Studies on the Hydrobiology and pollution of the Vembanad Lake and adjacent waters

The Thesis deals with the entire estuarine system in totality on several parameters related to hydrography, ecology of biota, productivity and also the effects of pollution. The objective of this study has been to review the systems physical, chemical and biological features through varying periods of time at locations where human interference is high so that an overall assessment of the changing ecology could be made so as to impress on the scientific community whether remedial measures could be undertaken in sensitive areas. It is also the objective of this study to point out thrust areas where concerted efforts from a larger body of scientists and administrators who can sit together and chalk out programmes for a co-operative endeavor in monitoring the most sensitive areas and also suggest ways and means to exploit the rich and diverse resources at optimum levels with emphasis on conservation and protection from environmental degradation resulting in depletion of resources. Areas also have been identified which are potentially more productive where aquaculture could be intensified

A Case Study Of The Finance Of Selected Panchayats In Ernakulam District

The objectives of the present study are to inquire into the financial aspects of the selected Panchayats in Ernakulam district; , to analyse the income and expenditure pattern of selected and ‘District Panchayats'16 during 1969-70 through 1983-84; , to suggest the steps to be taken by the Panchayat for the proper utilisation of resources and for increasing the availability of resources; to suggest the additional sources of revenue for the Panchayats

Building Digital. Repository Of Project Reports: A Proposal for cusat

The effective organization and utilisation of resources produced by the students, faculty and research scholars in university departments assume greater significance. Institutional repositories are developed by many institutions to provide resources and materials that support students in their studies. The present study recognizes the value of such a repository in the Engineering and Technology discipline in Cochin University of Science and Technology. The paper explains the need for a digital repository ofproject reports. The authors present a modelfor digital repository, and the organization.and administration of such a repository. The study also analyses the various other factors associated with the proposed depository.

Service provider switching: a study on the switching process in retail banking

In a business environment that is characterized by intense competition, building customer loyalty has become a key area of focus for most financial institutions. The explosion of the services sector, changing customer demographics and deregulation and emergence of new technology in the financial services industry have had a critical impact on consumers’ financial services buying behaviour. The changes have forced banks to modify their service offerings to customers so as to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and also high levels of customer retention. Banks have historically had difficulty distinguishing their products from one another because of their relative homogeneity; with increasing competition,the problem has only intensified with no coherent distinguishing theme. Rising wealth, product proliferation, regulatory changes and newer technologies are together making bank switching easier for customers. In order to remain competitive, it is important for banks to retain their customer base. The financial services sector is the foundation for any economy and plays the role of mobilization of resources and their allocation. The retail banking sector in India has emerged as one of the major drivers of the overall banking industry and has witnessed enormous growth. Switching behaviour has a negative impact on the banks’ market share and profitability as the costs of acquiring customers are much higher than the costs of retaining. When customers switch, the business loses the potential for additional profits from the customer the initial costs invested in the customer by the business get . The Objective of the thesis was to examine the relationship among triggers that customers experience, their perceptions of service quality, consumers’ commitment and behavioral intentions in the contemporary India retail banking context through the eyes of the customer. To understand customers’ perception of these aspects, data were collected from retail banking customers alone for the purpose of analysis, though the banks’ views were considered during the qualitative work carried out prior to the main study. No respondent who is an employee of a banking organization was considered for the final study to avoid the possibility of any bias that could affect the results adversely. The data for the study were collected from customers who have switched banks and from those who were non switchers. The study attempted to develop and validate a multidimensional construct of service quality for retail banking from the consumer’s perspective. A major conclusion from the empirical research was the confirmation of the multidimensional construct for perceived service quality in the banking context. Switching can be viewed as an optimization problem for customers; customers review the potential gains of switching to another service provider against the costs of leaving the service provider. As banks do not provide tangible products, their service quality is usually assessed through service provider’s relationship with customers. Thus, banks should pay attention towards their employees’ skills and knowledge; assessing customers’ needs and offering fast and efficient services.

Employment Realm in Technical Education in Kerala-A Study on the Problem of Unemployment among Engineers

The The The The growing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demandgrowing demand for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of for the expansion of the the the the publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system publicly funded system of education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goodof education as merit and free goods emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized emphasized on large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation large allocation of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds on of funds for promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting educationfor promoting education. Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to . Compared to the rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of Indiathe rest of India, Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead , Kerala is far ahead in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect in this respect primarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the eprimarily because of the earlierarlierarlierarlierarlierarlier political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social political and social compulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions ofcompulsions of the state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The prethe state. The presumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of sumption of assured assured assured assured assured assured assured assured and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed and guaranteed employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in employment in the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East the Middle East and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other and also in other countries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased furthecountries increased further the scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher educationthe scope of higher education in KeralaKeralaKeralaKeralaKeralaKerala, particularparticularparticularparticularparticularparticularparticularparticularparticularparticularly the technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe technical educationthe

Political Economy of Global Rush for Agricultural Land: a Tract on India’s Overseas Acquisitions

This paper is an attempt to map the global land acquisitions with a focus on Indian MNCs in acquiring overseas land for agricultural purposes. It tries to outline the contemporary political economy of capital accumulation at the global level, especially, in the emerging developing economies like India and China, where the emergence of a new capitalist class has engaged itself into acquisition of land and control of other natural resources in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and South East Asia, for example, water and other minerals to secure itself from the eventual losses of ongoing economic crisis and to earn profit from the volatile agricultural commodity markets. This sway of control of resources by the MNCs has got paramount State support under the helm of neoliberal policies. The paper provides scale of overseas land acquisitions at the current juncture and tries to highlight its causes and the major implications associated with it.

Technical and scale efficiency of cassava production system in Delta State, Nigeria: an application of Two-Stage DEA approach

The present study examines the level of pure technical and scale efficiencies of cassava production system including its sub-processes (that is production and processing stages) of 278 cassava farmers/processors from three regions of Delta State, Nigeria by applying Two-Stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. Results reveal that pure technical efficiency (PTE) is significantly lower at the production stage 0.41 vs 0.55 for the processing stage, but scale efficiency (SE) is high at both stages (0.84 and 0.87), implying that productivity can be improved substantially by reallocation of resources and adjusting operation size. The socio-economic determinants exert differential impacts on PTE and SE at each stage. Overall, education, experience and main occupation as farmer significantly improve SE while subsistence pressure reduces it. Extension contact significantly improves SE at the processing stage but reduces PTE and SE overall. Inverse size-PTE and size-SE relationships exist in cassava production system. In other words, large/medium farms are technically and scale inefficient. Gender gap exists in performance. Male farmers are technically efficient at processing stage but scale inefficient overall. Farmers in northern region are technically efficient. Investments in education, extension services and infrastructure are suggested as policy options to improve the cassava sector in Nigeria.

On the difficulty of feature-based attentional modulations in visual object recognition: A modeling study.

Numerous psychophysical experiments have shown an important role for attentional modulations in vision. Behaviorally, allocation of attention can improve performance in object detection and recognition tasks. At the neural level, attention increases firing rates of neurons in visual cortex whose preferred stimulus is currently attended to. However, it is not yet known how these two phenomena are linked, i.e., how the visual system could be "tuned" in a task-dependent fashion to improve task performance. To answer this question, we performed simulations with the HMAX model of object recognition in cortex [45]. We modulated firing rates of model neurons in accordance with experimental results about effects of feature-based attention on single neurons and measured changes in the model's performance in a variety of object recognition tasks. It turned out that recognition performance could only be improved under very limited circumstances and that attentional influences on the process of object recognition per se tend to display a lack of specificity or raise false alarm rates. These observations lead us to postulate a new role for the observed attention-related neural response modulations.

copyright resources

A collection of resources to inform staff about copyright issues, including useful links to articles and webpages as well as a PDF called "Copyright in Context" pertinant questions and answers that formed part of a study morning held at the Hartley Library in May 2010 and also a narrated powerpoint presentation by Adam Warren.

Excessive work or addiction to work: workaholism in a Colombian company. Pilot study trough application of DUWAS test

This paper examines the workaholism phenomenon in different work situations in Colombian company. Workaholism was defined as the individual’s steady and considerable allocation of time to work, which is not derived from external necessities (1). The research studies about workaholics and workaholism have been increasing a lot in the last years (2). Workaholism is an addiction that actually is affecting a lot of people around the world and has serious consequences in personal life, in the community and also in economy. Some of these researches are directed to explore ways to diagnose when a person is workaholic and when this situation may affect the performanceof the individual in work, daily life activities and especially in psychosocial area. Objective: this pilot study contributes to identify if Colombian workers present the main characteristicsof workaholism and if the job they perform is related to the presence of the characteristics of this addiction. Materials and method: for this pilot study used the Dutch Work Addiction Scale(DUWAS), this test suggests when a person has work addiction, trough the evaluation of two main components working excessively and working compulsively. Results: the study find differences for the two groups: the 67% of the AE group are over the average while only the 33% of the members of the O group are over it. Conclusions: these percentages show that the combinations of the components of workaholism are more evident in the population belonging to the administrative/executive jobs group, giving evidence that workaholism is presented in greater proportion in the population performance management positions.

Definition of an it project portfolio management methodology for a pharmaceutical company

Con la creciente popularidad de las soluciones de IT como factor clave para aumentar la competitividad y la creación de valor para las empresas, la necesidad de invertir en proyectos de IT se incrementa considerablemente. La limitación de los recursos como un obstáculo para invertir ha obligado a las empresas a buscar metodologías para seleccionar y priorizar proyectos, asegurándose de que las decisiones que se toman son aquellas que van alineadas con las estrategias corporativas para asegurar la creación de valor y la maximización de los beneficios. Esta tesis proporciona los fundamentos para la implementación del Portafolio de dirección de Proyectos de IT (IT PPM) como una metodología eficaz para la gestión de proyectos basados en IT, y una herramienta para proporcionar criterios claros para los directores ejecutivos para la toma de decisiones. El documento proporciona la información acerca de cómo implementar el IT PPM en siete pasos, el análisis de los procesos y las funciones necesarias para su ejecución exitosa. Además, proporciona diferentes métodos y criterios para la selección y priorización de proyectos. Después de la parte teórica donde se describe el IT PPM, la tesis aporta un análisis del estudio de caso de una empresa farmacéutica. La empresa ya cuenta con un departamento de gestión de proyectos, pero se encontró la necesidad de implementar el IT PPM debido a su amplia cobertura de procesos End-to-End en Proyectos de IT, y la manera de asegurar la maximización de los beneficios. Con la investigación teórica y el análisis del estudio de caso, la tesis concluye con una definición práctica de un modelo aproximado IT PPM como una recomendación para su implementación en el Departamento de Gestión de Proyectos.

Natural disasters and clientelism: the case of floods and landslides in Colombia

What are the effects of natural disasters on electoral results? Some authors claim that catastrophes have a negative effect on the survival of leaders in a democracy because voters have a propensity to punish politicians for not preventing or poorly handling a crisis. In contrast, this paper finds that these events might be beneficial for leaders. Disasters are linked to leader survival through clientelism: they generate an in-flow of resources in the form of aid, which increase money for buying votes. Analyzing the rainy season of 2010-2011 in Colombia, considered its worst disaster in history, I use a difference-in-differences strategy to show that in the local election incumbent parties benefited from the disaster. The result is robust to different specifications and alternative explanations. Moreover, places receiving more aid and those with judicial evidence of vote-buying irregularities, are more likely to reelect the incumbent, supporting the mechanism proposed by this paper.

Seguridad democrática, presencia de la policía y conflicto en Colombia

Este artículo evalúa uno de los componentes fundamentales de la política más icónica del gobierno de Álvaro Uribe: la ´ Seguridad Democrática. En particular, se evalúa el impacto sobre la intensidad del conflicto armado de los despliegues y refuerzos de policía en municipios con poca o nula presencia policial antes de agosto de 2002. Para ello se utiliza el estimador de diferencia en diferencias que compara el cambio en la dinámica del conflicto una vez se asignan los nuevos efectivos a los municipios receptores, relativo al cambio ocurrido simultáneamente en los municipios no receptores. Nuestros resultados sugieren que tanto los despliegues (instauración de inspecciones de policía en municipios que carecían de ´estas) como los refuerzos (envío de nuevos efectivos a municipios con poca presencia policial previa) generan incrementos en el número de ataques guerrilleros. Por otro lado, también hay evidencia que en los casos en los que la asignación de efectivos policiales estuvo acompañada de la movilización de tropas del ejército el conflicto disminuyó en las áreas afectadas, lo que sugiere que la coordinación de las fuerzas armadas resulta clave para el éxito de iniciativas regionales de seguridad.

The design of optimal education policies when individuals differ in inherited wealth and ability

In this paper I consider the role of education poli-cies in redistribution of income when individuals differ in two aspects: ability and inherited wealth. I discuss the extent to which the rules that emerge in unidimensional settings apply also in the bidimen-sional setting considered in this paper. The main conclusion is that, subject to some qualifi cations, the same type of rules that determine optimal education policies when only ability heterogeneity is considered apply to the case where both parameters of heterogeneity are considered. The qualifi cations pertain to the implementation of the optimal alloca-tion of resources to education and not the way the optimal allocations fi rst- and second-best differ.

The determinants of the health status in a developing country: results from the Colombian case

El artículo busca encontrar evidencia empírica de los determinantes de la salud, como una medición de capital salud en un país en desarrollo después de una profunda reforma en el sector salud. Siguiendo el modelo de Grossman (1972) y tomando factores institucionales, además de las variables individuales y socioeconómicas. Se usaron las encuestas de 1997 y 2000 donde se responde subjetivamente sobre el estado de salud y tipo de afiliación al sistema de salud. El proceso de estimación usado es un probit ordenado. Los resultados muestran una importante conexión entre las variables individuales, institucionales y socioeconómicas con el estado de salud. El efecto de tipo de acceso al sistema de salud presiona las inequidades en salud.