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Combination of organic liquid fertilizer and sea weed extract enhances the tomato growth, yield and photosynthetic attributes under hydroponic system
Get PDFTomato is popular hydroponic crop cultivated predominantly with Albert solution. However, the
recent trend in increased demand for organic agriculture warrants the need of alternative green liquid
fertilizers as opposed to inorganic solution. Therefore, this study intended to investigate the
effects of tomato photosynthetic, growth and yield performance supplemented with a simple
and organic liquid fertilizer (OLF) prepared from home garden wastes through natural anaerobic
fermentation using compost, goat manure, wild sunflower leaves, and banana peels supplemented
with brown sugar (25 g/l). Anaerobic fermentation was allowed for up to 30 days. The prepared OLF
was used to arrange five OLF treatments T1 (OLF, pH-5.5-6.5), T2 (OLF, pH-6.5-7.5), T3 (OLF, SWE,
pH-5.5-6.5), T4 (OLF, SWE, pH-6.5-7.5), T5 (OLF, pH-5.5-6.5, MOP) and in addition, T6 - control (1000
ppm Albert solution, pH-5.5-6.5) with Albert solution were maintained in a plant net house
facility. Tomato variety cv. Platina was used characterize the vegetative, floral, photosynthesis, and
yield traits. Our results indicated that the nutrient levels were significantly higher at 15 days after
fermentation, and highest nitrogen and phosphorus were obtained in the liquid solution. Tomato
trial revealed that T6 (control) had significantly (P<0.05) increased performance on leaf area (372
cm2
), plant height (166cm) photosynthetic rates (18.9) and chlorophyll content (58.0 SPAD) and
increased number of fruit set (13 fruits /plant) as opposed to other treatments. However, the T3
produced the highest performances among the OLF treatment. With those findings, T6 (Albert
solution, control) produced highest total fruit yield (701g/plant) followed by T3 (557g/plant),
suggesting that the treatments supplemented with Albert solution outperforms photosynthetic,
growth and yield characters in tomato. However, the T3 showed the second highest performance
among the treatments, Hence T3 can be proposed as an alternative organic liquid solution for
cultivation of hydroponic tomato
Factors influencing on women entrepreneurs’ performance in small and medium enterprises in Sri Lanka
No full textConcern over women’s entrepreneurship has grown in recent years, and now
there are programs and institutions helping women founders with funds,
education, networking opportunities, mentoring, and public policy. The
economic growth of Sri Lanka is strongly aided by women entrepreneurs. The
majority of small and medium-sized businesses have come up with innovative
products and services, and by doing so, they contribute to the development of
the national economy. Such small and medium-sized businesses must be
established properly to support national development. The objective of the
study is to investigate the factors that influence the performance of women
entrepreneurs in small and medium businesses of Sri Lanka. This study was
performed as a cross-sectional survey, where the data was gathered using a
specially designed questionnaire distributed using the random sampling
technique, two hundred women entrepreneurs were chosen as the sample. The
result had shown that the performance of women entrepreneurs is significantly
influenced by their educational background, prior entrepreneurial experience,
access to financing, government support, land ownership, tax, business
training, access to information, entrepreneur orientation, human capital,
entrepreneurship goals, motivational factors, and social and cultural factors.
On the other hand, it is discovered that factors such as age, marital status,
access to physical infrastructure, and market access are having an insignificant influence on women entrepreneurs’ performance. The findings of the research might be used as inputs for policymakers and to promote an environment that helps women entrepreneurs succeed. Further, the study may aid women entrepreneurs in addressing the variables that affect performance. Hence, they may take steps to enhance it, which will assist in poverty alleviation, promoting wealth & creativity, and creation of job opportunities. The study adds, to the body of knowledge on the factors that influence women entrepreneurs’ performance in small and medium enterprises
தமிழக – வடஇலங்கைப் பண்பாட்டு உறவுகள்: பத்தொன்பதாம் நூற்றாண்டின் பிற்பகுதியை அடிப்படையாகக் கொண்டது
No full textஇலங்கையின் வரலாற்றில் காலத்துக்குக் காலம் அரசியல்,
பொருளாதார, பண்பாட்டுச் செல்வாக்கை ஏற்படுத்திய வகையில் இந்திய நாட்டிற்குக்குக்
குறிப்பாகத் தமிழகத்திற்குப் பிரதான இடமுண்டு. அந்த உறவுகள் வரலாற்றுக்கு
முற்பட்ட காலத்திலிருந்து இற்றை வரை நீடித்திருப்பதை அவதானிக்கலாம். ஆயினும்
அந்தந்தக் காலகட்டங்களில் இருநாடுகளிலும் நிலவிய சூழ்நிலைகளுக்கேற்ப
செல்வாக்குகளின் நிலைகளில் மாற்றங்களும் நிகழ்ந்துள்ளதை வரலாற்றுச்
சான்றுகளின் துணைக்கொண்டு கண்டுகொள்ள முடிகின்றது. இப்பின்னணியில்
நோக்கும்போது 19ஆம் நூற்றாண்டில் இவ்விரு நாடுகளுக்குமிடையிலான உறவுகள்
பண்பாட்டு ரீதியில் கொண்டும் கொடுத்தும் இருந்ததெனலாம். இலங்கையில்
ஆறுமுகநாவலர் காலத்தில் சைவமறுமலர்ச்சியின் பின்புலத்தில் இயங்கிய அறிஞர்கள்,
அவர் மறைந்த பின்பும் தமிழ்நாட்டுடன் நெருங்கிய உறவினைப் பேணினர். இதனால்
இருபகுதிகளிலும் பண்பாட்டு இணைப்பு வலுவடைந்திருந்தது. அத்தகைய பண்பாட்டு
உறவுகளுக்கான பின்னணியைக் விளங்கிக் கொள்வதும் எத்தகைய பண்பாட்டு
உறவுகள் காணப்பட்டன என்பதைக் கண்டறிவதும் இவ்வாய்வின் நோக்கங்களாகும்.
வரலாற்று ஆய்வு அணுகுமுறை மற்றும் பண்பாட்டு ஆய்வு அணுகுமுறையைப் பின்பற்றி
இவ்வாய்வு முன்னெடுக்கப்படுகின்றது. மேலும் இவ்வாய்வின் முதன்மை ஆதாரங்களாக
அக்காலத்தில் வாழ்ந்த அறிஞர்களது இலக்கியங்கள், மற்றும் சமகாலப் பத்திரிகைகள்
பயன்படுத்தப்படுகின்றன. அத்துடன் இரண்டாம் நிலைத் தரவுகளாக மலர்கள்,
நூற்றாண்டு சிறப்பிதழ்கள், நூல்கள் மற்றும் பத்திரிகைகள் இவ்வாய்வுக்குத்
துணைநின்றமை குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது. பிற உறவுகளை விடவும் பண்பாட்டு
அடிப்படையிலான உறவுகள் பலம் மிக்கவையாகும். அதிலும் 19ஆம் நூற்றாண்டின்
பிற்பகுதியில் இரு பிராந்தியங்களிலும் காணப்பட்ட உறவுகள் சைவ மற்றும்
மொழியுணர்வவைப் வலுப்படுத்த உதவியுள்ளன என்பதை மறக்கமுடியாது.
இவ்விணைப்பு தமிழக – வடஇலங்கை உறவில் முக்கியமான காலகட்டதைக் குறித்து
நின்றதெனலாம்
Social media impression on consumer buying behavior in speedy aid restaurant in Sri Lanka
Get PDFThe aim of this research is to pinpoint the impression of social media
on consumer buying behavior in speedy aid restaurants in Sri Lanka. The usage
of social media is getting increasingly popular by day by day. Recent COVID 19
pandemic, political and economic crisis have added further value for this process.
The majority of companies now employ the utilization of social media for
promotional purposes. In the current economic climate, social media is a rapidly
expanding phenomenon in the business and public relations worlds. Because of
social media, websites like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter,
and TikTok have exploded in popularity, giving users a central hub from which
to interact, entertain, and inform one another. As a result of the rise of social
media, consumers now have more options than ever before for learning about
goods and services.
Design/methodology/approach: The study used a snowball sampling technique
to collect data from 354 people in the Colombo district. A standard questionnaire
was sent around via email, WhatsApp, and other channels. SPSS was used to
analyze the data for reliability, descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression.
Findings: The findings of this study effectively met the study objective of
examining how social media influence consumer purchasing behavior in Sri
Lankan quick service restaurants. The results show that social media has a large
impact on consumers' propensity to make purchases, with consumer comments,
user reviews, and online deals playing the biggest roles. Additionally, the most
common ways that consumers communicate today are via social media platforms
like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.
As the world becomes increasingly digital, the study's author finds that social
media now exerts a disproportionately large influence on the economy.
Practical limitation: The results of this study can aid the restaurants in creating
a social media strategy that will change patron behavior and boost sales. Like
when the restaurant can concentrate on boosting favorable ratings and interacting
with customers on social media platforms if the study indicates that people are
more inclined to visit the restaurant after reading positive evaluations on social
media. Social media algorithm changes may have an impact on the study's
findings.Originality/value: The study might simply provide a snapshot of social media
usage and might not account for evolving user trends or algorithmic adjustments.
The study may offer insightful information for Sri Lanka's restaurant industry,
where the popularity of fast food outlets and social media is growing. As a result,
this work can be regarded as innovative and significant given its potential to add
to the body of knowledge and its relevance to the sector
Automated text summarization of Sinhala online articles
Get PDFInformation retrieval is one of the major tasks in natural language processing applications. In
digitalized world, there is a development of retrieval information from online platforms and
there are abundant of information for a specific subject available in online. With the hustle and
bustle, readers need to know whether the information is important according to their need
within a very short time. Automated text summarization plays a key role in natural language
processing applications. Many studies have been explored for summarizing different languages
like English, Bengali, Hausa, Chinese, Hindi, etc. However, the local language like Sinhala is
still in beginning stage. On the other hand, as a diverse country, there is a community and
language diversity in Sri Lanka. Therefore, there are people who have less fluency in Sinhala
as their mother-tongue is another local language like Tamil. Social media like Facebook
provides platform for translation of content in a different language. However, other online
platforms do not provide such translation process of the content. In such scenario, having a
short summary of those articles would be an advantageous step for the readers who can easily
understand the main idea of the content. Therefore, this work aims to generate an online
platform that can provide a good summary for Sinhala language online articles. This research
investigates extractive text summarization for Sinhala online articles using some state-of-the art algorithms in NLP applications to select a best suitable method. This work comparatively
analyses the performance of TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) and
Text-Rank algorithms for Sinhala language. Performance of the algorithms is evaluated with
human generated summary from online sources using ROUGE (Recall Oriented Understudy
of Gisting Evaluation) where high ROUGE score (Measure the rate of n-gram overlapping of
original text and automated summary) values represent the more accurate automated summary
of the article. From the results, the TF-IDF algorithm comparatively performs better for Sinhala
online article summarization with medium content size
Integrating ice protection and noise abatement systems for aircraft application: a review
No full textAircraft icing remains a key aviation hazard as the global fleet of aircraft in various sectors continues to expand, posing a serious threat to flight safety. As previously stated, the growth of this type of aircraft has been accompanied by an increase in noise levels, and aircraft is reportedly the second most bothersome noise source after traffic. However, integrating an acoustic liner with anti-icing techniques on the leading edge of a nacelle would not efficiently eliminate forward radiated noise and improve the thermal performance of the anti-icing system. Hence, it is of the utmost importance to research the integration of ice protection and noise abatement systems for aircraft applications. This review discusses the integration of ice accretion and noise abatement systems in aircraft applications. The prominence of this review is to explain significant features such as ice protection systems, Computational Fluid Dynamics in ice protection, noise abatement systems, and the integration of ice protection systems and noise abatement systems wherever they are described
Geographical records of six common ant species (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in three climatic zones of Sri Lanka
Get PDFPublished geographical records of tramp species elsewhere, Anoplolepis gracilipes (F. Smith, 1857), Solenopsis
geminata (Fabricius, 1804) and Trichomyrmex destructor (Jerdon, 1851), medically important Odontomachus simillimus
F. Smith, 1858 and Tetraponera rufonigra (Jerdon, 1851), and mainly, a predator of insect pests, Oecophylla smaragdina (Fabricius, 1775) are listed and positioned on a Sri Lanka map for the first time, using Global Positioning System and an ArcGIS software. Future surveys are essentially required to fill the gaps due to less information in several districts
Establishing signaling assays to determine the biased agonism of the relaxin family peptide receptor 3
Get PDFG-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which make up the largest protein superfamily
in the human body, are essential for cellular signaling. They are essential
pharmacological targets for the development of drugs. The relaxin family peptide
receptor 3, commonly known as relaxin-3 receptor 1 (RXFP3), belongs to the class A
GPCR group. It is prominently expressed in brain regions such as the hypothalamus,
amygdala, and the brainstem. The signaling pathways activated by the RXFP3 receptor
upon binding with its ligands are inhibition of cyclic adenosine monophosphate
(cAMP) accumulation, ERK1/2, MAPK, and beta-arrest in recruitment. However,
additional information is needed to determine the distinct preferences of different
RXFP3 ligands regarding their recruitment of beta-arrest in or activation of G-proteins.
One of the upstream effectors activated by the RXFP3 receptor is Gαi/o, which is the
primary focus of this work. The objective is to establish a GloSensorTM cAMP signaling
assay to determine the functional selectivity of RXFP3 receptor activation by relaxin-3
agonists and its inhibition of forskolin-induced cAMP assays. In this method, a
luciferase enzyme connected to a cAMP-responsive component is used. The luciferase
enzyme is triggered when cAMP levels rise, producing light. This luminescence
provides a reliable measure of Gαi/o activation via RXFP3.In comparison to existing
cAMP measurement assays like Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), the
GloSensorTM cAMP assay, being a luminescence-based technique has several benefits,
such as being cost-effective and efficient. In the initial stages of the study, we isolated
and validated a pCAGGS mammalian expression plasmid construct containing the
GloSensor coding sequence. Then, the study focused on HEK-RXFP3 cell line-based
forskolin-induced cAMP assays. Adenylate cyclase activation and cAMP signaling in
cells were investigated using the well-known stimulant forskolin. The assay detected
the highest luminescence signal in response to forskolin and 3-Isobutyl-1
methylxanthine (IBMX), after transfecting HEK-RXFP3 cells with the GloSensor
plasmid, whereas the lowest signal was seen at the highest relaxin-3 concentration. The
resulting dose-response curve showed fluctuation of cAMP that was released in
response to relaxin-3 ligands. It is interesting to note that lower relaxin-3 concentrations
showed the greatest cAMP accumulation. During the optimization phase, experimental
parameters, including PEI concentration (1mg/ml) and cell count per well, were fine
tuned. The results revealed that 5 µl (25 µg/ml) of branched PEI yielded the most
robust signal compared to other concentrations. Additionally, relaxin-3 demonstrated
the ability to reduce cAMP synthesis by activating Gαi/o inhibitory pathways through
RXFP3 binding, highlighting the receptor's modulation of both stimulatory and
inhibitory pathways
Forest covers change detection in Mullaitivu district, Sri Lanka using landsat multispectral imagery
Get PDFThe estimation of forest cover and change detection is still a
challenging task. Therefore, this study was carried out in a tropical forest,
Mullaitivu district of Sri Lanka to assess the forest cover change detection
using Landsat multispectral imagery from 1994 to 2022. The objectives of
the study were to identify the forest type based on Normalized difference
vegetation index (NDVI) and to detect the forest cover change based on
supervised and unsupervised classifications. Landsat 8-9 OLI/TIRS C2 L2
(2022) and Landsat 4-5 TM C2 L2 (1994) were used for the change analysis
by using ArcGIS Pro version 2.8. The cloud cover of the image was removed
using masking and mosaic functions to increase the accuracy of the
classification. Different band combination was used for NDVI calculation for
Landsat 8 (NIR-5, Red-4 and Blue-3) and Landsat 4-5 (NIR-4, Red-3 and
Blue-2) based on the spectral values. Iterative Self-Organized (ISO) Data
Analysis Techniques and Support Vector Machine (SVM) learning algorithm
were performed for the unsupervised and supervised classifications,
respectively. The land use was categorized into four types namely forest,
built-up & farmlands, water bodies and bare lands. The accuracy of the
Landsat image was validated with Google Earth Pro timelapse images and
field observations. Error matrix function was used to derive the Cohen’s
Kappa statistics with Overall accuracy (OA), Producer Accuracy (PA) and
User Accuracy (UA) with 500 sampling points for accuracy assessment.
NDVI value was ranged from -0.27 to 0.51 in 1994 and – 0.17 to 0.48 in 2022,
and this represented that the forest was under category of dry zone lowland
forest with dense vegetation. A trend of land use changes was the same from
both supervised and unsupervised classifications. The total forest cover of
the district was 58.70 % (157,372.31 ha) in 2022 and 63.33 % (169,798.75
ha) in 1994 with a decline of 4.63 % (12,426.44 ha) over 28 years period.
The OA was ranged from 0.89 to 0.9 and K coefficient was ranged from 0.81
and 0.82, and this result indicated that the accuracy level was acceptable.
Further study is needed to improve and validate the accuracy of the
classifications using high-resolution multi and hyperspectral images with
more land use categories