Agrarian distress and livelihood strategies : a study in Pulpalli Panchayat, Wayanad District, Kerala

This paper examines the household livelihood strategies under agrarian distress in Pulpalli Panchayat of Kerala. It also looks at the relationship between household assets and livelihood strategies. The negotiations of institutions by the marginalized and depressed sections of the society were analysed in detail. Major causes of agrarian distress in the study area are the ecological degradation and fall in crops income. Land continues to be the most important asset determining livelihood outcomes. The livelihood strategies have been investigated in relation to land, education, housing pattern, investments & credit facilities, and participation in organizational activities. The livelihood strategies adopted by farmers in the wake of agrarian crisis includes diversification of agriculture, share cropping, organic farming, self-help group activities, cattle rearing, migration and exchange of labour. Livelihood strategies varied across socio-economic groups as farmers owning better landholdings diversified cropping patterns while poor households participated in the activities of SHGs. Casual agricultural labourers and marginal farmers moved to other places in search of jobs. Mitigation of agrarian distress requires public provision of education, health and other social safety measures. Key words: Livelihood risk, Coping Strategies, Livelihood, Livelihood Assets, Institutions, Wayanad, Kerala JEL Classification: Q, Q 0

Size-dependent changes in the electronic structure of metal clusters as investigated by scanning tunneling spectroscopy

Pd, Ag, Cd and Au clusters of varying sizes have been investigated by scanning tunneling spectroscopy under ultra-high vacuum. The conductance of the clusters decreases markedly when the cluster diameter is ≤1 nm. A plot of the density of states at the Fermi level against the cluster volume varies nearly linearly up to a cluster volume of 4 nm3 (diameter ~2 nm). Below a cluster diameter of 1 nm, an energy gap occurs, the value of which increases with the decrease in cluster size, reaching values up to 70 meV at small sizes. Clearly, the very small clusters tend to become non-metallic

Utilization of chlorophyll content index (CCI) to infer yellow rust severity in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Stripe rust caused by Puccinia striformis Westend. f. sp. tritici Eriks. (Pst) is a major constraint to wheat production in Northern India. In this study, 616 indigenous germplasm (IC) accessions of wheat were screened under field conditions against mixture of Pst isolates at DWR Karnal during 2012-13 crop season. Out of 616 accessions, 197 accessions were observed to be resistant (R), 115 moderately resistant (MR) to moderately susceptible (MS) and 304 as susceptible (S) against yellow rust. On the basis of days to heading, the accessions were grouped into four classes (early, medium early, medium late and late). Chlorophyll content index (CCI) recorded in flag leaf showed significant differences between resistant and susceptible lines in each classified group at 5% level of significance. The difference for CCI between resistant and moderately resistant plants was negligible, however in comparison with resistant plants, susceptible plants showed loss of 35-39% of chlorophyll. There was negative correlation (a correlation coefficient of – 0.60) between chlorophyll content and disease severity due to stripe rust in susceptible accessions

Noise Reduction with Lobed Mixers: Nozzle-Length and Free-Jet Speed Effects

Acoustic test results are presented for 1/4th-scaled nozzles with internal lobed mixers used for reduction of subsonic jet noise of turbofan engines with bypass ratio above 5 and jet speeds up to 830 ft/s. One coaxial and three forced lobe mixers were tested with variations in lobe penetration, cut-outs in lobe-sidewall, lobe number and nozzle-length. Measured exit flow profiles and thrusts are used to assist the inferences from acoustic data. It is observed that lobed mixers reduce the low-frequency noise due to more uniformly mixed exit flow; but they may also increase the high-frequency noise at peak perceived noise (PNL) angle and angles upstream of it due to enhanced mixing inside the nozzle. Cut-outs and low lobe penetration reduce the annoying portion of the spectrum but lead to less uniform exit flow. Due to the dominance of internal duct noise in unscalloped, high-penetration mixers their noise is not reduced as much with increase in free-jet speed as that of coaxial or cut-out lobed mixers. The latter two mixers also show no change in PNL over the wide range of nozzle-lengths tested because most of their noise sources are outside the nozzle; whereas, the former show an increase in noise with decrease in nozzle-length

Design and Development of Novel Matrix Converter Performance Enhancement Technique for Induction Motor Drive

Matrix converter is a direct AC-AC converter topology that directly converts energy from an AC source to an AC load without the need of a bulky and limited lifetime energy storage element. Due to the significant advantages offered by matrix converter, such as adjustable power factor, capability of regeneration and high quality sinusoidal input/output waveforms. Matrix converter has been one of the AC–AC topologies that hasreceived extensive research attention for being an alternative to replace traditional AC-DC-AC converters in the variable voltage and variable frequency AC drive applications. In the present paper an indirect space vector modulated matrix converter is proposed. The basic idea of an indirect modulation scheme is to separately apply SVM to the rectification and inversion stages, before combining their switching states to produce the final gating signals. The paper encompasses development of a laboratory prototype of 230V, 250VA three phase to three phase DSP controlled matrix converter fed induction motor drive. The observations and real time testings have been carried out to evaluate and improve the stability of system under various typical abnormal input voltage condition

Frequency of polymorphic variants in corticotropin releasing hormone receptor 1, glucocorticoid induced 1 and Fc fragment of IgE receptor II genes in healthy and asthmatic Tamilian population

Background: Asthma is a chronic airway inflammatory disease characterized by increased hyper-responsiveness and recurrent episodes of reversible obstructions. Asthma pharmacogenomic studies report significant association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes corticotropin releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1), Fc fragment of IgE receptor II (FCER2) and glucocorticoid induced 1 (GLCCI1) with inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) response. The present study was aimed to establish the allelic and genotypic frequencies of polymorphisms rs242941, rs28364072 & rs37972 in CRHR1, FCER2 and GLCCI1 genes, respectively in Tamilian healthy population and asthma patients and to compare with established frequencies of global populations.Methods: The study groups consisted of healthy volunteers and persistent asthma patients who were drug naïve or without ICS treatment in the last ≥2 months, attending JIPMER hospital (n=111 and 78, respectively). SNP genotyping was done using PCR-RFLP (polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism) and real time-PCR methods.Results: Allelic and genotypic frequencies for all the studied variants found to be in hardy-weinberg equilibrium with minor allele frequencies (MAF) of rs 242941, rs 28364072 and rs 37972 at 0.51, 0.33 and 0.38, respectively, in healthy population. No significant difference in gene frequencies was obtained between healthy control and asthma patient groups. Significant difference in allele frequencies was observed between Tamilian healthy and specific global populations. West African frequency was found to be significantly different for all 3 SNPs (p<0.0001).Conclusions: MAF of rs 242941, rs 28364072 and rs 37972 were 0.51, 0.33 and 0.38, respectively in Tamilian population which were significantly different from various global populations. The frequency distribution found helps to further with ICS response association studies in larger cohorts of asthma patients