Impact of WTO on Potato Export from India

Attempts are being made to export potatoes from India since 1970s but the quantities exported have been negligible and variable in spite of the fact that Indian potatoes are technically excellent and moderately export competitive. With the liberalization of Indian economy and establishment of WTO it was expected that the WTO regime would increase the price level in the international market due to implementation of proposed heavy cut in agricultural subsidies by the developed countries and hence the export of potatoes from India may get a boost. Under this backdrop, the study has ascertained the effect of establishment of WTO on export of potatoes from India. The study has indicated a declining export competitiveness of Indian potatoes in the post-WTO era, which requires immediate attention of policymakers as well as researchers in India to improve the export competitiveness by increasing the productivity and decreasing the cost of production. A need has been emphasized on giving some export incentives and easing some of the major infrastructural bottlenecks. Frozen-potatoes export from India had depicted competitiveness in the post-WTO era which can be encouraged to capture the fast expanding market of the product. The potato export from India can be made stable by either encouraging big export houses in the potato export or establishing a “Potato Board†to look into various aspects of potato export from the country.Agricultural and Food Policy,

First report on a cluster of colistin-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae strains isolated from a tertiary care center in India : whole-genome shotgun sequencing

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a nosocomial pathogen with clinical importance due to its increasing resistance to carbapenems and colistin. Here, we report the genome sequences of eight colistin-resistant K. pneumoniae strains which might help in understanding the molecular mechanism of the species. The sequence data indicate genomes of ~5.2 to 5.4 Mb, along with several plasmids

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

A search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons is described. The analysis is performed using a dataset recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.8 inverse femtobarns. Limits are set on the cross section of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to two photons. The expected exclusion limit at 95% confidence level is between 1.4 and 2.4 times the standard model cross section in the mass range between 110 and 150 GeV. The analysis of the data excludes, at 95% confidence level, the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the mass range 128 to 132 GeV. The largest excess of events above the expected standard model background is observed for a Higgs boson mass hypothesis of 124 GeV with a local significance of 3.1 sigma. The global significance of observing an excess with a local significance greater than 3.1 sigma anywhere in the search range 110-150 GeV is estimated to be 1.8 sigma. More data are required to ascertain the origin of this excess.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Measurement of isolated photon production in pp and PbPb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV

Isolated photon production is measured in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energies of 2.76 TeV in the pseudorapidity range |eta|<1.44 and transverse energies ET between 20 and 80 GeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. The measured ET spectra are found to be in good agreement with next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD predictions. The ratio of PbPb to pp isolated photon ET-differential yields, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions, is consistent with unity for all PbPb reaction centralities.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Measurement of the inclusive production cross sections for forward jets and for dijet events with one forward and one central jet in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The inclusive production cross sections for forward jets, as well for jets in dijet events with at least one jet emitted at central and the other at forward pseudorapidities, are measured in the range of transverse momenta pt = 35-150 GeV/c in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Forward jets are measured within pseudorapidities 3.2<|eta|<4.7, and central jets within the |eta|<2.8 range. The double differential cross sections with respect to pt and eta are compared to predictions from three approaches in perturbative quantum chromodynamics: (i) next-to-leading-order calculations obtained with and without matching to parton-shower Monte Carlo simulations, (ii) PYTHIA and HERWIG parton-shower event generators with different tunes of parameters, and (iii) CASCADE and HEJ models, including different non-collinear corrections to standard single-parton radiation. The single-jet inclusive forward jet spectrum is well described by all models, but not all predictions are consistent with the spectra observed for the forward-central dijet events.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physic