Traditional ecological knowledge for natural resource management and sustainable development in Indian context

During the last few decades, the increasing demands of growing human population in developing countries have resulted in extensive degradation of natural ecosystems. This has contributed to significant reduction in ecosystem goods and services, posing a grave challenge on ecosystem and human wellbeing. The Natural ecosystems are dynamic and complex and their management requires understanding of social and ecological interactions. Whilst there is a better appreciation on application and use of formal knowledge in natural ecosystem management still there is a need to have better understanding on traditional knowledge which is available with local communities. Integrating two knowledge systems, traditional and formal, is important for sustainable natural resource management. In this paper an effort is made to discuss the role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in conservation of biodiversity and natural resource management in India with special reference to sacred groves and management of Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP)for sustainable livelihood. Key words: Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Non Timber Forest Products, Sacred Grove

Learning Representations for Face Recognition: A Review from Holistic to Deep Learning

For decades, researchers have investigated how to recognize facial images. This study reviews the development of different face recognition (FR) methods, namely, holistic learning, handcrafted local feature learning, shallow learning, and deep learning (DL). With the development of methods, the accuracy of recognizing faces in the labeled faces in the wild (LFW) database has been increased. The accuracy of holistic learning is 60%, that of handcrafted local feature learning increases to 70%, and that of shallow learning is 86%. Finally, DL achieves human-level performance (97% accuracy). This enhanced accuracy is caused by large datasets and graphics processing units (GPUs) with massively parallel processing capabilities. Furthermore, FR challenges and current research studies are discussed to understand future research directions. The results of this study show that presently the database of labeled faces in the wild has reached 99.85% accuracy

Comparative study of energy flow through village ecosystems of two co-existing communities (the Khasis and the Nepalis) of Meghalaya in North-East India

This study deals with the village ecosystem function of typical Khasi and Nepali villages at Nayabunglow, at an elevation of 960 m, in Meghalaya north-east India. The Khasis chiefly practise jhum in a 5-year cycle, though some valley cultivation of rice and cultivation of pineapple on hill slopes also takes place. Pineapple plantations were most profitable and energy efficient. The Nepalis have kitchen gardens and valley cultivation of rice and fodder grass (Pennisetum purpurea) for cattle. Kitchen garden were the most efficient of the three. Swine husbandry and poultry-keeping are two main components of the animal husbandry subsystem of the Khasis. The Nepalis are basically cattle farmers. From an energy point of view, the Nepalis' cattle husbandry was the most efficient, followed by the swine husbandry of the Khasis. From an economic point of view, swine husbandry had the highest economic efficiency, followed by cattle husbandry for milk production. Both communities consumed half or more of the production from the land as food with a small fraction being kept aside as seed. About half the production from the valley cultivation was given to the landowner as rent. They meet their energy and protein needs from their production systems. The Khasis export a large fraction of their agricultural produce and both communities sell the produce from animal husbandry in the market only to buy again that which they need. The Khasis also export labour for cash income from outside. The significance of these observations is discussed