Constraints in dry chilli cultivation practices and mechanization of harvesting in Southern India

Dry chilli production in India condition faces many challenges apart from adverse weather conditions, labor-intensive production practices and higher overall production costs are limiting profitable dry chilli cultivation. Therefore, a study was carried to know the key constraints in current chilli production practices in eight major production districts of three states. A systematic research and development approach is essential to know the range of constraints and farmers preferences over technological options for field operations. The harvesting operation alone demands 43% of labour 360.5 man-days/ha. So, red chilli harvesting mechanization is a definite immediate requirement to reduce labour input. Farmers (47%) prefer small size self-propelled chilli harvester over tractor operated equipment. In the production catchments, farmer also inferred to change the cultivation practices to mechanize chilli production operations, but 18% of farmers hesitant to adopt one-timeharvesting chilli varieties due to suspicion about the yield potentials

A Langevin Approach to One-Dimensional Granular Media Fluidized by Vibrations

We present a Langevin approach to describe the steady-state dynamics of one-dimensional granular media fluidized by a vibrating bottom plate. We adopt a linear Langevin equation to describe the motion of the center of mass. Within this framework, we derive analytical expressions for several macroscopic quantities. We also predict the power spectrum for the height of the center of mass. We find good agreement between our theoretical predictions and extensive event-driven molecular dynamics simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

A comparison of the Nordtest and Japanese test methods for the moisture buffering performance of building materials

Two test methods, one worked out in a Nordtest project and the other available as a Japanese Industrial Standard, both developed to characterize building materials with respect to moisture buffering performance, are analyzed in detail by a numerical study on four different materials. Both test methods are based on a similar kind of dynamic loading, but the specifications of each test protocol vary. Therefore, the sensitivity of the test protocols is investigated by varying different protocol parameters. Subsequently, the practical applicability of the obtained values is investigated by confronting the values obtained for the four materials with the dynamic response of a small room with each of the materials used in turns as finishing material. Finally, the results determined according to the dynamic test protocol are compared with values calculated from steady-state material data.status: publishe

Hydrodynamics of thermal granular convection

A hydrodynamic theory is formulated for buoyancy-driven ("thermal") granular convection, recently predicted in molecular dynamic simulations and observed in experiment. The limit of a dilute flow is considered. The problem is fully described by three scaled parameters. The convection occurs via a supercritical bifurcation, the inelasticity of the collisions being the control parameter. The theory is expected to be valid for small Knudsen numbers and nearly elastic grain collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 EPS figures, some details adde

Using the guard-stage-milestone notation for monitoring BPMN-based processes

Business processes are usually designed by means of imperative languages to model the acceptable execution of the activities performed within a system or an organization. At the same time, declarative languages are better suited to check the conformance of the states and transitions of the modeled process with respect to its actual execution. To avoid defining models twice from scratch to cope with both the process enactment and its monitoring, this paper proposes an approach for translating BPMN process models to E-GSM ones: an extension of the Guard-Stage-Milestone artifact-centric notation. The paper also shows how a monitoring engine based on E-GSM specifications can detect anomalies during the execution of the process and classify them according to different levels of severity, that is, with respect to the impact on the outcome of the process

Development of fisheries in Lakshadweep recommendations

Investigations conducted by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute have indicated the possibilities of exploitation of the potential marine resources especially tunas and other commercially important fishes around Lakshadweep. Realising the need for the increased exploitation of the marine fishery resources, emphasis has been given to the biology and assessment of the resources of tunas, fishery and biology of tuna live-bait fishes and the environmental factors affecting their distribution and abundance. Of the various developmental schemes proposed to be implemented in Lakshadweep in recent years, exploitation of fishery resources has. been given considerable importance by researchers and planners alike. As the land area being limited, the scope for the development of land based industries is very meagre and hence any major development programme envisaged has to be centred on the exploitation of marine fish resources

Expression of drought responsive genes in pigeonpea and in silico comparison with soybean cDNA library

Pigeonpea, a drought tolerant, semi-arid pulse crop has been investigated for the expression of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) under drought stress. The cDNA library of soybean leaf tissue retrieved from the Unigene database of the NCBI, were compared for in silico expression using IDEG6 web statistical tool. A list of 52 non-redundant DEGs consisting of 11 up-regulated and 41 down-regulated was obtained. Among these, more photosynthesis and light harvesting proteins were down-regulated in drought stress conditions. Pathways were assigned based on KEGG database, revealing 32 genes involved in 17 metabolic pathways. Homologous sequences of six up-regulated genes namely, ADF3, APB, ASR, DLP, LTP1, and UGE5 were then used for quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) in pigeonpea. The qRT-PCR result revealed the significant up-regulation of dehydrin-like protein (DLP) (5.02 log2 fold) and down-regulation of acid phosphatase class B family protein (APB) (9.43 log2 fold) and non-specific lipid transfer protein 1-like (LTP1) (18.81 log2 fold) in pigeonpea water-stressed leaf sample compared to well-watered leaf samples. No significant difference was observed in the stressed root compared to the stressed pigeonpea leaf sample except that APB showed an up-regulation of 11.35 log2 fold chang

A Viscoelastic model of phase separation

We show here a general model of phase separation in isotropic condensed matter, namely, a viscoelastic model. We propose that the bulk mechanical relaxation modulus that has so far been ignored in previous theories plays an important role in viscoelastic phase separation in addition to the shear relaxation modulus. In polymer solutions, for example, attractive interactions between polymers under a poor-solvent condition likely cause the transient gellike behavior, which makes both bulk and shear modes active. Although such attractive interactions between molecules of the same component exist universally in the two-phase region of a mixture, the stress arising from attractive interactions is asymmetrically divided between the components only in dynamically asymmetric mixtures such as polymer solutions and colloidal suspensions. Thus, the interaction network between the slower components, which can store the elastic energy against its deformation through bulk and shear moduli, is formed. It is the bulk relaxation modulus associated with this interaction network that is primarily responsible for the appearance of the sponge structure peculiar to viscoelastic phase separation and the phase inversion. We demonstrate that a viscoelastic model of phase separation including this new effect is a general model that can describe all types of isotropic phase separation including solid and fluid models as its special cases without any exception, if there is no coupling with additional order parameter. The physical origin of volume shrinking behavior during viscoelastic phase separation and the universality of the resulting spongelike structure are also discussed.Comment: 14 pages, RevTex, To appear in Phys. Rev

Ising Universality in Three Dimensions: A Monte Carlo Study

We investigate three Ising models on the simple cubic lattice by means of Monte Carlo methods and finite-size scaling. These models are the spin-1/2 Ising model with nearest-neighbor interactions, a spin-1/2 model with nearest-neighbor and third-neighbor interactions, and a spin-1 model with nearest-neighbor interactions. The results are in accurate agreement with the hypothesis of universality. Analysis of the finite-size scaling behavior reveals corrections beyond those caused by the leading irrelevant scaling field. We find that the correction-to-scaling amplitudes are strongly dependent on the introduction of further-neighbor interactions or a third spin state. In a spin-1 Ising model, these corrections appear to be very small. This is very helpful for the determination of the universal constants of the Ising model. The renormalization exponents of the Ising model are determined as y_t = 1.587 (2), y_h = 2.4815 (15) and y_i = -0.82 (6). The universal ratio Q = ^2/ is equal to 0.6233 (4) for periodic systems with cubic symmetry. The critical point of the nearest-neighbor spin-1/2 model is K_c=0.2216546 (10).Comment: 25 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript file (to appear in Journal of Physics A