Developing a Scale to Measure the Indigenous Wisdom Orientation of Rice Farmers

The traditional rice farmers had adopted various indigenous technologies in rice farming which in due course of time was forgotten after the advent of high yielding varieties that warranted excessive use of chemical inputs. Hence a study was designed to develop a scale to measure the indigenous wisdom orientation of stakeholders in rice farming. The study was conducted in Palakkad district of Kerala. Fifty statements reflecting the indigenous wisdom orientation were generated. Likert’s method was employed in the scale construction and the final scale comprising 14 statements was standardized

A New Low Complexity Uniform Filter Bank Based on the Improved Coefficient Decimation Method

In this paper, we propose a new uniform filter bank (FB) based on the improved coefficient decimation method (ICDM). In the proposed FB’s design, the ICDM is used to obtain different multi-band frequency responses using a single lowpass prototype filter. The desired subbands are individually obtained from these multi-band frequency responses by using low order frequency response masking filters and their corresponding ICDM output frequency responses. We show that the proposed FB is a very low complexity alternative to the other FBs in literature, especially the widely used discrete Fourier transform based FB (DFTFB) and the CDM based FB (CDFB). The proposed FB can have a higher number of subbands with twice the center frequency resolution when compared with the CDFB and DFTFB. Design example and implementation results show that our FB achieves 86.59% and 58.84% reductions in resource utilizations and 76.95% and 47.09% reductions in power consumptions when compared with the DFTFB and CDFB respectively

Measuring Fractional Charge in Carbon Nanotubes

The Luttinger model of the one-dimensional Fermi gas is the cornerstone of modern understanding of interacting electrons in one dimension. In fact, the enormous class of systems whose universal behavior is adiabatically connected to it are now deemed Luttinger liquids. Recently, it has been shown that metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes are almost perfectly described by the Luttinger Hamiltonian. Indeed, strongly non-Fermi liquid behavior has been observed in a variety of DC transport experiments, in very good agreement with theoretical predictions. Here, we describe how fractional quasiparticle charge, a fundamental property of Luttinger liquids, can be observed in impurity-induced shot noise.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Accessing nanotube bands via crossed electric and magnetic fields

We investigate the properties of conduction electrons in single-walled armchair carbon nanotubes in the presence of mutually orthogonal electric and magnetic fields transverse to the tube's axis. We find that the fields give rise to an asymmetric dispersion in the right- and left-moving electrons along the tube as well as a band-dependent interaction. We predict that such a nanotube system would exhibit spin-band-charge separation and a band-dependant tunneling density of states. We show that in the quantum dot limit, the fields serve to completely tune the quantum states of electrons added to the nanotube. For each of the predicted effects, we provide examples and estimates that are relevant to experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

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Isolation, Screening and Production of Biosurfactant by Bacillus clausii 5B

Primary somatic embryos induced from the callus tissues revealed the presence of CSSV between 12-24 wks by PCR/capillary electrophoresis while PCR/agarose electrophoresis failed to detect the virus. Different carbon and nitrogen sources were evaluated for their effect on biosurfactant production. Maximum biosurfactant synthesis (2.11 g/L) was observed at 96 hours when the cells were grown on minimal medium containing 1 % (w/v) glucose as carbon source. Among nitrogen sources tested, ammonium chloride showed maximum biosurfactant production of 2.41 g/L. The biosurfactant produced by the bacterial isolate reduced the surface tension of the cell free broth from 53.56 mN/m to 29.48 mN/m. Compositional analysis of the biosurfactant revealed that it was of lipopetide type, composed of high percentage of lipid (~56 %, w/w) and protein (~39 %, w/w) content

Entomopathogenic fungi – Potential candidates for biocontrol of Helopeltis antonii Signoret in cashew

Evaluation of fungal entomopathogens, viz., Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae and Lecanicillium lecanii against tea mosquito bug (Helopeltis antonii Signoret), an insect pest of cashew revealed that these fungi are pathogenic to H. antonii. Mortality of H. antonii commenced after three days of inoculation, increased gradually with time and became evident at fifth day with 82.5 per cent, 85 per cent and 65 per cent respectively with B. bassiana, M. anisopliae and L. lecanii @109 spores mL-1. B. bassiana and M. anisopliae shown complete mortality at sixth day, whereas mortality rate with L. lecanii was 85 per cent. A field experiment was conducted in randomized block design for two consecutive years with these three entomopathogenic fungi @108 spores mL-1. Two rounds of spray were given by targeting flowering and nut set stage in the first year, instead of the routine three spray schedule on flushing, flowering and nut set; while routine three sprays were given in the second year. In the first year of field evaluation, least damage was observed in Kerala Agricultural University package of practices (KAU POP) with quinalphos, targeting both flowering and nut set stage. However, both B. bassiana and L. lecanii also recorded less tea mosquito bug damage and were comparable with KAU POP. In the second year, B. bassiana was on par with KAU POP and L. lecanii was superior to control. Highest nut yield was recorded in trees treated with B. bassiana followed by KAU POP