Modern pollen dispersal in relation to present vegetation distribution and land use in the Baspa valley, Kinnaur, western Himalayas.

Interpretation of a fossil pollen data for the vegetation and climate reconstruction of any region needs a modern pollen-vegetation analogue for its calibration. We analyzed the surface sediments and moss polsters for the pollen and microcharcoal records to understand the modern pollen-vegetation relationship and human activities in the Baspa Valley, Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh. Presently, valley is occupied by the arboreal and non-arboreal vegetation of temperate to subalpine habitats and land use activities.

Parameterized MDPs and Reinforcement Learning Problems-A Maximum Entropy Principle-Based Framework.

We present a framework to address a class of sequential decision-making problems. Our framework features learning the optimal control policy with robustness to noisy data, determining the unknown state and action parameters, and performing sensitivity analysis with respect to problem parameters. We consider two broad categories of sequential decision-making problems modeled as infinite horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with (and without) an absorbing state.

In vitro propagation and cytological analysis of Sophora mollis Royle: an endangered medicinal shrub.

Background: Sophora mollis Royle (family Fabaceae, subfamily-Papilionaceae) is a multipurpose legume distributed in plains and foothills of the North-West Himalaya to Nepal and is facing high risk of extinction due to habitat loss and exploitation by the local people for its fuel and fodder values. Therefore, the present study was conducted to standardize a micropropagation protocol for Sophora mollis by using shoot tip explants and to study the meiotic chromosome count in the species.

Results: Multiple shoots were induced in shoot tip explants of Sophora mollis in Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with different concentrations of cytokinins alone (BAP, TDZ, and Kinetin) and in combination with varying concentrations of NAA.