Farmers’ suicides in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India: a qualitative exploration of their causes

Background: To explore the various perceived reasons for farmers’ suicides in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, their common factors, and to suggest solutions. METHODS: The present formative research was undertaken in the 23 villages surrounding the Anji Primary Health Centre, located in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, India. A triangulation of free list and pile sort exercises was used. The data was analyzed by Anthropac 4.98.1/X software. This was followed by a semi-structured focus group discussion. To increase the validity of the results, these findings were presented to the participants and later they were circulated to the 26 farmers’ clubs in the villages for comment and discussion during their monthly, village-based meetings. RESULTS: Farmers perceived debt, addiction, environmental problems, poor prices for farm produce, stress and family responsibilities, government apathy, poor irrigation, increased cost of cultivation, private money lenders, use of chemical fertilizers and crop failure as the reasons for farmers’ suicides. Participants suggested solutions such as self-reliance and capacity building among farmers, a monitoring and support system for vulnerable farmers, support and counseling services, a village-level, transparent system for the disbursement of relief packages. CONCLUSIONS: Farmers’ suicides in Vidarbha are caused by the complex interplay of social, political and environmental constraints. Hence, a comprehensive intervention to ensure self-reliance and capacity building among farmers in modern farming techniques , monitoring and support system for vulnerable farmers, a village-level, transparent system for disbursement of relief packages is required to prevent farmer suicides in the near future. Apart from this, there is a need to strengthen the National Mental Health Program at primary health care level to offer support and counseling to vulnerable farmers in rural area

Analyzing the Performance of the Fuzzy Inference System in Decision Making

Inference systems that are fuzzy, It is common practise to make use of models such as the Mamdani and Sugeno models in order to take into consideration the presence of uncertainty and imprecision in the decision-making process. MATLAB is a well-known programming environment that provides persons who are interested in developing and implementing fuzzy inference systems with the necessary tools and strategies to accomplish their goals. In order to evaluate Diabetes Mellitus (DM), the Mamdani and Sugeno fuzzy inference systems have been developed in MATLAB. This abstract provides a brief summary of how the evaluation was carried out.The Mamdani model provides a description of uncertain data through the utilisation of fuzzy sets and is founded on language standards. Through the utilisation of the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox, users of MATLAB are able to rapidly construct and simulate Mamdani fuzzy systems. Membership functions, fuzzy rule sets, simulations, and Mamdani system optimisations can all be defined and created by users without any restrictions that are placed on them. The visualisation options that are available in MATLAB, such as the surface plot and the rules plot, help to make the behaviour of the system more understandable.For the purpose of producing inferences and predictions, the Sugeno model, also known as the Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) model, combines fuzzy principles with linear calculations. It is possible to implement Sugeno fuzzy systems by utilising the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox that is included in MATLAB. The user is able to create the linear functions that are associated to each rule after the information regarding the input-output relationships has been specified through the utilisation of linguistic variables and membership functions. Evaluation, simulation, and visualisation of the rule surfaces and output response curves of Sugeno fuzzy systems can be accomplished in MATLAB in a short amount of time. To summarise, the Mamdani and Sugeno fuzzy inference systems are capable of being constructed in an efficient manner by utilising MATLAB. There is software available for rapid system modelling, simulation, and analysis applications. The techniques of fuzzy logic that are available in MATLAB can be utilised by both professionals and academics in order to address the issue of uncertainty and imprecision in decision-making processes

Characterization of femtosecond laser written waveguides for integrated biochemical sensing

Fluorescence detection is known to be one of the most sensitive among the different optical sensing techniques. This work focuses on excitation and detection of fluorescence emitted by DNA strands labeled with fluorescent dye molecules that can be excited at a specific wavelength. Excitation occurs via optical channel waveguides written with femtosecond laser pulses applied coplanar with a microfluidic channel on a glass chip. The waveguides are optically characterized in order to facilitate the design of sensing structures which can be applied for monitoring the spatial separation of biochemical\ud species as a result of capillary electrophoresis

Efficient Real Time Vehicles Detection Approach for Complex Urban Traffic Management

Vehicles now a day are becoming very necessary part of our life this is leading to increase in congested traffic conditions around the world. With our research in this domain of vehicle detection with image processing we are focusing on detection of vehicles. This is then combined with car size detection. Our approach is to first work on the feature of four wheeler i.e., windshield of the car. Then to work with saliency generation of the region of interest which will be containing only windshield part for the vehicles in the frame. With conversion of this frame into HSV color model. From HSV the saturation value within certain limit is kept for the segmentation then on from that leading to the detection of the vehicles in the given frame. Vehicle size detection we have considered eagle eye view for taking out area and on the basis of that deciding threshold for the vehicles into different categories. Categories of vehicles include small, medium, large vehicles for four wheelers

Fluorescence monitoring of capilarry electrophoresis separation in a lab-on-a-chip with monolithically integrated waveguides

Femtosecond-laser-written optical waveguides were monolithically integrated into a commercial lab-on-a-chip to intersect a microfluidic channel. Laser excitation through these waveguides confines the excitation window to a width of 12 μm, enabling high-spatial-resolution monitoring of different fluorescent analytes, during their migration/separation in the microfluidic channel by capillary electrophoresis. Wavelength-selective monitoring of the on-chip separation of fluorescent dyes is implemented as a proof-of-principle. We envision well-controlled microfluidic plug formation, waveguide excitation, and a low limit of detection to enable monitoring of extremely small quantities with high spatial resolution

Optical sensing in microchip capillary electrophoresis by femtosecond laser written waveguides

Capillary electrophoresis separation in an on-chip integrated microfluidic channel is typically monitored with bulky, bench-top optical excitation/detection instrumentation. Optical waveguides allow confinement and transport of light in the chip directing it to a small volume of the microfluidic channel and collecting the emitted/transmitted radiation. However, the fabrication of optical waveguides or more complex photonic components integrated with the microfluidic channels is not a straightforward process, since it requires a localized increase of the refractive index of the substrate.\ud Recently, a novel technique has emerged for the direct writing of waveguides and photonic circuits in transparent glass substrates by focused femtosecond laser pulses.\ud In this work we demonstrate the integration of femtosecond laser written optical waveguides into a commercial microfluidic chip. We fabricate high quality waveguides intersecting the microchannels at arbitrary positions and use them to optically address with high spatial selectivity their content. In particular, we apply our technique to integrate optical detection in microchip capillary electrophoresis. Waveguides are inscribed at the end of the separation channel in order to optically excite the different plugs reaching that point; fluorescence from the labelled biomolecules crossing the waveguide output is efficiently collected at a 90° angle by a high numerical aperture optical fiber. The sensitivity of the integrated optical detection system was first evaluated filling the chip with a dye solution, obtaining a minimum detectable concentration of 40 pM. \ud After dynamic coating of the microchannels with an EPDMA polymer we demonstrate electrophoresis of an oligonucleotide plug with concentration down to 1 nM and wavelength-selective monitoring of on-chip separation of three fluorescent dyes. Work is in progress on separation and detection of fluorescent-labeled DNA fragments, targeting specific, diagnostically relevant regions of a template DNA, for application to the detection of chromosome aberrations

Phenol-crotonaldehyde resins. II. Effect of crotonaldehyde purity on resin properties

Acid-catalyzed polycondensation of phenol and crotonaldehyde results in soluble thermoplastic resins over a broad range of compositions. The thermal and curing behavior of the resins are found to vary markedly with the phenol to crotonaldehyde mole ratio and the purity of crotonaldehyde. Infrared analysis of the resins and their fractions separated by column chromatography indicates that all the resins are structurally similar. The number-average molecular weights of the resins fall in the range of 400 to 600. The resins from distilled crotonaldehyde exhibit higher molecular weights than those from crude crotonaldehyde. The thermal properties of the resins are comparable to the Novolak-type phenol-formaldehyde resins. The thermoplastic nature is retained even at higher fraction of crotonaldehyde, unlike for the conventional Novolak resins

Phenol-crotonaldehyde resins. III. Curing behavior with hexamethylenetetramine

Solid thermoplastic resins were prepared by acid-catalyzed condensation of phenol and crotonaldehyde (both crude and distilled). The thermal and curing properties were compared with the conventional phenol-formaldehyde (PF) novolak resins. Phenol-crotonaldehyde (PC) resins were found to be thermoplastic even after curing with the crosslinking agent hexamethylenetetramine up to 160°C. This curing behavior was observed irrespective of the purity of the crotonaldehyde or the phenol-to-crotonaldehyde mole ratio in the resin. Postcuring of these resins at elevated temperatures yielded insoluble and infusible thermoset products. This unique thermal characteristic could lead to interesting processing possibilities for the resins. The technical feasibility of thermoplastic processing of the PC resins followed by postcure heat treatment for transforming the molded part into a thermoset has been demonstrated

Fluoride removal from water by zirconium (IV) doped chitosan bio-composite

Water containing fluoride above 1.5 mg/L leads to health and environmental harms that creates skeletal and dental fluorosis. Adsorption technique prominently removes fluoride from water and its competence is reliant on development of recyclable, environmentally benign adsorbents. Many reported sorbents for defluoridation below stringent level 1.5 mg/L, displayed low to moderate adsorption capacity at varied concentrations and pH. Besides, viable defluoridation techniques are usually unsuccessful in developing countries. In this novel, cheap and efficient porous chelating resin, chitosan doped 20% zirconium (IV) with control morphologies were synthesized for delfuoridation. This bio-composite was at par with commercial alumina to mitigate water fluoride limit up to 1 to 1.5 mg/L. Effect of parameters namely pH, adsorbent dose, contact time and initial fluoride concentration were studied in batch scale. Kinetic data showed a rapid adsorption, indicated practicable operations in packed column. Findings encourage blending with other polymers as an effective option for defluoridation on a large scale.Key words: Fluorosis, chitosan, zirconium, bio-composite, defluoridation, water

Integrated optics sensors for multi-sensing platforms

An overview is presented of research projects on optical sensing, in the Integrated Optical MicroSystems group of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente