Aquaculture and Marine Biotechnology Programme in India

Marine biotechnology has been a major focus world-wide through bio-discovery of marine microbes, invertebrates, micro-algae and macro-algae. In the commercial production of bio-active molecules and pharmaceuticals it plays a pivotal role. The global market for products from marine biotechnology is expected to reach over US$ 4 billion by 2015 and therefore marine bio-resources emerging with a lot of scope for the health and well being of aquacultur

Quality of eggs produced from wild and captive spawners of Penaeus Indicus H. Milne Edwards and their bacterial load

The seeds of Penaeus indicus H. Milne Edwards were produced following the modified Galveston system at a hatchery located at Narakkal near Cochin, India. Unilaterally eyestalk-ablated wild females were used for seed production. Some adult prawns collected from grow-out ponds attached to the hatchery were also used for breeding purposes. In all, 20 spawnings were observed in the present study. Poor-quality eggs and abnormal nauplii were observed, usually from the pond-reared eyestalk-ablated females during the period of investigation. The present study was carried out to describe different types of eggs based on morphology and to determine the bacterial load of eggs and its relationship with hatching rate

A New Concept of Transonic Galactic Outflows in a Cold Dark Matter Halo with a Central Super-Massive Black Hole

We study fundamental properties of isothermal, steady and spherically symmetric galactic outflow in the gravitational potential of a cold dark matter halo and a central super-massive black hole. We find that there are two transonic solutions having different properties: each solution is mainly produced by the dark matter halo and the super-massive black hole, respectively. Furthermore, we apply our model to the Sombrero galaxy. In this galaxy, Chandra X-ray observatory detected the diffuse hot gas as the trace of galactic outflows while the star-formation rate is low and the observed gas density distribution presumably indicates the hydrostatic equilibrium. To solve this discrepancy, we propose a solution that this galaxy has a transonic outflow, however, the transonic point forms in a very distant region from the galactic center (?$\sim$ 127 kpc). In this slowly accelerated transonic outflow, the outflow velocity is less than the sound velocity for most of the galactic halo. Since the gas density distribution in this subsonic region is similar to the hydrostatic one, it is difficult to distinguish the wide subsonic region from hydrostatic state. Such galactic outflows are dfferent from the conventional supersonic outflows observed in star-forming galaxies.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in JPS Conference Proceedings. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1405.345

Seismic analysis of multi-storeyed building with floating column using fluid viscous dampers.

Nowadays many multi-storeyed buildings in India have open ground storey for providing better parking facilities, reception lobbies and other amenities. It is required to have column free space due to shortage of space, increase in population and also for functional and aesthetic requirement.For this purpose, building is provided with floating column at one or more storey.Floating column is a vertical member but its lower end is not connected to the foundation. Its lower end rest on beam which is a horizontal member, this beam transfers the load of floating column to other columns below it.The most common use of a floating column is to build a soft storey on the ground floor to provide extra parking or entrance corridor space.But such features are highly unwanted in seismically active region. The present study proposes a practical solution for reducing the risk of earthquake effects associated with floating column building by strengthening them with using fluid viscous dampers. The main aim of the work is to highlights the performance of floating column building and compare floating column building with and without using fluid viscous dampers. Seismic analysis is carried out by using response spectrum analysis as per IS: 1893-2002. The Seismic assessment is executed by using ETABS software

On the dynamic tensile strength of Zirconium

Despite its fundamental nature, the process of dynamic tensile failure (spall) is poorly understood. Spall initiation via cracks, voids, etc, before subsequent coalesce, is known to be highly microstructure-dependant. In particular, the availability of slip planes and other methods of plastic deformation controls the onset (or lack thereof) of spall. While studies have been undertaken into the spall response of BCC and FCC materials, less attention has paid to the spall response of highly anisotropic HCP materials. Here the dynamic behaviour of zirconium is investigated via plate-impact experiments, with the aim of building on an ongoing in-house body of work investigating these highly complex materials. In particular, in this paper the effect of impact stress on spall in a commercially sourced Zr rod is considered, with apparent strain-rate softening highlighted

Enzymes used in detergents: Lipases

Microbial lipases are an important group of biotechnologically valuable enzymes, because of the versatility of their applied properties and ease of mass production. Lipases of microbial origin are widely diversified in their enzymatic properties and substrate specificity, which make them very attractive for industrial applications. This review describes the applications of microbial lipases in detergents. Enzymes can reduce the environmental load of detergent products as the chemicals used in conventional detergents are reduced; they are biodegradable, non-toxic and leave no harmful residues. Besides lipases, other enzymes are widely used in household cleaning products, in laundering, medical, agriculture, etc. This article also reviews the use of enzymes, especially lipases as detergents and different types of lipase containing detergents available in the market.Key words: Detergents, enzymes, lipases

The efficacy of statins as otoprotective agents: A systematic review

Objective: This systematic review examined the current literature, summarized research findings and identified research gaps regarding the efficacy of statins on audiological outcomes. Methods: Systematic search of electronic databases and grey literature was performed. Eligibility criteria was the study of a statin drug with report of audiological outcomes such as hearing, tinnitus, or balance in either human or animal studies. Data extraction and quality assessment were performed by two independently researchers. The characteristics of the study and research findings were collated and summarized. A narrative synthesis was conducted. Meta-analysis was not possible due to heterogeneity of the included studies.Results: Analysis of searches yielded 17 studies meeting the criteria. Included studies had variable drug type and dosage, outcome measures, and associated inner ear conditions. Most animal experiments showed promising audiological outcomes after statin treatment, demonstrated by the results of auditory brain stem response, distortion product otoacoustic emissions, and inner ear histology. However, no clear effect can be discerned in human trials due to the mixed results, and heterogeneity in research methodology and quality. Audiological outcomes were not always correlated with cholesterol levels. Conclusions: Statins remain a potential candidate as otoprotective agents which warrant further investigation

PHYSICAL AND PHYTO-CHEMICAL EVALUATION OF GLYCYRRHIZA GLABRA LINN (YASHTIMADHU)

Glycyrrhiza glabra Linn (Yashtimadhu) is a perennial herb commonly known as liquorice. The drug is used in many Ayurvedic formulations like Dasamoolarishtam, Aswagandharishtam, Phalasarpighrita, Khadiragulika, Madhuyastyaditaila etc. Ascertaining the identity, genuineness and purity of herbal drugs has an important role in the maintenance of the quality of the drug and its formulations. The present study was undertaken to assess the preliminary Phyto-chemical constituents of the drug. The preliminary phyto-chemical analysis including quantitative data, qualitative chemical analysis, Thin Layer Chromatography, High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography and Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy were determined. The preliminary Phyto-chemical characteristics observed in the herb may help in standardization, identification and in carrying out further research in Glycyrrhiza glabra Linn

Automatic Visual Features for Writer Identification: A Deep Learning Approach

© 2013 IEEE. Identification of a person from his writing is one of the challenging problems; however, it is not new. No one can repudiate its applications in a number of domains, such as forensic analysis, historical documents, and ancient manuscripts. Deep learning-based approaches have proved as the best feature extractors from massive amounts of heterogeneous data and provide promising and surprising predictions of patterns as compared with traditional approaches. We apply a deep transfer convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify a writer using handwriting text line images in English and Arabic languages. We evaluate different freeze layers of CNN (Conv3, Conv4, Conv5, Fc6, Fc7, and fusion of Fc6 and Fc7) affecting the identification rate of the writer. In this paper, transfer learning is applied as a pioneer study using ImageNet (base data-set) and QUWI data-set (target data-set). To decrease the chance of over-fitting, data augmentation techniques are applied like contours, negatives, and sharpness using text-line images of target data-set. The sliding window approach is used to make patches as an input unit to the CNN model. The AlexNet architecture is employed to extract discriminating visual features from multiple representations of image patches generated by enhanced pre-processing techniques. The extracted features from patches are then fed to a support vector machine classifier. We realized the highest accuracy using freeze Conv5 layer up to 92.78% on English, 92.20% on Arabic, and 88.11% on the combination of Arabic and English, respectively