Effect of Planting Methods and Forage Crop Combinations on Fodder Productivity through Moisture Conservation

Out of 140.02 million ha cultivated area of the country, 76.76 million ha (54.82 %) is rainfed having soils with poor fertility and numerous physiochemical constraints. The productivity of animals is very low because of shortage of green fodder during most of the years. The poor feed quality and dry season feed shortage are the serious limitations for livestock production in rainfed areas & farmers maintain a large herd of animals to compensate for the low productivity of the livestock, which adds to the pressure on land and fodder resources (Pathak, 2005). Western Maharashtra region suffers from very low rainfall with uncertainty and ill distribution. Occurrence of drought noticed once in three years. The water scarcity and delayed monsoon are major problems of crop production. The efforts needed to increase production through suitable agro forestry system fit to the land, climate and resources. Incorporation of trees and bushes particularly of fodder values in agricultural production system through a systematic manner will help in providing sufficient fodder to the farmers without affecting arable crop yields (Deb Roy, 1994). Cenchrus ciliaris and Dichanthium anulatum are potential fast growing range grasses and having good regeneration capacity and can withstand moisture stress for fairly long time. Desmanthus, Siratro and Stylosanthes are legume fodder species which give nutritious fodder and could be grown under rainfed situations. Grasses and legume contributed to binding and soil stabilization due to their extensive root system. The overall impact of the soil conservation measures and pastoral systems resulted in increased infiltration rate, reduced soil loss and increased water stable aggregates. Therefore high productive, more palatable, perennial and persistent legumes like Stylosanthes and Desmanthus are thought to be the best suitable to overcome protein deficiency. Keeping the above points in view, the present study was undertaken to develop appropriate fodder production technology under rainfed conditions through moisture conservation

Change in awareness levels of cervical cancer among rural women after intervention by health education: a community-based study

Background: Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide. The prevention and control of cervical cancer depends on awareness about the disease, screening procedures, and preventive measures. Objectives of this study was to assess the awareness levels on various aspects of cervical cancer among women aged 25-65 years, and to assess the impact of health education intervention among them.Methods: This community-based interventional study was conducted for a period of 15 months among 250 women aged 25-65 years by cluster sampling method in a rural population. Data on all aspects of awareness about cervical cancer, i.e., risk factors, signs and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment and prevention were collected using a pre-tested semi-structured proforma. This was followed by a post-test 2 months after health education.Results: Overall awareness for cervical cancer was found to be very poor among the study subjects in the pre-test. Awareness on risk factors, signs and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment, and prevention of cervical cancer was found to be 6%, 3.6%, 1.2%, and 1.6% respectively. A significant increase in the knowledge level was found after health education.Conclusions: As the awareness levels regarding the cervical cancer was poor among the study population, health education programme and campaigns, along with periodic screening is need of the hour to effectively prevent cervical cancer

DCS and spin polarization parameter of argon by electron impact

In present paper, differential scattering cross section (DCS) and spin polarization parameter (S) of the elastic scattering of slow electrons from argon are reported and comparison is made with different available theoretical and experimental data. The present calculation is done with R-matrix theory. We have chosen a complex type potential, a part of which is directly calculated from the target charge density and other part is taken from Baluja and Jain [1]. The present work yields a satisfactory result for differential cross section and spin polarization parameter while previously large discrepancies were found in theoretical and experimental data.&nbsp

TimeFabric: Trusted Time for Permissioned Blockchains

As the popularity of blockchains continues to rise, blockchain platforms must be enhanced to support new application needs. In this paper, we propose one such enhancement that is essential for financial applications and online marketplaces - support for time-based logic such as verifying deadlines or expiry dates and examining a time window of recent account activity. We present a lightweight solution to reach consensus on the current time without relying on external time oracles. Our solution assigns timestamps to blocks at transaction validation time and maintains a cache reflecting the effects of recent transactions. We implement a proof-of-concept prototype, called TimeFabric, in Hyperledger Fabric, a popular permissioned blockchain platform, and experimentally demonstrate high throughput and minimal overhead (approximately 3%) of maintaining trusted time. We also demonstrate a 2x performance improvement due to the cache, compared to reconstructing account histories from the ledger