Economic analysis of groundwater markets in central dry zone of Karnataka

Water market, Groundwater irrigation, Water use efficiency, Economic analysis, India, Karnataka, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,

Economic Analysis of Groundwater Markets in Central Dry Zone of Karnataka

Groundwater, unlike surface water, is expensive and relatively scarce and hence should be used to grow crops that are responsive to protective irrigation, require less water and are remunerative. Sellers and buyers of groundwater have put large areas under paddy, a water-intensive crop. This needs to be disciplined through effective groundwater institutions. Groundwater literacy has to be promoted by educating farmers on the pros and cons of overexploitation. For farmers who do not own wells, one way to enable access to water is through group investments in well irrigation. This would require provision for institutional credit for such groups and energization of pumpsets. This will provide an environment of sharing available groundwater and the associated costs. The functioning of groundwater markets in hard rock areas of the semi arid dry zone of Karnataka show two types of arrangements. In the first one, irrigation services are provided on demand and water charge is levied on hourly basis. In the second one, irrigation services are provided for the whole crop season, and cash equivalent of a fixed share of crop produce is paid as water charge. For water buyers, crop sharing arrangement yielded higher returns than that under hourly rates. Comparative analysis of allocative efficiencies of input use for sellers and buyers in groundwater markets show that water buyers obtain higher economic efficiency in water used for crop production than sellers, though both buyers and sellers are growing water-intensive crops such as paddy.water markets, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Molecular fingerprinting of Helicanthus elastica (Desr.) Danser growing on five different hosts by RAPD

AbstractMistletoes are hemiparasitic plants growing on aerial parts of other host trees. Many of the mistletoes are reported to be medicinally important. The hemiparasitic nature of these plants makes their chemical composition dependent on the host on which it grows. They are shown to exhibit morphological dissimilarities also when growing on different hosts. Helicanthus elastica (Desr.) Danser (mango mistletoe) is one such less explored medicinal mistletoe found on almost every mango tree in India. Traditionally, the leaves of this plant are used for checking abortion and for removing stones in the kidney and urinary bladder while significant antioxidant and antimicrobial properties are also attributed to this species of mistletoe. The current study was undertaken to evaluate molecular differences in the genomic DNA of the plant while growing on five different host trees using four random markers employing random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) followed by similarity matrix by Jaccard’s coefficient and distance matrix by hierarchal clustering analysis. Similarity and distance matrix data employing just 4 random markers, separately and the pooled data as well, revealed significant difference in the genomic DNA of H. elastica growing on five different hosts. Pooled data of similarity from all the 4 primers cumulatively showed similarity between 0.256 and 0.311. Distance matrix ranged from of 0.256 to 0.281 on pooling the data from all the four primers. The result employing a minimum number of primers could conclude that genomic DNA of H. elastica differs depending upon the host on which it grows, hence the host must be considered while studying or utilizing this mistletoe for medicinal purposes

Risks of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) for sustainable water recycling via aquifers

The prediction of the fate of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water recycling with urban stormwater and treated wastewater is important since PFAS are widely used, persistent, and have potential impacts on human health and the environment. These alternative water sources have been utilized for water recycling via aquifers or managed aquifer recharge (MAR). However, the fate of these chemicals in MAR schemes and the potential impact in terms of regulation have not been studied. PFAS can potentially be transported long distances in the subsurface during MAR. This article reviews the potential risks to MAR systems using recycled water and urban stormwater. To date, there are insufficient data to determine if PFAS can be degraded by natural processes or retained in the aquifer and become suitable pre-treatment or post-treatment technologies that will need to be employed depending upon the end use of the recovered water. The use of engineered pre-treatment or post-treatment methods needs to be based on a ‘fit for purpose’ principle and carefully integrated with the proposed water end use to ensure that human and environmental health risks are appropriately managed

Shot noise of series quantum point contacts intercalating chaotic cavities

Shot noise of series quantum point contacts forming a sequence of cavities in a two dimensional electron gas are studied theoretically and experimentally. Noise in such a structure originates from local scattering at the point contacts as well as from chaotic motion of the electrons in the cavities. We found that the measured shot noise is in reasonable agreement with our theoretical prediction taking the cavity noise into account.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Design of Turbo Trellis Coding Modulation Scheme of Rate 4/9 for Rician Fading Channel

When the fading channels are encountered during data communication, errors are likely to occur at the receiving end due to multipath propagation. Researchers have been consistently striving to develop Error Correction Schemes that can effectively handle these errors and ensure error-free data reception at the receiver end. Of particular interest are the Forward Error Correction Schemes that can be implemented at the transmitter end itself. However, the implementation of error correction coding through these schemes incurs additional costs in terms of bandwidth expansion, as extra bits need to be added to facilitate error correction. Fortunately, there exists one coding scheme called Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), which addresses this issue. TCM selects a modulation scheme based on the rate of the convolutional coding scheme. However, this coding technique has limitations in correcting the number of errors, leading to the development of Turbo Coding. This scheme utilizes two coders at the transmitter, arranged in either serial or parallel configuration, and a suitable decoder at the receiver. A design of Turbo Coding scheme has been presented in this paper, that employs convolutional coders having rate 2/3, in a serially concatenated configuration, providing an effective rate of 4/9. This turbo coding scheme is then applied to TCM scheme in order to preserve the bandwidth. Therefore, if using the convolutional coding scheme of rate 2/3, the modulation scheme is 8-QAM and in order to preserve bandwidth after coding, using the Turbo coding scheme of rate 4/9, then the modulation scheme will be 512-QAM. The simulations have been conducted in MATLAB and the error correcting capabilities of the designed scheme in comparison with convolutional coding scheme using the constituent convolutional encoder have also been compared. It has been observed that in the Rician fading channel conditions, the Turbo Trellis Coding Modulation Scheme provides approximately 5 dB gain compared to the convolutional coding scheme

Learning Behavior of Memristor-Based Neuromorphic Circuits in the Presence of Radiation

In this paper, a feed-forward spiking neural network with memristive synapses is designed to learn a spatio-temporal pattern representing the 25-pixel character ‘B’ by separating correlated and uncorrelated afferents. The network uses spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) learning behavior, which is implemented using biphasic neuron spikes. A TiO2 memristor non-linear drift model is used to simulate synaptic behavior in the neuromorphic circuit. The network uses a many-to-one topology with 25 pre-synaptic neurons (afferent) each connected to a memristive synapse and one post-synaptic neuron. The memristor model is modified to include the experimentally observed effect of state-altering radiation. During the learning process, irradiation of the memristors alters their conductance state, and the effect on circuit learning behavior is determined. Radiation is observed to generally increase the synaptic weight of the memristive devices, making the network connections more conductive and less stable. However, the network appears to relearn the pattern when radiation ceases but does take longer to resolve the correlation and pattern. Network recovery time is proportional to flux, intensity, and duration of the radiation. Further, at lower but continuous radiation exposure, (flux 1x1010 cm−2 s−1 and below), the circuit resolves the pattern successfully for up to 100 s

Vacancy induced zero energy modes in graphene stacks: The case of ABC trilayer

The zero energy modes induced by vacancies in ABC stacked trilayer graphene are investigated. Depending on the position of the vacancy, a new zero energy solution is realised, different from those obtained in multilayer compounds with Bernal stacking. The electronic modification induced in the sample by the new vacancy states is characterised by computing the local density of states and their localisation properties are studied by the inverse participation ratio. We also analyse the situation in the presence of a gap in the spectrum due to a perpendicular electric field.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures Published in special issue: Exploring Graphene, Recent Research Advance