Adoption of Modern Paddy Farming Practices Among the Farmers in a Mahaweli Settlement Scheme in Sri Lanka

The main purpose of the study was to determine the adoption and level of adoption of modern paddy farming practices among the farmers in the Galnewa Block of System H in the Mahaweli territory of Sri Lanka. The study also attempted to estimate the relationship between adoption and yield. In addition, the study examined the relationships between adopt ion and ascertained factors derived from factor analysis. It further analysed the extent of adoption and non-adoption, the characteristics of adopters and non-adopters, the practices which were adopted and not adopted, and reasons for nonadoption. The study used the survey method supplemented by observations,unstructured interviews, and secondary data

In Quest of Bernstein Inequalities Rational Functions, Askey-Wilson Operator, and Summation Identities for Entire Functions

The title of the dissertation gives an indication of the material involved with the connecting thread throughout being the classical Bernstein inequality (and its variants), which provides an estimate to the size of the derivative of a given polynomial on a prescribed set in the complex plane, relative to the size of the polynomial itself on the same set. Chapters 1 and 2 lay the foundation for the dissertation. In Chapter 1, we introduce the notations and terminology that will be used throughout. Also a brief historical recount is given on the origin of the Bernstein inequality, which dated back to the days of the discovery of the Periodic table by the Russian Chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. In Chapter 2, we narrow down the contents stated in Chapter 1 to the problems we were interested in working during the course of this dissertation. Henceforth, we present a problem formulation mainly for those results for which solutions or partial solutions are provided in the subsequent chapters. Over the years Bernstein inequality has been generalized and extended in several directions. In Chapter 3, we establish rational analogues to some Bernstein-type inequalities for restricted zeros and prescribed poles. Our inequalities extend the results for polynomials, especially which are themselves improved versions of the classical Erdös-Lax and Turán inequalities. In working towards proving our results, we establish some auxiliary results, which may be of interest on their own. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the research carried out with the Askey-Wilson operator applied on polynomials and entire functions (of exponential type) respectively. In Chapter 4, we first establish a Riesz-type interpolation formula on the interval [−1, 1] for the Askey-Wilson operator. In consequence, a sharp Bernstein inequality and a Markov inequality are obtained when differentiation is replaced by the Askey-Wilson operator. Moreover, an inverse approximation theorem is proved using a Bernstein-type inequality in L2−space. We conclude this chapter with an overconvergence result which is applied to characterize all q-differentiable functions of Brown and Ismail. Chapter 5 is devoted to an intriguing application of the Askey-Wilson operator. By applying it on the Sampling Theorem on entire functions of exponential type, we obtain a series representation formula, which is what we called an extended Boas’ formula. Its power in discovering interesting summation formulas, some known and some new will be demonstrated. As another application, we are able to obtain a couple of Bernstein-type inequalities. In the concluding chapter, we state some avenues where this research can progress

Health risks associated with the conservation of kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus) on offshore islands : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Veterinary Science at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

New Zealand has a long history of using translocations of native fauna for conservation and offshore islands have been regarded as isolated ecosystems for conservation purposes. Maintaining the biosecurity of these islands is a fundamental part of conservation management. Island translocation has protected the endemic New Zealand parrot kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus) from becoming extinct and resulted a viable population in three offshore islands outside its historical range. However, kākāpō have been affected with novel diseases arising in the island sanctuaries. The aim of this research was to investigate the health risk for kākāpō in offshore islands, focusing on two main diseases. Exudative cloacitis is a disease of the cloaca in kākāpō from Whenua Hou for which no aetiology has been identified. An epidemiological study was conducted to identify the factors associated with the initiation of this disease in kākāpō. Results suggested that the disease is unlikely to have an infectious origin and diseased birds were not geographically clustered within Whenua Hou but reflected the kākāpō distribution within the island. Analysing the pH, moisture and ammonium content of kakapo roost materials did not show any evidence for the cause of the disease in the cloaca. Disease incidence has not been affected by the annual maximum temperature and rainfall each year. Erysipelas, an acute infection caused by the bacteria, Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae, emerged as a small cluster of mortality in translocated kākāpō in 2004, and has subsequently been diagnosed as a sporadic cause of death for kākāpō and other endangered New Zealand fauna. This study reported the presence of E. rhusiopathiae in different seabird species in two islands Whenua Hou and Te Hauturu-o-Toi through a targeted survey. Whole genome sequencing revealed that there was a geographic difference in genomic diversity of E. rhusiopathiae, and phylogenetic evidence suggested seabirds as a possible reservoir of the organism for endangered native land birds. An Erysipelothrix spp. phylogenetically different from E. rhusiopathiae was detected in Cook’s petrels (Pterodroma cookii) and in kākāpō indicating the diversity in the genus Erysipelothrix in these island ecosystems. The investigations in this thesis demonstrate that while island translocations have been instrumental in conserving endangered fauna in New Zealand, this conservation strategy does expose the translocated populations to novel health risks. Disease management should be a priority in managing endangered species and these results should help to guide management actions for new health issues as they arise

Electrochemical and surface plasmon bioassays for circulating biomarkers

To address analytical detection needs, sensitive and selective assay methodologies are of great importance. Compared to simple buffer medium, a great challenge exists in detecting ultra-low levels of biomarkers in clinical matrices due to their inherent complexity and interferences posed by non-specific molecules. In addition, small molecules do not yield measurable assay signal changes compared to large biomolecules. My thesis research is focused on designing nano-biological interfaces to detect small and large molecules at low parts-per-billion and femto/picomolar concentrations in complex biofluids (serum and urine samples). Compared to harsh and tedious chemical carboxylation, non-covalent carboxylation of multiwalled carbon nanotubes by π-π stacking 1-pyrenebutyric acid retains the innate sp2 structure and electronic properties of the nanotubes and offers surface carboxyl groups for stable covalent amine coupling of a large amount of enzymes, thus improving the sensitivity of the assay. Chapter 2 demonstrates the first pyrenyl carbon nanostructure modified enzymatic bioelectrode for amperometric detection of urine formaldehyde at clinically relevant parts-per-billion levels with selectivity and wide dynamic range. Subsequently, we explored the low dielectric permittivity and intrinsic plasmonics of graphene for the detection of serum glutamic acid decarboxylase autoantibody (GADA). Graphene-based electrochemical immunosensing approach is advantageous due to its additional applicability for surface plasmon based validation and binding strength analysis with surface immobilized GAD-65 antigens (Chapter 3). My thesis focused on the third class of biomarkers, microRNAs, which are small oligonucleotides with 21-25 bases. To develop the microRNA assay with quantitative characterization, surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi) coupled with quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) was designed (Chapter 4). Gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) were linked to the oligonucleotides to increase the detection sensitivity upon hybridization with the selective capture oligonucleotide immobilized on the sensor surface with minimal non-specific signals. Often, cancer and other similar health disorders have been shown to be related to various types of biomarkers. Hence, in Chapter 5, we designed a multiplex assay platform for combined measurement of proteins and microRNAs. For this multiplex assay, we synthesized iron-gold bimetallic core/shell nanoparticles (Fe3O4@Au NPs) that displayed a greater plasmonic signal amplification than either Fe3O4 or Au NPs.Chemistr

Attention Prompt Tuning: Parameter-efficient Adaptation of Pre-trained Models for Spatiotemporal Modeling

In this paper, we introduce Attention Prompt Tuning (APT) - a computationally efficient variant of prompt tuning for video-based applications such as action recognition. Prompt tuning approaches involve injecting a set of learnable prompts along with data tokens during fine-tuning while keeping the backbone frozen. This approach greatly reduces the number of learnable parameters compared to full tuning. For image-based downstream tasks, normally a couple of learnable prompts achieve results close to those of full tuning. However, videos, which contain more complex spatiotemporal information, require hundreds of tunable prompts to achieve reasonably good results. This reduces the parameter efficiency observed in images and significantly increases latency and the number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) during inference. To tackle these issues, we directly inject the prompts into the keys and values of the non-local attention mechanism within the transformer block. Additionally, we introduce a novel prompt reparameterization technique to make APT more robust against hyperparameter selection. The proposed APT approach greatly reduces the number of FLOPs and latency while achieving a significant performance boost over the existing parameter-efficient tuning methods on UCF101, HMDB51, and SSv2 datasets for action recognition. The code and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/wgcban/aptComment: Accepted at 18th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG'24) Code available at: https://github.com/wgcban/apt 12 pages, 8 figures, 6 table

Micro Finance as a Tool of Empowerment: Evidence from Two State Sponsored Micro Finance Projects in Sri Lanka

Microfinance provides a variety of small-scale financial products including credit, savings, insurance and business development services to poor people who do not have access to commercial banks and other formal financial institutions. It is widely believed that such credit enables poor people to engage in their own small enterprises, thereby to raise their incomes, and to accumulate assets. Microfinance is increasingly recognized as an effective instrument for poverty reduction and local economic development especially through empowering women economically, politically and socially. This research was carried  with an objective to assess the extent to which these micro finance projects contribute for the economic empowerment, social empowerment, interpersonal empowerment of women beneficiaries in Hingurakgoda DS division in Polonnaruwa district in Sri Lanka. 200 beneficiaries from 2nd community development and livelihood improvement project and  Samurdhi Bank Society were selected randomly and information was collected through structured questionnaire. Descriptive analysis shows that’s loans, advisory & counseling service, skills development & training and women empowerment are in high level. Correlation between predictors and empowerment is also reveals positive and significant relationship. Regression analysis shows that variables skills development & training and advisory & counseling service are contributing more to women empowerment

Development and characterization of biocomposite films using banana pseudostem, cassava starch and poly(vinyl alcohol): A sustainable packaging alternative

To meet the need for sustainable packaging, we introduce a novel biocomposite film consisting of banana pseudostem, cassava starch, and poly(vinyl alcohol). We aimed to evaluate the optimal biocomposite film composition, which is characteristic for packaging materials. Using the solvent casting method, we produced biocomposite films with varying proportions (10-40 % w/w) of the lignocellulosic component from both Sour and Ash Plantain banana pseudostems. The resulting biocomposite films were characterized for mechanical, chemical, thermal, water absorption, gas permeability, and morphological properties. At the 25 % lignocellulosic level, a notable drop (P < 0.05) in tensile strength and elongation was observed, while water absorption increased, and gas permeability decreased. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy analysis revealed insights into the structural attributes of lignocellulosic composites. Thermogravimetric analysis indicated an onset temperature of 120 degree celsius for thermal degradation, confirming the biocomposite's thermal stability. A fundamental discovery emerged with the optimal composition at a 30 % pseudostem powder inclusion, offering an exceptional balance of tensile strength, elongation at break, water absorption, and gas permeability. This breakthrough holds significant implications for eco-friendly biocomposite films, particularly in food packaging. Future work may be undertaken to further explore banana pseudostems' potential in creating biocomposite films with advanced functionalities and their broader applications, including characterizations

A Transformer-Based Siamese Network for Change Detection

This paper presents a transformer-based Siamese network architecture (abbreviated by ChangeFormer) for Change Detection (CD) from a pair of co-registered remote sensing images. Different from recent CD frameworks, which are based on fully convolutional networks (ConvNets), the proposed method unifies hierarchically structured transformer encoder with Multi-Layer Perception (MLP) decoder in a Siamese network architecture to efficiently render multi-scale long-range details required for accurate CD. Experiments on two CD datasets show that the proposed end-to-end trainable ChangeFormer architecture achieves better CD performance than previous counterparts. Our code is available at https://github.com/wgcban/ChangeFormer.Comment: Accepted to International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2022. 4 pages, 2 figures. Code & trained models are available at https://github.com/wgcban/ChangeForme