Assessing the Impact of International Natural Resource Management Research: The Case of Zero Tillage in India's Rice-Wheat Systems

A conservative ex-ante assessment of supply-shift gains alone (excluding social and environmental gains), shows that the investment in zero tillage (ZT) R&D by the Rice-Wheat Consortium and CIMMYT was highly beneficial with a benefit-cost ratio of 39, a net present value of US$ 94 million and an internal rate of return 57%. Sensitivity analysis highlights the influential role of the yield gain, the contribution of reduced tillage (i.e. partial adoption) and the assumed time-lag. Significant positive spillovers of sunk ZT R&D costs both previous and from elsewhere - also contributed to the high returns. The case thereby highlights the potential gains from successful technology transfer and adaptation. The case however also underscores that international NRM research can have a high return, particularly when it has wide applicability.natural resource management research, impact assessment, economic surplus, zero tillage, Q11, Q12, Q16, Crop Production/Industries, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Assessing the Impact of International Natural Resource Management Research - The Case of Zero Tillage in India’s Rice-Wheat Systems

A conservative ex-ante assessment of supply-shift gains alone (excluding social and environmental gains), shows that the investment in zero tillage (ZT) R&D by the Rice-Wheat Consortium and CIMMYT was highly beneficial with a benefit-cost ratio of 39, a net present value of US$ 94 million and an internal rate of return 57%. Sensitivity analysis highlights the influential role of the yield gain, the contribution of reduced tillage (i.e. partial adoption) and the assumed time-lag. Significant positive spillovers of sunk ZT R&D costs both previous and from elsewhere - also contributed to the high returns. The case thereby highlights the potential gains from successful technology transfer and adaptation. The case however also underscores that international NRM research can have a high return, particularly when it has wide applicability.natural resource management research, impact assessment, economic surplus, zero tillage

Assessing the impact of international natural resource management research: The Case of Zero Tillage in India's rice-wheat systems

A conservative ex-ante assessment of supply-shift gains alone (excluding social and environmental gains), shows that the investment in zero tillage (ZT) R&D by the Rice-Wheat Consortium and CIMMYT was highly beneficial with a benefit-cost ratio of 39, a net present value of US$ 94 million and an internal rate of return 57. Sensitivity analysis highlights the influential role of the yield gain, the contribution of reduced tillage (i.e. partial adoption) and the assumed time-lag. Significant positive spillovers of sunk ZT R&D costs - both previous and from elsewhere - also contributed to the high returns. The case thereby highlights the potential gains from successful technology transfer and adaptation. The case however also underscores that international NRM research can have a high return, particularly when it has wide applicability.natural resource management research; impact assessment; economic surplus; zero tillage

Biologically-inspired motion detection and classification : human and machine perception

Humans are good at the perception of biological motion, i.e. the motion of living things. The human perceptual system can tolerate not only variations in lighting conditions, distance, etc., but it can also perceive such motion and categorise it as walking, running, jumping etc. from minimal information systems such as moving light displays (MLDs). In these displays only specific points (e.g. joints in the case of a human being) are visible. Although a static display looks like a random configuration of dots, a dynamic display is perceptually organised into a moving figure. Some kind of temporal integration of the spatial contents seems to be a part of the perception mechanism; as manifested from the minimum presentation time required for biological motion to become apparent. One possible way to understand human perception may be to build an equivalent machine model. An analysis of the workings of this machine may lend us an insight into human perception. In this work, we considered a closed set of 12 different categories of MLD sequences. These sequences were shown to 93 participants and their responses are used as the basis of comparison of human and machine perception. Human responses were compared with the performance of /c-nearest neighbour and neural network detectors. Machine perception is found to differ from human perception in some important respects. We also examined the related aspect of person identification on the basis of gait. This has important applications in the fields of surveillance and biometrics. In recent years, gait has been investigated as a potential biometric; as this may be the only information available to identify a distant and/or otherwise masked person. Humans can learn to recognise different subjects in MLDs. In our experiments with a dataset of 21 subjects, an accuracy of nearly 90% and 100% was achieved with neural network and support vector machine classifiers respectively. Also the machines were able to make this recognition in a fraction of a gait cycle.</p

Control bit Based Congestion Control in Mobile Ad-hoc Network using OLSR Protocol

MANET is mobile ad-hoc network having various mobile nodes moves from position to the other position. While moving they can be at different speeds. Such that sometimes they are neighbor of given node and some time they become neighbor of other node. Each time the neighbor lists get changed. So each time each node has to upgrade the neighbor list. Each source node identifies the route by broadcast the route request. In congestion control mechanism in current research control bit is used. Before sending any data packet control signal will be send. If this control bit will be acknowledged then path is assumed to be cleared from congestion and send the packet on the route. Else alternative route will be selected. While this technique performance will be measured on the basis of different parameters like end to end delay, packet Delivery Ratio, Success rate and throughput. Under current research someparameter has improved compared to the previous mechanism. This we have tested over to the OLSR protocol and compared it with AODV based existing technique

Recent Advancement in Self Emulsifing Drug Delivery System

Every day, researchers make new attempts to identify neurotherapeutics, but few of them make it to clinical trials. The main cause is their low bioavailability, which is connected to low water solubility, low permeability through biological membranes, and the hepatic first-pass metabolism. However, the most significant challenge in administering drugs to the brain is overcoming the blood-brain barrier. In order to get around it, intranasal administration has become more popular, sometimes even more so than oral administration. Because of its structure, the nasal cavity can bypass the blood-brain barrier and transport drugs to the brain directly. Nasal absorption increases the systemic bioavailability of highly processed substances because they bypass the hepatic first-pass metabolism. However, due to their unique physicochemical properties, most neurotherapeutics must be synthesized in lipidic nanosystems as self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDS). To load large quantities of lipophilic medicines into micro or nanoemulsions, these isotropic mixes of oils, surfactants, and co-surfactants are diluted in water. The goal of SEDDS is to increase the stability of labile pharmaceuticals against enzymatic activity, boost drug penetration through absorptive membranes, and reduce the likelihood of drug precipitation at absorption sites. Therefore, improved brain targeting and bioavailability of medications might be anticipated by combining the benefits of SEDDS with those of the intranasal route for brain delivery. In order to better understand the mechanisms involved in the intranasal administration of pharmaceuticals loaded in SEDDS, this paper provides a comprehensive characterization of SEDDS as a lipidic nanosystem. Finally, the in vivo effects of intranasal or oral delivery of SEDDS, showing their superiority over standard solutions or suspensions, are described

Synthesis of green thermally resistant composite: A review

494-503Rising demand for the sustainable environment has been enthused interest in the synthesis of a green composite. In the modern era, thermal insulating materials prepared from agro-waste have been concerned globally as they represent a biodegradability and inexpensive alternative to the conventionally derived materials. Nearly 350 million tons of agro-waste is generated through agricultural activity in India which are either land filled or incinerated. The reuse of renewable waste fibers as filler for reinforcement of a polymer composite is a worthwhile option to the environment. This extensive review explores the utilization of agro-waste for synthesis biodegradable thermal resistant composite and methods used for thermal conductivity measurement. Proper utilization of agro-waste is the need of the modern world. In this review, Authors found that agro-waste such as corn cob, corn stalk, rice waste, date palm fiber, durian peel fiber, coconut coir, and straw bales etc. can be blended into the polymer to enhancing its thermal resistant property by lowering their thermal conductivity. This review also investigated an effect of different parameters such as particle size, moisture content, density, and concentration of agro-waste in composite preparation

Impact of HIV/AIDS On Society :A Review

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate what the effects on our society are when a person gets affected by HIV/AIDS and what kind of changes come in our society. HIV/AIDS is a deadly disease for which no cure is available yet. Prevention is the only cure of HIV/AIDS. How the society is being affected due to this disease and what are the ill effects of it on the elderly, women, children and the poor of the society. The impact of this disease   is such that public and private enterprises have to pay a heavy cost for it. As a result, it reduces the productivity of the society, losses skilled and experienced workers and increases the expenditure on the treatment of the affected workers in the industrial sector as the demand for public sector increases, as the national economies of countries like sub-saharan Africa have seen its servere consequences, it has affected virtually every region there. It has shown maximum impact on the most productive sector i.e. labour force. In countries with high HIV prevalence rates, labour supply has been cut and workers incomes have declined, adversely affecting the performance of enterprises and the national economy. In this direction, this paper is based on the national and international schemes of the government that which scheme is beneficial for the society