Socio-economic and marketing aspects of Laila and Bottom Long Line fisheries in the Kalpitiya peninsula of Sri Lanka

Surrounding Net Fishery (laila) and Bottom Long Line Fishery which operate in the coastal waters of Kalpitiya Peninsula, compete for the same fish resources, resulting in a fishery dispute between the respective fishermen. Both fisheries target demersal as well as mid pelagic fishes, such as travellys (parava), mullets (galmalu) and barracudas (ulava). As the dispute had an adverse impact on the social harmony in the fishing community of the area, a socio-economic survey was conducted to study the underlying factors and to suggest policy measures to resolve the issue. The laila fishermen were resident fishermen in the Kalpitiya Peninsula while bottom long line fishermen were migratory fishermen from Negombo and Chilaw areas in the west coast of Sri Lanka. The Kalpitiya peninsula is located in the North West coast, some 50 km away from the west coast. Although the educational level and literacy rate of the laila community was below that of the bottom long line community, the laila community was economically better off. The net economic returns from laila fishery were superior to that from bottom long line fishery. The boat owner's and crew's share per operation of laila fishery were Rs.3,736 and Rs.947 respectively. The same figures for bottom long line fishery were Rs.588 and Rs.327 respectively. The resource rent from laila fishery was Rs.5,860, however, and much higher than that for bottom long line fishery (Rs.275), showing that the laila fishery exploits the targeted fish resource at a much higher rate compared to bottom long line fishery. This situation badly affects the equitable distribution of resources between the two fishing communities and results in unequal economic gains. Based on the findings of this study, certain input/output controls are proposed to address this problem, among which is the need to increase license fee for laila fishery units to offset the higher exploitation rate of fish resources.

A survey on technology exposure and range of abilities of elderly and disabled users in India

This paper reports a survey on people with age-related and physical impairments in India. The survey evaluates functional parameters related to human computer interaction and reports subjective attitude and exposure of users towards technology. We found a significant cognitive decline in elderly users while their functional parameters are sufficient to use existing electronic devices. However young disabled users are found to be experienced with computer but could not have access to appropriate assistive devices, which would benefit them. Most users used desktop computers and mobile phone but none used tablet, smartphone or kiosks though they are keen to learn new technologies. Overall we hope that our results will be useful for HCI practitioners in developing countries. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Novel fluid grid and voidage calculation techniques for a discrete element model of a 3D cylindrical fluidized bed

A discrete element model (DEM) combined with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was developed to model particle and fluid behaviour in 3D cylindrical fluidized beds. Novel techniques were developed to (1) keep fluid cells, defined in cylindrical coordinates, at a constant volume in order to ensure the conditions for validity of the volume-averaged fluid equations were satisfied and (2) smoothly and accurately measure voidage in arbitrarily shaped fluid cells. The new technique for calculating voidage was more stable than traditional techniques, also examined in the paper, whilst remaining computationally-effective. The model was validated by quantitative comparison with experimental results from the magnetic resonance imaging of a fluidised bed analysed to give time-averaged particle velocities. Comparisons were also made between theoretical determinations of slug rise velocity in a tall bed. It was concluded that the DEM-CFD model is able to investigate aspects of the underlying physics of fluidisation not readily investigated by experiment. © 2014 The Authors.

Vision by Man and Machine

The development of increasingly sophisticated and powerful computers in the last few decades has frequently stimulated comparisons between them and the human brain. Such comparisons will become more earnest as computers are applied more and more to tasks formerly associated with essentially human activities and capabilities. The expectation of a coming generation of "intelligent" computers and robots with sensory, motor and even "intellectual" skills comparable in quality to (and quantitatively surpassing) our own is becoming more widespread and is, I believe, leading to a new and potentially productive analytical science of "information processing". In no field has this new approach been so precisely formulated and so thoroughly exemplified as in the field of vision. As the dominant sensory modality of man, vision is one of the major keys to our mastery of the environment, to our understanding and control of the objects which surround us. If we wish to created robots capable of performing complex manipulative tasks in a changing environment, we must surely endow them with (among other things) adequate visual powers. How can we set about designing such flexible and adaptive robots? In designing them, can we make use of our rapidly growing knowledge of the human brain, and if so, how at the same time, can our experiences in designing artificial vision systems help us to understand how the brain analyzes visual information?

Who has the Right to Govern Online Activity? A Criminal and Civil Point of View

Kohl, U. (2004). Who has the right to govern online activity? A criminal and civil point of view. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology 18 (3), 387-410 RAE2008

Whose News? Copyright and the Dissemination of News on the Internet

International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, Volume 17, Issue 2 July 2003 , pages 163 - 174 RAE2008

Urbanization effects on welfare and income diversification strategies of peri-urban farm households in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia: An empirical analysis

Urban areas in many developing countries are expanding rapidly by incorporating nearby subsistence farming communities. This has a direct effect on the consumption and production behaviours of the farm households but empirical evidence is sparse. This thesis investigated the effects of rapid urbanization and the associated policies on welfare of subsistence farm households in peri-urban areas using a panel dataset from Tigray, Ethiopia. The study revealed a number of important issues emerging with the rapid urban expansion. Firstly, private asset holdings and consumption expenditure of farm households, that have been incorporated into urban administration, has decreased. Secondly, factors that influence the farm households’ welfare and vulnerability depend on the administration they belong to, urban or rural. Gender and literacy of the household head have significant roles for the urban farm households to fall back into and/or move out of poverty. However, livestock holding and share of farm income are the most important factors for rural households. Thirdly, the study discloses that farming continues to be important source of income and income diversification is the principal strategy. Participation in nonfarm employment is less for farm households in urban than rural areas. Adult labour, size of the local market and past experience in the nonfarm sector improves the likelihood of engaging in skilled nonfarm employment opportunities. But money, given as compensation for the land taken away, is not crucial for the household to engage in better paying nonfarm employments. Production behaviour of the better-off farm households is the same, regardless of the administration they belong to. However, the urban poor participate less in nonfarm employment compared to the rural poor. These findings signify the gradual development of urban-induced poverty in peri-urban areas. In the case of labour poor households, introducing urban safety net programmes could improve asset productivity and provide further protection.

VegeDog: Formalism, vegetarian dogs, and partonomies in transition

The pragmatics of 'vegetarian' and 'carnivorous' exhibits an asymmetry that we put in evidence by analyzing a newspaper report about vegetarian dog-owners imposing a vegetarian diet on their pets. More fundamental is the problem of partonomy versus containment, for which we attempt a naive but formal analysis applied to ingestion and the food chain, an issue we derive from the same text analyzed. Our formal tools belong in commonsense modelling, a domain of artificial intelligence related to extra-linguistic knowledge and pragmatics. We first provide an interpretation of events analyzed, and express it graphically in a semantic-network related representation, and propose an alternative that we express in terms of a modal logic, avoiding the full representational power of Hayes's "ontology for liquids".

Load-balancing for mesh-based applications on heterogeneous cluster computers

This paper discusses load-balancing issues when using heterogeneous cluster computers. There is a growing trend towards the use of commodity microprocessor clusters. Although today's microprocessors have reached a theoretical peak performance in the range of one GFLOPS/s, heterogeneous clusters of commodity processors are amongst the most challenging parallel systems to programme efficiently. We will outline an approach for optimising the performance of parallel mesh-based applications for heterogeneous cluster computers and present case studies with the GeoFEM code. The focus is on application cost monitoring and load balancing using the DRAMA library.