Integrating diverse knowledge bases for empowering local farmers in India

The dissemination of agricultural information process to the farmers of Baruipur, a community development block in West Bengal, India is studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 129 farmers and two government officials. The study reveals that among the available wide range of information sources and learning forms, farmers primarily value local knowledge as it is mainly experience-driven, practical and can be shared or transmitted informally among the farmers. But, informal local knowledge gradually gets influenced by extraneous factors, constructing an alternative pathway that resist the flow of information from reaching to the grass-root level. Limitation of genuine and accurate agricultural information impeded the empowerment of farmers at the micro level which demands for a superior integration among diverse knowledge systems with informal local knowledge. Here, the study identifies a more practical approach for knowledge integration, aiming to secure local preference, dynamisms and internal cohesiveness among participants from different domain. Further, this paper forwards a participatory approach based informal communication model, facilitating two ways communication for better and effective flow of need based, value added, accurate information towards holistic empowerment of the farmers at the ground level

Inclusion of the economically backward students: Scope and tenet of Indian school libraries

The study aims to find out how far a school library can contribute in the issue of inclusion of the economically backward class students. Meanwhile the author has opined three major issues: Economical, Psychological and Societal as the reasons behind the school dropouts in India; while theoretical analyses have unveiled that the school library has enough scope and potential to reduce the dropout rate by offering several innovative approaches. Further, the author has investigated the reality and forwarded ten unique approaches (broadly classified into Library beyond school, Increase the reading habit and Empowerment of the student) which could be fruitful to impede the dropout rates in school education and also framed a flowchart to describe the steps of the process. The study shows that the approaches are well construct and self-explanatory and proper implications of those ideas can uplift the literacy rate. Later, two cases are being cited in the study to understand the applicability of those initiatives. The result shows that through the appropriate application of the ideas the dropout rates have decreased in both the cases

Integrating diverse knowledge bases for empowering local farmers in India

The dissemination of agricultural information process to the farmers of Baruipur, a community development block in West Bengal, India is studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 129 farmers and two government officials. The study reveals that among the available wide range of information sources and learning forms, farmers primarily value local knowledge as it is mainly experience-driven, practical and can be shared or transmitted informally among the farmers. But, informal local knowledge gradually gets influenced by extraneous factors, constructing an alternative pathway that resist the flow of information from reaching to the grass-root level. Limitation of genuine and accurate agricultural information impeded the empowerment of farmers at the micro level which demands for a superior integration among diverse knowledge systems with informal local knowledge. Here, the study identifies a more practical approach for knowledge integration, aiming to secure local preference, dynamisms and internal cohesiveness among participants from different domain. Further, this paper forwards a participatory approach based informal communication model, facilitating two ways communication for better and effective flow of need based, value added, accurate information towards holistic empowerment of the farmers at the ground level

Inner Tapered Tree-Shaped Ultra-Wideband Fractal Antenna with Polarization Diversity

A coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed third iteration inner tapered tree-shaped ultra-wideband (UWB) fractal antenna for polarization diversity applications is presented. The antenna comprises of two orthogonal fractal antenna structures to achieve polarization diversity performance across the frequency spectrum of 4.7–19.4 GHz. An isolation of more than 15 dB is accomplished. The designed antenna has a nearly omnidirectional radiation pattern with an average gain of 2.45 dB, very low values of envelope correlation coefficient and capacity loss, nearly constant diversity gain (DG) and mean effective gain (MEG) values. The time domain analysis results illustrated the low dispersion in the radiated pulse. The designed antenna has advantages of wider bandwidth and miniaturized dimensions along with good diversity performance. These advantages make the designed antenna a promising candidate for future wireless communication systems having multipath fading as a major concern

Defining The Role of Primary Cilia on Skin Derived Precursors.

Isolated in 2001, Skin Derived Precursors (SKPs) represent a novel population of multipotent stem cells1,2 residing at the base of hair follicle where they play a key role in defining the physiology and regeneration capacity of hair follicles and skin (Biernaskie et al. 2009). In order to understand how SKPs behavior is regulated in the skin, we asked whether primary cilia, microtubule bundles projected from the cell surface that transmit chemical signals between cells4, are present in the dermal papilla and dermal sheath in-vivo and in the population of isolated SKPs. In our investigation, we performed immunohistochemistry for acetylated tubulin and showed that SKPs do have cilia. We then tested whether these cilia can be elongated following treatments of lithium chloride on these dermal precursors. We then asked whether elongation of cilia has an effect on the self-renewal capacity of SKPs and whether drugs elongating cilia can work synergistically with Platelet Derived Growth Factor (PDGF), a growth factor that we have previously shown to improve cell growth and cell division. Experiments assessing the self-renewal capacity of SKPs suggested significant  increase in the diameter and the number of spherical presence when treated with lithium chloride and when lithium chloride is added in combination with PDGFβ when compared to PDGFβ alone. This suggests that signaling in cilia may influence PDGF signals causing an enhanced effect on SKP proliferation. Further experiments including knocking down primary cilia by blocking the transcription of ciliary protein using shRNA and in-vivo transplantations of lithium chloride and PDGF treated SKPs in a hair follicle formation assays will be executed to understand the key roles of primary cilia on SKPs. These studies will ultimately aim to answer whether drugs affecting cilia can function as potential therapeutic targets for autologous adult stem cell based therapies