Taxonomy and Distribution of Recent Benthic Foraminifera from the Inner Shelf of Gulf of Mannar, off Tuticorin, South East Coast of India

Foraminifera have been successful inhabitants of every aquatic environment from deep oceans to brackish water lagoons, estuaries and even rarely in fresh water streams, lakes, etc. In order to know their distribution in different offshore habitates, the present study has been undertaken 9 stations starting from Thirayshapuram to Vanthivu in two transects with necessary precautions from Gulf of Mannar, Tuticorin. Twenty five bottom sediments and water samples were collected. Benthic foraminiferal taxa belonging to four sub orders (Textularina, Milolina, Lagenina and Rotalina), 5 super families, 10 families, 11 sub families, 14 genera and 29 species have been identified. Among the 29 species, five species Ammonia beccarii, A. dentate, Spiroloculina communis, Quinquloculina seminulam and Pararotalina nipponica are considered to be abundant species of the present study. Higher diversity and population of foraminifera is noticed in the samples collected in the stations 2 to 8, because of their favorable niche. In the stations 1 and 9 the lower diversity and population may be due to the winnowing action of the waves. The substrate of present study area is seen to consist of Silty clay, Sand, Silty sand and Sand. The most accommodative substrate for higher population is Silty sand. The main ecological parameters, which govern the distribution of foraminifera of the present study area, are organic matter content and nature of the substrate. The other water parameters like temperature, salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen do not show any appreciable spatial variation among different stations and hence they do not have any ecological significance in the distribution of foraminifera. Keywords: Benthic foraminifera, Gulf of Mannar, South East coast of India

Pregnancy associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) as an early marker for the diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome.

Aims and objectives Pregnancy associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A), a metalloproteinase plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Recent studies have reported that elevated levels of PAPP-A, signal the onset of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). We, therefore, proposed to study the analytical competence of PAPP-A in patients admitted to the emergency department with chest pain and finally diagnosed as ACS. Methods and results Pregnancy associated plasma protein-A was measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 485 patients admitted to emergency care unit, of which 89 patients were diagnosed as Non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP). Elevated levels of PAPP-A were observed in patients diagnosed as ACS on comparison with the controls. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed PAPP-A to be a good discriminator between ischaemic and non-ischaemic patients. The area under the curve was found to be 0.904, 95% CI (0.874–0.929) with 90% sensitivity and 85% specificity (P< 0.0001). The cut-off value from the ROC curve was 0.55 μg/mL above which PAPP-A was considered to be positive. Conclusion Pregnancy associated plasma protein-A seems to be a promising biomarker for identification and risk stratification for patients with ACS

Beautiful Mirrors and Precision Electroweak Data

The Standard Model (SM) with a light Higgs boson provides a very good description of the precision electroweak observable data coming from the LEP, SLD and Tevatron experiments. Most of the observables, with the notable exception of the forward-backward asymmetry of the bottom quark, point towards a Higgs mass far below its current experimental bound. The disagreement, within the SM, between the values for the weak mixing angle as obtained from the measurement of the leptonic and hadronic asymmetries at lepton colliders, may be taken to indicate new physics contributions to the precision electroweak observables. In this article we investigate the possibility that the inclusion of additional bottom-like quarks could help resolve this discrepancy. Two inequivalent assignments for these new quarks are analysed. The resultant fits to the electroweak data show a significant improvement when compared to that obtained in the SM. While in one of the examples analyzed, the exotic quarks are predicted to be light, with masses below 300 GeV, and the Higgs tends to be heavy, in the second one the Higgs is predicted to be light, with a mass below 250 GeV, while the quarks tend to be heavy, with masses of about 800 GeV. The collider signatures associated with the new exotic quarks, as well as the question of unification of couplings within these models and a possible cosmological implication of the new physical degrees of freedom at the weak scale are also discussed.Comment: 21 pages, 4 embedded postscript figures, LaTeX. Two minor corrections performe

Somatic embryogenesis and transgenic development in black pepper for delayed infection and decreased spread of foot rot caused by Phytophthora capsici

Phytophthora capsici causing Phytophthora foot rot is the most important pathogen of black pepper (Piper nigrum L.). With a view to develop transgenic plants with resistance to this pathogen, Agrobacterium mediated genetic transformation using a PR 5 (pathogenesis related) gene ‘osmotin’ was attempted. Initially protocols for plant regeneration and somatic embryogenesis were optimised. Murashige and Skoog (MS) and woody plant media (WPM) supplemented with benzyl adenine (BA) (0.05-1 mg l-1) and thidiazuron (TDZ) (0.05-1 mg l-1) was found to be ideal. Plants could be successfully regenerated from tender leaf, shoot tip and hypocotyl explants of both mature and juvenile tissues. Somatic embryogenesis was also induced successfully from tender leaf explants of in vitro established mature tissues using the same medium. Successful transformation of leaf explants from these somatic embryo derived plants using Agrobacterium strain pGV 2260 carrying ‘osmotin’ under the control of CaMV 35S promoter was achieved. About 50 putative transgenic plants were obtained and planted in the green house. The gene transfer was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using osmotin and npt II specific primers. Infection with P. capsici on detatched leaves of putative transgenics showed delayed infection and decreased rate of disease spread indicating differential expression of osmotin. Stem and leaf inoculated plants showed survival, while root inoculated plants succumbed to infection and died. It can be inferred that osmotin confers resistance to infection by Phytophthora capsici in black pepper. &nbsp

Can the Zee Model Explain the Observed Neutrino Data?

The eigenvalues and mixing angles in the Zee model are investigated parameter-independently. When we require |\Delta m^2_{12}/\Delta m^2_{23}| \ll 1 in order to understand the solar and atmospheric data simultaneously, the only solution is one which gives bi-maximal mixing. It is pointed out that the observed values \sin^2 2\theta_{solar} \simeq 0.66 in the MSW LMA solution cannot be explained within the framework of the Zee model, because we derive a severe constraint on the value of \sin^2 2 \theta_{solar}, \sin^2 2 \theta_{solar} \geq 1 -(1/16)(\Delta m^2_{solar}/\Delta m^2_{atm})^2.Comment: Latex file, 10 pages, 1 figure, explanations and references added, typos corrected, to be published in Phys.Rev.

Nonexotic Neutral Gauge Bosons

We study theoretical and experimental constraints on electroweak theories including a new color-singlet and electrically-neutral gauge boson. We first note that the electric charges of the observed fermions imply that any such Z' boson may be described by a gauge theory in which the Abelian gauge groups are the usual hypercharge along with another U(1) component in a kinetic-diagonal basis. Assuming that the observed quarks and leptons have generation-independent U(1) charges, and that no new fermions couple to the standard model gauge bosons, we find that their U(1) charges form a two-parameter family consistent with anomaly cancellation and viable fermion masses, provided there are at least three right-handed neutrinos. We then derive bounds on the Z' mass and couplings imposed by direct production and Z-pole measurements. For generic charge assignments and a gauge coupling of electromagnetic strength, the strongest lower bound on the Z' mass comes from Z-pole measurements, and is of order 1 TeV. If the new U(1) charges are proportional to B-L, however, there is no tree-level mixing between the Z and Z', and the best bounds come from the absence of direct production at LEPII and the Tevatron. If the U(1) gauge coupling is one or two orders of magnitude below the electromagnetic one, these bounds are satisfied for most values of the Z' mass.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures. A comparison with the LEP bounds on sneutrino resonances is include

Running into New Territory in SUSY Parameter Space

The LEP-II bound on the light Higgs mass rules out the vast majority of parameter space left to the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with weak-scale soft-masses. This suggests the importance of exploring extensions of the MSSM with non-minimal Higgs physics. In this article, we explore a theory with an additional singlet superfield and an extended gauge sector. The theory has a number of novel features compared to both the MSSM and Next-to-MSSM, including easily realizing a light CP-even Higgs mass consistent with LEP-II limits, tan(beta) < 1, and a lightest Higgs which is charged. These features are achieved while remaining consistent with perturbative unification and without large stop-masses. Discovery modes at the Tevatron and LHC are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; Typo in equation (4.5) corrected; submitted to JHE

Proceedings and recommendations of the National Webinar on Implementation of Access to Plant Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing

A National Webinar on “Implementation of Access to Plant Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing (ABS)” was held on August 27, 2020. The meeting was co-organized by UN Environment Implemented GEF Project, Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Delhi Office, India and the Indian Society of Plant Genetic Resources (ISPGR) and was attended by 200 stakeholders from academia, policy, management, farmers and private sector. This document provides briefly the deliberations held during the webinar and the major recommendations which emerged

Improved S factor of the 12C(p,γ)13N reaction at E=320–620 keV and the 422 keV resonance

The 12C(p,γ)13N reaction is the onset process of both the CNO and hot CNO cycles that drive massive star, red and asymptotic giant branch star, and novae nucleosynthesis. The 12C(p,γ)13N rate affects the final abundances of the stable 12,13C nuclides with ramifications for meteoritic carbon isotopic abundances and the s-process neutron source strength. Here, an underground measurement of the 12C(p,γ)13N cross section is reported. The present data, obtained at the Felsenkeller shallow-underground laboratory in Dresden (Germany), encompass the 320–620 keV center of mass energy range to include the wide and poorly constrained E=422 keV resonance that dominates the rate at high temperatures. This work's S-factor results, lower than literature by 25%, are included in a comprehensive R-matrix fit, and the energy of the 12+ first excited state of 13N is found to be 2369.6(4) keV with a radiative and proton width of 0.49(3) eV and 34.9(2) keV, respectively. A reaction rate, based on the present R-matrix fit and extrapolation, is suggested