Improving Yield And Quality of Leucaena

Three studies were conducted with objectives of improving yield and quality of leucaena forage. An experiment was conducted in a split-split plot design with five harvests, four levels of irrigation and three accessions (K8, K500 and K4) as main plot, sub-plot and sub-sub-plot treatments respectively. Forage was harvested at 48 to 78 days intervals at 30-50 cm height. The initial rate of growth of K8 was the heighest and of K4 was the lowest. Forage yield was significantly high when crop was irrigated to fully compensate the evaporation losses which was the highest level irrigation treatment. Under well distributed rainfall conditions of Hawaii, soil moisture level of control treatment was well above the critical level of moisture requirement for leucaena. Therefore marginal increase in the soil moisture level through the intermediate levels of irrigation did not increase the yield. K8 and K500 yielded significantly higher than K4. There was no difference in DM yield of K8 and K500. However K8 was found to be superior to K8 for forage production due to higher protein yield, higher foliage fraction and low mimosine content. Forage yield and rate of stem elonation were high in summer and low in winter. The reverse was true for total nitrogen, mimosine and foliage fraction of the forage. Solar radiation was the most important factor which influenced the yield. In a leucaena leaf meal (LLM) feeding trial on growing Japanese quail, following six deitary treatments were included to study the effects of three types of LLM varying in mimosine and tannin contents; Positive control (normal diet with corn and soymeal), negative control (15% alfalfa leaf meal), TLM (15% leucaena K8 tender leaf meal with high mimosine and low tannin), MLM (15% K8 matured leaf meal with low mimosine and high tannin), LM (15% L. diversifolia K156 leaf meal with low mimosine and low tannin) and PVP (MLM diet with 1% polyvinyl pyrrolidone). Weight gain was the lowest in TLM, highest in positive and negative controls and intermediate in MLM, LM and PVP dietary treatments. The difference was noticable by the end of the first week of the trial. Results indicated that mimosine was probably the major cause of poor growth. There was no significant variation in the weight gain due to the difference tannin content of the diets. Supplimentation of PVP was beneficial in this trial. In another study, leucaena accessions maintained at the University of Hawaii, University of the Philippines at Los Banos and Perum Perhutani, Indonesia were screened for low mimosine and high vigor. 31 accessions from the University of Hawaii and one accession from the Perum Perhutani were selected. A forage yield trial has been laid out at the Experiment Station, Waimanalo, to test the yield potentials of these accessions

Empowerment of Women for Improved Quality of Life

Technological developments and information technologies are rapidly changing the economy and lifestyle However women in many developing countries are still deprived of their rights and needs Over the time women in India have faced many problems of inequality and deprivation which have also been a cause of illiteracy and poverty Focused attempt to empower women through sensitization of the community reduction of hardship improved health care development of various skills and support for promoting several income generation activities along with necessary policy support can improve the status of women within 3-5 years even in the backward regions While saving time on their routine household duties and improving the health status of themselves as well as that of their children they have been happy to take up the additional workload for food security and income generation The initial preferences of rural women for income generation were agriculture and livestock husbandry over non-farm activities because of inherent skills and high demand for the produc

Impact of product configurations on lead time and profits

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1997, and Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 71).by Narayan Hegde.M.B.A.M.S

Chiral metals and entrapped insulators in a one-dimensional topological non-Hermitian system

In this work, we study many-body "steady states" that arise in the non-Hermitian generalization of the noninteracting Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model at a finite density of fermions. We find that the hitherto known phase diagrams for this system, derived from the single-particle gap closings, in fact correspond to distinct nonequilibrium phases, which either carry finite currents or are dynamical insulators where particles are entrapped. Each of these have distinct quasiparticle excitations and steady-state correlations and entanglement properties. Looking at finite-sized systems, we further modulate the boundary to uncover the topological features in such steady states, particularly the emergence of leaky boundary modes. Using a variety of analytical and numerical methods, we develop a theoretical understanding of the various phases and their transitions, and we uncover the rich interplay of nonequilibrium many-body physics, quantum entanglement, and topology in a simple looking yet rich model system

Few-shot learning using generative modeling

In many machine learning tasks, the available training data has a skewed distribution- a small set of training classes for which a large number of examples are available (“base classes”), and many classes for which only a limited number of examples are available (fewshot classes). This is known as the long-tail distribution problem. Few-shot learning refers to understanding new concepts from only a few examples. Training a classifier on these fewexample classes is known as the few-shot classification task. Techniques disclosed herein improve classification accuracy for few-shot classes by leveraging examples from the base classes. A generative machine-learning model is trained using the base class examples and learns essential properties of the base classes. These essential properties, representing the intersection between base and few-shot classes, are applied to fewshot classes to generate additional few-shot examples. The generated few-shot examples are used to train a machine classifier to achieve better classification of inputs from few-shot classes

Management of Thrips, Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood, on Rose under Open-Field and Protected Conditions

Investigation on management of thrips, Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood on roses under open-field and protected conditions was conducted during 2008-10 at Bengaluru. Clothianidin 50 WDG 20g a.i./ha proved best in terms of efficacy and cost. Vertimac, spinosad and Garlic Barrier agriculture (GB Ag ) were comparable in efficacy. GB Ag was on par with clothianidin besides being eco-friendly. GB Ag was found effective as a new molecule. Neem seed kernel extract (NSKE) proved to be superior to neem oil, pongamia oil and the commercial neem product, Nimbecidine. NSKE was also found to reduce thrips density to the extent of 64% - 88%. In rose fields where pest suppression measures are hardly practised, farmers can apply NSKE, monocrotophos or imidacloprid. Based on the cost of vertimac and spinosad, these can be recommended where cost-effective, as in commercial polyhouses growing roses

Immunoprophylaxis against AIDS in macaques with a lentiviral DNA vaccine

AbstractWe earlier reported that immunization of macaques with a reverse transcriptase-deleted SHIVKU2 (ΔrtSHIVKU2) plasmid that contained HIV-1(HXB2) env and SIV gag–nef induced protection against AIDS caused by challenge virus SHIV89.6P with a heterologous env. We further deleted vif and integrase from ΔrtSHIVKU2 and substituted the 3′LTR with SV40 poly A sequences, creating Δ4SHIVKU2 (M) and a parallel construct containing gag–nef of HIV-1SF2, Δ4SHIVKU2 (H). Six macaques received two intramuscular injections of the (M) DNA, and another six received three injections of the (H) DNA. Three of the latter group received two post-challenge boosts with (M) DNA vaccine. Seven virus control macaques were inoculated with SHIV89.6P. All twelve immunized macaques were challenged with SHIV89.6P virus, and CMI responses were measured by ELISPOT assays.Virus control animals all developed progressive infection, whereas vaccinated macaques from both groups controlled virus replication, with plasma viral loads dropping to undetectable levels between weeks 6 and 126 p.i. This DNA vaccine was efficacious even though it encoded Env, Gag, and Nef that were genetically distinct from the proteins in the challenge virus. The DNA vaccine induced broad-based protection without using viral proteins to boost the immunity