India: mud banks, muddy waters

As mud banks along the southwest coast of India dwindle, several concerns and societal implications have been articulated regarding this unique oceanographic phenomenon

Demand Projections for Foodgrains in India

Demand for foodgrains has been estimated for India for the years 2011-12, 2016-17 and 2021-22, by accounting for the factors like urbanization, regional variations in consumption pattern, shifts in dietary pattern and income distribution, limit on energy requirement and changes in tastes and preferences of consumers for food varieties. Indirect demand including ‘home away demand’ has also been considered in working out these food demand projections. Policy scenario has been presented and yield targets for the years 2011-12, 2016-17 and 2021-22 have been projected to meet the demand of foodgrams in these years.Agricultural and Food Policy,

An Assessment of Economic Losses due to Avian Flu in Manipur State

The impact of 2007 outbreak of avian flu in the state of Manipur has been reported. The loss due to the disease has been found to be 14 per cent of the total value of livestock outputs in the entire state. More than 3 lakh birds were culled and 24 tonnes of poultry feed was destroyed post-flu. It has been found that the more affected were the producers and the input industry than traders and retailers. In dealing with such eventualities, compensation should be adequate and timely so as to ensure better compliance for effective control and stamping out of the disease. The study has suggested that the compensation rates may be fixed as per the prevailing economic condition of less-developed states like in the North-Eastern region, taking into consideration flock size, family size of farmers, proportion of income from poultry to total family income, level of nutritional security achieved from family poultry and border status of the state.Livestock Production/Industries,

Domestic fish marketing in India - changing structure, conduct, performance and policies

This study has been conducted in all the major coastal states and some selected inland states to understand the domestic marketing of fish in India. The total marketing costs of auctioneer, wholesaler, retailer, vendor, marine fishermen cooperative society and contractor/freshwater fishermen cooperative society have been found to be Re 0.98, Rs 8.89, Rs 6.61, Rs 4.50, Rs 6.00 and Rs 3.51, respectively. The marketing efficiencies for Indian major carps (IMC), sardine and seer fish have been found to vary from 34 per cent to 74 per cent, depending on the length of market channel. The marketing efficiency has been found more in the case of marine species than freshwater species, since the latter travel longer distances from the point of production to consumption centre, passing many intermediaries as compared to the former. The fisherman’s share in consumer’s rupee has shown variations across species, marketing channels and markets. The infrastructure facilities at most of the surveyed landing centres, fishing harbours and wholesale and retail markets have been found grossly inadequate and poorly maintained. The study has highlighted the need for formulating a uniform market policy for fishes for easy operation and regulation so that the country’s fish production is efficiently managed and delivered to the consuming population, ensuring at the same time remunerative prices to the fishers.Marketing,

Sustainable Development and the Philosophy of Grand National Happiness: Socio-Economic and Genetic Paradigm

The issue of development is based, in all forms and levels, on attaining equilibrium of development and environmental sustainability over time. Development is related to enhancement of the quality of human life in terms of increase in economic growth, infrastructure, industrial output, per capita income, adequate social security and polity, which is partly achieved by exploitation of nature or sometimes one section of people for the benefit of another section.Just as a gold medal has another face, development has also a dark hidden face. Development being an economic action tends to cause environmental damage. Environmental degradation disrupts the developmental process in the LDCs by imposing heavy cost on expenses on health as well as reduction on the productivity and human resources. In such a mad race of development, instead of growth statistics, the LDCs should look into a Grand National Happiness Index (GNHI) in framing the regional development co-ordinates. In this paper an attempt is made to highlight the philosophy of GNHI by encompassing socio-economic, genetic and environmental elements

Authentication Based on Texture Analysis And SVM Classification

This paper presents for identification and here used a fusion mechanism that amalgamates both, a Canny Edge detection and a Circular Hough Transform to detect the iris boundaries in the eye’s digital image. We then applied the Gabor Wavelet filter instead of using 1D Log-Gabor filter in order to exact the deterministic patterns in a person’s iris in the form of a feature vector. By comparing the quantized vectors using the Hamming Distance operator, we determine finally and for classification used Support vector Machine

Does a surface attached globule phase exist ?

A long flexible neutral polymer chain immersed in a poor solvent and interacting with an impenetrable attractive surface exhibits a phase known as surface attached globule ({\bf SAG}) in addition to other adsorbed and desorbed phases. In the thermodynamic limit, the {\bf SAG} phase has the same free energy per monomer as the globular phase, and the transition between them is a surface transition. We have investigated the phase diagrams of such a chain in both two- and three- dimensions and calculated the distribution of monomers in different domains of the phase diagram.Comment: 7 pages, 7 postscript figure

Qualitative analysis of interspecific hybrids of oil palm for bunch components and fatty acid composition

Elaeis oleifera or the American oil palm produces more liquid oil due to higher unsaturated fatty acid content compared to the commercial species Elaeis guineensis. However, due to erratic and poor yield, E. oleifera is not cultivated commercially. Interspecific hybrids are having the potentiality of combining yield and quality in the oil. Seven interspecific crosses were made involving six E. guineensis and five E. oleifera palms. These were evaluated for their bunch component and oil quality in terms of fatty acid composition along with control E. guineensis tenera (D X P) hybrids and E. oleifera parental palms. Bunch component analysis showed intermediate values for bunch weight as well as bunch related parameters including proportion of parthenocarpic fruits. However, the oil/mesocarp and oil/bunch were lower than those of the parents. Fatty acid composition showed intermediate value between the two parental species for all the fatty acids. Wide variability in fatty acid composition was found in progenies of two specific interspecific crosses. No correlation was observed between any two fatty acids. Out of seven interspecific crosses, three were found to be on par with the better performing E. oleifera parental palms with respect to fatty acids. Since performance of each palm is different, individual interspecific hybrid palm was assessed based on total unsaturated fatty acids and oleic acid content and 20 superior palms were selected, which could be employed for further back crossing programme to combine the quality of palm oil and yield

Modeling and optimal control of dengue disease with screening and information

This study presents a mathematical model for dengue transmission which quantifies two very important aspects: one, the impact of information-based behavioural response, and the other, the segregation of infected human population into two subclasses, ‘detected’ and ‘undetected’. For the proposed model, the sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify the key model parameters which not only influence the basic reproduction number, but also regulate the transmission of dengue. Further, in order to find the optimal pathways for suitable control interventions that reduce the dengue prevalence and economic burden, an optimal control problem is proposed by considering information-induced behavioural change, quarantine, screening, use of repulsive measures and culling of mosquitoes as control interventions. A weighted sum of various costs incurred in applied controls and the cost due to dengue disease (productivity loss) is incorporated in the proposed cost functional. The analysis of control system using Pontryagin’s maximum principle leads the existence of the optimal control profiles. Further, an exhaustive comparative study for seven different control strategies is conducted numerically. Our findings emphasize that every individual control strategy has their own impact on reducing the cumulative count of infection as well as cost. The combined impact of all control interventions is highly effective and economically viable in controlling the prevalence of dengue. We also investigated the effect of the basic reproduction number on the designed control strategies and observed that the comprehensive use of controls keeps a strong tab on the infective even if the severity of epidemic is high