 2018. Significant reduction in malnutrition was seen among children below 6 years but the pace of reduction has been slow over the past decade. The path of malnutrition reduction of central belt states (tribal population dominant) deviates from rest of the country.Our analysis of National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS) found that 42% of tribal children are underweight (i.e. 1.5 times higher than non-tribal children), over 50% of prevalence of malnutrition is in tribal population. 100% Mother & Child Protection registration do not reciprocate to 100% all Anti-Natal Care visits showing faults in monitoring system indicating that the investment by government in all fronts, economic development has not translated into desired reduction in malnutrition. Their 8.6% population accounts to 30% cases of malaria translating to 50% malarial deaths indicative of higher disease burden. Malnutrition crisis among tribals begins way early manifesting in higher rates of Low Birth Weight deliveries (LBW) which is 3–4% higher compared to non-tribal population. This is due to low nutrient diet, laborious work during gestational period and high disease burden.The focus of Maternal nutrition enhancement projects by Tribal Welfare Depts in these states should include nutrition sensitive along with nutrition specific interventions targeting the population under risk as well as entering risk. Now with district level data (NFHS) available every 4 years can aid in district level planning, shifting focus from population based to prevalence and exclusive planning for tribals. Our study involves developing a robust framework to enhance maternal nutrition through strong community mobilization and partnership. It also addresses the convergence issue being faced in the current system and paves a way forward for convergence among inter departmental schemes for larger participation by people and greater coverage of the scheme and its benefits.

Monsoon Mission: A Targeted Activity to Improve Monsoon Prediction across Scales

AbstractIn spite of the summer monsoon’s importance in determining the life and economy of an agriculture-dependent country like India, committed efforts toward improving its prediction and simulation have been limited. Hence, a focused mission mode program Monsoon Mission (MM) was founded in 2012 to spur progress in this direction. This article explains the efforts made by the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India, in implementing MM to develop a dynamical prediction framework to improve monsoon prediction. Climate Forecast System, version 2 (CFSv2), and the Met Office Unified Model (UM) were chosen as the base models. The efforts in this program have resulted in 1) unparalleled skill of 0.63 for seasonal prediction of the Indian monsoon (for the period 1981–2010) in a high-resolution (∼38 km) seasonal prediction system, relative to present-generation seasonal prediction models; 2) extended-range predictions by a CFS-based grand multimodel ensemble (MME) prediction system; and 3) a gain of 2-day lead time from very high-resolution (12.5 km) Global Forecast System (GFS)-based short-range predictions up to 10 days. These prediction skills are on par with other global leading weather and climate centers, and are better in some areas. Several developmental activities like coupled data assimilation, changes in convective parameterization, cloud microphysics schemes, and parameterization of land surface processes (including snow and sea ice) led to the improvements such as reducing the strong model biases in the Indian summer monsoon simulation and elsewhere in the tropics.

Focusing the L-Band Spaceborne Bistatic SAR Mission Data Using a Modified RD Algorithm

LuTan-1 [(LT-1), i.e., TwinSAR-L] mission is an innovative spaceborne bistatic synthetic-aperture radar (BiSAR) mission focusing mainly on differential interferometry, which will be launched in 2020. This article introduces some important aspects of the LT-1 mission for the first time, including the formation configuration, imaging mode, application scenarios, and the efficient baselines between the master satellite and the slave satellite. To realize the high accurate topography and deformation measurements, a wide swath BiSAR focusing algorithm with phase reserving ability should be developed. This article proposes a modified bistatic range-Doppler algorithm based on 2-D principle of stationary phase spectrum, which reduces the phase error introduced by the root term expansion and has an excellent focus performance and a good phase reserving ability. Finally, the spaceborne bistatic simulation experiments using orbital parameters and imaging mode of the LT-1 mission, including point targets and scene targets, are utilized to illustrate the validity and accuracy of the proposed algorithm.

A cross sectional study to assess the awareness and satisfaction level among the beneficiaries regarding Mission Indradhanush in selected districts of Indore division

Background: Only 62% (NFHS-4) of the infants in India are fully immunized which is much less than the desired goal of achieving 85% coverage. To accelerate the process of immunization by covering 5% and more children every year, the Mission Mode has been adopted to achieve target of full coverage by 2020. Mission Indradhanush will target all children under the age of two years and pregnant women with all available vaccines.Methods: It is a cross sectional study done in 3 randomly selected districts of Indore division. The beneficiaries selected were children <2 years and pregnant women. The selection of beneficiaries was done by exit interview technique. Data collection was done by using pre-designed, semi-structured questionnaire which assess the awareness and satisfaction level of the beneficiaries.Results: About 88% were aware about the immunization. Overall 78% beneficiaries agreed that vaccination is compulsory, 62% agreed that vaccination schedule should be followed, 30% beneficiaries considered that vaccination was harmful. Most of the beneficiaries were satisfied with behaviour of the health provider, with all key messages given by health provider.Conclusions: Most common reasons found for drop out or left out were, fear of side effects due to vaccination followed by lack of awareness regarding session sites. Satisfaction level was found relatively low regarding difficulty in finding the place where vaccination was done and distance of session sites.

Test-Friendly Data-Selectable Self-Gating (DSSG)

Low-power design is a key consideration in modern design. XOR self-gating (data-driven self-gating) is used for power reduction in clock networks, which is one of the main factors of dynamic power consumption. When applying XOR self-gating, dynamic power consumption is reduced, but the number of required test patterns on the testing side is inflated. In critical cases, more than three times the regular number of scan test patterns may be required for industrial designs, such as GPUs. In this brief, we propose a novel self-gating structure. Data-selectable self-gating (DSSG) is designed to use functional data and scan data selectively to eliminate the unnecessary clock toggling of flip-flops. With this structure, the self-gating function can be used in the scan test mode, as well as the function mode. When the self-gating logic is used during scan shift operations, the stuck-at faults in the self-gating logic can be tested with short test sequences; therefore, the rise in test costs can be mitigated. It is possible to test the stuck-at faults in self-gating logic using only four scan test patterns. The experimental results show that the average of the stuck-at test pattern increase ratio has been dropped from more than 90% to less than 8%. The low-power performance of the proposed method in the mission mode is the same as that of the conventional self-gating structures. When the DSSG method is used, the dynamic power of the shift operation which may increase excessively during the scan test can be reduced.

Service quality perception: A study of common service centers operating in rural areas

Maharashtra Government has implemented e-Governance project in the various government offices to improve the delivery of government services in transparent manner. Amongst the various projects Maha e-Seva Kendra project has been started to provide the services such as various online certificates to the people residing in Maharashtra. Maha e-Seva project is implemented in urban as well as in rural areas under the Revenue Department as a Mission Mode Project of National e-Governance Plan to provide the government services more efficiently to the citizens. So there is a need to assess the efficiency of the implemented project in terms of citizen’s satisfaction and service quality. The present research study is conducted in the rural parts of Kolhapur district. Perception of citizens regarding service quality of Common Service Centers operating in rural areas is assessed by using SERVQUAL Model. The study deals with the facilities and services provided by the Common Service Centers. Keywords: Service quality, SERVQUAL, Maha e- Seva Kendra, Common service centers, e-Governance.

A novel energy harvesting scheme in interference networks with UAVs

With the development of communication network technology and information technology, the diversity of information in modern society and the large size of communication regions have already limited the reconnaissance, surveillance and target tracking tasks by single unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). So single UAV has been unable to meet the needs nowadays. Therefore, the cooperative mission mode of multiple UAVs will be the main working form in the future. In the process of information transmission, interference and energy limitation are two key issues in the network. Therefore, we propose a new scheme for wireless energy harvesting (EH) and interference eliminating, which can optimize energy efficiency and eliminate interferences simultaneously. In the proposed scheme, we choose some of the antennas on the relay UAVs, which apply power splitting to decode information and collect energy at the same time, while the EH is done by the remaining antennas. A large number of simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed wireless opportunistic interference alignment-based (OIA-based) EH scheme.

Study of e-governance in India: a survey

E-governance is the process of delivering public services to citizens through the info. + communication tech. with reliability, transparency, efficiency without breaking the concept of cost-effectiveness. Governance can be felt omnipresent (24 × 7, globally). This work explores the growth and development of e-governance in India. Though the concept of e-governance was started in the eighth decade of the 20th century, it entered a second phase (organised/wireless + satellite) in India with NeGP-1.0 in 2006. In the beginning, existing manual processes were computerised without changing the original manual data acquisition, etc. We can say that the existing manual process was made workable on the computer. It was felt that, shall it not be better to introduce digitisation at the very early stage (grass root level of governance)? This idea took the shape of Digital India, in 2014. The translation converted to transformation. We also explore the implementation of e-governance projects. Various Indian states have implemented many mission mode projects successfully. It shall empower citizens by permitting seamless access to the government services. There are some difficulties and obstacles in e-governance implementation. This study is an effort to identify them.

Reply: Prevalence of hypertension and prehypertension in schoolchildren from Central India.

Sir, We thank commenter(s) for taking interest in our study titled “Prevalence of hypertension and prehypertension in schoolchildren from Central India” Published in the May–August 2019 issue of the journal.[1] Our study was conducted as part of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Jai Vigyan mission mode project on “community control of rheumatic fever/rheumatic heart disease” (2007–2014). We used the “Fourth Report on the Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure in Children and Adolescents” published in 2004 because it was the only reference standard available till 2017 when we conducted the study.[2] The study of Sayeemuddin et al. referred by the commenter(s) was also based on the same reference standard.[3] To the best of our knowledge, the study of Sayeemuddin et al., from a single center, based on selected group of children from higher social strata, without any multivariate analysis, has not formed a basis for creating Indian pediatric population blood pressure reference centile curves.[3] We have included children from different socioeconomic backgrounds in our study to take care of possible variation in blood pressure that might occur based on nutritional, ethnic, and socioeconomic variables that has been referred by the commenter(s). Financial support and sponsorship The present study was conducted as part of Jai Vigyan Mission mode project on “Community Control of Rheumatic fever/Rheumatic Heart Disease” and funded by the ICMR, New Delhi, India. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest. Acknowledgment We acknowledge the valuable guidance from late Professor R. Tandon for designing and conducting the study.

Hardware Protection via Logic Locking Test Points

Growing reverse-engineering attempts to steal or violate a design intellectual property (IP), or to identify the device technology in order to counterfeit integrated circuits (ICs), raise serious concerns in the IC design community. As the information derived from these practices can be used in a number of malicious ways, various active techniques have been proposed and deployed to protect IP, of which logic locking is a vital part. It allows inserting certain gates in a circuit’s data path to lock outputs to fixed logic values, if a wrong unlocking key is applied. This paper demonstrates that test points—industry-proven design-for-test technology used primarily to enhance the overall design testability–can also be reused in the mission mode to lock the circuit, and thus to improve the hardware security against IP piracy. In particular, it is shown that test points can facilitate the hiding of design functionality from adversaries. As a result, not only is the overall design testability improved, but also effective protection against piracy through unauthorized excess production and other forms of IP theft is ensured. Experimental results on industrial designs with test points demonstrate that the proposed scheme is effective in achieving a desired degree of hardware obfuscation.

Correction: Assessment of the High Resolution SAR Mode of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission for First Year Ice and Multiyear Ice Characterization. Remote Sensing 2018, 10, 594

In Figure 5 of [1], we detected a minor mistake in the visualization of the Spearman correlation related to the color bar.[...]

Catholic parish mission partnerships: Faith basis, practice, and ethical considerations

Parish mission partnerships have become a major mode of international mission in the US Catholic Church. This is the first large study of Catholic parishes from around the country that are engaged in such partnerships (N=91) that examines how practitioners understand the purpose and goals of the partnerships, their faith basis, and the principles and values that undergird them. It also explores how the practitioners engage in parish mission partnerships, how they learned to do so, and their awareness of potential ethical concerns in partnerships regarding dependency, paternalism, and the self-esteem of their non-US partners.

Preventing Scan Attacks on Secure Circuits Through Scan Chain Encryption

Scan attacks exploit facilities offered by scan chains to retrieve embedded secret data, in particular, secret keys used by the device for data encryption/decryption in mission mode. This paper presents a scan attack countermeasure based on the encryption of the data written to or read from the scan chains. The secret-key management system already embedded in the device is used to provide appropriate keys for encryption of data flowing on the scan chains. The goal of the proposed solution is to counteract the scan-related security threats while preserving test and diagnosis efficiency provided by conventional design-for-testability techniques, as well as to allow debugging capabilities in mission mode. The proposed solution can deal with both stuck-at and transition-faults test schemes as well as single and multiple scan chain configurations using test data compression schemes. We will show that the proposed scheme provides expected test/diagnostic and debug facilities as classical scan design with marginal impacts on area, test time and design flows, while successfully preventing control and observation of data flowing in the scan chains by unauthorized users.

On the Analysis and the Mitigation of Power Supply Noise and Power Distribution Network Impedance Variation for Scan-Based Delay Testing Techniques

In this paper, we analyze the impact of the power supply noise and the power distribution network (PDN) impedance variation on the timing margin in both modes for ICs with multiple clock domains. We investigate the so-called intermodulation products (IMPs). We show that IMPs are mainly induced by the dependent nature of the transistors. We also provide experimental results showing that scan-based delay testing can be optimistic with respect to the mission mode for maximum achievable nominal frequency prediction, even at lower clock frequencies. We also show that IMPs can induce timing margin fluctuations that can be larger than that of the ones induced by the voltage droop in the test mode. Using an improved HSpice simulation model of a PDN validated by experimental results, we also quantify the timing margin variation due to power noise in the test mode as a function of the clock frequency, including the so-called clock stretching phenomenon. Finally, we propose a robust test signal scheme for multiple clock domain chips. The simulation results reveal that this scheme is less sensitive to PDN impedance variation than that of the most popular existing test schemes, and that it provides timing margins closer to those obtained in the mission mode.

MICROSCOPE mission: drag-free and attitude control system expertise activities toward the scientific team

Microscope is a CNES-ESA-ONERA-CNRS-OCA-DLR-ZARM mission dedicated to the test of the Equivalence Principle with an improved accuracy of 10−15. The 300 kg drag-free microsatellite was launched on April 25th 2016 into a 710 km dawndusk sun-synchronous orbit for a 2-year mission. To comply with stringent requirements, the drag-free and attitude control system (DFACS) involves the scientific accelerometer as main sensor and a set of 8 cold gas proportional thrusters. Once in mission mode, within the CNES drag-free expertise center (CECT) the DFACS team provides several services to the system and to the scientific mission center: cold gas monitoring and management, ‘Attitude’ ancillary data, DFACS expertise ancillary data. For this purpose, expertise tools have been implemented in the CECT, using the flexibility and efficiency of Matlab™ utilities. This paper presents the role of the CECT within the mission and details the expertise activities of the DFACS team illustrated with some typical in flight results.

Evaluation of the precision of different Delay-Doppler Processor (DDP) algorithms using CryoSat-2 data over open ocean

This article explores the modification and inclusion of different algorithms within an in-house Delay-Doppler Processor (DDP) chain in order to understand their potentiality and the related impact in terms of geophysical retrievals’ precision, when operating the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode of CryoSat-2 mission over open ocean. To do so, a flexible and tunable processing chain has been developed by isardSAT, being able to accommodate the different algorithms/options. Two different levels of analysis have been carried out. On one hand, the CryoSat-2 nominal SAR processing baseline is compared against the one considered in the state-of-the-art Sentinel-3 ocean topographic mission, and then, against a modified version of CS-2, where the samples set to zero by the processor on the stack are not included in the incoherent averaging. On the other, the integration of an advanced processing at stack level and based on the amplitude compensation and dilation compensation (ACDC) is evaluated within the CryoSat-2 DDP. A comparative study of the different DDP configurations is presented exploiting SAR full bit rate (FBR) data from CryoSat-2 over two regions in the central Pacific Ocean and the Agulhas box. Ad-hoc SAR ocean re-trackers are exploited to derive the geophysical parameters (sea surface height-SSH and significant wave height-SWH), such that the performance of the different baselines can be quantified in terms of precision, i.e., estimation noise.

Assessment of the High Resolution SAR Mode of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission for First Year Ice and Multiyear Ice Characterization

Simulated compact polarimetry from the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) is evaluated for sea ice classification. Compared to previous studies that evaluated the potential of RCM for sea ice classification, this study focuses on the High Resolution (HR) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode of the RCM associated with a higher noise floor (Noise Equivalent Sigma Zero of −19 dB), which can prove challenging for sea ice monitoring. Twenty three Compact Polarimetric (CP) parameters were derived and analyzed for the discrimination between first year ice (FYI) and multiyear ice (MYI). The results of the RCM HR mode are compared with those previously obtained for other RCM SAR modes for possible CP consistency parameters in sea ice classification under different noise floors, spatial resolutions, and radar incidence angles. Finally, effective CP parameters were identified and used for the classification of FYI and MYI using the Random Forest (RF) classification algorithm. This study indicates that, despite the expected high noise floor of the RCM HR mode, CP SAR data from this mode are promising for the classification of FYI and MYI in dry ice winter conditions. The overall classification accuracies of CP SAR data over two test sites (96.13% and 96.84%) were found to be comparable to the accuracies obtained using Full Polarimetric (FP) SAR data (98.99% and 99.20%).

Alternate Systems of Medicine in India—How Pervasive and Why?

The Government of India has decided to revive alternate systems of medicine (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy—AYUSH) on a mission mode. However, this endeavour is barely supported by any nationally representative assessment of the demand for these alternate systems of medicine. This assumes additional significance in light of persistently low levels of public spending on the conventional health system. This article does an exploratory analysis of the 68th round (2011–2012) of the National Sample Survey data to generate evidence on the demand for AYUSH services and patterns in utilization, if any. It finds that although AYUSH had a fairly consistent presence in policy pronouncements, its utilization is low, with substantial variations across states in terms of usage, availability and perceived efficacy of AYUSH. Inadequate awareness about the system and inefficacy of treatment emerge as the two biggest reasons for not using these services. There exist rural–urban and class differences in utilization, medium of delivery and determinants of AYUSH use in India.

Adaptation to climate change and variability: a case of direct seeded rice in Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract Farmers, researchers and policy-makers are increasingly concerned about the potential impacts of climate change. Researchers are using various climate models to assess the impacts and identifying relevant alternative adaptation strategies to mitigate climate change. In India, rice is the major cereal crop grown and is influenced due to climate change and variability, inadequate water supply, labour shortage and methane emissions from rice ecosystems. This necessitates adoption action and upscaling of key adaption strategies like direct seeded rice (DSR) using validated data from rice growing areas in India. The study used experimental data of 2010–2014 and field survey data of DSR and non-DSR farmers collected during 2014. Results show that DSR method has incurred less tillage and labour costs by eluding puddling and transplantation by labour. Large-scale adoption of DSR was observed during 2012–2015 in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. This was mainly due to the delayed monsoon and water supply, reduction in cost of cultivation, capacity building of stakeholders and their active involvement in awareness and training programmes. The study has demonstrated that integrated extension approach in technology dissemination and scaling-out through stakeholder integration is crucial. However, a mission mode framework is needed for technology upscaling at system level.

Transforming information security governance in India (A SAP-LAP based case study of security, IT policy and e-governance)

Purpose Digital India, the flagship programme of Government of India (GoI) originated from National e-Governance Project (NeGP) in the year 2014. The programme has important aspect of information security and implementation of IT policy which supports e-Governance in a focused approach of Mission Mode. In this context, there is a need to assess situation of the programme which covers a study of initiatives and actions taken by various actor involved and processes which are responsible for overall e-Governance. Therefore, the purpose of this case study is to develop a Situation-Actor-Process (SAP), Learning-Action-Performance (LAP) based inquiry model to synthesize situation of information security governance, IT policy and overall e-Governance. Design/methodology/approach In this case study both systematic inquiry and matrices based SAP-LAP models are developed. Actors are classified who are found responsible and engaged in IT policy framing, infrastructure development and also in e-Governance implementation. Based on a synthesis of SAP components, various LAP elements were then synthesized then which further led to learning from the case study. Suitable actions and performance have also been highlighted, followed by a statement of the impact of the efficacy i.e. transformation of information security, policy and e-Governance on the Digital India programme. Findings On developing the SAP-LAP framework, it was found that actors like the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Govt. of India secures a higher rank in implementing various initiatives and central sector schemes to accelerate the agenda of e-Governance. Actions of other preferred actors include more investments in IT infrastructure, policy development and a mechanism to address cyber security threats for effective implementation of e-Governance. It was found that actors should be pro-active on enhancing technical skills, capacity building and imparting education related to ICT applications and e-Governance. Decision making should be based on the sustainable management practices of e-Governance projects implementation to manage change, policy making and the governmental process of the Indian administration and also to achieve Sustainable Development Goals by the Indian economy. Research limitations/implications The SAP-LAP synthesis is used to develop the case study. However, few other qualitative and quantitative multi criteria decision making approaches could also be explored for the development of IT security based e-Governance framework in the Indian context. Practical implications The synthesis of SAP leads to LAP components which can bridge the gaps between information security, IT policy governance and e-Governance process. Based on the learning from the Situation, it is said that the case study can provide decision making support and has impact on the e-Governance process i.e. may enhance awareness about e-services available to the general public. Such work is required to assess the transparency and accountability on the Government. Social implications Learning based on the SAP-LAP framework could provide decision making support to the administrators, policy makers and IT sector stakeholders. Thus, the case study would further help in addressing the research gaps, accelerating e-Governance initiatives and in capturing cyber threats. Originality/value The SAP-LAP model is found as an intuitive approach to analyze the present status of information security governance, IT policy and e-Governance in India in a single unitary model.