Wireless Sensor Networks for Paddy Field Crop Monitoring Application in Kuttanad

The evolution of wireless sensor network technology has enabled us to develop advanced systems for real time monitoring. In the present scenario wireless sensor networks are increasingly being used for precision agriculture. The advantages of using wireless sensor networks in agriculture are distributed data collection and monitoring, monitor and control of climate, irrigation and nutrient supply. Hence decreasing the cost of production and increasing the efficiency of production.This paper describes the application of wireless sensor network for crop monitoring in the paddy fields of kuttand, a region of Kerala, the southern state of India.

Development and Deployment of Wireless Sensor Network in Paddy Fields of Kuttanad

The evolution of wireless sensor network technology has enabled us to develop advanced systems for real time monitoring. In the present scenario wireless sensor networks are increasingly being used for precision agriculture. The advantages of using wireless sensor networks in agriculture are distributed data collection and monitoring, monitor and control of climate, irrigation and nutrient supply. Hence decreasing the cost of production and increasing the efficiency of production. This paper describes the development and deployment of wireless sensor network for crop monitoring in the paddy fields of Kuttanad, a region of Kerala, the southern state of India.

Distribution, Extracellular Virulence Factors and Drug Resistance of Motile Aeromonads in Fresh Water Ornamental Fishes and Associated Carriage Water

During last decades there has been a continuous growth of aquaculture industries all over the world and taking into consideration the spurt in freshwater ornamental fish aquaculture and trade in Kerala, the present study was aimed to assess the prevalence of various motile Aeromonas spp. in fresh water ornamental fishes and associated carriage water. The extracellular virulence factors and the antibiogram of the isolates were also elucidated. Various species of motile aeromonads such as Aeromonas caviae, A. hydrophila, A. jandaei, A. schubertii, A. sobria, A. trota and A. veronii were detected. Aeromonas sobria predominated both fish and water samples. Extracellular enzymes and toxins produced by motile aeromonds are important elements of bacterial virulence. The production of extracellular virulence factors - proteases, lipase, DNase and haemolysin by the isolates were studied. All the isolates from both fish and water samples produced gelatinase and nuclease but the ability to produce lipase, caseinase and haemolysins was found to vary among isolates from different sources. Among the 15 antibiotics to which the isolates were tested, all the isolates were found to be sensitive to chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin and gentamicin and resistant to amoxycillin. Local aquarists maintain the fish in crowded stressful conditions, which could trigger infections by the obligate/ opportunistic pathogenic members among motile aeromonads

E-Learning and Continuing Education in LIS

The aim of the study was to investigate the relevance of e—learning in continuing education of library professionals in the universities in Kerala. /55 part of a survey of library professionals in the seven major Universities in Kerala to find their continuing education needs, it was found that majority of the library professionals attend continuing education programmes (CEP) to be trained in the latest technologies. Internet resources were the preferred mode of information source by 38.9 per cent of the library professionals. The importance of continuing education in developing the competencies of library professionals is also stressed

Changing Role of Academic Libraries in the E-learning Environment: Issues and Challenges

The development of computer and network technology is changing the education scenario and transforming the teaching and learning process from the traditional physical environment to the digital environment. It is now possible to access vast amount of information online and enable one to one communication without the confines of place or time. While E-learning and teaching is unlikely to replace face-to-face training and education it is becoming an additional delivery method, providing new learning opportunities to many users. It is also causing an impact on library services as the increased use of ICT and web based learning technologies have paved the way for providing new ICT based services and resources to the users. Online learning has a crucial role in user education, information literacy programmes and in training the library professionals. It can help students become active learners, and libraries will have to play a greater role in this process of transformation. The significance of libraries within an institution has improved due to the fact that academic libraries and information services are now responsible for e-learning within their organization.

English-Malayalam Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval – an Experience

This paper describes about an English-Malayalam Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval system. The system retrieves Malayalam documents in response to query given in English or Malayalam. Thus monolingual information retrieval is also supported in this system. Malayalam is one of the most prominent regional languages of Indian subcontinent. It is spoken by more than 37 million people and is the native language of Kerala state in India. Since we neither had any full-fledged online bilingual dictionary nor any parallel corpora to build the statistical lexicon, we used a bilingual dictionary developed in house for translation. Other language specific resources like Malayalam stemmer, Malayalam morphological root analyzer etc developed in house were used in this work

Mini-trawls for Estuarine Fishing Kasargod District

Mi ni -trawls are operated by the artisanal fishermen from small wooden non-motorised canoes. Shrimp, fish and crab trawls wi th head rope length rang ing from 3.5-8 m, made of Po lyethy lene mon ofila ment (PE) twisted and Polyamide mullifilament (PA) rigged to 6-7 kll fla t rectangular wooden otter boards are common in the lower reaches of Kariango de and Chandrag iri rive rs. Since the trawling speed is less, ca tch is do minated by crus taceans. Less scope ratio also may be affecting the catching efficiency of the gear. This pape r deals with the design, operation and economics of mini traw ling carried out by a group of fisherme n in the above rivers of Kasargod district Kerala state.

Processing And Frozen Storage Characteristics Of Ray Fillets

Rays, belonging to the class Elasmobranchii, constitute a major fishery in many states in India like Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Maharashtra. The estimated landings are 21,700 tonnes per annum. Even though the meat of rays is nutritious and free from bones and spines, there is little demand for fresh meat due to the presence of a high urea content. The landings are mainly used for salt curing which fetches only very low prices for the producers. Urea nitrogen constituted the major component (50.8%) of the non-protein nitrogen of the meat. An attempt has been made to standat-dize the processing steps to reduce the urea levels in the meat before freezing by using different simple techniques like dipping the fillets in stagnant chilled water, dipping in chilled running water and dipping in stirred chilled running water. It was found that meat dipped in stirred running water for two hours reduced the urea level of the meat by 62%. The yield of the lateral fin fillets and caudal fin fillets vary with the size of the ray. The drip loss during frozen storage is found to be more in the case of samples frozen stored after the treatment for urea removal by the method of stirring in running water. The samples treated in stagnant chilled water had the lowest drip loss. The total nitrogen was higher in samples treated in stagnant chilled water and lowest in the samples treated in stirred running water. The overall acceptability was high in the case of samples treated with stirred running water and frozen stored

Ontology based Framework for News Extraction in Visual Media

Anticipating the increase in video information in future, archiving of news is an important activity in the visual media industry. When the volume of archives increases, it will be difficult for journalists to find the appropriate content using current search tools. This paper provides the details of the study we conducted about the news extraction systems used in different news channels in Kerala. Semantic web technologies can be used effectively since news archiving share many of the characteristics and problems of WWW. Since visual news archives of different media resources follow different metadata standards, interoperability between the resources is also an issue. World Wide Web Consortium has proposed a draft for an ontology framework for media resource which addresses the intercompatiblity issues. In this paper, the w3c proposed framework and its drawbacks is also discussed

Effectiveness of coir geotextiles in soil moisture conservation

Among the diversified use of coir geotextiles, its use as a protective covering to improve crop productivity and to reduce weed problem assumes to be much significant. An experiment has been conducted at Kumbazha, in Pathanamthitta district, Kerala, India to evaluate the different types of coir geotextiles and polythene as soil mulch. The treatments include different mulching materials like natural needled felt, black needled felt, rubberized coir, black polythene and transparent polythene along with a control plot (no mulch). The experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Design with six replications. The test crops used were bhindi (var. Salkeerthi) and pineapple (var. Mauritius). The study reveals that with bhindi crop growth parameters like plant height, leaf number and lateral spread were increased by mulching with rubberized coir and transparent polythene. These two mulches caused early flowering and increased fruit yield. Coir materials as mulch recorded a yield increase ranging from 67 to 196%. Observations also reveal that weeds were not grown in plots mulched with black polythene, transparent polythene and rubberized coir. Rubberized coir as mulch enhanced the fruit yield in the case of pineapple, which is followed by natural needled felt and transparent polythene. Black polythene resisted weed growth up to 7MAP, whereas rubberized coir and transparent polythene suppressed weeds up to 8MAP. Though the weeds were grown in other treatments the weeds count was significantly lower than that of control plot. Mulching with transparent polythene enhanced the soil temperature whereas rubberized coir lowered soil temperature. More over all mulched treatments had a favourable influence in increasing soil moisture. Observing the biodegradability and eco-friendly nature of coir it could be inferred that rubberized coir can serve as good mulch for bhindi and pineapple with minimum weed problem

Influence Of Additives On The Drain Down Characteristics Of Stone Matrix Asphalt Mixtures

In Kerala highways, where traditional dense graded mixtures are used for the surface courses, major distress is due to moisture induced damages. Development of stabilized Stone Matrix Asphalt (SMA) mixtures for improved pavement performance has been the focus of research all over the world for the past few decades. Many successful attempts are made to stabilize SMA mixtures with synthetic fibres and polymers. India, being an agricultural economy produces fairly huge quantity of natural fibres such as coconut, sisal, banana, sugar cane, jute etc.. Now- a -days the disposal of waste plastics is a major concern for an eco- friendly sustainable environment. This paper focuses on the influence of additives like coir, sisal, banana fibres (natural fibres), waste plastics (waste material) and polypropylene (polymer) on the drain down characteristics of SMA mixtures. A preliminary investigation is conducted to characterize the materials used in this study. Drain down sensitivity tests are conducted to study the bleeding phenomena and drain down of SMA mixtures. Based on the drain down characteristics of the various stabilized mixtures it is inferred that the optimum fibre content is 0.3% by weight of mixture for all fibre mixtures irrespective of the type of fibre. For waste plastics and polypropylene stabilized SMA mixtures, the optimum additive contents are respectively 7% and 5% by weight of mixture. Due to the absorptive nature of fibres, fibre stabilizers are found to be more effective in reducing the drain down of the SMA mixture. The drain values for the waste plastics mix is within the required specification range. The coir fibre additive is the best among the fibres investigated. Sisal and banana fibre mixtures showed almost the same characteristics on stabilization.

Retting Of Coconut Husk - A Unique Case Of Water Pollution On The South West Coast Of India

The extensive backwaters of Kerala are the sites for a flourishing cottage industry - the coir industry. This enterprise almost exclusively located along the 590 km coastal belt of Kerala, provides direct employment to over half a million people in the state and produces nearly 90% of the total coir goods in the world. The shallow bays and lagoons of the 30 backwater systems of the state are traditional areas for the retting of coconut husk for the production of the coir fibre. The paper examines the environmental status of the retting grounds in Kerala, in relation to the biotic communities. The study revealed that retting activity has caused large scale organic pollution along with the mass destruction of the flora and fauna, converting sizeable sections of the backwaters into virtual cesspools of foul smelling stagnant waters. High values of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, BOD5 associated with anoxic conditions and low community diversity of plankton, benthic fauna, fish, shell fish, wood boring and fouling organisms were the outstanding feature of the retting zones.

Primary Productivity Of The Retiing Zones In The Kadinamkulamestuary, South-West Coastof India

Retting.of coconut husk is one of the major problems of pollution in the estuaries (Kayals) of Kerala. This paper discusses the salient features associated with the variation in gross and net primary productivity values in the Kadinarnkularn Kayal based on lortnightlydala from twosclected stations frorn Octobcr1987 to September 1988.The gross primary productivity value in the surface water ranged from 0.06 to 0.29gC/m3/day at Station Iand from 0.06 to 1.49gC/rn3/dayatstation II. In the bottom wateritrangcdfrorn oto 0.21 gC/m2/ day at station I whereas that at station II from 0.03 to 1.41gC/m3j day. The net productivity in the surface water at station I varied from 0 to 024 gC/m Iday Whereas that atstation II varied from 0.02to 1.44gC/m3Iday.AI the bottomwaterilvaried from ato 0.19gC/m3/ day at station I and from 0.01 to 1.21gC/m3/day at station II. The monsoon period showed the highest mean seasonal value at stations I and II. The total depletion of dissolved oxygen giving rise to anoxic condition coupled with the production of large quantities of hydrogen sulphide was found to be detrimental to the gross and net productivity values in the retting zone

A study of information-seeking behavior and user perceptions of academic researchers

The purpose of this paper is to examine the information-seeking behavior of science and social science research scholars, including service effectiveness, satisfaction level on different type of sources and various methods adopted by the scholars for keeping up to dateData were gathered using a questionnaire survey of 200, randomly selected, PhD students of science and social science departments of four universities in Kerala, IndiaAlthough similarities exist between social science and science PhD students with regard to information-seeking behavior, there are significant differences as well. There is a significant difference between science and social science scholars on the perception of the adequacy of print journals and database collection which are very relevant to the research purposes. There is no significant difference between science and social science scholars on the perception of the adequacy of e-journals, the most used source for keeping up to date. The study proved that scholars of both the fields are dissatisfied with the effectiveness of the library in keeping them up to date with latest developments

Model Development and Validation for Studying Consumer Preferences of Car Owners

Globalization and liberalization, with the entry of many prominent foreign manufacturers, changed the automobile scenario in India, since early 1990‟s. Manufacturers such as Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Suzuki, Hyundai, Renault, Mitsubishi, Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Nissan set up their manufacturing units in India in joint venture with their Indian counterpart companies, by making use of the Foreign Direct Investment policy of the Government of India, These manufacturers started capturing the hearts of Indian car customers with their choice of technological and innovative product features, with quality and reliability. With the multiplicity of choices available to the Indian passenger car buyers, it drastically changed the way the car purchase scenario in India and particularly in the State of Kerala. This transformed the automobile scene from a sellers‟ market to buyers‟ market. Car customers started developing their own personal preferences and purchasing patterns, which were hitherto unknown in the Indian automobile segment. The main purpose of this paper is to come up with the identification of possible parameters and a framework development, that influence the consumer purchase behaviour patterns of passenger car owners in the State of Kerala, so that further research could be done, based on the framework and the identified parameters