Biochemical estimation and cultivation of Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Imbach on different casing materials and bio-inoculant Pseudomonas putida

This study was carried out during 2012-2014 to determine the effect of locally available casing materials with association of bio-inoculant Pseudomonas putida. Six different combinations of casing mixtures were amended for evaluating its effect on yield, biological efficiency, protein and carbohydrate contents of Agaricus bisporus. A mixture of FYM + GLS + Vermi-compost + P. putida gave higher mushroom yield, biological efficiency, protein and carbohydrate content. It gave better yield (1306 g), biological efficiency (28.7%), protein (34.07%) and carbohydrate content (5.07%) respectively when compared with other treatments. In addition, waste tea leaves took minimum period (33.00 days) for initiation of pin head when compared with others. Locally available casing materials along with P. putida incorporated in the casing soil can be an important factor to obtain maximum and assured yield in mushroom cultivation

Incidence of Post-Harvest Fungal Pathogens in Guava and Banana in Allahabad

A survey was conducted to study incidence of pathogens associated with post-harvest losses in fruits in produce from fruit markets of Allahabad. Rhizopus stolonifer (20.76%) was a major post-harvest pathogen isolated from the samples, followed by Pestalotia psidii (18.46%), Alternaria sp. (17.69%), Penicillium expansum (11.53%), Colletotrichum gloesporioides (10.76%), Aspergillus niger (9.23%), Tricothecium sp (8.46%), and Cladosporium sp. (4%) in Guava, and, Fusarium sp. (28.3%) Curvularia (23.39%), Colletotrichum musae (16.6%), Trichothecium sp (11.6), Penicillium (10.8%), Alternaria (5%) and Rhizopus (4%) in banana fruit samples

Evaluation of some plant extracts in management of dry bubble (Verticillium fungicola) disease of white button mushroom [Agaricus bisporus (Lange) Imbach]

The study was undertaken to determine antifungal potentials of some plant extracts against dry bubble (Verticillium fungicola) disease of white button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus). Twelve botanicals namely, Allium cepa, A. sativum, Saraca asoca, Aloe vera, Azadirachta indica, Lantana camara, Ocimum sanctum, Solanum lycopersicum (Lycopersicon esculentum), Tagetes erecta, Psidium guajava, Catharanthus roseus and Aparagus racemosus were evaluated in-vitro and in-vivo for their efficacy against both A. bisporus and V. fungicola, causing dry bubble disease of mushroom. The efficacy of botanicals was examined by poison food technique in in-vitro. The percent inhibition produced by botanicals against V. Fungicola recorded in-vitro was; A. cepa (25.87%), A. sativum (24.70%), S. asoca (12.35%), A. vera (22.35%), A. indica (35.11%), L. camara (28.48%), O. sanctum (20.59%), S. lycopersicum (20.34%), T. erecta (14.11%), P. guajava (15.11%), C. roseus (18.11%) and A. racemosus (13.52%). Among these plant extracts, A. indica was found best treatment followed by L. Camara and A. Cepa. Plant extracts showing maximum efficacy against V. fungicola and minimum inhibition against mushroom were further evaluated against V. fungicola infection in mushroom crop room (in-vivo test). In in-vivo test, the polybags which receive A. indica show maximum mean increase in yield (43.46%) over control and exhibited minimum mean disease incidence (27.7%)

Clinical profile of patients with vernal keratoconjunctivitis

Background: Ocular allergy is a common disorder, which can be debilitating for patients and at times challenging physicians to diagnose and treat. Allergic disease affects 30-50% of the population. Vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) has predilection for young age group and the diagnosis is generally based on signs and symptoms of the disease. This study was undertaken to stress upon the disease and those secondary to its long-term medication.Methods: 74 patients with VKC detected at random, who attended the Department of Ophthalmology KIMS, Hubli from December 2012 to May 2014. The relevant details of history and clinical examination of the patients were recorded on a specifically designed Proforma. The type and severity of VKC was noted. Clinical observation and evaluation of clinical signs and symptoms were performed before and after drug therapy at first visit, weekly interval for 2 weeks and at the end of 3 months.Results: 22 out of 74 (29.72%) were in the 6-10 years of age. The male: female ratio was 2.7:1.13. Majority of the patients presented in the month of May. Family history of allergy was present in 4 (5.04%) of patients. 59 (72.72%) patients showed seasonal symptoms and 15 (20.27%) patients showed perennial symptoms. Mixed type was found in 60.81%. Itching was present in 59 (79.72%). 72 (97.29%) had papillae on the upper tarsal conjunctiva.Conclusions: VKC was common in males, during hot climate. Mixed type of VKC was more commonly present.

Influence of hospital policy on partograph use in tertiary care facilities in India: a cross sectional survey

Background: Partograph is an effective, but underutilized tool for monitoring labour. This study examined the influence of hospital policy on the knowledge, attitude, practice and skills of doctors towards partograph plotting.Methods: A cross-sectional survey among doctors posted in labour rooms of tertiary care public teaching hospitals of India was carried out, using self-administered questionnaire to assess knowledge, attitude and practice; and labour case scenarios were provided to assess partograph plotting skills. Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test were employed to test the significance of association between knowledge, attitude, practice and skills of 150 doctors working in hospitals with (n=3) and without (n=2) policy of routine partograph plotting.Results: The majority of doctors in both groups had correct knowledge about different partograph components. However, doctors working in hospitals with a policy of partograph use, demonstrated significantly better skills using case scenarios for plotting partographs (p<0.01), and a positive attitude towards plotting partograph and its use as a decision support tool (p=0.000) as compared to doctors working in hospitals without a routine partograph plotting policy.Conclusions: Hospital policy of routine partograph plotting may positively influence utilization of partograph in tertiary care public hospitals in India

Text Extraction from Captured Image and Conversion to Audio for Smart Phone Application

Text extraction from captured image by smart phone is difficult task due muddle background and non-textual portion. Again the text is in a variety of fonts, styles, sizes, and having different words where every word may contain different characters in dissimilarities of text patterns. If we can ignored the problems of muddle background and text separation for the some instant, again there are several other reasons as font style and variations in size word by word or character by character; background as well as foreground colour; camera position which can lead distortions; brightness and image resolution. The proposed technique is firstly, Capture the image from mobile camera and it is a color image. Then the colour image is converted into gray scale image and then gray scale image is converted into binary image. This binary image is gives to the Optical character recognition (OCR) engine which recognize and extract the text from image and gives to the Text to Speech (TTS) engine. The Text to Speech engine is converting the text into audio

The burden and characteristics of enteric fever at a healthcare facility in a densely populated area of Kathmandu

Enteric fever, caused by Salmonella enterica serovars Typhi and Paratyphi A (S. Typhi and S. Paratyphi A) remains a major public health problem in many settings. The disease is limited to locations with poor sanitation which facilitates the transmission of the infecting organisms. Efficacious and inexpensive vaccines are available for S. Typhi, yet are not commonly deployed to control the disease. Lack of vaccination is due partly to uncertainty of the disease burden arising from a paucity of epidemiological information in key locations. We have collected and analyzed data from 3,898 cases of blood culture-confirmed enteric fever from Patan Hospital in Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City (LSMC), between June 2005 and May 2009. Demographic data was available for a subset of these patients (n = 527) that were resident in LSMC and who were enrolled in trials. We show a considerable burden of enteric fever caused by S. Typhi (2,672; 68.5%) and S. Paratyphi A (1,226; 31.5%) at this Hospital over a four year period, which correlate with seasonal fluctuations in rainfall. We found that local population density was not related to incidence and we identified a focus of infections in the east of LSMC. With data from patients resident in LSMC we found that the median age of those with S. Typhi (16 years) was significantly less than S. Paratyphi A (20 years) and that males aged 15 to 25 were disproportionately infected. Our findings provide a snapshot into the epidemiological patterns of enteric fever in Kathmandu. The uneven distribution of enteric fever patients within the population suggests local variation in risk factors, such as contaminated drinking water. These findings are important for initiating a vaccination scheme and improvements in sanitation. We suggest any such intervention should be implemented throughout the LSMC area.This work was supported by The Wellcome Trust, Euston Road, London, United Kingdom. MFB is supported by the Medical Research Council (grant G0600718). SB is supported by an OAK foundation fellowship through Oxford University

Effectiveness of some integrated disease management factors (IDM) on Fusarium wilt infected tomato

The study was conducted to investigate efficacy of Integrated disease management (IDM) viz., solarized soil, Trichoderma harzianum, spent mushroom compost and carbendazim on growth characteristics of infected tomato by Fusarial wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici) under pots conditions in the Bio-net house during 2013-2014. Seven treatments and five replicates were taken up in completed randomized design. Maximum shoot length, fresh and dry shoot weight were noticed in T4 (solarized soil+ Spent mushroom compost+ T. harzianum) 118.10 cm, 67.25 and 42.20 g respectively as compared to T. harzianum or spent mushroom compost that alone treated plants. Maximum root length, fresh and dry root weight were also recorded in T4 (solarized soil+ spent mushroom compost+ T. harzianum) 28.35 cm, 4.65 and 2.55 g respectively. The yield of tomato plants was significantly increased in T6 (tomato plant alone without Fusarium oxysporum) 170.15 g/plant followed by T4 137.52 g/plant as compared with T0- Fusarium oxysporum alone and T1- Solarized soil + Fusarium oxysporum 0.0 g

What's In My Big Data?

Large text corpora are the backbone of language models. However, we have a limited understanding of the content of these corpora, including general statistics, quality, social factors, and inclusion of evaluation data (contamination). In this work, we propose What's In My Big Data? (WIMBD), a platform and a set of sixteen analyses that allow us to reveal and compare the contents of large text corpora. WIMBD builds on two basic capabilities -- count and search -- at scale, which allows us to analyze more than 35 terabytes on a standard compute node. We apply WIMBD to ten different corpora used to train popular language models, including C4, The Pile, and RedPajama. Our analysis uncovers several surprising and previously undocumented findings about these corpora, including the high prevalence of duplicate, synthetic, and low-quality content, personally identifiable information, toxic language, and benchmark contamination. For instance, we find that about 50% of the documents in RedPajama and LAION-2B-en are duplicates. In addition, several datasets used for benchmarking models trained on such corpora are contaminated with respect to important benchmarks, including the Winograd Schema Challenge and parts of GLUE and SuperGLUE. We open-source WIMBD's code and artifacts to provide a standard set of evaluations for new text-based corpora and to encourage more analyses and transparency around them: github.com/allenai/wimbd