Impact of Rural Development Scheme on Availability of Agricultural Labour — A Study of Dairy Farmers in Thanjavur District of Tamil Nadu

This study conducted in the Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, has indentified the problems being faced by dairy farmers due to scarcity of farm labour for agricultural and livestock production. The study is based on the data collected from 40 selected respondents involved in crop production and dairying in the study area during the year 2008-09 through primary survey. The study has revealed that the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has provided employment opportunities to rural workers and has checked the migration of farm labour from villages to cities and nearby industrial townships. All the eligible family member of landless dairy farmers had the job cards, but medium and large dairy farmers possessing agricultural land, prefer to work at their own farms. These farmers have reported that they were facing acute shortage of labourers during peak paddy planting and harvesting due to MGNREGS. The labour wages have increased significantly from Rs 60 to Rs110 per day since the implementation of MGNREG scheme. It has been observed that milch animals of some landless/ small dairy farmers are being maintained by the children or aged family members, as majority of adult family members prefer the MGNREGS jobs to earn wages. These adult members have complained about not getting 100-day wage employment as per provisions of scheme. The wage payments are also delayed after completion of work and they face problems in getting the job cards. The study has concluded that the minimum wages under MGNREGS should be increased cautiously keeping in view its impact on agricultural/ livestock activities.MGNREGS, Agricultural labour, Labour demand, Labour wage rates, Rural – urban migration, Agricultural and Food Policy, J22, J23, J38, J39,

Extreme Learning Machine for Microarray Cancer Classification

Cancer is a diseases in which a set of cells has not able controlled their growth, attack that interrupts upon and destroy the nearest tissues or spreading to other locations in the body. Cancer has become one of the perilous diseases in the present scenario. In this paper, the recently developed Extreme Learning Machine is used for classification problems in cancer diagnosis area. ELM is an available learning algorithm for single layer feed forward neural network. The advanced and developed methodology known for cancer multi classification using ELM microarray gene expression cancer diagnosis, this used for directing multi category classification problems in the cancer diagnosis area. ELM avoids many problems, improper learning rate and over fitting commonly faced by iterative learning methods and completes the training very fast. The performance of classification ELM on three benchmark microarray data for cancer diagnosis, namely Lymphoma data set, Leukemia data set, SRBCT data set. The results of experiments with RVM and ELM shows that for many categories of ELM still outperformer with RVM. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15018

Population Pharmacokinetic Analysis of Centrally Acting Drugs Metabolized by CYP2D6

A simple, sensitive, and reliable UPLC method has been developed and validated for simultaneous determination of risperidone, 9-hydroxyrisperidone and olanzapine in human plasma in vitro. • The developed method has been successfully adopted to evaluate the pharmacokinetic parameters of second generation antipsychotic drugs, risperidone and its major metabolite, 9-hydroxyrisperidone, in human plasma. • The distributions of normal, intermediate and poor metabolizers were found to be 70%, 25% and 5% respectively. The allelic frequencies of all SNP were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P ≥ 0.05). • The metabolic ratio was higher in intermediate metabolizers (2.04 ± 0.20) as compared to normal metabolizers (1.40 ± 0.22). • The pharmacokinetic parameters (Cmax, AUC0-t, T1/2 and CL) of active moiety were found to be significant in normal and intermediate metabolizers. • Poor metabolizers exhibited a higher prevalence of CNS (P = 0.001), CVS (P < 0.001), dizziness (P = 0.005), hypotension (P = 0.01) and GIT (P = 0.01) as compared to normal metabolizers. • Our data supports these above conclusions in our sample population, i.e., poor metabolizers require half the risperidone dose than that for normal metabolizers to reduce the incidence of adverse effects. CONCLUSION: In the current study, we have demonstrated significant association between the genotype status and pharmacokinetic parameter of normal subjects from our locale in South India with respect to the CYP2D6*10 genotype. Our data suggest that CYP2D6*10 polymorphism have significant association between risperidone and 9-hydroxyrisperidone pharmacokinetics. Active moiety is highly predictive of the clinical response to risperidone in healthy volunteers, which is dependent on the CYP2D6*10 genotype status. Additionally, we demonstrated that using NONMEM and multi-compartment mixed effect modelling of the population pharmacokinetics of risperidone and its metabolite, genotype has a major influence on determining the plasma concentrations of both risperidone and 9- hydroxyrisperidone. The pharmacogenetic variations in clearance of the risperidone and 9-hydroxyrisperidone may be due to differential expressions of CYP2D6 in intestinal epithelium in different genotypes of CYP2D6*10 allele. Further, this could be applied to clinical decision making such as determination of dosing intervals. We recommend that the dose of risperidone in slow metabolizers must be less that used in normal metabolizers, though it has to be confirmed in further studies in our population

Densities and phase equilibria of hydrogen, propane and vegetable oil mixtures. Experimental data and thermodynamic modeling

Heterogeneous catalytic gas-liquid reactions are intensified when carried out in the homogenous fluid phase by means of a supercritical co-solvent. For instance, supercritical propane is used to enhance yield in the hydrogenation of vegetable oils. Besides phase equilibrium knowledge, volumetric information is also needed to elucidate kinetic mechanisms and design continuous supercritical reactors. In this work, we report new experimental PvT data of the reactive mixture H2+sunflower oil+propane using the isochoric method. In addition, the phase equilibria and PvT data are modeled with the GCA and RK-PR equations of state, respectively. The isochoric method not only provides PvT information under the reaction conditions, but also the reactive system compressibility, key variable to attain enhanced transport properties in the supercritical reactors.Fil: Hegel, Pablo Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; ArgentinaFil: Cotabarren, Natalia Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; ArgentinaFil: Brignole, Esteban Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; ArgentinaFil: Pereda, Selva. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de Ingeniería Química; Argentina. University of KwaZulu-Natal; Sudáfric

Influence of Demoxytocin on the Behavioural Actions of Melatonin

Oxytocin is stored and released by the posterior pituitary gland. In this study, the influence of oxytocin agonist, demoxytocin pretreatment on the behavioural actions of melatonin was ascertained. Swiss albino mice (n=6) were used for this study as control and test groups. Demoxytocin was injected in a concentration of (20 I.U/kg, i.p) and melatonin was injected (200mg/kg, i.p) 30 minutes before experimentation. The effect of pretreatment with demoxytocin was evaluated after melatonin injection on motor-coordination and locomotor activity. The results of our study suggest that demoxytocin was not able to affect significantly the actions on motor co-ordination but attenuated the locomotor activity after melatonin treatment

Ionic Liquids Made with Dimethylcarbonate: Solvents as well as Boosted Basic Catalysts for the Michael Reaction

Abstract: This article describes 1) a methodology for the green synthesis of a class of methylammonium and methylphosphonium ionic liquids (ILs), 2) how to tune their acid–base properties by anion exchange, 3) complete neat-phase NMR spectroscopic characterisation of these materials and 4) their application as active organocatalysts for base-promoted carbon– carbon bond-forming reactions. Methylation of tertiary amines or phosphines with dimethyl carbonate leads to the formation of the halogen-free methyl-onium methyl carbonate salts, and these can be easily anion-exchanged to yield a range of derivatives with different melting points, solubility, acid–base properties, stability and viscosity. Treatment with water, in particular, yields bicarbonate-exchanged liquid onium salts. These proved strongly basic, enough to efficiently catalyse the Michael reaction; experiments suggest that in these systems the bicarbonate basicity is boosted by two orders of magnitude with respect to inorganic bicarbonate salts. These basic ionic liquids used in catalytic amounts are better even than traditional strong organic bases. The present work also introduces neat NMR spectroscopy of the ionic liquids as a probe for solute– solvent interactions as well as a tool for characterisation. Our studies show that high catalytic efficacy of functional ionic liquids can be achieved by integrating their green synthesis, along with a fine-tuning of their structure. Demonstrating that ionic liquid solvents can be made by a truly green procedure, and that their properties and reactivity can be tailored to the point of bridging the gap between their use as solvents and as catalysts. Keywords: dimethyl carbonate · green chemistry · ionic liquids · Michael addition · NMR spectroscop

Primary radiotherapy in progressive optic nerve sheath meningiomas: a long-term follow-up study

Background/aims: To report the outcome of primary radiotherapy in patients with progressive optic nerve sheath meningioma (ONSM). Methods: The clinical records of all patients were reviewed in a retrospective, observational, multicentre study. Results: Thirty-four consecutive patients were included. Twenty-six women and eight men received conventional or stereotactic fractionated radiotherapy, and were followed for a median 58 (range 51–156) months. Fourteen eyes (41%) showed improved visual acuity of at least two lines on the Snellen chart. In 17 (50%) eyes, the vision stabilised, while deterioration was noted in three eyes (9%). The visual outcome was not associated with age at the time of radiotherapy (p=0.83), sex (p=0.43), visual acuity at the time of presentation (p=0.22) or type of radiotherapy (p=0.35). Optic disc swelling was associated with improved visual acuity (p<0.01) and 4/11 patients with optic atrophy also showed improvement. Long-term complications were dry eyes in five patients, cataracts in three, and mild radiation retinopathy in four. Conclusion: Primary radiotherapy for patients with ONSM is associated with long-term improvement of visual acuity and few adverse effects.Peerooz Saeed, Leo Blank, Dinesh Selva, John G. Wolbers, Peter J.C.M. Nowak, Ronald B. Geskus, Ezekiel Weis, Maarten P. Mourits, Jack Rootma