Is Futures Market Mitigating Price Risk: An Exploration of Wheat and Maize Market

Instability of commodity prices has always been a major concern of the producers as well as the consumers in an agriculture-dominated country like India. Farmers in a bid to avert the price risk often tend to go for distress sale and thereby reduce the potential returns. In order to cope up with this problem, futures trading has emerged as a viable option for providing a greater degree of assurance on the price front. Thus, futures markets serve as a risk -shifting function. In the present study, an attempt has been made to look into the mechanism of movement of spot and futures prices for two important food crops in Indian agriculture. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test has been used for both the crops to check the stationarity of the time series data. Most of the series have been observed to follow the stationary pattern at the first difference. The cointegration test has been attempted to find out whether there exists a longrun relationship between spot and futures prices of various contract months for maize and wheat crops. However, there exists a short run disequilibrium between these two. It has been observed that the futures contract behave in an expected manner and there exists a mechanism for long-run equilibrium in the maize as well as wheat crops. This phenomenon of price convergence for both maize and wheat crops clearly states that the farmers are mitigating price risk as spot prices and future prices converges.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Block Outlier Methods for Malicious User Detection in Cooperative Spectrum Sensing

Block outlier detection methods, based on Tietjen-Moore (TM) and Shapiro-Wilk (SW) tests, are proposed to detect and suppress spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attacks by malicious users in cooperative spectrum sensing. First, we consider basic and statistical SSDF attacks, where the malicious users attack independently. Then we propose a new SSDF attack, which involves cooperation among malicious users by masking. In practice, the number of malicious users is unknown. Thus, it is necessary to estimate the number of malicious users, which is found using clustering and largest gap method. However, we show using Monte Carlo simulations that, these methods fail to estimate the exact number of malicious users when they cooperate. To overcome this, we propose a modified largest gap method.Comment: Accepted in Proceedings of 79th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference-Spring (VTC-Spring), May 2014, Seoul, South Kore

Risk in Output Growth of Oilseeds in the Rajasthan State: A Policy Perspective

Today, India is one of the largest producers of oilseeds in the world and this sector occupies an important position in the agricultural economy. Rajasthan state occupies a prominent place in the oilseeds production of India. The important oilseed crops of the Rajasthan state are groundnut, soyabean, rapeseed & mustard, sesamum and taramira. The growth pattern of these crops in the state has been prone to risk over time and across the agro-climatic regions because of the rainfall behaviour, prolonged drought-periods, limited water-resources and facilities available in the state Under such a situation, growth performances of these crops are subjected to high degree of risks in the sector. Therefore, it is important to describe the growth pattern of area, production and productivity, factors affecting acreage allocation under crops and magnitude of instability as well as its sources in major oilseeds crops of Rajasthan state. The fluctuating yield has been seen for almost all the oilseeds crops. However, the area and yield instability of the mustard crop has been found declining overtime plausibly because of increase in irrigation facilities, location-specific technologies and better input management. However, this needs to be further strengthened for improvement in the overall agricultural scenario. The acreage of the crops has been found to be governed by both price and non-price factors. Hence, price incentive alone has not been found to be the sufficient in bringing the desirable change in the cropping pattern as well production of crops. Hence, a policy for better implementation of support price system, development of consistently performing varieties and further enhancement of irrigation facilities will go a long way to ensure stability in the Rajasthan agriculture. To compel the large yield variability, it is advisable to the farmers to avail benefits of crop insurance scheme.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Demographic Analysis of Factors Influencing Purchase of Life Insurance Products in India

Understanding the consumer’s perception and attitude towards insurance and creating an insurance culture is essential in facilitating the success of insurance services. A better understanding of consumer’s behavior through demographic analysis can play an important role in predicting demand for insurance. However, emerging new complex financial products and changes in the preferences of people for preventing their risks make it difficult. The study aims to find out the relationship of demographic characteristics of the respondents with five important factors influencing the purchase of a life insurance product namely product quality and brand image, service quality, customer friendliness, brand loyalty and commitment. Product Quality and Brand Image came out as the highest ranking factors while Brand Loyalty has been rated as the least important factor. It has been further observed that these factors vary significantly across various demographic characteristics of the respondents. Key Words: Factors, Influencing, Customer Preferences, Demographics, Insuranc

Comparative study of intrathecal fentanyl, tramadol, clonidine mixed with bupivacaine for peri and post operative pain relief in lower limb and lower abdominal surgery

Background: Pain relief is of paramount importance in patients undergoing surgery during perioperative and post-operative period. After effective pain relief a smoother post-operative period and early discharge from the hospital is anticipated. Intrathecal and epidural narcotics have been widely used to relieve pain and provide post-operative analgesia. Here three drugs tramadol, fentanyl, and clonidine used as adjuvant with bupivacaine in intrathecal injection for post-operative pain relief and comparative study had been done.Methods: After the study protocol was approved by the Ethical clearance committee of the DMCH, Laheriasarai, Bihar. Study design was prospective, randomized and double-blind techniques. A group of 80 patients undergoing lower abdominal and lower limb surgery were included in the study. Every patient was fully explained about the anaesthesia and surgical procedure before inclusion in the study. The patients were in the (25-65) years age group and belonged to the American Society of Anaesthesiologist (ASA) physical status class I-II and scheduled for lower abdominal and lower limbs surgery were randomly allocated to four groups with equal number: group B [Bupivacaine (35)% 3 cc + 0.4 cc normal saline], group BT [Bupivacaine (5)% 3 cc + 25 mg tramadol], BC [Bupivacaine (0.5)% 3 c.c + 30 μg clonidine], BF [Bupivacaine (0.5)% 3 c.c + 20 μg fentanyl]. All additive drugs used intrathecally were preservative free. All intrathecal punctures were performed in the lateral (Right or Left) position with a (25G) Quinke needle, using the midline approach at the L3-L4 intervertebral space.Results: The study revealed that administration of additives in group BC and group BF did prolong analgesia. In group B, duration of analgesia and mean duration of rescue analgesic requirement was (3.57±0.45) hrs. For group BC it was (9.47±0.85) hrs, for group BF (7.6±1.14) hrs, for group BT (3.72±0.42) hrs.Conclusions:Addition of adjuvants (Fentanyl, Clonidine) to intrathecal bupivacaine for perioperative pain relief does prolong postoperative analgesia and improves the intraoperative quality of analgesia than bupivacaine alone.Background: Pain relief is of paramount importance in patients undergoing surgery during perioperative and post-operative period. After effective pain relief a smoother post-operative period and early discharge from the hospital is anticipated. Intrathecal and epidural narcotics have been widely used to relieve pain and provide post-operative analgesia. Here three drugs tramadol, fentanyl, and clonidine used as adjuvant with bupivacaine in intrathecal injection for post-operative pain relief and comparative study had been done.Methods: After the study protocol was approved by the Ethical clearance committee of the DMCH, Laheriasarai, Bihar. Study design was prospective, randomized and double-blind techniques. A group of 80 patients undergoing lower abdominal and lower limb surgery were included in the study. Every patient was fully explained about the anaesthesia and surgical procedure before inclusion in the study. The patients were in the (25-65) years age group and belonged to the American Society of Anaesthesiologist (ASA) physical status class I-II and scheduled for lower abdominal and lower limbs surgery were randomly allocated to four groups with equal number: group B [Bupivacaine (35)% 3 cc + 0.4 cc normal saline], group BT [Bupivacaine (5)% 3 cc + 25 mg tramadol], BC [Bupivacaine (0.5)% 3 c.c + 30 μg clonidine], BF [Bupivacaine (0.5)% 3 c.c + 20 μg fentanyl]. All additive drugs used intrathecally were preservative free. All intrathecal punctures were performed in the lateral (Right or Left) position with a (25G) Quinke needle, using the midline approach at the L3-L4 intervertebral space.Results: The study revealed that administration of additives in group BC and group BF did prolong analgesia. In group B, duration of analgesia and mean duration of rescue analgesic requirement was (3.57±0.45) hrs. For group BC it was (9.47±0.85) hrs, for group BF (7.6±1.14) hrs, for group BT (3.72±0.42) hrs.Conclusions: Addition of adjuvants (Fentanyl, Clonidine) to intrathecal bupivacaine for perioperative pain relief does prolong postoperative analgesia and improves the intraoperative quality of analgesia than bupivacaine alone

Miniaturized Ring Resonator Wideband Bandpass Filter with Wide Stop Band

In this paper miniaturized quarter wavelength rectangular shaped multimode ring resonator bandpass filter with extended diagonal corners and internally located high impedance perturbation stubs, is proposed. Input/output open stubs are tightly coupled to the extended diagonal corners running parallel to the two sides of the ring resonator, implemented to generate wide passband and wide stop-band. Cut-off frequencies can be shifted to the higher side by increasing the length of the sides of resonator. By inserting the perturbation stubs, rectangular ring resonator produces three degenerate modes out of which first two form a wide passband. Small square patch is attached to the opposite interior corners of the ring resonator and T-shaped stub attached to the opposite longer side of the resonator are tightly coupled with feeder line to improve the return loss, insertion loss and skirt-characteristics. Shorter sides of the rectangular ring resonator are bent in U-shaped to increase the effective length of the resonator eventually the bandwidth is widened. Filter is designed and simulated for the center frequency of            3.2 GHz, bandwidth from 2.0 GHz to 4.0 GHz, on dielectric constant 3.38 and thickness 0.508 mm. Electromagnetic simulator Ansoft HFSS is used to optimize the filter dimensions

Eosin Y Catalyzed Visible-light-promoted One –Pot Facile Synthesis of 1,3,4- Thiadiazole

A novel one-pot visible light irradiated synthesis of 1,3,4-thiadiazole from aldehydes and thioacyl hydrazides have been reported in presence of eosin Y as an organophotoredox catalyst at room temperature under aerobic condition. This synthesis includes application of air and visible light as inexpensive, readily available, non-toxic and sustainable regents, which fulfils the basic principle of green chemistry

Facile Aerobic Photo-Oxidative Synthesis of Sulfinic Esters

A mild and efficient one-pot visible light-induced method has been developed for the synthesis of sulfinic esters. Sulfinic esters are important structural elements that are frequently found in pharmaceutical agents and biologically active natural products. The routine procedure in the drug discovery and development process to prepare and fully characterize sulfinic esters make them a drug candidate for biological evaluation. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License