Soil Microbial Rejuvenation through Soil Resource Recycling as a part of Sustainable Management Programme: A Case Study from Lakhipara Tea Estate, Dooars, West Bengal, India

Quest for sustainability in the Indian tea industry starts on a serious note in the backdrop of several key issues such as impact of climate change on crop productivity, higher intensity of pest and diseases, rampant use of agrochemicals, issue of pesticide residues, increasing mandays cost etc. In this difficult time when most of the tea producers are looking for areas for cost curtailment, Goodricke Group Ltd., initiated the Sustainable Management Programme with the objectivity of producing sustainable teas with low pesticide footprint from the year 2014 onwards. The present study was conducted as a part of the above programme, to evaluate the effectiveness of on-farm generated compost towards soil microbial enrichment. Large-scale composting was done using Novcom composting method and end product quality was analyzed as per International Standards. Total N, P, K in the mature compost was 1.97%, 0.75%, and 0.87%, respectively but most important was the presence of self-generated microbial population in the order of 1014–1016 c.f.u. The rate of CO2 evolution, nitrification index and phytotoxicity bioassay value confirmed end product maturity and absence of any toxicity towards root growth. Assessment of Soil development Index (SDI), one year post compost application showed maximum soil development under organic soil management followed by soils receiving integrated soil management whereas nominal variation was documented under conventional soil management. Biological properties of soil were found to play a major contributory role towards variation of SDI value indicating the importance of microbial rejuvenation towards soil quality development

Standardisation of intestinal ultrasound scoring in clinical trials for luminal Crohn's disease

Background: Intestinal ultrasound (IUS) is a valuable tool for assessment of Crohn’s disease (CD). However, there is no widely accepted luminal disease activity index. / Aims: To identify appropriate IUS protocols, indices, items, and scoring methods for measurement of luminal CD activity and integration of IUS in CD clinical trials. / Methods: An expert international panel of adult and paediatric gastroenterologists (n = 15) and radiologists (n = 3) rated the appropriateness of 120 statements derived from literature review and expert opinion (scale of 1-9) using modified RAND/UCLA methodology. Median panel scores of 1 to ≤3.5, >3.5 to <6.5 and ≥6.5 to 9 were considered inappropriate, uncertain and appropriate ratings respectively. The statement list and survey results were discussed prior to voting. / Results: A total of 91 statements were rated appropriate with agreement after two rounds of voting. Items considered appropriate measures of disease activity were bowel wall thickness (BWT), vascularity, stratification and mesenteric inflammatory fat. There was uncertainty if any of the existing IUS disease activity indices were appropriate for use in CD clinical trials. Appropriate trial applications for IUS included patient recruitment qualification when diseased segments cannot be adequately assessed by ileocolonoscopy and screening for exclusionary complications. At outcome assessment, remission endpoints including BWT and vascularity, with or without mesenteric inflammatory fat, were considered appropriate. Components of an ideal IUS disease activity index were identified based upon panel discussions. / Conclusions: The panel identified appropriate component items and applications of IUS for CD clinical trials. Empiric evidence, and development and validation of an IUS disease activity index are needed

A double-blind placebo-controlled trial of azithromycin to reduce mortality and improve growth in high-risk young children with non-bloody diarrhoea in low resource settings: the Antibiotics for Children with Diarrhoea (ABCD) trial protocol

Background Acute diarrhoea is a common cause of illness and death among children in low- to middle-income settings. World Health Organization guidelines for the clinical management of acute watery diarrhoea in children focus on oral rehydration, supplemental zinc and feeding advice. Routine use of antibiotics is not recommended except when diarrhoea is bloody or cholera is suspected. Young children who are undernourished or have a dehydrating diarrhoea are more susceptible to death at 90 days after onset of diarrhoea. Given the mortality risk associated with diarrhoea in children with malnutrition or dehydrating diarrhoea, expanding the use of antibiotics for this subset of children could be an important intervention to reduce diarrhoea-associated mortality and morbidity. We designed the Antibiotics for Childhood Diarrhoea (ABCD) trial to test this intervention. Methods ABCD is a double-blind, randomised trial recruiting 11,500 children aged 2–23 months presenting with acute non-bloody diarrhoea who are dehydrated and/or undernourished (i.e. have a high risk for mortality). Enrolled children in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Pakistan and Tanzania are randomised (1:1) to oral azithromycin 10 mg/kg or placebo once daily for 3 days and followed-up for 180 days. Primary efficacy endpoints are all-cause mortality during the 180 days post-enrolment and change in linear growth 90 days post-enrolment. Discussion Expanding the treatment of acute watery diarrhoea in high-risk children to include an antibiotic may offer an opportunity to reduce deaths. These benefits may result from direct antimicrobial effects on pathogens or other incompletely understood mechanisms including improved nutrition, alterations in immune responsiveness or improved enteric function. The expansion of indications for antibiotic use raises concerns about the emergence of antimicrobial resistance both within treated children and the communities in which they live. ABCD will monitor antimicrobial resistance. The ABCD trial has important policy implications. If the trial shows significant benefits of azithromycin use, this may provide evidence to support reconsideration of antibiotic indications in the present World Health Organization diarrhoea management guidelines. Conversely, if there is no evidence of benefit, these results will support the current avoidance of antibiotics except in dysentery or cholera, thereby avoiding inappropriate use of antibiotics and reaffirming the current guidelines. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT03130114. Registered on April 26 2017

Biomedical Discovery Acceleration, with Applications to Craniofacial Development

The profusion of high-throughput instruments and the explosion of new results in the scientific literature, particularly in molecular biomedicine, is both a blessing and a curse to the bench researcher. Even knowledgeable and experienced scientists can benefit from computational tools that help navigate this vast and rapidly evolving terrain. In this paper, we describe a novel computational approach to this challenge, a knowledge-based system that combines reading, reasoning, and reporting methods to facilitate analysis of experimental data. Reading methods extract information from external resources, either by parsing structured data or using biomedical language processing to extract information from unstructured data, and track knowledge provenance. Reasoning methods enrich the knowledge that results from reading by, for example, noting two genes that are annotated to the same ontology term or database entry. Reasoning is also used to combine all sources into a knowledge network that represents the integration of all sorts of relationships between a pair of genes, and to calculate a combined reliability score. Reporting methods combine the knowledge network with a congruent network constructed from experimental data and visualize the combined network in a tool that facilitates the knowledge-based analysis of that data. An implementation of this approach, called the Hanalyzer, is demonstrated on a large-scale gene expression array dataset relevant to craniofacial development. The use of the tool was critical in the creation of hypotheses regarding the roles of four genes never previously characterized as involved in craniofacial development; each of these hypotheses was validated by further experimental work

Renewable energy from Cyanobacteria: energy production optimization by metabolic pathway engineering

The need to develop and improve sustainable energy resources is of eminent importance due to the finite nature of our fossil fuels. This review paper deals with a third generation renewable energy resource which does not compete with our food resources, cyanobacteria. We discuss the current state of the art in developing different types of bioenergy (ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, etc.) from cyanobacteria. The major important biochemical pathways in cyanobacteria are highlighted, and the possibility to influence these pathways to improve the production of specific types of energy forms the major part of this review

Model dependence of solvent separated sodium chloride ion pairs in water-DMSO mixtures

Constrained molecular dynamics simulations have been used to investigate ion pairing in water - DMSO mixtures. The potentials of mean force between the sodium - chloride ion pair are constructed by estimating the mean forces between the ion pair at various interionic separations and then integrating the mean forces. Two compositions of the solvent mixture with DMSO mole fractions of 0.21 and 0.35 are considered. Two model potentials for water and DMSO have been considered. One of the main observations is that the contact ion pair which is dominantly present in both the individual solvents is conspicuously absent in the mixture compositions studied. While solvent separated ion pairs dominate in all the mixture compositions, there is a presence of a second solvent separated ion pair in the water-DMSO mixture of composition with mole fraction of DMSO = 0.21. The potentials of mean force are verified by dynamical trajectories of the ion pair. The dynamics of the solvation shells has also been investigated in detail

Magnetic and magnetotransport properties in (LaxSm1-x)(2/3)Sr1/3MnO3 (x=1/3, 1/2 and 2/3) manganites

The magnetic and transport properties of (LaxSm1-x)(2/3)Sr1/3MnO3 (x = 1/3, 1/2 and 2/3) manganites, prepared by the citrate-gel route, have been investigated. These compounds are found to crystallize in the orthorhombic structure. The hopping between Mn3+ and Mn4+ sites is controlled by the Mn-O-Mn bond angle. The magnetoresistance in 8.5 kOe fields varies from 15 to 25 percent over the temperature range 300 K to 80 K. The conduction mechanism can be understood by using the correlated small polaron model. The metal-insulator as well as magnetic transition temperatures are close to each other, which indicates the dominance of long-range ferromagnetic ordering in the present system. At low temperatures, a weak ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic transition is indicated, which could be due to competing super-exchange and double exchange interactions. The charge localization at lower temperatures could be the possible explanation for increasing magnetoresistance. The maximum magnetic moment at 5 K, for all the samples is similar to 3.6 mu(B)/Mn, which is close to the 3.7 mu(B)/Mn, as obtained by considering the Mn spins only. (c) 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Effect of cobalt substitution on magneto-transport properties of Nd0.7Sr0.3Mn1-xCoxO3 (0.0 <= x <= 1)

Magnetic and transport studies of the compounds Nd0.7Sr0.3Mn1-xCoxO3 (0.0 <= x <= 1) have been carried out. The compositions crystallize in single-phase ortho-perovskite. The conduction mechanism could be explained using the small polaron correlated hopping model. The thermal irreversibility in zero-field and field-cooled magnetization data increases with Co content, which is due to the different spin states of the Co. Transition of CO3+ from high spin/intermediate spin to low spin state is observed at low temperatures. The nonsaturating M-H behavior is observed in cobalt containing samples due to suppression of double-exchange interaction which favors long-range ferromagnetic order. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics

Case Report - Pulmonary hydatidosis: An unusual cause of haemoptysis

A 28-year-old female patient was referred to us with complaints of massive haemoptysis and cough with expectoration, of two years&apos; duration. Her chest radiograph, computed tomography scan and video-bronchoscopy revealed a cystic lesion in the right upper and lower zones of the lungs. Aspiration from the cyst fluid was grossly hemorrhagic and full of inflammatory cells. On digestion of the fluid with potassium hydroxide, it showed plenty of hooklets and scolices of Echinococcus granulosus . An intact brood capsule was also seen. Diagnosis of hydatidosis was further confirmed by a positive serological and therapeutic response to albendazole