Impact of Innovations in Value Chain on Sorghum Farmers

The paper has studied the implementation of millets value chain pilot project under the NAIP to create demand for sorghum through diversification in farm production, procurement, ultimately aiming at economical benefits to both farmers and other stakeholders. This 4.5 years novel initiative is still in the mid-way. The study has reported that technological backstopping of sorghum cultivation with end-product specific improved cultivars has realized 51 per cent rise in incremental net income of Rs 16098/ha for the participating farmers (58 per cent rise in kharif and 44 per cent in rabi farmers). The inconvenience in the preparation of sorghum foods which has been the important reason for the decrease in its consumption, has been eliminated through development of convenient and ready-to-eat/cook foods. The factorization of the investment expenditure made per farmer (one acre of sorghum per participating farmer) has been worked out to be Rs 356 (equivalent of Rs 890/ha) in a season resulting in 51 per cent rise in incremental net income over baseline which is slightly higher in kharif sorghum than in rabi sorghum. The output pricing in kharif has helped in attaining these benefits. However, the benefit-cost ratio has worked out in favour of rabi sorghum farmers, i.e. 1:7.5 vis-à-vis kharif farmers BC ratio of 1: 4.2. The study has observed that linking up of the entire stakeholders through value addition throughout the value chain system would renew and uplift the diminishing sorghum area and production and its ultimate economical benefits to farmers and other stakeholders in the value chain.Agricultural and Food Policy,

A review of public health economic modelling in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

Background: The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) use economic modelling to inform judgements whenever further insight is required for decision-making. Doing so for public health guidance poses several challenges. The study’s objective was to investigate the level of heterogeneity in NICE’s public health economic models with regards to economic evaluation techniques, perspectives on outcomes and the measurement of non-health benefits. Methods: A review of all economic modelling reports published by NICE’s Centre for Public Health (CPH) as part of their guidance. Results: The review identified 56 eligible pieces of public health over the relevant period. Of these, 43 used economic modelling and 13 used no formal economic model. In total 61 economic models were used. Though the CPH specifies a reference case, in practice there is a large amount of variability from one model to the next. The most common perspective used for evaluations was that of the National Health Service (NHS); the most common economic evaluation approach was cost-utility analysis (CUA). 23 of the 56 topics used other combinations of perspective and technique, which allowed them to incorporate non-health effects, such as productivity, the effect on taxes raised and benefits spending, costs to the criminal justice sector, the effect on educational attainment and general wellbeing. Conclusions: NICE regularly updates its reference case, and non-CUA evaluation techniques have become more prominent in recent years. The results highlight the genuine advantages of having a variety of economic evaluation techniques available, which can be matched with the given topic. While it is always necessary to be wary of the possibility of gamesmanship and cherry picking, there is a surprising alignment between many approaches in certain circumstances

Effect of VAM fungi and bacterial biofertilizers on mulberry leaf quality and silkworm cocoon characters under semiarid conditions

The influence of VAM fungi and bacterial biofertilizer (BBF) with 50% reduction in the recommended dose of (N and P) chemical fertilizers on leaf quality traits of mulberry variety (S-13) and its impact on silkworm (PM ? NB4D2) growth and cocoon characters were studied under semi-arid conditions. Four different treatments were imposed i.e., T1: Control (only 100% NPK); T2: VAM (50% cut in P); T3: BBF (50% cut in N) and T4: BBF and VAM (50% cut in N and P). The results revealed that reduction (50%) in the dose of chemical fertilizers in T2, T3 and T4 did not affected the leaf quality traits or cocoon parameters, this may be due to the effect of microbial inoculants in these treatments, which had efficiently regulated the normal growth, metabolism and physiological activity in plants. Among the three-biofertilizer treatments, leaf quality, silkworm growth and cocoon parameters were found improved in T4 and was on par with T1 control. The dual inoculation (T4) proved economical and beneficial with regard to saving of 50 % cost of chemical fertilizers and improvement in soil fertility, leaf quality and cocoon parameters, thus this technology can be recommended to sericulture

IGG purity assay using a new high resolution SDS-GEL

Comunicaciones a congreso

First-principles quantum transport modeling of thermoelectricity in single-molecule nanojunctions with graphene nanoribbon electrodes

We overview nonequilibrium Green function combined with density functional theory (NEGF-DFT) modeling of independent electron and phonon transport in nanojunctions with applications focused on a new class of thermoelectric devices where a single molecule is attached to two metallic zigzag graphene nanoribbons (ZGNRs) via highly transparent contacts. Such contacts make possible injection of evanescent wavefunctions from ZGNRs, so that their overlap within the molecular region generates a peak in the electronic transmission. Additionally, the spatial symmetry properties of the transverse propagating states in the ZGNR electrodes suppress hole-like contributions to the thermopower. Thus optimized thermopower, together with diminished phonon conductance through a ZGNR/molecule/ZGNR inhomogeneous structure, yields the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT~0.5 at room temperature and 0.5<ZT<2.5 below liquid nitrogen temperature. The reliance on evanescent mode transport and symmetry of propagating states in the electrodes makes the electronic-transport-determined power factor in this class of devices largely insensitive to the type of sufficiently short conjugated organic molecule, which we demonstrate by showing that both 18-annulene and C10 molecule sandwiched by the two ZGNR electrodes yield similar thermopower. Thus, one can search for molecules that will further reduce the phonon thermal conductance (in the denominator of ZT) while keeping the electronic power factor (in the nominator of ZT) optimized. We also show how often employed Brenner empirical interatomic potential for hydrocarbon systems fails to describe phonon transport in our single-molecule nanojunctions when contrasted with first-principles results obtained via NEGF-DFT methodology.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures; mini-review article prepared for the special issue of the Journal of Computational Electronics on "Simulation of Thermal, Thermoelectric, and Electrothermal Phenomena in Nanostructures", edited by I. Knezevic and Z. Aksamij