Medical research council dyspnoea score and forced expiratory volume in one second as the predictors of vertical climbing in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a leading cause of chronic morbidity and mortality throughout the globe. MRC and FEV1 are related with 6MWD in COPD. But stair climbing is mechanically and physiologically different from walking. Dyspnoea is most often the limiting factor to staircase climbing. Hence the study is designed to correlate MRC dyspnoea score and FEV1 with vertical height climbed in COPD patients and to find out whether they are the predictors of vertical climbing in COPD patients.Methods: It was Prospective Cross sectional study. 50 COPD patients satisfying the inclusion criteria were underwent a stair climb test after recording their MRC dyspnoea score and FEV1. FEV1 was measured with mini Wright peak flow meter in sitting position. Vertical height of floor climbed, time taken to climb and recovery time was recorded.Results: A significant negative correlation and positive correlation was observed between vertical height climbed and MRC dyspnoea score (r= -0.76, p=0.001) and between vertical height climbed and FEV1 (r=0.59, p<0.001) respectively. On Multiple linear regression analysis, both are found to be the independent predictors of vertical height climbed by COPD.Conclusions: MRC and FEV1 correlated with vertical height climbed and found to be the independent predictors of vertical climbing in COPD patients. Vertical height climb (m) can be predicted with equation 12.94+5.58(FEV1) – 3.35(MRC)

Review on Efficient Contrast Enhancement Technique for Low Illumination Color Images

A digital color image, as its fundamental purpose requires, is to provide a perception of the scene to a human viewer or a computer for carrying out automation tasks such as object recognition. An image of high quality that could truly represent the captured object and the scene is hence in great demand.Contrast is an important factor in any subjective evaluation of image quality. It is the difference in visual properties that makes an object distinguishable from other object and background. On the contrary, the human visual perception is interested in hue (H), saturation (S) and intensity (I) attributes that are carried by the color image. Therefore, when the image has to be processed, most approaches convert the RGB space into some convenient working signal spaces that are close to human perceptions

Determination of variability in rancidity profile of select commercial Pearl millet varieties/hybrids

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), one of the world’s hardiest cereal crop can grow under harsh climatic conditions. It is grown in the drylands, mostly by smallholder farmers and forms part of the staple diet for millions of resource-poor people in the drylands. However, flour prepared from this climate-change-ready crop has a low shelf-life, attributed to the nature of the fat. Thus, pearl millet has to be ground fresh before use adding to the drudgery of the consumers, especially women. Commercialization of pearl millet flour, which is also in demand in the urban market due to its health benefitting properties, has been constrained due to this rancidity problem. Thus, a study was initiated to evaluate the suitability of popular Indian commercial varieties/hybrids for obtaining shelf-stable flour. Two parameters indicating rancidity namely acid value (indicates enzymatic rancidity) and peroxide value (indicates oxidative rancidity) were monitored during the study. Flour from each variety was stored under three storage conditions – Refrigerated (4°C), room temperature (25°C) and accelerated (35°C, 70%RH) and their acid and peroxide values measured at regular intervals. The study clearly established the existence of diversity in the rancidity profile among the select varieties/hybrids of pearl millet studied. Pearl millet varieties/hybrids that are least susceptible to rancidity can be promoted for use in production of self-stable pearl millet flour in conjunction with appropriate processing and packaging technologies

Promoting Entrepreneurship in Food Processing Sector for Inclusive Market Oriented Development (IMOD)

The need for linking farmers to markets has been identified as one of the most important intervention strategies in the agricultural value chain in order to create impacts in progression towards prosperity. This calls for the creation of an ecosystem that shall catalyse appropriate linkages of the farmers to the markets, ensuring maximum benefit to the poor. The key components required for development of such an ecosystem has been enumerated in International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)’s strategic plan to 2020 and is based on the development pathway called Inclusive Market Oriented Development (IMOD). This is a cycle in which value-adding innovations (technical, policy, institutional and others) enable the poor to capture larger rewards from markets, while managing their risks. There are two major dimensions of IMOD (Figure 1). The curve represents the power of market opportunities that offer prosperity to smallholders. The platform is the risk management dimension, which highlights the need for more effective social assistance programs to help the poorest of the poor, especially the smallholder farmers, connects to market, in a way that builds their own resilience rather than creating dependency

Development of mobile sensors for estimation of grain qualities and contaminants to enhance nutrition and safety of grain-products in developing countries; current status

The governments of several developing countries responded to their population “malnutrition crisis” (P.Webb et al., 2018), among others, by promotion of crops of high nutritional value and their enhanced usage for food products formulations (e.g. “Millet Mission” in India or “Blending Policy” in Kenya). Simultaneously, several CGIAR crop improvement programs-initiated the development of nutritionally enhanced crop cultivars (e.g. ICRISAT, CIAT, IIT). In developing countries, the promotion of novel cultivars is generally a slow and tedious process, especially if the improved grain (quantity or quality) doesn’t ultimately result in the economic incentives (e.g. the market price). Thus far, there is no economic advantage directly linked to the trade of bio-fortified crop cultivars in developing countries which does prevents their accelerated adoption. This may change if/once the necessary information on a crops value is enabled

Assessing the Prebiotic Diversity of Sorghum and Pearl Millet

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid tropics (ICRISAT), India is a major repository for world Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) and Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum [L.J R. Br.) germplasm. ICRISAT’s gene bank consists of 37,904 accessions of Sorghum from 91 countries and 21,594 accessions of Pearl millet from 50 countries. In order to enhance the use of germplasm for screening of specific traits core and mini core collections, representing the diversity of the entire collection have been developed by ICRISAT, for both these cereals. However, these germplasm accessions of Sorghum and Pearl millet have not yet been profiled for their prebiotic diversity. Hence profiling of accessions, of the germplasm collections of Sorghum and Pearl millet, with the aim to identify accessions with desirable prebiotic traits for development of functional (probiotic) foods is being undertaken

Studies on rapid multiplication of black pepper (Piper nigrum L.) on soil mound

An experiment was conducted to study rapid multiplication of black pepper (Piper nigrum) on soil mound at Dapoli (Maharashtra). The black pepper plants were planted at the base of soil mound (2.5 m width, 0.60 m height at centre, 18 m length, 45' angle slope) at various spacings (15.0,22.5, 30.0 and 37.5 cm) and compared with cuttings raised by bamboo and traditional methods. The vines in soil mound method exhibited superior performance with respect to length and root production node". The availability of cuttings from soil mound method was also the highest. The rooting percentage of cuttings obtained from soil mound and bamboo methods were significantly superior over traditional method of propagation. The B : C ratio for marketable black pepper cuttings by soil mound method was the best (2.1:1.0). Planting base material at 15 cm spacing on soil mound was the best and produced more runners per unit area as compared to other spacing treatments and traditional method. &nbsp

Comprehensive Research Synopsis and Systematic Meta-Analyses in Parkinson's Disease Genetics: The PDGene Database

More than 800 published genetic association studies have implicated dozens of potential risk loci in Parkinson's disease (PD). To facilitate the interpretation of these findings, we have created a dedicated online resource, PDGene, that comprehensively collects and meta-analyzes all published studies in the field. A systematic literature screen of ∼27,000 articles yielded 828 eligible articles from which relevant data were extracted. In addition, individual-level data from three publicly available genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were obtained and subjected to genotype imputation and analysis. Overall, we performed meta-analyses on more than seven million polymorphisms originating either from GWAS datasets and/or from smaller scale PD association studies. Meta-analyses on 147 SNPs were supplemented by unpublished GWAS data from up to 16,452 PD cases and 48,810 controls. Eleven loci showed genome-wide significant (P<5×10−8) association with disease risk: BST1, CCDC62/HIP1R, DGKQ/GAK, GBA, LRRK2, MAPT, MCCC1/LAMP3, PARK16, SNCA, STK39, and SYT11/RAB25. In addition, we identified novel evidence for genome-wide significant association with a polymorphism in ITGA8 (rs7077361, OR 0.88, P = 1.3×10−8). All meta-analysis results are freely available on a dedicated online database (www.pdgene.org), which is cross-linked with a customized track on the UCSC Genome Browser. Our study provides an exhaustive and up-to-date summary of the status of PD genetics research that can be readily scaled to include the results of future large-scale genetics projects, including next-generation sequencing studies