Keynote Address

Thank you, professor, for that introduction. It was quite the introduction. It is true my brother started a very successful online diaper company. It was mentioned that we do not have enough followers on our Twitter feed. My brother is a much more clever member of the family. My recollection is that when he started that company, he had a slogan—he and some folks came up with this slogan for the diaper company—which was—and it was emblazoned on a t-shirt which was one of the few perks of being related to somebody who started a company, and I from time to time proudly wear that t-shirt—and the slogan for his company was: “We are number one in number two.

Regional analysis of gender-related development: districts of western India

"In this paper the diverse dimensions of gender development are examined using individual indicators for the districts of the western region of India. The western region for the purpose of this study covers the five states of Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. Using a selected set of indicators, the levels of women’s development in demographic, educational, health-related, socio-cultural and economic spheres are identified. The methodology used is a simple ranking exercise that highlights relative levels of development or backwardness.

Real time pedestrian detection and tracking for driver assistance systems

Real time pedestrian detection and tracking is considered as a critical application. Night time driving is more risky as compared to day time driving because of poor visibility especially in the case of senior citizens. While traditional methods of segmentation using thresholding, background subtraction and background estimation provide satisfactory results to detect single objects, noise is produced in case of multiple objects and in poor lighting conditions. To overcome these difficulties, a new method is proposed for detecting and tracking multiple moving objects on night-time lighting conditions. The method is performed by integrating both the wavelet-based contrast change detector and locally adaptive thresholding scheme. In the initial stage, to detect the potential moving objects contrast in local change over time is used. To suppress false alarms motion prediction and spatial nearest neighbor data association are used. A latest change detector mechanism is implemented to detect the changes in a video sequence and divide the sequence into scenes to be encoded independently. Using the change detector algorithm (CD), it was efficient enough to detect abrupt cuts and help divide the video file into sequences. With this we get a sufficiently good output with less noise. But in some cases noise becomes prominent. Hence, a method called correlation is used which gives the relation between two consecutive frames which have sufficient difference to be used as current and previous frame. This gives a way better result in poor light condition and multiple moving objects

Gender development indicators: issues, debates and ranking of districts

"This paper is divided into seven sections. After the introduction, the second section deals with some of the debates and measures of development indicators. Section three presents the methodology, objectives and scope of the study. The fourth section discusses the selected indicators along with a state level analysis of each of them. A detailed presentation of district-wise data analysis is undertaken in the fifth section under specific sub-heads of demographic, educational, health, sociocultural and economic indicators. The main findings are presented in the sixth section. Some concluding remarks, including directions for further explorations and limitations of the present study are provided in the last section.

Effect of deficit irrigation and in situ moisture conservation on soil moisture content and frequency of irrigation in kiwifruit cultivar Allison

The effect of deficit irrigation and in situ moisture conservation in kiwifruit cv. Allison vines was studied during the years 2011 and 2012 in the Department of Fruit Science, Dr. Y. S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, HP, India. Soil moisture content and frequency of irrigation were investigated in kiwifruit in response to deficit irrigation and in situ moisture conservation techniques. Seven treatments viz., irrigation at 80 per cent Field Capacity (T1), 60 per cent Field Capacity (T2) and 40 per cent Field Capacity (T3), 60 per cent Field Capacity (FC) plus grass mulch (T4) or black polythene (T5) and 40 per cent FC plus grass mulch (T6) or black polythene (T7) were applied from March to October with three replications in Randomized Block Design (RBD). During the year 2011, the soil moisture content under kiwifruit vines was highest under the treatment T1 (15.3, 16.9) , followed by T5 (15.2, 16.8) and T4 (14.9, 16.6) at 30 cm and at 60 cm soil depth, respectively. Whereas, during the year 2012, the soil moisture content under kiwifruit vines was highest under the treatment T1 (14.9, 16.4), followed by T5 (15.0, 16.3) and T4 (14.6, 16.1) at 30 cm and at 60 cm soil depth, respectively. However,the least soil moisture content was, however, observed under T3 (11.0, 12.8) at 30 cm and 60 cm soil depth , respectively, during the year 2011, similarly, during the year 2012, the least soil moisture content was also observed under T3 (10.6, 12.7) at 30 cm and 60 cm soil depth, respectively. The frequency of irrigation was highest under T1 (16 irrigations) followed T2 (10 irrigations) while the least was recorded under T6 and T7 (7irrigations). Total numbers of irrigations applied were reduced from 16 (under T1) to 8 (under T5). The use of black plastic mulch may be beneficial as it helped to conserve moistureunder DI regime which is comparable to those in well irrigated vines. It may also reduce the high irrigation requirement of kiwifruit in areas where sufficient water is not available