Organizational aspects of irrigation management at Dewahuwa tank during Yala 1986

Irrigation effects / Economic aspects / Irrigation practices / Water distribution / Agricultural production / Diversification / Sri Lanka

Organizational aspects of improved irrigation management: An experiment in Dewahuwa Tank, Sri Lanka

Irrigation management / Organizations / Tank irrigation / Farmer-agency interactions / Water allocation / Rotation / Diversification / Crops / Sri Lanka / Dewahuwa

Non-native perception of the English phonemes /w/ and /v/ by native Sinhalese speakers: A study exploring perceptual difficulties associated with L2 acquisition.

The aim of this study was to test the abilities of native Sinhalese speakers to perceive and produce the English phonemes /w/ and Nl. It is well known that people who speak Sinhalese as their first language have difficulty in acquiring the English (L2) phoneme contrast w-v. This is commonly seen among these speakers in their L2 speech production, Experiment 1 involved native Sinhalese speakers completing language background questionnaires and carrying out an English phoneme identification task of natural speech for assessment of their L2 perception. Experiment 1 also consisted of a voice recording of the Sinhalese subjects in order to assess their L2 speech production. Experiment 2 required the native Sinhalese speakers to carry out an identification/goodness task of synthesised English phonemes and to state whether the stimuli could be assimilated to the native Sinhalese phoneme A)/. Experiment 2 also involved an identification/goodness task in which native Sinhalese bilinguals and English monolinguals assessed the synthesised stimuli for assimilations to the English phonemes /w/ and Nl. Experiment 3 was carried out by both Sinhalese and English speakers and involved a discrimination task and similarity task. The results showed that the Sinhalese bilinguals generally had a low sensitivity to perception of the English phonemes. The Sinhalese Bilinguals who had more proficient use of their second language L2 showed a high sensitivity for acoustical changes in the dimension of manner of articulation wile the English speakers were sensitive to both manner and place of articulation

Myco-Remediation of Textile Wastewater and its Re-Usability in Irrigation

Environmental pollution by synthetic dye contained textile wastewater effluents disturb the human health and ecological equilibrium. Therefore, present study was focused on myco-remediation of textile wastewater effluents that generated from local textile dyeing industries. Three fungal strains; Aspergillus niger, A. aculeatus and A. nomius which previously isolated and identified as potential dye decolorising agents, were screened for its potential applicability on decolorisation of textile wastewater effluents. Four cylinders of each fungal isolates were introduced into 100 mL of three textile wastewater effluents obtained from Biyagama (BW), Pugoda (PW) and Negambo (NW) in Sri Lanka, without addition of further nutrients. All the experiments were carried out in triplicates and controls were maintained without addition of fungi. Samples were incubated at 28o C under shaking conditions (100 rpm). Percentage color removal was calculated by measuring the changes of the absorbance at maximum wavelength for each effluent. A. niger showed complete decolorisation of BW, PW and NW effluents within 48h of incubation while A. aculeatus and A. nomius taking 72 h for the same. Controls showed no decolorisation after 72 h. The treated effluents by A .niger, which showed rapid decolorisation of wastewater samples compared to the other two species, was used for the assessment of phytotoxicity for evaluation of the potential applicability on two commercially important edible plants (Oryza sativa and Vigna radiata) in Sri Lanka. The germination percentages of both O. sativa and V. radiata were less than 10% for all three wastewater effluents. Remarkably, 100% germination performance was observed for both O. sativa and V. radiata for the biologically treated effluents confirming the re-usability of selected wastewater effluents for the irrigation purposes. Though the biologically treated textile wastewater effluents cannot used for the drinking purposes directly without further purifications, present study confirmed the potential usability of biologically treated textile wastewater effluents on irrigation purposes.Keyword: Decolorisation, Myco-remediation, Fungi, Aspergillu

Multi-thematic delineation of 'natural zones' of arable fields and their correspondence to spatial yield variation

Properties such as soil apparent electric conductivity (ECa), topography and other site-related data (e.g. canopy reflectance from aerial images) vary across field. The agronomic effects of such variability can sometimes be seen in the spatial variations of crop yield on that field. However, yield maps do not always represent the natural boundaries based on site characteristics. Identification of these boundaries as “management zones” (MZ) can be beneficial in crop management and improving crop input use efficiency. A simple methodology is required to delineate such zones. This research presents an effective methodology to delineate MZ in an irrigated and a non-irrigated (rain-fed) arable maize field in New Zealand. Elevation data for the sites were acquired from Google Earth images and a soil survey. Soil ECa was collected from a soil survey with an electromagnetic device. Yield values (t/ha) were obtained from combine harvesters equipped with yield monitor and Global Positioning System (GPS), over the course of four years for the irrigated site, and two years for the non-irrigated site. The yield data was quality controlled using a filtering system to remove outliers and technically non-plausible data. The data sources were combined in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and three MZ were delineated for each field through standard clustering methods. The maize yields were aggregated per derived MZ to compare yields between different MZ-classes. The results showed that there was some consistency in yields related to the MZ, derived without yield data. In both the non-irrigated and irrigated fields, the lowest yield consistently occurred in the same class each year, however, the MZ-class with the highest yield varied year to year. The results show that it is possible for the studied type of fields to delineate ‘natural’ clusters or zones of site properties that can be used as MZ-classes as they represent different yield levels. The required inputs are freely available and easily obtained data

The Real Exchange Rate Volatility and U.S. Exports: An Empirical Investigation

This paper investigates effects of exchange rate volatility on U.S. exports, using disaggregated sectoral data on U.S. exports to its major trading partners. In this paper, we use a generalized ARCH-type model (GARCH) to generate a measure of exchange rate volatility which is then tested in a model of U.S. exports. The analysis uses monthly trade data for the period from January 1990 through December 2007. Testing sectoral trade data allows us to detect whether the direction or magnitude of the impact of volatility differs depending on the types of goods that are traded. The results obtained in this paper suggest that the increase in the volatility of exchange rate exert a negative effect upon export demand in majority of the products: the study finds evidence for significant negative effects in six of ten export products, and significant positive effects in four products

Gender and displacement in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

This report presents the preliminary results of a household survey of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Jaffna District in Northern Province, one of the areas that still has a large IDP population. The main focus of this survey conducted in October 2020 employing Covid-19 safety protocols was to examine the gendered experiences arising from protracted displacements spanning over three decades. The survey covered 220 households (182 male-headed and 38 female-headed), which accounts for 54.3 per cent of the total IDP households in the Jaffna District. Among other topics, the survey gathered data on the respondents’ current living conditions, finances, asset ownership, safety and security concerns, access to services, social networks and relationship with other IDPs and the host community, and water, sanitation and hygiene issues they face. It also gathered data on the respondents’ pre-displacement experiences to compare that with their current lives, in order to examine the role of displacement in gendered issues they face

Developing a Cost-Efficient Employee and Project Management System for Small-Scale Software Development Startups

Startups are a vital and significant part of the software development landscape. They are the first to implement and embrace new technologies and changes in existing technologies. Even though the vast majority of startups are minor in scale, they represent a significant market share. They develop innovative products within a limited time frame with less capital. Their need to work within a limited time frame guides most startups to embrace the agile methodology. These companies also work with proprietary data and procedures essential to maintain competitiveness with other companies in the market. Employee management systems can reduce the workload on human resource management, and project management systems can increase the efficiency of software development. Both these systems are essential tools for a startup. Even though many tools provide these functionalities in the market, they were not developed specifically for startups. This research aims to create a single service optimized for a small employee base that can provide both of these functionalities in the most cost-efficient and secure way

A Web Based Employee Management System

Employees are the backbone of any company. Often employee data such as personal details of employees, salary, leaves, and work allocations are managed using manual methods. These manual methods generate a lot of paperwork and make it complex to effectively manage the tasks. Most of the computerized systems proposed for employee management mainly focuses only on attendance management, leave management and salary management. This paper proposes a web-based Employee Management System solution to address the difficulties faced. The system will address the shortcomings of the existing systems and provide functions to manage employee data effectively. It will use trending technologies such as React JS, Node JS, Express JS, and MongoDB as the database which are faster and more user friendly compared to the technologies proposed in the literature. The system will use the concepts of distributed systems, client server architecture and show features of 3-tier architecture. The paper concludes that the proposed system addresses the shortcomings of the similar systems proposed in the literature but should be further improved by studying the subject area. Further research should be done to provide more features related to managing employee data and to provide a responsive design that can be accessed through mobile devices as well