Mungbean (<em>Vigna radiata</em> L. Wilczek): Retrospect and Prospects

Mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) is economically most important crop of Vigna group. It is also known as green gram, golden gram, moong, Chickasaw, Oregon pea, and chop suey bean and this legumes have a strategic position in Southeast Asian countries for nutritional security and sustainable crop production. Being rich in quality protein, minerals and vitamins, they are inseparable ingredients in the diets of a vast majority of Indian population. When supplemented with cereals, they provide a perfect mix of essential amino acids with high biological value. These crops have the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen (58–109 kg per ha in kg per ha mungbean) in symbiotic association with Rhizobium bacteria, which enables them to meet their own nitrogen requirement and also benefit the succeeding crops. This crop has also been reported to smother weed flora appreciably (20–45%) when intercropped with tall cereals or pigeonpea and consequently, minimize the cost incurred on weed control. On account of short duration and photo-thermo insensitivity, they are considered excellent crops for crop intensification and diversification. A seed of mungbean is highly nutritious containing 24–28% protein, 1.0–1.5% fat, 3.5–4.5% fibre, 4.5–5.5% ash and 59–65% carbohydrates on dry weight basis and provide 334–344 kcal energy. Mungbean protein is considered to be easily digestible. Mungbean are tropical grain legumes widely grown in the sub-tropical countries of South and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, these crops are cultivated over a wide range of latitudes in the regions where average diurnal temperatures during the growing season are warmer than about 20°C

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Probiotics: A New Era of Biotherapy

Probiotics or health-beneficial bacteria have only recently been introduced in dentistry after years of successful use in mainly gastrointestinal disorders. The concept of bacteriotherapy was first introduced in the beginning of 20th century. They are administered in different quantities that allow for colon colonization. These products help in stimulating health promoting flora and also suppressing the pathologic colonization and disease spread. The use of probiotic plays an important aspect in dentistry too, ever since the oral infections occupied the prime spot among the other infections affecting the humans. Probiotics strengthen the immune system to combat allergies, stress, exposure to toxic substances, and other diseases. This review is an attempt to discuss briefly the role of probiotics in oral health

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Not AvailableIn India antibiotics are frequently used for preventing and controlling bacterial pathogens incarp aquaculture system, yet no studies have been performed to evaluate the ecological impact of itsintensive and prolonged use. In this work the frequency of oxytetracycline-resistant bacteria from water,palletized feed and different life stages of fish from Indian freshwater carp aquaculture system as well asthe level of resistance of selected strains was investigated. Viable as well as antibiotic-resistant bacterialcounts were performed by spread plate method in culture media supplemented with the oxytetracycline.Sixty two resistant Gram negative isolates which represented the oxytetracycline-resistant bacterialpopulation, were randomly selected on nutrient agar supplemented with oxytetracycline (50μg/ml) fromcarp farms and feed pellet samples. Among these bacterial isolates Flavobacterium (21%), Alcaligenes(14.5%), Aeromonas (11%), Pseudomonas (10%) and Enterobacteriace (19%) were the most frequent.The Escherichia, Serratia, Citrobacter, Enterobacter, Shigella and Proteus from Enterobacteriace wererecovered. Twelve isolates of oxytetracycline resistant bacteria were mainly dominated in adult fishes bythe genus Flavobacterium (23%) and Enterobacteriace(41%). Selected strains exhibited high levels ofoxytetracycline resistance with minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging from 50 to600μg/ml.This study shows the presence of an important population of oxytetracycline-resistant bacteriain the microflora of Indian carp aquaculture farms. Therefore the environment of these farms might playimportant roles as reservoirs of bacteria carrying genetic determinants for high level tetracyclineresistance, prompting an important risk to public health.Not Availabl

Novel CMS lines in pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh] derived from cytoplasmic substitutions, and their effective restoration and deployment in hybrid breeding

The availability of stable cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS or A) lines coupled with a robust restoration system (R lines) is an essential prerequisite for efficient hybrid breeding. CMS-enabled hybrid technology holds immense potential to enhance the long-stagnant productivity of pigeonpea. In the present investigation, cytoplasmic substitutions were made in the nuclear backgrounds of early-maturing pigeonpea varieties or lines. Three new CMS lines (ICPL 88039A, Pusa 992A, and DPP 3-2A) resulted from genetic crosses involving cytoplasmic donors from A2 (GT 288A) and A4 (ICPA 2089) categories. In addition to visual inspection of anthers, pollen-staining techniques and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis were used to confirm pollen sterility. Further, given the relevance of the plant mitochondrial genome to CMS manifestation, 25 mitochondrion-specific DNA markers were assayed on these newly developed A lines and isogenic maintainer (B) lines. DNA polymorphism between Pusa 992A and Pusa 992B as revealed by the nad7a_del marker confirmed the successful combination of sterilizing cytoplasm (A4) and nonrestoring nuclear background (Pusa 992). Such cytoplasm-specific DNA markers are required for A2-CMS as well. Further, to assess restoration ability, potential restorers were crossed with these CMS lines, and as a consequence, promising A × R combinations exhibiting 100% pollen fertility could be identified. In parallel, we also analyzed the inheritance patterns underlying fertility restoration using ICPL 88039A-derived F2 and BC1F1 populations, and established a monogenic dominant model to explain the phenomenon of A2-CMS restoration. In summary, we report the successful development of new CMS lines and describe their effective deployment in hybrid breeding of pigeonpea

Using AFLP-RGA markers to assess genetic diversity among pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) genotypes in relation to major diseases

Resistance gene analog (RGA)-anchored amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP-RGA) marker system was used in order to evaluate genetic relationships among 22 pigeon pea genotypes with varied responses to Fusarium wilt and sterility mosaic disease. Five AFLP-RGA primer combinations (E-CAG/wlrk-S, M-GTG/wlrk-S, M-GTG/wlrk-AS, E-CAT/S1-INV and E-CAG/wlrk-AS) produced 173 scorable fragments, of which 157 (90.7%) were polymorphic, with an average of 31.4 fragments per primer combination. The polymorphism rates obtained with the five primers were 83.3%, 92.0%, 92.3%, 93.0% and 93.1%, respectively. Mean polymorphic information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.24 (with E-CAT/S1-INV) to 0.30 (with E-CAG/wlrk-AS), whereas resolving power (RP) values varied from 11.06 (with M-GTG/wlrk-S) to 25.51 (with E-CAG/wlrk-AS) and marker index (MI) values ranged from 5.98 (with M-GTG/wlrk-S) to 12.30 (with E-CAG/wlrk-AS). We identified a positive correlation between MI and RP (r²=0.98, p<0.05), stronger that that observed for the comparison between PIC and RP (r²=0.88, p<0.05). That implies that either MI or RP is the best parameter for selecting more informative AFLP-RGA primer combinations. The Jaccard coefficient ranged from 0.07 to 0.72, suggesting a broad genetic base in the genotypes studied. A neighbor-joining tree, based on the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean, distinguished cultivated species from wild species. The grouping of resistant genotypes in different clusters would help in the selection of suitable donors for resistance breeding in pigeon pea

Improving Voting Feature Intervals for Spatial Prediction of Landslides

In this study, the main aim is to improve performance of the voting feature intervals (VFIs), which is one of the most effective machine learning models, using two robust ensemble techniques, namely, AdaBoost and MultiBoost for landslide susceptibility assessment and prediction. For this, two hybrid models, namely, AdaBoost-based Voting Feature Intervals (ABVFIs) and MultiBoost-based Voting Feature Intervals (MBVFIs) were developed and validated using landslide data collected from one of the landslide affected districts of Vietnam, namely, Muong Lay. Quantitative validation methods including area under the ROC curve (AUC) were used to evaluate model performance. The results indicated that both the newly developed ensemble models ABVFI (AUC = 0.859) and MBVFI (AUC = 0.839) outperformed the single VFI (AUC = 0.824) model. Thus, ensemble framework-based VFI algorithms can be used for the accurate spatial prediction of landslides, which can also be applied in other landslide prone regions of the world. Landslide susceptibility maps developed by ensemble VFI models can be used for better landslide prevention and risk management of the area.Validerad;2020;Nivå 2;2020-11-26 (johcin)</p

Multiple parameterization for hydraulic conductivity identification

Hydraulic conductivity identification remains a challenging inverse problem in ground water modeling because of the inherent nonuniqueness and lack of flexibility in parameterization methods. This study introduces maximum weighted log-likelihood estimation (MWLLE) along with multiple generalized parameterization (GP) methods to identify hydraulic conductivity and to address nonuniqueness and inflexibility problems in parameterization. A scaling factor for information criteria is suggested to obtain reasonable weights of parameterization methods for the MWLLE and model averaging method. The scaling factor is a statistical parameter relating to a desired significance level in Occam\u27s window and the variance of the chi-squares distribution of the fitting error. Through model averaging with multiple GP methods, the conditional estimate of hydraulic conductivity and its total conditional covariances are calculated. A numerical example illustrates the issue arising from Occam\u27s window in estimating model weights and shows the usefulness of the scaling factor to obtain reasonable model weights. Moreover, the numerical example demonstrates the advantage of using multiple GP methods over the zonation and interpolation methods because GP provides better models in the model averaging method. The methodology is applied to the Alamitos Gap area, California, to identify the hydraulic conductivity field. The results show that the use of the scaling factor is necessary in order to incorporate good parameterization methods and to avoid a dominant parameterization method