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

An enzymatic method for the detection of human serum albumin

Albumin is the most abundant protein in human serum. A dye-binding method is commonly used in clinical laboratories for its estimation using different types of dyes. However, all these dye methods were interfered by a variety of compounds. Here we present a method for the detection of albumin in human serum and other biological fluids. The principle is based on the fact that lactate dehydrogenase isoenzyme-5 (LDH-5) binds specifically to Dextran-Blue (DB). Albumin inhibits the binding of LDH-5 with DB. Absence of LDH activity in DB fraction after gel filtration indicates the presence of albumin in sample and vice versa

Helping Deluxe Beds to sleep easy : a case study of agile project management

This case study describes the embedding of the Scrum project management framework as an innovation and operational improvement tool within a manufacturing Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) in the UK. The teaching notes inform 1) other UK manufacturing SMEs with novice teams, and 2) students at undergraduate and postgraduate level exploring innovation and operations management/improvement. The case advances our understanding of how small family-run manufacturing businesses can use contemporary frameworks such as Scrum to improve business operations and innovation. Deluxe Beds Ltd is a family SME manufacturing beds and mattresses with a technically novice workforce mainly with no formal educational background

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

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

Purification and characterization of thermostable chitinase from a novel S. maltophilia strain

Aims: The presents study examines the purification and characterization of a chitinase from S. maltophilia SJ602 strainisolated from a soil sample collected from Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi.Methodology and Results: The purification steps included chitin affinity using colloidal chitin as the affinity matrix andcolumn chromatography using Sephadex G-100. The chitinase was purified to 66 fold having a yield of 17%. The molecular weight of the chitinase was found to be around 29 kDa by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). The pH and temperature optima of the purified chitinase were found to be at pH 5.5 and60 °C, respectively. Conclusion, Significance and Impact of the study: Besides showing a significant yield, the enzyme has a highthermal stability which has its applicability in the recycling of chitin waste

A Novel Energy-Efficient Reservation System for Edge Computing in 6G Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

The roadside unit (RSU) is one of the fundamental components in a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), where a vehicle communicates in infrastructure mode. The RSU has multiple functions, including the sharing of emergency messages and the updating of vehicles about the traffic situation. Deploying and managing a static RSU (sRSU) requires considerable capital and operating expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX), leading to RSUs that are sparsely distributed, continuous handovers amongst RSUs, and, more importantly, frequent RSU interruptions. At present, researchers remain focused on multiple parameters in the sRSU to improve the vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication; however, in this research, the mobile RSU (mRSU), an emerging concept for sixth-generation (6G) edge computing vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), is proposed to improve the connectivity and efficiency of communication among V2I. In addition to this, the mRSU can serve as a computing resource for edge computing applications. This paper proposes a novel energy-efficient reservation technique for edge computing in 6G VANETs that provides an energy-efficient, reservation-based, cost-effective solution by introducing the concept of the mRSU. The simulation outcomes demonstrate that the mRSU exhibits superior performance compared to the sRSU in multiple aspects. The mRSU surpasses the sRSU with a packet delivery ratio improvement of 7.7%, a throughput increase of 5.1%, a reduction in end-to-end delay by 4.4%, and a decrease in hop count by 8.7%. The results are generated across diverse propagation models, employing realistic urban scenarios with varying packet sizes and numbers of vehicles. However, it is important to note that the enhanced performance parameters and improved connectivity with more nodes lead to a significant increase in energy consumption by 2%

Effect of Two Different Rodenticides on Serum Biochemistry of House Rats (Rattus rattus)

This study was conducted to compared the serum biochemical parameters of the Rattus rattus as influenced by feeding two different rodenticides i.e., brodifacoum and food energy inhibitor (cellulose). The experiment was conducted on total 42 rats which were divided equally into 3 groups. One group was fed brodifacoum while the other was fed cellulose. The third group served as a control. Both the groups were fed with the calculated amount of brodifacoum and cellulose for 14 days. At the end of experiment, rats of all the three groups were killed and blood was collected to obtain serum. Significantly low feed intake was recorded in food energy inhibitor fed group. Serum was analyzed for glucose, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), Triiodothyronine (T3) and Thyroxine (T4). It was observed that serum glucose and T3 were significantly low (p<0.05) in brodifacom fed group while ALT and T4 were significantly high (p<0.05) in brodifacom fed rats. The biochemical comparison of these rodenticides provides useful information regarding the controlling strategy of Rattus rattus