A Short Review on the Development of Salt Tolerant Cultivars in Rice

Rice is staple food for half of the world. With a population of almost 9.6 billion by the year 2050, there is a dire need of developing techniques to improve the crop plants, not only in terms of better yield but also to withstand harsh environmental conditions and stresses like drought, temperature, flood and salinity. Salinity is second to drought stress and hence it is very important to develop crops tolerant to salinity stress. This review discusses the mechanisms of salt tolerance and the recent developments in understanding the complex tolerance phenomena. One way to address the salinity issue is to develop tolerant rice varieties using conventional and modern breeding techniques for which screening the rice germplasm for the varieties with desired traits is critical. Conventional methods to develop tolerant rice varieties are discussed along with modern biotechnology techniques are also discussed. Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) and Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) are promising techniques. In addition to these modern techniques, some recent developments in the fields of transgenic plants, haploid breeding and Somaclonal variations have also been discussed. The limited knowledge about molecular and genetic mechanisms to tolerate abiotic stresses, however is a barrier to efficiently develop tolerant cultivars. A combination of conventional and modern biotechnology techniques could possibly open up the new ways

Effect of amino acids on inhibition of lactate dehydrogenase-X by gossypol

Gossypol acetic acid (GAA) has been shown to have male antifertility effects, but there are pronounced differences among animal species. In the search of endogenous effector molecules, which interfere with the functions of GAA, we have studied the in vitro effect of various amino acids on the inhibition of the purified LDH-X by GAA. Histidine, cysteine and glycine were shown to block the effect of GAA. The effects of these amino acids were concentration dependent. Histidine and glycine protection was found to be complex type in which both the Km and Vmax were decreased compared to control. Arginine, glutamic acid, phenylalanine and valine were found to be ineffective against the inhibitory action of GAA

Empirical Evidence on Enhanced Mutation Rates of 19 RM-YSTRs for Differentiating Paternal Lineages.

Rapidly mutating Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (RM Y STRs) with mutation rates ≥ 10-2 per locus per generation are valuable for differentiating amongst male paternal relatives where standard Y STRs with mutation rates of ≤10-3 per locus per generation may not. Although the 13 RM Y STRs commonly found in commercial assays provide higher levels of paternal lineage differentiation than conventional Y STRs, there are many male paternal relatives that still cannot be differentiated. This can be improved by increasing the number of Y STRs or choosing those with high mutation rates. We present a RM Y STR multiplex comprising 19 loci with high mutation rates and its developmental validation (repeatability, sensitivity and male specificity). The multiplex was found to be robust, reproducible, specific and sensitive enough to generate DNA profiles from samples with inhibitors. It was also able to detect all contributor alleles of mixtures in ratios up to 9:1. We provide preliminary evidence for the ability of the multiplex to discriminate between male paternal relatives by analyzing large numbers of male relative pairs (536) separated by one to seven meioses. A total of 96 mutations were observed in 162 meioses of father-son pairs, and other closely related male pairs were able to be differentiated after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 meiosis in 44%, 69%, 68%, 85%, 0%, 100% and 100% of cases, respectively. The multiplex offers a noticeable enhancement in the ability to differentiate paternally related males compared with the 13 RM Y STR set. We envision the future application of our 19 RM Yplex in criminal cases for the exclusion of male relatives possessing matching standard Y STR profiles and in familial searching with unknown suspects. It represents a step towards the complete individualization of closely related males

Estimation and separation of N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase isoenzymes in urine

N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase is a lysosomal enzyme made up of two isoenzymes (A and B). It has been used extensively as a marker for kidney damage. However, its estimation in urine has not been standardized. We have established a method for the estimation and separation of NAG isoenzymes by ion-exchange chromatography. In 19 experiments done so far, this method has given reproducible results. The significance of this method is that with a single experiment, one can estimate total as well as individual isoenzyme activity. Furthermore, urine constituents do not appear to interfere in this assay

A novel DeepMaskNet model for face mask detection and masked facial recognition

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has significantly affected the daily life activities of people globally. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the World Health Organization has recommended the people to wear face mask in public places. Manual inspection of people for wearing face masks in public places is a challenging task. Moreover, the use of face masks makes the traditional face recognition techniques ineffective, which are typically designed for unveiled faces. Thus, introduces an urgent need to develop a robust system capable of detecting the people not wearing the face masks and recognizing different persons while wearing the face mask. In this paper, we propose a novel DeepMasknet framework capable of both the face mask detection and masked facial recognition. Moreover, presently there is an absence of a unified and diverse dataset that can be used to evaluate both the face mask detection and masked facial recognition. For this purpose, we also developed a largescale and diverse unified mask detection and masked facial recognition (MDMFR) dataset to measure the performance of both the face mask detection and masked facial recognition methods. Experimental results on multiple datasets including the cross-dataset setting show the superiority of our DeepMasknet framework over the contemporary models

Manual and Automatic Extraction of Lineaments From Multispectral Image in Part of Al-Rawdah, Shabwah, Yemen by Using Remote Sensing and GIS Technology

Lineaments extracted from satellite data have advantage of extracting lineaments which are not recognizable by the human eyes. Lineaments are considered as one of the most important topographic features used in exploring resources such as minerals, groundwater, oil and gas etc. beside they are indicators of structural and tectonics of a basin. Satellite data become useful for extract lineament feature especially in high resolution images. Lineaments have been extracted by manual and automatic methods successfully in parts of Al-Rawdah, Shabowh, YEMEN. Various image processing methods such as spatial filters and FCC applied in manual method whereas PCA technique and various default parameters have been applied for automatic technique. These, methods used for remove the noise, sharp the linear feature and enhance the image. Numbers of software have been used such as Erdas Imagine2014, Arc GIS 10.2.2, PCI Geomatica13 and Rockwork15. Four geospatial analyses have been applied for assess the extracted lineaments such as length, density, and intersection density and orientation analysis. The total length of manual and automatic maps after superimpose are 740km and 1978km respectively. The lineament density in all manual and automatic concentrate largely at NE ampSW. The intersection density map for manual extraction concentrated largely at NWampSE of the study area, besides in automatic intersection density mostly concentrate in NEampW. Rose diagram indicated that the dominate trend of lineaments are NE-SW. The study area demonstrate the utilize of Landsat ETM+ for extract automatic and manual lineaments to assess and compare between them

Paper Session II-C - Satellite Remote Sensing for Environment and Resource Managment

In the recent years there have been valuable achievements in data pre-processing r image processing and interpretation and other related techniques. These developments in the field of satellite remote sensing have resulted in much more useful studies of environment and resource management. We present a review of some of such studies with emphasis on different land use /landcover features in some urban areas of Pakistan. These studies were made using SPOT multispectral and panchromatic data. Our analysis will be found useful for updating information of different urban features. In the end we present our future programs regarding the resource management and environment using earth resource satellites like LANDSAT and SPOT

Modeling of Kashmir Aftershock Decay Based on Static Coulomb Stress Changes and Laboratory-Derived Rate-and-State Dependent Friction Law

We model the spatial and temporal evolution of October 8, 2005 Kashmir earthquake\u2019s aftershock activity using the rate-and-state dependent friction model incorporating uncertainties in computed coseismic stress perturbations. We estimated the best possible value for frictional resistance \u2018\u2018Arn\u2019\u2019, background seismicity rate \u2018\u2018r\u2019\u2019 and coef\ufb01cient of stress variation \u2018\u2018CV\u2019\u2019 using maximum log-likelihood method. For the whole Kashmir earthquake sequence, we measure a frictional resistance Arn * 0.0185 MPa, r * 20 M3.7? events/year and CV = 0.94 \ub1 0.01. The spatial and temporal forecasted seismicity rate of modeled aftershocks \ufb01ts well with the spatial and temporal distribution of observed aftershocks that occurred in the regions with positive static stress changes as well as in the apparent stress shadow region. To quantify the effect of secondary aftershock triggering, we have re-run the estimations for 100 stochastically declustered catalogs showing that the effect of aftershock-induced secondary stress changes is obviously minor compared to the overall uncertainties, and that the stress variability related to uncertain slip model inversions and receiver mechanisms remains the major factor to provide a reasonable data \ufb01t