Decentralization of public-sector agricultural extension in India: The case of the district-level Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA)

agricultural extension reform, Decentralization, demand-driven, organizational capacity,

Factors determining spawning success in Penaeus monodon Fabricius

Spawning success in relation to the size of spawner, clumping of eggs, percentage of spawning and frequency of spawning was studied in Penaeus monodon collected off Tamil Nadu, India. The results indicated positive correlation between the size of spawner and the fecundity and hatching percentage, but not the start of hatching. Hatching characteristics were influenced by clumping of eggs or abortive spawning; the greater the clumping, the longer the time taken for hatching, resulting in a lower hatching percentage. The start of hatching time increased when the frequency of spawning increased. Lower hatching rate was observed as the frequency of spawning increased

Neutrino Masses and Mixings in a Minimal SO(10) Model

We consider a minimal formulation of SO(10) Grand Unified Theory wherein all the fermion masses arise from Yukawa couplings involving one 126 and one 10 of Higgs multiplets. It has recently been recognized that such theories can explain, via the type-II seesaw mechanism, the large \nu_\mu - \nu_\tau mixing as a consequence of b-tau unification at the GUT scale. In this picture, however, the CKM phase \delta lies preferentially in the second quadrant, in contradiction with experimental measurements. We revisit this minimal model and show that the conventional type-I seesaw mechanism generates phenomenologically viable neutrino masses and mixings, while being consistent with CKM CP violation. We also present improved fits in the type-II seesaw scenario and suggest fully consistent fits in a mixed scenario.Comment: 27 pages, 13 eps figures, revtex4; references added, some minor correction

Constraining Proton Lifetime in SO(10) with Stabilized Doublet-Triplet Splitting

We present a class of realistic unified models based on supersymmetric SO(10) wherein issues related to natural doublet-triplet (DT) splitting are fully resolved. Using a minimal set of low dimensional Higgs fields which includes a single adjoint, we show that the Dimopoulos--Wilzcek mechanism for DT splitting can be made stable in the presence of all higher order operators without having pseudo-Goldstone bosons and flat directions. The \mu term of order TeV is found to be naturally induced. A Z_2-assisted anomalous U(1)_A gauge symmetry plays a crucial role in achieving these results. The threshold corrections to alpha_3(M_Z), somewhat surprisingly, are found to be controlled by only a few effective parameters. This leads to a very predictive scenario for proton decay. As a novel feature, we find an interesting correlation between the d=6 (p\to e^+\pi^0) and d=5 (p\to \nu-bar K+) decay amplitudes which allows us to derive a constrained upper limit on the inverse rate of the e^+\pi^0 mode. Our results show that both modes should be observed with an improvement in the current sensitivity by about a factor of five to ten.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX, 2 figures, Few explanatory sentences and three new references added, minor typos corrected

Citations v/s Altmetric Attention Score: A Comparison of Top 10 Highly Cited Papers in Nature

This study aims to analyze the correlation between citations and altmetric score of top 10 highly cited papers in Nature by extracting the data from Google metrics. It tries to investigate whether a highly cited paper has high altmetric score or not by using correlation method and the result show that there exists a high correlation. The study found that Mendeley is the main medium through which scientific papers are being disseminated more and contributing to the altmetric score intensely. The country wise tweeting data show that U.S and U.K holds the first and second position in tweeting with 1143 &14 tweets respectively. As the altmetric values the online attention, it prompts the entire research community to opt for social media for publication for getting good attentions and there by promoting open access. Even though, altmetrics is not at all a replacement of traditional metrics but acts as supplement to it

Linking Mara Fruits and Vegetable Growers to Serengeti National Park Tourist Hotels Market

Tourism in Tanzania has been on the rise since late 1990s when the markets were fully liberalized. This has created a high demand for horticultural produces from tourist hotels located in Serengeti national park in the northwest of Tanzania. Analysis was carried out to determine supply and demand for horticultural produces in Mara region. The annual requirements for horticulture produces in three Serengeti tourist hotels were about 614 tons. These hotels obtain most of the fruits and vegetables from Arusha, Kenya and South Africa which are very far from the park. Due to long distances and poor roads the hotels obtain high priced, low quality and small quantities of produces. The production of horticulture in Mara region is about 620 tons which is more than what is demanded by the hotels. The major problems hindering horticulture production in Mara region include unstable markets, erratic prices and low demand for horticulture produces. The tourist hotels demand locally produced, regular supply, fresh and medium quality horticulture produces while farmers want regular markets for their produces. The Gross Margin analysis indicated that supplier gross profit and growers’ return to labour are high with horticultural crops as compared to other crops. The study recommends that the hotels and growers establish contract agreement to enhance reliable deliveries. To improve production and entrepreneurial skills of the farmers; management support at the beginning of implementation from extension, research, credit and irrigation schemes from local institutions would be necessary. Keywords: Mara Fruits, Tourism, Serengeti, TanzaniaAgricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,