Turtle landing

A Olive Ridely turtle, Olivacea Lepiodochelys wascaughtinagillnetatMirkarwad, Ratnagiri coast on 24 December. The carapace length was 34 inch, width 27 inch and weight was 25k

Emerging light and hand jigging fishery for cephalopods along Ratnagiri coast, Maharashtra

Cephalopods have emerged as one of the prime foreign exchange earners in India. Trawl nets operating up to 100 m depth account for nearly 85% of the cephalopod landings and use of high opening bottom trawl nets resulted in rapid increase in production. Other gears that exploit cephalopods as bycatch are boat seines, purse seines and dol nets. Jigging, a specialised fishing method developed for cephalopods in Japan, has slowly emerged in India too. Cephalopod jigging by hand has been reported along various places such as Vizhinjam, Kanyakumari, Palk Bay coast, Tuticorin, Karnataka, Devipattinam and Keelakarai in the Gulf of Mannar. The present report of squid jigging off Ratnagiri appears to be the first report from the state of Maharashtr

On a bumper catch of catfish Tachysurus thalassinus landed at Mirkarwada, Ratnagiri

A bumper catch of catfish Tachysurus thalassinus was landed at Mirkarwada, Ratnagiri on 20-3-1993

पिंजऱ्याची बांधणी : तत्त्व आणि आराखडा

The culture of finfishes in cages has been practiced for years in countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hongkong. Cage was first used as a holding facility for fish. True cage culture was said to have started in 1243 in China. Use of modern cage materials like synthetic nets, woods and metals started in early 1960’s. The size and shape of the cages are very important for the growth and production of the fishes/ shell fishes living inside it. The design will vary depending on the selected site. The constructed cage must withstand the force of wind and wave while holding the stock safely. The cage must be safe, secure and easy to manage. Circular cage bags make the most efficient use of materials, and thus have the lowest costs per unit volume. Shape is likely to influence effective stocking densities and swimming behaviour, which in turn can influence production. Fish cages can be constructed from a variety of materials. All materials used for the cage should be durable, nontoxic, and rustproof

Occurrence of Octopus dollfusi Robson 1928 in Maharashtra waters

Octopus fishery is gaining momentum in India especially along the north-west coast. The major centres in Mumbai where octopi are landed by trawlers are New Ferry Wharf, Sassoon docks and Versova. Cephalopods comprise about 10.5% of trawl landings of Maharashtra with octopus contributing 7.1% (CMFRI, 2006)

Synthesis of Cuprous Oxide (Cu2O) Nanoparticles – a Review

Cuprous Oxide (Cu2O) a semiconductor material oxide; with unique optoelectronic properties; gains significant importance for its synthesis in view of its various technological and industrial applications. A few liquid phase methods for the synthesis of Cu2O nanoparticles are reviewed on the basis of materials, methodology, synthesis conditions and key findings. A comparative study of these methods is also performed following criteria of repeatability, safety, cost, time span and simplicity. Contextual to the above mentioned criteria, three liquid phase synthesis techniques were shortlisted and actually experimented (as reported) to synthesize the Cu2O nanoparticles. This was done to investigate the effectiveness, repeatability and stability of the synthesized Cu2O product as a function of ageing time. The synthesized Cu2O using all these techniques are prone to be unstable and undergo the rapid phase change to CuO phase which was ascertained from the shift of absorbance peak in UV-VIS spectra. The results have highlighted the urgent need to develop a facile, economical, scalable and safe method to synthesize stable Cu2O nanoparticles at room temperature

Record of complete albinism in marine catfish, Osteogeneiosus militaris (Linnaeus, 1758), landed at Mumbai

Albinism is due to one of several gene mutations that affect the normal pigmentation. There are various degrees of albinism. True albino or amelanistic animals lack melanin and are white with unpigmented pink eyes

Extended release delivery system of metoprolol succinate using hot-melt extrusion: effect of release modifier on methacrylic acid copolymer

The current study reports on the manufacturing of extended release dosage forms of metoprolol succinate via hot-melt extrusion (HME) technology. Either Eudragit®S100 and Eudragit®L100 alone or in combination with release modifying agent Polyox™ WSR 303 and Eudragit®L100-55 were processed to obtain complete and faster release. Metoprolol succinate with similar solubility parameters to polymer was dispersed in polymer matrix and was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Stability of drug after extrusion was confirmed by thermogravimetric analysis and high-performance liquid chromatography. Physical characterization method exhibited that the drug was homogeneously dispersed in non-crystalline state in Eudragit®L100-55-based formulations whereas in semi-crystalline state in Polyox™ WSR 303. The drug release percentage was below 3 and 40% in 0.1 N HCL with Eudragit®L100-55- and Polyox™ WSR 303-containing formulations, respectively, and exhibited pH-dependent dissolution properties. The drug-release mechanism was anomalous with Polyox™ WSR 303 formulations whereas diffusion through pore formation was obtained with Eudragit®L100-55. Both Eudragit®L100-55 and Polyox™ WSR 303 changed the release mechanism and kinetics of drug release from thermally processed dosage forms. The optimized stable formulation is similar to the marketed formulation with F2 value of 72.36. Thus, it can be concluded that HME was exploited as an effective process for the preparation of controlled release matrix system based on pH-dependent polymer matrices Eudragit®S100 and Eudragit®L100

How to Influence People with Partial Incentives

We study the power of fractional allocations of resources to maximize influence in a network. This work extends in a natural way the well-studied model by Kempe, Kleinberg, and Tardos (2003), where a designer selects a (small) seed set of nodes in a social network to influence directly, this influence cascades when other nodes reach certain thresholds of neighbor influence, and the goal is to maximize the final number of influenced nodes. Despite extensive study from both practical and theoretical viewpoints, this model limits the designer to a binary choice for each node, with no way to apply intermediate levels of influence. This model captures some settings precisely, e.g. exposure to an idea or pathogen, but it fails to capture very relevant concerns in others, for example, a manufacturer promoting a new product by distributing five "20% off" coupons instead of giving away one free product. While fractional versions of problems tend to be easier to solve than integral versions, for influence maximization, we show that the two versions have essentially the same computational complexity. On the other hand, the two versions can have vastly different solutions: the added flexibility of fractional allocation can lead to significantly improved influence. Our main theoretical contribution is to show how to adapt the major positive results from the integral case to the fractional case. Specifically, Mossel and Roch (2006) used the submodularity of influence to obtain their integral results; we introduce a new notion of continuous submodularity, and use this to obtain matching fractional results. We conclude that we can achieve the same greedy $(1-1/e-\epsilon)$-approximation for the fractional case as the integral case. In practice, we find that the fractional model performs substantially better than the integral model, according to simulations on real-world social network data