Emerging clam fishery in Muthalapozhi Estuary

Muthalapozhi Estuary is located in northern part of Thiruvananthapuram District, Kerala. Perunguzhi and Azhoor are commercial bivalve landing centers located along the Muthalapozhi Estuary, where large-scale clam exploitation has emerged during the recent past (Fig. 1). This new development is due to the increased domestic demand for clams in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra consequent to the decreased availability of clams in their traditional local clam fishing grounds

Impact of short term yoga on anthropometric measures, body composition and serum lipid profile in overweight and obese adults: a pilot study

Background: Excess bodyweight is the sixth most important risk factor contributing to the overall burden of disease worldwide. Overweight and obesity have been called a global epidemic by the World Health Organization. The epidemic reflects progressive decreases in physical activity, together with substantial dietary changes with passive over-consumption of energy despite the neurobiological processes controlling food intake. This pilot study was undertaken to find out the impact of yoga practice in overweight and obese individuals.Methods: total of 32 subjects with BMI, ≥23to ≤40 were selected for the study for a single group pre-post trial. The subjects had undergone yogic intervention for one hour in the morning for 10 days. The changes in anthropometric measures, body composition and serum lipid profile were assessed before and after 10 days of yoga therapy.Results: The data obtained was verified for normal distribution and analysed using paired t-test with SPSS (version 20.0) package. Significant decrease in body weight, BMI, triglycerides and total cholesterol in obese subjects and a significant decrease in body weight, BMI and triglycerides of overweight subjects was observed.Conclusions: The study demonstrates the efficacy of yogic practices on anthropometric measures and lipid profile subjects with overweight and obesity

Loose shell syndrome (LSS) of cultured Penaeus monodon - microbiological and histopathological investigations

Investigations were undertaken on loose shell syndrome (LSS) of cultured Penaeus monodon during the period 2009 - 2010. The infected shrimps were collected from culture ponds of east and west Godavari districts in Andhra Pradesh, India and were subjected to microbiological and histopathological studies. Four species of Vibrio were isolated from the diseased shrimps and were identified as V. harveyi, V. alginolyticus, V. metschnikovii and V. fluvialis based on morphological characteristics and biochemical tests. Histopathological studies revealed the presence of occlusion and inclusion bodies of monodon baculovirus (MBV), hepatopancreatic parvo-like virus (HPV), and white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) in hepatopancreatic and gill tissues. All the LSS affected shrimps collected during the present study were found infected with V. harveyi and concurrent infections of other Vibrio species were observed in 40% of the samples. Prevalence of infection with WSSV, MBV and HPV was less compared to Vibrio infections. Granuloma formation was observed in the affected tissues due to bacterial invasions. Multiple viral infections in association with Vibrio sp. were also observed in 2% of LSS affected shrimp

Single Dose Pharmacokinetics of Efavirenzin Healthy Indian Subjects

Background & Objective: Access to antiretroviral therapy in India is improving. Efavirenz (EFV) is a commonly used non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor used to treat HIV infection. No information is available on the pharmacokinetics of EFV in Indian subjects. The aim of this study was to obtain information on single dose pharmacokinetics of efavirenz (EFV) in healthy Indian subjects. Methods: Sixteen adult healthy volunteers (8 males and 8 females) were administered a single oral tablet of 600 mg EFV after an overnight fast. Blood samples were collected at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 24 and 48 hours post dosing. Plasma EFV concentrations were estimated by HPLC, and certain pharmacokinetic variables were calculated. Results: Plasma EFV concentrations were higher in females than males at all the time points, the differences being significant at 1 (p<0.001) and 2 (p=0.05) hours. Females had significantly higher peak concentration (Cmax) of EFV than males (p=0.05) (3.11 & 1.90 μg/ml). The inter-individual variability in Cmax and AUC0-48 were 42 and 45% respectively. Conclusions: This study provides basic information on the pharmacokinetics of EFV in Indian subjects. Females had higher peak levels of EFV than males. Inter-subject variability was high. Further studies are necessary to describe the pharmacokinetic profile of EFV under steady state conditions in Indian patients on antiretroviral treatment

HPLC Method for Determination of p-coumaric acid from the Medicinal Herb Leptadinia reticulata

The aim of present study was to develop and validate a simple, precise and rapid HPLC method for the quantification of p-coumaric acid in Leptadinia reticulata extractst. The analysis was performed by reverse-phase chromatography on an phenomenex C18 columns with isocratic elution of Methanol and 0.8%-Formic acid in water (6:4) at a flow rate of 1.0mL/min, a column temperature of 35°C, photodiode array detector detection at 326 nm. The method validated in terms of linearity accuracy precision LOD, LOQ and stability. The herb Leptidinia reticulata contains 0.17% p-coumaric acid. The linear range of method was 0.25-50µg/ml with correlation coefficient of 0.9993, the recovery was 98-99.4% and the relative standard deviation is 0.98 % (n=6). The developed method was found to be a relatively simple, precise and reproducible for the quantification of p-coumaric acid. The method does not employ any derivatization procedure and can be used as a quality control tool for the routine analysis of    p-coumaric acid from an herb Leptadinia reticulata

Pattern of adverse effects in patients with nephrotic syndrome on oral prednisolone

Background: Nephrotic syndrome is a common illness affecting the paediatric age group and 80% of the idiopathic syndrome is steroid sensitive. Multiple relapses make them vulnerable to the adverse effects of corticosteroids. There is limited literature evidence for the adverse effects of steroids in children with renal pathology.Methods: This descriptive, cross sectional study analyses the adverse effects of oral prednisolone in children and adults with nephrotic syndrome Fifty-five patients with nephrotic syndrome, attending nephrology or paediatric OP, more than 3 years of age and who were on oral prednisolone for a minimum of eight weeks were included in the study. Demographic details, detailed history, lab investigations and ophthalmic examination were done and the results were analysed.Results: Hypertension and behavioural changes were the most common adverse effects followed by dermatological, endocrine and metabolic changes. Infections and gastrointestinal disturbances were more in adults (p <0.05). Short stature was more in children (p< 0.05). There was no abnormality in blood glucose levels and body weight. Hypertension, cushingoid habitus, infections and short stature were statistically less in patients on alternate day prednisolone. But no statistical association could be made between the occurrence of cataract and the pattern of prednisolone use.Conclusions: Adverse effects pattern is different among adults and children. Also, the adverse effects are less with alternate day prednisolone regimen. Long term follow up into their adulthood is needed to analyse the morbidity produced by corticosteroids in these subsets of population

Histogenesis of Peyer’s patches in Ovine foetus (Ovis aries)

Tissue pieces of jejunum and ileum from different prenatal age groups of sheep were collected from Corporation slaughter house, Perambur, Chennai. By three months of foetal age in sheep, the Peyer’s patches appeared as an aggregation of lymphocytes in the propria submucosa of the jejunum and ileum. The lymphocytic aggregation appeared only in the antimesenteric part of the jejunum and ileum. By four months of foetal age, the circumscribed nodular aggregations of lymphocytes were found enlarged giving a follicle-like appearance. The capsular connective tissue was predominated by reticular fibres and a few collagen fibres. The dome area of the follicle consisted of closely packed small-sized lymphocytes which appeared darker than the basal area. The smooth muscle fibres of muscularis mucosae were not continuous throughout and were absent in the follicle having domes. In five months-old foetuses, the jejunal and ileal Peyer’s patches were distinctly observed as follicles. The follicle showed a distinct outer cortex and an inner lighter medulla. Numerous small-sized lymphocytes were observed in the outer cortex and few lymphoblasts, medium sized lymphocytes and reticular cells were observed in the medulla. Keywords: Histogenesis; Peyer’s patches; Ovine foetus

Support vector machine and neural network for enhanced classification algorithm in ecological data

The current economic scale is bigger and bigger, the social material living standard also along is also getting higher and higher with the rapid economic growth. However, the problems caused by economic development are also increasing, on the one hand, there is the contradiction between supply and demand caused by resource consumption and shortage of resources; on the other hand, there also is contradiction between the great pollution and destruction in the ecological environment and the public’s increasingly demanding ecological environment. Especially, the contradiction between the ecological environment and the social environment has become the focus of attention of the Chinese public. Therefore, the ecological environment protection becomes the current consensus either from the national level or the social level, how to manage and protect the ecological environment is also a question of the current social thinking. The common practice of ecological environment protection is to control and protect, at the same time, governance is to restore the damaged environment. There are many means for protection, such as energy conservation, emission reduction, monitoring and so on. Energy saving and emission reduction not only mean that the consumption of resources is reduced, but also mean that the discharge of pollutants and destroy the ecological environment are reduced. And monitoring refers to the existing ecological environment monitoring; the change of ecological environment is detected by real-time observation, so that counter measures are made according to the changes

Comprehensive surface magnetotransport study of SmB6

After the theoretical prediction that SmB6 is a topological Kondo insulator, there has been an explosion of studies on the SmB6 surface. However, there is not yet an agreement on even the most basic quantities such as the surface carrier density and mobility. In this paper, we carefully revisit Corbino disk magnetotransport studies to find those surface transport parameters. We first show that subsurface cracks exist in the SmB6 crystals, arising both from surface preparation and during the crystal growth. We provide evidence that these hidden subsurface cracks are additional conduction channels, and the large disagreement between earlier surface SmB6 studies may originate from previous interpretations not taking this extra conduction path into account. We provide an update of more reliable magnetotransport data than the previous one (S. Wolgast et al., Phys. Rev. B 92, 115110) and find that the orders-of-magnitude large disagreements in carrier density and mobility come from the surface preparation and the transport geometry rather than the intrinsic sample quality. From this magnetotransport study, we find an updated estimate of the carrier density and mobility of 2.71×1013 (1/cm2) and 104.5 (cm2/Vsec), respectively. We compare our results with other studies of the SmB6 surface. By this comparison, we provide insight into the disagreements and agreements of the previously reported angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and magnetotorque quantum oscillations measurements

Antidiabetic activity of 3-hydroxyflavone analogues in high fructose fed insulin resistant rats

Synthetic 3-hydroxyflavone analogues (JY-1, JY-2, JY-3, JY-4), were tested for antidiabetic activity in high-fructose-diet-fed (66 %, for 6 weeks) insulin-resistant Wistar rats (FD-fed rats). The fasting blood glucose, insulin, creatinine and AGEs were decreased to near normal upon treatment with test compounds. Insulin resistance markers such as HOMA-IR, K-ITT, plasma triglycerides, lipids, endogenous antioxidant defense and glycogen were restored in FD-fed rats after treatment with 3-hydroxyflavones. It is known that insulin resistance is partly because of oxidative stress and hence antioxidant activity was determined. They exhibited significant in vitro DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activity (IC50: 10.66-66.63 μM). Test compounds inhibited ROS and NO production in RAW 264.7 cells (IC50: 10.39–42.63 μM) and they were found as potent as quercetin. Further, the test compounds inhibited lipid peroxidation at low concentrations (IC50: 99.61-217.47 μM). All test compounds at concentrations 100-200 μM protected calf thymus DNA-damage by Fenton reaction. In addition, test compounds inhibited protein glycation in different in vitro antiglycation assays. JY-2 showed maximum potency in all the stages of glycation which was comparable to the standard quercetin and aminoguanidine. Test compounds also enhanced the glucose uptake by L6 myotubes at an EC50 much lower than that of quercetin. Thus the synthetic 3-hydroxyflavones were found to have good antidiabetic activity by pleotropic and multimodal suppression of insulin resistance and enhancement of glucose uptake by skeletal muscles. These compounds are non-toxic at the doses tested. Further, the combined antioxidant and antiglycation activities of these molecules have complementary benefits in management of diabetes