Productivity enhancement and popularization of improved production technologies in wheat through frontline demonstrations

Front line demonstrations (FLDs) on wheat were conducted on 150 farmers’ fields to demonstrate the impact of drought tolerant rainfed varieties (PBW 175 & PBW 644) and other improved practices techniques (supplemental irrigation and sowing with seed drill) on production and economic benefits in the kandi region of Punjab state during rabi seasons from 2011-12 to 2013-14 under rainfed situation. The improved production technologies recorded additional mean yield of 27.8 q/ha and 28.4 q/ha for rainfed varieties and other improved practices. The per cent average increase in yield of rainfed over local cultivars was 35.3, while 29.1 for other improved practices. The average extension gap, technology gap and technology index were 7.3 q/ha, 8.4 q/ha and 22.5 per cent, respectively in different varieties. FLDs recorded higher B:C ratio of 2.32 and 2.52 for rainfed varieties and other improved practices, respectively. The FLDs conducted on improved technologies during the present study resulted in enhancement of yield, net returns and also increased the knowledge of the farmers. Thus, productivity of wheat could be increased by adopting recommended improved management practices with a suitable high yielding variety under rainfed conditions. The present study resulted in convincing the farming community about potentialities of improved production management technologies of wheat in productivity enhancement and for further adoption by the farming community

Spin-Hall effect in the scattering of structured light from plasmonic nanowire

Spin-orbit interactions are subwavelength phenomena which can potentially lead to numerous device related applications in nanophotonics. Here, we report Spin-Hall effect in the forward scattering of Hermite-Gaussian and Gaussian beams from a plasmonic nanowire. Asymmetric scattered radiation distribution was observed for circularly polarized beams. Asymmetry in the scattered radiation distribution changes the sign when the polarization handedness inverts. We found a significant enhancement in the Spin-Hall effect for Hermite-Gaussian beam as compared to Gaussian beam for constant input power. The difference between scattered powers perpendicular to the long axis of the plasmonic nanowire was used to quantify the enhancement. In addition to it, nodal line of HG beam acts as the marker for the Spin-Hall shift. Numerical calculations corroborate experimental observations and suggest that the Spin flow component of Poynting vector associated with the circular polarization is responsible for the Spin-Hall effect and its enhancement.Comment: Optics Letters (accepted), 201

Performance of high yielding drought tolerant varieties of maize and in situ moisture conservation techniques in Kandi region of Punjab, India

In the present investigation, 87 front line demonstrations (FLDs) of maize were conducted on farmers’ fields to demonstrate the impact of high yielding drought tolerant varieties (JH 3459, Parkash and PMH 1) and in situ moisture conservation techniques (ridge sowing, sowing across the slope, summer ploughing and earthing up) on production and economic benefits in Kandi region of Punjab state during kharif seasons from 2011 to 2013 under rainfed situation. The improved production technologies recorded additional yield ranging from 29.7 to 47.6 q/ha with a mean yield of 37.1 q/ha and 24.4 to 42.6 q/ha with a mean yield of 32.7 q/ha for drought tolerant varieties and in situ moisture conservation techniques, respectively. The per cent average increase in yield of drought tolerant varieties over local cultivars was 35.8, while 15.6 for in situ moisture conservation techniques.The average extension gap, technology gap and technology index were 9.8& 4.4 q/ha, 3.7& 6.1q/ha and 9.1& 16.7 per cent, respectively in drought tolerant varieties and in situ moisture conservation techniques. FLDs recorded higher mean net returns i.e. Rs. 36,292 and 28,234 per ha. with B:C ratio of 2.53 and 2.17 for drought tolerant varieties and in situ moisture conservation techniques, respectively. The FLDS conducted revealed that availability of suitable high yielding variety and lack of knowledge about improved production technologies is the main bottleneck in maize production, enhancement of yield and knowledge of the farmers. Hence, the productivity of maize can be increased by adoption of the recommended management practices and the study resulted in convincing the farming community about potentialities of the recommended production technologies in yield enhancement

INFORMER and Potassium Values: A system to enhance detection, notification, and action upon a threat to patient safety in the emergency department [abstract]

Computational Infrastructure and Informatics Poster SessionBackground: Quick remediation should occur after critically abnormal potassium levels are detected by the medical laboratory in blood from emergency department (ED) patients. Critical potassium levels can be elevated (“HyperK+“) or decreased (“HypoK+“). HyperK+ and HypoK+ can both lead to avoidable patient harm by causing heart rhythm problems, which can be harmful or lethal. Also, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) could be enhanced by the creation of an electronic “audit trail” to track these remediations, which involve detection, notification, action-upon, and documentation steps (D1-N-A-D2). HyperK+ and HypoK+ are a logical first target to ameliorate inefficiencies of D1-N-A-D2, because of the frequency of occurrence of these problems in the ED, because the appropriate rapid ED response is clear, and because failures of D1-N-A-D2. can hurt or kill patients. Hypothesis: An automated D1-N-A-D2, plus audit path, can be created, then merged with a to-be-created standing ED order set, to hasten the treatment of HyperK+ and HypoK+. Methods: (1) A standing order set will be adopted, to permit nurses to administer appropriate treatments to patients with either HyperK+ or HypoK+, without prior physician notification. Oral or intravenous potassium, as appropriate, will remediate HypoK+, Administration of insulin plus glucose, calcium, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium polystyrene resin will ameliorate HyperK+. Order sets will be created after input from physician and nursing personnel. (Re-obtaining of blood from patients in whom HyperK+ is thought to be a false positive result, due to hemolysis of the blood sample, will be permitted). (2) “Electronic loop”: Engineers will create an electronic pathway to enable the rapid electronic notification of appropriate medical personnel, after critical HyperK+ or HypoK+ have been detected. This will enable and drive nurses to action. Actions can be electronically audited via review of digital PyxisTM medication administration machine records, matching medication withdrawals for specific patients to specific incidences of HyperK+ and HypoK+. Time to nurse action will be documented. Data during implementation of D1-N-A-D2 will be compared to prior historical control data, to determine whether the newly created process delivers appropriate care more quickly to patients with critically abnormal K+ values. (In addition, it is anticipated that electronic review of laboratory data for the historical controls will reveal total system failures for some patients; some patients with HyperK+ and/or HypoK+ might not have been treated at all for their potassium abnormality during their time in the ED.) Results: Time to treatment for HyperK+ and HypoK+ patients, and % of patients with HyperK+ and HypoK+ who represent total system failures, before vs. after implementation of the pervasive computing protocol, will be determined. Conclusion: It is anticipated that a pervasive computing environment can be created to facilitate implementation of a standing medication order set, to enable more rapid D1-N-A-D2 after critical values of HyperK+ or HypoK+ are detected in the blood of emergency department patients. Also, this environment will decrease the failure-to-treat rate for critical HyperK+ and HypoK+

INFORMER: A System for Immediate and Direct Notification of Critical Data for Patient Care [abstract]

Computational Infrastructure and Informatics Poster SessionEfficient and timely delivery of healthcare requires constant improvements in the quality while keeping the cost of delivery under control. One of the important requirements for such delivery system is the timely notification of patient related data (For example notification of laboratory results on metabolites, circulating levels of certain medications, etc) to doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals for prescribing necessary action. Currently, in nearly all hospitals and laboratories, laboratory or nursing staff are responsible for manually transmitting such information. They take the information verbally or written on a piece of paper, on a pad or on some other media to the recipient in one or multiple hops. Such approach, although serves the purpose, has a number of ordinary to serious limitations such as a higher error rate, incorrect destination, security breach, etc., that could endanger patients life. For example, it is quite possible that the person responsible for notification may forget or delay, for a variety of reasons, to notify the doctor or medical staff or may miscommunicate the results; for example instead of sodium of 150, he or she may orally communicate it as 160. It is also possible that the dispatcher may deliver the information to wrong person (security breach), or take too long to deliver the information. These issues are likely to have serious consequences, in particular for institutions that deal with human subjects such as emergency department of the hospitals where rapid notification is essential for saving lives of critically ill patients. For results communication, paging is a commonly used notification methods but it also involves human and any inadvertent delays in reporting critical data to the physician and other medical staff or to the patient can have serious consequences. We claim that automation in data notification will (a) eliminate or minimize such undesirable consequences, (b) will keep the cost down and (c) improve patient care. We are in the process of designing a pervasive system, referred here as “Informer” to automate the notification process. The system will (a) compose the information (test results, recommendations, etc.) to be dispatched in a easy to read format, (b) identify and notify the critical results to the right medical professionals, (b) maintain an active log of automation process for immediate reference, (c) guarantee accurate data delivery, (d) keep the cost down, (e) provide necessary security, (f) work equally well with wired and wireless network, and (g) offer a high scalability. It will be (a) an independent system with plug and play capability, (b) can port to any system (window, Mac, Linux, etc.), and (c) easy to configure for specific needs

Phytoplanktonic diversity in lake Jaisamand, Rajasthan (India)

The present study describes the diversity of phytoplankton in the lake Jaisamand of Rajasthan (India). Results depict that phytoplankton was contributed by six major groups which comprised total 85 species. Out of which 13 belongs to Myxophyceae, 5 to Euglenophyceae, 38 to Chlorophyceae, 3 to Xanthophyceae, 1 to Cryptophyceae and 23 to Bacillariophyceae. Thus, Bacillariophyceae and Chlorophyceae turned up as the dominant groups in terms of density (159-554 numbers per liter and 24-485 numbers per liter) and species number (23 and 38), respectively. It was revealed that Jaisamand Lake maintained fairly good population of phytoplankton which is indication of providing broad base for achieving high productivity in this water body

Temperature-dependent Optoelectronic Properties of Quasi-2D Colloidal Cadmium Selenide Nanoplatelets

Colloidal Cadmium Selenide (CdSe) nanoplatelets (NPLs) are a recently developed class of efficient luminescent nanomaterial suitable for optoelectronic device applications. A change in temperature greatly affects their electronic bandstructure and luminescence properties. It is important to understand how-and-why the characteristics of NPLs are influenced, particularly at elevated temperature, where both reversible and irreversible quenching processes come into picture. Here we present a study on the effect of elevated temperature on the characteristics of colloidal CdSe NPLs. We used an effective-mass envelope function theory based 8-band k$\cdot$p model and density-matrix theory considering exciton-phonon interaction. We observed the photoluminescence (PL) spectra at various temperatures for their photon emission energy, PL linewidth and intensity by considering the exciton-phonon interaction with both acoustic and optical phonons using Bose-Einstein statistical factors. With rise in temperature we observed a fall in the transition energy (emission redshift), matrix element, Fermi factor and quasi Fermi separation, with reduction in intraband state gaps and increased interband coupling. Also, there was a fall in the PL intensity, along with spectral broadening due to an intraband scattering effect. The predicted transition energy values and simulated PL spectra at varying temperatures exhibit appreciable consistency with experimental results. Our findings have important implications for application of NPLs in optoelectronic devices, such as NPL lasers and LEDs, operating much above room temperature.Comment: Published in Royal Society of Chemistry, Nanoscale (12 pages, 9 figures

Design, synthesis and anticonvulsant activity of some new 5,7-dibromoisatin semicarbazone derivatives

A series of 5,7-dibromoisatin semicarbazones have been synthesized in good yield, involving aryl urea and aryl semicarbazide formation. The structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed on the basis of their spectral data. All the compounds were evaluated for anticonvulsant and CNS depressant activities. Anticonvulsant activity was determined after intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration to mice by maximal electroshock (MES) induced seizure method and minimal motor impairment was determined by rotarod test. A computational study was carried out for prediction of pharmacokinetic properties and making them potentially promising agents for the treatment of epilepsy. Compounds (Z)-1-(5,7-dibromo-2-oxoindolin-3-ylidene)-4-(4-chlorophenyl)semicarbazide (DH-05), (Z)-1-(5,7-dibromo-2-oxoindolin-3-ylidene)-4-(3-chloro-4-fluorophenyl)semicarbazide (DH-11) and (Z)-1-(5,7-dibromo-1-methyl-2-oxoindolin-3-ylidene)-4-(3-chloro-4-fluorophenyl)semicarbazide (DH-12) exhibited prominent anticonvulsant effect in the series with little or no neurotoxicity and little CNS depressant effect as compared to standard drug

Combining ability analysis in linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) for improvement of seed yield and its component traits

Twenty eight hybrids developed from eight genotypes of linseed through diallel mating design (excluding reciprocal) along with one checks viz., Shekhar were evaluated in randomized block design with three replications for eleven distinct morphological traits during rabi season of 2012-13, to estimate the general combining ability (GCA) of the parents and specific combining ability (SCA) of hybrids considered for the development of high yielding varieties. The analysis of variance for combining ability revealed significant mean sum of squares due to GCA and SCA for all the traits under study. Genotype EC-1392 (0.50) and TL-11 (0.45) has been found good general combiner with highest magnitude of GCA effects for seed yield per plant. In addition to above, EC-1392 and TL-11 also showed good GCA effects for plant height, secondary branches per plant, capsules per plant and biological yield per plant. Hybrids A.95.B x Shekhar (2.43), TL-11 x EC-1392 (1.71) and NDL-2004-05 x GS-234 (1.53) showed higher positive significant SCA effects for seed yield per plant. These hybrids also exhibited positive significant SCA effects for plant height, secondary brances per plant, capsules per plant, indicating potential for exploiting hybrid vigour in breeding programme

Association of ACE Polymorphism and Diabetic Nephropathy in South Indian Patients

Objective: To study the association of ACE gene polymorphism and diabetic nephropathy in South Indian subjects. Setting: Outpatient clinic of a specialized hospital. Patients: The study included 109 South Indian type 2 diabetic patients (72 males and 37 females; age 56.7±9.0 years, mean±SD). The patients were subdivided into two groups: nephropathic (n=86) and normoalbuminuric patients (n=23). Interventions: Genomic DNA was isolated from the peripheral blood leukocytes. To determine the ACE genotype, genomic DNA was amplified by PCR initially using a flanking primer pair and, subsequently when necessary, with a primer pair that recognizes the insertion specific sequence for confirmation of the specificity of the amplification reactions. Main outcome measures: ACE genotype distribution in the two study groups. Results: In the nephropathic patients, ID and DD genotypes were present in 52.3% and 27.9% of the patients, respectively as compared to 34.8% and 21.7% respectively in those with normoalbuminuria. The D allele was present in 80.2% of the nephropathic patients and 56.5% of the normoalbuminuric patients (c 2=4.28, P=0.039; odds ratio 3.12). Therefore, the higher percentage of II genotype in the normoalbuminuric group was 43.5% as compared to the 19.8% in nephropathic patients. Conclusions: This study showed a positive association between the D allele (ID and DD genotype) of the ACE polymorphism and diabetic proteinuria in South Indian type 2 diabetic patients. Our findings are in keeping with several earlier studies showing a strong association of the D allele of the ACE gene with diabetic nephropathy