Quantification of yield gaps in rain-fed rice, wheat, cotton and mustard in India

Rainfed farming / Crop yield / Simulation / Rice / Wheat / Cotton / Mustard / India

Higher order asymptotics for large deviations – Part I

The file archived on this institutional repository is a preprint available online at https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.06793. It has not been certified by peer review. Please consult the version of record available published by IOS Press at https://doi.org/10.3233/ASY-201602 .For sequences of non-lattice weakly dependent random variables, we obtain asymptotic expansions for Large Deviation Principles. These expansions, commonly referred to as strong large deviation results, are in the spirit of Edgeworth Expansions for the Central Limit Theorem. We show that the results are applicable to Diophantine iid sequences, finite state Markov chains, strongly ergodic Markov chains and Birkhoff sums of smooth expanding maps & subshifts of finite type.P. Hebbar was partially supported by the ARO grant W911NF1710419

Machine Learning for Handwriting Recognition

With the knowledge of current data about particular subject, machine learning tries to extract hidden information that lies in the data. By applying some mathematical functions and concepts to extract hidden information, machine learning can be achieved and we can predict output for unknown data. Pattern recognition is one of the main application of ML. Patterns are usually recognized with the help of large image data-set. Handwriting recognition is an application of pattern recognition through image. By using such concepts, we can train computers to read letters and numbers belonging to any language present in an image. There exists several methods by which we can recognize hand-written characters. We will be discussing some of the methods in this paper

HMDSAD: Hindi multi-domain sentiment aware dictionary

Sentiment Analysis is a fast growing sub area of Natural Language Processing which extracts user's opinion and classify it according to its polarity into positive, negative or neutral classes. This task of classification is required for many purposes like opinion mining, opinion summarization, contextual advertising and market analysis but it is domain dependent. The words used to convey sentiments in one domain is different from the words used to express sentiments in other domain and it is a costly task to annotate the corpora in every possible domain of interest before training the classifier for the classification. We are making an attempt to solve this problem by creating a sentiment aware dictionary using multiple domain data. The source domain data is labeled into positive and negative classes at the document level and the target domain data is unlabeled. The dictionary is created using both source and target domain data. The words used to express positive or negative sentiments in labeled data has relatedness weights assigned to it which signifies its co-occurrence frequency with the words expressing the similar sentiments in target domain. This work is carried out in Hindi, the official language of India. The web pages in Hindi language is booming very quickly after the introduction of UTF-8 encoding style. The dictionary can be used to classify the unlabeled data in the target domain by training a classifier

Assessment of awareness on generic drugs among health care professionals and laypersons

Background: In the present day world the expenditure on medicines is very high. Most of the people in developing countries find it difficult to afford expensive medicines. One of the measures to cut down the expenditure on medicines is to use generic drugs. Hence the study was taken up to know the awareness, attitude and preference for generic drugs among medical and non medical persons.Methods: The study was done on 290 participants. 60 medical interns, 30 doctors, 50 nurses, 50 non medical staff (clerks and attenders) and 100 patients were included. They were given a questionnaire to know the awareness and knowledge on generic drugs, willingness to prescribe (among doctors) and use it (non medical staff and patients).Results: This study showed that all medical persons- doctors, interns and nurses knew about generic drugs whereas 60% of non medical staff and 95% of the patients were not aware about it. All doctors had good knowledge about generic drugs and 80% prescribed it always. 70% of the patients depended on what doctors prescribed for them and never asked for generic/ branded drugs in particular. 70% non medical staff preferred it only sometimes.Conclusions: The awareness among non medical persons is poor than medical persons among the surveyed population. Hence adequate measures should be taken to increase awareness and knowledge among public so that they become imperative enough to ask their doctors to prescribe generic drugs

Impact of educational intervention on pressurized metered dose inhaler technique among undergraduate medical students

Background: Inhaled medications form the cornerstone for the management of Asthma and related diseases. Proper technique of pressurized metered dose Inhalers (pMDIs) has proven to be associated with higher level of control of these conditions. Medical personnel who are responsible for training patients must themselves be proficient with usage of pMDI. This study evaluated the outcome of different educational interventions regarding the correct usage of pMDI.Methods: An interventional study was carried out with 60 second year medical students in department of pharmacology, HIMS, Hassan from June to August 2015. Pre and post intervention (after one week and one month) was evaluated based on National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) criteria for the use of pMDI by written and demonstration methods. The interventions included a video clip, an information leaflet and demonstration by a trained faculty.Results: Overall mean scores in pre-test for written knowledge and skill demonstration are 2.13±1.49 and 3.78±1.06 .There was substantial improvement in post intervention scores 7.15±1.41 and 7.37±1.67 (p<0.05) . Using one way ANOVA, demonstration group has shown statistically significant improvement in mean score compared to video and checklist groups in 1 week (8.8 versus 7.2 and 6.1, p<0.05) and 1 month (8.25 versus 7.1 and 5.7 (p<0.05) after the intervention.Conclusions: Correct usage of pMDI is a necessary skill for health care professionals and can be taught by various methods. The educational intervention by an interactive demonstration has proven to be effective in learning the inhaler technique

A prospective evaluation of efficacy and safety of topical bromfenac 0.09% over topical flurbiprofen 0.03% after cataract surgery

Background: Different medications are used to reduce pain and inflammation after cataract surgery. Hence this study was taken up to compare the efficacy and safety of topical bromfenac 0.09% over topical flurbiprofen 0.03% in reducing anterior chamber inflammation and pain after cataract surgery.Methods: Total of 100 patients who underwent uneventful cataract surgery with posterior chamber intra ocular lens (IOL) implantation were randomly allocated to receive bromfenac 0.09% and flurbiprofen 0.03% topically from first post-operative day onwards for 6 weeks. Assessment of anterior chamber inflammation and pain was done by slit lamp and visual analogue scale respectively on each follow up days. Analysis was done by unpaired t test and Fischer’s exact test.Results: The response to treatment was earlier in bromfenac group for all the inflammatory changes (significant difference was found on day 7, p<0.05) except for corneal edema where both the groups showed similar response. On 7th day after surgery, 72% patients in flurbiprofen group and 12% in bromfenac group had pain (score1), while on the 14th day none in the bromfenac group complained of pain whereas 4% in flurbiprofen group still had pain. Both the drugs were safe and no clinically serious adverse effects were observed in either of the groups.Conclusions: This study showed both the medications, topical bromfenac 0.09% and topical flurbiprofen 0.03% effective and safe in reducing pain and anterior chamber inflammation after cataract surgery but the response was earlier with bromfenac 0.09%

Bioassay of Geniculosporium species for Phytophthora megakarya biological control on cacao pod husk pieces

Fungal endophytes (Geniculosporium sp.) isolated from cacao leaves were screened for biological control of Phytophthora megakarya the cacao black pod disease pathogen, using Cacao Pod Husk Pieces (CPHP). CPHP were pre-treated with spore suspensions of Geniculosporium sp. [BC13 (GJS 01- 196), BC108 (GJS 01-192), BC118 (GJS 01-197), BC177 (GJS 01-198)], and were infected with P. megakarya zoospore suspensions (105 zoospores/ml). Effects on P. megakarya were noticed at pod infection, mycelia growth inside infected tissues, and fungal sporulation, that are major stages of the black pod disease cycle on cacao pods. CPHP pre-treated with BC108 expressed the lowest early Infection Index (EII), but could not control disease progress into infected cacao pod husk tissues. On CPHP pre-treated with BC13, average growth rate of the necrosis was significantly reduced, but no control on P. megakarya sporulation was observed, while CPHP pre-treated with BC177 significantly reduced P. megakarya sporulation.Key words: Cacao, biological control, Geniculosporium sp, endophytes, Phytophthora megakarya, pod husks pieces