SOCIAL CONTRACTS, MARKETS AND EFFICIENCY -- GROUNDWATER IRRIGATION IN NORTH INDIA

This paper uses primary data to analyze the institutions and informal markets that govern groundwater allocation in the principal sugarcane belt of North India. In contrast to earlier literature, we find that the observed water trades result in efficient water allocation across farms. We interpret this and other stylized facts in terms of a simple bargaining model with limited inter-player transfers. Poor functioning of the power sector leads to reduced pumping and a water supply constraint. Simulations show that power supply reform can significantly increase farm yields, be financed out of the increased farm profits, and provide an instrument to use for attaining intertemporal efficiency in water allocation.water markets, market structure, water production function.

Guns and Butter? Fighting Violence with the Promise of Development

There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest anti-poverty programs, India's NREGS, on the intensity of Maoist conflict. We find short-run increases of insurgency-related violence, police-initiated attacks, and insurgent attacks on civilians. We discuss how these results relate to established theories in the literature. The main mechanism consistent with the empirical patterns is that NREGS induces civilians to share more information with the state, improving police effectiveness

Wettability of Carbonaceous Materials with Molten Iron at 1550°C

In the direct iron smelting process, interfacial reactions of carbonaceous materials with molten iron are among some of the key factors that dictate the rate of carbon transfer into molten iron and establish a carbon concentrated melt to reduce iron oxide in the slag phase. Detailed wettability investigations on a range of carbonaceous materials, e.g. synthetic graphite, natural graphite, coke, coal-chars, coke-polymer blends, waste plastics in contact with molten iron at 1550°C were carried out using the sessile drop method. Experimental results on dynamic contact angles are presented in this chapter and are discussed in terms of the basic characteristics of carbons and the changing composition of the interfacial region as a function of time

The collision of two slowly rotating, initially non boosted, black holes in the close limit

We study the collision of two slowly rotating, initially non boosted, black holes in the close limit. A ``punctures'' modification of the Bowen - York method is used to construct conformally flat initial data appropriate to the problem. We keep only the lowest nontrivial orders capable of giving rise to radiation of both gravitational energy and angular momentum. We show that even with these simplifications an extension to higher orders of the linear Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli black hole perturbation theory, is required to deal with the evolution equations of the leading contributing multipoles. This extension is derived, together with appropriate extensions of the Regge-Wheeler and Zerilli equations. The data is numerically evolved using these equations, to obtain the asymptotic gravitational wave forms and amplitudes. Expressions for the radiated gravitational energy and angular momentum are derived and used together with the results of the numerical evolution to provide quantitative expressions for the relative contribution of different terms, and their significance is analyzed.Comment: revtex, 18 pages, 2 figures. Misprints corrected. To be published in Phys. Rev.

Influence of Wettability and Reactivity on Refractory Degradation – Interactions of Molten Iron and Slags with Steelmaking Refractories at 1550°C

Refractories, materials that can withstand high temperatures, play an important role in the iron and steel sector which alone accounts for ~70% of total refractories produced. In this chapter, detailed wettability and interfacial phenomena investigations on alumina-carbon and zirconia-carbon refractories at steelmaking temperatures. The wettability between refractory substrates and molten iron/slags was investigated at 1550°C using the sessile drop approach in a horizontal tube furnace equipped with a CCD camera. Detailed experimental results were obtained on alumina-carbon/molten iron system at high temperatures. Alumina is known to be non-wetting to molten iron while carbon can be easily wetted. Observed contact angles were found to depend strongly on the substrate composition and contact time. While the refractory substrates containing 50 and 60% carbon were found to be non-wetting to molten iron, the substrates containing higher amounts of C (≥ 70%) were found to become increasingly wetting. Molten iron droplets were seen to spread on these substrates

Mining High Dimensional Web Content With Sentimental Analysis: A Proactive Approach

Sentiment analysis or opinion mining has a humongous scope in the field of digital marketing. Many research ideas have evolved in this field of engineering over the past decades. The major task of proposing sentiment analysis in mining is to systematize the detection of opinions, attitudes and the feelings expressed. These approaches however have some setback in certain scenarios. Rather than directly expressing the feelings sometimes a person might use diverse strategies to express emotions which might be positive, negative or neutral. One word which was viewed positive in a scenario might be regarded as negative in another situation. Such circumstances would interrogate the reliability of sentimental analysis. Our researches aim at alleviating the challenges in sentimental analysis and deliver a tool that is effective and reliable