Review on Information Retrieval for Desktop Search Engine

Search is an important aspect of information management often taken for granted. Domain specific repositories are growing in both size and numbers calling for efficient search and retrieval of documents. This paper explores the possible techniques and necessary system components for a search engine charting several iterative optimizations over the last few years. This paper focuses on NLP models while retaining basic principles from other methods that assist in information search

Gender Sensitization of Adolescent Boys and its Linkage to the Creation of Positive Male Role Models

Adolescents in India outnumber (in terms of the population dividend) their counterparts elsewhere in the world. With the future of our fast-growing economy fairly rested on them, it is important that for gender inclusive growth to set in, adolescent boys grow up with gender awareness and sensitivity. This becomes all the more important in societies like ours, which continue to subscribe to patriarchal biases and rigid gender roles are a reality of the times. While un-conditioning and unlearning in adulthood can be a social exercise to build inclusive mind-sets, grass root level interventions that groom young boys to be gender sensitive individuals can aid our transition to an equal and inclusive future. This study was conducted in order to understand the current need in India for systematic gender sensitization interventions for adolescent boys. In the first segment of the study, a qualitative research was undertaken amongst principals and vice principals of 20 prominent schools in the Indian city of Chennai to understand the key challenges they faced with regards to gender sensitivity amongst their male students. The study conducted amongst the principals revealed that there was a huge gap in existence in conditioning young boys on the ethical tenets of gender sensitivity. The second segment of the study traced the adolescence of successful male role models from corporate India, who were surveyed to understand the impact of gender sensitization conversations they had in their adolescence in shaping their mindsets in adult lives. The results established strong interlinkages between a male leader’s ability to inclusively interact and effectively lead diverse teams, with that of constructive gender sensitivity discussions he had in his adolescence

Donkey milk: chemical make-up, biochemical features, nutritional worth, and possible human health benefits - Current state of scientific knowledge

Milk and milk derivatives are widely consumed because of their high nutritional density. Donkey milk and milk products have been consumed since ancient times. The use of donkey milk in the human diet is gaining popularity. The abundance of antibacterial components and protective elements in donkey milk sets it apart from the milk of other animals. Like human milk, donkey milk has low fat, high lactose, and low casein/whey protein ratio. Donkey milk whey protein's anti-proliferative properties imply lung cancer treatment. Alpha-lactalbumin, a type of protein, has been found to have antiviral, anticancer, and anti-stress properties. Donkey milk, like human milk, includes a low amount of casein and a smaller quantity of beta-lactoglobulin than cow milk. Donkey milk is an alternative for newborns with cow milk protein allergy and lactose intolerance since it has a higher amount of lactose, improves palatability, and prevents allergies. Osteogenesis, arteriosclerosis therapy, cardiac rehabilitation, accelerated aging, and hypocholesterolemic diets are some areas where donkey milk is beneficial. Since it contains probiotic lactobacilli strains, fermented beverages can be made with donkey milk. Donkey milk moisturizes skin due to its high vitamin, mineral, and polyunsaturated fatty acid content. The chemical makeup and potential therapeutic benefits of donkey milk warrant additional research. This has led to a rise in interest in producing dairy goods derived from donkey milk. Donkey milk has been used to make cheese, ice cream, milk powder, and even some experimental useful fermented drinks. The present article summarises what we know about donkey milk's chemical makeup, biological functions, nutritional worth, and possible human health benefits

Genetic dissection of marker trait associations for grain micro-nutrients and thousand grain weight under heat and drought stress conditions in wheat

IntroductionWheat is grown and consumed worldwide, making it an important staple food crop for both its calorific and nutritional content. In places where wheat is used as a staple food, suboptimal micronutrient content levels, especially of grain iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn), can lead to malnutrition. Grain nutrient content is influenced by abiotic stresses, such as drought and heat stress. The best method for addressing micronutrient deficiencies is the biofortification of food crops. The prerequisites for marker-assisted varietal development are the identification of the genomic region responsible for high grain iron and zinc contents and an understanding of their genetics.MethodsA total of 193 diverse wheat genotypes were evaluated under drought and heat stress conditions across the years at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, under timely sown irrigated (IR), restricted irrigated (RI) and late sown (LS) conditions. Grain iron content (GFeC) and grain zinc content (GZnC) were estimated from both the control and treatment groups. Genotyping of all the lines under study was carried out with the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from Breeder’s 35K Axiom Array.Result and DiscussionThree subgroups were observed in the association panel based on both principal component analysis (PCA) and dendrogram analysis. A large whole-genome linkage disequilibrium (LD) block size of 3.49 Mb was observed. A genome-wide association study identified 16 unique stringent marker trait associations for GFeC, GZnC, and 1000-grain weight (TGW). In silico analysis demonstrated the presence of 28 potential candidate genes in the flanking region of 16 linked SNPs, such as synaptotagmin-like mitochondrial-lipid-binding domain, HAUS augmin-like complex, di-copper center-containing domain, protein kinase, chaperonin Cpn60, zinc finger, NUDIX hydrolase, etc. Expression levels of these genes in vegetative tissues and grain were also found. Utilization of identified markers in marker-assisted breeding may lead to the rapid development of biofortified wheat genotypes to combat malnutrition

A cross-sectional study on the nasopharyngeal microbiota of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection across three COVID-19 waves in India

BackgroundMultiple variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have plagued the world through successive waves of infection over the past three years. Independent research groups across geographies have shown that the microbiome composition in COVID-19 positive patients (CP) differs from that of COVID-19 negative individuals (CN). However, these observations were based on limited-sized sample-sets collected primarily from the early days of the pandemic. Here, we study the nasopharyngeal microbiota in COVID-19 patients, wherein the samples have been collected across the three COVID-19 waves witnessed in India, which were driven by different variants of concern.MethodsThe nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 589 subjects providing samples for diagnostics purposes at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB), Hyderabad, India and subjected to 16s rRNA gene amplicon - based sequencing.FindingsWe found variations in the microbiota of symptomatic vs. asymptomatic COVID-19 patients. CP showed a marked shift in the microbial diversity and composition compared to CN, in a wave-dependent manner. Rickettsiaceae was the only family that was noted to be consistently depleted in CP samples across the waves. The genera Staphylococcus, Anhydrobacter, Thermus, and Aerococcus were observed to be highly abundant in the symptomatic CP patients when compared to the asymptomatic group. In general, we observed a decrease in the burden of opportunistic pathogens in the host microbiota during the later waves of infection.InterpretationTo our knowledge, this is the first analytical cross-sectional study of this scale, which was designed to understand the relation between the evolving nature of the virus and the changes in the human nasopharyngeal microbiota. Although no clear signatures were observed, this study shall pave the way for a better understanding of the disease pathophysiology and help gather preliminary evidence on whether interventions to the host microbiota can help in better protection or faster recovery

Marker-assisted selection for transfer of QTLs to a promising line for drought tolerance in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Wheat crop is subjected to various biotic and abiotic stresses, which affect crop productivity and yield. Among various abiotic stresses, drought stress is a major problem considering the current global climate change scenario. A high-yielding wheat variety, HD3086, has been released for commercial cultivation under timely sown irrigated conditions for the North Western Plain Zone (NWPZ) and North Eastern Plain Zone NEPZ of India. Presently, HD3086 is one of the highest breeder seed indented wheat varieties and has a stable yield over the years. However, under moisture deficit conditions, its potential yield cannot be achieved. The present study was undertaken to transfer drought-tolerant QTLs in the background of the variety HD3086 using marker-assisted backcross breeding. QTLs governing Biomass (BIO), Canopy Temperature (CT), Thousand Kernel Weight (TKW), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Yield (YLD) were transferred to improve performance under moisture deficit conditions. In BC1F1, BC2F1, and BC2F2 generations, the foreground selection was carried out to identify the plants with positive QTLs conferring drought tolerance and linked to traits NDVI, CT, TKW, and yield. The positive homozygous lines for targeted QTLs were advanced from BC2F2 to BC2F4via the pedigree-based phenotypic selection method. Background analysis was carried out in BC2F5 and obtained 78-91% recovery of the recurrent parent genome in the improved lines. Furthermore, the advanced lines were evaluated for 2 years under drought stress to assess improvement in MABB-derived lines. Increased GWPS, TKW, and NDVI and reduced CT was observed in improved lines. Seven improved lines were identified with significantly higher yields in comparison to HD3086 under stress conditions

Federated learning enables big data for rare cancer boundary detection.

Although machine learning (ML) has shown promise across disciplines, out-of-sample generalizability is concerning. This is currently addressed by sharing multi-site data, but such centralization is challenging/infeasible to scale due to various limitations. Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative paradigm for accurate and generalizable ML, by only sharing numerical model updates. Here we present the largest FL study to-date, involving data from 71 sites across 6 continents, to generate an automatic tumor boundary detector for the rare disease of glioblastoma, reporting the largest such dataset in the literature (n = 6, 314). We demonstrate a 33% delineation improvement for the surgically targetable tumor, and 23% for the complete tumor extent, over a publicly trained model. We anticipate our study to: 1) enable more healthcare studies informed by large diverse data, ensuring meaningful results for rare diseases and underrepresented populations, 2) facilitate further analyses for glioblastoma by releasing our consensus model, and 3) demonstrate the FL effectiveness at such scale and task-complexity as a paradigm shift for multi-site collaborations, alleviating the need for data-sharing