Study on mitigation of ammonia volatilization loss in urea through adsorbents

Volatilized ammonia loss (VAL) and toxicity are major disadvantages on urea amendment. In order to mitigate, slow (or) controlled release urea based fertilizers are prepared with low cost materials. Therefore, micro and nano-sized adsorbents such as zeolite, biochar were impregnated with urea @1:1 ratio for fertilizer formulations. The objective of the study was to evaluate the VAL rate. To study the effect of soil texture, incubation experiment on two different soils of Tamil Nadu (TypicHaplustalf and VerticUstropepts) with 4 physically mixed, 4 fabricated, conventional urea and control without urea determined. Fertilizer formulations were surface applied @ 250 kg N ha-1 and assessed the VAL rate for 16 days. The trapped ammonia was observed with colour change from pink to greenish and titrated with diluted sulfuric acid. Initial 3 days VAL rate was high on urea, physically mixed adsorbent fertilizers than urea impregnated fertilizers and colour change was observed on every 4-6 h of both soils. In contrast, the urea impregnated fertilizers had colour change after 9-10 h regardless of adsorbent and soils. The fabricated fertilizer observed VAL rate on gradual with low quantity on T5- Zeourea (13.5 days, 15.1 days) T6- Nano-zeourea (15.5 days, 16 days), T9- Biourea (7.5 days, 7.1 days) and T10- Nano-biourea (9 days, 9.7 days) than T2- Urea (5.5 days, 4.6 days) of Alfisols and Inceptisols respectively. Cumulative VAL rate percentage was low on T5- Zeourea (30 %, 34 %), T6- Nano-zeourea (28 %, 29.3 %) T9- Biourea (39 %, 41.5 %) and T10- Nano-biourea (36 %, 37.5 %) of Alfisols and Inceptisols, respectively on comparison with other fertilizer type.It is concluded that the surface amendment of physically mixed fertilizers not influenced any change on both soils. Urea impregnation influenced on days and cumulative VAL percentage. Our study elucidates that micro and nano porous adsorbents are potential substrate to reduce VAL rate of urea in both soils

Internal Tide Generation Using Green Function Analysis: To WKB or Not to WKB?

An established analytical technique for modeling internal tide generation by barotropic flow over bottom topography in the ocean is the Green function–based approach. To date, however, for realistic ocean studies this method has relied on the WKB approximation. In this paper, the complete Green function method, without the WKB approximation, is developed and tested, and in the process, the accuracy of the WKB approximation for realistic ridge geometries and ocean stratifications is considered. For isolated Gaussian topography, the complete Green function approach is shown to be accurate via close agreement with the results of numerical simulations for a wide range of height ratios and criticality; in contrast, the WKB approach is found to be inaccurate for small height ratios in the subcritical regime and all tall topography that impinges on the pycnocline. Two ocean systems are studied, the Kaena and Wyville Thomson Ridges, for which there is again excellent agreement between the complete Green function approach and numerical simulations, and the WKB approximate solutions have substantial errors. This study concludes that the complete Green function approach, which is typically only modestly more computationally expensive than the WKB approach, should be the go-to analytical method to model internal tide generation for realistic ocean ridge scenarios.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grants OCE 0645529 and OCE1129757

Ethnomedicinal Survey of Medicinal Plants Used for the Treatment of Diabetes and Jaundice Among the Villagers of Sivagangai District, Tamilnadu

The present study revealed that totally 12 and 10 modes of treatment were followed by the rural people of Sivagangai district to cure diabetes and jaundice respectively. The rural people of the study area were used 17 plants for diabetes and 12 for jaundice. Among them, 6 plants viz., Azadirachta indica, Carum nothum, Cynodon dactylon, Lablab purpureus, Momordica charantia and Phyllanthus amarus were used to cure both diabetes and jaundice. The plants were used either separately or in combination with other plants. These ethnomedicinal data may provide a base to start the search the new compounds related to phytochemistry, pharmacology and pharmacognosy. Attention should also be made on proper exploitation and utilization of these medicinal plants

A Modified Polybius Square Based Approach for Enhancing Data Security

Digital communication is the prominent technique used by various organizations for information exchange. It replaces the traditional methods with the help of internet and its related technologies. There is a chance to retrieve the contents of the transmitted message from the unsecure communication medium. The biggest challenge is to deploy a suitable mechanism for secure communication. Cryptography plays a dominant role in the information security domain. This paper proposes a modified Polybius square based approach for efficient key generation. New key is obtained from the original key by performing three different operations on modified Polybius square namely Square ring rotation, Square reversal and Transpose. From the security analysis it can be inferred that the proposed approach generates an efficient key

Human Resource Development for Agricultural Sector in India

The paper describes a system dynamics model developed for dynamic analysis of human resource development for the agricultural sector in different sources of employment, viz., government, private (including corporate), academic, financial institutes, non-governmental organizations, self employment, and others in India. Besides projecting an overall scenario for continuation of current agricultural education policy and trends, the paper analyses simulated results from the model for the current curriculum with 80:20 proportion of technical to soft skills. The analysis shows that in the coming years the private sector will emerge as a major employer for the graduates of agriculture and allied sciences