Abstract

Recently, an approach has been proposed in the literatureto extract frequent patterns which occur periodically. Inthis paper, we have proposed an approach to extract rareperiodic-frequent patterns. Normally, the singleminsupbased frequent pattern mining approaches like Apriori andFP-growth suffer from “rare item problem”. That is, at highminsu p, frequent patterns consisting of rare items will bemissed, and at lowminsu p, number of frequent patternsexplode. In the literature, efforts have been made to extractrare frequent patterns under “multiple minimum supportframework”. It was observed that the periodic-frequentpattern mining approach also suffers from the “rare itemproblem”. In this paper, we have extended “multiple mini-mum support framework” to extract rare periodic-frequentpatterns and developed a new algorithm to extract rareperiodic-frequent patterns. Experiment results show thatthe proposed approach is efficient.

Abstract

To improve the performance of agricultural education, research efforts are being made to exploit to developan education methodology to impart practical skills to agricultural graduates regarding aforesaid farming situationproblems in an effective and efficient manner. In this paper, we explain the background and the overview of theproposed ICT-based framework to impart applied education to agriculture professionals.

Abstract

A read-only transaction (ROT) does not modify any data. The main issues regarding processing of read-only transactions (ROTs) are correctness, data currency and performance. Even though the popular two-phase locking protocol processes ROTs correctly with no data currency related issues, its performance deteriorates with data contention. To improve the performance of ROTs, snapshot isolation-based approaches have been proposed. Eventhough snapshot isolation-based approaches improve the performance of ROTs, both data currency of ROTs andcorrectness (serializability) are compromised. In this paper, we propose an asynchronous speculative locking protocol (called as ASLR) which improves the performance ofROTs by trading extra processing resources. The simulation results show that ASLR improves the performance of ROTs significantly over two-phase locking and snapshot isolation-based approaches with manageable extra processing resources. The ASLR approach processes ROTs without any data currency and correctness issues.

Abstract

A read-only transaction (ROT) does not modify anydata. Efforts are being made in the literature toimprove the performance of ROTs without correct-ness and data currency issues. The widely used two-phase locking protocol (2PL) processes the transac-tions without any correctness and data currency issues.However, the performance of 2PL deteriorates withdata contention. Snapshot isolation (SI)-based pro-tocols proposed in the literature improve the perfor-mance of ROTs, but they compromise on correctnessand data currency issues. Speculative locking (SL)protocols are proposed in the literature for improv-ing the performance of ROTs by carrying out spec-ulative executions only for ROTs and following 2PLfor update transactions. In SL-based protocols, up-date transactions are blocked if they conflicting withROTs. In this paper, we have proposed an improvedapproach to improve parallelism among update trans-actions and ROTs by exploiting a new notion called“compensatability”. In this protocol, an ROT whichcan be “compensatable” can complete the executionand carry out compensating operation to incorporatethe effect of conflicting update transactions. As aresult, the parallelism is improved over SL protocolsas the update transactions which are conflicting with‘compensatable’ ROTs need not block. In this paper,we have proposed a protocol by exploiting both “com-pensatability” property of ROTs and speculation. Thesimulation results show that the proposed protocol im-proves the performance by carrying out less number ofspeculative executions. Further, the proposed protocoldoes not violate serializability criteria.

Abstract

A read-only transaction (ROT) does not modify any data. The main issues regarding processing ROTs are correctness, data currency and performance. Two-phase Locking (2PL) protocol is widely used for concur-rency control with serializabilty as correctness criteria. Even though 2PL processes ROTs correctly with no data currency related issues, the performance deteriorates as data contention increases. To improve the performance, an approach has been proposed in the literature by considering “Snapshot Isolation (SI)” as correctness criteria to process ROTs. At SI-level, ROTs are processed by reading from a snapshot of the committed data and ignoring the modifications produced by the concurrent active transactions. Even though SI-based algorithms improve the performance of ROTs, data currency of ROTs and correctness (serializability) are compromised. In this paper, we propose an approach by extending the notion of speculation to improve the performance of ROTs without com-promising data currency of transactions and correctness. Speculation-based approach improves the performance of ROTs by trading extra computing resources without violating serializability as correctness criteria. The simula-tion results show that with the proposed protocol the throughput performance is improved significantly over 2PL and the data currency of ROTs is improved significantly over SI-based ap proaches with manageable extra re-sources.

Abstract

In this paper, we explain a personalized agricultural advisory system called eSagu, which has been developed to improve the performance and utilization of agriculture technology and help Indian farmers. In eSagu, rather than visiting the crop in person, the agricultural expert delivers the expert advice at regular intervals (once in one or two weeks) to each farm by getting the crop status in the form of digital photographs and other information. During 2004-06, through eSagu, agricultural expert advices delivered for about 6000 farms covering six crops. The results show that the expert advices helped the farmers to achieve savings in capital investment and improved the crop yield. Mainly, the data warehouse of farm histories has been developed which is providing the crop related information to the agricultural expert in an integrated manner for generating a quality agricultural expert advice. In this paper, after explaining eSagu and its advantages, we discuss how data warehouse of farm histories is enabling agricultural expert to deliver a quality expert advice. We also discuss some research issues to improve the performance of eSagu.

Abstract

A read-only transaction (ROT) does not modify any data. The main issues regarding processing ROTs are correctness, data currency and perform-ance. Two-phase Locking (2PL) protocol is widely used for concurrency con-trol with serializabilty as correctness criteria. Even though 2PL processes ROTs correctly with no data currency related issues, the performance deteriorates as data contention increases. To improve the performance over 2PL, snapshot iso-lation (SI)-based protocols have been proposed. SI-based protocols process ROTs by reading from a snapshot of the committed data and ignoring the modi-fications produced by the concurrent active transactions. Even though SI-based algorithms improve the performance of ROTs, both data currency of ROTs and correctness (serializability) are compromised. In this paper, we propose an ap-proach to improve the performance of ROTs using speculation without compromising data currency of transactions and correctness. The proposed approach improves the performance of ROTs by trading extra computing re-sources without violating serializability as correctness criteria. The simulation results show that with the proposed protocol the throughput performance is im-proved significantly over 2PL and SI-based approaches with manageable extra resources.

Abstract

To bridge the information gap between the agricultural expert and the farmer, International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad has built the eSagu (“Sagu” means cultivation in Telugu language) system, which is an IT-based personalized agricultural extension system to improve agricultural productivity by disseminating a fresh expert agricultural advice to the farmers, both in a timely and personalized manner. In e-Sagu, the agricultural experts generate the expert advice based on the information about the crop situation received in the form of both text and digital photographs. In Kharif2 2004, a prototype was developed and implemented with 1051 farms. In the prototype, a team of agricultural experts stayed at IIIT, Hyderabad (India) and delivered 20,000 pieces of agricultural expert advice to 1051 cotton farms of three villages (Oorugonda, Gudeppad and Oglapur) in Atmakur Mandal of Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh state, India, by looking at digital photographs and other farm information supplied by some educated and experienced farmers (coordinators) in these villages. The pilot project was implemented successfully. In this article, an analysis of 51 registered farmers’ regarding compliance of advices and corresponding effect is reported. The following of expert advice on pest and disease management and IPM practices were analyzed by giving appropriate scores based on their effect on yield and input cost. The analysis showed that about fifty percent of farmers have followed the practices which increase yield and reduce input cost. A high positive correlation (r=0.46**) was observed between the compliance rate and the yields. Though some farmers obtained same yield as the farmers who have followed the advices, their input costs were significantly higher.

Abstract

Timely agro-advisory service and efficient risk mitigation mechanisms can provide stableincome to the farmers. To provide timely agro-advisory service, e-Sagu systemhas beendeveloped by IIIT-Hyderabad and Media Lab Asia. It is an IT-based personalized agro-advisorysystemwhich is being developedto provide high-qualitypersonalized (farm-specific) agricultural expert adviceto each and everyfarmin a timely manner at thefarmer’s door-step without farmer asking a question. The results show that significantbenefits have flowntothe farmers interms of reducedinputs andenhancedyield.Regarding risk mitigation, the agri-insurance schemes around the worldwhether anadvanced or a developing nation like India are suffering due to catastrophic losses,covariate risks, asymmetric information and lack of quality data. These problems maypose a serious threat to the survival of the implementing agencies unless the there is aneffective monitoring systemin place, with enough man power and robust infrastructure.In this paper we explain how agri-insurance schemes can be effectively implemented ontop of eSagu system. The agri-insurance scheme can bevery cost-effective as it can useresources and processes of eSagu system. Also, as eSagu provides quality and reliabledata at farmlevel,the problemof asymmetric information can be effectively hedged.Most important, eSagualsoimproves the performance offormal risk mitigationmechanisms through farm-specific agro-advisory and monitoring system.

Abstract

Ranking the search results is an important research problem in WWW. HITS, PageRank and variations of these algorithms are widely used approaches for ranking. In this paper we proposed a new ranking algorithm to rank the search results by introducing the concept of “leader-page”. The notion of “leader-page” is defined by extending the concept of “leader” from leadership theory. In leadership theory, a leader is defined as a person, who has more contacts with the other members of the group, both initiates and receives communication, and whose characteristics are the most similar to the group’s own characteristics. Similarly, in WWW, the proposed approach identifies leader-pages and assigns “leadership score” to them based on several kinds of cyclic and similarity relationships it establishes with other web pages. Given a set of key words (search query), the proposed approach ranks the related pages based on the corresponding “leadership score”. The experiment results show that the proposed approach gives high leadership score to resourceful pages as compared to the results of the HITS algorithm and the Google search engine