A Review on Rice Straw Management Strategies

Rice straw is one of the organic materials and natural residue of rice crop or paddy material and is the third-largest residue from agriculture after sugarcane bagasse and maize straw. Southeast Asian countries produce approximately 80% of rice production in the world. It leads to a large quantity of rice straw as a by-product every year. Surplus rice straw is a focal issue associated with storage of rice straw, removal of entire straw from the field, and very little time between the cultivation of the crop. Stubble burning is a quick, cheap, and efficient way to prepare the soil bed for wheat, the next crop. Rice straw has both nutrient and calorific values. Straw is the only organic material available in significant quantities to most rice farmers. About 40 percent of the nitrogen (N), 30 to 35 percent of the phosphorus (P), 80 to 85 percent of the potassium (K), and 40 to 50 percent of the sulfur (S) taken up by rice remains in vegetative plant parts at crop maturity. Straw is either removed from the field, burned in situ, piled or spread in the field, or incorporated in the soil. Open burning of the crop residue kills useful microflora of soil, leads to soil degradation, and contributes to harmful greenhouse gases such as SO2, NO2, CH4, N2O, carbon monoxide in the atmosphere including the hydrocarbon and particulate matter. Therefore, rice straw burning is a serious creator of environmental pollution. The study investigated environment-friendly options of rice straw such as bedding material for cattle, mushroom cultivation, nutrition in the soil, power generation, combustion material, pellet making, bio-gas, bio-ethanol, bio-char, acoustic material, 3D objects, cardboard and composite board, packaging materials, production of bio-composite, cement bricks, and handmade paper. The key purpose of this paper is to provide environmentally friendly alternatives to rice straw instead of open field burning.

Does Protest Against Police Violence Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities, 1990 through 2019

An underlying premise of democratic politics is that protest can be an effective form of civic engagement that shapes policy changes desired by marginalized groups. But it is not certain that this premise holds up under scrutiny. This article presents a three-part argument that protest (1) signals the salience of a movement’s focal issue and expands awareness that an issue is a social problem requiring a solution, (2) empowers residents in disadvantaged communities and raises a sense of community cohesion, which together (3) raise costs and exert pressure on elites to make concessions. The empirical analysis examines the likelihood that a city will establish a civilian review board (CRB). It then compares the effects of protest and CRB presence on counts of officer-involved fatalities by race and ethnicity. Two main hypotheses about the effect of protest are supported: cities with more protest against police brutality are significantly more likely to establish a CRB, and protest against police brutality reduces officer-involved fatalities for African American and Latino (but not for White) individuals. However, the establishment of CRBs does not reduce fatalities, as some have hoped. Nonetheless, mobilizing against police brutality matters, even in the absence of civilian review boards.

Cognitive diversity promotes social learning - but only when cognitive differences are obscured

Cognitive diversity is often assumed to catalyze creativity and innovation by promoting social learning. Yet the learning benefits of cognitive diversity often fail to materialize. Why does cognitive diversity promote social learning in some contexts but not in others? We propose that the answer partly lies in the complex interplay between cognitive diversity and cognitive homophily: The likelihood of individuals learning from one another, and thus changing their views about a substantive issue, depends crucially on whether they are aware of the cognitive similarities and differences that exist between them. When social identities and cognitive associations about concepts related to a focal issue are obscured, we theorize that cognitive diversity will promote social learning by exposing people to novel ideas. When cognitive diversity is instead made salient, we anticipate that a cognitive homophily response is activated that extinguishes cognitive diversity’s learning benefits---even when social identity cues and other categorical distinctions are suppressed. To evaluate these ideas, we introduce a novel experimental paradigm and report the results of four pre-registered studies (N=1,325) that lend support to our theory. We discuss implications for research on social influence, collective intelligence, and cognitive diversity in groups.

Rebounding through the pandemic: towards the digitized and digitalized small hospitality business in China

Purpose Grappling with the sweeping pandemic, the small hospitality business (SHB), smaller in scale and weaker in risk mitigation, has been seriously affected. The purpose of this study aims to supplement the unrepresented area of SHB in China from the digital perspective by drawing on instrumentalization theory (IT). Design/methodology/approach Based on two appropriate and detailed SHB cases, this paper adopted a qualitative approach to understand and conceptualize the focal issue. Findings This study identified the factors affecting SHB at operational, managerial and transformational levels amidst the crisis. It further developed a theoretical framework of the SHB rebound matrix, highlighting the importance of digitization and digitalization. Research limitations/implications The research theoretically confirmed that SHB is internally, externally and essentially restricted and developed a corresponding rebound matrix. It practically supports SHB’s transformation by making recommendations to unleash the potential of digital business. Originality/value This study complements extant descriptive and atheoretical research by focusing on SHB’s underlying digital nature through the lens of IT, providing an evidenced theoretical understanding of SHB’s development amidst and after the pandemic.

Plausible Scenarios for Thai Energy Businesses in the Next 30 Years

The energy sector is currently facing different challenges. It is necessary for business leaders to understand the forthcoming changes that will affect their businesses in order to prepare themselves for any uncertainties and take advantage of new opportunities. This paper identifies changes that are expected to have an impact on Thailand’s energy system in the next 30 years and explores plausible scenarios for Thailand’s energy sector under such changes. The study starts with an examination of global and local circumstances. The examination pinpoints a focal issue as “to achieve sustainable development goals (SDG) by 2050”. Then, STEEP analysis is implemented to identify business drivers in social (S), technological (T), economical (E), ecological (E), and political (P) aspects. Subsequently, consultations with stakeholders are arranged to finalize the critical uncertainties. Policy and technology are found to be two of the most powerful factors affecting energy business and are, therefore, used as fundamental frameworks for scenario development. Accordingly, four plausible scenarios are derived providing different possible prospects for Thailand’s energy businesses. The findings can further be used in the analysis of national energy balance with detailed sector-by-sector projections. All of which will be beneficial in strategic energy planning at both the national and corporate level with a view to achieving the SDGs by 2050.

Gender Stereotypes in Natural Language: Word Embeddings Show Robust Consistency Across Child and Adult Language Corpora of More Than 65 Million Words

Stereotypes are associations between social groups and semantic attributes that are widely shared within societies. The spoken and written language of a society affords a unique way to measure the magnitude and prevalence of these widely shared collective representations. Here, we used word embeddings to systematically quantify gender stereotypes in language corpora that are unprecedented in size (65+ million words) and scope (child and adult conversations, books, movies, TV). Across corpora, gender stereotypes emerged consistently and robustly for both theoretically selected stereotypes (e.g., work–home) and comprehensive lists of more than 600 personality traits and more than 300 occupations. Despite underlying differences across language corpora (e.g., time periods, formats, age groups), results revealed the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes in every corpus. Using gender stereotypes as the focal issue, we unite 19th-century theories of collective representations and 21st-century evidence on implicit social cognition to understand the subtle yet persistent presence of collective representations in language.

Past and Present Economic Status of West Bengal: A Review

Economic development is the process through which a country transformed from one position to another. Economic progress, therefore, covers almost all aspects of a socio-cultural segment of a country. Various economic parameters influence the growth of the state, West Bengal. Among them, agriculture and industrial development play a crucial role. West Bengal ensures its position as the sixth-largest state economy in India. From agriculture to software, this state makes remarkable progress. The target of this development is people-centric. The focal issue is to give a better living standard to the people.

Virtual Traffic Police

In the new advancing world, traffic rule infringement has become a focal issue for larger part of the creating nations. The quantities of vehicles are expanding quickly just as the quantities of traffic rule infringement are expanding exponentially. Overseeing traffic rule infringement has consistently been a lethal and trading off undertaking. Despite the fact that the procedure of traffic the executives has gotten robotized, it's an extremely testing issue, because of the decent variety of plate designs, various scales, revolutions and non-uniform brightening conditions during picture obtaining. The vital target of this undertaking is to control the traffic rule infringement precisely and cost adequately. The undertaking presents Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) strategies and other picture control methods for plate confinement and character acknowledgment which makes it quicker and simpler to recognize the number plates. In the wake of perceiving the vehicle number from number plate the SMS based module is utilized to advise the vehicle proprietors about their traffic rule infringement. An extra SMS is sent to Regional Transport Office (RTO) for following the report status and furthermore to the proprietor of vehicles to advise about the standard infringement.

COVID-19 & Climate Change

Climate change has been a focal issue for centuries, but even more so in the last decade, with much focus in recent months on the Venetian natural hazards and the Australian bushfires; visible events that were close to home; in the West. However, fast forward a few months, we now find ourselves in an unimaginable and unprecedented situation; the COVID-19 pandemic, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) as well as an economic crisis, and climate change could not be more relevant.

Load Balancing in Cloud Computing using Modified Throtled Algorithm

In the coming age of computing world, cloud computing plays an important role. Cloud computing gives assets to customer on interest. The assets might be programming assets or equipment assets. Cloud computing structures are circulated, parallel and serve the requirements of various customers in various situations. This appropriated design conveys assets cloud to convey benefits productively to clients in various topographical channels. Customers in a circulated domain produce ask for haphazardly in any processor. So the real downside of this haphazardness is related with errand task. The unequal undertaking task to the processor makes imbalance i.e., a portion in the processors work a lot and some of them stay idle. To exchange the load from over- burden procedure to under stacked procedure straightforwardly is the goal of load balancing. Out of many issues involving in distributed computing, load balancing is one of the focal issue. To accomplish superior, least reaction time and high asset use proportion we have to exchange the assignments between hubs in cloud arrange. Load balancing strategy is utilized to appropriate errands from over stacked hubs to under stacked or inert hubs. In following areas we talk about cloud computing, load balancing strategies.