Volatile Price and Declining Profitability of Black Pepper in India: Disquieting Future

Historically, black pepper has been a highly tradable commodity; its domestic price, production as well as profitability are highly influenced by its international prices. In 2003-04, the domestic prices of black pepper plunged down to Rs 74/kg from a peak of Rs 215/kg in 1999-2000. The study has therefore been undertaken to identify the drivers for its production, examine the profitability of the farmers and analyse the price behaviour and mechanism of price transmission in black pepper. Like other major spices, the production of black pepper in India has increased substantially over the years. Area under the crop and lagged export quantity have been the main drivers influencing pepper production in the country. From the field survey in two major black pepper growing districts, viz. Idukki and Wayanad, it has been revealed that the production of pepper has become unremunerative due to depressed prices in the domestic and/or global markets coupled with increasing input costs. Further, from the projections for production and demand for black pepper during the period 2005-2015, it is learnt that its production is going to outpace the domestic demand in a big way. This requires a serious attention because until new and diversified export markets are not exploited, the farmers would face further crash in farm gate price due to huge surplus stock. From the co-integration analysis, it has emerged that the three series of prices — farm harvest, domestic, and export, have been moving together over the years and the prices have tended to find equilibrium faster in the long-run than during the preliberalization period. The availability of disease-free planting material and financial assistance on easy terms would help the farmers to replace the senile plantation for realizing increased crop yield and profitability. The specific policies for integrating farm harvest price with retail price will not only help the producers but also make these spices somewhat more affordable to the domestic consumers.Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Effectiveness of Specific Strength Training Profile on Performance and Prevention of injury on Trained Athletes

BACKGROUND: Musculo skeletal injuries are very common among physically active individuals and athletes and are most frequently observed in the population aged 18 to 25 years. General warm up and cool down will prevent injury along with specific strength training which will enhance physical performance. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was conducted in order to compare the specific strength training profile combined with general warm-up and cool-down can improve physical performance and prevent injury for trained athletes. METHODS: To achieve the objective of the study, Thirty (N=30) athletes were selected 18 to 25 age groups and they were divided into two groups of twenty (n=15) each .general warm-up and cool-down was given to control group and general warm-up, specific strength training and cool-down was given to experimental group for eight weeks (3 days/week). Performance and injury prevention were measured before and after the training section for both groups. Descriptive statistics and dependent ‘t’ test were used to find out the results. This study state that there would be significant improvement on performance and prevent injury variables of trained athletes OUTCOME MEASURES: In this study two main outcome measures were taken into consideration. They are 6 minutes Run/Walk test – to assess endurance and changes in physical performance. Foot and ankle mobility (FAAM) – Questionnaire is just to assess physical function to prevent injury. RESULT: 6 minutes walk test and FAAM results are decreased with Group A than Group B. Group B shows significant improvement with specific strength training combined with warm up and cool down. CONCLUSION: This study concludes that with specific strength training exercises implemented with warm up and cool down exercises increases physical performance and prevents injury

In silico design of potent agonists for human PPAR γ

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR γ) acts as a key regulator on adipocyte differentiation and glucose homeostasis. PPAR γ has been implicated in the pathology of type 2 diabetes. As human PPAR γ activity is considered important in improving insulin sensitivity, in silico screening was carried out to find potent agonists for human PPAR γ protein. The co-crystal structure of PPAR γ, solved through X-Ray diffraction method was retrieved from the protein data bank. Four PPAR γ agonists selected from literature were submitted to subsequent 2D searching protocol using Ligand.Info, which yielded 1699 structural analogs. The PPAR γ co-crystal structure and ligand dataset were preprocessed using protein preparation wizard and LigPrep, respectively. Further, docking was performed by using three phased docking protocol of Maestro v9.2 that implements Glide v5.7. The obtained thirteen leads through docking were compared with the existing inhibitors and seven leads with good binding affinity with PPAR γ were proposed. The binding orientations of the seven leads were coinciding well with the native co-crystal structure of human PPAR γ. Thus, the proposed seven leads can be suggested as potential agonists for improving insulin sensitivity in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus if synthesized and validated in animal model

A Generative Model For Zero Shot Learning Using Conditional Variational Autoencoders

Zero shot learning in Image Classification refers to the setting where images from some novel classes are absent in the training data but other information such as natural language descriptions or attribute vectors of the classes are available. This setting is important in the real world since one may not be able to obtain images of all the possible classes at training. While previous approaches have tried to model the relationship between the class attribute space and the image space via some kind of a transfer function in order to model the image space correspondingly to an unseen class, we take a different approach and try to generate the samples from the given attributes, using a conditional variational autoencoder, and use the generated samples for classification of the unseen classes. By extensive testing on four benchmark datasets, we show that our model outperforms the state of the art, particularly in the more realistic generalized setting, where the training classes can also appear at the test time along with the novel classes

First assessment of age and sex structures of elephants by using dung size analysis in a West African savannah

1. An age and sex structure study of the West African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana africana) population of the Nazinga Game ranch (Burkina Faso) was carried out using direct sightings of individuals near water points, where they group during hot periods of the day, and droppings circumference measurements of dung pile along line transects, during the dry seasons of 2007 and 2008. The age structure, from direct observation data, was estimated by classifying the individuals into 9 age-class-categories based on body size and eruption (length) of tusks.2. The frequency distribution of number of individuals into the age-class-categories showed high similarity with the distribution of circumference measurements of dung-piles that the individuals were seen depositing. Fifty dung-piles measured soon after they were deposited (Class A) and after they dried (to class C) showed a significant difference between the circumference measurements in relation to the time elapsed between the measurements.3. The frequency distribution of dung circumference classes of the observed elephants was similar to that of the dung-piles measured along the transects in 2008. Therefore, dung-piles measurements were used to estimate the Nazinga Game Ranch savanna elephant population’s age and sex structures at the end of dry seasons of 2007 and 2008. We advocated that the Nazinga elephant population consisted mainly of sub-adults.4. The sex ratio was estimated to be in favour of females (1/2). The age-class-specific sex ratio was uneven for calves and young individuals, while being in favour of females with adults. Individuals of less than 1 year represented 6% of the population during the study period

Spoof detection using time-delay shallow neural network and feature switching

Detecting spoofed utterances is a fundamental problem in voice-based biometrics. Spoofing can be performed either by logical accesses like speech synthesis, voice conversion or by physical accesses such as replaying the pre-recorded utterance. Inspired by the state-of-the-art \emph{x}-vector based speaker verification approach, this paper proposes a time-delay shallow neural network (TD-SNN) for spoof detection for both logical and physical access. The novelty of the proposed TD-SNN system vis-a-vis conventional DNN systems is that it can handle variable length utterances during testing. Performance of the proposed TD-SNN systems and the baseline Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) is analyzed on the ASV-spoof-2019 dataset. The performance of the systems is measured in terms of the minimum normalized tandem detection cost function (min-t-DCF). When studied with individual features, the TD-SNN system consistently outperforms the GMM system for physical access. For logical access, GMM surpasses TD-SNN systems for certain individual features. When combined with the decision-level feature switching (DLFS) paradigm, the best TD-SNN system outperforms the best baseline GMM system on evaluation data with a relative improvement of 48.03\% and 49.47\% for both logical and physical access, respectively

Light scattering from a magnetically tunable dense random medium with weak dissipation : ferrofluid

We present a semi-phenomenological treatment of light transmission through and its reflection from a ferrofluid, which we regard as a magnetically tunable system of dense random dielectric scatterers with weak dissipation. Partial spatial ordering is introduced by the application of a transverse magnetic field that superimposes a periodic modulation on the dielectric randomess. This introduces Bragg scattering which effectively enhances the scattering due to disorder alone, and thus reduces the elastic mean free path towards Anderson localization. Our theoretical treatment, based on invariant imbedding, gives a simultaneous decrease of transmission and reflection without change of incident linear polarisation as the spatial order is tuned magnetically to the Bragg condition, namely the light wave vector being equal to half the Bragg vector (Q). Our experimental observations are in qualitative agreement with these results. We have also given expressions for the transit (sojourn) time of light and for the light energy stored in the random medium under steady illumination. The ferrofluid thus provides an interesting physical realization of effectively a "Lossy Anderson-Bragg" (LAB) cavity with which to study the effect of the interplay of spatial disorder, partial order and weak dissipation on light transport. Given the current interest in propagation, optical limiting and storage of light in ferrofluids, the present work seems topical

Acute Diarrhea with Mild to Moderate Dehydration E.c Viral Infection

Diarrhea is a public health problem in developing countries, such as Indonesia, because of its high morbidity and mortality. Diarrhea is defined as an increasing of defecation frequency more than 3 times per day in infants or children, with liquifying of stool consistency with or without mucus and blood, which is occured less than one week. It was a case report study taken from Abdul Moeloek general hospital in October 2013. An 1 year 4 months boy came with watery diarrhea about 6 times defecation in a day and vomiting more than 10 times, since 12 hours before hospital admission. The physical examination, was founded moderate general state, compos mentis, 36,8°C of body temperature, 30 times/minutes respiratory rate. The pulse 140 beats/minutes, the eyes looked concave, skin turgor returned slowly and increased of bowel peristaltic. The complete blood count founded leucocytosis and no bacteria in stool examination. The patient was diagnosed as acute diarrhea with mild to moderate dehydration e.c viral infection. The pharmacology therapy of this patient was intravenous fluid of KAEN 3A XX gutatae per minutes, zinc sulfate syrup 20mg/5ml per day for 10 days, ibuprofen syrup 100mg/5ml 3 times a day and 1 sachet oralit in 200 ml drinking water in each defecation

Algorithm for Suppression of Wideband Probing in Adaptive Array with Multiple Desired Signals

The integrity of signal environment for a navigation system among other factors depends critically on the capability of the adaptive antenna array in controlling (reconfiguring) its radiation pattern for various signal scenarios. For a signal environment consisting of simultaneous multiple desired signals and probing sources, the output signal-to-noise ratio of the adaptive antenna array depends on the efficiency of the adaptive algorithm employed for weight estimation. Sufficient antenna gain is required to be maintained towards each of the desired signals, while simultaneously suppressing returns towards the sources probing from distinctly different directions. The weight estimation for the multiple desired signal environments is carried out using a novel modified version of the improved least mean square (LMS) algorithm. This modified scheme effectively suppresses the narrowband/wideband probing towards the antenna array (linear/planar). The weight estimation and the steering vector are adapted according to the multiple desired signal environments. Each spectral line of the wideband source is considered as an independent narrowband source. This is incorporated in the correlation matrix of the received signal. The simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of this novel algorithm in active cancellation of narrowband/wideband probing sources, even while the simultaneous multiple signals in desired directions are maintained. The performance of the proposed algorithm is reported to be better than that of standard LMS and recursive LMS algorithm.Defence Science Journal, 2011, 61(4), pp.325-330, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.61.109