Inter-collaboration Network among Institutional Actors of Agricultural Knowledge Information System (AKIS): A Comparative Study between Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri Districts of West Bengal, India

Agricultural extension institutions play different roles at village level. There is always a need of inter-collaboration network between different institutions. Information exchange among these organizations is important for technology generation, information dissemination and adoption. So, it is imperative to know the inter collaboration network among the institutional actors which requires proper investigation and analysis. A few works were found in India on inter-collaboration network among the institutional actors of Agricultural Knowledge Information System (AKIS). The objective of the study was to find out the inter-collaboration network among institutional actors of AKIS of two different districts of West Bengal and their comparative evaluation. The data were collected from 84 respondents from 19 different institutions employing a random sampling technique. The data were analysed through UCINET 6 and Netdraw software. It was found from the study that Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Comprehensive Area Development Corporation (CADC), Agricultural line department through Assistant Director of Agriculture (ADA), Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) and Farmer Producers’ Organisations (FPO) play a pivotal role in this network. It was found also from the study that Cooch Behar district had stronger inter-collaboration network among its institution’s actors than Jalpaiguri district.

The Effect of Marketing Strategies on the Tourism Development of Archaeological Sites

The current study aims to test the impact of marketing strategies on tourism development, as well as to identify the nature of the practice and interest of the Antiquities and Heritage Authority and its affiliated sites, as the importance of the study stems from the limitations of previous studies that tried to identify and know the type of relationship between research variables (marketing strategies, tourism development) Add to this the researcher's attempt to address a realistic problem that mainly affects the tasks and work of the Antiquities and Heritage Authority at the near and far level, so the study adopted the intentional stratified sampling method, and distributed (100) questionnaires as a main tool for data collection, to (director, assistant director, head of department, responsible (Division, employee) at the headquarters of the Commission, and the number of recovered persons was (86), of which (79) were a questionnaire suitable for statistical analysis. Analytical, historical method, and statistical methods were used to analyze the practical aspect (weighted mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, relative importance, T-test, simple correlation coefficient Pearson, regression etc. The simple and multiple folding), and the descriptive and inferential statistical analysis has concluded the most prominent result, by employing the Antiquities and Heritage Authority for marketing strategies in tourism development, especially when it uses the market-oriented strategy, focusing on the main customers, and organizational efficiency in promoting the tourism development of the Authority.

Hou Xiaoxian as Ambassador

This chapter closely traces the evolution of Hou Xiaoxian's contentious modes of place making while he shot on-location in China for the “Taiwan Trilogy," where Southern Chinese locales sometimes substituted for Taiwan’s historical settings. Location shooting in China for City of Sadness presented Hou with his first opportunity to perform a role as a cultural ambassador in an unprecedented period of cross-strait geopolitical thaw. After cross-strait relations became more normalized, Hou widely publicized his intentions of location shooting in Fujian for The Puppetmaster (1993). During this shoot, Hou articulated his theory of “authenticating life,” or the reenactment of lived experience. To authenticate the life of famed Taiwanese puppeteer Li Tianlu, whom he believed to be a living embodiment of Chinese-ness, Hou re-staged live budaixi shows in Fujian, hoping the environmental aura of present-day China would conjure for Li memories of colonial-era Taiwan. Assistant director Chen Huaien, however, counters that it was Taiwanese culture which required salvaging, not China’s. “Authenticating life,” Chen implied, relied on inauthentic means of reenactment to produce what only felt superficially authentic. The final section explores this contradiction as it is manifested in Good Men, Good Women (1995) – Hou’s first, and final film to feature present-day Chinese settings. I demonstrate that the filmmakers were unable to experience their production environments in Guangdong as anything more than through a “tourist gaze.” Hou finally experienced the constraints of “authenticating life,” and more broadly, the complexities of salvaging cultural Chinese heritage in an increasingly volatile period of cross-strait relations.

Mapping of Agriculture Knowledge Information System for Betel Vine Growers

Studying Agriculture Knowledge Information System (AKIS) in terms of generation, dissemination, transformation, utilization, storage and retrieval of knowledge and information is needed for Agriculture development. Study was conducted in purposively selected Nadia district of West Bengal. Betel vine growers, extentionists and researchers were considered as respondents. Information obtained from all the actors of AKIS was summarized in matrix from to analyze the extent of information exchange among various actors pertaining to cultural practices, plant protection techniques and harvesting of betel vine cultivation. The matrix revealed that information flow was linear in majority of the cases. The feedback got blocked with some of the actors, as upstream flow of information was weak. The present study was undertaken to study the existing Farmer-Extensionists-Researcher linkage as perceived by the linkage matrix with AKIS. A total of 200 farmers responding Karimpur 1, Karimpur 2, Krishnaganj and Chakdah block of Nadia district were selected for the study. The district and blocks were selected purposively for the study. Farmers were selected by the simple random sampling method. The result of the study reveal that betel growers had low linkage with researcher and were found maximum linkage with extension workers like Assistant Director of Agriculture, Krishi Projukti Sohaok, Opinion leaders, Dealers etc.

Data middle platform construction: The strategy and practice of National Bureau of Statistics of China

To address the data ‘islandization’ issue in the statistical field and to take advantage of the opportunity of the Statistical Cloud construction, the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) started adopting the concept of a “data middle platform” for data resource planning. With it, NBS aims to build a comprehensive data capability platform that includes data collection and exchange; data sharing and integration; data organizing and processing; data modeling and analyses; data management and governance; and data service and application. The statistical data middle platform provides the basic capability for data application support. It also enables data to form a closed loop between the data middle platform and the business system, and eventually realizes the ‘servitization’ of statistical data that meets internal and societal requirements. As a new innovative development, the statistical data middle platform will not only solve the long-standing data island problem of NBS but will also provide a basic guarantee for greater use of the data potential, and thus will help official statistics to transform from statistical analysis to predictive analysis, from single-domain to cross-domain, from passive analysis to active analysis, and from non-real-time to real-time analysis. The paper was prepared under the kind mentorship of Ronald Jansen, Assistant Director and Chief of Data Innovation at the UN Statistics Division in New York.

HUGH SACKETT (1928–2020)

Hugh Sackett (1928–2020) was a leading figure of the British School at Athens and British archaeology in Greece for over 60 years, while teaching throughout that time at Groton School in Massachusetts in the USA. He was best known for being a meticulous excavator, who almost always worked in collaboration with other scholars, a great teacher, and a generous and modest person, and also for his unusual breadth of vision. His interests – and field projects – ranged from Classical Attica to prehistoric and Early Iron Age Euboea (where he co-directed excavations at Lefkandi with Mervyn Popham) and Minoan Palaikastro and Roman Knossos in Crete: all of them have been major contributions to the history of Greece. He was Assistant Director of the British School at Athens in 1961–3 and, later, became a Vice-President; he was also the first President of the British School at Athens Foundation in the USA. His greatest honour was to receive the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America, the only schoolteacher to do so. It was a just reward for his research and for introducing Greece to many generations of schoolboys and girls.

The Other Sex of Polish Cinema. The Contribution of Female Filmmakers to Feature Film Production in the People’s Republic of Poland

The paper is dedicated to the Polish female filmmakers – contributors to feature film production from the period 1945–1989 in the Polish state film industry. The theoretical framework is based on women’s studies and production studies. Author presents and comments on the numbers from the quantitative research, including credits of feature films production, divided into key positions: director, scriptwriter, cinematographer, music, editor, production manager, set designer and assistant director, costume designer. The results are presented in graphics and commented in 5 years blocs. The analysis leads to the conclusions describing the specificity of emancipation in socialist Poland in the area of creative work.

History of the Indiana Geological and Water Survey

Not an abstract, per se, but the opening paragraph. The early years of the Survey’s history (1837–1986) is taken, almost verbatim, from an article written by John B. Patton (Director and State Geologist from 1959–86) (Patton, 1988). Information from later years is from various sources: the Hester years from a piece by John R. Hill (IGS Geologist and Assistant Director from 1970 to 2007) and the Steinmetz years from the reminiscences of John C. Steinmetz (Director, 1998–2015). It also includes various facts taken from Landmarks in Indiana Geology—A Timeline, an online visual history by Henry H. Gray. These various pieces were edited and expanded upon by Deborah A. DeChurch (IGWS Editor, 1992–2020), with the assistance of Nancy R. Hasenmueller, Barbara T. Hill, Jenna Lanman, Polly R. Sturgeon, and Todd A. Thompson. We also relied upon the institutional memories of other staff members.

Bringing Essanay’s “Special Eastern” to Ithaca

This chapter describes Ted Wharton's brief stay in Ithaca, wherein he shot Football Days at Cornell (1912), the picture that would prove to be a turning point in his career. Convinced that the town would be an ideal location for a full season of summer shooting, he pressed George K. Spoor, cofounder of Essanay, to allow him to establish a temporary Ithaca studio facility. Spoor agreed to authorize the venture, and in May of 1913, Ted returned to Ithaca with the “Special Eastern,” a complete company of some twenty crew members and photoplayers, including the studio's biggest star, Francis X. Bushman, and his frequent leading lady Beverly Bayne. The Hermit of Lonely Gulch was the first of the pictures the “Special Eastern” would produce that season, and it proved to be an excellent start. Other pictures produced that season include Sunlight, For Old Time's Sake, A Woman Scorned, Tony the Fiddler, and Dear Old Girl. The chapter then considers assistant director Archer MacMackin, who—working under Ted's close supervision—kept himself and the company busy throughout the summer with rehearsals and production. The Toll of the Marshes would be the last picture filmed by Ted's Essanay “Special Eastern.” After the company decided against opening a permanent eastern studio, Ted terminated his contractual association with Essanay and moved to Ithaca to form his own independent production company.

‘An indefatigable intermediary’

At a time when museum curatorship in America was in its infancy, Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967) scouted and negotiated for outstanding works of art for the cash-rich Cleveland Museum of Art, which opened to the public in 1916. As its European representative (1925–41), he acquired such masterworks as the Stroganoff Ivory, El Greco’s Holy Family with St Mary Magdalen, and the Warren tondo by Filippino Lippi, all during the late 1920s. During a lifetime’s work in the art market, in which he worked for private collectors and other museums, this was his most important achievement. What he acquired for the Cleveland Museum is vividly recounted in the art agent’s correspondence, until now, almost entirely unpublished. After moving to Rome in 1910, Parsons first served as ‘an indefatigable intermediary’ in the world market for antiquities. Later, with the blessing of Edward Waldo Forbes and Paul J. Sachs – director and assistant director, respectively, of Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum – and with a host of European contacts, he was able to ‘gun for’ art for an ever expanding number of clients.