Constraints facing goat-keepers and ways of addressing them through a participatory approach: Some experiences from semi-arid India

BAIF Development Research Foundation (BAIF), India, and the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich, UK, are jointly implementing two complementary projects aimed at alleviating goat production problems caused by seasonal feed shortages in semi-arid India. One is entirely field-based and the other is primarily oriented towards laboratory feed evaluation: both started on 1 October 1997 and are due to end on 30 September 2000. The UK.'s Department for International Development is supporting the projects through its Livestock Production Programme. The title of the field-based project, the subject of this report, is: "Easing seasonal feed scarcity for small ruminants in semi-arid crop/livestock systems through a process of participatory research". The project is a multi-disciplinary one: the Project Leader for NRI is a socio-economist, whereas the Project Leader for BAIF is a veterinarian; and contributions are made by other staff from both organisations, who are from a variety of disciplines, including ruminant nutrition and agronomy. Until now the project has been working in three districts of north-west India - two in south Rajasthan (Bhilwara and Udaipur) and one in Gujarat (Bhavnagar). These districts were selected so that different goat production systems would be covered by the project (see Table 1). Limited diagnostic and needs assessment work has also been done in Vidisha district of Madhya Pradesh. During 2000 similar work will be done in two new districts - Dharwad (Kamataka) and Pune (Maharashtra); and if feed scarcity is an important constraint in those districts further trials may be undertaken there

A zone-based shared-tree multicast protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

This paper proposes a new multicast protocol for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The proposed protocol, Shared-Tree MZR, is a shared tree variant of the Multicast Routing Protocol based on Zone Routing (MZR). The concept of zone-based multicast routing for mobile ad hoc networks was originally proposed in MZR. The new protocol utilizes the advantages of the shared-tree together with the advantages of the zone-based routing. The performance of the protocol is analyzed for various network conditions. The test results show that the new protocol performs well and has significantly low overhead in scenarios with multiple sources

A bibliography of parasites and diseases of marine and freshwater fishes of India

With the increasing demand for fish as human food, aquaculture both in freshwater and salt water is rapidly developing over the world. In the developing countries, fishes are being raised as food. In many countries fish farming is a very important economic activity. The most recent branch, mariculture, has shown advances in raising fishes in brackish, estuarine and bay waters, in which marine, anadromous and catadromous fishes have successfully been grown and maintained

Understanding the Fodder Markets for Sustainable Development of Livestock Sector in Bihar-A Rapid Appraisal Approach

Livestock is an integral part of rural economy in Bihar and fodder is a critical input for livestock development. Data shows that there exist a huge gap between demand and supply of fodder (both dry as well as green). Most part of the south Bihar comprising of agro climatic zones, IIIA and IIIB are fodder surplus because of cultivation of paddy and wheat under assured irrigation facilities. Agro climatic Zone I and Zone II are fodder deficit and mostly depend on fodder surplus regions for their fodder requirement. In order to promote fodder production and requirement it is imperative for the Government to come forward and develop fodder storage facilities at different locations in different regions, so that farmers could store fodder to ensure its availability throughout the year. Due to lack of adequate storage facilities and space producers are forced to dispose the fodder in excess of their marketable surplus and therefore many times marketed surplus exceeds the actual marketable surplus in this way. Institutional support in the form of credit and creation of fodder banks in different fodder producing as well as deficit areas for maintaining buffer stock is essential. Fodder markets are highly unorganized and informal and the role of public sector/govt. in its marketing is virtually negligible. Most of the fodder markets are running on different places do not have any dedicated market place.. Most of the fodder markets are operating along the roadsides and have no legal credentials. This becomes one of the reasons of exploitation of people who are involved in this business. It is envisaged that establishment of dedicated and legal market places would help fodder trade a great deal and also check corrupt practices and exploitations of poor producers and traders. Fodder is a bulky item, which makes its trading cumbersome and handling difficult. Some traders use compressing machines to make fodder blocks. It is important to develop some cost effective and efficient fodder compressing machine for ease of handling and transportation as well as cost saving. Quality control of manufactured compound feed and concentrates is also essential. Most of the traders and consumers feel that there should be a mechanism to ensure quality of manufactured feed and nutritional supplements. Development of technology for cost effective and nutritive feed is requires urgent attention and here Public sector R&D can play an effective role. This can also be done in public-private partnership mode

Radiation Induced Apoptosis of Murine Bone Marrow Cells is Independent of Early Growth Response 1 (EGR1)

An understanding of how each individual 5q chromosome critical deleted region (CDR) gene contributes to malignant transformation would foster the development of much needed targeted therapies for the treatment of therapy related myeloid neoplasms (t-MNs). Early Growth Response 1 (EGR1) is a key transcriptional regulator of myeloid differentiation located within the 5q chromosome CDR that has been shown to regulate HSC (hematopoietic stem cell) quiescence as well as the master regulator of apoptosis—p53. Since resistance to apoptosis is a hallmark of malignant transformation, we investigated the role of EGR1 in apoptosis of bone marrow cells; a cell population from which myeloid malignancies arise. We evaluated radiation induced apoptosis of Egr1+/+ and Egr1-/- bone marrow cells in vitro and in vivo. EGR1 is not required for radiation induced apoptosis of murine bone marrow cells. Neither p53 mRNA (messenger RNA) nor protein expression is regulated by EGR1 in these cells. Radiation induced apoptosis of bone marrow cells by double strand DNA breaks induced p53 activation. These results suggest EGR1 dependent signaling mechanisms do not contribute to aberrant apoptosis of malignant cells in myeloid malignancies

Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in April of 2019 and lasting six months, O3b starting in November of 2019 and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in April of 2020 and lasting 2 weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main dataset, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figure

Search for subsolar-mass black hole binaries in the second part of Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run

We describe a search for gravitational waves from compact binaries with at least one component with mass 0.2 M⊙–1.0 M⊙ and mass ratio q ≥ 0.1 in Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo data collected between 1 November 2019, 15:00 UTC and 27 March 2020, 17:00 UTC. No signals were detected. The most significant candidate has a false alarm rate of 0.2yr−1 ⁠. We estimate the sensitivity of our search over the entirety of Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run, and present the most stringent limits to date on the merger rate of binary black holes with at least one subsolar-mass component. We use the upper limits to constrain two fiducial scenarios that could produce subsolar-mass black holes: primordial black holes (PBH) and a model of dissipative dark matter. The PBH model uses recent prescriptions for the merger rate of PBH binaries that include a rate suppression factor to effectively account for PBH early binary disruptions. If the PBHs are monochromatically distributed, we can exclude a dark matter fraction in PBHs fPBH ≳ 0.6 (at 90% confidence) in the probed subsolar-mass range. However, if we allow for broad PBH mass distributions we are unable to rule out fPBH = 1. For the dissipative model, where the dark matter has chemistry that allows a small fraction to cool and collapse into black holes, we find an upper bound fDBH < 10−5 on the fraction of atomic dark matter collapsed into black holes

Model-based cross-correlation search for gravitational waves from the low-mass X-ray binary Scorpius X-1 in LIGO O3 data

We present the results of a model-based search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass X-ray binary Scorpius X-1 using LIGO detector data from the third observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA. This is a semicoherent search which uses details of the signal model to coherently combine data separated by less than a specified coherence time, which can be adjusted to balance sensitivity with computing cost. The search covered a range of gravitational-wave frequencies from 25Hz to 1600Hz, as well as ranges in orbital speed, frequency and phase determined from observational constraints. No significant detection candidates were found, and upper limits were set as a function of frequency. The most stringent limits, between 100Hz and 200Hz, correspond to an amplitude h0 of about 1e-25 when marginalized isotropically over the unknown inclination angle of the neutron star's rotation axis, or less than 4e-26 assuming the optimal orientation. The sensitivity of this search is now probing amplitudes predicted by models of torque balance equilibrium. For the usual conservative model assuming accretion at the surface of the neutron star, our isotropically-marginalized upper limits are close to the predicted amplitude from about 70Hz to 100Hz; the limits assuming the neutron star spin is aligned with the most likely orbital angular momentum are below the conservative torque balance predictions from 40Hz to 200Hz. Assuming a broader range of accretion models, our direct limits on gravitational-wave amplitude delve into the relevant parameter space over a wide range of frequencies, to 500Hz or more