Showing papers by "National Institute of Rural Development published in 2012"

The complete swine olfactory subgenome: expansion of the olfactory gene repertoire in the pig genome

Abstract: Insects and animals can recognize surrounding environments by detecting thousands of chemical odorants. Olfaction is a complicated process that begins in the olfactory epithelium with the specific binding of volatile odorant molecules to dedicated olfactory receptors (ORs). OR proteins are encoded by the largest gene superfamily in the mammalian genome. We report here the whole genome analysis of the olfactory receptor genes of S. scrofa using conserved OR gene specific motifs and known OR protein sequences from diverse species. We identified 1,301 OR related sequences from the S. scrofa genome assembly, Sscrofa10.2, including 1,113 functional OR genes and 188 pseudogenes. OR genes were located in 46 different regions on 16 pig chromosomes. We classified the ORs into 17 families, three Class I and 14 Class II families, and further grouped them into 349 subfamilies. We also identified inter- and intra-chromosomal duplications of OR genes residing on 11 chromosomes. A significant number of pig OR genes (n = 212) showed less than 60% amino acid sequence similarity to known OR genes of other species. As the genome assembly Sscrofa10.2 covers 99.9% of the pig genome, our analysis represents an almost complete OR gene repertoire from an individual pig genome. We show that S. scrofa has one of the largest OR repertoires, suggesting an expansion of OR genes in the swine genome. A significant number of unique OR genes in the pig genome may suggest the presence of swine specific olfactory stimulation.

Estimation and determinants of chronic poverty in India: An Alternative approach

Abstract: The chronically poor are generally identified using longitudinal household panel data on income or expenditure. The basic motivation for our approach is to overcome the absence of a nationally representative panel data in analysing chronic poverty issues. A household is identified as chronically poor if its income is below the poverty line and if its children are suffering from malnutrition for a longer period of time. Making use of a set of common variables available in two nationally representative surveys (that deal with the estimation of consumer expenditure and malnutrition), the incidence of chronic poverty is estimated among the different social groups and across the various states of India. The paper aims to improve our understanding of the determinants of chronic poverty by considering economic, demographic and social factors. It attempts to answer specific questions such as: how important is household income as a determinant of chronic poverty? What factors inhibit escape from chronic poverty? How different are the ‘other poor’ from the chronically poor? Demographic pressure, low wage rates for households offering labour in rural and urban areas, low household income, and social factors all have a significant impact on chronic poverty. Chronically poor households tend to be concentrated at the lower end of family lifecycle. The ‘other’ poor households may be able to move out of chronic poverty because of their small household size, as well as the more intensive use of labour, including child labour. While the wage rates of labour households do not show much difference between the chronic and other poor households, they are substantially higher for non-poor households. Hence, a higher wage rate is of paramount importance in lifting labour households from poverty. Improvement in household income is crucial for reducing the incidence of both chronic poverty and other poverty. A 10 percent increase in the per capita expenditure of chronically poor households would lift about one‑third of these families from chronic poverty and one-sixth of them from poverty. Roughly, a 60 percent increase in per capita expenditure would be required to lift all chronically poor households from poverty. This would be a stupendous task, considering the fact that in the 1990s per capita expenditure of the bottom 30 percent increased at 1.5 percent per annum.

Impact assessment of watershed in desert region

Abstract: Change detection from different temporal images usually based on reflectance on natural and human activity impact, using integrated GIS, Remote Sensing and image processing technologies enable impact assessment of watershed in desert region. A time series analysis of seasonal NDVI have been used to estimate net primary productivity, phonological characteristic of vegetative surface, length of growing season and dry drown periods (Ramsey et al ., 1995). The study is designed to achieve the objectives to Study the changes in vegetation for selected watershed in a desert districts of Bhilwara, Barmer & Jaisalmer in Rajastan State of India, to identify the changes in density of vegetation, to assess the temporal changes and to assess the impact of the watershed, with an objective to conserve the soil erosion and harvest the rainwater in order to increase the ground water table, to improve the socio economic condition of the people and to stop the migration of the people from the villages in search of livelihood. These activities will have a direct impact on the crop production. The Changes in density of vegetation indicates the quantity of crop production and the growth of vegetation apart from crops and the conservation of land with out scrub/barren land to land with scrub. This gives an picture about the impact of watershed programme in increasing the vegetative cover. The temporal changes help in understanding the changes taken place in the watershed, and facilitate understand the positive as well as negative impacts of any decisions taken in the implementation. The extent and density and type of vegetation for the years, 2000,2004,2005,2007 and 2008, was studied and vegetation growth was analysed using GIS and Digital Image Processing techniques.