Institutional and Economic Dynamics of Water Users Cooperative (WUC) Societies in Cauvery Basin of Karnataka

The economic and institutional dimensions of water users cooperative (WUC) societies have been analyzed with regards to performance, membership and transaction costs in forming organization in the Cauvery basin of Karnataka. Field data have been collected from presidents and members of 30 WUC societies in Tirumakudalu Narasipura taluk of Mysore, Karnataka. Using cluster analysis, these have been grouped into (i) well performing, (ii) moderately performing, and (iii) poorly performing WUC societies. To understand institutional and economic dimensions, the selected WUC societies have been grouped based on command area, membership and conjunctive use of water. The odds ratio determined using logit model has indicated that for every one chance of not willing to pay additional water charges, there are seven chances of willingness to pay. Landholding size of farmer, conjunctive use and distance of the farm from canal have been found to significantly influence his/her willingness to pay for the assured summer irrigation. The mean willingness to pay amount for assured summer canal water has been found as ` 178 over and above the existing charge of ` 100. With all the odds being faced by these cooperatives, this study has revealed the inner strength of water user cooperative societies in canal water distribution through collective action.Water users cooperative society, Institutional economics, Water institutions, Cauvery Basin, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q13, Q15, Q25, K00,

A Generative Product-of-Filters Model of Audio

We propose the product-of-filters (PoF) model, a generative model that decomposes audio spectra as sparse linear combinations of "filters" in the log-spectral domain. PoF makes similar assumptions to those used in the classic homomorphic filtering approach to signal processing, but replaces hand-designed decompositions built of basic signal processing operations with a learned decomposition based on statistical inference. This paper formulates the PoF model and derives a mean-field method for posterior inference and a variational EM algorithm to estimate the model's free parameters. We demonstrate PoF's potential for audio processing on a bandwidth expansion task, and show that PoF can serve as an effective unsupervised feature extractor for a speaker identification task.Comment: ICLR 2014 conference-track submission. Added link to the source cod

Groundwater markets and water use efficiency: The case of Karnataka

Research highlight based on a paper titled “Groundwater markets promoting efficiency in water use in agriculture in Karnataka.”Water market, Groundwater extraction, Water use efficiency, Wells, Crop production, Irrigation water, Domestic water, Pricing, Models, Policy, India, Karnataka, Demand and Price Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Security and Poverty, Productivity Analysis,

Groundwater markets and water use efficiency: The case of Karnataka

This study, based on primary data collected from 120 groundwater users in eastern dry zone of Karnataka compares the water use efficiency among different categories of water users, viz. well owners who do not sell water, well owners who sell water either for agricultural or non-agricultural use and water buyers (both agricultural and nonagricultural). Some of the important findings are- • The cropping pattern varies between categories, with both the sellers and buyers preferring low water intensive mulberry crop, while the self user's category grew more water intensive crops. • Farmers who sold water for non-agricultural purposes earned the highest return (because of higher end-use price) and also made the most efficient use of water. Thus, making a point that end-use pricing is a key in shaping marginal productivity of water. • Compared to the self-users, farmers selling water for either agricultural or non-agricultural purposes realized higher marginal productivity. Thus,groundwater markets acted as an effective tool in enhancing efficient use of a scarce resource.This study explores efficiency and equity in groundwater markets in the hard rock areas of Karnataka. It compares the water use efficiency of farmers using groundwater for irrigating their land and also selling it for agricultural purpose (WSA, n=30), farmers using water for irrigating their land and also selling for non-agriculture purpose (WSNA, n=15), farmers who do not either sell or buy water but use it on their farms (WO, n=30), farmers who are buying groundwater for agriculture purpose (WBA, n=30), and buyers of water for non-agriculture purpose (WBNA, n=15). The Nash equilibrium framework describing the bargaining power of buyers and sellers of groundwater is used. Sidlaghatta taluk in eastern dry agroclimatic zone (EDZ) of Karnataka is chosen because it supports intensive groundwater markets. The objective of the study is to find out water use efficiencies among different groups of water users with the hypothesis that WSNA obtain higher water use efficiency than WSA, WBA, and WO.Groundwater markets, efficiency, equity, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Using Information And Communication Technologies To Improve Transparency In Transition Countries

Automating government to citizen (G2C) interactions will help in achieving transparency and combating corruption. However, in the case of post-communist transitioning countries such as Armenia, the challenges are unique. These countries are struggling with the transformation of their legacy bureaucratic and administrative processes. In addition, almost every post- Soviet country has inherited systemic corruption that is built in to the ‘modus operandi’ of both the public and private sectors. The process of automating G2C interactions using information and communication technology (ICT) needs to be analyzed as a socio-technical information processing system. Automating existing bureaucratic processes that are defective will not yield results. Improving the enforcement of rules through automation is clearly the best way to combat corruption. The introduction of e-Government plays a major role in this context as it automates several processes. To deliver public service in a more transparent and efficient way, it is necessary to categorize, assess, and modify existing administrative processes. In this paper, we propose a methodology to render transparency in governance using information and communication technology that goes beyond mere automating existing citizen-government interactions

A Phase Change Memory and DRAM Based Framework For Energy-Efficient and High-Speed In-Memory Stochastic Computing

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have proven to be highly effective in various fields related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). However, the significant computational and memory requirements of CNNs make their processing highly compute and memory-intensive. In particular, the multiply-accumulate (MAC) operation, which is a fundamental building block of CNNs, requires enormous arithmetic operations. As the input dataset size increases, the traditional processor-centric von-Neumann computing architecture becomes ill-suited for CNN-based applications. This results in exponentially higher latency and energy costs, making the processing of CNNs highly challenging. To overcome these challenges, researchers have explored the Processing-In Memory (PIM) technique, which involves placing the processing unit inside or near the memory unit. This approach reduces data migration length and utilizes the internal memory bandwidth at the memory chip level. However, developing a reliable PIM-based system with minimal hardware modifications and design complexity remains a significant challenge. The proposed solution in the report suggests utilizing different memory technologies, such as Dynamic RAM (DRAM) and phase change memory (PCM), with Stochastic arithmetic and minimal add-on logic. Stochastic computing is a technique that uses random numbers to perform arithmetic operations instead of traditional binary representation. This technique reduces hardware requirements for CNN\u27s arithmetic operations, making it possible to implement them with minimal add-on logic. The report details the workflow for performing arithmetical operations used by CNNs, including MAC, activation, and floating-point functions. The proposed solution includes designs for scalable Stochastic Number Generator (SNG), DRAM CNN accelerator, non-volatile memory (NVM) class PCRAM-based CNN accelerator, and DRAM-based stochastic to binary conversion (StoB) for in-situ deep learning. These designs utilize stochastic computing to reduce the hardware requirements for CNN\u27s arithmetic operations and enable energy and time-efficient processing of CNNs. The report also identifies future research directions for the proposed designs, including in-situ PCRAM-based SNG, ODIN (A Bit-Parallel Stochastic Arithmetic Based Accelerator for In-Situ Neural Network Processing in Phase Change RAM), ATRIA (Bit-Parallel Stochastic Arithmetic Based Accelerator for In-DRAM CNN Processing), and AGNI (In-Situ, Iso-Latency Stochastic-to-Binary Number Conversion for In-DRAM Deep Learning), and presents initial findings for these ideas. In summary, the proposed solution in the report offers a comprehensive approach to address the challenges of processing CNNs, and the proposed designs have the potential to improve the energy and time efficiency of CNNs significantly. Using Stochastic Computing and different memory technologies enables the development of reliable PIM-based systems with minimal hardware modifications and design complexity, providing a promising path for the future of CNN-based applications

Effects of duct source and termination impedance on the acoustic response characteristics of duct elements

The objective of the thesis is to study the effects of termination of an air duct on the acoustic response characteristics of the elements in the duct system. The end reflections due to the mis-match of the acoustic impedance at the termination affect the acoustic characteristics of the duct elements; The ducts of the duct system, terminating into atmosphere abruptly, like the HVAC ducts with diffusers, provide reflective termination. With this type of termination much of the sound energy in lower frequencies is reflected. This sets up standing sound waves inside the duct. The analytical methods to calculate the insertion-loss, noise reduction consider single reflection only inside the duct. Because of that, the analytical values of the insertion-loss and noise reduction do not match the experimental values well. When an anechoic termination is provided there will not be any reflections from the termination. This reduces the formation of standing sound waves on the downstream side of the acoustic element. This improves the agreement between the analytical and experimental values; The effect of termination on the acoustic characteristics of the duct elements was studied using a simple expansion chamber. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

A Directed Hypergraph Approach for the Verification of Rule-Based Expert Systems.

Rule-based representation techniques have become popular for storing and manipulation of domain knowledge in expert systems. It is important that systems using such a representation are verified for accuracy before implementation. In recent years, graphical techniques have been found to provide a good framework for the detection of errors that may appear in a rule base. In this dissertation, we develop a technique that uses a directed hypergraph to accurately detect all the different types of errors that appear in a rule base. This technique overcomes limitations of existing graphical techniques that are unable to accurately detect all the errors that appear in a rule base, without misdiagnosing error-free instances. The directed hypergraph technique allows rules to be represented in a manner that clearly identifies complex dependencies across compound clauses in the rule base. Since connectivity across compound clauses are accurately represented, the verification procedure can detect errors in an accurate fashion. We have developed a verification procedure that uses the adjacency matrix of the directed hypergraph. The procedure detects different types of errors by using simple operations on the adjacency matrix. In practice, expert systems are often used to make inferences based on multiple observed facts. Most existing techniques have ignored this aspect, since the selection of valid combinations of rule antecedents from a large number of rule antecedents to be considered is difficult. To address this issue, the directed hypergraph technique has been extended to perform verification checks when sets of feasible multiple assertions are made available to the system. As the size of the rule base increases, execution of the algorithm can be hard due to storage and computational considerations. It has been empirically found that sets of rules in large rule bases are sufficiently separated to allow decomposition into smaller sets. The directed hypergraph technique has been enhanced to accurately detect all errors in large rule bases by performing verification checks over the smaller groups of rules separately, and propagating the results from one group to other linked groups

Economic Analysis of Transaction Cost on Kolaramma Tank Watershed in Eastern Dry Zone of Karnataka

The transaction cost incurred on the Kolaramma tank watershed in the Kolar district of Karnataka, with a geographical area of 6,570 hectares and covering 26 catchments has been found to be Rs 78,89,210. The decomposition of this transaction cost into information, contractual and enforcement costs has revealed that enforcement cost amounted to a vast share of 82.0 per cent, followed by contractual cost (13.6%) and information cost (4.4%) in the total transaction cost. Considering the overall transaction cost, the investment on information and contractual cost has been quite less. These need to be increased by economizing on the administrative expenses of the implementing agency. Any additional investment on information and contractual cost would greatly benefit the actual beneficiaries in the watershed.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,