Acute Oxalate Nephropathy Due to Bilimbi Poisoning: A Case Report

Background: The concentrated juice made from Averrhoa bilimbi is rich in oxalic acid. It can cause acute oxalate nephropathy by blocking the tubules with calcium oxalate crystals. Case: An elderly woman was admitted to the hospital with a history of swelling of the legs, facial puffiness, and abdominal distention. Her biochemical study revealed features of acute renal failure. She gave history of taking half liter of bilimbi juice. Renal biopsy confirmed it was a case of acute oxalic nephropathy, which made it the second case of acute oxalic nephropathy due to ingestion of bilimbi juice ever reported from Bangladesh.Conclusion: It is not safe to consume high oxalate-containing fruits in large quantities

Carbon sequestration potential, challenges, and strategies towards climate action in smallholder agricultural systems of South Asia

South Asia is a global hotspot for climate change with enormous pressure on land and water resources for feeding the burgeoning population. The agricultural production systems are highly vulnerable in the region and is primarily dominated by small and marginal farmers with intensive farming practices that had favored the loss of carbon (C) from soil. This review discusses the potential of soil and crop management practices such as minimum/reduced/no-tillage, use of organic manure, balanced and integrated plant nutrient application, precision land levelling, precision water and pest management, residue management, and cropping system optimization to maintain the C-equilibrium between soil and atmosphere and to enhance the C-sequestration in the long run. Results of meta-analysis show a potential 36% increase in soil organic C stock in the top 0–15 cm layer in this region which amounts to ∼18 Mg C stocks ha−1. Improved management practices across crops and environment may reduce methane em0ission by 12% resulting in an 8% reduction in global warming potential (GWP), while non-submerged condition led to a 51% GWP reduction in rice. Conservation agriculture and precision fertilization also reduced GWP by 11 and 14%, respectively. Although several innovative climate resilient technologies having significant potential for C-sequestration have been developed, there is an urgent need for their scaling and accelerated adoption to increase soil C-sequestration. Policies and programs need to be devised for incentivizing farmers to adopt more C-neutral or C-positive agricultural practices. The national governments and other agencies should work towards C farming together with global initiatives such as the “4 per 1000” Initiative and Global Soil Partnership, and regional public-private partnership initiatives on carbon credits for Regenerative Agriculture such as by Grow Indigo-CIMMYT-ICAR in India, in addition to research and policy changes. This will be vital for the success of soil C sequestration towards climate action in South Asia

"The fruits of independence": Satyajit Ray, Indian nationhood and the spectre of empire

Challenging the longstanding consensus that Satyajit Ray's work is largely free of ideological concerns and notable only for its humanistic richness, this article shows with reference to representations of British colonialism and Indian nationhood that Ray's films and stories are marked deeply and consistently by a distinctively Bengali variety of liberalism. Drawn from an ongoing biographical project, it commences with an overview of the nationalist milieu in which Ray grew up and emphasizes the preoccupation with colonialism and nationalism that marked his earliest unfilmed scripts. It then shows with case studies of Kanchanjangha (1962), Charulata (1964), First Class Kamra (First-Class Compartment, 1981), Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1970), Shatranj ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977), Agantuk (The Stranger, 1991) and Robertsoner Ruby (Robertson's Ruby, 1992) how Ray's mature work continued to combine a strongly anti-colonial viewpoint with a shifting perspective on Indian nationhood and an unequivocal commitment to cultural cosmopolitanism. Analysing how Ray articulated his ideological positions through the quintessentially liberal device of complexly staged debates that were apparently free, but in fact closed by the scenarist/director on ideologically specific notes, this article concludes that Ray's reputation as an all-forgiving, ‘everybody-has-his-reasons’ humanist is based on simplistic or even tendentious readings of his work

Modification of ground and excited states of 3-phenylureidoquinoline by encapsulation in surfactant assemblies

The interaction of the fluorescent probe 3-phenylureidoquinoline with surfactant assemblies has been investigated using fluorescence spectroscopic and computational techniques. The non-radiative deactivation rates are found to be suppressed in micelles. In the negatively charged SDS micelle, the cation is found to form, leading to a marked shift in fluorescence. This is explained by a consideration of the local pH and altered pKa of the fluorophore. In reverse micelle the gradual addition of water remarkably enhances the rate of non-radiative depopulation.© Elsevie

An explicitly spin-free compact open-shell coupled cluster theory using a multireference combinatoric exponential ansatz: formal development and pilot applications

In this paper, we present a comprehensive account of an explicitly spin-free compact state-universal multireference coupled cluster (CC) formalism for computing the state energies of simple open-shell systems, e.g., doublets and biradicals, where the target open-shell states can be described by a few configuration state functions spanning a model space. The cluster operators in this formalism are defined in terms of the spin-free unitary generators with respect to the common closed-shell component of all model functions (core) as vacuum. The spin-free cluster operators are either closed-shell-like n hole-n particle excitations (denoted by Tμ) or involve excitations from the doubly occupied (nonvalence) orbitals to the singly occupied (valence) orbitals (denoted by Seμ). In addition, there are cluster operators with exchange spectator scatterings involving the valence orbitals (denoted by Sreμ). We propose a new multireference cluster expansion ansatz for the wave operator with the above generally noncommuting cluster operators which essentially has the same physical content as the Jeziorski-Monkhorst ansatz with the commuting cluster operators defined in the spin-orbital basis. The Tμ operators in our ansatz are taken to commute with all other operators, while the Seμ and Sreμ operators are allowed to contract among themselves through the spectator valence orbitals. An important innovation of this ansatz is the choice of an appropriate automorphic factor accompanying each contracted composite of cluster operators in order to ensure that each distinct excitation generated by this composite appears only once in the wave operator. The resulting CC equations consist of two types of terms: a "direct" term and a "normalization" term containing the effective Hamiltonian operator. It is emphasized that the direct term is almost quartic in the cluster amplitudes, barring only a handful of terms and termination of the normalization term depends on the valence rank of the effective Hamiltonian operator and the excitation rank of the cluster operators at which the theory is truncated. Illustrative applications are presented by computing the state energies of neutral doublet radicals and doublet molecular cations and ionization energies of neutral molecules and comparing our results with the other open-shell CC theories, benchmark full CI results (when available) in the same basis, and the experimental results. Highly encouraging results show the efficacy of the method

Treatment of quasi-degeneracy in single-reference coupled-cluster theory. Separation of dynamical and nondynamical correlation effects

We show that the most important nondynamical correlation effects of quasidegeneracy arising, for example, out of bond-breaking, can be effectively handled using low-body cluster operators (usually up to rank two) via a modification of single-reference coupled-cluster (CC) theory. This is done by separating the effects of cluster operators leading to dynamical and nondynamical correlations. The former leads to direct excitations to the virtual functions χi from the reference function /gf, and the latter excites to χi via intermediates /gfμ quasi-degenerate with /gf. By utilizing a separability condition for the dynamical and nondynamical correlation energies, a rigorously size-extensive and size-consistent CC theory is developed which should be well-behaved and accurate at bond-breaking geometries

IMPACT OF HUMAN INTERFERENCE ON FISH DIVERSITY IN FIVE WETLANDS OF NORTH BENGAL, INDIA

This study was conducted in five wetlands of North Bengal to find out impact of anthropogenic activities in diversity of fish species. Total 101 fish species were documented in those wetlands. Maximum species (93) were recorded from Gajoldoba wetland, whereas Nimai beel recorded only 33 species. Results indicate that anthropogenic activities (other than fishing) affected ichthyofauna diversity adversely. Human interferences altered electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, BOD, free carbon dioxide, phosphate and nitrate level significantly. Also, human interferences significantly affected emergent vegetation covered shore area and percentage of floating vegetation. All those physio-chemical and vegetative changes possibly affected the zooplankton diversity negatively dwindling the base of the food chain and in turn, affected fish diversity. Immediate and proper action should be taken to save this biodiversity and the wetland of this region as a whole