Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process in Engineering Education

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) provides a mathematical technique to formulate a problem as a hierarchical structure and believes in an amalgamation of quantitative and qualitative criteria. It is this uniqueness of AHP that makes it one of the important inclusive systems, considered to make decisions with multiple criteria. This paper focuses on conducting Analytic Hierarchy Process, based on the data collected from several Engineering colleges in the state of Telangana. This paper aims to understand the reasons for removing the staple Engineering streams such as Mechanical engineering, Production engineering, Electronics and Instrumentation engineering and introducing new and contemporary streams such as Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and Internet of Things. The World Economic Forum’s latest “Future of Jobs” report highlights the impact of ‘double disruption’ of Automation, followed by COVID-19. The report indicates that while 85 million jobs will be displaced, 47% of core skills will change by 2025. The topic thus is of immense value since it looks closely at the paradigm shift mentioned above and its further consequences. The result of the present study would be helpful to indicate the exact rankings of the programming and non-programming branches in the engineering field and thus would be instrumental in gauging learners’ inclination towards studying specific branches. This paper aims to analyze the growing demand of programming branches over traditional, non-programming branches.

Neglected isolated plantar dislocation of middle cuneiform : a case report

BACKGROUND: Four cases of plantar dislocation of middle cuneiform have been reported in the english literature. All of them were fresh cases and treated with open reduction. We are reporting a case of neglected plantar dislocation of middle cuneiform which was treated with excision. CASE PRESENTATION: A farmer presented with a painful plantar dislocation of middle cuneiform bone after 9 months of injury. The bone was deformed and was excised by a plantar incision. It resulted in painless foot with no disability. CONCLUSION: The neglected plantar dislocated middle cuneiform bone becomes deformed due to repeated weight bearing. The gap gets filled with Fibrous tissue. Excision of the cuneiform gives good results

Inheritance of juvenile traits and immune competence in Gramapriya male line chicken

High correlation estimates between body weight and shank length revealed strong association among traits. The significant positive association between 4 and 6 weeks shank length and body weight in the Gramapriya male line chicken suggest the breeder to pre-pone the selection to 4 weeks age which economizes the production cost. Besides, the immune competence of the birds was also found to be better, making them suitable male line for production of backyard poultry varieties

Prevalence of GB virus type C in urban Americans infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1

GBV-C virus infection has been linked to improved clinical outcome in HIV-1 co-infected individuals. The epidemiology of GBV-C has, thus far, been limited to the gay male, HIV(+ )population. Here we describe the prevalence of antibodies against GBV-C envelope glycoprotein E2 and GBV-C viremia in an HIV(+ )inner city population. This study group is predominantly African-American; 41% of the participants are women. The major risk factor for HIV infection is intravenous drug use. Overall, 56% of the study population had evidence of current or past infection with GBV-C. GBV-C exposure was not associated with hepatitis C virus infection. The group of participants, who had GBV-C viremia and anti-E2 antibodies, had high percentage of patients with an undetectable HIV-1 viral load. These data provide increased insight into the prevalence of GBV-C co-infection in the HIV epidemic in this understudied population

Differential gene expression analysis in germinating and dormant teliospores of Tilletia indica using RNA seq approach

Karnal bunt of wheat is an important quarantine disease that interrupts India’s wheat trade in the international market. The whole transcriptome of germinating and dormant teliospores of Tilletia indica was performed using the RNA Seq approach to identify germination-related genes. Approximately 63 million reads were generated using the RNA sequencing by the Illumina NextSeq500 platform. The high-quality reads were deposited in NCBI SRA database (accession: PRJNA522347). The unigenes from the pooled teliospores were 16,575 having unigenes length of 28,998,753 bases. The high-quality reads of germinating teliospores mapped on to 21,505 predicted CDSs. 9,680 CDSs were common between dormant and germinating teliospores of T. indica. 11,825 CDSs were found to be in germinating teliospores while only 91 were unique in dormant spores of pathogen. The pathway analysis showed the highest number of pathways was found in germinating spores than dormant spores. The highest numbers of CDSs were found to be associated with translation (431 in number), transport and catabolism (340), signal transduction (326), and carbohydrate metabolism (283). The differential expression analysis (DESeq) of germinating and dormant teliospores showed that 686 CDS were up-regulated and 114 CDS were down-regulated in the germinating teliospores. Significant germination-related genes in the spores were validated using qPCR analysis. Ten genes viz. Ti3931, Ti6828, Ti7098, Ti7462, Ti7522, Ti 9289, Ti 8670, Ti 7959, Ti 7809,and Ti10095 were highly up-regulated in germinated teliospores which may have role in germination of spores.Further, these differentially expressed genes provide insights into the molecular events. This first study of transcriptome will be helpful to devise better management strategies to manage Karnal bunt disease

Performance of marker assisted backcross breeding (MABC) elite chickpea lines under drought conditions in Kenya

Drought is the most important constraint affecting production of chickpea and other crops as well. Quantitative traits like drought tolerance are multigenic and their inheritance is difficult to predict hence the need to explore more precise breeding techniques like maker assisted selection. The aim of this study was to introgress the identified root trait QTLs into Kenyan adapted cultivar to enhance drought tolerance through marker assisted backcrossing. Four varieties Chania Desi 1 (ICCV 97105), ICCV10, ICCV 92318, and Saina K1 (ICCV 95423) were selected as a recurrent parents for improvement among ten agronomically superior elite cultivars after exhibiting high polymorphism with SSR markers. Five molecular markers (CaM1903, CaM1502, TAA 170, NCPGR21 and GA11) were validated for use in MABC deployed in this study. Crosses were made between the four parents and ICC 4958 followed by marker screening of the F1 seedling progenies for the QTL of interest. Identified true heterozygotes were used as donors and backcrossed to the recurrent parent to obtain BC1F1 seeds. The process was repeated to obtain BC2F1 and finally BC3F1 with molecular marker identification of seedlings carrying the QTL region at each step. Results of evaluation in one trial site in Kenya semi-arid area (Koibatek ATC) of MABC lines for the four parents ICCV10 (24 lines), ICCV 92318 (8lines), ICCV 97105 (12 lines) and Saina K1-ICCV 95423 (10 lines) showed that the best progenies with higher levels of drought resistance and yield were ICCMABCD-21, 9, 20, 23, 15, 22, 5, 14, 16, 19 and 6 with yields > 2.5 tons/ha. The results indicated that it is possible to transfer QTL that confers drought tolerance using MABC. The best progenies are undergoing further evaluation to validate the contribution of the introgressed QTL in improving drought tolerance and yield

SRI-A Method for Sustainable Intensification of Rice Production with Enhanced Water Productivity

Climate change induced higher temperatures will increase crops’ water requirements. Every 10°C increase in mean temperature, results in 7% decline in the yield of rice crop. Hence, there is a need to develop water saving technologies in rice which consumes more than 50% of the total irrigation water in agriculture. System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is one such water saving rice production technology. Experiments were conducted at different locations in India including research farm of Directorate of Rice Research (DRR), Hyderabad, during 2005-10 to assess the potential of SRI in comparison to normal transplanting/Standard Planting (NTP/SP) under flooded condition. SRI recorded higher grain yield (6 to 65% over NTP) at majority of locations. Long term studies clearly indicated that grain yield was significantly higher (12-23% and 4-35% over NTP in Kharif and Rabi seasons, respectively) in SRI (with organic+inorganic fertilizers) while the SRI (with100% organic manures), recorded higher yield (4-34%) over NTP only in the Rabi seasons. Even though, SRI resulted in higher productivity, the available nutrient status in soil was marginally higher (10, 42 and 13% over NTP for N, P and K, respectively) at the end of four seasons. There was a reduction in the incidence of pests in SRI and the relative abundance of plant parasitic nematodes was low in SRI as compared to the NTP. About 31% and 37% saving in irrigation water was observed during Kharif and Rabi seasons, respectively in both methods of SRI cultivation over NTP. SRI performed well and consistently reduced requirement of inputs such as seed and water in different soil conditions. SRI method, using less water for rice production can help in overcoming water shortage in future and it can also make water available for growing other crops thus promoting crop diversificatio

Performance Bounds for Flexible Systems Requiring Setups

Many organizations use product variety as one possible strategy for increasing their competitiveness. They have installed flexible manufacturing systems because these systems offer a powerful means for accommodating production and assembly of a variety of products. However, increased product variety comes at a cost. For instance, if the resource requires to be set up each time it switches to operate on a new product, the resulting delays and costs could negate the intended benefits of increased product variety. Analyzing these flexible resources for optimal design and operation is therefore very important. To address such issues, we model a flexible resource, serving multiple products, using a queueing model--more precisely, a polling model. In this model, a single server attends to multiple service centers (queues) at which requests arrive and queue up for service, performing a setup at a polled queue only if that queue is nonempty. This is the state dependent (SD) polling model. Exact analysis of the SD polling model is inherently very complex. This paper presents a very efficient procedure to compute a hierarchy of successively improving bounds on the values of performance measures obtained from the SD polling model with the exact solution as its limit. This procedure can be applied to quickly estimate performance measures for large SD polling models previously deemed analytically intractable.polling models, descendant sets technique, state-dependent service, cyclic service

Not Available

Not AvailableNot AvailableNot Availabl

Site-Directed Mutagenesis of Catalytic Residues in <i>N</i>⁵‑Carboxyaminoimidazole Ribonucleotide Synthetase

<i>N</i>⁵-CAIR synthetase, an essential enzyme in microorganisms, converts 5-aminoimidazole ribonucleotide (AIR) and bicarbonate to <i>N</i>⁵-CAIR with the aid of ATP. Previous X-ray crystallographic analyses of <i>Aspergillus clavatus N</i>⁵-CAIR synthetase postulated that R271, H273, and K353 were important for bicarbonate binding and for catalysis. As reported here, site-directed mutagenesis of these residues revealed that R271 and H273 are, indeed, critical for bicarbonate binding and catalysis whereas all K353 mutations, even ones conservative in nature, are inactive. Studies on the R271K mutant protein revealed cooperative substrate inhibition for ATP with a <i>K</i>_i of 1.2 mM. Kinetic investigation of the H273A mutant protein indicated that it was cooperative with respect to AIR; however, this effect was not seen in either the wild-type or any of the other mutant proteins. Cooperative ATP-dependent inhibition of wild-type <i>N</i>⁵-CAIR synthetase was also detected with ATP displaying a <i>K</i>_i of 3.3 mM. Taken together, these results indicate that <i>N</i>⁵-CAIR synthetase operates maximally within a narrow concentration of ATP