Geochemical Signature of Arsenic-Contaminated Groundwater in Barak Valley (Assam) and Surrounding Areas, Northeastern India

AbstractHigh arsenic (As) concentrations (12-97μg/l) have been detected in the groundwater of the Barak Valley region (Assam), northeastern India. The main source of As is traced to the litho-facies of the Tipam formation

Price trend and integration of wholesale markets for onion in metro cities of India

Availability of market intelligence on various aspects like the potential markets, quantity arrived and prevailing and expected prices in different regions during different months of the year are important in mitigating many of market related problems. Study reveals that there was high variability in the arrival of onion in the month of March and April in selected markets. Among the markets, the coefficient of variation in both arrivals and prices were found to be higher in Ahmedabad and Kolkata. The zero order correlation matrix between two markets average wholesale prices of onion indicated the high integration among the selected markets except Ahmedabad with Mumbai market. This might be due to the movement of produce from one market area to another depending upon price prevailed in the markets. The competitive conditions prevailing in the selected markets might have influenced the movement of prices in the same direction. The magnitude of regression coefficient revealed that an increase in market arrivals by a MT in a month led to an increase in prices by Rs.6.00/MT and Rs. 0.40/MT in Bangalore and Delhi markets respectively. On the contrary, prices of onion decreased in Ahmedabad (Rs. 6.00), Mumbai (Rs. 10.00) and Kolkata (Rs. 2.00) markets with increase in arrivals by one MT in a month. Key words: Instability, Market integration, Price behavio

Dynamics of Coronal Bright Points as seen by Sun Watcher using Active Pixel System detector and Image Processing (SWAP), Atmospheric Imaging Assembly AIA), and Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI)

The \textit{Sun Watcher using Active Pixel system detector and Image Processing}(SWAP) on board the \textit{PRoject for OnBoard Autonomy\todash 2} (PROBA\todash 2) spacecraft provides images of the solar corona in EUV channel centered at 174 \AA. These data, together with \textit{Atmospheric Imaging Assembly} (AIA) and the \textit{Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager} (HMI) on board \textit{Solar Dynamics Observatory} (SDO), are used to study the dynamics of coronal bright points. The evolution of the magnetic polarities and associated changes in morphology are studied using magnetograms and multi-wavelength imaging. The morphology of the bright points seen in low-resolution SWAP images and high-resolution AIA images show different structures, whereas the intensity variations with time show similar trends in both SWAP 174 and AIA 171 channels. We observe that bright points are seen in EUV channels corresponding to a magnetic-flux of the order of $10^{18}$ Mx. We find that there exists a good correlation between total emission from the bright point in several UV\todash EUV channels and total unsigned photospheric magnetic flux above certain thresholds. The bright points also show periodic brightenings and we have attempted to find the oscillation periods in bright points and their connection to magnetic flux changes. The observed periods are generally long (10\todash 25 minutes) and there is an indication that the intensity oscillations may be generated by repeated magnetic reconnection

Augmenter of liver regeneration: An important intracellular survival factor for hepatocytes

Background/Aims: Augmenter of liver regeneration (ALR), a protein synthesized and stored in hepatocytes, is associated with mitochondria, and possesses sulfhydryl oxidase and cytochrome c reductase activities. We sought to determine the effects of ALR depletion in hepatocytes by antisense oligonucleotide transfection. Methods: Rat hepatocytes in primary culture were transfected with antisense oligonucleotide for ALR mRNA (ALR-AS) or scrambled oligonucleotide. Various analyses were performed at times up to 24 h after transfection. Results: Treatment with ALR-AS caused a decrease in ALR mRNA, cellular depletion of ALR protein primarily from mitochondria, and decreased viability. Flow cytometric analysis of ALR-AS-transfected hepatocytes stained with annexin-Vcy3 and 7-aminoactinomycin D revealed apoptosis as the predominant cause of death up to 6 h; incubation beyond this time resulted in necrosis in addition to apoptosis. ALR-AS-transfection caused release of mitochondrial cytochrome c, activation of caspase-3, profound reduction in the ATP content, and cellular release of LDH. Inhibition of caspase-3 inhibited the early phase of ALR-AS-induced death but not the late phase that included ALR and LDH release. Conclusions: These results suggest that ALR is critically important for the survival of hepatocytes by its association with mitochondria and regulation of ATP synthesis. © 2008 European Association for the Study of the Liver

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Appointment of Chief of Defence Staff and Creation of the Department of Military Affairs: A Gamechanger

The announcement by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address to the nation of Government's intent to appoint a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) marked the gamechanger event that the country was to embark upon. The subsequent appointment, in December 2019,2 of General Bipin Rawat, to the newly created appointment as its first incumbent and the simultaneous creation of a Department of Military Affairs as a separate vertical within the Ministry of Defence with the CDS as its ex-officio Secretary are each and together tectonic shifts that have moved the balance in civil-military relations to a new normal. It has also disruptively altered the entire edifice of the structure of decision-making relating to matters of the military