Exploring the Psychological Antecedents of Attitude towards Indigenous Wetland Practices

A study was conducted in the North eastern agro-climatic zone of Tamil Nadu, India to analyze the possible impact of the psychological antecedents of attitude towards Indigenous Wetland Practices(IWPs) among the farming community. Two hundred and nine farmers were selected at random from ten blocks in three districts of the state. Their psychological characteristics and attitude towards IWPs were assessed. The mean attitude score and the mean attitude index were analysed. The highest variable index was found in the case of Progressivism and Traditionalism, followed by Self-Reliance. Environmental orientation and Decision making ability had a positive and highly significant relationship while Scientific Orientation had a negative and highly significant relationship with attitude towards Indigenous Wetland Practices.

Gender Equality in Agricultural Education

Women play an important role in Agriculture, especially in developing countries. Promoting gender equality is crucial for agricultural development and food security. Agricultural extension services have a long tradition of working predominantly with men and only 15 percent of the world’s extension agents are women. World Bank has suggested“Increased women’s enrollment in agricultural courses” as one among the strategies when addressing gender issues in the education and training components of agricultural development projects. In this context the study was carried out to ascertain the representation of women and their academic achievement in agricultural education. The study revealed that almost equal representation was found for women in agricultural course and they were also provided better quality education in their schooling, in the form of English medium education and education in private schools. Recent trends for the past four years showed a higher percentage of enrollments of women in agricultural course than men. The growth rate was also higher for the female students. Women also showed a significantly higher percentage of academic achievement than men. These positive indicators provide sufficient signals for equality of women in agricultural course and have positive implications for development of the agricultural sector in future

Management Characteristics and Adoption Index of Indigenous Agricultural Practices by Rice Farmers

The study was conducted in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu, to assess the relationship between Management characteristics of farmers and their adoption of Indigenous Agricultural Practices (IAPs) in Rice cultivation. One hundred and twenty Rice growing farmers were purposively selected from five blocks of Vellore district for the study. Thirty eight IAPs for Rice cultivation as listed in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Agritech portal were selected for the study and the adoption index regarding these technologies revealed that majority (65%) of the respondents had ‘medium’ adoption index. With regard to the management characteristics studied, majority of the respondents had medium level of management orientation (75.00%), coordination ability (70.80%), risk orientation (75.80%), self-confidence (69.20%) and self-reliability (56.70%). The study also revealed that therewas a positive and significant relationship with regard to self-confidence and self-reliance of the farmers with the extent of adoption of Indigenous Agricultural Practices. Risk orientation had a negative but significant relationship with extent of adoption. Training the farmers to improve their management skills could lead to better adoption of the indigenous practices

Understanding Learning Style Variations among Undergraduate Students

A study was conducted in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu state to understand the learning styles of students. The term learning style refers to the way or method or approach by which a student learns. The study explored the possible learning style variations among agricultural, horticultural, engineering and arts & science students and their association with academic achievement. One hundred and twelve students were randomly selected from the four streams and their learning styles were analyzed. In the agricultural and horticultural streams, a majority of the students were auditory learners. They were also found to be predominantly unimodal learners. Overall, it was found that majority of the students were visual learners followed by auditory and kinesthetic style. The highest percentage of kinesthetic learners was found among engineering students. Trimodal learners scored the highest mean percentage of marks. The influence of learning styles on the academic achievements of the students did not show a significant relationship

Implementation Performance of Mobile Wimax for Various Propagation Models

Nowadays the Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology becomes popular and receives growing acceptance as a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system. These networks enable high data transmission rates. WiMAX is the newest wireless broadband Internet technology based on IEEE 802.16 standard. Based on OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), this system uses radio frequency range from 2 to 11 GHz. WiMAX has potential success in its line-of-sight (LOS) and non line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions which operating below 11 GHz frequency. There are going to be a surge all over the world for the deployment of WiMAX networks. Estimation of path loss and signal coverage is very important in initial deployment of wireless network and cell planning. Numerous path loss (PL) models (e.g. Okumura Model, Hata Model) are available to predict the propagation loss, but they are inclined to be limited to the lower frequency bands (up to 2 GHz). In this thesis we compare and analyze different path loss models and signal coverage (i.e. COST 231 Hata model, ECC-33 model, SUI model, Ericsson model and COST 231 Walfish-Ikegami model) in different receiver antenna heights in urban, suburban and rural environments in NLOS condition. Our main concentration in this thesis is to find out a suitable model for different environments to provide guidelines for cell planning of WiMAX at cellular frequency. From calculations, that I made, can be concluded, that FSPL model, gives the lowest path loss, in all type of terrains – rural, suburban and rural areas. Model ECC-33 can predict path loss in urban and suburban areas, but it is unusable in rural areas. Also I can conclude, that model SUI, has approximately the same values of path loss with those, computed with FSPL model. My research shows that all Pathloss will be less in Rural areas compared to urban and suburban, Signal coverage will be more in suburban areas than in urban areas

Identification of New Drug Candidates Against \u3cem\u3eBorrelia burgdorferi\u3c/em\u3e Using High-Throughput Screening

Lyme disease is the most common zoonotic bacterial disease in North America. It is estimated that .300,000 cases per annum are reported in USA alone. A total of 10%–20% of patients who have been treated with antibiotic therapy report the recrudescence of symptoms, such as muscle and joint pain, psychosocial and cognitive difficulties, and generalized fatigue. This condition is referred to as posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome. While there is no evidence for the presence of viable infectious organisms in individuals with posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome, some researchers found surviving Borrelia burgdorferi population in rodents and primates even after antibiotic treatment. Although such observations need more ratification, there is unmet need for developing the therapeutic agents that focus on removing the persisting bacterial form of B. burgdorferi in rodent and nonhuman primates. For this purpose, high-throughput screening was done using BacTiter-Glo assay for four compound libraries to identify candidates that stop the growth of B. burgdorferi in vitro. The four chemical libraries containing 4,366 compounds (80% Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approved) that were screened are Library of Pharmacologically Active Compounds (LOPAC1280), the National Institutes of Health Clinical Collection, the Microsource Spectrum, and the Biomol FDA. We subsequently identified 150 unique compounds, which inhibited .90% of B. burgdorferi growth at a concentration of ,25 µM. These 150 unique compounds comprise many safe antibiotics, chemical compounds, and also small molecules from plant sources. Of the 150 unique compounds, 101 compounds are FDA approved. We selected the top 20 FDA-approved molecules based on safety and potency and studied their minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration. The promising safe FDA-approved candidates that show low minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration values can be chosen as lead molecules for further advanced studies