Characterization and Evaluation of a Rare Orchid Renanthera imschootiana Rolfe from Manipur & Nagaland

The orchid Renanthera imschootiana Rolfe is the only species under the genus available in India at Manipur and Nagaland, which is a part of Indo-Burma mega diversity hot-spot. The only collection, NRCO-Coll-77 (1998)/IC 566525 of this species available with us was evaluated and characterized as per 'Common Descriptors of Orchids' developed at this center. Monopodial nature in habit, un-branched raceme with a length of 32.2 cm having attractive dominant red-purple (RHS-60A) flowers and petals coloured grayed orange (RHS-164C) with shade is typical of this species. Broad, lateral sepals with attractive dominant crimson/red purple colour flower having medium-range vase life of 23.7 days, imparts high breeding value to this species for developing new hybrid derivatives

In situ approach for rapid characterization to aid on farm conservation of coconut germplasm - A case study of two ecotypes from West coast of India

Characterization and evaluation of coconut germplasm have conventionally been undertaken in ex situ gene banks, which take a minimum duration of fifteen years. On the other hand, utilization of coconut populations in situ can effectively reduce the time required for characterization of the populations. Hence, a concept to make a paradigm shift in the existing approach of coconut germplasm characterization is advocated in this study with a view to broaden the conservation base and facilitate inclusion of identified diverse ecotypes. The methodology has been applied to identify, locate and characterize two tall coconut ecotypes viz., Bedakam and Kuttiyadi, from northern Kerala. Agronomic traits, viz., higher number of nuts per palm, higher copra content and better performance under marginal management conditions along with adaptation to the environment, were the major reasons for preference of these ecotypes among the farmers. Comparison of the two ecotypes revealed that the traits, trunk girth, length of internode, number of leaves, number of bunches with nuts, number of nuts, shell weight, husked fruit weight and fruit weight were higher in Kuttiyadi than in Bedakam ecotype. On the other hand, number of leaf scars per meter, length of inflorescence, fruit breadth, husk weight, nut cavity volume and copra weight were higher in Bedakam compared to Kuttiyadi ecotype. Relevance, utility and importance of the study are discussed from the perspective of effective utilization of the coconut diversity in situ and their possible further use in coconut improvement efforts through conservation strategies

Sequential application of hyperspectral indices for delineation of stripe rust infection and nitrogen deficiency in wheat

© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York. Nitrogen (N) fertilization is crucial for the growth and development of wheat crops, and yet increased use of N can also result in increased stripe rust severity. Stripe rust infection and N deficiency both cause changes in foliar physiological activity and reduction in plant pigments that result in chlorosis. Furthermore, stripe rust produce pustules on the leaf surface which similar to chlorotic regions have a yellow color. Quantifying the severity of each factor is critical for adopting appropriate management practices. Eleven widely-used vegetation indices, based on mathematic combinations of narrow-band optical reflectance measurements in the visible/near infrared wavelength range were evaluated for their ability to discriminate and quantify stripe rust severity and N deficiency in a rust-susceptible wheat variety (H45) under varying conditions of nitrogen status. The physiological reflectance index (PhRI) and leaf and canopy chlorophyll index (LCCI) provided the strongest correlation with levels of rust infection and N-deficiency, respectively. When PhRI and LCCI were used in a sequence, both N deficiency and rust infection levels were correctly classified in 82.5 and 55 % of the plots at Zadoks growth stage 47 and 75, respectively. In misclassified plots, an overestimation of N deficiency was accompanied by an underestimation of the rust infection level or vice versa. In 18 % of the plots, there was a tendency to underestimate the severity of stripe rust infection even though the N-deficiency level was correctly predicted. The contrasting responses of the PhRI and LCCI to stripe rust infection and N deficiency, respectively, and the relative insensitivity of these indices to the other parameter makes their use in combination suitable for quantifying levels of stripe rust infection and N deficiency in wheat crops under field conditions

On the selection and design of proteins and peptide derivatives for the production of photoluminescent, red-emitting gold quantum clusters

Novel pathways of the synthesis of photoluminescent gold quantum clusters (AuQCs) using biomolecules as reactants provide biocompatible products for biological imaging techniques. In order to rationalize the rules for the preparation of red-emitting AuQCs in aqueous phase using proteins or peptides, the role of different organic structural units was investigated. Three systems were studied: proteins, peptides, and amino acid mixtures, respectively. We have found that cysteine and tyrosine are indispensable residues. The SH/S-S ratio in a single molecule is not a critical factor in the synthesis, but on the other hand, the stoichiometry of cysteine residues and the gold precursor is crucial. These observations indicate the importance of proper chemical behavior of all species in a wide size range extending from the atomic distances (in the AuI-S semi ring) to nanometer distances covering the larger sizes of proteins assuring the hierarchical structure of the whole self-assembled system

Sub-logarithmic Distributed Oblivious RAM with Small Block Size

Oblivious RAM (ORAM) is a cryptographic primitive that allows a client to securely execute RAM programs over data that is stored in an untrusted server. Distributed Oblivious RAM is a variant of ORAM, where the data is stored in $m>1$ servers. Extensive research over the last few decades have succeeded to reduce the bandwidth overhead of ORAM schemes, both in the single-server and the multi-server setting, from $O(\sqrt{N})$ to $O(1)$. However, all known protocols that achieve a sub-logarithmic overhead either require heavy server-side computation (e.g. homomorphic encryption), or a large block size of at least $\Omega(\log^3 N)$. In this paper, we present a family of distributed ORAM constructions that follow the hierarchical approach of Goldreich and Ostrovsky [GO96]. We enhance known techniques, and develop new ones, to take better advantage of the existence of multiple servers. By plugging efficient known hashing schemes in our constructions, we get the following results: 1. For any $m\geq 2$, we show an $m$-server ORAM scheme with $O(\log N/\log\log N)$ overhead, and block size $\Omega(\log^2 N)$. This scheme is private even against an $(m-1)$-server collusion. 2. A 3-server ORAM construction with $O(\omega(1)\log N/\log\log N)$ overhead and a block size almost logarithmic, i.e. $\Omega(\log^{1+\epsilon}N)$. We also investigate a model where the servers are allowed to perform a linear amount of light local computations, and show that constant overhead is achievable in this model, through a simple four-server ORAM protocol

A Lower Bound for One-Round Oblivious RAM

We initiate a fine-grained study of the round complexity of Oblivious RAM (ORAM). We prove that any one-round balls-in bins ORAM that does not duplicate balls must have either \Omega(\sqrt{N}) bandwidth or \Omega(\sqrt{N}) client memory, where N is the number of memory slots being simulated. This shows that such schemes are strictly weaker than general (multi-round) ORAMs or those with server computation, and in particular implies that a one-round version of the original square-root ORAM of Goldreich and Ostrovksy (J. ACM 1996) is optimal. We prove this bound via new techniques that differ from those of Goldreich and Ostrovksy, and of Larsen and Nielsen (CRYPTO 2018), which achieved an \Omega(\log N) bound for balls-in-bins and general multi-round ORAMs respectively. Finally we give a weaker extension of our bound that allows for limited duplication of balls, and also show that our bound extends to multiple-round ORAMs of a restricted form that include the best known constructions

Yes, There is an Oblivious RAM Lower Bound!

An Oblivious RAM (ORAM) introduced by Goldreich and Ostrovsky [JACM\u2796] is a (possibly randomized) RAM, for which the memory access pattern reveals no information about the operations performed. The main performance metric of an ORAM is the bandwidth overhead, i.e., the multiplicative factor extra memory blocks that must be accessed to hide the operation sequence. In their seminal paper introducing the ORAM, Goldreich and Ostrovsky proved an amortized $\Omega(\lg n)$ bandwidth overhead lower bound for ORAMs with memory size $n$. Their lower bound is very strong in the sense that it applies to the ``offline\u27\u27 setting in which the ORAM knows the entire sequence of operations ahead of time. However, as pointed out by Boyle and Naor [ITCS\u2716] in the paper ``Is there an oblivious RAM lower bound?\u27\u27, there are two caveats with the lower bound of Goldreich and Ostrovsky: (1) it only applies to ``balls in bins\u27\u27 algorithms, i.e., algorithms where the ORAM may only shuffle blocks around and not apply any sophisticated encoding of the data, and (2), it only applies to statistically secure constructions. Boyle and Naor showed that removing the ``balls in bins\u27\u27 assumption would result in super linear lower bounds for sorting circuits, a long standing open problem in circuit complexity. As a way to circumventing this barrier, they also proposed a notion of an ``online\u27\u27 ORAM, which is an ORAM that remains secure even if the operations arrive in an online manner. They argued that most known ORAM constructions work in the online setting as well. Our contribution is an $\Omega(\lg n)$ lower bound on the bandwidth overhead of any online ORAM, even if we require only computational security and allow arbitrary representations of data, thus greatly strengthening the lower bound of Goldreich and Ostrovsky in the online setting. Our lower bound applies to ORAMs with memory size $n$ and any word size $r \geq 1$. The bound therefore asymptotically matches the known upper bounds when $r = \Omega(\lg^2 n)$

Structured fibrous carbon-based catalyst for continuous nitrate removal from natural water

[EN] Bimetallic (Pd–Cu, Pd–Sn) nanoparticles supported on structured fibrous carbons (activated carbon fibers and carbon nanofibers grown on sintered metal fibers) were tested in nitrate removal of natural polluted water by hydrogen (a batch and continuous mode). Dependence of the activity/selectivity on catalyst chemical composition, promoter nature and metal particle size was studied. Sn-modified Pd nanoparticles showed higher N2 selectivity as compared to Cu-modified ones. The structured (Pd–Sn) nanoparticles supported on carbon nanofibers grown on Inconel sintered metal fibers demonstrated the best catalytic performance in an open flow reactor, providing optimal hydrodynamics properties.This work was carried out with the financial support of the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 226347.Yuranova, T.; Franch Martí, C.; Palomares Gimeno, AE.; García-Bordejé, E.; Kiwi-Minsker, L. (2012). Structured fibrous carbon-based catalyst for continuous nitrate removal from natural water. Applied Catalysis B: Environmental. 123-124:221-228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apcatb.2012.04.007S221228123-12