Equity Issues Relating to Irrigation-induced Soil Degradation under Left Bank Canal of Tungabhadra Project Area, Karnataka

The equity issues concerning soil degradation and soil reclamation have been analysed for Tungabhadra Project Area of the Karnataka state. The study is based on primary data obtained from 325 respondent farmers. The data gathered by survey method have been analysed using conventional and simple tabular method of analysis, Gini ratio, and Lorenz curve. The study has revealed that the small and marginal farmers are worst affected by soil degradation. The large farmers have also experienced the brunt of soil degradation but the effect has been marginal since they have alternative sources of livelihood. The study has further indicated that the extent of inequity is higher on degraded than normal soils. However, this can be reduced to a great extent by launching land reclamation programmes. Therefore, the study has suggested that the government should initiate land reclamation programmes on a large scale on long-term basis so that the fruits of land reclamation technologies could reach the vulnerable sections of the society.Agricultural and Food Policy,

An Economic Analysis of Public Interventions for Amelioration of Irrigation-Induced Soil Degradation

The study has reported the impact of public interventions for amelioration of soil degradation through subsurface drainage technology in the Tungabhadra Project area in Karnataka. The primary data, obtained from 105 farmers of TBP area, have been analysed using budgeting, discounted cash flow measures and gini ratio. The provision of subsurface drainage through public interventions, has increased the productivity of land appreciably (166 per cent) and has provided a source of regular income (Rs 13,636/ha from paddy) to resource-poor households. The technology has been found to be cost effective, socially acceptable and economically feasible. The equity analysis has indicated reduction in inequalities in income distribution during the post-drainage period. The study has suggested that the government should aim at encouraging and educating the affected farmers in adopting subsurface drainage technology on a large-scale.Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Estimation of Severity of Speech Disability through Speech Envelope

In this paper, envelope detection of speech is discussed to distinguish the pathological cases of speech disabled children. The speech signal samples of children of age between five to eight years are considered for the present study. These speech signals are digitized and are used to determine the speech envelope. The envelope is subjected to ratio mean analysis to estimate the disability. This analysis is conducted on ten speech signal samples which are related to both place of articulation and manner of articulation. Overall speech disability of a pathological subject is estimated based on the results of above analysis.Comment: 8 pages,4 Figures,Signal & Image Processing Journal AIRC

Silver Metalized Mixed Phase Manganese-Doped Titania: Variation of Electric Field and Band Bending within the Space Charge Region with Respect to the Silver Content

Silver was deposited on manganese-doped titanates (Mn–TiO2) by photoinduced deposition method. The catalyst shows enhanced photocatalytic activity due to the synergistic effect of bicrystalline framework of anatase and rutile structures with high intimate contact due to the similarity in their crystallite sizes. The deposited metal nanostructures help in the formation of resonant surface plasmons in response to a photon flux, localizing the electromagnetic energy close to their surfaces. Better charge separation is achieved near the semiconductor surface due to the localized field. Silver deposition was varied from 0.1 to 1.5% on the surface of Mn–TiO2. The mechanism of interfacial electron transfer at heterojunctions in mixed phase induced by the plasmonic catalysis is explained. The extent of band bending, the variation of potential field in the space charge region with respect to the size of the deposited Ag metal particles is discussed. The photocatalytic activity of silver deposited Mn–TiO2 was evaluated by taking resorcinol (Rs) as the model compound along with oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and ammonium per sulfate (APS) under UV/solar light illumination. The electronic level of the dopant, high intimate contact between the anatase and rutile phases along with efficient electron trapping by silver particles, plays a significant role in the photocatalytic process

Permutation Decision Trees

Decision Tree is a well understood Machine Learning model that is based on minimizing impurities in the internal nodes. The most common impurity measures are Shannon entropy and Gini impurity. These impurity measures are insensitive to the order of training data and hence the final tree obtained is invariant to any permutation of the data. This leads to a serious limitation in modeling data instances that have order dependencies. In this work, we propose the use of Effort-To-Compress (ETC) - a complexity measure, for the first time, as an impurity measure. Unlike Shannon entropy and Gini impurity, structural impurity based on ETC is able to capture order dependencies in the data, thus obtaining potentially different decision trees for different permutations of the same data instances (Permutation Decision Trees). We then introduce the notion of Permutation Bagging achieved using permutation decision trees without the need for random feature selection and sub-sampling. We compare the performance of the proposed permutation bagged decision trees with Random Forests. Our model does not assume that the data instances are independent and identically distributed. Potential applications include scenarios where a temporal order present in the data instances is to be respected.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Pre- and post-processing for Cosmic/NASTRAN on personal computers and mainframes

An interface between Cosmic/NASTRAN and GIFTS has recently been released, combining the powerful pre- and post-processing capabilities of GIFTS with Cosmic/NASTRAN's analysis capabilities. The interface operates on a wide range of computers, even linking Cosmic/NASTRAN and GIFTS when the two are on different computers. GIFTS offers a wide range of elements for use in model construction, each translated by the interface into the nearest Cosmic/NASTRAN equivalent; and the options of automatic or interactive modelling and loading in GIFTS make pre-processing easy and effective. The interface itself includes the programs GFTCOS, which creates the Cosmic/NASTRAN input deck (and, if desired, control deck) from the GIFTS Unified Data Base, COSGFT, which translates the displacements from the Cosmic/NASTRAN analysis back into GIFTS; and HOSTR, which handles stress computations for a few higher-order elements available in the interface, but not supported by the GIFTS processor STRESS. Finally, the versatile display options in GIFTS post-processing allow the user to examine the analysis results through an especially wide range of capabilities, including such possibilities as creating composite loading cases, plotting in color and animating the analysis

Investigation on Geosynthetic Reinforced Two Layered Soil System

Use of geosynthetics for flexible pavements founded on expansive soil subgrade is one of feasible and economic solution to minimize the undulation and required pavement thickness. In this present investigation the effect of inclusion of the geosynthetic reinforcement on California Bearing Ratio (CBR) value of a two layered soil system with black cotton soil at bottom and granular soil at top as a buffer layer, with different thickness configuration and geotextiles of different physical and mechanical properties was studied by laboratory and field California bearing ratio tests. Thickness of flexible pavement over the two layer soil system of different thickness configurations was estimated for unreinforced and reinforced two layered soil system by the method suggested by United States Army Corps of Engineers and Indian Road Congress. The reduction (%) in the thickness of pavement due to inclusion of geotextiles has been observed in the investigation. The reduction in thickness of pavement can be achieved up to 53.53% depending upon the thickness configuration and the type of the geotextile used. The results have shown that the field CBR tests can yield the results in conformity with the values obtained in the laboratory test

Bulk and surface modification of TiO2 with sulfur and silver: Synergetic effects of dual surface modification in the enhancement of photocatalytic activity

Sulfur ion (S6+) was incorporated into the TiO2 lattice (Ti0.85S0.15O2) using sulfur powder as precursor. 0.05​% of silver was deposited on the surface of Ti0.85S0.15O2 by photoinduced deposition method. The photocatalytic reactivity of TiO2, Ag-​TiO2, Ti0.85S0.15O2 and Ag-​Ti0.85S0.15O2 photocatalysts were probed for the degrdn. of a model compd. congo red (CR) dye under UV​/solar light illumination. FTIR and XPS results suggested that the dopant sulfur ion (S6+) was incorporated into the TiO2 crystal lattice at Ti4+ lattice site and the sulfur ions on the surface were modified as SO42-​ active sites serving as electron withdrawing group. TEM and XPS anal. of Ag-​Ti0.85S0.15O2 has confirmed the deposition of silver in the Ag0 state. Ag-​Ti0.85S0.15O2 shows better photoactivty under solar light irradn. when compared to all the other photocatalysts. The enhanced photocatalytic activity of this catalyst is attributed to the synergetic effects of the incorporated dopant electronic energy level with the dual surface modifications of the type SO42-​ active centers and Schottky junctions created by metallic Ag0. Further the deposited Ag particles plays a dual role one as a sensitizer due to the Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) effect and also acts as an electron trapper under solar light illumination reducing the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers