Well-point techniques and the shallow water table in boulder clay

The reliability of water-table measurements in clay soil is currently under review (Twocock, 1971; Bonell, 1971; Visvalingam, 1972). This paper summarizes some of the experimental results from a boulder clay catchment in East Yorkshire. The experiments investigated the functioning characteristics of cased auger holes and piezometers in clay soil and compared the results with observations made with a neutron moisture probe. It appears that well-point technique, especially piezometers, are extremely unreliable in clay soil. The measured water level is demonstrated to be influenced by not only the position of the ‘water table’ but also the permeability of the soil; in which context the type, diameter, and length of tubing, as well as the time of installation, become important considerations

Cartographic Algorithms: Problems of Implementation and Evaluation and the Impact of Digitising Errors

Cartographic generalisation remains one of the outstanding challenges in digital cartography and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). It is generally assumed that computerisation will lead to the removal of spurious variability introduced by the subjective decisions of individual cartographers. This paper demonstrates through an in‐depth study of a line simplification algorithm that computerisation introduces its own sources of variability. The algorithm, referred to as the Douglas‐Peucker algorithm in cartographic literature, has been widely used in image processing, pattern recognition and GIS for some 20 years. An analysis of this algorithm and study of some implementations in wide use identify the presence of variability resulting from the subjective decisions of software implementors. Spurious variability in software complicates the processes of evaluation and comparison of alternative algorithms for cartographic tasks. No doubt, variability in implementation could be removed by rigorous study and specification of algorithms. Such future work must address the presence of digitising error in cartographic data. Our analysis suggests that it would be difficult to adapt the Douglas‐Peucker algorithm to cope with digitising error without altering the method. Copyright © 1991, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserve

Line generalisation by repeated elimination of points

This paper presents a new approach to line generalisation which uses the concept of ‘effective area’ for progressive simplification of a line by point elimination. Two coastlines are used to compare the performance of this, with that of the widely used Douglas-Peucker, algorithm. The results from the area-based algorithm compare favourably with manual generalisation of the same lines. It is capable of achieving both imperceptible minimal simplifications and caricatural generalisations. By careful selection of cutoff values, it is possible to use the same algorithm for scale-dependent and scale-independent generalisations. More importantly, it offers scope for modelling cartographic lines as consisting of features within features so that their geometric manipulation may be modified by application- and/or user-defined rules and weights. The paper examines the merits and limitations of the algorithm and the opportunities it offers for further research and progress in the field of line generalisation. © 1993 Maney Publishing

Precision farming technology, adoption decisions and productivity of vegetables in resource-poor environments

‘Precision Farming’ or ‘Precision Agriculture’ aims at increasing productivity, decreasing production costs and minimizing the environmental impact of farming. In this context, the present study has been undertaken to understand the impact of precision farming on resource-poor regions and underprivileged farmers. Specifically, the study has looked into productivity, income, employment, and adoption behaviour of technology in agriculture. The study, conducted in the Dharmapuri district, has collected data on precision and non-precision farmings through the interview schedule during the year 2007. Sources of the productivity difference between the precision and conventional farmings have been identified by decomposing the productivity change. Financial impact of adoption has been studied through a two-stage econometric model. The first stage of the model consists of an adoption decision model that describes the factors which influence the likelihood of adopting precision farming. Results of first stage have provided input for the second stage of the model, which has been used to estimate the impact of precision farming on farm financial performance. The study has revealed that adoption of precision farming has led to 80 per cent increase in yield in tomato and 34 per cent in brinjal production. Increase in gross margin has been found as 165 and 67 per cent, respectively in tomato and brinjal farming. The contribution of technology for higher yield in precision farming has been 33.71 per cent and 20.48 per cent, respectively in tomato and brinjal production. The elasticity of 0.39 for the adoption in tomato and 0.28 in brinjal has indicated that as the probability of adoption increases by 10 per cent, net return increases by 39 per cent and 28 per cent in tomato and brinjal cultivation. Lack of finance and credit facilities have been identified as the major constrains in nonadoption of precision farming. The study has suggested that providing of subsidies for water-soluble fertilizers and pump-sets will increase adoption of precision farming.Crop Production/Industries,

In silico analysis for the presence of HARDY an Arabidopsis drought tolerance DNA binding transcription factor product in chromosome 6 of Sorghum bicolor genome

Expression of the Arabidopsis HARDY (hrd) DNA binding transcription factor (555 bp present on chromosome 2) has been shown to increase WUE in rice by Karaba et al 2007 (PNAS, 104:15270–15275). We conducted a detail analysis of the complete sorghum genome for the similarity/presence of either DNA, mRNA or protein product of the Arabidopsis HARDY (hrd) DNA binding transcription factor (555 bp present on chromosome 2). Chromosome 6 showed a sequence match of 61.5 percent positive between 61 and 255 mRNA residues of the query region. Further confirmation was obtained by TBLASTN which showed that chromosome 6 of the sorghum genome has a region between 54948120 and 54948668 which has 80 amino acid similarities out of the 185 residues. A homology model was constructed and verified using Anolea, Gromos and Verify3D. Scanning the motif for possible activation sites revealed that there was a protein kinase C phosphorylation site between 15th and 20th residue. The study indicates the possibility of the presence of a DNA binding transcription factor in chromosome 6 of Sorghum bicolor with 60 percent similarity to that of Arabidopsis hrd DNA binding transcription factor

Blending of Images Using Discrete Wavelet Transform

The project presents multi focus image fusion using discrete wavelet transform with local directional pattern and spatial frequency analysis. Multi focus image fusion in wireless visual sensor networks is a process of blending two or more images to get a new one which has a more accurate description of the scene than the individual source images. In this project, the proposed model utilizes the multi scale decomposition done by discrete wavelet transform for fusing the images in its frequency domain. It decomposes an image into two different components like structural and textural information. It doesn’t down sample the image while transforming into frequency domain. So it preserves the edge texture details while reconstructing image from its frequency domain. It is used to reduce the problems like blocking, ringing artifacts occurs because of DCT and DWT. The low frequency sub-band coefficients are fused by selecting coefficient having maximum spatial frequency. It indicates the overall active level of an image. The high frequency sub-band coefficients are fused by selecting coefficients having maximum LDP code value LDP computes the edge response values in all eight directions at each pixel position and generates a code from the relative strength magnitude. Finally, fused two different frequency sub-bands are inverse transformed to reconstruct fused image. The system performance will be evaluated by using the parameters such as Peak signal to noise ratio, correlation and entrop