Volatility of agricultural prices - an analysis of major international and domestic markets

The price volatility of agricultural commodities assumes critical importance in the context of the ongoing debate regarding agricultural trade liberalisation in India. The arguments against agricultural trade liberalisation are often based on the issue of larger volatility in international markets. In order to make informed judgements about this crucial aspect of agriculture, which has implications for the entire economy, it is essential to study the volatility patterns in international and domestic markets in a comparative framework. The present study by CSC Sekhar is an attempt in this direction. The study, using monthly price data, finds little evidence to show that the international agricultural prices are uniformly more variable than the domestic prices. The study shows that the intra-year variability is higher in domestic markets while the inter-year variability is higher in the international markets. The current bound rates ofduty are generally found adequate in this study except in case of soybean oil and sugar.

Studies on the Accumulation of Chromium in Fenugreek

Studying Cr uptake by Fenugreek, we note that the maximum concentration of Cr takes place in the shells of the pods followed by leaves, stems and seeds in that order. Interestingly, applied higher doses of Cr does not increase accumulation of Cr in the stems, rather Cr content in the stems levels off. However, the maximum dispersal/distribution of Cr taken up is in the leaves

Chromium uptake by Fenugreek

Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum- graecum) is both herb (leaves) and a spice (seed) belonging to the family Fabaceae. Fenugreek leaves and seeds are used in the cuisine of India. Fenugreek also has medicinal value. Fenugreek seeds are known to reduce serum glucose and improve glucose tolerance and hence are prescribed to diabetic patients. In the recent past supplemental Chromium is being prescribed to diabetic patients to activate (increased- insulin binding, insulin receptor number, insulin receptor phosphorylation) insulin. Plants can uptake substantial quantities of toxic metals from contaminated soils if these soils are well ameliorated. 

It is then probable that the medicinal efficacy of Fenugreek in the case of diabetes could be enhanced if it takes up chromium from the soil. Preliminary studies are being conducted to note the chromium uptake by Fenugreek from soils which are applied with potassium dichromate

Out-of-plane dielectric constant and insulator-superconductor transition in Bi_2Sr_2Dy_{1-x}Er_xCu_2O_8 single crystals

The out-of-plane dielectric constant of the parent insulator of the high-temperature superconductor Bi_2Sr_2(Dy,Er)Cu_2O_8 was measured and analysed from 80 to 300 K in the frequency range of 10^6-10^9 Hz. All the samples were found to show a fairly large value of 10-60, implying some kind of charge inhomogeneity in the CuO_2 plane. Considering that the superconducting sample Bi_2Sr_2(Ca,Pr)Cu_2O_8 also shows a similar dielectric constant, the charge inhomogeneity plays an important role in the insulator-superconductor transition.Comment: RevTex4 format, 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to J. Phys. Condens. Ma

Scalable parallel communications

Coarse-grain parallelism in networking (that is, the use of multiple protocol processors running replicated software sending over several physical channels) can be used to provide gigabit communications for a single application. Since parallel network performance is highly dependent on real issues such as hardware properties (e.g., memory speeds and cache hit rates), operating system overhead (e.g., interrupt handling), and protocol performance (e.g., effect of timeouts), we have performed detailed simulations studies of both a bus-based multiprocessor workstation node (based on the Sun Galaxy MP multiprocessor) and a distributed-memory parallel computer node (based on the Touchstone DELTA) to evaluate the behavior of coarse-grain parallelism. Our results indicate: (1) coarse-grain parallelism can deliver multiple 100 Mbps with currently available hardware platforms and existing networking protocols (such as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and parallel Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) rings); (2) scale-up is near linear in n, the number of protocol processors, and channels (for small n and up to a few hundred Mbps); and (3) since these results are based on existing hardware without specialized devices (except perhaps for some simple modifications of the FDDI boards), this is a low cost solution to providing multiple 100 Mbps on current machines. In addition, from both the performance analysis and the properties of these architectures, we conclude: (1) multiple processors providing identical services and the use of space division multiplexing for the physical channels can provide better reliability than monolithic approaches (it also provides graceful degradation and low-cost load balancing); (2) coarse-grain parallelism supports running several transport protocols in parallel to provide different types of service (for example, one TCP handles small messages for many users, other TCP's running in parallel provide high bandwidth service to a single application); and (3) coarse grain parallelism will be able to incorporate many future improvements from related work (e.g., reduced data movement, fast TCP, fine-grain parallelism) also with near linear speed-ups

Export performance of Indian fisheries in the context of globalisation

Internationally traded fisheries products are characterised by a high degree of heterogenity, reflecting the wide range of species and of processing techniques. Indian sea food industry, by and large still remains as a supplier of raw materials to the pre processors in foreign countries and 90 per cent goes in bulk packs, which is the prime reason for the drastic reduction in the unit value realisation (Rao and Prakash, 1999). India 's share in the overall trade of the world is 1.5 to 2 per cent

Quantum phase transition in a Dp-Dq system

Using the top-down approach, we study intersecting Dp-Dq brane configuration in string theory and find examples, where there can be a quantum phase transition at zero temperature induced by the violation of the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound at IR, which is done essentially by a combination of charge density and magnetic fields. In particular, there exists a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) type of transition for D3-D5 and D5-D5 systems. The study of the BKT type of transition is initiated by Jensen et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 105}, 041601 (2010) ] for a D3-D5 system with nonzero charge density and a magnetic field. Here, we show that one can have the BKT transition for a D3-D5 system even in the absence of charge density but requires multiple magnetic fields. In this case the field theory lives in 2+1 dimensions, whereas for the D5-D5 type, the transition requires the presence of both the charge density and magnetic fields and the dual field theory lives on a 3+1 dimensional spacetime. We also study the D3-D7 system but it does not show the BKT type of transition.Comment: 1+37 pages; v2 Chern-Simon term for D3-D5 case presented, typos fixed and a reference added; v3 Minor corrections, Chern-Simon term for D2-D4, D4-D6, and D5-D7 added, also an appendix and few references added; v4 Journal versio

Extractive-photometric determination of cobalt(II) in steels using 4-(2-pyridylazo)resorcinol and xylometazoline hydrochloride

Cobalt(II) forms anionic chelates with 4-(2-pyridylazo)resorcinol (PAR) at pH 7.0-8.0, which can be quantitatively extracted into chloroform as an ion-pair with xylometazolonium cation (XMH). The ion-association system has an absorption maximum at 535 nm and obeys Beers law in the range 0-1.6 mu g of Co/ml with a molar absorptivity 42000 dm(3) mol(-1) cm(-1). The Job's method of continuous variations indicated a composition of 1 : 2 : 2 for cobalt : PAR : XMH for the extracting species. Based on this extraction, a highly sensitive and selective spectrophotometric method for the determination of cobalt in various steels, after prior separation of iron, is described