Isolation of cDNA fragment of Glycerol-3-Phosphate Acyltransferase Gene from Seabuckthorn

The contribution of membrane lipids, particularly the level of unsaturation of fatty acids, to chilling sensitivity of plants, has been intensively discussed. The biosynthesis of phosphatidyl glycerol represents a central pathway in lipid metabolism in all organisms. Glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT) catalyses the first step of glycerolipid biosynthesis and, therefore, it is a potential site for triacylglycerol synthesis regulation. The cDNA for GPAT gene has been cloned and extensively characterised from several plants excluding Seabuckthorn Hippophae rhamnoides. The isolation of partial cDNA (689 bp, Accession No. EU081817) for GPAT gene from Seabuckthorn plant has been reported for the first time that shows 97 per cent homology with the Lycopersicon esculentum at nucleotide level and 93 per cent homology with the Capsicum annuum at protein level. Full-length cloning and overexpression of GPAT from Seabuckthorn will modify the ability of vegetable crops to tolerate chilling temperature by protecting the photo synthetic machinery from photoinhibition under cold conditions.Defence Science Journal, 2009, 59(2), pp.147-151, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.59.150

In Vitro Antioxidant and Anti-rhizopus Activity of Methanolic Seed Extract of Camelina Sativa L.

The antifungal efficacy of seed extracts (propanol, ethanol, methanol and sterile deionised water) of Camelina sativa cv. Calena (EC643910) against Rhizopus stolonifer was investigated by agar disc diffusion method. Among all extracts, methanolic seed extract (Disc 3) showed significant activity against R. stolonifer. However, no activity was observed against rest of the extracts (Disc 1, 2 and 4). The inhibition zones were ~35 mm for methanolic extract and ~41 mm for standard drug, respectively. The total phenol content was observed 13.5 μmol, 23.3 μmol, 42.9 μmol and 3.4 μmol gDW-1 in propanolic, ethanolic, methanolic and sterile deionised water extracts of Camelina, respectively. Likewise, the ascorbate peroxidase (APX) activity was observed highest in methanolic extract that was ~10.2, ~2.4 and ~5.7-folds higher as compared to propanolic, ethanolic and sterile deionised water extracts, respectively. Similarly, guaiacol peroxidase (GPX) activity was also observed highest in methanolic extract as compared to other extracts, which is ~7.3, ~1.9 and ~6.6-folds higher as compared to propanolic, ethanolic and sterile deionised water extracts, respectively. The findings of the study clearly speculate that the possibility of using methanolic seed extract of Camelina as a potential control measure against R. stolonifer, which may be used for the development of future herbal drug formulations

A Sitar Concert

Kemp Recital Hall Wednesday Evening October 13, 1993 8:00p.m

Antimicrobial activity in leaf, seed extract and seed oil of Jatropha curcas L. plant

The study on antibacterial and antifungal efficacy of leaf and seed extract and seed oil of Jatropha curcas reveals that the inhibition zones ranged from 7 to 22 mm for antibacterial and from 10 to 20 mm for antifungal activity. Among all extracts tested, seed extract showed significant activity while leaf extract showed intermediate activity against gram-positive bacteria. In case of gram-negative bacteria, seed extract and seed oil has shown some moderate activity whereas, no activity was observed in leaf extract. In case of fungal cultures, among all test extracts only seed extract showed significant activity against Mucor and Tilletia fungus, while in case of Rhizopus no activity was observed against all test extracts. These results indicated the possibility of using Jatropha extract and seed oil for medicinal uses and natural food preservation

TRANSLATING BETWEEN REALTIME BI-DIRECTIONAL CONVERSATIONS AND PUSH-TO-TALK SYSTEMS

The techniques presented herein provide an artificial intelligence (AI)-based conversational agent to allow communications between (i.e., “translate for”) a push-to-talk (PTT) client and endpoints that support real-time, bi-directional conversation, including voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) endpoints (also referred to as IP telephony endpoints) and endpoints running multimedia applications that allow bi-directional, real-time conversation. These techniques are applicable when PTT deployments allow direct calls between endpoints that support real-time, bi-directional conversation (e.g., VoIP endpoints) and PTT endpoints. During these calls, the techniques may allow a caller from the real-time, bi-directional conversation endpoint to have a real-time or nearly real-time conversational experience while the PTT user has a start-stop PTT experience

Profit Driven Decision Assist System to Select Efficient IaaS Providers

IaaS providers provide infrastructure to the end users with various pricing schemes and models. They provide different types of virtual machines (small, medium, large, etc.). Since each IaaS provider uses their own pricing schemes and models, price varies from one provider to the other for the same requirements. To select a best IaaS provider, the end users need to consider various parameters such as SLA, pricing models/schemes, VM heterogeneity, etc. Since many parameters are involved, selecting an efficient IaaS provider is a challenging job for an end user. To address this issue, in this work we have designed, implemented and tested a decision-assist system which assists the end users to select efficient IaaS provider(s). Our decision-assist system consists of an analytical model to calculate the cost and decision strategies to assist the end user in selecting the efficient IaaS provider(s). The decision assist system considers various relevant parameters such as VM configuration, price, availability, etc. to decide the efficient IaaS provider(s). Rigorous experiments have been conducted by emulating various IaaS providers, and we have observed that our DAS successfully suggests the efficient IaaS provider/ providers by considering the input parameters given by the user

Densification and Characterization of Magnesium Aluminate Spinel from Commercial Grade Reactants: Effect of Milling and Additives

Among different refractory materials, magnesium aluminate spinel is of great importance from the industrial point of view, mainly due to its excellent corrosion and thermal shock resistances. Magnesium aluminate spinel (MgAl2O4), the only compound forms in the MgO-Al2O3 system, has the most desirable characteristics for refractory application, along with the environmental friendliness. Other than refractory there are studies for its applications as humidity sensors, transparent ceramic, anode material in aluminum cell, etc. In combination with alumina, spinel is of great importance as the refractory lining material for the steel ladles essential for iron & steel industries due to excellent corrosion and thermal shock resistances. Again in association with magnesia it is important for the burning zones and transition zones of cement rotary kilns. The major reason for this application is its better resistance to thermal shock and alkali materials, which indicates two or three times longer service lives than other basic bricks such as conventional MgO-chrome. Magnesium aluminate spinel has always an environment friendly advantage, so it has received favor from researchers, scientists and industrialists all over world. Despite all these properties and application, the magnesium aluminate spinel is not commercially successful at per due to its high cost of production. The formation of magnesium aluminate spinel from its reactant is associated with a volume expansion which hinders to obtain dense magnesium aluminate spinel in a single step firing process. The commercial synthesis process involves two stage firing process which increases the cost of production The present work focused on synthesis of magnesium aluminate spinel from commercial grade oxide using a single step sintering process. The effect of planetary milling, effect of additives like zinc Oxide, zirconium dioxide was studied. The effect of insitu generated magnesia and alumina from nitrate precursor was also studied. The sintering study was done in the temperature range 1200-16000C.The phase and microstructure was studied with varying milling time and additive percentage using X-ray diffraction technique and field emission scattered electron microscopy respectively. The flexural strength and thermal shock behavior was also studied for each batch. Dense magnesium aluminate spinel was successfully produced. The planetary milling and additive were found to enhance spinellisation process at lower temperature. The density and strength was also found to improve with milling and additive incorporation

Endourological management of pediatric urolithiasis in Northeast India

Background: Urolithiasis affects between 5-10% of the population during their lifetime, 2-3% of them are children. In the last decade, technological advancement and miniaturization of instruments has changed the management of pediatric urinary-stone disease. Extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) has been preferred method of management of pediatric stone disease, whereas the endoscopic approach is limited to a few centers.Methods: This retrospective study was conducted among the pediatric patients (6-15 years) presenting with urolithiasis during 1st January 2017 to 31st December 2019 to the department of urology, Dispur hospital Pvt. Ltd., Assam. Only confirmed cases of pediatric urolithiasis were included in this study. Medical records were reviewed for clinical and laboratory data including gender, age at diagnosis, clinical presentation, presence of urinary tract anomalies, and urinary tract infections (UTI) in the form of urinalysis, urine culture and complete blood count. Metabolic evaluation was advised in all children. Finally, a total of 100 pediatric urolithiasis cases were included in this study.Results: ESWL was performed in 28 children. The stone-free rate was 85.7%. The total number of shocks per treatment ranged from 1000 to 2000. A total of 10 percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNLs) were done with complete stone clearance in 83.33%. In the URS group, urethroscopy was successful in 20 cases (75%). Cystolithotripsy was done in 08 cases with 100% clearance rate. 30 patients were managed conservatively.Conclusions: ESWL is highly effective in children for small stone burden. Early metabolic evaluation and treatment may prevent further renal damage and recurrence

Vaccination in preterm infants: An Indian prospective

Although available literature on vaccination in preterm infants supports timely vaccination without any correction for birth weight or gestation, a delay is still noted. Unfortunately, this group often suffers from various vaccine-preventable diseases with increased severity, especially in lower-middle-income countries. All this could be attributed to unavailability of robust evidence and clear guidelines related to vaccination. A current review article summarizes the available evidence on the use of these vaccines, their immune response, common myths and facts about vaccination in preterm infants in the Indian context. Authors conclude that the vaccines in preterm infants are equally safe, effective, and immunogenic as compared to full-term infants; hence, they should be vaccinated following the same schedule as of their counterparts who born full term. Only exception to this is hepatitis B vaccine, where additional doses should be administered to infants with weight <2000 g, apart from the birth dose

An Improved Algorithm for Neural Network Classification of Imbalanced Training Sets

In this paper, we analyze the reason for the slow rate of convergence of net output error when using the backpropagation algorithm to train neural networks for a two-class problems in which the numbers of exemplars for the two classes differ greatly. This occurs because the negative gradient vector computed by backpropagation for an imbalanced training set does not point initially in a downhill direction for the class with the smaller number of exemplars. Consequently, in the initial iteration, the net error for the exemplars in this class increases significantly. The subsequent rate of convergence of the net error is very low. We suggest a modified technique for calculating a direction in weight-space which is downhill for both classes. Using this algorithm, we have been able to accelerate the rate of learning for two-class classification problems by an order of magnitude