Ethnomedicinal Survey of Medicinal Plants Used for the Treatment of Diabetes and Jaundice Among the Villagers of Sivagangai District, Tamilnadu

The present study revealed that totally 12 and 10 modes of treatment were followed by the rural people of Sivagangai district to cure diabetes and jaundice respectively. The rural people of the study area were used 17 plants for diabetes and 12 for jaundice. Among them, 6 plants viz., Azadirachta indica, Carum nothum, Cynodon dactylon, Lablab purpureus, Momordica charantia and Phyllanthus amarus were used to cure both diabetes and jaundice. The plants were used either separately or in combination with other plants. These ethnomedicinal data may provide a base to start the search the new compounds related to phytochemistry, pharmacology and pharmacognosy. Attention should also be made on proper exploitation and utilization of these medicinal plants

A Modulation Technique for Sensorless Control of Switched Reluctance Motor

The switched reluctance motor (SRM) uniquely bears several merits with respect to other motor configurations. Especially, the construction of the rotor is simple in the sense that it neither contains copper not contains permanent magnets. Because of this construction, likelihood of rotor’s failure is less than the other motor configurations. This makes this motor more suitable for harsh environments. On the flip side, this motor cannot directly operate with AC or DC power source and needs electronic commutation. For commutation, the information on instantaneous orientation of the rotor is essential. Since inclusion of appropriate sensor adds to the cost and complexity of the system, sensor-less commutation of SRM gained interest among the researchers and has been studied extensively in literature. The techniques for sensorless control of SRM can be broadly classified into Active phase and Idle phase techniques. Idle phase techniques are generally believed to be not suitable for high speed operation beause of tail current in a phase, i.e., because of inductive nature of the phase, it takes time for flow of current to stop. This paper proposes a novel idle phase technique that is conducive for high speed operation of switched reluctance motor

ANTI-TUMOUR ACTIVITY OF BROMOPYRROLE ALKALOIDS AGAINST HUMAN BREAST TUMOUR (MCF-7) THROUGH APOPTOSIS INDUCTION

Objective: The present study was conducted to screen the cytotoxicity and initiation of apoptosis in MCF-7 human breast tumour cells using the Indian sponge Acanthostylotela cornuta of the Gulf of Mannar. Methods: The crude methanol extract of A. cornuta was fractionated using a reversed phase silica gel column chromatography. The purity of the active fraction of bromopyrrole alkaloids was confirmed with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GCMS). The bromopyrrole alkaloids induce apoptotic changes in MCF-7 cells were studied with electrophoresis, caspase assay, and different staining analysis. The MCF-7 cells were analyzed by Flow cytometry to determine their DNA content. Results: Bromopyrrole alkaloids of A. cornuta showed cytotoxicity against MCF-7 human breast tumour cells with the IC50 value of 8.0μg/ml. The bromopyrrole compounds induced cells exhibited scatted red fluorescence, showing the presence of several residual bodies and condensation of chromatin. Caspase-3, pro-caspase-9, caspase-9 and Poly-ADP-Ribose-Polymerase (PARP) activity were occurred in bromopyrrole alkaloids treated tumour cell. The cell cycle arrest is conceivable that the compound prevented the progression of cell cycle through the G phase resulting from inhibition of survival, leading them to undergo apoptosis. Conclusion: Bromopyrrole alkaloids of A. cornuta possess antitumor activity which was arrested the G phase in cell cycle that clearly indicated its nature as that of antitumour drugs

Assessment of germination percentage and growth parameters of different varieties of Napiergrass (Pennisetum purpureum) on sodic soil of Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu, India

Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum) is a fast-growing forage crop cultivated throughout the year in tropical and subtropical regions. A phytoremediation study was undertaken at the Agricultural College and Research Institute (AC & RI), Killikulam, Thoothukudi District, Tamil Nadu, India, during 2020-2021 to evaluate the performance of cumbu napier varieties on sodic and neutral soil. Four cumbu napier varieties, CO (BN) 6, CO (BN) 5, KKM 1 and CO (CN) 4, were tested in both soils. Pots were filled with 10 kg of soil. Three cuttings of cumbu napiers per pot were planted as per the treatment schedule. Germination and growth parameters were observed up to three harvests. The results of the present study revealed that the germination percentage of variety CO (BN) 6 was highest (100%) among the varieties under sodic conditions. Growth parameters such as plant height, leaf length, number of leaves, and number of clumps of this variety showed better efficiency under high sodic levels than other varieties. This variety CO (BN) 6 could tolerate and be established well under alkaline soil and produced amaximum plant height (134 cm) and a higher number of clumps (10) during the third harvest. The growth pattern of cumbu napier varieties was in the order of CO (BN) 6> CO (BN) 5 > KKM 1 > CO (CN) 4. Furthermore, the experimental results revealed that cumbu napier could be recommended as a suitable crop for sodic soil

A novelty approach to solve an economic dispatch problem for a renewable integrated micro-grid using optimization techniques

Introduction. The renewable integrated microgrid has considered several distributed energy sources namely photovoltaic power plant, thermal generators, wind power plant and combined heat and power source. Economic dispatch problem is a complex operation due to large dimension of power systems. The objective function becomes non linear due to the inclusion of many constraints. Hourly demand of a commercial area is taken into consideration for performing economic dispatch and five combinations are considered to find the best optimal solution to meet the demand. The novelty of the proposed work consists of a Sparrow Search Algorithm is used to solve economic load dispatch problem to get the better convergence and accuracy in power generation with minimum cost. Purpose. Economic dispatch is performed for the renewable integrated microgrid, in order to determine the optimal output of all the distributed energy sources present in the microgrid to meet the load demand at minimum possible cost. Methods. Sparrow Search Algorithm is compared with other algorithms like Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Algorithm and has been proved to be more efficient than Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Algorithm and Conventional Lagrange method. Results. The five combinations are generation without solar power supply system and Combined Heat and Power source, generation without solar and wind power supply systems, generation including all the distributed energy sources, generation without wind power supply system and Combined Heat and Power source, generation without thermal generators. Practical value. The proposed optimization algorithm has been very supportive to determine the optimal power generation with minimal fuel to meet the large demand in commercial area

Diagnosis of leukemia disease based on enhanced virtual neural network

White Blood Cell (WBC) cancer or leukemia is one of the serious cancers that threaten the existence of human beings. In spite of its prevalence and serious consequences, it is mostly diagnosed through manual practices. The risks of inappropriate, sub-standard and wrong or biased diagnosis are high in manual methods. So, there is a need exists for automatic diagnosis and classification method that can replace the manual process. Leukemia is mainly classified into acute and chronic types. The current research work proposed a computer-based application to classify the disease. In the feature extraction stage, we use excellent physical properties to improve the diagnostic system’s accuracy, based on Enhanced Color Co-Occurrence Matrix. The study is aimed at identification and classification of chronic lymphocytic leukemia using microscopic images of WBCs based on Enhanced Virtual Neural Network (EVNN) classification. The proposed method achieved optimum accuracy in detection and classification of leukemia from WBC images. Thus, the study results establish the superiority of the proposed method in automated diagnosis of leukemia. The values achieved by the proposed method in terms of sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and error rate were 97.8%, 89.9%, 76.6%, and 2.2%, respectively. Furthermore, the system could predict the disease in prior through images, and the probabilities of disease detection are also highly optimistic