Behaviour of Market Arrivals and Prices of Selected Vegetable Crops: A Study of Four Metropolitan Markets

This study has been undertaken with the twin objectives of examining the variability pattern of market arrivals and prices of selected vegetable crops (cabbage, cauliflower, tomato and peas) in metropolitan markets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata and analysing the relationship between market arrivals and prices. The study is based on market arrivals and wholesale prices of different vegetable crops collected from the Azadpur market of Delhi and Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), New Delhi, for the period 1990-2001. The study has shown that the extent of variability in the arrivals of cabbage was lower in Bangalore and higher in Mumbai. The prices were relatively stable in Mumbai but were more volatile in Bangalore. There was broadly a similar pattern in the price variability across different months in Kolkata and Delhi markets. For cauliflower, the variability in the market arrivals was more pronounced in Kolkata than the remaining three markets. The price variability was, however, more marked in Delhi. The extent of variability in the market arrivals of tomato across different months was very high in all the four markets. Likewise, while the maximum variability in the prices of peas was noted for Delhi, these were relatively less marked in Bangalore. The results of the study have confirmed the negative relationship between market arrivals and prices in terms of correlation coefficients over the years and across months in all the four metropolitan markets, though there were several instances of positive relationship.Agricultural and Food Policy,

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF IMAGE RETRIEVAL TECHNIQUES IN CYBERSPACE

Purpose: With the popularity and remarkable usage of digital images in various domains, the existing image retrieval techniques need to be enhanced. The content-based image retrieval is playing a vital role to retrieve the requested data from the database available in cyberspace. CBIR from cyberspace is a popular and interesting research area nowadays for a better outcome. The searching and downloading of the requested images accurately based on meta-data from the cyberspace by using CBIR techniques is a challenging task. The purpose of this study is to explore the various image retrieval techniques for retrieving the data available in cyberspace.  Methodology: Whenever a user wishes to retrieve an image from the web, using present search engines, a bunch of images is retrieved based on a user query. But, most of the resultant images are unrelated to the user query. Here, the user puts their text-based query in the web-based search engine and compute the related images and retrieval time. Main Findings:  This study compares the accuracy and retrieval-time of the requested image. After the detailed analysis, the main finding is none of the used web-search engines viz. Flickr, Pixabay, Shutterstock, Bing, Everypixel, retrieved the accurate related images based on the entered query.   Implications: This study is discussing and performs a comparative analysis of various content-based image retrieval techniques from cyberspace. Novelty of Study: Research community has been making efforts towards efficient retrieval of useful images from the web but this problem has not been solved and it still prevails as an open research challenge. This study makes some efforts to resolve this research challenge and perform a comparative analysis of the outcome of various web-search engines

Project success and critical success factors of construction projects: project practitioners’ perspectives

Project management is primarily practitioneroriented and loaded with many critical success factors (CSFs), and although these are well-evidenced in theory, they do not deliver as efficiently as factors of interest to project professionals during execution. The present study explores the perceptions of senior project managers (PMs) about project success, CSFs and complexity in large construction projects. Data from project practitioners were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using content analysis. The participants were selected with convenience sampling method given the complex understanding of the domain and included highly experienced PMs from the global community with expertise in project management. PMs perceive a small number of CSFs in contrast to the large exhaustive CSFs listed in the questionnaire surveys. Though important, traditional constraints of the Iron Triangle are considered inadequate in defining project success. Project professionals are seen as relying more on other performance indicators for defining a project as a success. They perceive complex construction projects in terms of a large number of interfaces, complex working systems and uncertainty. The findings of this paper suggest that project practitioners perceive differently about the CSFs and project success

To assess the viability of a new service concept and to develop a comprehensive business plan for an energy management consultancy (EMREG)

Individual Reflection report on the processes carried out for dissertatio

Does vitamin D3 supplementation improve medial joint space narrowing in patients with osteoarthritis knee

Background: Although vitamin D3 levels are known to improve pain and knee function in patients with knee OA, no clear evidence is available regarding relation between improvement in medial joint space with improvement in vitamin D3 levels. The aim of this study was to evaluate effectiveness of vitamin D3 supplements in improving joint space in the patients with OA knee.Methods: 100 patients with OA Knee who fulfilled inclusion criteria and consented to participate were enrolled for study. Patients of OA Knee were blinded and randomized to receive either tablet vitamin D3 or identical placebo tablet. Vitamin D3 Tab was administered in a dose of 60000U/week for 3 months in 12 doses while placebo tablets with identical dosing schedule were used for control group. The patients who received vitamin D3 tablets were allocated to case group while those receiving identical placebo tablets were grouped as controls. The vitamin D3 levels and medial joint space were assessed at baseline, 3 mo, 6mo and 1 year in both the groups.Results: In two groups of patients of OA knee of 50 patients each vitamin D3 supplementation increased levels of vitamin D3 in case group. While no significant improvement in joint space narrowing was noted with vitamin D3 supplementation in case group. Also no significant correlation was observed between vitamin D3 levels and medial joint space narrowing.Conclusions: There was no improvement in medial knee joint space with vitamin D3 supplementation

Enhanced photocatalytic and disinfection activities of silver loaded ordered mesoporous titanium dioxide for water treatment

In the present paper ordered mesoporous titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been synthesized by using the nanocasting method with SBA-15 as a hard template and titanium alkoxide as the precursor. The silver has been loaded onto the obtained ordered mesoporous TiO2 using photoreduction method. The physicochemical properties of as-prepared and calcined silver loaded mesoporous titanium dioxide (SMTO) have been characterized by various techniques. The XRD pattern confirms the existence of tetragonal anatase-rutile mixed phases of TiO2 with a crystallite size of the range of 12-15 nm. SEM and TEM images show that the aggregation of nanocrystalline phase results in the formation of nanometer sized mesoporous TiO2 with a well-defined spherical morphology and retained ordered structure. The as-obtained samples exhibit good photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B, Congo red and methyl orange dyes as model water contaminant at room temperature with UV light irradiation. The samples under study also show substantial disinfection properties against E. coli & S. aureus used as a model strain. The significant enhancement of the photocatalytic and disinfection activities of the SMTO materials is mainly attributed to their absorbed more photons and reduced electron-hole pair recombination due to synergic effect of porosity of the ordered structure and Ag-impregnated nanoparticles, respectively