Rice Production in India — Implications of Land Inequity and Market Imperfections

The relationship between farm productivity and farm structure has been analyzed focusing mainly on one channel of transmission of this relationship, viz. input-use pattern in rice production. The hypothesized relationship tested in this study is that land inequality influences access to/ use of resources in rice production and in-turn influences productivity. Market imperfections aggravate the negative effect of land inequity on productivity. Results have shown that smallholders’ share in inputs like fertilizers, and irrigation has increased over time, but a large number of smallholders still do not have access to these resources. Study has demonstrated that policies like fertilizer subsidy, agricultural credit, and minimum support prices are able to address market imperfections only partially. Hence, for improving productivity and profitability of rice production of smallholders in particular and other farmers in general, addressing of structural inequity needs attention besides a focus on technology development.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Potential Benefits of Bt Brinjal in India — An Economic Assessment

The potential economic benefits of Bt brinjal hybrids in terms of yield gain, reduction in insecticide-use, and increase in net returns per hectare have been reported in this study. Results have shown that adoption of Bt brinjal hybrids would provide yield gain of 37 per cent and reduction in total insecticide-use of about 42 per cent over non-Bt hybrids. Other benefits like increase in additional brinjal production (30 thousand tonnes), savings from insecticides (` 47 crore) against Fruit and Shoot Borer (FSB), increase in net returns (` 11029/ha), and reduction in price of brinjal output (3%), etc. would be at 15 per cent adoption level. With increased adoption level of 60 per cent of Bt brinjal hybrids would provide, additional production of 119 thousand tonnes, savings from insecticides against FSB Rs 187 crore, increase in net returns ` 44117/ha and likely reduction in brinjal price by 15 per cent. Simulation of gains adopting Bt brinjal hybrids has shown that country may gain aggregate direct economic benefits between ` 577 crore and ` 2387 crore annually at 15 per cent and 60 per cent adoption levels of bt brinjal hybrids, respectively. The major gains will accrue to consumers (66% of total) and rest would go to the farmers. In brief, Bt brinjal offers a large scope to increase income of farmers, reduce its cost to consumers, improve food safety and reduce health hazards and environmental pollution. The results of study may be helpful in policy decision on Bt brinjal adoption in the context of smallholders agriculture.GM food crop, Bt brinjal hybrid, Fruit and shoot borer, Economic benefits, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q11, Q16, Q15,

Scientometric Analysis of Synthetic Fiber Literature

A Quantitative study of research papers published in Synthetic Fiber Research from 2008-2017 was undertaken to investigate the research output in this field. The study made by applying various parameters for capturing the trend-growth pattern of the literature, Relative Growth Rate, Doubling Time, authorship pattern, Prolific author and Top ranking Journals etc., The data were obtained from scopus database. Articles published from 2008 – 2017 were taken for this study. A total of 2594 articles were published in this field with an yearly average of 259.4 articles. . Out of the 2594 articles, the majority of the articles 421 (16.23%) were published in the year 2017. The RGR in the year 2009 found to be 2.05 and in the end year 2017 found to be 0.12. This shows that the RGR declining trend is linear. Among the Authorship patterns, the major contribution of articles were from three authors 534 (20.59%). The Journal named “Advanced Materials Research” ranked in the top position in contributing articles 59 (2.28%) in this field. The highly prolific author is Monteiro S.N who has contributed 41 articles 0.47 %

Combined effects of internal heat generation and viscous dissipation for double diffusive with Forchheimer fluid model

In this paper, a numerical study using shooting technique is applied for a double diffusive flow for the combined effects of internal heat generation and viscous dissipation over a vertical heated plate under the influence of variable fluid properties is carried out. The governing equations of the physical problem are non-linear and coupled partial differential equations for velocity, temperature and concentration distributions. Using a suitable similarity transformation, the governing equations are transformed to ordinary differential equations involving the various non-dimensional parameters of the problem. Please download the full abstract below

Spin-charge gauge symmetry: A way to tackle HTS cuprates?

We propose an explanation of several experimental features of transport phenomena in the normal state of high Tc cuprates in terms of a spin-charge gauge theory of the 2D t-J model. The calculated doping-temperature dependence for a number of physical quantities is found in qualitative agreement with data. In particular, we recover: in the ``pseudogap phase'' the metal-insulator crossover of the in-plane resistivity and of the NMR ``relaxation time'' and the insulating behavior of the out-of-plane resistivity; in the ``strange metal phase'' (at higher temperature or doping) the linear in T behavior of the above quantities; the appearance of maxima in the in-plane far-infrared conductivity in strongly underdoped and overdoped samples.Comment: 8 pages, 14 figures; to appear without figures in Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solid

COMPARATIVE DOCKING STUDIES ON THE EFFECT OF COMMERCIAL DRUGS ON DIPEPTIDYL PEPTIDASE-4 (DPP-4)

Objective: The aim of our study was to validate the accuracy of computational tools in drug discovery and molecular interaction studies by studying the inhibitory activity of various commercial drugs on DPP-4.Methods: In order to validate the accuracy of computational tools, 50 commercially available drugs were docked with DPP-4, a major target for type 2 diabetes treatment. Studies were performed using Discovery studio 3.5.Results: The analysis showed that out of the fifty selected drugs, 33 drugs passed the Lipinski's rule and commercially prescribed drugs namely Sulfonylurea, Pregabalin and Metaformin were found to have maximum interaction with the target.Conclusion: These major drugs which yielded the best results were found to be used in the treatment of diabetes which reconfirms the efficacy of these drugs, druggability of the target as well as the accuracy of the tool used

Response to comments on “A numerical method to determine interdiffusion coefficients of Cu6Sn5 and Cu3Sn intermetallic compounds”

Comments have recently been made by Yuan et al. [1] to deny one statement in our paper [2], Eq. (21) in Wagner's paper [3] can be used to accurately calculate the integrated interdiffusion coefficient for an incremental diffusion couple only under the assumption of constant Molar volume for all phases. We respond here to explain how they misunderstood our mathematical deduction, made a mistake in deriving a couple of equations, falsely cited our work and employed unjustifiable assumption. As a result, we believe that their comments are invalid to deny our statement

Techno-economic analysis of solar stills using integrated fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and data envelopment analysis

Desalination using solar stills is an ancient economic method for water desalination. Over the years, research and development in the area of solar still has resulted in increased distillate yield by means of integration of PCM (phase change material), photo-voltaic thermal (PVT), etc with the still. Nano-PCM is an upcoming technology which modifies the thermal performance of PCM. The aim of this research is to analyze the efficiency of 20 solar stills including nano-PCM based solar stills considering various input and output criteria using integrated fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The efficiency derived here is relative with regard to the parameters and stills considered in this study. The result infers that, even though the productivity of stepped solar still with sun tracking system was high, but when techno-economic aspects were considered it is not among the top solar stills. The analysis indicated pyramid type solar still, single slope solar still with PVT, solar still with NPCM (paraffin + copper oxide), solar still with NPCM (paraffin + titanium dioxide) and solar still with PCM (paraffin) occupies the top five positions with relative efficiency of 100, 100, 88.47, 88.46 and 76.93% respectively

Innovative airport 4.0 condition-based maintenance system for baggage handling DCV systems

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a recent study conducted with the objective of addressing the problem of failure of baggage carts in the high-speed baggage tunnel at Heathrow Terminal 5 by the development of an innovative condition-based maintenance (CBM) system designed to meet the requirements of 21st century airport systems and Industry 4.0. Design/methodology/approach An empirical experimental approach to this action research was taken to install a vibration condition monitoring pilot test in the north tunnel at Terminal 5. Vibration data were collected over a 6-month period and analysed to find the threshold of good quality tyres and those with worn bearings that needed replacement. The results were compared with existing measures to demonstrate that vibration monitoring could be used as a predictive model for CBM. Findings The findings demonstrated a clear trend of increasing vibration velocity with age and use of the baggage cart wheels caused by wheel mass unbalanced inertia that was transmitted to the tracks as vibration. As a result, preventative maintenance is essential to ensure the smooth running of airport baggage. This research demonstrates that a healthy wheel produces vibration of under 60 mm/s whereas a damaged wheel measures up to 100 mm/s peak to peak velocity and this can be used in real-time condition monitoring to prevent baggage cart failure. It can also run as an autonomous system linked to AI and Industry 4.0 airport logic. Originality/value Whilst vibration monitoring has been used to measure movement in static structures such as bridges and used in rotating machinery such as railway wheels (Tondon and Choudhury, 1999); this is unique as it is the first time it has been applied on a stationary structure (tracks) carrying high-speed rotating machinery (baggage cart wheels). This technique has been patented and proven in the pilot study and is in the process of being rolled out to all Heathrow terminal connection tunnels. It has implications for all other airports worldwide and, with new economic sensors, to other applications that rely on moving conveyor belt

Flux profile scanners for scattered high-energy electrons

The paper describes the design and performance of flux integrating Cherenkov scanners with air-core reflecting light guides used in a high-energy, high-flux electron scattering experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The scanners were highly radiation resistant and provided a good signal to background ratio leading to very good spatial resolution of the scattered electron flux profile scans.Comment: 22 pages, 17 figure