Factors Influencing Economic Viability of Marginal and Small Farmers in Punjab

It has been noticed in Punjab that living in nearly the same socio-economic environment, some of the marginal and small farmers are financially viable, which means that they are able to earn enough income to meet their farm as well as household expenditure, while others fail to do so. There are multiple factors responsible for this viability. Broadly these factors are: farm size, off-farm income, income from dairy, rational domestic expenditure, and productivity of crops. This paper has examined the contribution of these factors towards the viability of marginal and small farmers by collecting data from three districts (Ropar, Ludhiana and Bathinda) of the state. The rationalizations of household expenditure and farm investment are also a source of enhancing the possibilities of financial viability of both the categories of farming families. Therefore, on the policy front, all efforts should be made to create off-farm employment opportunities for these farmers. The public investments should be made to remove the regional productivity gaps, as it will enhance income of these farmers. Assuring remunerative prices and up-scaling of the marketing and input supply facilities are the need of the hour to promote dairying and other allied activities among these farmers. All these measures will go a long way in easing the financial stress on marginal and small farmers of the area. In the prevailing economic scenario, it is difficult to pull out or push out these farmers out of agriculture in a short-run and hence the solution lies in making them part-time farmers having access to diversified sources of income as has happened in some of the South-East Asian countries.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Standardisation of recipe for the preparation of lobster analogues

Lobster analogues were prepared with lobster base flavour (paste),h lobster cook water (whole lobster omogenate:water, 1:1 and 1:0.5) and lobster meat mince. In another experiment, different combinations of ginger-garlic paste and lobster base flavour, i.e., 1:3, 1:4, 1:6, 3:3, 3:4, 3:6, 5:3, 5:4 and 5:6 were added to the lobster analogue paste. It was observed that lobster analogues prepared with lobster base flavour (paste) are suitable organoleptically. The combination of ginger garlic paste and lobster base flavour in the ratio of 3:4 was found to be suitable organoleptically. Lobster analogues coloured with annatto seed colour at 1:2 (annatto seed:water) concentration had high values for the colour attribute as compared to orange-red synthetic colour, beetroot colour, caramel colour and paprika colour. It was observed that come-up-time to achieve a temperature of850°C was 28 minutes with a processing period of 11 minutes

Effect of modified starch on the shelf life of frozen fish Kamaboko with prepared spinach

Fish kamaboko with spinach was prepared by mixing fish kamaboko with spinach prepared with different combinations of ordinary starch (OS) and modified starch (MS), viz., 40:60, 50:50, 60:40, 100%) MS and 100% OS. The products were frozen at -40°C and stored at -20°C, and subjected to biochemical (peroxide value, total titratable acidity, pH and moisture) organoleptic (appearance, taste and colour), microbiological (total plate count) and physical (folding and expressible water) tests at monthly intervals. Among the different combinations tried, it was observed that fish kamaboko with spinach prepared with 50:50 and 60:40 combinations of OS and MS could be stored for six months at-20°C

Optimising Performance of a Cantilever-type Micro Accelerometer Sensor

A technique for optimising performance of cantilever-type micro acceleration sensor hasbeen developed. Performance of a sensor is judged mainly by its sensitivity and bandwidth.Maximising product of these two important parameters of inertial sensors helps to optimise thesensor performance. It is observed that placement of a lumped mass (add-mass) on the sensor'sproof-mass helps to control both sensitivity and the first resonant frequency of the cantileverstructure to the designer's choice. Simulation and modelling of various dimensions of rectangularstructures for acceleration sensor with this novel add-mass technique are discussed. CoventorwareMEMSCAD has been used to model, simulate, and carry out FEM analysis. A simple analyticalmodel is discussed to elaborate the mechanics of cantilever-type micro accelerometer. Thecomparison of the results obtained from analytical model and the finite element simulations revealthese to be in good agreement. The advantages of this technique for choosing the two mostimportant sensor parameters (i.e., sensitivity and bandwidth) of an inertial sensor are brought out

Neutrino lensing and modification of Newtonian gravity at large distances

The nature of the modification to neutrino lensing from galaxies, as caused by possible modifications to Newtonian gravity at large distances, is studied.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Massive Electrodynamics and the Magnetic Monopoles

We investigate in detail the problem of constructing magnetic monopole solutions within the finite-range electrodynamics (i.e., electrodynamics with non-zero photon mass, which is the simplest extension of the standard theory; it is fully compatible with the experiment). We first analyze the classical electrodynamics with the additional terms describing the photon mass and the magnetic charge; then we look for a solution analogous to the Dirac monopole solution. Next, we plug the found solution into the Schr\"{o}dinger equation describing the interaction between the the magnetic charge and the electron. After that, we try to derive the Dirac quantization condition for our case. Since gauge invariance is lost in massive electrodynamics, we use the method of angular momentum algebra. Under rather general assumptions we prove the theorem that the construction of such an algebra is not possible and therefore the quantization condition cannot be derived. This points to the conclusion that the Dirac monopole and the finite photon mass cannot coexist within one and the same theory. Some physical consequences of this conclusion are considered. The case of t'Hooft-Polyakov monopole is touched upon briefly.Comment: 24 pages, revtex, 1 figure appended as a PostScript fil

A Study of the Scintillation Induced by Alpha Particles and Gamma Rays in Liquid Xenon in an Electric Field

Scintillation produced in liquid xenon by alpha particles and gamma rays has been studied as a function of applied electric field. For back scattered gamma rays with energy of about 200 keV, the number of scintillation photons was found to decrease by 64+/-2% with increasing field strength. Consequently, the pulse shape discrimination power between alpha particles and gamma rays is found to reduce with increasing field, but remaining non-zero at higher fields.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted by Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research

Properties of the series solution for Painlevé I

We present some observations on the asymptotic behaviour of the coefficients in the Laurent series expansion of solutions of the first Painlevé equation. For the general solution, explicit recursive formulae for the Taylor expansion of the tau-function around a zero are given, which are natural extensions of analogous formulae for the elliptic sigma function, as given by Weierstrass. Numerical and exact results on the symmetric solution which is singular at the origin are also presented

Measurements of Scintillation Efficiency and Pulse-Shape for Low Energy Recoils in Liquid Xenon

Results of observations of low energy nuclear and electron recoil events in liquid xenon scintillator detectors are given. The relative scintillation efficiency for nuclear recoils is 0.22 +/- 0.01 in the recoil energy range 40 keV - 70 keV. Under the assumption of a single dominant decay component to the scintillation pulse-shape the log-normal mean parameter T0 of the maximum likelihood estimator of the decay time constant for 6 keV < Eee < 30 keV nuclear recoil events is equal to 21.0 ns +/- 0.5 ns. It is observed that for electron recoils T0 rises slowly with energy, having a value ~ 30 ns at Eee ~ 15 keV. Electron and nuclear recoil pulse-shapes are found to be well fitted by single exponential functions although some evidence is found for a double exponential form for the nuclear recoil pulse-shape.Comment: 11 pages, including 5 encapsulated postscript figure

High-Speed Cylindrical Collapse of Two Perfect Fluids

In this paper, the study of the gravitational collapse of cylindrically distributed two perfect fluid system has been carried out. It is assumed that the collapsing speeds of the two fluids are very large. We explore this condition by using the high-speed approximation scheme. There arise two cases, i.e., bounded and vanishing of the ratios of the pressures with densities of two fluids given by $c_s, d_s$. It is shown that the high-speed approximation scheme breaks down by non-zero pressures $p_1, p_2$ when $c_s, d_s$ are bounded below by some positive constants. The failure of the high-speed approximation scheme at some particular time of the gravitational collapse suggests the uncertainity on the evolution at and after this time. In the bounded case, the naked singularity formation seems to be impossible for the cylindrical two perfect fluids. For the vanishing case, if a linear equation of state is used, the high-speed collapse does not break down by the effects of the pressures and consequently a naked singularity forms. This work provides the generalisation of the results already given by Nakao and Morisawa [1] for the perfect fluid.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Gen. Rel. Gra