Estimation of Growth Rates and Decomposition Analysis of Major Fruit Crops in Punjab, India

Horticulture has been increasingly significant in supplying key elements to Punjabis’ diets. From 2010-11 to 2018-2019, the study examines the trends and variations in area, production, and yield of fruit crops in Punjab. The state’s trends in fruit area, production, and yield tend to be good for key fruits (citrus, mango, guava, and pear) in practically all areas. The decline in production of guava during the year 2016-17 and in production of pear during the year 2015-16 & 2016-17 was due to downward growth in area in during these years. Results of Cuddy-Della Valle Index indicates that fluctuations in production of major fruits i.e. constantly increasing over time (from 2010-2019); however, instability in their area mounted and reached to the highest levels for guava, mango and pear again in 2017-18 and 2018-19. While, disparity in pear production were the highest in 2015-16 followed by 2016-17. On the basis of growth rate data these can be ascribed to expansion in area to a great extent and remarkably in productivity improvement. During the study period, fruit production differs due to area in guava and pear, though productivity is not changed greatly. The results of decomposition analysis specify comparably intense stimulus of area expansion in production of guava and pear. Due to the scarcity of agricultural land, there are few opportunities to expand the area of fruit crops. As a result, improvements in fruit crop output levels are essential to maintain healthy growth in fruit output

Analysis of the effect of a one-time vibrotherapy treatment on selected skin characteristics, body composition and body circumferences of women with lipodystrophy

Lipodystrophy is a common problem that is more common in women than in men. Among the many methods of therapy, local vibrotherapy can be distinguished. However, the literature does not indicate which parameters describing the vibration stimulus show the optimal effect. The aim of the study was to indicate the vibration parameters which, after a single treatment, will affect selected skin features, composition and body circumferences of women with lipodystrophy. A study was conducted among 33 women who were divided into two groups and underwent a one-time vibration treatment with the use of low and high vibration parameters. Changes in body parameters were noticed in all women. Vibration treatments used to eliminate cellulite must be performed in series. With a single treatment, the use of a less intense stimulus may bring more beneficial effects to the skin. Studies with an extended observation protocol will indicate in the future whether these beneficial effects are adaptable.

Learned Changes in the Sensitivity of Stimulus Representations: Associative and Nonassociative Mechanisms

Central to associative learning theory is the proposal that the concurrent activation of a pair of event representations will establish or strengthen a link between them. Associative theorists have devoted much energy to establishing what representations are involved in any given learning paradigm and the rules that determine the degree to which the link is strengthened. They have paid less attention to the question of what determines that a representation will be activated, assuming, for the case of classical conditioning, that presentation of an appropriately intense stimulus from an appropriate modality will be enough. But this assumption is unjustified. Ipresent the results of experiments on the effects of stimulus exposure in rats that suggest that mere exposure to a stimulus can influence its perceptual effectiveness—that the ability of a stimulus to activate its representation can be changed by experience. This conclusion is of interest for two reasons. First, it supplies a direct explanation for the phenomenon of perceptual learning—the enhancement of stimulus discriminability produced by some forms of stimulus exposure. Second, it poses a theoretical challenge in that it seems to require the existence of a learning mechanism outside the scope of those envisaged by current formal theories of associative learning. I offer some speculations as to how this mechanism might be incorporated into such theories.

Psychometric Functions for Loudness Discomfort and Most Comfortable Loudness Levels

Adaptive procedures were used to determine psychometric functions for loudness discomfort level (LDL) and most comfortable loudness (MCL) for pure tones and speech using normal and hearing-impaired listeners. For the LDL, both groups demonstrated steeply rising functions with the 50% point at ∼ 100 dB SPL. The MCL data resulted in two functions, one (Function A) differentiating MCL from less intense stimulus levels and the second (Function B) differentiating between MCL and more intense levels. Function A may be considered a lower bound and Function B an upper bound for MCL. For the normal listeners, the difference between the functions at 50% response ranged from 9.9 to 19.9 dB depending upon the experimental condition. For the hearing-impaired subjects, this range was restricted to ∼ 4.5 dB, primarily as a result of a shift in Function A toward higher sound pressure levels.

Stimulation of Hematopoiesis by Femoral Marrow Curettage in Sublethally Irradiated Mice

Femoral bone marrow curettage produced an intense stimulus on hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) in sublethally irradiated mice 4 days after curettage. A similar but lesser stimulation of 59Fe incorporation into spleen and red cells was observed. Previous investigations have shown that this effect is not observed in unirradiated mice. Histologic studies of the curetted femurs indicated a rapid regeneration of a primitive mesenchymal tissue within the medullary cavities during the period of stimulation. It is suggested that the primitive mesenchymal cells synthesize a humoral factor that is capable of stimulating HSC in a marrow microenvironment of depleted cellularity. The observations are consistent with a hypothesis of inhibition of HSC response to a similar stimulus in a normocellular marrow by a mechanism of cell-cell interaction. The humoral factor affects HSC similar to fetuin, spleen extract, and alpha globulin fractions.

Habituation To Auditory Stimuli in Mice

Mice subjected to auditory stimuli (clicks containing ultrasonic components, tones, or combinations of the two) once every 30 seconds showed a variety of responses. The initial orienting response and static exploration waned in about 5 minutes. There was also a longer-lasting increase in exploratory behaviour, elicited by the clicks and/or the tones, which waned after 3 hours. Finally jerks and other movements elicited primarily during sleep by the click components (though they could also be elicited from waking animals with a more intense stimulus) laster for 49 hours or more. Thus the various types of response elicited by auditory stimuli wane at different rates: the variation in habituation rate appears not to be merely a consequence of stimulus intensity.

Correlates of Reaction Time to Startle

The present study was concerned with behavioral and physiological correlates of response time to high intensity, 'unexpected' auditory stimuli. Stimuli consisted of an initial 120 db startle tone followed by a series of 50 tones of 75 db and a final 120 db startle tone. Sub-jects responded by moving a control stick as rapidly as possible to the onset of each tone. Continuous recordings of heart rate and skin resistance were taken. Autonomic reactivity to the first intense stimulus was found to be positively correlated with response latency, while response time to the final intense stimulus suggests a negative relationship to autonomic levels and reactivity. The primary effect of the second high intensity tone was to significantly exaggerate pre-existing differences between individuals in their reaction time to the preceding moderate intensity stimuli. Possible relationships of this differential stress response to concepts of excitation and inhibition are briefly discussed.

The Effect of Erythropoietic Stimulation on the Hemopoietic Colony-forming Cells of Mice

The effect of prolonged hypoxia on the mouse hemopoietic system has been examined in order to ascertain the effect of this intense stimulus on quantitative measures of differentiation and proliferation on the erythropoietic system. The first change that was observed (2-3 days after hypoxia) was a marked increase in the in vitro iron incorporation of the spleen cells and a less marked increase of that of the marrow cells. Later (at 4 days), there was an increase in peripheral reticulocytes. Following both of these events there was a marked decrease in the number of colony-forming cells in the spleen of the hypoxic mice but no change in the number in the marrow. We conclude that the primitive erythroid precursor that is sensitive to erythropoietic stimulation is not the colony-forming cell. We suggest, instead, that the late decrease in colony-forming cells in the spleen is a response to a depleted pool of cells sensitive to erythropoietin and that colony-forming cells are differentiated to produce more of these cells.

Stimulus Intensity and Attention in Relation to Learning Theory

Three experiments are described which test the hypothesis that the more intense of two stimuli will, ceteris paribus, be more likely to receive attention. It is assumed that an objective behavioural manifestation of attention to a given stimulus is a preference for responding to it rather than to another which is present at the same time. In all three experiments, successions of pairs of visual stimuli interspersed with single stimuli were presented to the subject, and he was instructed to respond to either (by pressing its corresponding morsekey), but not both, in the case of the pairs. The first two experiments reveal significant tendencies to respond to the larger and the brighter stimulus respectively. In the third experiment, there was a tendency, but a statistically insignificant one, to respond to a constant rather than to a flickering stimulus. It is shown that the attraction of attention by a more intense stimulus follows from Hull's system with the addition of his new variable, “stimulus-intensity dynamism (V),” and it is suggested that it may thus be possible to add attention to the phenomena that can be integrated with an objective behaviour theory.

The reaction of living tissues to homogeneous x-radiation produced by crystal diffraction

The adaptation of the X-ray spectrometer to a biological investigation has been described in previous papers (1925 and 1930). The allantoic membrane of the embryo chick was used a standard tissue and effects or destruction, the latter representing a higher degree of change associated with a more intense stimulus. The energy available after crystal diffraction is so small that it is necessary to make certain assumption when biological changes can be obtained in a reasonable time of exposure. It would appear that there is a neutralising action between frequencies and that action of any one frequency is selective with respect to another. There is ample experimental evidence of the neutralising action which was termed antagonism and of a selective action (1930, a and b ).