Heterosis in single cross inter and intra-specific hybrids of Desi cotton (Gossipium arboreum and G. herbaceaum) for their seed cotton yield, fibre quality and seed oil content

The present investigation was carried out to assess the expression of per se performance and heterotic effect for fibre quality and seed oil content besides seed cotton yield, studied involving ten desi cotton (Gossipium arboreum and G. herbaceaum) genotypes and their 45 cross combinations in half diallel analysis. F-1 hybrids GBhv-282 x G 27 (67.36%), GBhv- 287 x 824 (58.14%), GBhv- 282 x GAM- 173 (35.00%), GBhv- 286 x G 27 (20.50%), and GBhv- 283 x 824 (18.75%) recorded highest per se performance and significant positive standard heterosis while the maximum heterobeltiosis for seed cotton yield per plant was exhibited by the hybrid GBhv- 287 x 824(155.60 %) followed by GBhv- 282 x G 27 (151.29%) and GBhv- 282 x GAM- 173 (130.30%). Similar trend of heterosis for numbers of boll per plant were observed in above hybrids. For fibre quality traits none of the cross showed consistent high performance for all the characters. Cross GBhv- 283 x 824 was exhibited high standard heterosis for 2.5 % span length, fibre strength, fibre elongation percentage as well as for short fibre index (SFI) while cross GBhv- 286 x 824 were promising for 2.5 per cent span length, fibre strength and fibre fineness. In case of oil content intraarboreum crosses resulted as better crosses and among them cross combination 824 x GAM- 173 was best. Desi cotton hybrids are having lower fibre quality and yield. So, improvement for yield and fibre quality of diploid native varieties through heterosis breeding provided better hybrids for rainfed farming

Using honey to heal diabetic foot ulcers

Diabetic ulcers seem to be arrested in the inflammatory/proliferative stage of the healing process, allowing infection and inflammation to preclude healing. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have become a major cause of infections, including diabetic foot infections. It is proposed here that the modern developments of an ancient and traditional treatment for wounds, dressing them with honey, provide the solution to the problem of getting diabetic ulcers to move on from the arrested state of healing. Honeys selected to have a high level of antibacterial activity have been shown to be very effective against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in laboratory and clinical studies. The potent anti-inflammatory action of honey is also likely to play an important part in overcoming the impediment to healing that inflammation causes in diabetic ulcers, as is the antioxidant activity of honey. The action of honey in promotion of tissue regeneration through stimulation of angiogenesis and the growth of fibroblasts and epithelial cells, and its insulin-mimetic effect, would also be of benefit in stimulating the healing of diabetic ulcers. The availability of honey-impregnated dressings which conveniently hold honey in place on ulcers has provided a means of rapidly debriding ulcers and removing the bacterial burden so that good healing rates can be achieved with neuropathic ulcers. With ischemic ulcers, where healing cannot occur because of lack of tissue viability, these honey dressings keep the ulcers clean and prevent infection occurring

Metal-macrofauna interactions determine microbial community structure and function in copper contaminated sediments

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The effect of canopy temperature depression in Barley crop on different environmental sowing conditions in Trans-Gangetic plains of India

A study on barley crops was carried out at the research farm of the Department of Agricultural Meteorology during the Rabi season of 2019-20 and 2020-21. The trial objective was to understand the effect of various meteorological, plant and soil parameters on the Canopy Temperature Depression (CTD) of barley crops under varying growing environmental conditions. Four dates of sowings were selected for both rabi seasons of 2019-20 and 2020-21, i.e., D1- 15th November 2019, D2- 30th November 2019, D3- 15th December 2019 and D4- 30th December 2019 and D1- 28th November 2020, D2- 14thDecember 2020, D3- 28thDecember 2020 and D4- 8 th January 2021. The meteorological parameters were taken from the agrometeorological observatory at the research farm of CCS HAU, Hisar. Plant and soil parameters were recorded and calculated during the field trials conducted on barley crops in both seasons (2019-20 and 2020-21). The CTD of the barley crop was observed using a hand-held infrared thermometer at different phenological stages. It was observed that the CTD of D1 and D2 sown crops was majorly influenced by meteorological and soil parameters, respectively. The plant parameters majorly influenced the CTD of D3and D4 sown crops

Constraints Perceived by Buffalo Farmers in Interaction with Information Providing Stakeholders

The present study was conducted in Haryana. The 120 buffalo farmers from twelve villages constituted the sample size for the present study. An ex-post facto research design was used for the study. Farmers were asked to rank the constraints that they faced in their interaction with stakeholders. The constraints were studied under four subheads viz., farmers related, extension related, veterinary and infrastructure-related, and other constraints. It was found that low extension agency contact and lack of information about stakeholders were the most important farmers’ related constraints. Most serious extension-related constraints were less focus of state department of animal husbandry personnel on extension activities, unavailability of information in the local language, poor availability of buffalo related literature. The most severe veterinary and infrastructural constraints were lack of rapport of farmers with veterinary surgeons, less availability of veterinary surgeons, inadequate number of veterinary functionaries. Less information on marketing channels, less information on credit/loan, source of credit availability were other most serious constraints that were acting as impediments in their interaction with stakeholders. The perceived constraints can be overcome by increasing extension agency contact, increasing social participation, availing more communication media to the farmers, providing buffalo related literature in the local language, increasing the number of veterinarians per thousand animals, off-campus training, efficient management of cooperatives, more information on market and farm credit, need-based information, and context-specific information to the farmers. The findings of the present research would provide new insights about the impediments in the interaction of buffalo farmers with stakeholders

Optical properties of Yb3+ doped ZnO/MgO nanocomposites

[EN] Yb3þ doped ZnO/MgO nanocomposite were prepared by combustion synthesis method. The samples were further heated to 1000 °C to improve their crystallinity and photoluminescent efficiency. The concentrations of Yb3þ and Mg2þ were varied between 1–2% and 5–70% respectively in prepared samples. The nano-powders were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-ray Diffraction for morphology and structural determination. XRD studies have revealed the wurtzite structure for MgxZn1"xO for Mg concentrations below 30%. Higher concentrations of Mg results in Yb3þ doped ZnO/ MgO nanocomposite containing three phases; the wurzite hexagonal phase typical of ZnO, the cubic phase of MgO and a small amount of cubic Yb2O3 phase. As expected, the amount of cubic phase in nanopowders increased with the increase of Mg concentration in ZnO. The crystallite size of ZnO/MgO composites decreased from 55 nm to 30 nm with increase of Mg content. SEM images of Yb3þ doped ZnO/MgO nanocomposite with higher Mg content (450%) showed clearly distinct hexagonal and cubical shaped nano-particles. Photoluminescent emission showed a broad band in the range (435 nm to 700 nm). Pure ZnO nano-phosphor showed an emission peak around 545 nm, which is blue shifted with Mg content. The photoluminescence intensity increased with increase of Mg content in ZnO and it became maximum with 30% Mg concentration. Time resolved decay curves of photoluminescence indicated decay time in microsecond time scaleThis work was supported by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (ENE2013-46624-C4-4-R), Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEUS-II/2014/044) and the European Commission through NanoCIS project (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES ref. 269279).Marí, B.; Singh, KC.; Verma, N.; Jindal, J. (2016). Optical properties of Yb3+ doped ZnO/MgO nanocomposites. Ceramics International. 42(11):13018-13023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ceramint.2016.05.079S1301813023421

Alcohol and HIV Disease Progression: Weighing the Evidence

Heavy alcohol use is commonplace among HIV-infected individuals; however, the extent that alcohol use adversely impacts HIV disease progression has not been fully elucidated. Fairly strong evidence suggests that heavy alcohol consumption results in behavioral and biological processes that likely increase HIV disease progression, and experimental evidence of the biological effect of heavy alcohol on simian immunodeficiency virus in macaques is quite suggestive. However, several observational studies of the effect of heavy alcohol consumption on HIV progression conducted in the 1990s found no association of heavy alcohol consumption with time to AIDS diagnosis, while some more recent studies showed associations of heavy alcohol consumption with declines of CD4 cell counts and nonsuppression of HIV viral load. We discuss several plausible biological and behavioral mechanisms by which alcohol may cause HIV disease progression, evidence from prospective observational human studies, and suggest future research to further illuminate this important issue

Low-pressure Chemical Vapour Deposition of Silicon Nanoparticles:Synthesis and Characterisation

emiconductor nanostructures such as quantum wells, quantum wires or quantum dots exhibit superior properties in comparison to their bulk forms. Quantum dots are described aszero-dimensional electron gas system, as carriers are confined in all the three directions. Densityof states is discrete function of energy. Allowed energy spectrum is discrete like in an atom.Energy band gap is broadened due to carriers confinement. Semiconductor quantum dots exhibittypical coulomb blockade characteristic which is exploited for development of new generationof nanoelectronic devices namely single-electron transistor, memories, etc, whose operationdepends on quantum mechanical tunneling of carriers through energy barriers. Thesesemiconductor nanostructures emit light in visible range upon excitation by optical means. Inrecent years,  research  has been focused on different nano-scale materials; metals (Au, Ag, Fe,Mn, Ni), metal oxides (SnO2, ZnO2), compound semiconductors (GaAs, GaAlAs, CdSe, CdS,GaN), and elemental semiconductors (silicon and germanium). As silicon is the most favouredmaterial in the established integrated circuits manufacturing technology, research is being donefor controlled synthesis and characterisation of Si nanoparticles. The Si nanoparticles havebeen synthesised on oxide and nitride layers over  Si substrate by IC technology compatiblelow-pressure chemical vapour deposition technique. Atomic force microscopy (AFM)characterisation has been extensively carried out on the samples. It is shown that the tip radiusand shape of tip lead to less accurate estimate of the actual size. The AFM images have been evaluated based on the real surface topography and shape of the tip. Photolumine scence (PL) studies have been performed to characterise the samples. The PL measurements showed visiblelight emission from synthesised silicon nanoparticles.Defence Science Journal, 2008, 58(4), pp.550-558, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.58.167

Effects of conversion of native cerrado vegetation to pasture on soil hydro-physical properties, evapotranspiration and streamflow on the Amazonian agricultural frontier

Understanding the impacts of land-use change on landscape-hydrological dynamics is one of the main challenges in the Northern Brazilian Cerrado biome, where the Amazon agricultural frontier is located. Motivated by the gap in literature assessing these impacts, we characterized the soil hydro-physical properties and quantified surface water fluxes from catchments under contrasting land-use in this region. We used data from field measurements in two headwater micro-catchments with similar physical characteristics and different land use, i.e. cerrado sensu stricto vegetation and pasture for extensive cattle ranching. We determined hydraulic and physical properties of the soils, applied ground-based remote sensing techniques to estimate evapotranspiration, and monitored streamflow from October 2012 to September 2014. Our results show significant differences in soil hydro-physical properties between the catchments, with greater bulk density and smaller total porosity in the pasture catchment. We found that evapotranspiration is smaller in the pasture (639 ± 31% mm yr-1) than in the cerrado catchment (1,004 ± 24% mm yr-1), and that streamflow from the pasture catchment is greater with runoff coefficients of 0.40 for the pasture and 0.27 for the cerrado catchment. Overall, our results confirm that conversion of cerrado vegetation to pasture causes soil hydro-physical properties deterioration, reduction in evapotranspiration reduction, and increased streamflow

Study the antimicrobial agents sensitivity of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolated from patients admitted in RIMS, Ranchi

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections that are becoming increasingly difficult to combat because of emerging resistance to all current antibiotic classes. For this, study of MRSA isolated from admitted patients were carried out. These strains were separately tested for their sensitivity to different antibiotics to know which group of antibiotics are most effective particularly for cases of RIMS, Ranchi. Material & Methods: The present study was carried out in the Department of Microbiology, Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ranchi clinical isolates of MRSA strains were obtained from admitted patients of RIMS, Ranchi. The sources of isolate included pus from infected surgical wounds, infected burn wounds, conjunctival swab, aural swab, throat swab, vaginal swab, urine etc for microbiological analysis and antimicrobial sensitivity of MRSA. Disc diffusion method was employed. Results: All the 264 cases of staphylococcal species isolated from different clinical specimens were subjected to coagulase test. It was observed that out of 264 strains of staphylococci isolated from different sites 165 strains (62.5%) were coagulase positive and 99 strains (37.5%) were coagulase negative by tube method. It was observed that out of 165 strains of staph. aureus isolated from different clinical samples 64 strains of staph. aureus were resistant to methicillin (38.78%). Maximum isolation of MRSA were from pus 38 (51.35%), followed by throat swab 19 (36.36%), aural swab (14.28%) and conjunctival swab (44.44%). It was observed that out of 165 strains of s. aureus isolated only 64 strains were resistant to methicillin. All strains of MRSA were 100% sensitive to Vancomycin & linezolid. Similarly 92.3% were sensitive to netilmicin, 89.7% to clindamycin, 82.1% to ciprofloxacin, 74.4% to cephotaxime, 69.2% to azithromycin, 56.4% to roxithromycin & clarithromycin, 17.9% to piperacillin/tazobactam. The most effective antibiotic against MRSA was vancomycin, linezolid, netilmicin & clindamycin. Conclusion: After comparing the effectiveness of antibiotics against MRSA infection it can be concluded that piperacillin/tazobactam, clarithromycin, roxithromycin azithromycin, cefotaxime & ciprofloxacin are of little value in treating the MRSA infection. They should not be used indiscriminately and in a haphazard manner otherwise increment in emergence of resistant strains may not be checked