In vitro method for predicting the bioavailability of iron from Bathua (Chenopodium album) and Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum graecum) leaves in Indian cookies

This study was considered to determine the nutritional composition and in vitro bioavailability of iron of the prepared food products. The in vitro bioavailability of iron was determined in fresh and dehydrated bathua (Chenopodium album) and methi (Trigonella foenum graecum) leaves (in the ratio of 1:1) and their based product i.e. Indian cookies (paratha and laddoo) by using thiocynate method at pH 1.35 and 7.5, using pepsin. At pH 1.35 the soluble iron and ionizable iron were higher than pH 7.5. when pH was increased from 1.35-7.5 there was decreasing trend soluble as well as ionizable iron contents. There was highly significant (F< 0.05) difference between the control and treatments of products indicating that the addition of 20% of fresh and dehydrated leaves of bathua and methi improved the overall acceptability of products. The total iron content was found 11.69mg/100g in paratha incorporated with fresh GLVs whereas in vitro bioavailability of iron was found 2.16mg/100g in paratha. The total iron content was found 15.16mg/100g in laddoo incorporated with dehydrated GLVs whereas in vitro bioavailability of iron was found 2.78mg/100g in laddoo

Metal Nanowire Assisted Hollow Core Fiber Sensor for an Efficient Detection of Small Refractive Index Change of Measurand Liquid

In this article, a cost-effective hollow core fiber (HCF)-based refractive index (RI) sensor using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is designed and demonstrated. The sensor consists of a metal nanowire inside an HCF along with the sensing medium of various refractive indices. SPR effect between polaritons and the guided core mode of designed HCF is exploited to enhance the sensing performance. A full vectorial finite element method (FEM) is used for the design and analyses of the sensing probes which exhibit very high sensitivities of 12,400 nm/RIU, 10560 nm/RIU, and 6400 nm/RIU for copper (Cu), gold (Au), and silver (Ag), respectively with a resolution of 1.61 × 10−6 RIU. Additionally, the influence of metal wire dimension is also investigated in this paper. The reported simple and low-cost sensor exhibits high sensitivity for liquid with refractive indices slightly higher than that of the dielectric tube, such as olive oil, turpentine, kerosene, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, glycerol, and toluene

THREE ELEMENT DUAL SEGMENT TRIANGULAR DIELECTRIC RESONATOR ANTENNA FOR X-BAND APPLICATIONS

Abstract-A wideband dual segment three element triangular dielectric resonator antenna (TDRA) has been proposed for applications in X-band. Proposed antenna has been fabricated and tested. The simulation study of the antenna is carried out using Ansoft HFSS simulation software. The simulation results for input characteristics and radiation patterns of the proposed antenna are compared with corresponding experimental results at the resonant frequency. The simulation results are in agreement with the measurement results. The return loss-frequency characteristics of the proposed antenna are also compared with those of single element, and three element TDRAs

Self‐reported sleep quality is more closely associated with mental and physical health than chronotype and sleep duration in young adults: A multi‐instrument analysis

Sleep and circadian rhythms are considered to be important determinants of mental and physical health. Epidemiological studies have established the contribution of self‐reported sleep duration, sleep quality and chronotype to health outcomes. Mental health and sleep problems are more common in women and men are more likely to be evening types. Few studies have compared the relative strength of these contributions and few studies have assessed these contributions separately in men and women. Furthermore, sleep and circadian characteristics are typically assessed with a limited number of instruments and a narrow range of variables is considered, leaving the understanding of the relative contribution of different predictors somewhat fractionary. We compared sleep quality, sleep duration and chronotype as predictors for self‐reported mental and physical health and psychological characteristics in 410 men and 261 women aged 18 to 30. To ascertain that results were not dependent on the use of specific instruments we used a multitude of validated instruments including the Morningness‐Eveningness‐Questionnaire, Munich‐ChronoType‐Questionnaire, Pittsburgh‐Sleep‐Quality‐Index, British‐Sleep‐Survey, Karolinska‐Sleep‐Diary, Insomnia‐Severity‐Index, SF‐36‐Health Survey, General‐Health‐Questionnaire, Dutch‐Eating‐Behaviour‐Questionnaire, Big‐Five‐Inventory, Behaviour‐Inhibition‐System‐Behaviour‐Activation‐System, and the Positive‐Affect‐Negative‐Affect‐Schedule. Relative contributions of predictors were quantified as local effect sizes derived from multiple regression models. Across all questionnaires, sleep quality was the strongest independent predictor of health and in particular mental health and more so in women than in men. The effect of sleep duration and social jetlag was inconspicuous. A greater insight into the independent contributions of sleep quality and chronotype may aid the understanding of sleep‐health interactions in women and men

SPRING-INX: A Multilingual Indian Language Speech Corpus by SPRING Lab, IIT Madras

India is home to a multitude of languages of which 22 languages are recognised by the Indian Constitution as official. Building speech based applications for the Indian population is a difficult problem owing to limited data and the number of languages and accents to accommodate. To encourage the language technology community to build speech based applications in Indian languages, we are open sourcing SPRING-INX data which has about 2000 hours of legally sourced and manually transcribed speech data for ASR system building in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi and Tamil. This endeavor is by SPRING Lab , Indian Institute of Technology Madras and is a part of National Language Translation Mission (NLTM), funded by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India. We describe the data collection and data cleaning process along with the data statistics in this paper.Comment: 3 pages, About SPRING-INX Dat

Use of chelating agent for optimum post thaw quality of buck semen

Ejaculates (35) from adult Sirohi bucks (2–4 years old) were utilized for the present study to find out the freezability of buck semen at different levels of chelating agent used (ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid - EDTA: 0, 0.01, 0.05 and 0.1%) by conventional method of freezing. The ejaculates were collected twice at weekly intervals using artificial vagina and were extended to maintain sperms concentration approximately 100 million / dose (0.25 ml) with tris- citric acid- fructose (TCF) diluent having 10% (v/v) egg yolk and 6% (v/v) glycerol as cryo protecting agent. Filling and sealing of straws were done at 5ºC in cold handing cabinet after 4 h of equilibration period then straws were vapor frozen for 10 min above 2 cm of liquid nitrogen and finally put in to liquid nitrogen. Post thaw motility, live sperm count, abnormalities, acrosomal integrity and hypo osmotic swelling test had been conducted to know freezability. Analysis of data using SPSS 16 revealed that post thaw motility, live sperm count, abnormalities, acrosomal integrity and hypo osmotic swelling positive spermatozoa differed significantly at different levels of EDTA. The post thaw motility, live sperm count, acrosomal integrity and hypo osmotic swelling positive spermatozoa were significantly highest in 0.1% of EDTA used in the present study. So, 0.01% EDTA can be used as an additive in semen dilutor in routine freezing process for better post thaw recovery of buck semen

Antioxidant Capacity and Radical Scavenging Effect of Polyphenol Rich Mallotus philippenensis

Mallotus philippinensis is an important source of molecules with strong antioxidant activity widely used medicinal plant. Previous studies have highlighted their anticestodal, antibacterial, wound healing activities, and so forth. So, present investigation was designed to evaluate the total antioxidant activity and radical scavenging effect of 50% ethanol fruit glandular hair extract (MPE) and its role on Human Erythrocytes. MPE was tested for phytochemical test followed by its HPLC analysis. Standard antioxidant assays like DPPH, ABTS, hydroxyl, superoxide radical, nitric oxide, and lipid peroxidation assay were determined along with total phenolic and flavonoids content. Results showed that MPE contains the presence of various phytochemicals, with high total phenolic and flavonoid content. HPLC analysis showed the presence of rottlerin, a polyphenolic compound in a very rich quantity. MPE exhibits significant strong scavenging activity on DPPH and ABTS assay. Reducing power showed dose dependent increase in concentration absorption compared to standard, Quercetin. Superoxide, hydroxyl radical, lipid peroxidation, nitric oxide assay showed a comparable scavenging activity compared to its standard. Our finding further provides evidence that Mallotus fruit extract is a potential natural source of antioxidants which have a protective role on human Erythrocytes exhibiting minimum hemolytic activity and this justified its uses in folklore medicines

Comparison of biological and chemical properties of arable and pasture Solonetz soils

Soil samples were collected from salt-affected soils (Solonetz) under different land uses, namely arable (SnA) and pasture (SnP), to investigate the effects of land use on microbiological [basal soil respiration (BSR), microbial biomass carbon (MBC), dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and phosphatase activity] and chemical properties [organic carbon (OC), humic ratio (E4/E6), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N), nitrate nitrogen (NO3-N), available forms of phosphorus (P2O5), potassium (K2O), calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+), sodium (Na+)] and on the moisture content. The results showed that the two sites, SnA and SnP, were statistically different from each other for all the microbiological and chemical parameters investigated except Na+ and moisture content. Higher values of MBC (575.67 μg g-1), BSR (9.71 μg CO2 g-1 soil h-1), DHA (332.76 μg formazan g-1 day-1) and phosphatase activity (0.161 μmol PNP g-1 hr-1) were observed for the SnP soil. Great heterogeneity was found in SnP in terms of microbiological properties, whereas the SnA plots showed more homogeneous microbiological activity due to ploughing. 75.34% of variance was explained by principal component one (PC1), which significantly separated SnA and SnP, especially on the basis of soil MBC and P2O5. Moreover, it was concluded that the pasture land (SnP) was microbiologically more active than arable land (SnA) among the Hungarian salt-affected soils investigated

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF PALMAROSA CULTIVATION IN INDIA

ABSTRACT Cymbopogon martinii, commonly known as palmarosa, is an essential oil-bearing crop cultivated by the farmers for production of oil used in perfumery, cosmetics and flavour industries. The study on the economics of palmarosa cultivation has shown that the major portion of operational cost was shared by human labour, distillation charges and preparation of nursery. Total variable cost was found to be 47926 per hectare per year. The gross returns were found to be 124000 per hectare e per year. The net returns over variable cost were 76074 per hectare. The benefit-cost ratio was found to be 2.59 indicating a higher profit to the farmers. The independent variables like human labour, planting material and distillation charges were positive indicating significant impact on the returns from the crop. There is need for effective market intelligence system to ensure remunerative price of the produce to the farmers