The structure of the central disk of NGC 1068: a clumpy disk model

NGC 1068 is one of the best studied Seyfert II galaxies, for which the blackhole mass has been determined from the Doppler velocities of water maser. We show that the standard $\alpha$-disk model of NGC 1068 gives disk mass between the radii of 0.65 pc and 1.1 pc (the region from which water maser emission is detected) to be about 7x10$^7$ M$_\odot$ (for $\alpha=0.1$), more than four times the blackhole mass, and a Toomre Q-parameter for the disk is $\sim$0.001. This disk is therefore highly self-gravitating and is subject to large-amplitude density fluctuations. We conclude that the standard $\alpha$-viscosity description for the structure of the accretion disk is invalid for NGC 1068. In this paper we develop a new model for the accretion disk. The disk is considered to be composed of gravitationally bound clumps; accretion in this clumped disk model arises because of gravitational interaction of clumps with each other and the dynamical frictional drag exerted on clumps from the stars in the central region of the galaxy. The clumped disk model provides a self-consistent description of the observations of NGC 1068. The computed temperature and density are within the allowed parameter range for water maser emission, and the rotational velocity in the disk falls off as $r^{-0.35}$.Comment: To appear in Ap

Pure gonadal dysgenesis misdiagnosed as Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome: a case report

Gonadal dysgenesis is a group of heterogeneous disorders with very rare presentation. The spectrum of disease not only includes primary amenorrhoea but also secondary amenorrhoea. Herein, we are reporting a case of 16-year-old phenotypic female who presented with amenorrhoea with 46, XX karyotype with hypoplastic uterus with absent ovaries (on imaging), with high gonadotropins level and low estradiol. Suspecting Mayer–Rokitansky–Küster–Hauser syndrome (due to hypoplastic uterus) with gonadal dysgenesis she was started on cyclic hormones for development of secondary sexual characters and to prevent bone loss. But, during follow up, after giving estrogen for 8 months, her hypoplastic uterus again starts reappearing with attainment of cyclic menses on estrogen and progesterone withdrawal. We concluded that, in the presence of rudimentary or hypoplastic uterus, straightforward diagnosis of MRKH is to be avoided without seeing peripheral estrogenisation, hormone profile and karyotype analysis.

An Extreme Learning Machine-Relevance Feedback Framework for Enhancing the Accuracy of a Hybrid Image Retrieval System

The process of searching, indexing and retrieving images from a massive database is a challenging task and the solution to these problems is an efficient image retrieval system. In this paper, a unique hybrid Content-based image retrieval system is proposed where different attributes of an image like texture, color and shape are extracted by using Gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), color moment and various region props procedure respectively. A hybrid feature matrix or vector (HFV) is formed by an integration of feature vectors belonging to three individual visual attributes. This HFV is given as an input to an Extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier which is based on a solitary hidden layer of neurons and also is a type of feed-forward neural system. ELM performs efficient class prediction of the query image based on the pre-trained data. Lastly, to capture the high level human semantic information, Relevance feedback (RF) is utilized to retrain or reformulate the training of ELM. The advantage of the proposed system is that a combination of an ELM-RF framework leads to an evolution of a modified learning and intelligent classification system. To measure the efficiency of the proposed system, various parameters like Precision, Recall and Accuracy are evaluated. Average precision of 93.05%, 81.03%, 75.8% and 90.14% is obtained respectively on Corel-1K, Corel-5K, Corel-10K and GHIM-10 benchmark datasets. The experimental analysis portrays that the implemented technique outmatches many state-of-the-art related approaches depicting varied hybrid CBIR system

Socio economic profile of direct seeded rice (DSR) farmers of Haryana

The study has focused on socio economic profile, adoption level of Direct seeded rice (DSR) farmers and extension strategy to increase the adoption of DSR cultivation in Haryana (India). More than half of respondents (51.66 %) belonged to the middle age group 36-50 years and maximum 21.67 per-cent farmer qualification found metric. Majority of the farmers (50.83 per cent) had low level of socio-economic. Economic motivation of farmers was 70.83 per cent belonged to low to moderate level, whereas 67.5 per-cent of respondents belonged moderate to high innovation proneness. The overall adoption level of DSR technology was low to moderate, since 70 per-cent of respondents belonged to low to medium category

Prospects of Citrus sinensis (masumbi) cultivation in Haryana State, India

The empirical study on prospects of Citrus sinensis cultivation by farmers indicated that overall prospects of masumbi (C. sinensis) crop were medium to high since 77.5% respondents belonged to these categories. Majority of respondents agreed that better market facilities (weighted mean score 2.72), increased purchasing power of people (2.65), better fruit quality (2.62), better economic return (2.53) and increase in demand of fruit were the major prospective aspects for its wider adoption (2.53), whereas better technical support (1.20) and better credit facilities (1.08) both were not up to the desired level as expressed by the farmers. So the government should make concerted efforts to further strengthen the highly prospective aspects like better marketing facilities, cultivars of better quality fruits at farm gate or village level. On the basis of result obtained, the prospects of masumbi (C. sinensis) cultivation may be high in future

Constraints faced by farmers of Haryana state in adoption of masumbi (Citrus sinensis) cultivation

The study focused on the constraints faced by farmers of Haryana state in adoption of masumbi (Citrus sinensis) cultivation. The study was conducted in Bhiwani district. The constraints as perceived by the respondents were measured by the scores on the basis of magnitude of the problems. Constraints were categorized into inputs, marketing, production, technical and psychologicalconstraints. While analyzing overall constraints as perceived by farmers the findings revealed that high price of insecticides/pesticides (weighted mean score 2.25), non-availability of inputs at proper time (1.13), absence of agro-processing units (2.05), no support price (1.86), aberrant climatic conditions (1.99), unawareness about proper and balanced fertilizer application and time of application (1.99), lack of guidance of post-harvest technology (1.95), lack of knowledge of current advances in fruit cultivation (1.34), longer time taken in fruit bearing (1.51) and orchard maintenance(1.34) etc. were major constraints faced by the farmers

LIFESTYLE FACTORS AND OBESITY AMONG ADOLESCENTS IN RURAL SOUTH INDIA

Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of obesity among adolescents of thestudy area and to study the association of physical activity, dietary habitswith obesity.Methods: This was a school based cross sectional study conducted among 2963 adolescents in Udupi. They were interviewed using pre-testedquestionnaire, followed by body mass index measurement and classification using World Health Organization criteria. Statistical analysis was doneusing Mann–Whitney U-test, Kruskal–Wallis test, and Chi-square tests.Results: The prevalence of overweight was 2.4% and obesity 1.4% and they were higher among the adolescents belonging to higher socio-economicstatus, among those using motorized transport. Furthermore, 93.2% of the subjects consumed readymade food items apart from homemade ones,28.8% of them had the habit of eating in between the regular meals, and 59.6% of the subjects had the habit of consuming carbonated beveragesregularly.Conclusions: Current levels of obesity and lifestyle factors among the adolescents in the study area can significantly predispose them to the risk ofnon-communicable diseases, which needs to be considered while making policies for non-communicable diseases.Keywords: Adolescents, Obesity, Overweight, Lifestyle, Diet, World Health Organization

A sustainable rice production technology: problems and prospects

The study has focused on problems and prospects perceived by farmers’ for growing rice in direct seeded cultivation mode i.e. Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) in Haryana (India). Overall adoption of DSR technology was low to moderate since 70 per cent respondents belonged to these categories. The method of sowing (weighted mean score 3.0), depth of sowing (2.93) and seed treatment (2.93) were highly adopted agronomic practices, whereas least adopted practices were like recommended seed rate (1.94), timely application of fertilizers (1.87) and their recommended doses (1.73), and ferrous sulphate use only at deficiency syndrome (1.19) not as per recommended schedule. Among constraints non-availability of quality seeds, fertilizers, weedicides and pesticides in required quantity and at proper time (1.64), high weed infestation in DSR in comparison to transplanting (2.88), wide fluctuation in prices (2.83) of basmati paddy due to lack of MSP, lack of storage facilities in villages (2.78), lack of proper knowledge of irrigation schedule (1.73), non-availability of extension personnel (1.64), lack of low credit facility (1.62), non-availability of agricultural magazines and literature in time in villages (2.78), lack of stable procurement policy for basmati rice (2.78) and lack of trained field staff to provide technical guidance during cultivation (2.02) process were serious constraints faced by farmers in adoption of DSR technology in Haryana. Since majority of respondent farmers agreed that DSR technology give better net returns in comparison to transplanting (2.95), less labour requirement (2.92) and best suited to climate change risks (2.66)

Hybrid Models for Learning to Branch

A recent Graph Neural Network (GNN) approach for learning to branch has been shown to successfully reduce the running time of branch-and-bound algorithms for Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP). While the GNN relies on a GPU for inference, MILP solvers are purely CPU-based. This severely limits its application as many practitioners may not have access to high-end GPUs. In this work, we ask two key questions. First, in a more realistic setting where only a CPU is available, is the GNN model still competitive? Second, can we devise an alternate computationally inexpensive model that retains the predictive power of the GNN architecture? We answer the first question in the negative, and address the second question by proposing a new hybrid architecture for efficient branching on CPU machines. The proposed architecture combines the expressive power of GNNs with computationally inexpensive multi-linear perceptrons (MLP) for branching. We evaluate our methods on four classes of MILP problems, and show that they lead to up to 26% reduction in solver running time compared to state-of-the-art methods without a GPU, while extrapolating to harder problems than it was trained on.Comment: Preprint. Under revie

A general scheme for modeling gamma-ray burst prompt emission

We describe a general method for modeling gamma-ray burst prompt emission. We find that for the burst to be produced via the synchrotron process unphysical conditions are required -- the distance of the source from the center of the explosion ($R_\gamma$) must be larger than $\sim 10^{17}$cm and the source Lorentz factor \gta 10^3; for such a high Lorentz factor the deceleration radius ($R_d$) is less than $R_\gamma$ even if the number density of particles in the surrounding medium is as small as $\sim 0.1$ cm$^{-3}$. The result, $R_\gamma > R_d$, is in contradiction with the early x-ray and optical afterglow data. The synchrotron-self-Compton (SSC) process fares much better. There is a large solution space for a typical GRB prompt emission to be produced via the SSC process. The prompt optical emission accompanying the burst is found to be very bright (\lta 14 mag; for $z\sim2$) in the SSC model, which exceeds the observed flux (or upper limit) for most GRBs. Continuous acceleration of electrons can significantly reduce the optical flux and bring it down to the observed limits. (Abridged)Comment: Published in MNRAS Jan 2008, 56 page