Factors Responsible for Paddy Growers’ Diversification

In Tamil Nadu, a constituent state of India, the cultivable area under paddy had reduced over the period of time due to various factors. This study aims to enumerate the factors responsible for paddy growers’ diversification in the study area. Altogether 60 respondents were asked for the factors responsible for diversification. The major push factor responsible for diversification was inadequate labour availability & irrigation and availability of farm inputs was the major pull factor

Mass Justice: The Limited and Unlimited Power of Courts

The role of courts in mass tort litigation is examined. The courts\u27 interests in such cases, the power that courts have to aggregate claims, limits on that power and the flexibility that courts have to get around limits are discussed. Ways that courts\u27 interests in resolving mass tort litigation interfere with judicial promulgation and consistent application of legal rules are also discussed

Narrative, Sensemaking, and Improvisation in Participatory Hypermedia Construction

In this paper we describe research into a form of practitioner sensemaking in the context of participatory hypermedia construction sessions, in which groups of people build knowledge maps. We discuss how constructs from narrative theory and improvisation have helped us understand what happens at the moments when practitioners encounter dilemmas and obstacles. We provide brief examples from case studies and discuss possible contributions to broader themes in sensemaking research

Coherence, engagement, and usefulness as sensemaking criteria in participatory media practice

When skilled practitioners create media artifacts such as web pages, newspaper articles, videos, or business presentations, they are engaging in a pursuit which has consequences for the people who will interact with those artifacts. The juncture of practice, artifact, and consequences involves diverse normative considerations. We have summarized these into three criteria: coherence, engagement, and usefulness. In this paper we report on initial progress to develop a method for assessing these criteria in a particular form of skilled real-time media practice

Can one identify non-equilibrium in a three-state system by analyzing two-state trajectories?

For a three-state Markov system in a stationary state, we discuss whether, on the basis of data obtained from effective two-state (or on-off) trajectories, it is possible to discriminate between an equilibrium state and a non-equilibrium steady state. By calculating the full phase diagram we identify a large region where such data will be consistent only with non-equilibrium conditions. This regime is considerably larger than the region with oscillatory relaxation, which has previously been identified as a sufficient criterion for non-equilibrium.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, J. Chem. Phys. (2010) (in press

Diffusion-based method for producing density equalizing maps

Map makers have long searched for a way to construct cartograms -- maps in which the sizes of geographic regions such as countries or provinces appear in proportion to their population or some other analogous property. Such maps are invaluable for the representation of census results, election returns, disease incidence, and many other kinds of human data. Unfortunately, in order to scale regions and still have them fit together, one is normally forced to distort the regions' shapes, potentially resulting in maps that are difficult to read. Many methods for making cartograms have been proposed, some of them extremely complex, but all suffer either from this lack of readability or from other pathologies, like overlapping regions or strong dependence on the choice of coordinate axes. Here we present a new technique based on ideas borrowed from elementary physics that suffers none of these drawbacks. Our method is conceptually simple and produces useful, elegant, and easily readable maps. We illustrate the method with applications to the results of the 2000 US presidential election, lung cancer cases in the State of New York, and the geographical distribution of stories appearing in the news.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

As Interactive Cable Enters, Does Privacy Go out the Window

Interactive cable will provide consumers with the ability to bank, shop, attend classes, respond to polls, view programs and attend to other daily activities from the home through a television set linked to a computer. Storage of this personal information poses a privacy concern relating to the government\u27s ability to search the records as part of criminal investigations. The author analogizes current law in forecasting possible judicial treatment of Fourth Amendment protection and suggests possible methods for establishing a clear standard which would maximize subscriber protection