Potent endogenous allelopathic compounds in Lepidium sativum seed exudate: effects on epidermal cell growth in Amaranthus caudatus seedlings

Many plants exude allelochemicals – compounds that affect the growth of neighbouring plants. This study reports further studies of the reported effect of cress (Lepidium sativum) seed(ling) exudates on seedling growth in Amaranthus caudatus and Lactuca sativa. In the presence of live cress seedlings, both species grew longer hypocotyls and shorter roots than cress-free controls. The effects of cress seedlings were allelopathic and not due to competition for resources. Amaranthus seedlings grown in the presence of cress allelochemical(s) had longer, thinner hypocotyls and shorter, thicker roots – effects previously attributed to lepidimoide. The active principle was more abundant in cress seed exudate than in seedling (root) exudates. It was present in non-imbibed seeds and releasable from heat-killed seeds. Release from live seeds was biphasic, starting rapidly but then continuing gradually for 24 h. The active principle was generated by aseptic cress tissue and was not a microbial digestion product or seed-treatment chemical. Crude seed exudate affected hypocotyl and root growth at ∼25 and ∼450 μg ml(−1) respectively. The exudate slightly (28%) increased epidermal cell number along the length of the Amaranthus hypocotyl but increased total hypocotyl elongation by 129%; it resulted in a 26% smaller hypocotyl circumference but a 55% greater epidermal cell number counted round the circumference. Therefore, the effect of the allelochemical(s) on organ morphology was imposed primarily by regulation of cell expansion, not cell division. It is concluded that cress seeds exude endogenous substances, probably including lepidimoide, that principally regulate cell expansion in receiver plants

Examining volatility spillover between Asian countries' stock markets

Background: This study examined the volatility spillover effects between the stock markets of Asian countries, i.e., Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, and Hong Kong. Methods: The daily data was considered from the period 4 January 1999 to 1 January 2014, consisting five trading days from Monday to Friday. The volatility spillover between stock markets was captured by using the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model. Results: The empirical analyses show evidence of significant bidirectional spillover of return and volatility between China and Japan. The results also show significant bidirectional volatility transmission between the equity markets of the following countries: Hong Kong and Sri Lanka, China and Sri Lanka. The significant unidirectional transmissions of stock market volatility are found to be flowing from India to China, Sri Lanka to Japan, Pakistan to Sri Lanka, and Hong Kong to India and Japan. Conclusions: These results are important for economic policy makers in order to safeguard the financial sector from international financial shocks. The investors can use this information for making efficient portfolio which will reduce their risk and enhance their returns

Forecasting Inflation: Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model

This study compares the forecasting performance of various Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models by using time series data. Primarily, The Box-Jenkins approach is considered here for forecasting. For empirical analysis, we used CPI as a proxy for inflation and employed quarterly data from 1970 to 2006 for Pakistan. The study classified two important models for forecasting out of many existing by taking into account various initial steps such as identification, the order of integration and test for comparison. However, later model 2 turn out to be a better model than model 1 after considering forecasted errors and the number of comparative statistics

Design and Analysis of a Stand-Alone PV System for a Rural House in Pakistan

In this paper, thermal modeling of a typical rural house in Pakistan has been done using BEopt, to determine the hourly load profile. Using the load data, the design of a stand-alone PV system has been completed using HOMER Pro. The designed system consists of a 5.8 kW PV with eight batteries of 12 V, 255 Ah, and a 1.4 kW inverter. The system analyses show that such system can support mainly lighting and appliance load in a rural house. The dynamic model of the designed system has been simulated in MATLAB-Simulink. Perturbation and observation-based algorithm has been used for maximum power extraction from PV. Simulation results indicate that the system can provide a stable voltage and frequency for the domestic load. The method and analysis presented here can be used for the PV system design for other parts of the world

Cognitive Storage Model And Mapping With Classical Data Structures

Memories are the internal mental records that we maintain .Human mind is a very complex organ.. Processing depends on how we memorize information, events and how we recall things and use them efficiently in situations when required. It can be related that for Storage in mind we use different data structures for storing variety of information. We remember the names of known persons, and the people we met more frequently.The Topics in book, Months of the year, our CNIC Number, the way we learn words of a new language etc. Recently invented data structures e.g skiplist [1] show much similarity of how the brain store the information. So we can say Careful study of how the cognitive storage works could lead to the discovery of the new data structures In this paper we have attempted to relate the existing data structures with how we store information in mind

Low-Cost and Secure Communication System for SCADA System of Remote Microgrids

Renewable energy-based local microgrids are gaining popularity despite the unavailability of low-cost, power efficient, and secure communication system for its supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. This research has been carried out to address this issue along with the additional features such as data uploading to a server through a gateway, local data logging, and alerting the concerned crew in case of any fault to minimize the outage time. This paper presents the design of a communication system for the SCADA system of microgrid. ESP32 with LoRa has been used for communication between two nodes or a node and central SCADA unit. Communication security has been achieved by implementing AES cryptography. Data authenticity has been achieved by introducing a unique message authentication code (MAC) for each message. A mesh-like network has been implemented to improve the LoRa range. ESP32 and dragino-uno based LoRa gateways have been tried for uploading the data to the server, and local data storage has been achieved using an SD card. The main controller working as the SCADA unit has the feature of sending emails. Detailed system design and test results are presented in this pa

Presence of oligosaccharides in seed-coat mucilage of Lepidium sativum : role in allelopathy

Lepidimoide is a naturally occurring disaccharide reported to be an oligosaccharin, i.e. to exhibit ‘hormone-like’ biological activity. It was found in cress (Lepidium sativum) root exudates and exerts apparently allelopathic effects on neighbouring Amaranthus seedlings. In the present study the effect of cress root exudates on hypocotyl and root length of Amaranthus caudatus and Lactuca sativa was studied. The seedlings of both species grown with Lepidium sativum seedlings had longer hypocotyls and shorter roots as compared to the control. In this study I found an active principle with biological effects similar to those of lepidimoide to be more abundant in cress seed-coat mucilage than in root exudates. The active principle peaked 24 hours after seed soaking, and thereafter plateaued. I also for the first time confidently proved that the bioactive compound(s) were exuded by cress and were not microbial digestion products or seed treatment chemicals. Quantitative tests of cress root exudates and cress seed-coat mucilage showed the presence of hexoses, pentoses, uronic acids and unsaturated uronic acid. The presence of unsaturated uronic acid might be of interest because the known structure of lepidimoide includes an unsaturated uronic acid. Active principle from mucilage was partitioned into the aqueous phase when shaken with ethyl acetate at pH 2, 6.5 and 12, showing it to be hydrophilic, unlike auxins and gibberellins. The mucilage was also heated at 130°C for 48 h and severe heating did not affect its biological activity, suggesting that if the compound is lepidimoide then it is heat-resistant. In an attempt to test whether the compound is of high or low Mr, the mucilage was partitioned into 75% ethanol-precipitated and non-precipitated fractions. The biological activity in the non-precipitated fraction was very high, and was further separated by gel-permeation chromatography (GPC). GPC on Bio-Gel P-10 and P-2 suggested that the active principle had Mr ~500–750, compatible with oligosaccharide(s), suggesting that a particular oligosaccharide may be the active principle. TLC separation of bioactive fractions from P-2 showed that the bioactive compound migrated between GalA and Gal but co-migrated with sucrose; however, paper chromatography separation proved that the compound is not sucrose and might be a different disaccharide (lepidimoide). From the structure of lepidimoide, Fry et al. (1993) proposed that lepidimoide is formed by the lyase-catalysed cleavage of a pectic polysaccharide, rhamnogalacturonan-I (RG-I). So I tried to prepare lepidimoide or lepidimoide-like compounds by the action of RG-I lyase from Pichia pastoris on purified potato RG-I. The lyase showed its activity but the digest did not demonstrate biological activity, which might be due to presence of tris-HCl buffer in the solution. An attempt was also made to prepare lepidimoide by methyl esterification and -elimination of purified potato RG-I but again the product did not show any biological activity, which might be due to presence of borate buffer in the solution. This part of research might be useful for future work on preparation of lepidimoide and lepidimoide-like compounds

Long-range and secure communication system for remote data logging monitoring of micro-grids

With the increasing renewable energy penetration in the grid system, the number of distributed generation and remote micro-grids are also increasing. While each remote micro-grid requires to have a sophisticated (secure, long range, low power and low cost) communication system for the Suspervisory Control and Data Acquision (SCADA) system, creating a research gap for devising a system with desired attributes. This research was conducted to fill that gap by implementing a low power, low cost, secure, and a long-range communication system for remote micro-grids. The literature review comprising the study of twelve wireless technologies and three wired technologies was done to achieve this. After the comparison of those technologies, LoRa communication was chosen for this purpose. Different encryption algorithms were studied, implemented, cross-checked, and finally advanced encryption algorithm was implemented to achieve the security of the communication system. An algorithm was developed to generate a unique message authentication code for each message. It enabled to identify a bit-level alteration in the message. Further, to monitor the system remotely, data was uploaded to the server. It was achieved by programming and configuring different gateways for this purpose. LoRa range was improved by implementing LoRa nodes in a mesh-network structure. A hybrid, LoRa and radio-set based system was implemented to extend its range up to 40km. Three different system topologies were designed and implemented, and the final one was recommended based upon the SG SCADA system requirements. The results of step-by-step designing and implementation of the system show that this research work has significantly contributed to develope a low-cost, secure and long-range communication system for remote micro-grids

A Comparison between Type-2 Diabetics and Non-Diabetics in Terms of Papillary Bleeding Index (PBI)

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to compare the Type 2 diabetes mellitus patients and non-diabetics in terms of Papillary bleeding index (PBI) of periodontal disease. METHODOLOGY: This comparative cross-sectional study was conducted during the period of November 2020 to February 2021 in three (3) tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar. The sampling technique was purposive sampling. The sample comprised 105 individuals, 56 participants in Type–2 diabetes group and 49 in non-diabetes group. Male and females, having age between 40-65 years were recruited. Each diabetic and non-diabetic were clinically examined for periodontitis. Age and sex-matched participants suffering from periodontitis without a history of diabetes as well as with good glycemic control (HbA1c) were considered as controls subjects. Glycated hemoglobulin (HbA1c) was carried out for all the participants free of cost by using Human Gmbh-Max-Planck-Ring 21-65205 Wiesbaden-Germany kit. The study was approved by the ethical committee of the Peshawar Medical College. Data was analyzed using software package SPSS version 20. RESULTS: Out of 56  diabetics, 24 subjects brushed once daily, 15  brushed twice daily, 11 brushed occasionally and 6  didn’t brush  whereas in 49 non diabetics, 20 subjects brushed once daily, 13 brushed twice daily, 11  brushed occasionally and 5 didn’t brush. The clinical parameter mean (PBI) was recorded in our study. Score was 2.09 (±0.82) in diabetics and 1.02 (±0.47) in non-diabetics. P-value measured by the chi square test was significant. Spearman correlation test was performed to explore the association between the type 2 diabetes and Papillary bleeding index (PBI). CONCLUSION: We concluded that a significant difference exists between the mean PBI scores of Type 2 diabetics and non-diabetics

PICTORIAL REVIEW OF EXTRAOSSEOUS EWING’S TUMOUR: A SINGLE CENTER EXPERIENCE

Purpose: Ewing’s family tumour is an extremely rare tumour, with annual incidence rates amongst Caucasian children <21 years being in the range of 2–3 cases per million in the U.S. There are mainly three subtypes including Ewing’s sarcoma (ES) of bone, extraosseous (EO) Ewing’s tumour and Peripheral primitive neuroectodermal tumour. Although extremely rare, this study represents a review of various types of cases and the significance of imaging including its baseline and post-treatment response radiological characteristics. There are a very few cases of EO ES in the current literature with variable spectrum of tumour site and their imaging characteristics.Materials and Methods: Electronic records were retrospectively reviewed from 1 May 2011 to 1 May 2016 with patients who were diagnosed as histologically proven ES. A number of patients, gender and base line computed tomography (CT)/magnetic resonance imaging findings for staging were reviewed.Results: A total of 568 patients with diagnosed ES were analysed, of which 15 patients had EO type of ES. Of these only 8 patients had baseline imaging available which included tumours arising from the occipital region, orbit, anterior mediastinum, anterior abdominal wall, mesentery, kidney, prostate gland and presacral region.Conclusion: EO ES is a rare entity and can involve a wide array of soft tissue organs. A cross-sectional imaging with CT and MR has a key role in pre- and post-treatment assessment.Key words: Computed tomography, Ewing’s sarcoma, extraosseous Ewing’s, magnetic resonance imaging, peripheral primitive neuroectodermal tumou