Molecular breakdown of different forms of natural rubber and its influence on properties of their mixes and vulcanizates

The forms of natural rubber studied were sheet [RSS 4 and RSS 5], ISNR 20 and EBC. In the case of the latter two forms samples from estate and nonestate sectors were included. The samples were collected from different locations at specified intervals, for a particular period. The effect of the extent of mastication on raw rubber properties as well as the properties of the compounds and vulcanizates also studied. The consistency in raw rubber properties and breakdown behavior of skim rubber were studied by collecting samples periodically from selected processing units. The effect of incorporation of skim with ISNR 20 has also been investigated

Biochemical Genetics Of Selected Commercially Important Penaeid Prawns

‘Biochemical genetics of selected commercially important penaeid prawns‘ dloted was carried out by collecting samples from different important fishing ceatres of India and the practical work was carried out in the Research Centre of CMFRI laboratories attached with those places. On the whole, in crustacea little importance has been given so far in finding out tin genetic characteristics of different species, genetic variation within and between species and ontogenetic variations in lobsters, prawns and other crustaceans. Prawn is caunercially important group where very little attention had been given so far to find out the racial divergence which may exist in cufferent species. with the increased foreign exchange earning and consequent indiscriminate over exploitation of existing resources of prawns resulting in depletion of the marine rescurces, alternative ways and augmenting production has become essential. In this connection genetic manipulation of the broodstock will surely bring about the heterogenous characters to multiply production. In order to understand racial fragmentation of sane of the coumercially important prawns such as Pengeus ggdicus and Parggenagsis sgliferg the isozyme studies were carried out. Qatogenetic variation of g. indicus showed stage specific electrophoretic variation. Inter species variation studies was carried out for the closely aligned Penaeus species

Some Aspects Of Phytoplankton Blooms In Relation To Pelagic Fishes

The present study was undertaken to observe the phytoplankton (distones,dinoflageliates,and blue green algae) blooms occurring along the south west coast of India at various seasons from February 1982 to august 1984.The centers selected for collection and observation were off Quilon, off Alleppey ,off Calicut. A total number of 25 phytoplankton blooms were studied. Characterisation of phytoplankton blooms include observing the cell counts from the day of its appearance to its day of disappearance. The appearance ,duration and locality of the blooms were also noted

"Profile of Industrial workers in Kerala - A Comparative Study of the Socioeconomic Profile of Workers in Traditional and Modern Industries

The objective of this study is to assess the changes that have been taking place in the socio-economic profile of organized industrial workers of Kerala in the context of the changes that have been taking place in the state's industrial structure. with this object in view, the study seeks to find out the similarities and differences in the profile of workers belonging to two Segments of factory sector industries in Kerala viz., modern and traditional segments. It also seeks to examine the factors leading to the differences in profile, if any, and their consequences. As noted earlier, the profile of workers may be influenced both by external societal factors and by internal factors like the difference in industrial structure and the technologies used. It is proposed to assess the relative importance of these two groups of factors. In drawing up the profile, we seek to find out whether the workers belonging to the organised sector of industry in Kerala particularly the more modern sector have begun to form a ‘select group‘ in the Kerala society and the total work force. Wherever possible, it is proposed to compare the profile of the Kerala workers with those of workers in other states of India. As an incidental objective, it is also proposed to find out to the extent possible, whether trends towards labour embourgeoisement and class shifting have begun to set in among the industrial workers of Kerala, particularly among the workers in the modern industries as a result of their relative affluence and their middle class socioeconomic background. besides, the study seeks to find out whether there is any difference in the class consciousness of workers belonging to these two segments of organized industry, arising from the differences in their economic status and social background.

Recruitment And Training Of Managers In The Public Sector Concerns In Kerala

Public undertakings have been assigned a significant role to play in the systematic socio-economic development of India. My interest in the subject was kindled while I was doing my Masters Diploma in Public Administration at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi during 1960-61. It was further strengthened by my teaching of the subject in different courses offered by me at the School of Management Studies and in several programmes organised by various voluntary and training organisations like the Institute of Management in Government, Trivandrum, Centre for Management Development, Trivandrum, etc. The several years in which I served as a member of the faculty in the School of Management Studies, University of Cochin,gave me the opportunity to come into close contact with different public sector concerns and their managers at various levels. This rich opportunity gave me a better insight into the problems faced by these concerns. The present study is a result of the interest so developed.

Physiological Effects Of Some Heavy Metals On Perna Viridis (Linnaeus)

No serious attempt has so far been made in India to make use of the ‘Mussel watch’ concept as a useful tool for pollution monitoring of the marine and estuarine environment. The recently conducted 'National seminar on mussel watch’ by the Cochin University of Science and Technology (13-14 Feb, 1986) discussed the technical aspects related to mussel watch programme and the application of sentinel organism concept to the coastal areas of India. It is well known that the biological and physiological characteristics of the organism inhabiting tropical waters such as those prevailing in India, and the ecological as well as the environmental characteristics of temperate areas, where mussel watch programmes are already in existence differ greatly. So it is essential to adopt the techniques and standards developed for temperate species to the situations and conditions in India. In this context it is a prerequisite to collect information on physiology and other biological indices of stress of possible sentinel organisms like P.viridis. In consideration of the above, P. viridis which is a potential sentinel organism, is selected for the present study

Physiology of the blood of cat fishes

The vast areas of derelict swamps covered by macrophyton and swarmed by insects scattered in different parts of India are at present either under total negligence or utilized as waste disposal dumps. Eventhough Indian subcontinent is ranked among the first ten fish producing countries in the world, the fish production is not at par with the increasing need of protein in the average Indian diet. So the water areas which become unusable for conventional human activities like the swamps could be used for fish culture which would increase the availability of protein in the form of fish flesh, thus providing new opportunities to the fishermen. But the conversion of swamps for fish culture would entail considerable expenditure. Hence the significance of a group of fresh water fishes which have made their favourable abode the muddy swamps of tropics depending partly on accessory _respiration to survive in the inimical environment. The homeostasis achieved in such a hostile, hypoxic medium make them excellent choices for culture in the derelict freshwater bodies of India. These air breathing fishes form an economically important group which are highly esteemed as food fishes in many parts of South Asia and Africa. Though their natural habitat seems to be the marshes, they have also conquered other freshwater bodies like ponds, tanks, rivers and flooded paddy fields. They can also tolerate slightly brackish waters. They are known for their nutritive, invigorating and therapeutic qualities and are recommended by physicians as diet during convalescence (Jhingran, 1982)

Studies On The Biology And Fishery Of The Fishes Of The Family Priacanthidae (Pisces : Perciformes) Of Indian Waters

Preliminary investigations revealed that 3. hamrur is the predominant species along the east and west coasts of India while other species are sparsely distributed and occur sporadically. In the present investigation, aspects such as population parameters, breeding and feeding biology, fishery etc. of _l:. hamrur of the north east coast of India (Fig.1) are dealt with. Studies on the distribution, abundance and stock size of priacanthids all along the Indian waters were undertaken. Taxonomic studies of the priacanthid species encountered during the study from the Indian waters is also attempted

Design And Development Of A Named Entity Based Question Answering System For Malayalam Language

This is a Named Entity Based Question Answering System for Malayalam Language. Although a vast amount of information is available today in digital form, no effective information access mechanism exists to provide humans with convenient information access. Information Retrieval and Question Answering systems are the two mechanisms available now for information access. Information systems typically return a long list of documents in response to a user’s query which are to be skimmed by the user to determine whether they contain an answer. But a Question Answering System allows the user to state his/her information need as a natural language question and receives most appropriate answer in a word or a sentence or a paragraph. This system is based on Named Entity Tagging and Question Classification. Document tagging extracts useful information from the documents which will be used in finding the answer to the question. Question Classification extracts useful information from the question to determine the type of the question and the way in which the question is to be answered. Various Machine Learning methods are used to tag the documents. Rule-Based Approach is used for Question Classification. Malayalam belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is one of the four major languages of this family. It is one of the 22 Scheduled Languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala. It is spoken by 40 million people. Malayalam is a morphologically rich agglutinative language and relatively of free word order. Also Malayalam has a productive morphology that allows the creation of complex words which are often highly ambiguous. Document tagging tools such as Parts-of-Speech Tagger, Phrase Chunker, Named Entity Tagger, and Compound Word Splitter are developed as a part of this research work. No such tools were available for Malayalam language. Finite State Transducer, High Order Conditional Random Field, Artificial Immunity System Principles, and Support Vector Machines are the techniques used for the design of these document preprocessing tools. This research work describes how the Named Entity is used to represent the documents. Single sentence questions are used to test the system. Overall Precision and Recall obtained are 88.5% and 85.9% respectively. This work can be extended in several directions. The coverage of non-factoid questions can be increased and also it can be extended to include open domain applications. Reference Resolution and Word Sense Disambiguation techniques are suggested as the future enhancements

Characteristics of ABL during active and weak phases of monsoon

Understanding of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) is imperative in the arena of the monsoon field. Here, the features of the ABL are studied employing Conserved Variable Analysis (CVA) using equivalent potential temperature and humidity. In addition, virtual potential temperature and wind are used during active and weak phases of monsoon. The analysis is carried out utilising the radiosonde observations during the monsoon months for two stations situated in the west coast of India. All these parameters show considerable variations during active and weak monsoon phases in both the stations. The core speed and core height vary with these epochs. The core speed is found to be more than 38 knots in the active monsoon phase around 1.2 km over Trivandrum and around 2 km over Mangalore. But during weak monsoon phase the core wind speed is decreased and core height is elevated over both stations. The wind direction shows an additional along shore component during weak monsoon period. The Convective Boundary Layer (CBL) height shows increase during weak monsoon phase over both stations due to less cloudiness and subsequent insolation. The CBL height during the southwest monsoon is more over Mangalore and is attributed by the orographic lifting in the windward side of the Western Ghats while the influence of the Ghats is less over Trivandrum.

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.

An assessment of potential public health risk associated with the extended survival of indicator and pathogenic bacteria in freshwater lake sediments

Microcosm studies were performed to evaluate the survival of Escherichia coli, Salmonella paratyphi and Vibrio parahaemolyticus in water and sediment collected from the freshwater region of Vembanad Lake (9 35◦N 76 25◦E) along the south west coast of India. All three test microorganisms showed significantly (p < 0.01) higher survival in sediment compared to overlying water. The survival in different sediment types with different particle size and organic carbon content revealed that sediment with small particle size and high organic carbon content could enhance their extended survival (p < 0.05). The results indicate that sediments of the Lake could act as a reservoir of pathogenic bacteria and exhibit a potential health hazard from possible resuspension and subsequent ingestion during recreational activities. Therefore, the assessment of bacterial concentration in freshwater Lake sediments used for contact and non contact recreation has of considerable significance for the proper assessment of microbial pollution of the overlying water, and for the management and protection of related health risk at specific recreational sites. Besides, assessment of the bacterial concentration in sediments can be used as a relatively stable indicator of long term mean bacterial concentration in the water column above

Diversity and antimicrobial activity of Lactic Acid Bacteria from the gut of marine fish Rastrelliger kanagurta against fish, shrimp and human pathogens

Emergence of antibiotic resistance among aquaculture pathogens has made it necessary to look into environment friendly, effective and sustainable methods such as probiotic and immunostimulants among others.. In the present study, LAB were isolated from the gut of fish species namely Rastrelliger kanagurta and analyzed for their antibacterial activity against various fish, shrimp and human pathogens. Different LAB species such as Lactobacillus plantarum, L. bulgaricus, L. brevis and L. viridiscens were encountered in the gut of R. kanagurta. Several strains showed good activity against fish, shrimp and human pathogens. LAB from the gut of such marine species may be developed as possible probiont for environment friendly health management of fresh water, estuarine and marine species currently exploited in aquaculture

“Rights of Women against Domestic Violence - The Law and Emerging Challenges”

Domestic violence is a gender based violation of human rights having multi- dimensional repercussions in the well- being of individuals in family and society. The Indian legislation to protect the women from domestic violence is significant in providing a mechanism for enforcing positive civil rights of protection and injunction orders to the victims of domestic violence along with the existing remedies of criminal sanctions. However the Act was brought in the backdrop of an established tradition of cohesive and stable family setting. This, in turn, results in the emergence of new issues and challenges which necessitates deeper understandings of indigenous sociocultural institutions in India i.e., marriage and family. This study is an attempt to analyse the Indian law on domestic violence and to assess whether the law addresses and answers the problems of domestic violence effectively in the culture specific setting of India

Biogeochemistry of the shelf sediments of south eastern Arabian sea: Effect on benthic bacterial heterotrophs

The composition and variability of heterotrophic bacteria along the shelf sediments of south west coast of India and its relationship with the sediment biogeochemistry was investigated. The bacterial abundance ranged from 1.12 x 103 – 1.88 x 106 CFU g-1 dry wt. of sediment. The population showed significant positive correlation with silt (r = 0.529, p< 0.05), organic carbon (OC) (r = 0.679, p< 0.05), total nitrogen (TN) (r = 0.638, p< 0.05), total protein (TPRT) (r = 0.615, p< 0.05) and total carbohydrate (TCHO) (r = 0.675, p< 0.05) and significant negative correlation with sand (r = -0.488, p< 0.05). Community was mainly composed of Bacillus, Alteromonas, Vibrio, Coryneforms, Micrococcus, Planococcus, Staphylococcus, Moraxella, Alcaligenes, Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Flavobacterium and Aeromonas. BIOENV analysis explained the best possible environmental parameters i.e., carbohydrate, total nitrogen, temperature, pH and sand at 50m depth and organic matter, BPC, protein, lipid and temperature at 200m depth controlling the distribution pattern of heterotrophic bacterial population in shelf sediments. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the environmental variables showed that the first and second principal component accounted for 65% and 30.6% of the data variance respectively. Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) revealed a strong correspondence between bacterial distribution and environmental variables in the study area. Moreover, non-metric MDS (Multidimensional Scaling) analysis demarcated the northern and southern latitudes of the study area based on the bioavailable organic matter