Fish diversity of Haryana and its conservation status

The present study on fish biodiversity of Haryana state was carried out during 2011 to 2014. A total number of 59 fish species inhabits the freshwaters of this state. Maximum number of fish species belonged to the order Cypriniformes (35) followed by the order Siluriformes (12) and Perciformes (8). The orders Beloniformes,Clupeiformes, Osteoglossiformes and Synbranchiformes were represented by only one species each. Out of 59 fish species, 2 are endangered, 11 vulnerable, 28 have lower risk of threat, 8 exotic and 4 fish species have lower risk least concern. The conservation status of six fish species has not been evaluated so far, hence they cannot be included in any of the IUCN categories at this moment. Family Cyprinidae alone contributed 32 fish species followed by Bagridae family. Fish species Parapsilorhynchus discophorus was observed for the first time in Haryana waters. This species is the native of Kaveri river basin, the occurrence of this species in river Yamuna may be attributed to some religious activity of people. A decline in fish diversity has been recorded from 82 species in 2004 to 59 species in the present study in the year 2014. The main causes for decrease in fish biodiversity are habitat destruction and fragmentation, changing practices of land use, exotic species introduction, fishing, irrigation needs, pollution and global climate change impacts. It is essential to prevent further decline of fish resources by devising all possible measures of conservation and rehabilitation

A study of constitutive heterochromatin and NOR banding in three species of Indian major carps from the State of Haryana, India

Cytogenetic survey of fishes becomes increasingly important to establish chromosomal relation between the teleosts, to have a glimpse of the relation between chromosomal evolution and differentiation of vertebrate species. In the present study, Chromosome banding studies was done in three species of carps i.e. Catla catla (Hamilton, 1822), Labeo rohita (Hamilton, 1822) and Cirrhinus mrigala (Hamilton, 1822). Diploid chromosome number 50 was observed in all 3 species of carps. The chromosomes of C. catla, L. rohita and C. mrigala showed constitutive heterochromatin at telomeric and centromeric regions of chromosomes. The Ag-NOR (Argyrophilic-Nucleolus Organizer Region) bands were observed on homologous chromosome pair number 11 in C. catla, 15th chromosome pair in L. rohita. In C. mrigala, the Ag- NOR staining elucidated the presence of darkly stained NORs on the terminal region of the long arms of one of the chromosome. Another homologue of this chromosome pair could not be localized due to scattering of chromosomes. The results depict that variation in ecological conditions with time due to human activities can not only affect the chromosomal number but also chromosomal morphology. &nbsp

A study of constitutive heterochromatin and NOR banding in three species of Indian major carps from the State of Haryana, India

Cytogenetic survey of fishes becomes increasingly important to establish chromosomal relation between the teleosts, to have a glimpse of the relation between chromosomal evolution and differentiation of vertebrate species. In the present study, Chromosome banding studies was done in three species of carps i.e. Catla catla (Hamilton, 1822), Labeo rohita (Hamilton, 1822) and Cirrhinus mrigala (Hamilton, 1822). Diploid chromosome number 50 was observed in all 3 species of carps. The chromosomes of C. catla, L. rohita and C. mrigala showed constitutive heterochromatin at telomeric and centromeric regions of chromosomes. The Ag-NOR (Argyrophilic-Nucleolus Organizer Region) bands were observed on homologous chromosome pair number 11 in C. catla, 15th chromosome pair in L. rohita. In C. mrigala, the Ag- NOR staining elucidated the presence of darkly stained NORs on the terminal region of the long arms of one of the chromosome. Another homologue of this chromosome pair could not be localized due to scattering of chromosomes. The results depict that variation in ecological conditions with time due to human activities can not only affect the chromosomal number but also chromosomal morphology. &nbsp

Adolescent childbearing in sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines whether increased years of schooling exercised a consistent impact on delayed childbearing in sub-Saharan Africa. Data were drawn from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in eight countries over the period 1987-1999. Multiple logistic regressions were used to assess trends and determinants in the probability of first birth during adolescence. Girls' education from about the secondary level onwards was found to be the only consistently significant covariate. No effect of community aggregate education was discernible, after controlling for urbanity and other individual-level variables. The results reinforce previous findings that improving girls' education is a key instrument for raising ages at first birth, but suggest that increases in schooling at lower levels alone bear only somewhat on the prospects for fertility decline among adolescents.adolescence, Africa, developing countries, education, fertility, fertility determinants

Characterization and categorization of Indian mustard genotypes for agro-morphological traits

A total of sixty genotypes and germplasm lines were evaluated and characterized for 14 quantitative and 8 qualitative traits in Brassica juncea. Observations were recorded on the basis of scores given in the DUS descriptor. Majority of accessions were very late in maturity and medium in flowering. No variability was observed for leaf length and leaf width. On the basis of branches, most of the genotypes were classified under intermediate category. Long main shoot length (31), medium number of siliquae on main shoot (46), medium density on main shoot (52), short siliqua length (51), very tall plant height (38), few numbers of seeds per siliqua (33), medium 1000-seed weight (38), medium seed yield per plant (32) and low oil content (40) were observed in most of the genotypes. For qualitative traits, most of the genotype showed dark green leaf color, sparse hairs, dentation of leaf margin lyrate type, open leaf growth habit, yellow petal color, semi-appressedsiliqua angle with main shoot and intermediate siliqua surface texture. Wide (Yellow, Dull grey, Reddish brown, Brown and Black) diversity has been observed for seed color

Deep Features based Hierarchical Classification Scheme for Face Recognition in Heterogeneous Environments

This dissertation investigates the advantages and limitations of the heterogeneous problem of matching infrared long-range, night time face images against their visible counterparts. The contributions of the thesis are three-fold. First, a multifeature scenario dependent fusion scheme is developed, where Gabor Wavelets, Histogram of gradients (HOG) and Local binary patterns (LBP) feature descriptors are empirically selected. Next, a set of fusion score level schemes are developed and applied before face matching. The developed fusion scheme results in 54 percent point (pp) higher recognition performance than the baseline established using a commercial and a set of academic face matchers. Second, to further improve the performance of baseline face recognition (FR) systems, a scenario dependent and sensor adaptable convolutional neural network (CNN) is developed that groups the data in terms of demographic information, including scenarios (situations) such as indoors or outdoors data, as well as distance and sensor based data. The automated grouping scheme developed is applied before the FR algorithms are used, improving baseline performance from 48% (all vs. all) to 70% (with data grouping). Third, an image quality restoration scheme is designed and developed. This scheme is beneficial to FR systems because the quality of face data captured under challenging conditions is affected by a variety of noise factors (including low illumination conditions, variable standoff distances, and uncooperative subjects). Thus, image quality is responsible for the performance degradation of conventional FR matchers. The developed scheme improves, first, the quality of distorted face images and, then, FR performance in terms of the rank-1 identification rate. Based on the experimental results the major conclusion from this research is that the aforementioned schemes discussed in this dissertation significantly improve cross-spectral face matching performance on diverse scenarios, when used either independently or in combination. The experimental results are further supported by statistical analysis tests, conducted to find the statistical significance of incorporating the developed score level fusion schemes, as well as the demographic filtering to FR systems