A Study on Evolving Optimal Cropping Patterns in Groundwater Over-exploited Region of Perambalur District of Tamil Nadu

Falling groundwater tables and depletion of economically accessible groundwater resources would have major social and economic consequences. The present study has been taken up with the overall objective of evolving optimal crop plans to sustain the use of groundwater resources for irrigation. Perambalur district was purposively selected for the study as it mainly depends on groundwater for its irrigation. Linear programming technique was used to evolve optimal crop plans. The constraints identified were primarily irrigation water, besides land availability during the cultivating seasons and capital. Six typical farms were selected, one each for the open well, wells in tank command area and tubewell-irrigated farms in critical and over-exploited groundwater regime and also for semi-critical and safe groundwater regime. The results of the optimal crop plans derived showed that the irrigation water-use in the critical period could be reduced by 24.30, 4.54 and 51.71 hours of pumping in ordinary wells, wells in tank command area and tubewell-irrigated farms, respectively in critical and over-exploited groundwater regime sample farms. In the semi-critical and safe groundwater regime sample farms, the optimal crop plans revealed that the irrigation water-use in the critical period could be reduced by 4.61, 3.99, and 4.73 hours of pumping in ordinary wells, wells in tank command area and tubewell-irrigated farms, respectively. Area under high water intensive crops namely, paddy and sugarcane declined almost in all the optimal crop plans. Area under low water intensive crops (groundnut, gingelly and tapioca) showed an increasing trend in all optimal crop plans. The net income of the sample farms increased marginally or considerably in the optimal crop plans of both the critical and overexploited groundwater regime sample farms and semi-critical and the safe groundwater regime sample farmsAgricultural and Food Policy,

Randomised positive control trial of NSAID and antimicrobial treatment for calf fever caused by pneumonia

One hundred and fifty-four preweaning calves were followed between May and October 2015. Calves were fitted with continuous monitoring temperature probes (TempVerified FeverTag), programmed so a flashing light emitting diode (LED) light was triggered following six hours of a sustained ear canal temperature of ≥39.7°C. A total of 83 calves (61.9 per cent) developed undifferentiated fever, with a presumptive diagnosis of pneumonia through exclusion of other calf diseases. Once fever was detected, calves were randomly allocated to treatment groups. Calves in group 1 (NSAID) received 2 mg/kg flunixin meglumine (Allevinix, Merial) for three consecutive days and group 2 (antimicrobial) received 6 mg/kg gamithromycin (Zactran, Merial). If fever persisted for 72 hours after the initial treatment, calves were given further treatment (group 1 received antimicrobial and group 2 received NSAID). Calves in group 1 (NSAID) were five times more likely (P=0.002) to require a second treatment (the antimicrobial) after 72 hours to resolve the fever compared with the need to give group 2 (antimicrobial) calves a second treatment (NSAID). This demonstrates the importance of ongoing monitoring and follow-up of calves with respiratory disease. However, of calves with fever in group 1 (NSAID), 25.7 per cent showed resolution following NSAID-only treatment with no detrimental effect on the development of repeated fever or daily live weight gain. This suggests that NSAID alone may be a useful first-line treatment, provided adequate attention is given to ongoing monitoring to identify those cases that require additional antimicrobial treatment

Mortality of Tribolium castaneum and quality changes in Oryza sativa by indirect exposure to Non-Thermal Plasma

The management of stored product pests is a serious concern as it contributes to postharvest product losses. This study investigated the influence of NTP on the control of Tribolium castaneum adults and the quality of Oryza sativa and compared with phosphine fumigation. The experiments were performed at 100 - 200 V of NTP and 100 - 200 ppm of phosphine for the exposure periods of 8, 16, and 24 h. Mortality of 100 % and 86.67 % was obtained at 24 h of exposure for plasma treatment (200 V) and phosphine (200 ppm), respectively. The quality changes in rice during the mortality studies were also evaluated for treated samples. The cooking properties, texture, hydration behavior, and pasting profile along with color and moisture content were investigated. The statistical analysis did not report any significant quality changes for plasma and phosphine treated rice compared to the untreated samples. The microstructural changes in the rice was also examined by scanning electron microscope. The results suggest that NTP treatment can be used as a useful tool for the control of T. castaneum without affecting the properties of rice. However, large scale studies have to be explored for practical usage of NTP in management of stored product pests

Improvement in Millet Soaking by Way of Bubbled Cold Plasma Processed Air Exposure; Phytic Acid Reduction Cum Nutrient Analysis Concern

Pearl millet is one of the high-grown and underutilized grain crops. It is confined to traditional foods due to its anti-nutritional and functional properties. The present study investigated the influence of plasma processed air bubbling and soaking on phytic acid content, total and HCl extractable iron, physicochemical, techno-functional, and pasting properties of pearl millet. Exposure of pearl millet to plasma processed air bubbling at 180 V with an airflow rate of 10 liters /h for 1 h and 2 h reduced phytic acid content by 60.66 % and 39.27 % respectively. Whereas soaking for 12 h reduced phytic acid by 21.6 % in contrast with the untreated sample. The total iron content reduced from 39.9 to 29.8 mg/100g and HCl extractable iron content increased from 12 % to 69.49 % with the given treatments. Obtained data were noticed with significant changes (p < 0.05) and are in line with its exposure to the selected variable treatments. This work points to the potentiality of plasma processed air pre-treatment in the food industry to improve nutrition and mineral availability accompanied by modifying pasting, techno-functional properties of pearl millet

Numerical Studies of Rivet-Fastened Rectangular Hollow Flange Channel Beams

The rivet-fastened rectangular hollow flange channel beam (RHFCB) is a new cold-formed hollow section proposed as an alternative to welded hollow flange beams. It is a monosymmetric channel section made by rivet-fastening two torsionally rigid rectangular hollow flanges to a web plate. This method will allow the designers to develop optimum sections, with affordable rivet connection between their web and flange elements. In addition to this unique geometry, the rivet-fastened RHFCBs also have unique characteristics relating to their stress-strain characteristics, residual stresses, initial geometric imperfections and hollow flanges that are not encountered in conventional hot-rolled and cold-formed steel channel sections. Therefore detailed experimental and numerical studies were conducted to study the section moment capacities of rivet-fastened RHFCBs. This paper presents the details of the numerical study of rivet-fastened RHFCBs and the results. Finite element models of rivet-fastened RHFCBs were developed by including all the significant effects that influence their ultimate section moment capacities, including material inelasticity, and geometric imperfections. The results from finite element analyses were then compared with corresponding experimental results and the predictions from the current design rules. Test results showed that the developed finite element models were able to predict the behaviour and section moment capacities of RHFCBs. The validated model was then used in a detailed parametric study that produced additional section moment capacity data of the rivet-fastened RHFCBs

Section Moment Capacity Tests of Rivet-Fastened Rectangular Hollow Flange Channel Beams

The rivet-fastened rectangular hollow flange channel beam (RHFCB) is a new cold-formed hollow section proposed as an alternative to welded hollow flange steel beams. It is a mono-symmetric channel section made by rivet fastening two torsionally rigid rectangular hollow flanges to a web plate. This method will allow the designers to develop optimum sections, with affordable rivet connection between the web and flange elements. The new rivet-fastened RHFCB has unique characteristics that are not encountered in conventional hot-rolled and cold-formed steel channel sections. Therefore an experimental study consisting of 15 section moment capacity tests was conducted with different rivet spacings to investigate the flexural behaviour and strength of rivet-fastened RHFCB members. The ultimate moment capacities from the tests were compared with the capacities predicted by the current design rules for steel structures, and their suitability to predict the section moment capacities of RHFCBs was investigated. The applicability of the Direct Strength Method based design rules was also investigated. This paper presents the details of this experimental study and the results

An overview on the Impact of Food Fraud Incidences in Various Countries and its Detection Methods, Assessment Techniques and Preventive Measures

Food fraud is not just a local issue but perhaps a global phenomenon. If the food available in the market are undetected or poorly controlled, this can harm consumer health. Food fraud causes a lack of traceability of supply chains and may eventually be a risk to food safety. The purpose of this paper is to acquaint the various types of food fraud and to evaluate the detection methods in identifying the adulterants. It also addresses the importance of vulnerability assessment of food fraud and key actions required for its prevention. Fighting food fraud will remain a race between the fraudsters and scientists developing new methods to prevent them. The review is unique that it summarized food fraud types, basic and instrument-based detection techniques for adulterants identification and it also focuses on the international governing bodies concerned with food laws and regulations. This study also provides perceptions of the interplay between vulnerability assessment and food fraud prevention

A Comparative study of Tailored Lateral Sphincterotomy Versus Lateral Sphincterotomy for Chronic Fissure in Ano in Government Rajaji Hospital, Madurai

BACKGROUND: Fissure in ano is the most common painful condition of perianal region, characterized by longitudinal ulcers affecting the distal part of the anal canal. To reduce the incidence of fecal incontinence , flatus incontinence and recurrence rates Tailored lateral sphincterotomy is used. This study compares the efficacy of tailored lateral sphincterotomy and lateral sphincterotomy in chronic fissure in ano in healing, incontinence rates and recurrence. AIM OF THE STUDY: The aim of this study is to compare outcomes like, fecal incontinence , and recurrence rate in patients undergoing tailored lateral sphincterotomy and traditional lateral sphincterotomy for chronic fissure in ano OBJECTIVE: To derive conclusions that tailored lateral sphincterotomy is a safe effective and flatus incontinence,faecal incontinence, fecal soiling,recurrence rate are less compared to traditional lateral sphincterotomy. METHODOLOGY: Surgery was done under regional anaesthesia, lithotomy position. An incision made in the 3 o clock position using 15 blade in the intersphincteric groove and turned medially,Internal sphincter palpated and hooked out using aretery forceps.Length of the fissure is measured and the fibres of internal sphincter are cut upto length below the dentate line. RESULTS: Among the 60 patients in our study No patients who underwent tailored lateral sphincterotomy developed flatus incontinence, with a significant p value (0.040).No patients who underwent tailored lateral sphincterotomy developed fecal incontinence, with a significant p value (0.040).1 patients who underwent tailored lateral sphincterotomy developed recurrence with a significant p value ( 0.046). Patients who underwent lateral sphintcterotomy the mean pain score on day 1 was 5.6 when compared to the mean score of patient who underwent tailored lateral sphintcterotomy being 5.6 without significant p value (p value-0.975). Mean pain score on day3 for patients who underwent lateral sphintcteroto was 2.8 when compared to who underwent tailored lateral sphintcterotomy being 2.7 without significant p value (p value-0.139). Mean pain score on day5 for patients who underwent lateral sphintcteroto was 1.2 when compared to who under went tailored lateral sphintcterotomy being 1.2 without significant p value (p value-0.375) CONCLUSION: Due to Significant reduction in faecal incontinence, flatus incontinence and recurrencethis present study concludes that the tailored lateral sphincterotomy should be used as the primary treatment of choice in the management of Chronic fissure in ano, when compared to conventional lateral sphincterotomy

A new adaptive test for paired data for small to moderate sample sizes.

When carrying out data analysis, a practitioner has to decide on a suitable test for hypothesis testing, and as such, would look for a test that has a high relative power. Tests for paired data tests are usually conducted using t-test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test or the sign test. Some adaptive tests have also been suggested in the literature by O'Gorman, who found that no single member of that family performed well for all sample sizes and different tail weights, and hence, he recommended that choice of a member of that family be made depending on both the sample size and the tail weight. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive test. Simulation studies for n=25 and n=50 show that it works well for nearly all tail weights ranging from the light-tailed beta and uniform distributions to t(4) distributions. More precisely, our test has both robustness of level (in keeping the empirical levels close to the nominal level) and efficiency of power. The results of our study contribute to the area of statistical inference

Cross Pixel Optical Flow Similarity for Self-Supervised Learning

We propose a novel method for learning convolutional neural image representations without manual supervision. We use motion cues in the form of optical flow, to supervise representations of static images. The obvious approach of training a network to predict flow from a single image can be needlessly difficult due to intrinsic ambiguities in this prediction task. We instead propose a much simpler learning goal: embed pixels such that the similarity between their embeddings matches that between their optical flow vectors. At test time, the learned deep network can be used without access to video or flow information and transferred to tasks such as image classification, detection, and segmentation. Our method, which significantly simplifies previous attempts at using motion for self-supervision, achieves state-of-the-art results in self-supervision using motion cues, competitive results for self-supervision in general, and is overall state of the art in self-supervised pretraining for semantic image segmentation, as demonstrated on standard benchmarks