An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Plant Variety Protection Legislation on Innovation and Transferability

Under the TRIPs Agreement, all member-countries of the World Trade Organization are required to provide an "effective" system of plant variety protection within a specific time frame. In many developing countries this has led to a divisive debate about the fundamental desirability of extending intellectual property rights to agriculture. But empirical studies on the economic impacts of PVP, especially its ability to generate large private sector investments in plant breeding and facilitate the transfer of technology, have been very limited. This paper examines two aspects of the international experience of PVP legislation thus far (i) The relationship between legislation, R&D expenditures and PVP grants, i.e., the innovation effect, and (ii) The role of PVP in facilitating the flow of varieties across countries, i.e., the transferability effect.Plant variety protection, biotechnology, technology transfer, Crop Production/Industries,

An Assessment of the Potential Consumption Impacts of WHO Dietary Norms in OECD Countries

The member countries of the World Health Organization (WHO) have recently endorsed its Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. The strategy emphasizes the need to limit the consumption of saturated fats and trans fatty acids, salt and sugars, and to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables in order to combat the growing burden of non communicable diseases. Adherence to the norms recommended by the WHO would call for major changes in the consumption, production and trade of several key food products and several sectors of the food industry have expectedly raised serious concerns about the potential impact of these norms on their future growth prospects. This paper attempts a broad quantitative assessment of the consumption impacts of these norms in OECD countries using a mathematical programming approach. We find that adherence to the WHO norms would involve a significant decrease in the consumption of vegetable oils (30%), dairy products (28%), sugar (24%), animal fats (30%) and meat (pig meat, 13.5%, mutton and goat 14.5%) and a significant increase in the human consumption of cereals (31%), fruits (25%) and vegetables (21%). The paper also explains the apparent dilemma that some OECD countries face when simultaneously trying to liberalise agricultural markets and promote healthy diets.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Comparison of Fracture Delineation Methods in Anteroposterior Pelvic Radiographs

Pelvic fractures are very difficult to detect due to the visual complexity of the pelvic bone. Pelvic fracture occurs less frequently, only when there is a high energy event such as fall from a height or vehicle collision. In elder people and in osteoporosis patients even a low energy incident may cause fracture. The paper includes the comparison of three different fracture detection methods – GLCM and ANN based, Statistical curve fitting and classifier based and finally statistical curve fitting and ANN based method

Drivers' Real-Time Drowsiness Identification Using Facial Features and Automatic Vehicle Speed Control

The road crash is one of the significant problems that is of great concern in today's world. Road accidents are often caused by drivers' carelessness and negligence. The drowsy condition of the drivers, which occurs due to overwork, fatigue, and many other factors, is one of those causes. It is therefore most critical to establish systems that can detect the driver's drowsy state and provide the drivers with the appropriate warning system. In addition to the automatic speed control of the car, this system thus supports drivers in incidents by providing warnings in advance. This means that road collisions that are harmful to living lives are minimised. This is achieved by using the technique of image recognition, where driver drowsiness is observed, and using this method, simultaneous warning and speed monitoring of the vehicle is carried out

Wideband Fabric Antenna for Ultra Wideband Applications using for Medical Applications

Traditional cancer detection imaging techniques suffer high costs, high false negatives, high false positives,and pain. The microwave imaging techniques overcome the limitations, which depend primarily on antenna design. If an antenna is wearable and implantable, the imaging system gives better results with less pain and cost. A wide band fabric antenna that operates at the ultra-wideband frequency with a low specific absorption rate (SAR) on breast phantom is verified. The proposed design has Jeans material as a substrate and the copper patch as a radiating element. The patch is designed in a circular shape with an M-type slot to suppress the spurious modes. The designed antenna model is commonly used for monitoring microwave imaging and has dimensions of 28X30X1.6 mm3. The proposed antenna design covers 2.3-8 GHz frequency with a broadside radiation pattern. The gain over the operating frequency is about 2.3-4.5 dB, and the efficiency is 55 %–79 %. The antenna model was designed and simulated in CST microwave studio. The performance of an antenna is tested on breast cancer to detect the presence of tumor cells in the breast. The antenna analysis on the phantom was done by considering the tumor location and corresponding results are presented. By varying the sizes of the tumor the antenna performance is analysed. The simulated SAR values of the proposed antenna design on breast phantom are under the limits of FCC

Comparison on electrical properties of pure Y2O3, bismuth doped Y2O3, zinc doped Y2O3, bismuth and zinc codoped Y2O3 prepared by sol-gel method

Yttrium oxide is widely studied nowadays as a substitute for SiO2 which is a well-known dielectric material. The uniqueness of yttrium oxide is that it has a high melting point (2430 °C) which is higher than other host materials like alumina, zirconia and yttrium aluminium garnet. Hence an attempt was made to add the dopants, bismuth and zinc simultaneously to the yttrium oxide lattice and to study their properties as a dielectric material. Also the dependence of their electrical properties on structure, particle size and morphology is analysed. Pure Yttrium oxide, bismuth doped yttrium oxide, zinc doped yttrium oxide and bismuth and zinc codoped yttrium oxide samples of 0.5 weight percentage of yttrium precursor as dopant concentration are synthesized by simple precipitation technique, sol-gel method. Electrical properties of the samples are studied and a comparative study is done on the doped and codoped samples and it was found that codoped samples show better electrical properties compared with single dopant samples.

Marriage Rituals in an Anthropological Perspective

Literature and anthropology are closely related and anthropology helps us to understand the marriage rituals followed by man in Sangam era. This article explores the marriage rituals that took place in the Sangam era through the very famous Tamil book Ettuthogai. Marriage rituals means the glory of humanity. The purpose of this article is to investigate the marriage rituals in the Ettuthogai, such as Fasting, fixing date, keeping flower, greeting the woman, cooking and feasting. In this article the reason for their marriage ceremony had been viewed from anthropological point on the basis of action-oriented, social relations and community-oriented

HEPATOPROTECTIVE ACTIVITY OF AQUEOUS EXTRACTS OF CHRYSANTHEMUM INDICUM FLOWERS ON PARACETAMOL INDUCED LIVER INJURY IN ALBINO RATS

Objective: The present investigation was evaluated that protective activity of aqueous extract of flowers of Chrysanthemum indicum studied againstparacetamol-induced hepatotoxicity in animal model.Methods: Bioactive functional groups, such as alcohol, carboxylic acid, and amines, were present in the aqueous extract of flowers of C. indicumidentified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The animals were grouped into 5 and each group has 6 animals and induced the hepatic failure.Silymarin was used as reference standard. Aqueous extract of flowers of C. indicum treated in a different dose which was compared with control groupof animals.Results: Aqueous extract of flowers of C. indicum reduced the level of aspartate transaminase (AST), alanine transaminase (ALT), serum bilirubin,protein, triglycerides, and cholesterol compared than paracetamol treated Group II animals. Histopathological studies were confirmed that reductionof necrosis and inflammation in the liver cells.Conclusion: Thus, these results revealed that the aqueous extract of flowers of C. indicum shown very significant (p<0.01) hepatoprotection againstparacetamol-induced hepatic failure in animal model by reducing AST, ALT, serum total bilirubin, protein, triglycerides, and cholesterol levels.Keywords: Hepatoprotective activity, Chrysanthemum indicum, Paracetamol

Operationalizing the concept of farming system for nutrition through the promotion of nutrition-sensitive agriculture

Despite impressive gains in agricultural production and greater availability of food many people in India suffer from undernutrition. Improvements in agricultural production that lead to greater access to nutritious food could help combat undernutrition. This article in Current Science shares a new farming model to promote improved nutrition outcomes amongst vulnerable farming communities. Five villages in Wardha district of Maharashtra have been selected for the study to evaluate the effectiveness of the farming system for nutrition (FSN) approach. The programme includes on farm demonstrations of arable crops and community nutrition gardens of vegetables and fruits (managed by women). A wide range of nutritious vegetables were promoted in the nutrition gardens to ensure availability to the households in the selected communities.UK AidDepartment for International Development (DFID