Profitability of Cotton on a Pest Management Continuum in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh

The plant protection response of farmers in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh has been examined with particular reference to the adoption of Bt cotton varieties and IPM components. The farmers have been found to follow a wide range of practices to manage the insect pests in cotton. The use of chemical insecticides has accounted for, about 37 per cent of the total variable costs. No significant reduction in plant protection expenditure has been recorded on adoption of Bt varieties without IPM practices. The adoption of IPM practices, however, has led to reduced use of insecticides and increased profitability. The saving on plant protection chemicals has more than compensated the cost of adopting IPM components. Consequently, the net returns have been found increased considerably from cotton cultivation.Crop Production/Industries,

A NEW SPEECH ENHANCEMENT TECHNIQUE USING PERCEPTUAL CONSTRAINED SPECTRAL WEIGHTING FACTORS

This paper deals with musical noise result from perceptual speech enhancement type algorithms and especially wiener filtering. Although perceptual speech enhancement methods perform better than the non perceptual methods, most of them still return annoying residual musical noise. This is due to the fact that if only noise above the noise masking threshold is filtered then noise below the noise masking threshold can become audible if its maskers are filtered. It can affect the performance of perceptual speech enhancement method that process audible noise only. In order to overcome this drawback here proposed a new speech enhancement technique. It aims to improve the quality of the enhanced speech signal provided by perceptual wiener filtering by controlling the latter via a second filter regarded as a psychoacoustically motivated weighting factor. The simulation results shows that the performance is improved compared to other perceptual speech enhancement method

Estimation of Economic Returns to Soil and Water Conservation Research – An Ex Ante Analysis

The economic returns to investment made in soil and water conservation research have been analyzed. Technologies such as conservation furrow, residue incorporation have been found to be economically viable under farmers’ conditions. The study has covered four locations, viz. Agra and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Kota in Rajasthan and Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. The economic surplus analysis has revealed that when adopted on a large scale, soil and water conservation technologies generate significant economic surplus as reflected in high NPV and BC ratio. The share of producer surplus has been found to be higher in the total economic surplus generated from technology adoption. Thus, investments in generation and transfer of soil and water conservation technologies have been found be justified in terms of economic benefits. However, various constraints that hamper adoption of these technologies are to be addressed so that the potential benefits could be realized by both farmer and consumer.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Soil and Water Conservation Works through National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in Andhra Pradesh — An Analysis of Livelihood Impact

The impact of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been studied on rural livelihoods and the nature of soil and water conservation (SWC) works. NREGS is under implementation in almost all the rural districts of the country with the major objective of enhancing livelihoods through productive works. Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are the three states leading in scheme implementation with a large number of works, expenditure and employment. In Andhra Pradesh, soil and water conservation (SWC) works have accounted for over 80 per cent. The share of labour wages under the scheme has been 80 per cent with only 20 per cent for material, which is well within the prescribed norm of 40 per cent for the latter. The field study in the Ananthapur district has indicated that almost two-thirds of the beneficiaries are farmers. The scheme has brought down the migration levels from about 27 per cent to only 7 per cent in the study villages. The linear regression function has brought out that the number of family members participating in the NREGS is significantly influenced by income from other sources, family size and landholding. The NREGS earnings are being used mainly for food, education and health security. Although the scheme provides opportunity for 100 days of wage guarantee, the actual average employment is only for 25 days per household. Ideally, this gap needs to be bridged at least in the distress districts. The study has observed that SWC works in agricultural lands, especially in the rainfed areas need to be continued. However, some works require structural modifications for a better impact.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Stacking faults in double hexagonal close-packed crystals

Possible deviations in the regular ....ABACA.... sequence of stacking (0004) close-packed planes in the double hexagonal close-packed (d.h.c.p.) structure have been considered. Six intrinsic and one extrinsic type stacking faults have been suggested. The schemes of stacking sequences have been usefully considered in terms of the configurational symbols suggested by Jagodzinski. Extending the Hirth and Lothe procedure, estimates of theoretical fault energies are given in terms of the number of pairs of planes of separation N which are not in the shceme of perfect structure sequence. Relative fault energies have been arrived at reckoning only the first and second nearest neighbour interactions for three ideal situations: (a) the transformation energy of d.h.c.p. structure to either f.c.c. or h.c.p. structure is the same; (b) d.h.c.p. ⇌ f.c.c. transformation occurs; and (c) d.h.c.p. ⇌ h.c.p. transformation occurs

High Temperature X-Ray Diffraction Study of Barium Pyrophosphate

820-82

Performance Comparison between Nonidentical Segmented Exponential Concave and Nonidentical Segmented Exponential Convex Serrated CATRs

This paper presented a theoretical and numerical assessment for nonidentical segmented exponential- (NISE-) convex and NISE-concave serrated plane CATRs by changing number of serrations. The investigation was based on diffraction theory and, more specifically, on the diffraction formulation of Fresnel. The compact antenna test range (CATR) provides uniform illumination within the Fresnel region to the test antenna. Application of serrated edges has been shown to be a good method to control diffraction at the edges of the reflectors. In this paper, the Fresnel fields of NISE-convex and NISE-concave serrated CATRs are analyzed using physical optics (PO) technique. The PO analysis is applied in this paper for plane reflector serrated CATR only. The same analysis is applied to any type of reflector. In this paper, lens-based reflector is not considered. It is observed that NISE-concave serrated CATR gives less ripple and enhanced quiet zone width than NISE-convex

Hardware Circuit Implementation of Automatic Control of Static Var Compensator (SVC) using Micro Controller

The design, Fabrication of 1Kvar 1-phase fixed capacitor-thyristor controlled reactor (FC-TCR) type SVC based on microcontroller have been developed in the laboratory for SMSL(Single Machine Single Load) Test System. The test system is setup in the laboratory with a 3-phase Synchronous Machine of 5kva capacity and a 1-phase Induction Motor of 1HP Rating. Brake test have been performed on the Induction Motor by taking the supply from one of the phases of Synchronous Generator. The bus voltage is fall down from 230 V to 195 V on Full Load. Automatic control circuit Hardware of this SVC have been designed and fabricated based on Microcontroller LPC 2148 chip, the most modern industrial controller. The same test system also has been tested with SVC automatic control circuit and experimental results have been presented in this paper. The P-V Curves of the SMSL Test system with and without SVC Control have been plotted which shows the effectiveness of Automatic control of SVC on Voltage Stability enhancement