The Image of Super Woman: a Portrayal of Woman in Bernard Shaw\u27s Pygmalion and the Millionairess

Socialism and Feminism stand first in the list of factors that influenced Shaw in creating strong women characters that must have looked arrogant and brass to the Victorian audience who had assigned a gentile and soft gender role to women. Shaw not only has created assertive women characters but he has created men with an open mind to accept such a woman as part of their society. This creation of understanding and accommodating men has complemented Shaw\u27s women characters and has lent the space for them to move freely and interact with utmost liberty. If Shaw had created men who had narrower views on gender equality and who are confirmative, Shaw would not have created a truly explosive gender dynamics that has become the hallmark of his plays. It is the influence of socialism and socialists which empowered Shaw to create and present such advanced characters and environment in his plays

From the Individual to the Historical: a Commentary on Amitav Ghosh as a Writer of Historical Fiction with Reference to the Glass Palace

Amitav Ghosh is widely known as a historical novelist in Indian Writing in English. He recreates the colonial past of the subcontinent from the colonized point of view. However, he is not one who merely recreates history. He is appreciated for writing history with life. He narrates the story of an individual who often turns out to be the representative of a community and its untold history. The Glass Palace is one such novel that recreates the history of the colonial past of India and Burma. The focus is mainly on the life of Rajkumar who is an Indian orphan struggling to survive in Burma after being unfortunately transported to the country by accident. This paper is an analysis of Ghosh's novel, The Glass Palace in order to show how the author recreates a lively history by narrating the life story of his protagonist

Mechanical harvesting in tea: A case study of Pasuparai estate

Tea cultivation is a highly labour intensive and more than 2.0 lakh people are directly or indirectly involved in south India. Normally, women workers are deployed to harvest the crop manually at an interval of 10-12 days. By the turn of the century, usage of hand held shears became inevitable to increase the labour productivity. An interval of 14-16 days is mandatory to obtain good quality and regular crop production when hand held shears are used. Employing more labour is not practically and economically viable and hence adoption of mechanical harvesting is the only option to achieve the sustainability of the crop. The case study deals with continuous mechanization over a period of 6 years and its impact on crop productivity besides the adoption of improved agronomic practices. Significant improvement in plucking average was recorded after the introduction of machines. Timely harvesting of the crop improved the quality parameters of made tea and reduced the cost of harvesting. Deliberate addition of a new tier of maintenance foliage was followed during January-March, every year after the machine harvesting. Furthermore, foliar application of micronutrients, plant growth regulators and potassium nitrate also given to minimize the ill effects of mechanization. Mechanization enabled to achieve sustained crop productivity, and the case study narrates the impact of mechanization and the importance of adopting good agronomic practices to sustain the productivity in south Indian tea plantations

Bio-efficacy of pumpkin phloem lectin on red spider mite, Oligonychus coffeae (Nietner) infesting tea

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Evaluation of Antiproliferative Activity of Red Sorghum Bran Anthocyanin on a Human Breast Cancer Cell Line (MCF-7)

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death in women worldwide both in the developed and developing countries. Thus effective treatment of breast cancer with potential antitumour drugs is important. In this paper, human breast cancer cell line MCF-7 has been employed to evaluate the antiproliferative activity of red sorghum bran anthocyanin. The present investigation showed that red sorghum bran anthocyanin induced growth inhibition of MCF-7 cells at significant level. The growth inhibition is dose dependent and irreversible in nature. When MCF-7 cells were treated with red sorghum bran anthocyanins due to activity of anthocyanin morphological changes were observed. The morphological changes were identified through the formation of apoptopic bodies. The fragmentation by these anthocyanins on DNA to oligonuleosomal-sized fragments, is a characteristic of apoptosis, and it was observed as concentration-dependent. Thus, this paper clearly demonstrates that human breast cancer cell MCF-7 is highly responsive by red sorghum bran anthocyanins result from the induction of apoptosis in MCF-7 cells

Detection and Quantification of Alternaria solani in Tomato by Real Time PCR

A conventional and real-time PCR assays using SYBR Green for the detection and quantification of A. solanihave been developed and validated. A primer set (ALP and ITS4) designed from the ITS region of A. linicola/ A. solani complex, yielded a 536 bp product when DNA from 38 isolates of A. solani were amplified. No product was amplified from A. alternata, A. brassicae, A. brassicicola, A.helianthi, A. porri, A. sesami, A.carthami, A.ricini, Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, C. capsici, C. falcatum, Cercospora canescens, C. capsici, Phytophthora infestans, Sclerotium rolfsii, Fusarium equiseti, F. oxysporum, Rhizoctonia solani, Phoma exigua, Curvularia spp and Drechslera. In addition, ALP/ITS4 primers were successfully utilized in real-time PCR assays of A. solani. The efficiency of conventional and real-time PCR assays was compared. The conventional PCR was able to detect the pathogen on symptomatic artificially infected tomato plants 5 days after pathogen inoculation. The detection limit was 100 conidia and 10 pg of DNA in the case of conventional PCR. Real-time PCR exhibited a detection limit 10 times lower (10 conidia, 10fg of DNA). The application of real time PCR assay for rapid detection of A.solani in infected tomato plant material is discussed

Studies in biogas technology. Part I. Performance of a conventional biogas plant

This paper gives an account of a conventional 5.66 m3/day (200 cubic ft/day) biogas plant which has been instrumented, operated and monitored for 2 ½ years. The observations regarding input to the plant, sludge and biogas outputs, and conditions inside the digester, have been described. Three salient features stand out. First, the observed average daily gas yield is much less than the rated capacity of the plant. Secondly, the plants show ease of operation and a very slow response to reductions and cessations of dung supply. Thirdly, the unexpectedly marked uniformity of density and temperature inside the digester indicates the almost complete absence of the stratification which is widely believed to take place; hence, biogas plants may be treated as isothermal, 'uniform' density, most probably imperfectly mixed, fed-batch reactors operating at the mean ambient temperature and the density of water

Antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of uropathogenic Escherichia coli and their prevalence among people in and around Dhanbad, Jharkhand

Background: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common infections, which causes high morbidity and mortality among human population. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and their antibiogram profile of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) in and around Dhanbad. Methods: A total of 641 urine samples were collected from the suspected patients of UTI. The samples were cultured on MacConkey agar for isolation and identification. Antibiotic susceptibility test was done by disc diffusion method. Both male and female patients of different age groups were included for this study. Results: 45.70% urinary isolates were identified as E. coli. 43.56% UPEC isolates were sensitive to nitrofurantoin and piperacillin/tazobactum. 22.77% isolates were susceptible to levofloxacin and amikacin followed by cefotaxime (21.78%). These isolates were mostly resistant to ampicillin and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, their susceptibility pattern was found to be 11.88% and 5.94% respectively. Conclusion: Prevalence of E. coli among urinary isolates was high in our study. Antibiogram profile of these isolates varies to different antibiotics in terms of their susceptibility pattern. Continuous surveillance of antibiogram of UPEC isolate is mandatory because it vary significantly in different geographical area. Thus empirical selection of antimicrobials should be based on the knowledge of local prevalence and individual sensitivity rather than on universal guideline

LONG-TERM EFFICACY OF PROTEIN-ENRICHED PEA FLOUR AGAINST TRIBOLIUM CASTANEUM (COLEOPTERA: TENEBRIONIDAE) IN WHEAT FLOUR

Long-term efficacy of the protein-enriched flour of pea (Pisum sativum L. var. Bonneville) in its toxicity, progeny reduction and organoleptic properties was evaluated by combining it with wheat flour and testing the admixture against the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst). The toxicity and progeny-reducing effects of the wheat flour treated with protein-enriched pea flour were stable for a period of 5 months when stored at 28°C with 75% r.h. Heat treatment destroyed the biological activity of the protein-enriched pea flour containing the active ingredient due to the denaturation of proteins. The organoleptic properties of stored wheat flour were not affected by the treatment with protein-enriched pea flour