Social benefits and costs of interventions in coconut based homesteads of central Kerala

A research project on 'possible diversifications and restructuring of coconut based homesteads' was implemented in six agro-ecosystems of Central Zone of Kerala covering three districts namely Palakkad, Thrissur and Eranakulam from the year 2005 to 2008 in a holistic approach with the participation of all the stakeholders. The interventions were selected by the farmers on participatory basis. Analysis of social and monitory benefits consequent to the adoption of interventions showed that all the six dimensions of Social Cost Index Value were found as the lowest in High Elevation-Medium Rainfall situation. Among all the dimensions, exploitation by middlemen was rated as the maximum Social Cost Index Value in almost all the situations and, therefore this dimension requires the attention of policy makers to ensure suitable price for the farm produce. Among the six dimensions in the Social Benefit Index Value, family labour utilisation and self confidence contributed maximum to this attribute. Benefit Index Value. It indicated that, the interventions made in the homesteads fully utilized family labour and enhanced the self confidence of the participating farmers. Social Benefit Cost Ratio was computed as the highest with 2.04 at High Elevation-Medium Rainfall situation and the lowest with 1.07 at Medium Elevation-Low Rainfall situation after three years of adoption of interventions. The interventions on restructuring of coconut based homesteads were found to be economically viable and socially desirable

Sustainability of the interventions in coconut based homesteads of Central Kerala

An ICAR adhoc scheme on 'Possible Diversifications and Restructuring of Coconut based Homesteads' was implemented in the six agro-ecosystems of Central zone of Kerala covering three districts namely Palakkad, Thrissur and Ernakulam with the holistic approach in coconut based homesteads from 2005 to 2008 by the participation of all the stakeholders. A comparative index namely Sustainability Development Index was developed for the study, which contained specific indices for economic, social, ecological sustainability, productivity, stability and equity dimensions. After three years of interventions, Sustainability Development Index was found to be the highest at High Elevation- Medium Rainfall (HEMR) situation (Kizhakkenchery) with 41.92. Economic sustainability (56.40) was the highest among all the dimensions because of the visibility of enhanced economic returns and increased employment opportunities. Ecological sustainability and stability were the two dimensions which contributed less for the Sustainability Development Index of the selected homesteads. It was concluded that the interventions on diversifications of coconut based homesteads indicated sustainability

ENTITY EXTRACTION USING STATISTICAL METHODS USING INTERACTIVE KNOWLEDGE MINING FRAMEWORK

There are various kinds of valuable semantic information about real-world entities embedded in web pages and databases. Extracting and integrating these entity information from the Web is of great significance. Comparing to traditional information extraction problems, web entity extraction needs to solve several new challenges to fully take advantage of the unique characteristic of the Web. In this paper, we introduce our recent work on statistical extraction of structured entities, named entities, entity facts and relations from Web. We also briefly introduce iKnoweb, an interactive knowledge mining framework for entity information integration. We will use two novel web applications, Microsoft Academic Search (aka Libra) and EntityCube, as working examples

A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF SERVICES RENDERED BY E-COMMERCE AND THEIR INNOVATIONS IN TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION TOWARDS AGRICULTURE SECTOR

E-Commerce is commercial transactions conducted electronically on the Internet. E-commerce (electronic commerce or EC) is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. These business transactions occur either as business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business. There are a lot of innovations in e-commerce which took place in recent years. The benefits of e-commerce include its around-the-clock availability, the speed of access, the wide availability of goods and services for the consumer, easy accessibility, and international reach. The technology adopted has also gone through a lot of changes. The technology advancements in e-commerce have been discussed in the study.  The main objective of the study is to analyze the advantages of adopting E-Commerce in agricultural sector and to know the advancement in technology adoption. Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, bio fuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. As agriculture plays a major role for the country to develop. The study clearly helps farmers to farm with less input and gain adequate output using e-commerce. It helps farmers to shop online from where ever they are for irrigation like purchasing seeds, fertilizers and search for markets for their output. Descriptive type of research is used for the study. The data gathered is primary as well as secondary. Websites, books, journals are the sources used for data gathering. Formulation of hypothesis, objectives, advantages and limitations have been discussed in the study

THERAPEUTIC APPLICATION OF A SIDDHA FORMULATION PATAIC CANKARAN - A REVIEW

Padarthamarai is the fungal skin infections and are categorised under Kutta Rogam (Padarthamarai -Pundareega Kutam). Many siddha drugs are prescribed for these diseases among them, Pataic Cankãran is exclusively mentioned for these disease as an internal and external medicine in Siddha literature - Siddha Vaidya Thirattu. Two different preparations are mentioned under Pataic Cankãran and differences observed in the ingredients as in Pataic Cankãran I Ankol (Alangium salvifolium (L.f.) Wang.), Marukkarai (Catunaregam spinosa (Thunb.) Tirvengadumia) and Elumitchai (Citrus aurantifolia (Christm.) Swingle), where as in Pataic Cankãran II, Thagarai (Senna tora (L.) Roxb.), Erruku (Calotropis procera (Ait.) R.Br.) are used. Even though Pataic Cankãran is mentioned in literature exclusively for dermatophytosis which is no longer in uses; Clinical study and standardisation of this drug have not been done so far, but In-vitro anti-dermatophytotic activities of the individual ingredient of these formulations have already been proved. The present review article aimed to document the biological, pharmacological and therapeutic applications such as anti-microbial, anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory activities of individual ingredients used in Pataic Cankãran I with reference to skin diseases. This study will help to understand the need of research study on this ancient Siddha formulation

Adaptive importance sampling technique for markov chains using stochastic approximation

For a discrete-time finite-state Markov chain, we develop an adaptive importance sampling scheme to estimate the expected total cost before hitting a set of terminal states. This scheme updates the change of measure at every transition using constant or decreasing step-size stochastic approximation. The updates are shown to concentrate asymptotically in a neighborhood of the desired zero-variance estimator. Through simulation experiments on simple Markovian queues, we observe that the proposed technique performs very well in estimating performance measures related to rare events associated with queue lengths exceeding prescribed thresholds. We include performance comparisons of the proposed algorithm with existing adaptive importance sampling algorithms on some examples. We also discuss the extension of the technique to estimate the infinite horizon expected discounted cost and the expected average cost

Studies on Longshore Sediment Transport Along Coast of Nagapattinam, India

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Model Study of River Cooum in Chennai, India

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Estimation of Soil Moisture for Different Crops Using SAR Polarimetric Data

Soil moisture is an essential factor that influences agricultural productivity and hydrological processes. Soil moisture estimation using field detection methods takes time and is challenging. However, using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, soil moisture parameters become easier to detect. In microwave remote sensing, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data helps to retrieve soil moisture from more considerable depths because of its high penetration capability and the illumination power of its light source. This study aims to process the SAR Sentinel-1A data and estimate soil moisture using the Water Cloud Model (WCM). Many physical and empirical models have been developed to determine soil moisture from microwave remote sensing platforms. However, the Water Cloud Model gives more accurate results. In this study, the WCM model is used for mixed crop types. The experimental soil moisture was determined from in-situ soil samples collected from various agricultural areas. The soil backscattering values corresponding to the different soil sampling locations were derived from Sentinel SAR data. Using linear regression analysis, the laboratory's soil moisture results and soil backscattering values were correlated to arrive at a model. The model was validated using a secondary set of in-situ moisture content values taken during the same period. The R2 and RMSE of the model were observed to be 0.825 and 0.0274, respectively, proving a strong correlation between the experimental soil moisture and satellite-derived soil moisture for mixed crop field types. This paper explains the methodology for arriving at a model for soil moisture estimation. This model helps to recommend suitable crop types in large, complex areas based on predicted moisture content. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2023-09-06-08 Full Text: PD