Developmental impact of joint forest planning and management (JFPM) programme on forest dependent communities: experiences from joida, Karnataka

Joint Forest Planning and Management Programme was introduced in the state of Karnataka in the year 1993. A product of the National Forest Policy of 1988, JFPM was an effort in the direction of involving local communities in the management of forest resources. This programme marked a clear shift in the approach to forest conservation and brought forest dependent communities and the KFD on a common platform to plan and execute sustainable forest management strategies. The programme which became operational with the establishment of Village Forest Committees also gave people the opportunity to augment both individual and community assets by creating the space for sharing the proceeds of the sale of Forest produce from JFPM plantations and also collection of Minor Forest Produce from the neighbourhood forest. This paper seeks to examine the strengths and gaps of the JFPM, mainly as a development praxis. It may be recalled here that Joida was the first taluk in Karnataka where the JFPM programme was introduced

Clinicopathological study and Prognostic Factors in Radical Cystectomy.

Fifty-four thousand new cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed each year. It is the second most common genitourinary cancer and results in over 12,000 cancer-related deaths annually. Twenty percent to 25% of newly diagnosed bladder cancer consist of muscle-invasive disease, with majority of these invasive bladder cancers demonstrating invasion at the time of diagnosis. While tumor grade and stage do influence progression, only approximately 15% of superficial tumors will eventually develop the characteristic features of muscle-invasion. For those that become muscle-invasive, however, the risk of metastasis and mortality unquestionably and dramatically rises. OBJECTIVES : 1. To study the recurrence pattern and disease-free survival of patients undergoing radical cystectomy for bladder cancer. 2. To study the effect of lymphadenectomy on recurrence in bladder cancer after radical cystectomy. 3. To study the prognostic factors governing disease-free survival after radical cystectomy. 4. To do a descriptive analysis of patients undergoing radical cystectomy, to study the morbidity pattern and the quality of life after surgery. MATERIALS AND METHOD : From January 2001 to March 2007, 37 patients underwent radical cystectomy for bladder cancer. These patients were followed up till October 2007. The recurrence pattern and the time to recurrence were studied at follow up. Prognostic factors such as histology, age, grade and stage of the disease that influence the survival and recurrence were studied. The extent of lymphadenectomy and pathological nodal status were correlated with the recurrence. The analysis was done using the SPSS 11.0.1 (15 Nov 2001) statistical package. CONCLUSION : The incidence of bladder cancer is low in India and at the Madras Metropolitan Tumor Registry. Radical cystectomy, performed for muscle-invasive bladder cancer has acceptable morbidity, and level of satisfaction with urinary diversion is satisfactory. Pathological stage of the disease and grade of the tumor has a bearing on the recurrence of the disease. Extent of lymph node dissection and pathological nodal status can prognosticate local recurrence. Extended disease free survival is possible in stage I and stage II disease, and after extensive lymph nodal dissection. High loco-regional failure was observed for N3 disease after surgery, which questions the role of surgery in such a scenario

Investigating stellar variability in the open cluster region NGC 381

We study variable stars in the field of the open cluster NGC 381 using photometric data observed over 27 nights and identify a total of 57 variable stars out of which five are member stars. The variable stars are classified based on their periods, amplitudes, light curve shapes, and locations in the H-R diagram. We found a rich variety of variable stars in the cluster. We identified a total of 10 eclipsing binaries out of which 2 are Algol type (EA) while 8 are W UMa type (EW) binaries. The estimated ages of these EW binaries are greater than 0.6 Gyr which is in agreement with the formation time constraint of > 0.6 Gyr on short-period eclipsing binaries. The estimation of the physical parameters of the three EW type binaries is done using PHOEBE model-fitting software. The pulsating variable stars include one each from {\delta} Scuti and {\gamma} Dor variability class. We determined the pulsation modes of pulsating variables with the help of the FAMIAS package. We obtained 15 rotational variables stars comprising four dwarf stars identified on the basis log(g) versus log(Tef f ) diagram. These dwarf stars are found to have generally larger periods than the remaining rotational variables.Comment: The paper is accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal (AJ). It contains 6 tables and 14 figure

SHARPE: Variation-Aware Formal Statistical Timing Analysis in RTL

Variations in timing can occur due to multiple sources on a chip. Many circuit level statistical techniques are used to analyze timing in the presence of these sources of variation. At the system (higher) level of design, however, timing estimation/verification is not performed. The design at the Register Transfer Level (RTL) is unaware of the underlying statistics and timing variations. It is desirable to have ``variation awareness'' at the higher level, and estimate block level delay distributions early in the design cycle, to evaluate design choices quickly and minimize post-synthesis simulation costs. In this paper, we introduce SHARPE, a rigorous, systematic timing analysis/verification methodology and tool flow to find statistical delay invariants in RTL. We treat the RTL source code as a program and use static program analysis techniques to compute probabilities. We model the probabilistic RTL modules as Discrete Time Markov Chains (DTMCs) that are then checked formally for probabilistic invariants using PRISM, a probabilistic model checker. Our technique is illustrated on the RTL description of the datapath of OR1200, an open source embedded processor.Ope

The statistical analysis of the dynamical evolution of the open clusters

We present the dynamical evolution of ten open clusters which were part of our previous studies. These clusters include both young and intermediate-age open clusters with ages ranging from 25$\pm$19 Myr to 1.78$\pm$0.20 Gyr. The total mass of these clusters ranges from 356.18$\pm$142.90 to 1811.75$\pm$901.03 M$_{\odot}$. The Galactocentric distances to the clusters are in the range of 8.91$\pm$0.02 to 11.74$\pm$0.18 kpc. The study is based on the ground-based UBVRI data supplemented by the astrometric data from the Gaia archive. We studied the minimum spanning tree of the member stars for these clusters. The mass segregation in these clusters was quantified by mass segregation ratios calculated from the mean edge length obtained through the minimum spanning tree. The clusters NGC 2360, NGC 1960, IC 1442, King 21, and SAI 35 have ${\Gamma}_{MSR}$ to be 1.65$\pm$0.18, 1.94$\pm$0.22, 2.21$\pm$0.20, 1.84$\pm$0.23, and 1.96$\pm$0.25, respectively which indicate moderate mass segregation in these clusters. The remaining five clusters are found to exhibit weak or no mass segregation. We used the ratio of half mass radius to the tidal radius i.e. R$_{h}$/R$_{t}$ to investigate the effect of the tidal interactions on the cluster structure and dynamics. The ratios of half mass radii to tidal radii are found to be positively correlated with the Galactocentric distances with a linear slope of 0.06$\pm$0.01 having linear regression coefficient r-square = 0.93 for the clusters.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Statistical Guarantees of Performance for MIMO Designs

Coordinated Science Laboratory was formerly known as Control Systems LaboratoryUILU-ENG-09-221

Cloning and characterization of promoters of vascular specific genes in Zebrafish

Gene promoters located at the 5′ end of genes are instrumental in regulating the gene expression in a ubiquitous or tissue specific manner. The objective of the study was to identify, clone and characterize promoters involved in gene expression in specific tissues such as the blood and blood vessel of Zebrafish. Three genes, known to express in the blood and blood vessel lineage in Zebrafish, were selected viz.  Pak2a, Rac1 and Cdc42. Approximately 800 bp of putative promoter region of Pak2a and 826 bp putative promoter region of cdc42 were cloned into plasmid vectors. This putative promoter did not show any expression in Zebrafish embryos. However, approximately 716 bp of putative promoter region of Rac1 showed Red Fluorescent Protein expression. While study Cmlc2 was used as a positive control