An Improved Approach for Contrast Enhancement of Spinal Cord Images based on Multiscale Retinex Algorithm

This paper presents a new approach for contrast enhancement of spinal cord medical images based on multirate scheme incorporated into multiscale retinex algorithm. The proposed work here uses HSV color space, since HSV color space separates color details from intensity. The enhancement of medical image is achieved by down sampling the original image into five versions, namely, tiny, small, medium, fine, and normal scale. This is due to the fact that the each versions of the image when independently enhanced and reconstructed results in enormous improvement in the visual quality. Further, the contrast stretching and MultiScale Retinex (MSR) techniques are exploited in order to enhance each of the scaled version of the image. Finally, the enhanced image is obtained by combining each of these scales in an efficient way to obtain the composite enhanced image. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is validated by using a wavelet energy metric in the wavelet domain. Reconstructed image using proposed method highlights the details (edges and tissues), reduces image noise (Gaussian and Speckle) and improves the overall contrast. The proposed algorithm also enhances sharp edges of the tissue surrounding the spinal cord regions which is useful for diagnosis of spinal cord lesions. Elaborated experiments are conducted on several medical images and results presented show that the enhanced medical pictures are of good quality and is found to be better compared with other researcher methods.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, International Journal of Imaging and Robotics. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.571

Technical Efficiency and its Determinants in Tomato Production in Karnataka, India: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Approach

Low productivity in agriculture is mainly due to the inability of the farmers to exploit the available technologies fully, resulting in lower efficiencies of production. The present study has estimated the technical and scale efficiencies of tomato-producing farms in Karnataka, considering different production levels and has identified the determining factors of their technical efficiency. The study is based on the data collected from the major tomato-producing regions of Karnataka, viz. Kolar and Bangalore rural districts of Karnataka, under three-production situations, viz. small, medium and large farms. Data Envelopment analysis (DEA) and log linear regression models have been used for estimating the technical efficiency and its determining factors, respectively. The study has indicated that most of the farms irrespective of size of holding have shown technical inefficiency problems. The medium farmers have been observed with best measures of technical efficiency, which has been explained by factors such as the land and labour productivity and education. Though medium farmers have been found efficient, with higher yields, it is the small farmers who have emerged as price-efficient producers in terms of lower cost on production (Rs 1.72/kg compared to Rs 2.01 in medium farms and Rs 1.85 in large farms) and higher unit profit. Most of the farms have been observed to have potential to expand production and productivity, increasing technical efficiency as majority have been performing with increasing returns to scale.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Marketing Losses and Their Impact on Marketing Margins: A Case Study of Banana in Karnataka

The explicit evaluation of the post-harvest losses at different stages of marketing and their impact on farmers’ net price, marketing costs, margins and efficiency have been presented. It has been found that the existing methods tend to overstate the farmers’ net price and marketing margins of intermediaries. In fact, the margin of the retailers’ after taking into account the physical loss during retailing has been found to be negative (loss), which otherwise, was positive (profit) in the conventional estimation. Similarly, the producers’ net share and wholesalers’ margins also decrease substantially. It has been shown that marketing efficiency is inversely proportional to the marketing losses. The co-operative marketing has been found to be a more efficient system in terms of both operations and price. Marketing cost has been identified as the major constraint in the wholesale marketing channel and bringing down the costs, particularly the commission charges as demonstrated in the co-operative channel, will help in reducing the price-spread and increasing the producers’ margin. The need for specialized transport vehicles for perishable commodities has been highlighted.Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Effect of Culture, Age and Pruning on Mass Production of the VA Mycorrhizal Fungus, Glomus fascicuiatum.

Glomus fasciculatum .pot cultures were raised in Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana Kunth) using perlite - soilrite mix (1:1 by volume) in 16 cm pots holding 700 g substrate and were harvested at different intervals. Cultures harvested on the 75th day after sowing had the maximum number of infective propagules. In a second experiment, pruning was found to reduce the mychizal propagules up to 4 weeks. However, the propagules increased from 5th week onwards

Occurrence and extracellular enzyme potential of Actinomycetes of a thermoltalerant, northern region of Karanataka, Inida

Occurrence and extracellular enzyme activities of a thermotalerent actinomycetes isolated from thermal spring of compost pit area, hair, feathers dumping places and municipal wastes of Gulbarga and Bellary (Northern part of Karnataka) and tested their degradability against hair and feather. A total of 67 actinomycetes were isolated, out of these 57 actinomycetes screened exhibited amylase, protease, chitinase, cellulase and keratinase activity determined in the petriplate using on starch casein agar (SCA) and nutrient agar media (NA). Out of 57 actinomycetes, 50 isolates showed amylase, 54 protease, 50 chitenase, 52 cellulase and 41 isolates showed keratinase activities respectively. The Maximum keratinase activity shows VSAC-12, this study shows that the isolates were found to be capable using keratin substrates as sole source of carbon and energy for further investigation

DESIGN, FABRICATION AND EVALUATION OF SS 316 PUNCH DIE SET FOR ACCURATE SIZING OF SODIUM CROMOGLYCATE OCULAR INSERTS

Objective: Objective of the study was to design, fabricate & evaluate punch die set for accurate sizing of sodium cromoglycate ocular inserts prepared using few polymers and to compare with physico-chemical results of manually sized inserts. Methods: The formulated ocular inserts were sized manually and by using punch die set. Ocular inserts sized by manual cutting & stainless steel 316 (SS 316) punch die set was compared and evaluated for various important physico-chemical parameters. Results: Phenomenal differences were observed in all evaluated parameters like appearance, thickness, drug content and drug release studies. Ocular inserts sized using punch die set had improved appearance, uniform thickness both near the edges & in the center of insert and accurate drug content when compared to ocular inserts that were sized manually. Drug release studies were better for punch die sized inserts as against manually sized inserts. Conclusion: Ocular inserts sized by punch die set was superior when compared to inserts sized manually. The results for evaluated parameters like appearance, thickness, drug content and drug release studies were accurate, uniform and consistent

Influence of Quenching Agents on Mechanical, Wear, and Fracture Characteristics of Al2O3 / MoS2 Reinforced Al-6061 Hybrid Metal Matrix Composite (MMCs)

Aluminium (Al) based composites enhance the mechanical and wear behavior by heat treatment. The quenching factors like cooling agent, cooling rate and temperature of cooling are expected to influence the hardness, tensile, and wear behavior of the Al MMCs. This research shows the outcomes of a sequence of experiments to find the wear and mechanical behavior of the Al6061-Al2O3-MoS2 hybrid composites are quenched with different quenching agents. Hardening of the developed hybrid composites was carried out at 510ºC for the time period of 2 hours. Later, the same composite samples were quenched in ice cubes and water separately. Finally, age-hardening was done at 180ºC temperature for 4 hours and then the samples were cooled under room temperature. Heat treated hybrid composites were subjected to evaluate the hardness, tensile, and wear behavior. The outcomes reveal that the heat treatment significantly enhances the wear and mechanical behavior of hybrid composites. High mechanical strength and improved wear characteristics were observed in the hybrid composites which were quenched using ice cubes. The fractured surface of the tensile test samples and the wornout surface of wear test specimens were studied using a SEM analysis