Management of Dryland Sustainable Agriculture

The study was conducted in the Bhiwani district of Haryana state, which was selected purposively on the basis of maximum area under dryland agriculture. From the four blocks in the Bhiwani district 200 farmers (50 farmers from each block) were selected randomly. The concept of sustainable agriculture involves the evolution of a new type of agriculture rich in technology and information, with much less than intensive energy use and market purchased inputs. Thus, sustainability is the successful management of resources to satisfy the challenging human needs, while maintaining or enhancing the quality of environment and conserving natural resources. Keeping in view the ever-increasing population, development of dry land agriculture, the depletion of natural resources, environmental pollution and limitations of sustainable agriculture a study was conducted to find out the perception of dryland farmers about economic and social aspects of sustainable dryland agriculture in Haryana (India). The study revealed that majority of the farmers perceived minimum tillage, crop diversification, soil fertilization application, integrated nutrient management, weed control, integrated pest management, maintaining plant population, drought resistant varieties, moisture and water conservation practices, agro-forestry and subsidiary occupation like livestock, poultry, horticulture, vegetable etc., as economically feasible, viable, as well as socially acceptable and sustainable for sustainable dryland agriculture.Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

Economic Efficiency of Input Use in Peach Cultivation in North Western Himalayas

Peach is the most important stone fruit in temperate and sub-tropical areas. Among the stone fruits, peach crop accounts for 49.54 per cent in area and 60.82 per cent production in Himachal Pradesh. A sample of 60 farmers cultivating peach was selected using multistage simple random sampling. Results of the study revealed that literacy rate in the study area were worked out to 82.57 per cent with literacy index of 2.23 indicating low quality of education. Average operational area was found 1.26 ha, out of which orchard area was 0.83 ha and peach plantation accounts for 52.38 per cent. The cultivation of peach component was also seem to be quite important; with its contribution to total household income was 45.54 per cent. It has been observed that fertilizer, FYM and Labour were significantly affecting the production but plant protection chemical was not found significant. It has been observed that Fertilizer, FYM, Plant Protection Chemicals and Labour were found to be significantly under-utilized resources and increase the use of these inputs will increase production. The findings of the study strongly recommend the optimum use of the resources in order to attain desired growth in peach cultivation and ultimately the productivity

On the Stability of Superposed Viscous-Viscoelastic Fluids Through Porous Medium

Rayleigh-Taylor instability of a Newtonian viscous fluid overlying Walters’s B viscoelastic fluid through porous medium is considered. For the stable configuration the system is found to be stable or unstable. However, the system is found to be unstable for the unstable configuration. The effects of a uniform horizontal magnetic field and a uniform rotation are also considered. For the stable configuration, in the hydro magnetic case also, the system is found to be stable or unstable. However, for the unstable configuration, the magnetic field and viscoelasticity have got stabilizing effects. The system is found to be unstable for the potentially unstable case, for highly viscous fluids, in the presence of a uniform rotation

SMDDH: Singleton Mention detection using Deep Learning in Hindi Text

Mention detection is an important component of coreference resolution system, where mentions such as name, nominal, and pronominals are identified. These mentions can be purely coreferential mentions or singleton mentions (non-coreferential mentions). Coreferential mentions are those mentions in a text that refer to the same entities in a real world. Whereas, singleton mentions are mentioned only once in the text and do not participate in the coreference as they are not mentioned again in the following text. Filtering of these singleton mentions can substantially improve the performance of a coreference resolution process. This paper proposes a singleton mention detection module based on a fully connected network and a Convolutional neural network for Hindi text. This model utilizes a few hand-crafted features and context information, and word embedding for words. The coreference annotated Hindi dataset comprising of 3.6K sentences, and 78K tokens are used for the task. In terms of Precision, Recall, and F-measure, the experimental findings obtained are excellent

A study on Morphological and Mechanical Characterization of Al-4032/SiC/GP Hybrid Composites

The pattern of metal matrix composites can be enhanced by integrating the concept of hybrid metal matrix composite to produce newer engineering materials with improved properties. The morphological and mechanical characteristics of Al-4032/SiC/GP hybrid composites have been investigated. The aluminium alloy (Al-4032) based hybrid composites have been fabricated through the bottom pouring stir casting set up, by reinforcing the silicon carbide (SiC) and granite powder ceramic particles as the reinforcement material at various fraction levels i.e. 0, 3, 6, 9 weight% in equal proportion. The reinforcement particle size is up to 54μm. The microstructural characterization of the hybrid composite samples has been carried out using an optical microscope, SEM, and XRD. The study reveals that the reinforcement hybrid particles (SiC + GP) are almost uniformly distributed throughout the matrix phase. The mechanical properties (tensile strength, impact strength, and microhardness) of the hybrid composite samples have been obtained and found to be better than the unreinforced alloy.

Mining bee Andrena (Agandrena) agilissima (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae): A new record from India with morphological and molecular notes

The mining bee Andrena agilissima (Scopoli, 1770), is recorded for the first time in India from the western agro-climatic zone of its Punjab state. This is the first account of morphological and molecular characteristics of A. agilissima. This new record now increases the number of mining bees known in India to 21. Taxonomic commentsand metric values of 40 morphological characters have been presented. The mean values for body length, head width, compound eye length, median ocellus diameter, forewing length and hamuli number were 14.04±0.04 mm, 4.26±0.003 mm, 2.327±0.008 mm, 0.255±0.005 mm, 12.75±0.022 mm and 17.00±0.00, respectively. Using thestandard barcoding protocols, cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 marker (standard DNA barcode region) based 658 bp DNA barcode sequence of the species has been established, as a first step towards the DNA barcode library of solitary bees of Punjab. The barcode sequence generated for the species has been registered by Gen- Bank, National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) under accession ‘KT960836’ and Barcode of Life Data (BOLD) Systems under Barcode Index Number ‘BOLD:AAY6909’. The floral sources for A. agilissima in Punjab are also provided. The results can be used to further study the races/ecotypes in different parts of country, habitat management studies, plant-pollinator interactions and in conservation programmes for the species. Further, the precise identification of A. agilissima and the inventory of its foraging plants would provide new opportunities for its potential use as pollinator of crops

Comparative evaluation of Doolittle, Cupkit and Karl Jenter techniques for rearing Apis mellifera Linnaeus queen bees during breeding season

Comparative evaluation of Doolittle, Karl Jenter and Cupkit techniques of Apis mellifera Linnaeus queen bee rearing was done during spring (mid February- mid April 2013) breeding season. The highest acceptance of cell cups (66.00 %), queen cells raising (64.00 %), their sealing (60.67 %) and emergence of gynes (54.67 %) was recorded in Cupkit apparatus. Maximum weight of newly emerged gyne was recorded in Doolittle method in plastic cell cups (212.36 mg), while the mean weight was 184.96 mg in case of Cupkit apparatus. Overall, Cupkit proved to be the best option for queen bee rearing because of its better performance in terms of acceptance of larvae (66.00 %) and the number of successfully produced gynes i.e. 16 queens/colony/cycle of 12 days

Esthetic Management of Midline Diastema by Combined Surgical and Prosthetic Approach

Maxillary midline diastemas are a common esthetic problem that dentists must treat. Many innovative therapies have been used, varying from restorative procedures to surgery (frenectomies) and orthodontics. The need for treatment is mainly attributed to esthetic and psychological reasons, rather than functional ones. Present case report is about 34 year old female patient whose midline diastema was managed by surgical and prosthetic approach