Some observations on the beaked sea snake Enhydrina schistosa (Daudin, 1803) in the mudbank area, off Alapuzha, Kerala, southwest coast of India

Hook-nosed sea snake or beaked snake, Enhydrina schistosa were caught during experimental fishing operations in the mudbank region along central Kerala Coast at depths ranging from 6 to 12 m. The sea snakes were found to form aggregations of 5 to 6 numbers and were able to tolerate highly turbid waters. The catfish Arius jella and the puffer fish Lagocephalus inermis were the dominant prey items. mudbanks are unusually calm areas which form along the Kerala coast during the monsoon. The inshore waters including the mudbanks are intense fishing areas of non mechanized crafts during the monsoon. The presence of venomous sea snakes is precarious and there is a need to give awareness programme for the fishers about this danger

Harbour Based Fisheries Management in Thoothukudi District – A Case of Thoothukudi Fishing Harbour

Thoothukudi District having a coastal line of 163.5 km stretches from Vembar in the north to south of Manappad (i.e., between 8° 9' 00" to 9° 7' 30" N latitude and 78° 2' 30" to 78° 25' 00" E longitude). Thoothukudi fishing harbour (TFH) is one of the oldest fishery ports in the east coast of India. Due to its commercial and economic importance from the marine fisheries point of view, nowadays it is considered as one of the major fishing harbours on the east coast of India. For the sake of easy management the fishing areas are divided into north of Thoothukudi and southern Thoothukudi. Of which the southern area cover up to Chinna muttom in Kanyakumari district and northern side covers up to Ervadi in Ramanathapuram district

Economics and marketing of dry fish production in Thoothukudi District, Tamil Nadu, India

The present study attempted to evaluate the economics and marketing of dry fish production in Thoothukudi District of Tamil Nadu, India. The information on various aspects of the dry fish enterprise was collected through random sampling of 29 dry fish producers in a pre-structured interview schedule. The results indicated that 50% of the total dry fish produced (in terms of quantity) was contributed by sardines and anchovies. However, seer fishes fetched a premium market price of ₹550 kg-1 followed by carangids (₹125 kg-1) and belonids (₹115 kg-1). Dry fish production was found to be a profitable business with an internal rate of returns (IRR) of 75% and simple rate of returns (SRR) of 43.48% respectively with a net profit margin of ₹2258.83 week-1. The study also suggests that the dry fishes reached the consumers by way of three marketing channel viz., channel 1 (producer to consumer) channel 2 (producer, middleman and consumer) and channel 3 (producer, wholesaler, middleman and consumer). Channel 1 was found the most efficient marketing channel over channel 2. The cost of raw materials, transportation, packaging and marketing margin were found to be the key factors that influences and decides the income of the dry fish producers and all the factors exhibited statistical significance at 0.05 level

Enhancing Knee Osteoarthritis severity level classification using diffusion augmented images

This research paper explores the classification of knee osteoarthritis (OA) severity levels using advanced computer vision models and augmentation techniques. The study investigates the effectiveness of data preprocessing, including Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE), and data augmentation using diffusion models. Three experiments were conducted: training models on the original dataset, training models on the preprocessed dataset, and training models on the augmented dataset. The results show that data preprocessing and augmentation significantly improve the accuracy of the models. The EfficientNetB3 model achieved the highest accuracy of 84\% on the augmented dataset. Additionally, attention visualization techniques, such as Grad-CAM, are utilized to provide detailed attention maps, enhancing the understanding and trustworthiness of the models. These findings highlight the potential of combining advanced models with augmented data and attention visualization for accurate knee OA severity classification.Comment: Paper has been accepted to be presented at ICACECS 2023 and the final version will be published by Atlantis Highlights in Computer Science (AHCS) , Atlantis Press(part of Springer Nature

Thin Film Growth and Device Fabrication of Iron-Based Superconductors

Iron-based superconductors have received much attention as a new family of high-temperature superconductors owing to their unique properties and distinct differences from cuprates and conventional superconductors. This paper reviews progress in thin film research on iron-based superconductors since their discovery for each of five material systems with an emphasis on growth, physical properties, device fabrication, and relevant bulk material properties.Comment: To appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Multicolour Single Molecule Imaging in Cells with Near Infra-Red Dyes

Background: The autofluorescence background of biological samples impedes the detection of single molecules when imaging. The most common method of reducing the background is to use evanescent field excitation, which is incompatible with imaging beyond the surface of biological samples. An alternative would be to use probes that can be excited in the near infra-red region of the spectrum, where autofluorescence is low. Such probes could also increase the number of labels that can be imaged in multicolour single molecule microscopes. Despite being widely used in ensemble imaging, there is a currently a shortage of information available for selecting appropriate commercial near infra-red dyes for single molecule work. It is therefore important to characterise available near infra-red dyes relevant to multicolour single molecule imaging. Methodology/Principal Findings: A range of commercially available near infra-red dyes compatible with multi-colour imaging was screened to find the brightest and most photostable candidates. Image series of immobilised samples of the brightest dyes (Alexa 700, IRDye 700DX, Alexa 790 and IRDye 800CW) were analysed to obtain the mean intensity of single dye molecules, their photobleaching rates and long period blinking kinetics. Using the optimum dye pair, we have demonstrated for the first time widefield, multi-colour, near infra-red single molecule imaging using a supercontinuum light source in MCF-7 cells