Giant dipole resonance with exact treatment of thermal fluctuations

The shape fluctuations due to thermal effects in the giant dipole resonance (GDR) observables are calculated using the exact free energies evaluated at fixed spin and temperature. The results obtained are compared with Landau theory calculations done by parameterizing the free energy. The Landau theory is found to be insufficient when the shell effects are dominating.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Technical Efficiency in Agricultural Production and Its Determinants : An Exploratory Study at the District Level

Given the importance of agriculture to the well being of a large percentage of Indias population, it becomes important to study how improvements can be made in the productivity of this sector. This study attempts to estimate the technical efficiency a measure of how well inputs are being used towards producing output of about 250 Indian districts in 1990-91. It employs the stochastic frontier function methodology. The results indicate that (i) the land elasticity is the highest followed by fertilizer; (ii) the mean efficiency of raising agricultural output is 79 per cent and therefore there is a scope for increasing output by 21 per cent without additional resources; (iii) states such as Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan have the largest number of districts with below average TE and they stand to gain the most from policy interventions towards improving technical efficiency. The results further indicate that health, education, and infrastructure are powerful drivers of efficiency at the district level and the relative importance of the determinants of efficiency across districts depends greatly on environmental factors, such as agro-climatic zones, technological factors, and crop mix. The results highlight the need for developing policy strategies at a more localized level.agriculture, technical efficiency, stochastic frontier function, India

Combined spectral and spatial processing of ERTS imagery data

A procedure for extracting a set of textural features for ERTS-1 MSS data is presented. The textural features were combined with a set of spectral features and were used to develop a classification algorithm for identifying the land use categories of blocks of digital MSS data. The classification algorithm was derived from a training set of 314 blocks and tested on a set of 310 blocks. The overall accuracy of the classifier was found to be 83.5% on seven land use categories

Beyond Triangles: A Distributed Framework for Estimating 3-profiles of Large Graphs

We study the problem of approximating the $3$-profile of a large graph. $3$-profiles are generalizations of triangle counts that specify the number of times a small graph appears as an induced subgraph of a large graph. Our algorithm uses the novel concept of $3$-profile sparsifiers: sparse graphs that can be used to approximate the full $3$-profile counts for a given large graph. Further, we study the problem of estimating local and ego $3$-profiles, two graph quantities that characterize the local neighborhood of each vertex of a graph. Our algorithm is distributed and operates as a vertex program over the GraphLab PowerGraph framework. We introduce the concept of edge pivoting which allows us to collect $2$-hop information without maintaining an explicit $2$-hop neighborhood list at each vertex. This enables the computation of all the local $3$-profiles in parallel with minimal communication. We test out implementation in several experiments scaling up to $640$ cores on Amazon EC2. We find that our algorithm can estimate the $3$-profile of a graph in approximately the same time as triangle counting. For the harder problem of ego $3$-profiles, we introduce an algorithm that can estimate profiles of hundreds of thousands of vertices in parallel, in the timescale of minutes.Comment: To appear in part at KDD'1

Distributed Estimation of Graph 4-Profiles

We present a novel distributed algorithm for counting all four-node induced subgraphs in a big graph. These counts, called the $4$-profile, describe a graph's connectivity properties and have found several uses ranging from bioinformatics to spam detection. We also study the more complicated problem of estimating the local $4$-profiles centered at each vertex of the graph. The local $4$-profile embeds every vertex in an $11$-dimensional space that characterizes the local geometry of its neighborhood: vertices that connect different clusters will have different local $4$-profiles compared to those that are only part of one dense cluster. Our algorithm is a local, distributed message-passing scheme on the graph and computes all the local $4$-profiles in parallel. We rely on two novel theoretical contributions: we show that local $4$-profiles can be calculated using compressed two-hop information and also establish novel concentration results that show that graphs can be substantially sparsified and still retain good approximation quality for the global $4$-profile. We empirically evaluate our algorithm using a distributed GraphLab implementation that we scaled up to $640$ cores. We show that our algorithm can compute global and local $4$-profiles of graphs with millions of edges in a few minutes, significantly improving upon the previous state of the art.Comment: To appear in part at WWW'1

Crop classification using airborne radar and LANDSAT data

Airborne radar data acquired with a 13.3 GHz scatterometer over a test-site near Colby, Kansas were used to investigate the statistical properties of the scattering coefficient of three types of vegetation cover and of bare soil. A statistical model for radar data was developed that incorporates signal-fading and natural within-field variabilities. Estimates of the within-field and between-field coefficients of variation were obtained for each cover-type and compared with similar quantities derived from LANDSAT images of the same fields. The classification accuracy provided by LANDSAT alone, radar alone, and both sensors combined was investigated. The results indicate that the addition of radar to LANDSAT improves the classification accuracy by about 10; percentage-points when the classification is performed on a pixel basis and by about 15 points when performed on a field-average basis

Outcomes of Whipple procedure/pancreaticoduodenectomy- an eighteen-year experience at a tertiary cancer care centre in south India

Background: Early postoperative mortality rates after pancreaticoduodenectomy are in the range of 2-5%. Nonetheless, morbidity rates are still at 30-50% calling for apt strategies. The goal of this study was to examine the outcomes in terms of postoperative morbidity and 30-day mortality while additionally reviewing the demographic, clinical and pathological features of patients undergoing Whipple procedure at our government institution and comparing the outcomes with literature. Methods: Data about demographic characteristics, intraoperative findings, postoperative histopathology, postoperative course, early post-operative outcomes, complications, and causes of postoperative death in patients who underwent pancreaticoduodenectomy for periampullary and pancreatic carcinoma between September 2006-August 2023 were collected and analysed. Results: 45 patients were analysed. Mortality rate was 15.6%. Seven patients died perioperatively; three from cardiac cause (myocardial infarction), two from bile leak and sepsis, one from pulmonary embolism, and one as a result of postoperative hemorrhage. The morbidity rate was 54%. The most common early postoperative complication was delayed gastric emptying (31%) followed by postoperative pancreatic fistula (22%).  The median overall survival of 39 patients was 21±6.5 months. The 5-year survival was 17 months. Conclusions: Considering the fact that postoperative morbidity after Whipple procedure was similar to other centres, but the mortality rate being high, better knowledge about salvage techniques, improvements in perioperative care, use of interventional radiology, and running quality improvement projects to standardize postoperative recovery protocol could help in reducing the mortality and improve the outcome.

Lifestyle and Language in Thirumurugatrupadai

Tamil literature clearly reflects the lifestyle of the ancient Tamils. In the field of anthropology Tamil literature plays an important role. The richness of a country's language is judged by the richness of its literature in the regional language spoken by the people of that country. The ideas found in those literary works shapes the mind and lifestyle of both the present and future generation too. Thirumurugatrupadai which is one among the Pattuppattu (anthology) is about a person who is blessed by the lord Murugan, comforting another servant to Murugan. In this text author Nakkiranar has sung songs in six sections about the places where Murugan used to stay such as Tiruparanguntram, Tiruchendur, Palani, Swamimalai, Palamuthircholai and Kuntuthoradal. Thus, the article briefly explains about the Kurinji land people, their customs, how they worshipped lord Murugan, their clothing, accessories, the sense of solidarity with relatives, the spirit of living together, chastity, and the development of virtue. All these things strengthen the richness of the Tamil language