Vegetative propagation of Azadirachta indica: effect of auxin and rooting media on adventitious root induction in mini-cuttings

Azadirachta indica (Neem), a prodigious multipurpose tree, has immense potential to benefit mankind and to protect the environment. In order to investigate the effects of the auxins hormone and rooting media on root formation in mini-cuttings of A. indica, an experiment was conducted using mist system in poly house in summer 2012. The experiment was established on three different rooting media: sand, vermiculite and soil assembled with six concentrations (100; 250; 500; 750; 1,000 and 1,500 mg L-1) of the auxins IBA (indole-3-butyric acid), IAA (indole-3-acetic acid) and NAA (α-naphthalene acetic acid) with randomized block design, each block containing four replicates. The basal long soak methods were used for treating cuttings. The data revealed significant effect of different auxins and rooting media on the Neem establishment. The rooted mini-cuttings were assessed for rooting percent, number of roots, root length and number of leaves. In present finding among all the auxins and rooting media, , IBA (250 mg L-1) showed better results with sand in terms of rooting percent (80%), number of roots (70.63), root length (11.13) and number of leaves (5.25) per rooted mini-cuttings. The formation of healthy plants after hardening under outdoor conditions showed that A. indica could be successfully propagated by mini-cuttings techniques

Visualizing Components of Seed Yield to Identify Plant Ideotype in Field Pea (Pisum sativum L.)

The yields of pulse crops in general and fieldpea in particular have stagnated hence a study was undertaken to suggest a model plant type in fieldpea utilizing F4 populations of six crosses. Observations were recorded for nine traits on 120 randomly selected plants in each cross to work out genetic variability and phenotypic correlations which were further utilized for drawing the inferences to shape out an ideal plant type. Based on these, the model fieldpea plant with a combination of characteristics such as leafiness more number of primary branches and pods per plant, longer pods, with higher number of seeds per pod, round and large seed size was envisaged. The effect of different qualitative traits on yield contributing characters revealed that leafy and round seeded plants could be favorable components of high yield

Severe Esophagitis and Chemical Pneumonitis as a Consequence of Dilute Benzalkonium Chloride Ingestion: A Case Report

Background: Benzalkonium chloride (BAC) has been used as an active ingredient in a wide variety of compounds such as surface disinfectants, floor cleaners, pharmaceutical products and sanitizers. Solutions containing <10% concentration of BACs typically do not cause serious injury. As the available data regarding acute BAC toxicity is limited, we report a case of dilute benzalkonium chloride ingestion resulting in bilateral chemical pneumonitis and significant gastrointestinal injury requiring mechanical ventilatory support. The Case: A 42-year-old male presented with chief complaints of nausea, vomiting and excessive amount of blood- mixed oral secretions after accidental ingestion of approximately 100ml of BAC solution (<10%). Later he developed respiratory distress with falling oxygen saturation for which he was intubated and mechanical ventilatory support was administered. Computed tomography (CT) chest was suggestive of bilateral chemical pneumonitis and upper gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy revealed diffuse esophageal ulcerations. The patient was managed with intravenous fluids, corticosteroids, proton pump inhibitor, empiric antibiotics and total parenteral nutrition. Conclusion: The present case report emphasizes that dilute BAC compounds can cause severe respiratory and gastrointestinal injuries. Immediate and aggressive medical treatment is crucial for improving patient outcomes and reducing the complication rates

Nanostructured Manganese Hexacyanidocobaltate(III) as Heterogeneous Catalyst for Solvent-Free Oxidation of Benzyl Alcohol

Manganese hexacyanidocobaltate(III) nanostructures have been synthesized using double decomposition method and characterized in terms of CHNS analysis, atomic absorption spectroscopy, thermal analysis, infrared spectral studies and transmission electron microscopic technique. The transmission electron microscopic image of the synthesized material showed that it is consisting of roughly spherical shaped particle with size range of 30-60 nm. The catalytic activity of the synthesized material was studied for the oxidation of benzyl alcohol, using H2O2 as oxidant, under solvent-free conditions. The characterization of the oxidation product of benzyl alcohol and its quantitative estimation was done using gas chromatography. The synthesized material was found to be an effective heterogeneous catalyst with a high selectivity towards benzaldehyde as the oxidation product. It showed 31% conversion of benzyl alcohol under the optimized conditions of various reaction parameters, namely, amount of catalyst, reaction temperature, benzyl alcohol to H2O2 molar ratio and the reaction time

Osmotic controlled drug delivery system (OSMO technology) and its impact on diabetes care

Recently, focus on the development of controlled release drug delivery system has increased, as existing drugs exhibit certain pharmacokinetic limitations. The major goal of designing sustained release formulations is to improve the drug performance by prolonged duration of drug action, decreased frequency of dosing and reduced side effects by using smallest quantity of drug administered by the most suitable route. Osmotic-controlled release oral delivery system (OSMO technology) is the most promising strategy based system for sustained delivery of drug. Drug can be delivered in a controlled manner over a long period of time by the process of osmosis. Osmotic drug delivery system appears to be a promising solution for the limitations of conventional extended release formulations by virtue of their distinguished technological features. The present review describes briefly about various controlled drug delivery systems with special focus on advantages of osmotic-controlled release oral delivery system related to diabetes therapy and improved compliance

Development of new promising varieties of faba bean through traditional pedigree method for commercial cultivation in plain zone of India

A long term experiment was carried out in MAP Section, Department of Genetics & Plant Breeding,  CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar from 2005-06 to 2018-19 on identification of elite genotypes from germplasm and their utilization in the development of high yielding variety through hybridization followed by traditional pedigree method to obtain desirable transgressive segregants in Faba bean. In the present investigation a number of germplasm lines were screened for seed yield and other related traits including national check Vikrant during 2005-06 under AICRN in augmented block design. As a result, ten elite genotypes identified i.e. EC117755, EC117799, EC248710, EC329675, HB123, HB180, HB430, HB204, HB 430, HB 502, HB 503 & one check variety, Vikrant. By using these elite genotypes, a number of F1 hybrids were made during 2005-06 and F2 to F6 generations were evaluated to identify the superior progenies during 2007-08 to 2011-12. After a long process of evaluation, rejection and selection, 20 superior transgressive segregant homozygous progenies were identified to make new entries. Later on, during 2012-2013, the superior entries (viz. HB12-1, HB12-5, HB12-8, HB12-9, HB12-11, HB12-12, HB12-13, HB12-14, HB12-15, HB12-26, HB12-28, HB12-29, HB12-30, HB12-31, HB12-34, HB12-36, HB12-37,HB12-38, HB12-39 and HB12-42) were evaluated at Hisar centre against Vikrant and found promising. Therefore, all these 20 genotypes were evaluated in SST during 2013-14, LST during 2014-15 and FYT during 2015-16. On the basis of above results, only five genotypes viz. HB12-8 (47.77q/ha), HB12-42 (47.70q/ha), HB12-15 (46.70q/ha), HB12-34 (46.14q/ha) and HB12-37 (45. 31q/ha) were found promising. These were further evaluated in multi-location trials at seven locations (i.e. Ambikpur, Delhi, Faizabad, Faridkot, Hisar, Ludhiana & Ranchi) for seed yield, quality and resistance against insect pest & disease in IVT and AVT during 2016-17 & 2017-18, respectively. Out of these, HB12-34 exhibited yield superiority over national checks,Vikrant and HFB-1 and free from insect pest and disease as well as low in vicine-covicine and high in protein content. Therefore, HB12-34 may be recommended for commercial cultivation in plain zone at national level

Morphology of Atmospheric Particles over Semi-Arid Region (Jaipur, Rajasthan) of India: Implications for Optical Properties

The regional dust morphology and spectral refractive indices (RIs; governed by hematite, Fe2O3 content at short wavelengths) are key elements for ascertaining direct radiative forcing of mineral dust aerosols. To provide morphological features of background mineral dust from a semi-arid zone in the vicinity of the Thar Desert, we carried out an expedition to the Jaipur city during late winter of 2012. Morphological analysis reveals the predominance of "Layered", "Angular" and "Flattened" particles, while the frequency distribution of a total of 235 dust particles shows the aspect ratio, AR and circularity parameter, CIR (measures of particle's non-sphericity) typically similar to 1.4 and similar to 0.8, respectively. Sensitivity analysis at 550 nm wavelength reveals the equivalent sphere model may underestimate Single Scattering Albedo, SSA for the dust with low (similar to 1.1%) hematite by similar to 3.5%. Both underestimation (by similar to 5.6%) and overestimation (up to 9.1%) are probable in case of dust with high hematite content (similar to 5.68%). In addition, the effect of AR on the dust scattering is significant in case of dust with high hematite content. More such regionally representative dust morphological data are required for better estimation of regional radiative forcing of mineral dust aerosols

HealthFog: An ensemble deep learning based Smart Healthcare System for Automatic Diagnosis of Heart Diseases in integrated IoT and fog computing environments

Cloud computing provides resources over the Internet and allows a plethora of applications to be deployed to provide services for different industries. The major bottleneck being faced currently in these cloud frameworks is their limited scalability and hence inability to cater to the requirements of centralized Internet of Things (IoT) based compute environments. The main reason for this is that latency-sensitive applications like health monitoring and surveillance systems now require computation over large amounts of data (Big Data) transferred to centralized database and from database to cloud data centers which leads to drop in performance of such systems. The new paradigms of fog and edge computing provide innovative solutions by bringing resources closer to the user and provide low latency and energy-efficient solutions for data processing compared to cloud domains. Still, the current fog models have many limitations and focus from a limited perspective on either accuracy of results or reduced response time but not both. We proposed a novel framework called HealthFog for integrating ensemble deep learning in Edge computing devices and deployed it for a real-life application of automatic Heart Disease analysis. HealthFog delivers healthcare as a fog service using IoT devices and efficiently manages the data of heart patients, which comes as user requests. Fog-enabled cloud framework, FogBus is used to deploy and test the performance of the proposed model in terms of power consumption, network bandwidth, latency, jitter, accuracy and execution time. HealthFog is configurable to various operation modes that provide the best Quality of Service or prediction accuracy, as required, in diverse fog computation scenarios and for different user requirements

A self assembled monolayer based microfluidic sensor for urea detection

Urease (Urs) and glutamate dehydrogenase (GLDH) have been covalently co-immobilized onto a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) comprising of 10-carboxy-1-decanthiol (CDT) via EDC–NHS chemistry deposited onto one of the two patterned gold (Au) electrodes for estimation of urea using poly(dimethylsiloxane) based microfluidic channels (2 cm × 200 μm × 200 μm). The CDT/Au and Urs-GLDH/CDT/Au electrodes have been characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, contact angle (CA), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electrochemical cyclic voltammetry (CV) techniques. The electrochemical response measurement of a Urs-GLDH/CDT/Au bioelectrode obtained as a function of urea concentration using CV yield linearity as 10 to 100 mg dl−1, detection limit as 9 mg dl−1 and high sensitivity as 7.5 μA mM−1 cm−2

Small and sick newborn care during the COVID-19 pandemic: global survey and thematic analysis of healthcare providers' voices and experiences.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting health systems globally. Maternity care disruptions have been surveyed, but not those related to vulnerable small newborns. We aimed to survey reported disruptions to small and sick newborn care worldwide and undertake thematic analysis of healthcare providers' experiences and proposed mitigation strategies. METHODS: Using a widely disseminated online survey in three languages, we reached out to neonatal healthcare providers. We collected data on COVID-19 preparedness, effects on health personnel and on newborn care services, including kangaroo mother care (KMC), as well as disruptors and solutions. RESULTS: We analysed 1120 responses from 62 countries, mainly low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Preparedness for COVID-19 was suboptimal in terms of guidelines and availability of personal protective equipment. One-third reported routine testing of all pregnant women, but 13% had no testing capacity at all. More than 85% of health personnel feared for their own health and 89% had increased stress. Newborn care practices were disrupted both due to reduced care-seeking and a compromised workforce. More than half reported that evidence-based interventions such as KMC were discontinued or discouraged. Separation of the mother-baby dyad was reported for both COVID-positive mothers (50%) and those with unknown status (16%). Follow-up care was disrupted primarily due to families' fear of visiting hospitals (~73%). CONCLUSION: Newborn care providers are stressed and there is lack clarity and guidelines regarding care of small newborns during the pandemic. There is an urgent need to protect life-saving interventions, such as KMC, threatened by the pandemic, and to be ready to recover and build back better