Pretreatment of feed water to improve membrane flux during filtration of agriculture field water containing substituted phenyl urea pesticide diuron has been reported. Laboratory-made reverse osmosis membrane was used for filtration. Preliminary experiments were conducted with model solution containing natural organic matter extracted from commercial humic acids, divalent ions Ca2+, Mg2+. Membrane fouling was characterized by pure water flux decline, change in membrane hydrophilicity and infrared spectroscopy. Natural organic matter present in field water causes severe membrane fouling.

A large number of diseases have been grouped together as ‘rare diseases’, because we do not know much about them. There is no consensus on the definition of a rare disease. This is because, obtaining reliable statistical estimates of the frequency of occurrence of a rare event, such as prevalence of a rare disease, requires an inordinately large sample size, collection of which costs prohibitively large amount of money. (Editorial)

Original Source

The present paper is based on the analysis of survey data of 500 lac growers of Ranchi and West Singhbhum districts in the year 2003-04 and 2004-05. Primary data has been collected from the lac growers.

The present paper examines the cost, return and resource use efficiency in lac cultivation on major lac host plants. This paper is based on the analaysis of data collected on 400 lac growers of Ranchi and West Singhbhum district in the year 2003-2004 and 2004-2005.