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PublicationArticle Regional landslide susceptibility zonation utilizing bivariate statistical techniques in the northwestern Himalayas, Jammu and Kashmir, India(Springer, 2024) Imran Khan; Harish Bahuguna; Ashutosh KaintholaThis research focuses on assessing landslide susceptibility in the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) region of the northwestern Himalayas, which is known for its high incidence of landslides. Utilizing advanced geographic information system (GIS) techniques, 18 influencing factors, including terrain characteristics, land use, rainfall, and lithology, were incorporated to create a comprehensive landslide susceptibility map (LSM). Leveraging a robust database comprising 6669 landslides, with 70% utilized for modelling and 30% for validation, the study utilized a Yule's coefficient (YC). The resulting LSM, categorized into five susceptibility zones, indicates that one third of the study area is highly susceptible to landslides, with 9.9, 23.9, 27.9, 23.1, and 15.2% falling into very high, high, moderate, low, and very low susceptibility zones, respectively. The model’s accuracy was validated with an 80.9% success rate through receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis. This LSM serves as a crucial tool for regional planning and management, providing valuable insights to mitigate landslide hazards. It facilitates informed decision-making and proactive measures and enhances resilience in landslide-prone areas, thereby contributing to the sustainable development and safety of the J&K Himalayan region. © Indian Academy of Sciences 2024.PublicationArticle Work-Life Balance and Occupational Stress of the Non-Gazetted Central Reserve Police Force Jawans in Chandauli(Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, 2023) Gunjan Singh; Manushi Srivastava; Mona Srivastava; Ratan Kumar Srivastava; Priya SrivastavaBackground: A good work life balance is essential for the employees of any organization because it emphasize on balancing the personal and professional life. However there is scarcity of studies focusing work-life balance of defense force employees in India. Aims & Objectives: The present study explores the Work-Life Balance and Occupational Stress of the Non-Gazetted Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Jawans. The main objective behind conducting this study is to investigate the relationship between Work Life Balance and Occupational Stress among the Non-Gazetted CRPF Jawans. Methods: The present study is a quantitative cross-sectional study based on data collected from 354 non-gazetted officers of 148th battalion in Chandauli, Uttar Pradesh, India. Data was collected from after receiving written consent from the respondents. A semi-structured questionnaire was designed to collect the data which included questions related to socio-demographic characteristics, 13 self-developed questions related to work life balance and 46 items Occupational Stress scale developed by Srivastava & Singh. Result: Most of the CRPF Jawans had moderate occupational stress and high work-life balance. The study found moderate negative correlation between Work Life Balance score and Occupational Stress score among the non-gazetted CRPF Jawans. © 2023, Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine. All rights reserved.PublicationArticle Household food insecurity and mental health among teenage girls living in urban slums in Varanasi, India: A cross-sectional study(MDPI AG, 2018) Divya Rani; Jitendra Kumar Singh; Dilaram Acharya; Rajan Paudel; Kwan Lee; Shri Prakash SinghThis study was undertaken to investigate the relation between household food insecurity and mental health problems in teenage girls living in urban slums. This community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 5 urban slums in Varanasi, India, between September 2016 and July 2017. A probability proportion to size (PPS) method was employed to select 5 of 210 urban slums at a first stage, and in the second stage, 418 teenage girls were chosen randomly from selected households. The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and mental health inventory tools were employed to assess food insecurity and mental health status. Multivariable logistic regression analysis with at a 95% confidence interval (CI) was used to assess the association between household food insecurity and mental health status. Of 418 respondents, 47.6% were food insecure; 64.1%, 57.7%, and 58.4% had high levels of anxiety, depression, or psychological distress, respectively; and 57.2% exhibited a medium level of loss of behavioral control. Furthermore, teenage girls from food insecure households were more likely to have high levels of anxiety, depression, loss of behavioral control and psychological distress than those living in food secure households. This study shows food insecurity is independently associated with mental health problems among teenage girls. Food insecurity in Indian slums should be addressed by specific public health intervention programs that provide access to sufficient safe, nutritious food. © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.PublicationArticle Petrology, genesis and geodynamic implication of the Mesoproterozoic–Late Cretaceous Timmasamudram kimberlite cluster, Wajrakarur field, Eastern Dharwar Craton, southern India(Elsevier B.V., 2017) Ashish Dongre; N.V. Chalapathi Rao; K.S. Viljoen; B. LehmannNew mineralogical and bulk-rock geochemical data for the recently recognised Mesoproterozoic (ca. 1100 Ma) and late Cretaceous (ca. 90 Ma) kimberlites in the Timmasamudram cluster (TKC) of the Wajrakarur kimberlite field (WKF), Eastern Dharwar Craton, southern India, are presented. On the basis of groundmass mineral chemistry (phlogopite, spinel, perovskite and clinopyroxene), bulk-rock chemistry (SiO2, K2O, low TiO2, Ba/Nb and La/Sm), and perovskite Nd isotopic compositions, the TK-1 (macrocrystic variety) and TK-4 (Macrocrystic variety) kimberlites in this cluster are here classified as orangeites (i.e. Group II kimberlites), with geochemical characteristics that are very similar to orangeites previously described from the Bastar Craton in central India, as well as the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa. The remaining kimberlites (e.g., TK-2, TK-3 and the TK-1 microcrystic variant), are more similar to other 1100 Ma, Group I-type kimberlites of the Eastern Dharwar Craton, as well as the typical Group I kimberlites of the Kaapvaal Craton. Through the application of geochemical modelling, based on published carbonated peridotite/melt trace element partition coefficients, we show that the generation of the TKC kimberlites and the orangeites results from low degrees of partial melting of a metasomatised, carbonated peridotite. Depleted mantle (TDM) Nd perovskite model ages of the 1100 Ma Timmasamudram kimberlites show that the metasomatic enrichment of their source regions are broadly similar to that of the Mesoproterozoic kimberlites of the EDC. The younger, late Cretaceous (ca. 90 Ma) TK-1 (macrocrystic variant) and TK-4 kimberlites, as well as the orangeites from the Bastar Craton, share similar Nd model ages of 1100 Ma, consistent with a similarity in the timing of source enrichment during the amalgamation of Rodinia supercontinent. The presence of late Cretaceous diamondiferous orangeite activity, presumably related to the location of the Marion hotspot in southern India at the time, suggests that thick lithosphere was preserved, at least locally, up to the late Cretaceous, and was not entirely destroyed during the breakup of Gondwana, as inferred by some recent geophysical models. © 2016 China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking UniversityPublicationArticle An Insight Into Systemic Immune Response in Leishmania donovani Mediated Atypical Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in the New Endemic State of Himachal Pradesh, India(Frontiers Media S.A., 2022) Lovlesh Thakur; Priyanka Madaan; Aklank Jain; Vinay Shankar; Ajeet Negi; Shashi Bhushan Chauhan; Shyam Sundar; Om Prakash Singh; Manju JainLeishmaniasis continues to afflict known and newer endemic sites despite global efforts towards its control and elimination. In this regard, the emergence of newer endemic sites with unusual disease formats is recognized wherein Leishmania donovani complex classically known to cause visceral disease is demonstrated to cause cutaneous manifestation. In this context, atypical cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) cases caused by L. donovani genetic variants from the newer endemic state of Himachal Pradesh (HP) in India are beginning to be understood in terms of parasite determinants. The atypical CL manifestation further needs to be explored to define host immune correlates with a possible role in driving the unusual disease progression. In the given study, we performed comprehensive systemic-immune profiling of the atypical CL patients from the study area in HP, India, in comparison with the classical visceral leishmaniasis (VL) patients from the northeast region of India. The systemic immune response was studied using ELISA-based assessment of Th1, Th2, Th17, Treg, and Th22 specific plasma cytokine expression pattern and parasite-specific total serum IgG/IgG subclasses. The specified immune correlates are known to exhibit heterogeneous association with the different infecting parasite species, infection load, and co-lateral host immunopathology in classical CL and VL. In the atypical CL patient group, altered expression of IL-10 emerged as the key finding that could potentially fine-tune the Th1/Th17/Th22 effector cytokine axis towards a localized cutaneous manifestation. A reduced expression of IL-10 along with a high IFN-γ/IL-10 ratio as a readout of effective parasite killing defined atypical cutaneous outcome. In contrast, high circulatory IL-10 levels and a depressed IFN-γ/IL-10 ratio were seen in classical VL patients in line with an ineffective parasite-killing cytokine response. Overall, the study highlights new knowledge on host immune correlates in terms of cytokine expression pattern and IgG subclasses that underline atypical disease manifestation such that L. donovani, a generally visceralizing parasite species cause skin localized cutaneous lesions. Copyright © 2022 Thakur, Madaan, Jain, Shankar, Negi, Chauhan, Sundar, Singh and Jain.PublicationArticle Evaluation of CORDEX- South Asia regional climate models for heat wave simulations over India(Elsevier Ltd, 2021) Saumya Singh; R.K. Mall; J. Dadich; S. Verma; J.V. Singh; A. GuptaThe episodes of heat wave events have strengthened in recent decades causing great concern for human health, agriculture and natural ecosystem. In the present study, Regional Climate Models (RCMs) namely, CCAM and RegCM, from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiments (CORDEX) for South Asia (SA) are evaluated for simulating heat waves (March–June) for a long-term period (1971 to 2005) over India in comparison with observations from India Meteorological Department (IMD). The statistical analysis (correlation, RMSE, MAE, ECDF) results reveal differences in RCMs in simulating spatial pattern and trends of maximum temperature before bias correction. Variance scaling bias correction is found to remove bias and improve model simulations in capturing temperature variability. An increase in correlation in daily observations from 0.24 to 0.70 and reduction in RMSE from 8.08 °C to 2.02 °C and MAE from 3.87 °C to 2.43 °C after bias correction is observed between model and observation. LMDZ4 and GFDL-ESM2M are found to perform best in simulating interannual variability of seasonal mean maximum temperature with an underestimation of −7.74% and −15.41% which improved significantly to around −1.51% and − 0.78%, respectively after bias correction over India. LMDZ4 and GFDL-ESM2M are also best-performing models in significantly reproducing the heat wave frequency and spatial variability in closer proximity with observations over India amongst all models after bias correction. Over NW and western regions, the LMDZ4 and GFDL-ESM2M ensemble models successfully capture the increasing trend of 0.2 events/year and 0.4 events/year accordance to IMD and IITM criteria, respectively. However, the ACCESS1.0, CNRM-CM5 and CCSM4 ensemble experiments overestimated heat waves by ±40 events in most sub-divisions in India. Over the central Indian regions, the ACCESS 1.0 and CNRM-CM5 model output show a negative trend of −0.2 events/year and large spatial variability possibly due to model associated uncertainties. Overall the results show an improvement in capturing maximum temperature and heat waves across the regions of Indian sub-continent in the bias-corrected downscaled CORDEX-SA ensemble RCMs than without bias-corrected output. The study suggests a way forward to assess RCMs performance and uncertainty in extreme weather analysis in future projections. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.PublicationArticle Fuzziness in conceptualisation of women’s empowerment, access to resources and autonomy: evidence from Indian states(Springer, 2017) Tulika Tripathi; Nripendra K. MishraEmpowerment is instrumentally important for achieving positive development outcomes and well-being of life which lies in the doing and being what one values and have reason to value, i.e. agency. Sen made a strong claim for increasing the agency of the individual to enable them to be an effective agent of their own well-being and development. The concept of empowerment is very complex in itself, indeed very fuzzy also. Different scholars hold different definition of empowerment according to the need of their work. Women’s agency, autonomy and empowerment are widely used idea in development literature and capability approach. But there exists substantial ambiguity in conception of these ideas. While women’s well-being and women’s agency is sufficiently distinguished from each other, there seems to be a large overlap between agency and empowerment and between agency and autonomy. The present paper examines various conceptions of these ideas to clearly mark the overlapping zones and distinguishing features of respective concepts. It is shown that operationalisation of these concepts in empirical research covering all states of India is quite difficult and given the limitation of data sources only some dimensions of empowerment can be empirically tested at all India level. This paper uses NFHS-3 data set to do so. The second part of the paper carries out empirical testing of indicators of access to resources and autonomy for major 15 states of India and shows that access to resources and autonomy are not necessarily coterminous. © 2017, Institute for Social and Economic Change.PublicationArticle A note on the Fan-Fabric Structures in the late Palaeoproterozoic Kajrahat Limestone, Katni, M.P., India(Palaeontological Society Of India, 2021) Uday Bhan; Divya Singh; Mukund Sharma; Deepak Singh; S.K. PandeyPresent study records the Fan-Fabric Structures from the late Palaeoproterozoic Kajrahat Limestone of the Vindhyan Supergroup, India exposed in Katni district, M. P. Centimeter (cm) size carbonate fans (1 to 10 cm in length) radiating in upward direction are part of a stromatolite dominated Kajrahat Limestone in the area. The Kajrahat FFS represent their wide-spread occurrence in the Proterozoic successions of India. Our study establishes that these fans were originally precipitated and not the result of a late diagenesis or any other post sedimentation process. These fan-fabric structures were deposited in intertidal to sub-tidal environments. Globally, fan-fabrics structures are considered a common feature of the Archaean to early Mesoproterozoic carbonate platforms. © 2021 Palaeontological Society Of India. All rights reserved.PublicationNote First report of powdery mildew caused by Erysiphe alphitoides on Aegle marmelos in India(Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2020) Arghya Banerjee; Debashis Rana; Saidul Islam; Swarnavo Chakraborty; Subrata Chatterjee; Arghya Chatterjee; Koushik Banerjee; Birendranath Panja; Partha Sarathi Nath[No abstract available]PublicationArticle Menstrual hygiene practices among adolescent women in rural India: a cross-sectional study(BioMed Central Ltd, 2022) Aditya Singh; Mahashweta Chakrabarty; Shivani Singh; Rakesh Chandra; Sourav Chowdhury; Anshika SinghBackground: Exclusive use of hygienic methods (sanitary napkins, locally prepared napkins, tampons, and menstrual cups) to prevent the visibility of bloodstains during menstruation is still considerably low among adolescent women in rural India. However, no prior research has explored the prevalence and determinants of exclusive hygienic methods among rural Indian adolescent women. To address this gap, this study examines the factors affecting adolescent women’s exclusive use of hygienic methods in rural India. Additionally, this study explores state- and district-level geographical disparities in the exclusive use of hygienic methods among adolescent women in rural India. Methods: Information on 95,551 adolescent women from rural India from the latest round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) was analyzed. Bivariate statistics and multilevel logistic regression analysis were used to assess the Individual- and community-level factors associated with exclusive use of hygienic methods among adolescent women in rural India. Choropleth maps were used to discern the geographical disparities in the exclusive use of hygienic methods. Results: In rural India, only 42% of adolescent women exclusively used hygienic methods, with substantial geographic disparities at the state and district levels. At the state level, the exclusive use of hygienic methods varied from 23% in Uttar Pradesh to 85% in Tamil Nadu. Even greater variation was observed at the district level. There was a clear north-south divide in the exclusive use of hygienic methods among adolescent women in rural India. The results of multilevel logistic regression indicated a considerable amount of variation in the exclusive use of hygienic methods at community level which further reduced when controlled for individual and community-level factors. Rural Indian adolescent women with higher education (AOR:3.20, 95% CI: 2.81–3.64), from general category (AOR: 1.14, 95% CI: 1.07–1.21), with medium mass media exposure (AOR: 1.43, 95% CI: 1.35–1.51), and from richest wealth quintile (AOR: 3.98, 95% CI: 3.69–4.30) were more likely to use hygienic methods exclusively. Conclusion: Wide differential across biodemographic and socioeconomic groups, and substantial geographic disparities at state- and district-level in the exclusive use of hygienic methods suggests a need to adopt context-specific interventions for adolescent women in rural India. Distribution of subsidized or free menstrual hygiene methods to disadvantaged adolescent women, and in the low-prevalence districts may increase the level of exclusive use of hygienic methods remarkably. © 2022, The Author(s).