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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moisture measurement techniques presently available, as accurate determination of the moisture content (MC) of grains or any food items at right time is very important for its processing, marketing and storing.

There are basically two types of MC measurement techniques – destructive method and non-destructive method. In the time-consuming destructive method, cleaning of the food items is done and shells of food items like peanuts are removed for which man power is required and so the technique becomes costly. A literature review of the existing non-destructive methods has been done, and the methodology of each approach is explained with the figure. The less time-consuming non-destructive technique used to measure MC require less man power, as grains or food items can be directly used without any process like cleaning or crushing so that the technique become economic.

Most of the techniques used magnetic or electric properties to measure the MC indirectly. The problem with existing non-destructive technique is that measurement of MC uses only few numbers or grams of grains or food items at a time.

The farmers’ produce large quantity of grains. The small quantity of grains cannot be the representative sample for whole grains produced by the farmers. Most of the techniques use only small quantity of grains or food items at a time to measure the MC which is not accurate and representative of the produce. Also, the techniques are not simple and easily available. The cost of the techniques or arrangement to measure the MC is not reasonable.

Most of the farmers in the developing countries are financially backward. To store the agricultural produce, MC of the commodities is a key factor influencing the quality of the storage. Measurement of the MC of the seeds is thus very important for the farmers.

This paper is a review of the previous research that happened in this area, and it would help the researcher to know the techniques already been used. To the knowledge of the authors, the review of the existing moisture measurement of seeds/agricultural commodities is available in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between proactive personality (PP), goal orientation (GO), meta-skills and the underlying dimensions of protean (self-directed and value-driven) and boundaryless (boundaryless mobility and mobility preference) career attitudes among Indian IT professionals.

Data were collected from 600 IT professionals working in six IT companies in the Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) in India. Structural equation modeling was used to validate the measures of the selected constructs and for testing the hypothesis.

The results of the study revealed that PP significantly affects individuals’ protean and boundaryless career attitudes. Moreover, GO significantly affects protean career attitudes, and meta-skill significantly affects boundaryless mobility, respectively.

The study serves as a guide for the HR managers to devise the company’s strategies keeping in mind the employees’ requirements in parallel with the policies for IT industries in India.

The study enriches the protean and boundaryless career literature by identifying and empirically establishing the relationship between various personality traits and career patterns opted in the context of the Indian IT industry.

This study aims to investigate the buoyancy-induced heat and mass transfer phenomena in a backward-facing-step (BFS) channel subjected to applied magnetic field using different types of nanofluid.

Conservation equations of mass, momentum, energy and concentration are used through velocity-vorticity form of Navier–Stokes equations and solved using Galerkin’s weighted residual finite element method. The density variation is handled by Boussinesq approximation caused by thermo-solutal buoyancy forces evolved at the channel bottom wall having high heat and concentration. Simulations were carried out for the variation of Hartmann number (0 to 100), buoyancy ratio (−10 to +10), three types of water-based nanofluid i.e. Fe₃O₄, Cu, Al₂O₃ at χ = 6%, Re = 200 and Ri = 0.1.

The mutual interaction of magnetic force, inertial force and nature of thermal-solutal buoyancy forces play a significant role in the heat and mass transport phenomena. Results show that the size of the recirculation zone increases at N = 1 for aiding thermo-solutal buoyancy force, whereas the applied magnetic field dampened the fluid-convection process. With an increase in buoyancy ratio, Al₂O₃ nanoparticle shows a maximum 54% and 67% increase in convective heat and mass transfer, respectively at Ha = 20 followed by Fe₃O₄ and Cu. However, with increase in Ha the Nuavg and Shavg diminish by maximum 62.33% and 74.56%, respectively, for Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles at N = 5 followed by Al₂O₃ and Cu.

This research study numerically examines the sensitivity of Fe₃O₄, Cu and Al₂O₃ nanoparticles in a magnetic field for buoyancy-induced mixed convective heat and mass transfer phenomena in a BFS channel, which was not analyzed earlier.

As the investment in social and health protection remained poor in India, the most vulnerable citizens lack access to existing health related government initiatives with transformational benefits due mostly to the lack of “accurate information”. The purpose of this paper is to explore and demonstrate the impact of participation of the community through a structured intervention that promotes awareness, enables the community to ensure entitlements, and enhances the utilization of government initiatives.

Through a baseline–endline study using a quasi-experimental design, this research provides empirical evidence of such intervention on awareness and utilization of health, nutrition and developmental initiatives. It involved survey of 400 households from the four study locations before and after the interventions. The pre-post estimation in the “proportion of respondents who were fully aware” was analyzed to measure changes in knowledge. Mc-Nemar test was applied to measure the statistical significance of these changes.

The results indicate that the intervention of “empowerment centers” has increased knowledge and utilization of the various government schemes, services and facilities that are routine and offer benefits all household members, in general, and women as well as children, in particular. The intervention was found to be successful in improving the local governance systems; empowering communities, linking communities and local level government systems across all sectors, as well as bringing in inter-sectoral linkages across governments systems.

Although there have been many interventions of community participation for reducing inequities across the globe, there is a dearth of documentation and evidence generation. More efforts are required to evaluate such interventions, identify which interventions work and how they can be adapted to different contexts. This also requires exploration of the social processes and contextual realities underlying these interventions.

To the best knowledge of the authors, this research is one-of-its-kind that assessed an intervention targeting cross-cutting schemes and services, beyond just health interventions. The evidence points to the success of grassroots level inter-sectoral community actions, in the form of empowerment centers, to improve awareness and utilization of government interventions through participatory governance, and points to the expanding scope of learning and adapting such interventions to different contexts and scopes.

The purpose of this study is to understand the role and impact of gender on reading habits. It is an attempt to explore the probable reason why or why not gender differences take place concerning reading time, reading purpose, reading resources and digital devices among undergraduate students in the digital environment.

For this study, the researcher used a survey-based approach. To accomplish the study’s goals, a meticulously designed questionnaire has been disseminated among undergraduate students in selected colleges located in the western district of Tripura, a northeastern state in India.

The study found that female respondents have a slightly higher level of liking for reading than males. For both genders, the major purpose of reading is to enhance their knowledge unvaryingly. Furthermore, it has been observed that female respondents read electronic and print reading material more frequently compared to their male counterparts. Female respondents read fiction more frequently than males in print form. Both genders have more ease in reading print resources than digital resources. Among all digital devices, respondents are most competent at using mobile devices and prefer them for digital reading.

As part of the pilot study, investigators surveyed a limited sample population, where the participation of students was further lower because of the unavailability of students.

The gender-based level of competency with digital devices is studied as a variable among the adult population to measure its correlation with reading habits.