Importance of Municipal Solid Waste Management

Solid waste management is one among the fundamental and essential services provided by municipal authorities in the developed as well as developing countries to keep urban areas clean. In certain regions of our country, the free disposal facilities have reached their own capacity and even local governments are confronted with difficult decisions. Solid waste management is an integral element of modern society. There are many ways in which solid waste can be treated, and thanks to modernized practices and technological advancement, these methods are very safe and practical

Semirings embedded in a completely regular semiring

summary:Recently, we have shown that a semiring $S$ is completely regular if and only if $S$ is a union of skew-rings. In this paper we show that a semiring $S$ satisfying $a^2=na$ can be embedded in a completely regular semiring if and only if $S$ is additive separative

Ultrahigh Strength Steel: Development of Mechanical Properties Through Controlled Cooling

Structural steels with very high strength are referred as ultrahigh strength steels. The designation of ultrahigh strength is arbitrary, because there is no universally accepted strength level for this class of steels. As structural steels with greater and greater strength were developed, the strength range has been gradually modified. Commercial structural steel possessing a minimum yield strength of 1380 MPa (200 ksi) are accepted as ultrahigh strength steel (Philip, 1990). It has many applications such as in pipelines, cars, pressure vessels, ships, offshore platforms, aircraft undercarriages, defence sector and rocket motor casings. The class ultrahigh strength structural steels are quite broad and include several distinctly different families of steels such as (a) medium carbon low alloy steels, (b) medium alloy air hardening steel, (c) high alloy hardenable steels, and (d) 18Ni maraging steel. In the recent past, developmental efforts have been aimed mostly at increasing the ductility and toughness by improving the melting and the processing techniques. Steels with fewer and smaller non-metallic inclusions are produced by use of selected advanced processing techniques such as vacuum deoxidation, vacuum degassing, vacuum induction melting, vacuum arc remelting (VAR) and electroslag remelting (ESR). These techniques yield (a) less variation of properties from heat to heat, (b) greater ductility and toughness especially in the transverse direction, and (c) greater reliability in service (Philip, 1978). The strength can be further increased by thermomechanical treatment with controlled cooling

Effect of Sublethal Concentration of Malathion Insecticide on Innate Immune System, Immune Function and Hemocytes of Adult Drosophila melanogaster

Invertebrate organisms mostly have innate immune system. Hemocytes are the immune cells of the innate immunity in invertebrates. Our study was designed to observe the effect of malathion insecticide on the innate immune system, immune function and hemocytes of Drosophila melanogaster. A hemocytometer was used for total count of hemocytes which showed a reduced percentage of live cells (from 91.63% to 44.57%) due to the treatment. For differential count, the hemolymph was spread as a smear on a clean grease free slide. It was observed that the plasmatocyte count considerably decreased under the effect of malathion (from 78% to 44.66%). Lamellocytes also showed a decline in their number (from 18.33% to 12.61%). But, a trivial increase (from 3.67% to 3.98%) in crystal cell count was recorded. Our result suggests that malathion has mostly negative effect on hemocytes. This study could help in understanding of insect defense mechanism against such hazardous chemicals. Additionally, the function of human macrophages is analogous to the function of plasmatocytes. Hence, this work could possibly aid us in studying the response of human immune cells against organophosphates like malathion

Protection from experimental colitis by theaflavin-3,3'-digallate correlates with inhibition of IKK and NF-κB activation

Background and purpose: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is associated with activation of nuclear factor κ B (NF-κB) involved in regulating the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and proinflammatory cytokine genes. As theaflavin-3,3'-digallate (TFDG), the most potent anti-oxidant polyphenol of black tea, down-regulates NF-κB activation, we investigated if TFDG is beneficial in colonic inflammation by suppressing iNOS and proinflammatory cytokines. Experimental approach: The in vivo efficacy of TFDG was assessed in mice with trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis. Both mRNA and protein levels of proinflammatory cytokines and iNOS were analyzed in colon tissue treated with or without TFDG. NF-κB activation was determined by electrophoretic mobility shift assay and levels of NF-κB inhibitory protein (IκBα) were analyzed by Western blotting. Key results: Oral administration of TFDG (5 mg kg-1 daily i.g.) significantly improved TNBS-induced colitis associated with decreased mRNA and protein levels of TNF-α, IL-12, IFN- and iNOS in colonic mucosa. DNA binding and Western blotting revealed increase in NF-κB activation and IκB depletion in TNBS-treated mice from Day 2 through Day 8 with a maximum at Day 4, which resulted from increased phosphorylation of IκB and higher activity of IκB kinase (IKK). Pretreatment with TFDG markedly inhibited TNBS-induced increases in nuclear localization of NF-κBα, cytosolic IKK activity and preserved IκBα in colon tissue. Conclusions and Implications: TFDG exerts protective effects in experimental colitis and inhibits production of inflammatory mediators through a mechanism that, at least in part, involves inhibition of NF-κB activation