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Northeast India (northeast + india)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Life Sciences42%
Humanities and Social Sciences42%

Selected Abstracts

Kinship systems and language choice among academics in Shillong, Northeast India

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Issue 2 2001
Anne Hvenekilde
In Shillong, the capital of the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, Indo-Aryan languages from the plains meet the Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic minority languages of the hills, and the result is a degree of multilingualism that is high even by Indian standards. English is widely used by academic groups everywhere in India, but structured interviews with all 17 faculty members of two departments at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong reveal special reasons why some parents now choose to use English with their children rather than their own mother tongue. Caste imposes fewer barriers in this part of India than elsewhere, and marriages across ethnic groups are common, but con ?icting kinship practices can bring complications. If a woman from a matrilineal group marries a man from a patrilineal group, both families will, according to their traditions, consider the children to belong to their kinship group. Using English with their children, rather than choosing the language of just one set of grand-parents, can be a way of avoiding potential con?ict. Thus, in addition to the use of English in higher education, increasing geographic mobility, and the general prestige of English, the con?icting demands of different kinship systems needs to be considered among the factors contributing to the spread of English at the cost of local languages in Northeast India. [source]

Place, community education, gender and child mortality in North-east India

POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 1 2006
Laishram Ladusingh
Abstract This article examines the relevance of socio-cultural and environmental factors in explaining child mortality in Northeast India, considered to be the most inaccessible region in the country. Using data from the Indian National Family Health Survey, we provide evidence that lack of hygiene in the household and poor women's engagement in physically demanding agriculture based work contributes to higher risk of child mortality. Unlike in other parts of India, female children have an edge over boys in childhood survival and living with paternal grandmother tends to lower the risk of child death in the first five years of life. Community education is found as the dominant factor outside the household to have a significant effect on child mortality. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

A deterministic seismic hazard map of India and adjacent areas

GEOPHYSICAL JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, Issue 2 2003
Imtiyaz A. Parvez
SUMMARY A seismic hazard map of the territory of India and adjacent areas has been prepared using a deterministic approach based on the computation of synthetic seismograms complete with all main phases. The input data set consists of structural models, seismogenic zones, focal mechanisms and earthquake catalogues. There are few probabilistic hazard maps available for the Indian subcontinent, however, this is the first study aimed at producing a deterministic seismic hazard map for the Indian region using realistic strong ground motion modelling with the knowledge of the physical process of earthquake generation, the level of seismicity and wave propagation in anelastic media. Synthetic seismograms at a frequency of 1 Hz have been generated at a regular grid of 0.2°× 0.2° by the modal summation technique. The seismic hazard, expressed in terms of maximum displacement (Dmax), maximum velocity (Vmax), and design ground acceleration (DGA), has been extracted from the synthetic signals and mapped on a regular grid over the studied territory. The estimated values of the peak ground acceleration are compared with the observed data available for the Himalayan region and are found to be in agreement. Many parts of the Himalayan region have DGA values exceeding 0.6 g. The epicentral areas of the great Assam earthquakes of 1897 and 1950 in northeast India represent the maximum hazard with DGA values reaching 1.2,1.3 g. The peak velocity and displacement in the same region is estimated as 120,177 cm s,1 and 60,90 cm, respectively. [source]

Os incae: variation in frequency in major human population groups

JOURNAL OF ANATOMY, Issue 2 2001
TSUNEHIKO HANIHARA
The variation in frequency of the Inca bone was examined in major human populations around the world. The New World populations have generally high frequencies of the Inca bone, whereas lower frequencies occur in northeast Asians and Australians. Tibetan/Nepalese and Assam/Sikkim populations in northeast India have more Inca bones than do neighbouring populations. Among modern populations originally derived from eastern Asian population stock, the frequencies are highest in some of the marginal isolated groups. In Central and West Asia as well as in Europe, frequency of the Inca bone is relatively low. The incidence of the complete Inca bone is, moreover, very low in the western hemisphere of the Old World except for Subsaharan Africa. Subsaharan Africans show as a whole a second peak in the occurrence of the Inca bone. Geographical and ethnographical patterns of the frequency variation of the Inca bone found in this study indicate that the possible genetic background for the occurrence of this bone cannot be completely excluded. Relatively high frequencies of the Inca bone in Subsaharan Africans indicate that this trait is not a uniquely eastern Asian regional character. [source]

Cinnamomum tamala var. elliptifolium var. nov. (Lauraceae) from northeast India

NORDIC JOURNAL OF BOTANY, Issue 3-4 2008
Akhil Baruah
Cinnamomum tamala Nees var. elliptifolium Baruah & S. C. Nath var. nov. is illustrated and described as a new variety, with a note on its leaf essential oil characters reported earlier as a ,variant' of the species. [source]

Exudativory in the Bengal slow loris (Nycticebus bengalensis) in Trishna Wildlife Sanctuary, Tripura, northeast India

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
N. Swapna
Abstract In this study we estimated the extent of exudativory in Nycticebus bengalensis and examined whether exudates can be considered as fallback foods. This study was carried out in Trishna Wildlife Sanctuary, northeastern India, in winter (December,February) and summer (March and April). We estimated time,activity budget using instantaneous sampling and used continuous focal animal sampling to record all instances and durations of feeding, over a total of 177,hr. Feeding accounted for 22.3±2.2% of the activity budget, with no seasonal difference. Bengal slow lorises fed on exudates, nectar, fruit, bark, invertebrates and avian eggs. In addition to scraping they also obtained exudates by gouging holes into the bark of trees. In winter, lorises almost exclusively fed on exudates (94.3% of winter feeding time). In summer, exudates (67.3%) and nectar from one species (22.3%) dominated the diet. This study identifies the Bengal slow loris as the most exudativorous loris. Exudates rather than being a staple fallback food, seem to be a preferred, patchily distributed and common food in the diet of the Bengal slow loris. Exudativory in this species is characterized by high selectivity among species and seasonal variation, which may be related to variations in productivity of exudates and their chemical composition. An understanding of these factors is necessary for predicting the response of this species to human disturbance such as logging. This study also underscores the importance of protecting some of the common species such as Terminalia belerica on which the loris feeds during periods of scarcity. Am. J. Primatol. 72:113,121, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]