Exploring Market Potential and Developing Linkages – A Case of Underutilized Fruit Products in India

Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore, India, under the aegis of International Centre for Underutilized Crops (ICUC), trained the officials of Bharathiya Agro-Industries Foundation (BAIF), a nongovernmental organization (NGO), on small scale processing and marketing of underutilized fruits in August 2004. As a result, small scale processing units were established at the community village level in the state of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat in India for processing of underutilized fruits like aonla, tamarind and jackfruit into different products. Later, a survey was undertaken to ascertain the processing and market potential of underutilized fruit products. The market survey in the Hassan district of Karanataka has indicated the presence of underutilized fruit products like citron pickles, tamarind paste and jackfruit chips, which are sold by the retailers in small quantities. The market survey of underutilized fruit products in Pune (Maharashtra) has indicated the trading of underutilized fruit products like aonla pickle, aonla squash, aonla supari and tamarind products like concentrate, pani puri masala in the market, though in small quantities. The market survey in the Dharmapur and Valsad markets, Gujarat has indicated the presence of underutilized fruit products like pachan aonla (digestive aonla), ber powder, salted ber and tamarind under different brand names like Oswal, Khelkar, Frootlet, etc. The share of the underutilized fruit products is small but these products have made their presence felt in the market. By and large, consumers have accepted the quality and price of the products of the small scale community processing unit. However, label needs improvement and is to be made more attractive. Thus, market research has helped in identifying the potential markets for the underutilized fruit products of the community level processing units. The institutional arrangements in the form of IIHR-BAIF have benefited the community at large and the women SHGs in particular.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Utilization of trash fish for human consumption. 3: Studies on the development of fish pickle from Nemipterus japonicus

A method for the preparation of fish pickles from a lean variety of fish namely pink perch (Nemipterus japonicus) is described. Dipping the fish in 10% sodium chloride solution containing 6% acetic acid before pickling, was found desirable for retaining the meaty texture of the product. The product has no fish smell or flavour and has a shelf life of more than six months at ambient temperatures and scored very well in organoleptic tests

FINAL REPORT ON CONTROL ALGORITHM TO IMPROVE THE PARTIAL-LOAD EFFICIENCY OFSURFACE PM MACHINES WITH FRACTIONAL-SLOT CONCENTRATED WINDINGS

Surface permanent magnet (SPM) synchronous machines using fractional-slot concentrated windings are being investigated as candidates for high-performance traction machines for automotive electric propulsion systems. It has been shown analytically and experimentally that such designs can achieve very wide constant-power speed ratios (CPSR) [1,2]. This work has shown that machines of this type are capable of achieving very low cogging torque amplitudes as well as significantly increasing the machine power density [3-5] compared to SPM machines using conventional distributed windings. High efficiency can be achieved in this class of SPM machine by making special efforts to suppress the eddy-current losses in the magnets [6-8], accompanied by efforts to minimize the iron losses in the rotor and stator cores. Considerable attention has traditionally been devoted to maximizing the full-load efficiency of traction machines at their rated operating points and along their maximum-power vs. speed envelopes for higher speeds [9,10]. For example, on-line control approaches have been presented for maximizing the full-load efficiency of PM synchronous machines, including the use of negative d-axis stator current to reduce the core losses [11,12]. However, another important performance specification for electric traction applications is the machine's efficiency at partial loads. Partial-load efficiency is particularly important if the target traction application requires long periods of cruising operation at light loads that are significantly lower than the maximum drive capabilities. While the design of the machine itself is clearly important, investigation has shown that this is a case where the choice of the control algorithm plays a critical role in determining the maximum partial-load efficiency that the machine actually achieves in the traction drive system. There is no evidence that this important topic has been addressed for this type of SPM machine by any other authors. This topic takes on even greater significance for fractional-slot concentrated-winding SPM machine designs. In particular, maximizing the torque/power density of this class of SPM machines typically leads to machine designs with high numbers of poles. The resulting high electrical frequencies can easily result in high stator core losses unless special care is taken during the machine design process. The purpose of this report is to discuss a modified vector control algorithm for a fractional-slot concentrated winding SPM machine that has been developed to maximize the machine's partial-load efficiency over a wide range of operating conditions. For purposes of this discussion, a 55 kW (peak) SPM machine designed to meet requirements established in the US FreedomCar program [13] is used as the basis for demonstrating the proposed technique. A combination of closed-form analysis [14] and finite element analysis (FEA) is used during this investigation

Gravitational field of domain wall in Lyra geometry

In this paper, we study the domain wall with time dependent displacement vectors based on Lyra geometry in normal gauge i.e. displacement vector $f^*_i = [ \beta (t), 0,0,0]$. The field theoretic energy momentum tensor is considered with zero pressure perpendicular to the wall. We find an exact solutions of Einstein equation for a scalar field $\phi$ with a potential $V(\phi)$ describing the gravitational field of a plane symmetric domain wall. We have seen that the hyper surfaces parallel to the wall ($z = constant$) are three dimensional de-sitter spaces. It is also shown that the gravitational field experienced by test particle is attractive.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; Submitted in Astrophysics and Space Science after minor revisio

Multilayered feed forward Artificial Neural Network model to predict the average summer-monsoon rainfall in India

In the present research, possibility of predicting average summer-monsoon rainfall over India has been analyzed through Artificial Neural Network models. In formulating the Artificial Neural Network based predictive model, three layered networks have been constructed with sigmoid non-linearity. The models under study are different in the number of hidden neurons. After a thorough training and test procedure, neural net with three nodes in the hidden layer is found to be the best predictive model.Comment: 19 pages, 1 table, 3 figure

Two lectures on color superconductivity

The first lecture provides an introduction to the physics of color superconductivity in cold dense quark matter. The main color superconducting phases are briefly described and their properties are listed. The second lecture covers recent developments in studies of color superconducting phases in neutral and beta-equilibrated matter. The properties of gapless color superconducting phases are discussed.Comment: 56 pages, 9 figures. Minor corrections and references added. Lectures delivered at the IARD 2004 conference, Saas Fee, Switzerland, June 12 - 19, 2004, and at the Helmholtz International Summer School and Workshop on Hot points in Astrophysics and Cosmology, JINR, Dubna, Russia, August 2 - 13, 200

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

Psychosocial Treatment of Children in Foster Care: A Review

A substantial number of children in foster care exhibit psychiatric difficulties. Recent epidemiologi-cal and historical trends in foster care, clinical findings about the adjustment of children in foster care, and adult outcomes are reviewed, followed by a description of current approaches to treatment and extant empirical support. Available interventions for these children can be categorized as either symptom-focused or systemic, with empirical support for specific methods ranging from scant to substantial. Even with treatment, behavioral and emotional problems often persist into adulthood, resulting in poor functional outcomes. We suggest that self-regulation may be an important mediat-ing factor in the appearance of emotional and behavioral disturbance in these children

Reproducibility in the absence of selective reporting : An illustration from large-scale brain asymmetry research

Altres ajuts: Max Planck Society (Germany).The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p-hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left-right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta-analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an "ideal publishing environment," that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically-used sample sizes