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Ports are a significant link in a global supply chain and an economic entity that contributes to the country's economy. India has around 200 ports along its coastline of about 8,000 Km, yet none of them perform at par with many Asian ports. In the Indian port system, cargo throughput and the turnaround time (TAT) of ships calling at ports constitute the most significant performance measures. These performance metrics do not integrate sustainability measures such as emission levels and energy consumed. The draft is a constraint in many ports and ships visit with less than full shipload cargo. The TAT for such vessels may be lower, but the emission per ton of cargo carried is higher compared to a ship with full shipload cargo. Many ports have old or poorly maintained equipment. This state of equipment increases pollution and consumption of energy. In this paper, an attempt has been made to address the issue of undesirable and right outputs simultaneously in an Indian port system. This paper proposes a framework to ensure zero defects in Indian port operations and a port-sustainability-index to measure sustainable services in Indian ports.

The authors used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to show that all private terminals did not perform efficiently and contradicted the notion of Indian policymakers that privatization will lead to an increase in performance levels. A literature review was carried out to identify the dimensions and factors that affect ports' performance. A case study of a major port in India and expert group discussion was done to ascertain the views of stakeholders on deficiencies in the system. The authors complemented this approach with sentiment analysis of opinions expressed by stakeholders over a while, using SentiStrength analysis software (Thelwell, 2010, 2012). The authors used the combined findings to develop the port-sustainability-index (PSI), identify the research question, and develop an ontology of the port system. The authors use the concepts of ontology-design-pattern (ODP) and logistics-service-map (Glöckner et al., 2014; Glöckner and Ludwig, 2016, 2017), opinion mining (Pang and Lee, 2008) and competency questions (Glöckner and Ludwig, 2017) to develop a port system map followed by the identification of critical elements; and the flows (physical and information flow) that gets disrupted due to defects in the system. The ontology led to the identification of competencies and capabilities a port needs to possess. Based on these identification process competency questions were drawn, and the authors identified the plausible defects that port may encounter. The authors suggested the sustainability metrics for monitoring port performance and policy changes based on the competency questions, defects, and mitigation plans.

The authors introduced four KPIs, namely, port-sustainability-index (PSI), load factor (l_x and l_y), draft ratio (d_r), and turnaround-time ratio (TATR). The authors suggested significant policy changes for Indian ports. These included –(1) Introduction of virtual arrival (VA) policy, reducing randomness in the system by pre-scheduling arrivals and activities. (2) Redefining economic life of equipment and machinery in terms of expenditure, income and desired levels of output. (3) Pricing port charges based on stakeholders’ ability and willingness to pay. The port needs to declare its productivity levels and frame their charges accordingly. (4) The ports need to frame an output-oriented privatization policy where it specifies the growth of the port. (5) Framing vessel pricing policy where a vessel may pay tax for the use of non-clean fuel or a get discount for bringing higher parcel load. (6) Levy lower port charges for the shipper for transporting cargo by rail and barges. (7) Introduce a differential pricing system where port levies lower charges for export cargo compared to import load.

The research work can be extended to develop a simulation model to carry out policy experimentations concerning the improvement of performance and carry out sustainable operations. Alternatively, researchers may develop a multi-criteria optimization model to determine the best course of action, keeping the objective function as minimization of PSI value.

This paper provides the means to the Indian ports to remain competitive, lower emission levels and energy consumption, and optimize emission per ton of cargo handled in the port.

Society significantly benefits from this study as it recommends ways to minimize pollution that has a significant impact on human lives. Besides, the measures suggested in the paper will lower the cost of exports and imports, enhancing the real income of consumers.

The area of sustainable port operations has previously been under-researched in the Indian context. Authors contribute to the sustainable port operation literature by suggesting a port-sustainability-index, a framework to assess the defects in port operation and development of a port-ontology for further research in the area of a port system.

It has long been challenged that the distributions of empirical returns do not follow the log-normal distribution upon which many celebrated results of finance are based including the Black–Scholes Option-Pricing model. Borland (2002) succeeds in obtaining alternate closed form solutions for European options based on Tsallis distribution, which allow for statistical feedback as a model of the underlying stock returns. Motivated by this, we simulate two distinct time series based on initial data from NIFTY daily close values, one based on the Gaussian return distribution and the other on non-Gaussian distribution. Using techniques of non-linear dynamics, we examine the underlying dynamic characteristics of both the simulated time series and compare them with the characteristics of actual data. Our findings give a definite edge to the non-Gaussian model over the Gaussian one.

The purpose of this paper is to present a localization and mapping data set acquired by a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The data set was collected for educational and research purposes: to save time in dealing with hardware and to compare the results with a benchmark data set. The data were collected in standard Robot Operating System (ROS) format. The environment, fixed-wing, and sensor configuration are explained in detail. GPS coordinates of the fixed-wing are also available as ground truth. The data set is available for download (www.ece.unb.ca/COBRA/open_source.htm).

The data were collected in standard ROS format. The environment, fixed-wing, and sensor configuration are explained in detail.

The data set can be used for target localization and mapping. The data were collected to assist algorithm developments and help researchers to compare their results. Robotic data sets are specifically important when they are related to unmanned systems such as fixed-wing aircraft.

The Robotics Data Set Repository (RADISH) by A. Howard and N. Roy hosts 41 well-known data sets with different sensors; however, there is no fixed-wing data set in RADISH. This work presents two data sets collected by a fixed-wing aircraft using ROS standards. The data sets can be used for target localization and SLAM.

This paper aims to consider the effects of a merger on technology adoption and welfare in the presence of passive cross ownership. Merger increases investments in process technology and may increase welfare. The results are important for antitrust policies and suggest that the antitrust authorities may not need to be too concerned about mergers in industries with cross ownership.

Game-theoretic analysis.

Merger increases investments in process technology and may increase welfare.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is original.

THE object of industry is to supply the goods and services needed by the community, with the minimum consumption of real resources. The goods and services constitute our standard of living, which we can only improve if we minimise the use of our real resources and reduce the wastage in them. Productivity is thus the ratio between what you take out in the way of goods and services and what you put in as real resources. Higher productivity is getting the same or more goods and services from less resources. That is the problem which faces us both in relation to the immediate needs of the population and in respect to the drive to increase exports and so pay for the important imports which the country so badly needs.

This study explores privacy challenges in recommender systems (RSs) and how they have leveraged privacy-preserving technology for risk mitigation. The study also elucidates the extent of adopting privacy-preserving RSs and postulates the future direction of research in RS security.

The study gathered articles from well-known databases such as SCOPUS, Web of Science and Google scholar. A systematic literature review using PRISMA was carried out on the 41 papers that are shortlisted for study. Two research questions were framed to carry out the review.

It is evident from this study that privacy issues in the RS have been addressed with various techniques. However, many more challenges are expected while leveraging technology advancements for fine-tuning recommenders, and a research agenda has been devised by postulating future directions.

The study unveils a new comprehensive perspective regarding privacy preservation in recommenders. There is no promising study found that gathers techniques used for privacy protection. The study summarizes the research agenda, and it will be a good reference article for those who develop privacy-preserving RSs.

The purpose of this paper is to build a theory of joint venture formation and instability based on synergy and monitoring.

This problem is formulated as a dynamic game and solved using the notion of subgame perfect Nash equilibrium.

It was found that monitoring problems may prevent the joint venture from forming at all. Moreover, joint venture formation usually involves over‐monitoring, and ex post could involve cheating by one, or both the firms. Faced with the possibility of over‐monitoring, firms may choose to under‐invest in improving the input quality. The paper develops some testable implications of this theory.

The contribution of this paper is both methodological, as well as in terms of generation of new insight. It provides a framework that allows one to analyze issues like both sided moral hazard, as well as monitoring in joint ventures. New insights are that monitoring issues can take several forms including over‐ and under‐monitoring by partner firms, and, there is a linkage between such monitoring problems and joint venture instability.

The space-time variants algorithm will not give good results in practical scenarios; when no tubes increase, these techniques will not give the results. It is challenging to reduce the energy of the output synopsis videos. In this paper, a new optimized technique has been implemented that models and covers every frame in the output video.

In the video synopsis, condensing a video to produce a low frame rate (FR) video using their spatial and temporal coefficients is vital in complex environments. Maintaining a database is also feasible and consumes space. In recent years, many algorithms were proposed.

The main advantage of this proposed technique is that the output frames are selected by the user definitions and stored in low-intensity communication systems and also it gives tremendous support to the user to select desired tubes and thereby stops the criterion in the output video, which can be further suitable for the user's knowledge and creates nonoverlapping tube-oriented synopsis that can provide excellent visual experience.

In this research paper, four test videos are utilized with complex environments (high-density objects) and show that the proposed technique gives better results when compared to other existing techniques.

The proposed method provides a unique technique in video synopsis for compressing the data without loss.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the determinants of foreign and domestic tourist arrivals and revenue receipts from tourism using state-level panel data in 25 Indian states for the period 1995 to 2011.

The study uses IV-2SLS method to examine the determinants of foreign and domestic tourist arrivals in Indian states. Economic development (proxied by per capita income, PCI) is an endogenous variable. We have used the state-wise “liable to flood prone area” as an instrument for PCI to control for endogeneity. An inverse relationship exists between state-wise “liable to flood prone area” and real PCI, in a sense that states with greater proportion of area marked as liable to flood experience lower economic development. For robust analysis, the study has also used IV-Tobit model to examine the effects of economic development and crime on revenue receipts from tourism.

The empirical results based on IV-2SLS method suggest that, in addition to economic development, other factors such as the presence of world-class monuments, natural landscapes and cultural heritage also encourage both international and domestic visitors in Indian states. While crime activities adversely affect the inflow of foreign and domestic tourist arrivals, terror activities do not significantly impact tourist arrivals and tourism receipts. Finally, the estimates of IV-Tobit model show that economic development and government expenditure on tourism sector leads to a significant increase in tourism receipts.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study done in Indian context in which state-level panel data have been used to examine the impact of economic, social and cultural factors on tourist arrivals and revenue earnings from tourism. Hence, the present study not only contributes to existing tourism literature, but also makes an important contribution to structuring suitable tourism management policies for the Indian states.