Cardiovascular Disease Risk among Rural Population of South India

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Technologies used at advanced dairy farms for optimizing the performance of dairy animals: A review

Superior germplasm, better nutrition strategies, health care facilities and improved dairy husbandry practices have boosted milk yield and its quality with a rapid rate. Per cow productivity has risen up sharply with considerable increase in the population of dairy animals. Recent era has witnessed the extension of large dairy farms around the world. Demand for high quality and increased quantity of milk is of the prime concern for all the dairy farms. With an increase in the size of animals in a farm, the labour requirement also rises up. Availability of skilled labour at low wage rate is becoming difficult. In last couple of decades, the cost of microprocessors has been reduced to an affordable level. The economic availability of engineered processors, artificial intelligence, improved data statistics combined with expert suggestions has created a revolution in livestock farming. Advanced engineered devices have become alternative to reduce high labour cost. This review focuses on latest knowledge and emerging developments in animal’s welfare focused biomarker activities and activity-based welfare assessment like oestrus, lameness and others. Use of enhanced sensors and data technologies with expert based solutions is anticipated to bring out a substantial improvement in existing dairy farming practices

Redescription of Oligodon arnensis, Shaw, 1802 (Reptilia: Colubridae) collected from Birbhum, West Bengal, India

Oligodon arnensis, Shaw, 1802 commonly known as kukri snake, a semi- fossorial snake species is taken for study as it is a most challenging group of snake. A morphometric study on several aspects like the number of supra-labials , infra-labials, ventrals, dorsals, distance between eye to nostril, eye diameter, number of bands, shape of banding etc. are reported. A significant correlation is present in between snout-vent length and tail length and in between eye diameter and distance from eye to nostril a possible explanation of large eye size related to habitat is given in the study

Methyl directed DNA mismatch repair in Vibrio cholerae

Mismatches in DNA occur either due to replication error or during recombination between homologous but non-identical DNA sequences or due to chemical modification of bases. The mismatch in DNA, if not repaired, result in high spontaneous mutation frequency. The repair has to be in the newly synthesized strand of the DNA molecule, otherwise the error will be fixed permanently. Three distinct mechanisms have been proposed for the repair of mismatches in DNA in prokaryotic cells and gene functions involved in these repair processes have been identified. The methyl-directed DNA mismatch repair has been examined inVibrio cholerae, a highly pathogenic gram negative bacterium and the causative agent of the diarrhoeal disease cholera. The DNA adenine methyltransferase encoding gene (dam) of this organism which is involved in strand discrimination during the repair process has been cloned and the complete nucleotide sequence has been determined.Vibrio cholerae dam gene codes for a 21.5 kDa protein and can substitute for theEscherichia coli enzyme. Overproduction ofVibrio cholerae Dam protein is neither hypermutable nor lethal both in Escherichia coli andVibrio cholerae. WhileEscherichia coli dam mutants are sensitive to 2-aminopurine,Vibrio cholerae 2-aminopurine sensitive mutants have been isolated with intact GATC methylation activity. The mutator genesmutS andmutL involved in the recognition of mismatch have been cloned, nucleotide sequence determined and their products characterized. Mutants ofmutS andmutL ofVibrio cholerae have been isolated and show high rate of spontaneous mutation frequency. ThemutU gene ofVibrio cholerae, the product of which is a DNA helicase II, codes for a 70 kDa protein. The deduced amino acid sequence of themutU gene hs all the consensus helicase motifs. The DNA cytosine methyltransferase encoding gene (dam) ofVibrio cholerae has also been cloned. Thedcm gene codes for a 53 kDa protein. This gene product might be involved in very short patch (VSP) repair of DNA mismatches. The vsr gene which is directly involved in VSP repair process codes for a 23 kDa protein. Using these information, the status of DNA mismatch repair inVibrio cholerae will be discussed

Large tuneable exchange fields due to purely paramagnetically limited domain wall superconductivity

The ability to locally apply and tune large magnetic fields is a crucial requirement for several devices, most notably for detection and generation of majorana fermions. Such a functionality can be achieved in Superconductor (S) /Ferromagnet (F) bilayers, where superconductivity is strengthened on top of domain walls due to local lowering of the proximity induced effective exchange fields. This is predicted to result in significant superconducting Tc enhancements and possible complete magnetic controlled switching on and off of the superconducting state. By using thin films of superconducting Nb and ferromagnetic insulating (GdN) bilayers, and through detailed magneto-transport measurements, we demonstrate the previously unobserved phenomena of complete switching in and out of the S state in S/F bilayers. In the thinnest of Nb layers, we estimate that the domain wall state induced tunability of proximity induced exchange fields can be as high as 1.3T with application of in plane external fields of only a few mT.Comment: 3 figure

Red Panda: A Novel Method for Detecting Variants in Single-Cell RNA Sequencing

BACKGROUND: Single-cell sequencing enables us to better understand genetic diseases, such as cancer or autoimmune disorders, which are often affected by changes in rare cells. Currently, no existing software is aimed at identifying single nucleotide variations or micro (1-50 bp) insertions and deletions in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. Generating high-quality variant data is vital to the study of the aforementioned diseases, among others. RESULTS: In this study, we report the design and implementation of Red Panda, a novel method to accurately identify variants in scRNA-seq data. Variants were called on scRNA-seq data from human articular chondrocytes, mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), and simulated data stemming from the MEF alignments. Red Panda had the highest Positive Predictive Value at 45.0%, while other tools-FreeBayes, GATK HaplotypeCaller, GATK UnifiedGenotyper, Monovar, and Platypus-ranged from 5.8-41.53%. From the simulated data, Red Panda had the highest sensitivity at 72.44%. CONCLUSIONS: We show that our method provides a novel and improved mechanism to identify variants in scRNA-seq as compared to currently existing software. However, methods for identification of genomic variants using scRNA-seq data can be still improved

Improvement of low grade ejaculates of Holstein Friesian crossbred bulls by different filtration techniques for cryopreservation

To improve the quality of poor ejaculates, sephadex (FS) and sephadex with ion-exchangers (FS+IE) filtration were used to examine split samples of 18 ejaculates of 6 Karan Fries bulls at various stages of cryopreservation. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance. All semen quality traits improved in both the filtration and further superiority of FS+IE column was observed due to its better efficacy of trapping immotile, dead and abnormal spermatozoa as well as there was decrease in sperm concentration, tail and total abnormalities. The initial, prefreeze and post-thaw motility, viability, sperm cells with intact plasma membranes and sperms with normal acrosomes of FS+IE filtrates were significantly better than the nonfiltered and FS filtered semen samples during different stages of cryopreservation. Therefore, it can be concluded that better quality semen can be harvested from poor ejaculates through FS+IE and FS filtration to improve fertilization potential of the spermatozoa

Improvement of sexual behavior and semen quality by therapeutic approach and zinc supplementation on Karan Fries

Sub-fertility is one of the major concerns in crossbred bulls as 42.98% bulls are getting culled due to sub- fertility problems therefore, a study was planned on 18 Karan Fries bulls producing poor quality semen or not mounted. They were randomly grouped into 3 treatment groups of 6 animals each and 2 normal bulls were kept as control. Sexual behavior and semen quality were studied during pre-therapy (1 month), therapy (90 days) and post- therapy (90 days) period. Data were analyzed using ANOVA. During therapy period, first group treated with 10 g of herbal product orally, second group with 0.0082 mg of GnRH intramuscularly at 10 days interval and third group with 80 ppm of zinc for 90 days for each group. The results depicted that herbal and GnRH treatment significantly reduced the reaction time, whereas herbal, GnRH treatment and zinc supplementation significantly improved the libido score and reduced per cent of non-mounts during the therapy and post-therapy period. The volume of semen and level of testosterone improved in all treatments groups. Herbal, GnRH treatment and zinc supplementation increased the average number of good and medium quality ejaculates/month/bull and maximum efficiency achieved during the treatment period. There was increase in percent live sperm and decrease in abnormality in herbal treated and zinc supplemented group. Therefore, it can be concluded that GnRH therapy, herbal treatment and zinc supplementation will be effective to overcome the sub-fertility problem in crossbred bulls