Microbial β-Glucosidase: sources, production and applications

Cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer in biosphere and the major constituent of plant biomass. Cellulose polymer is made up of β-glucose units linked by β-glucosidic bonds. Cellulase is an enzymatic system that catalyzes the hydrolysis of cellulose polymer to glucose monomers. This enzymatic system consists of three individual enzymes namely endoglucanase, exoglucanase and β-glucosidase which act synergistically to degrade cellulose molecules into glucose. Cellulases are produced by bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals and used in many industrial applications such as textile industries, laundry and detergent industries, paper and pulp industry, animal feeds, and biofuels production. β-Glucosidase is a diverse group of enzymes with wide distribution in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals and has the potential to be utilized in various biotechnological processes such as biofuel production, isoflavone hydrolysis, flavor enhancement and alkyl/aryl β-D-glucoside and oligosaccharides synthesis. Thus, there is increased demand of β-glucosidase production from microbial sources under profitable industrial conditions. In this review, β-glucosidase classification, localization, and mechanism of action will be described. Subsequently, the various sources of β-glucosidase for industrial sector will be discussed. Moreover, Fermentation methods and various parameters affecting β-glucosidase production will be highlighted on the light of recent findings of different researchers. Finally, β-glucosidase applications in biofuel production, flavors enhancement, isoflavones hydrolysis, cassava detoxification and oligosaccharide synthesis will be described

Explanatory Study of Women Working in the Management of Universities

The paper aims to investigate the gender in higher education andcareer experience of women academicians to understand the factors that undermine their career progression. The objectives of the study are to overview the existing situation of women and men in universities and to identify the barriers that cause the underepresentation of women. Both primary and secondary data was used in the study.Questionnaire (Quantitative method )was used to collect the data. The sample of the study consists of 120 women academician of three universities. The sample universities were AIOU, AJ&K and FJWU. Data was analysed through percentage,tabulation and graphs. The paper examined the factors such as work/family conflict, exclusion of women from policy formulation,facilities provided by organization, attitude of male superior and colleagues and difficulties to exercise authority over male.The findings show that work/family conflict and difficulties to exercise authority, exclusion of women from policy formulation are negatively impact on women’s career progression.This study provides an opportunity to develop an insight into the issue of women’s representation in academic and administrative positions in universities. The findings of this study may provide information to different working organizations. There are different projects and programs of ministry of education, ministry of women development. This research would be beneficial both for public and private universities. The study might serve to strengthen efforts to implement equal opportunities for women in the universities and encourage women to put themselves forward for appointment to management positions

Employee Voice Behavior in Organizations: An Evidence from Pakistan

To remain competitive, organizations seek innovative ideas and solutions from employees. Since employees can give more practical views they often participate by sharing their ideas and by giving opinions often termed as voice. Current study contributes the literature by examining the effect of big five personality traits combined with the psychological antecedents on employees’ voice behavior in Pakistani service sector context. Four independent variables organizational based self-esteem, felt obligation, motivational factors and personality traits were proposed to have a positive relation with dependent variables, promotive and prohibitive voices in the presence of a moderator, psychological safety. Data was collected from 200 employees of the leading insurance sector organization of Pakistan through a survey questionnaire. The results confirmed the hypotheses. Keywords: Voice behavior, self-esteem, motivation, personality traits

Characterization of thermophilic β-Glucosidase of rhizospheric bacterial strain (LSKB15) isolated from Cholistan Desert, Pakistan

Fifty thermophilic bacterial strains isolated from rhizospheric soil of Cholistan desert, Pakistan, and designated as LSKB01-LSKB50 were screened for β-glucosidase gene (bgl) belonging to glycoside hydrolase family 1 (GH 1) using PCR technique. Subsequently, the same strains were screened for extracellular β-glucosidase production using esculin as substrate. All fifty strains were shown to be amplified for conserved region of bgl gene and to secrete extracellular β-glucosidase. One strain (LSKB15) secreted relative high amount of this enzyme as indicating by size of ferric-esculetin precipitate. This strain was further cultivated on cellulose containing media and β-glucosidase was purified by ammonium sulfate, dialysis and gel filtration chromatography. The purified enzyme showed an optimal temperature of 60°C and an optimal pH of 7. It also showed excellent temperature and pH stability retaining > 90% activity after incubation for 2 h at pH 5-8 and 40-60°C. Finally, the purified enzyme was run on Native-PAGE and subsequently incubated in phosphate buffer containing 5 mM of 4-methylumbelliferyl-β-D-glucoside (4-MUG) for 15 min at 50°C and visualized by UV light as white band. We concluded that thermophilic LSKB15 β- glucosidase may work with other cellulase to degrade available cellulose synthesized by plant and the properties exhibited by it such as high temperature and pH stability pointed out its potential industrial importance

Effects of Anaerobic Exercises on Cardiac Workload, Peripheral Resistance, and Lipid Index in Grade-I Hypertensive Young Adults

Purpose: Hypertension is the leading preventable risk factor for various cardiovascular diseases. With the soaring prevalence globally, there is a need to identify the non-pharmacological management for the maintenance of blood pressure. Hence this study is aimed to determine the impact of an-aerobic exercise in grade-I hypertensive young adults. Methods: A total of 92 participants were recruited from the OPD of a tertiary care hospital between the periods of 11 months (August 2017-June 2018) and were allocated in an anaerobic and aerobic group. The intervention was given based on ACSM, FITT protocol for 8 weeks. The pre- and post-systolic blood pressure, ankle brachial index (ABI), and lipid index were determined. Results: The results obtained from the study showed that eight weeks of prescribed exercises significantly improved systolic blood pressure, ankle brachial index, and lipid index of the hypertensive patients in both groups (CI: 95%, pConclusion: The study concluded that 8 weeks of supervised training programs were found to be effective in improving blood pressure, ABI, and lipid index among grade-I hypertensive young adults. Both exercises regimes were found to be equally effective, however, in term of their impact on the dose-response relationship curve resisted exercises were found to be more potent than aerobic exercises as only 24 sessions of resisted exercises performed for 8 weeks provided an equally effective result as were obtained after 40 sessions of aerobic exercises

Microbial β-Glucosidases: screening, characterization, cloning and applications

Cellulose is the most abundant biomaterial in the biosphere and the major component of plant biomass. Cellulase is an enzymatic system required for conversion of renewable cellulose biomass into free sugar for subsequent use in different applications. Cellulase system mainly consists of three individual enzymes namely: endoglucanase, exoglucanase and β-glucosidases. β-Glucosidases are ubiquitous enzymes found in all living organisms with great biological significance. β-Glucosidases have also tremendous biotechnological applications such as biofuel production, beverage industry, food industry, cassava detoxification and oligosaccharides synthesis. Microbial β-glucosidases are preferred for industrial uses because of robust activity and novel properties exhibited by them. This review aims at describing the various biochemical methods used for screening and evaluating β-glucosidases activity from microbial sources. Subsequently, it generally highlights techniques used for purification of β-glucosidases. It then elaborates various biochemical and molecular properties of this valuable enzyme such as pH and temperature optima, glucose tolerance, substrate specificity, molecular weight, and multiplicity. Furthermore, it describes molecular cloning and expression of bacterial, fungal and metagenomic β-glucosidases. Finally, it highlights the potential biotechnological applications of β-glucosidases

An integrated model for solving production planning and production capacity problems using an improved fuzzy model for multiple linear programming according to Angelov's method

Decision making has become a part of our everyday lives. The main apprehension is that almost all decision difficulties include certain criteria, which usually can be multiple or conflicting. Certainly, the production planning and production capacity development includes several parameters uncertainty such as fuzzy resource capacity, fuzzy demand and fuzzy production rate. This situation makes decision maker challenging to describe the objective crisply and at the end the real optimum solution cannot attained correctly. The Fuzzy model for multi-objective linear programming should be an suitable approach for dealing with the production planning and production capacity (PP& PC) problems. The PP& PC problem based on the fuzzy environment becomes even more sophisticated as decision makers try to consider multi-objectives, Therefore, this study attempts to propose a novel scheme which is capable of dealing with these obstacles in PP& PC problem. Intuitionistic Fuzzy Optimization (1FO) by implementing the optimization problem in an Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set (IFS) environment and considered the degrees of rejection of objective(s) and of constraints as the complement of satisfaction degrees. The aim of the research is to propose a new method capable of dealing with these obstacles in the PP & PC problem. It takes into account uncertainty and makes trade-offs between multiple conflicting goals simultaneously. To verify the validity of the proposed method, a case study of the fuzzy multi-objective model of the PP&PC is used. This research takes into account uncertainty and makes a comparison between multiple conflicting goals at the same time. Therefore, this study attempts to propose a new scheme which is the modified Angelov’s approach

Manifestation of Colonial Subjects in Twilight in Dehli and A Passage to India

The goal of this research is to examine how the colony is portrayed by both the colonizer and the colonized. This paper focuses mainly on the politics of depiction by implementing the insights of postcolonialism. In this context, Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali also deals with the same subject from the view of the colonized, whereas A Passage to India is a narrative of the British colony by its colonizer E. M. Forster. It may be argued that the writers’ two depictions of a similar colony represent different political and cultural viewpoints. The two authors’ representations of the same colony, one from a colonized civilization and another from that was colonized, consistently reflect their distinctive voices. Additionally, the latest research has incorporated Homi K. Bhabha and Edward Said’s analytical works on the depiction in the postcolonial theoretical perspective and explored the problem of cultural representation while using textual analyses. The research has shown that both works’ representations of colonial India differ significantly because of the authors’ respective cultural roles as colonizer and colonized

PID-sliding surface based sliding mode controller for anti-lock braking system of electric vehicle

Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) is a crucial part in electric vehicle. It is an uncertain and nonlinear system. In this paper a Sliding Mode Control (SMC) technique with PID sliding surface is used to maintain the slip ratio, at 0.2 of ABS system. The mathematical representation of a quarter vehicle model that emphasizes essential characteristics of the whole vehicle was implemented in this research. The model was developed using Simulink and the proposed SMC technique was tested and validated. In addition, the sliding mode enforcement was ensured via stability analysis. The simulation results have shown good agreement and acceptable response of the ABS syste