Kinetics & Mechanism of Base Hydrolysis of Malonato & Succinato Complexes of Pentaamminecobalt(III) Ion

300-30

EFFECT OF SULPHUR DIOXIDE ON GROWTH, CHLOROPHYLL AND SULPHUR CONTENTS OF TOMATO (SOLANUM LYCOPERSICUM L.)

The direct toxic effect of atmospheric pollutant such as sulphur dioxide on plants has been well documented. It is essentially a potent phytotoxic gas and its toxicity to plant is manifested in typical chronic or acute foliar symptom injury. The mode and extent of damage caused by this pollutant to tomato has not been precisely and systematically studied. Under such circumstances, the present investigation was undertaken under simulating condition to find out the possible extent of adaptability of tomato in SO2 emission of our state. The effect of varying levels of sulphur dioxide (0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 ppm) fumigated for 1 hour, 2 hours and 3 hours under simulated conditions on tomato revealed that the important traits like leaf number, leaf area, fresh weight, dry weight and chlorophyll content in leaves were adversely affected, the latter treatment (SO2 1.0 ppm with 3 hours exposure) being more uninnocuous in this regards. However, no significant variation was seen amongst the treatments in respect of tissue fresh and dry weight when compared with that of control (ambient SO2). On the other hand, sulphur content in tissues increase progressively with increasing levels of SO2 and time of fumigation and the variation observed within treatments was significant to each other. It is suggested that the lowest concentration of SO2 (0.25 ppm) used in this study is more than sufficient to bring about a significant changes in most of the parameters studied

Spin precession and inverted Hanle effect in a semiconductor near a finite-roughness ferromagnetic interface

Although the creation of spin polarization in various non-magnetic media via electrical spin injection from a ferromagnetic tunnel contact has been demonstrated, much of the basic behavior is heavily debated. It is reported here for semiconductor/Al2O3/ferromagnet tunnel structures based on Si or GaAs that local magnetostatic fields arising from interface roughness dramatically alter and even dominate the accumulation and dynamics of spins in the semiconductor. Spin precession in the inhomogeneous magnetic fields is shown to reduce the spin accumulation up to tenfold, and causes it to be inhomogeneous and non-collinear with the injector magnetization. The inverted Hanle effect serves as experimental signature. This interaction needs to be taken into account in the analysis of experimental data, particularly in extracting the spin lifetime and its variation with different parameters (temperature, doping concentration). It produces a broadening of the standard Hanle curve and thereby an apparent reduction of the spin lifetime. For heavily doped n-type Si at room temperature it is shown that the spin lifetime is larger than previously determined, and a new lower bound of 0.29 ns is obtained. The results are expected to be general and occur for spins near a magnetic interface not only in semiconductors but also in metals, organic and carbon-based materials including graphene, and in various spintronic device structures.Comment: Final version, with text restructured and appendices added (25 pages, 9 figures). To appear in Phys. Rev.

Generalized information entropies depending only on the probability distribution

Systems with a long-term stationary state that possess as a spatio-temporally fluctuation quantity $\beta$ can be described by a superposition of several statistics, a "super statistics". We consider first, the Gamma, log-normal and $F$-distributions of $\beta$. It is assumed that they depend only on $p_l$, the probability associated with the microscopic configuration of the system. For each of the three $\beta-$distributions we calculate the Boltzmann factors and show that they coincide for small variance of the fluctuations. For the Gamma distribution it is possible to calculate the entropy in a closed form, depending on $p_l$, and to obtain then an equation relating $p_l$ with $\beta E_l$. We also propose, as other examples, new entropies close related with the Kaniadakis and two possible Sharma-Mittal entropies. The entropies presented in this work do not depend on a constant parameter $q$ but on $p_l$. For the $p_l$-Gamma distribution and its corresponding $B_{p_l}(E)$ Boltzmann factor and the associated entropy, we show the validity of the saddle-point approximation. We also briefly discuss the generalization of one of the four Khinchin axioms to get this proposed entropy.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Challenges to pre-migration interventions to prevent human trafficking: Results from a before-and-after learning assessment of training for prospective female migrants in Odisha, India

Background: Awareness-raising and pre-migration training are popular strategies to prevent human trafficking. Programmatic theories assume that when prospective migrants are equipped with information about risks, they will make more-informed choices, ultimately resulting in safe migration. In 2016, India was estimated to have 8 million people in modern slavery, including those who migrate internally for work. Work in Freedom (WiF) was a community-based trafficking prevention intervention. This study evaluated WiF’s pre-migration knowledge-building activities for female migrants in Odisha to prevent future labour-related exploitation. / Methods: Pre- and post- training questionnaires were administered to women (N = 347) who participated in a two-day pre-migration training session. Descriptive analysis and unadjusted analyses (paired t-tests, McNemar’s tests, Wilcoxon signed ranks tests) examined differences in women’s knowledge scores before and after training. Adjusted analyses used mixed effects models to explore whether receiving information on workers’ rights or working away from home prior to the training was associated with changes in scores. Additionally, we used data from a household survey (N = 4,671) and survey of female migrants (N = 112) from a population sample in the same district to evaluate the intervention’s rationale and implementation strategy. / Results: Female participants were on average 37.3 years-old (SD 11) and most (67.9%) had no formal education. Only 11 participants (3.2%) had previous migration experience. Most participants (90.5%) had previously received information or advice on workers’ rights or working away from home. Compared to female migrants in the population, training participants were different in age, caste and religion. Awareness about migration risks, rights and collective bargaining was very low initially and remained low post-training, e.g. of 13 possible migration risks, before the training, participants named an average of 1.2 risks, which increased only slightly to 2.1 risks after the training (T(346) = -11.64, p<0.001). Changes were modest for attitudes about safe and risky migration practices, earnings and savings. Before the training, only 34 women (10.4%) considered migrating, which reduced to 25 women (7.7%) post-training (X2 = 1.88, p = 0.169)—consistent with the low prevalence (7% of households) of female migration locally. Women’s attitudes remained relatively fixed about the shame associated with paid domestic work. Survey data indicated focusing on domestic work did not correspond to regional migration trends, where women migrate primarily for construction or agriculture work. / Conclusion: The apparent low effectiveness of the WiF short-duration migration training may be linked to the assumption that individual changes in knowledge will lead to shifts in social norms. The narrow focus on such individual-level interventions may overestimate an individual’s agency. Findings indicate the importance of intervention development research to ensure activities are conducted in the right locations, target the right populations, and have relevant content. Absent intervention development research, this intervention suffered from operating in a site that had very few migrant women and a very small proportion migrating for domestic work—the focus of the training. To promote better development investments, interventions should be informed by local evidence and subjected to rigorous theory-based evaluation to ensure interventions achieve the most robust design to foster safe labour migration for women

Discrete Multiscale Analysis: A Biatomic Lattice System

We discuss a discrete approach to the multiscale reductive perturbative method and apply it to a biatomic chain with a nonlinear interaction between the atoms. This system is important to describe the time evolution of localized solitonic excitations. We require that also the reduced equation be discrete. To do so coherently we need to discretize the time variable to be able to get asymptotic discrete waves and carry out a discrete multiscale expansion around them. Our resulting nonlinear equation will be a kind of discrete Nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. If we make its continuum limit, we obtain the standard Nonlinear Schr\"odinger differential equation