The Pakistan Agricultural Research System: Present Status and Future Agenda

Alarming food supply and demand deficits are projected to the year 2020 and beyond for Pakistan, based on its current low investment/low growth agricultural sector. Evidence suggests that agricultural productivity growth and increases in production may not keep pace with past growth rates. Part of the problem is an underfunded and poorly managed agricultural research system that can not hope to contribute significantly to increasing agricultural productivity now or in the future. The World Bank-assisted Agricultural Research II Project (ARP-II) was initiated to partially overcome some of the funding problems and provide institutional development in the areas of organisation, planning, and management of the research system at both the federal and provincial levels. A National Master Agricultural Research Plan (NMARP) was one of the principal goals of the ARP-II as part of improving research planning and management. The objective of this paper is to review the reasons why the Pakistan agricultural research system needs to be revitalised, review the status and problems of the present agricultural research system, and outline a future agenda for Pakistan’s agricultural research system based on the plan developed for the NMARP.

Job Satisfaction among Non-Teaching Employees of Universities in India – A Comparative Study

The efficient management of staff is the key factor for effective management of a University.  Key role players for the existence of a University and its functioning are students, teaching and non-teaching employees.  While the students form fundamental part of the universities, the teaching employees are regarded as key players.  On the other hand, the Non-Teaching employees are pillars of the University functioning.  The job satisfaction forms the important aspect of effective and efficient management system.  Hence, it would be necessary to make sure that the non-teaching staff employed in the University is satisfied with their jobs and the working conditions so that they can give their maximum output for the betterment of the University.  This paper attempted to find out the factors that contribute to Job Satisfaction among Non-Teaching Employees of the Universities in study.  Also, to find the difference in the perception of the Non-Teaching Employees regarding the factors that contribute to Job Satisfaction.  The study is based on both primary and secondary data.  The main source of primary data is the non-teaching employees of both the Central Universities situated in Hyderabad i.e. University of Hyderabad and Maulana Azad National Urdu University.  Both these Universities are functioning under the aegis of University Grants Commission and Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.  The secondary source includes the journals, books and university websites, etc. Key words : Job Satisfaction, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, University of Hyderabad, Non-Teaching Employee

Studies on growth and mortality of Cyprinus carpio (Lin.) in floating ponds

Growth and mortality rate of Cyprinus carpio (Linnaeus) under five different dietary conditions were studied in fifteen floating net cages in ponds of the Bangladesh Agricultural University Campus, Mymensingh. Growth rate was found to vary under different dietary conditions. The feed with mixture of 25% rice bran, 5% wheat bran, 30% linseed oil cake and 40% water hyacinth leaf meal exhibited the highest growth rate. The gain of log of body weight per unit increase of log of total length was significant. Significant survivals of the fishes were found

Visual Analysis of Uncertainty in Trajectories

Mining trajectory datasets has many important applications. Real trajectory data often involve uncertainty due to inadequate sampling rates and measurement errors. For some trajectories, their precise positions cannot be recovered and the exact routes that vehicles traveled cannot be accurately reconstructed. In this paper, we investigate the uncertainty problem in trajectory data and present a visual analytics system to reveal, analyze, and solve the uncertainties associated with trajectory samples. We first propose two novel visual encoding schemes called the road map analyzer and the uncertainty lens for discovering road map errors and visually analyzing the uncertainty in trajectory data respectively. Then, we conduct three case studies to discover the map errors, to address the ambiguity problem in map-matching, and to reconstruct the trajectories with historical data. These case studies demonstrate the capability and effectiveness of our system. ? 2014 Springer International Publishing.EI

Crop production growth in different agro-ecological zones of Bangladesh

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the progress and regional variations of crop production in Bangladesh. The secondary data were used and collected for the years 1980-81 to 2002-03 from the ‘Statistical Yearbooks of Bangladesh’, ‘Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics’ and population census of different years. The study was conducted during the period from September 2006 to February 2008. An analysis was done for twelve mutually exclusive agro-ecological zones by assigning various indicators of crop sector development. The remarkable progress of rural literacy rate, ratio of agricultural workers to population, number of farmer’s co-operative societies and per capita regional domestic agricultural products in two decades was observed in different regions. Wide disparities in the level of crop sector development had been observed across the regions. The overall results reveal that some of the regions are in better positions in respect of socioeconomic progress, land use pattern, input use, growth performance of HYV rice and food-grains production. The developed regions were ‘Old Himalayan Piedmont Plain and Tista Floodplain’, ‘Karatoya Floodplain and Atrai Basin’, ‘Brahmaputra-Jamuna Floodplain’ and ‘Middle Meghna River Floodplain’ on the basis of land utilization pattern, input use and food-grains production. Analysis of regional disparities reveals that ‘Sylhet Basin and Surma-Kusiyara Floodplain’, Greater Dhaka’, ‘Middle Meghna River Floodplain’ and ‘Lower Meghna River and Estuarine Floodplain’ regions has developed remarkably in the last twenty years