A study on food and feeding habits of Nemipterus japonicus (Bloch) off Bombay coast

The gut content of Nemipterus japonicus revealed that this fish is a carnivorous bottom feeder, feeding mainly on crustaceans, fishes, salps and polychaetes, with marginal variations in females. The intensity of feeding increased with the advancement of maturity till stage 5 except in stage 3 where the intensity of feeding indicated a decrease

APPLICATION OF MULTIFACTORIAL EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN FOR OPTIMIZATION OF PRODIGIOSIN PRODUCTION USING SERRATIA MARCESCENS MBB01, MBB02 AND MBB05

Objective: The present study was aimed at investigating the prodigiosin production under optimized conditions with different parameters such astemperature, incubation time, substrate concentration, and inoculum size.Methods: Response surface methodology was found to be useful in optimizing and determining interactions among process variables in prodigiosinproduction by applying Box–Behnken and face-centered central composite design.Results: Prodigiosin producing Serratia marcescens (SM) MBB01, MBB02, and MBB05 were isolated from soil (Western Ghats Ecosystem). Thesignificant R value was 0.9666, 0.9459, and 0.9433, and the maximum experimental response for prodigiosin production was 497, 690, and560 mg/mL, whereas the predicted value was 495.3, 706.6, and 574.8 mg/mL for SM MBB01, SM MBB02, and SM MBB05, respectively.2Conclusion: Statistically optimized conditions by Box–Behnken design found to be very significant in improved pigment production by SM MBB01,MBB02, and MBB05. The correlation between the predicted and observed values indicates the adequacy of the model.Keywords: Prodigiosin, Serratia marcescens, RSM

Phytochemical Screening and Antibacterial Activity of Aqueous and Methanolic Leaf Extracts of Two Medicinal Plants against Bovine Mastitis Bacterial Pathogens

Spathodea campanulata P. Beauv is extensively used in Indian traditional and folklore medicines to cure various human ailments. Tridax procumbens Linn is a tropically distributed medicinal plant. Antimicrobial activity of aqueous and methanol extracts of two plants were investigated by agar disc and well-diffusion method against bovine mastitis bacterial pathogens. The plant extracts showed inhibitory activity against the tested organisms. Phytochemical screening of the plant revealed the presence of tannins, flavonoids, saponins and alkaloids. The study scientifically validates the use of plant in traditional and ethnoveterinary medicine

Antimicrobial Activity of Aegle marmelos Against Pathogenic Organism Compared with Control Drug

The aqueous and ethanolic extracts from the leaves of Aegle marmelos traditionally used in Indian system of Medicines were screened against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis by using disc diffusion test technique. Bacillus subtilis exhibit about 22mm inhibition zone were considered resistant. The zone of inhibition of the extract was compared with the standard antibiotics such as Penicillin. The study suggests that the plant is promising development of phytomedicine for antimicrobial properties

RNA editing of the GLI1 transcription factor modulates the output of Hedgehog signaling

The Hedgehog (HH) signaling pathway has important roles in tumorigenesis and in embryonal patterning. The Gliomaassociated oncogene 1 (GLI1) is a key molecule in HH signaling, acting as a transcriptional effector and, moreover, is considered to be a potential therapeutic target for several types of cancer. To extend our previous focus on the implications of alternative splicing for HH signal transduction, we now report on an additional post-transcriptional mechanism with an impact on GLI1 activity, namely RNA editing. The GLI1 mRNA is highly edited at nucleotide 2179 by adenosine deamination in normal cerebellum, but the extent of this modification is reduced in cell lines from the cerebellar tumor medulloblastoma. Additionally, basal cell carcinoma tumor samples exhibit decreased GLI1 editing compared with normal skin. Interestingly, knocking down of either ADAR1 or ADAR2 reduces RNA editing of GLI1. This adenosine to inosine substitution leads to a change from Arginine to Glycine at position 701 that influences not only GLI1 transcriptional activity, but also GLI1-dependent cellular proliferation. Specifically, the edited GLI1, GLI1-701G, has a higher capacity to activate most of the transcriptional targets tested and is less susceptible to inhibition by the negative regulator of HH signaling suppressor of fused. However, the Dyrk1a kinase, implicated in cellular proliferation, is more effective in increasing the transcriptional activity of the non-edited GLI1. Finally, introduction of GLI1-701G into medulloblastoma cells confers a smaller increase in cellular growth relative to GLI1. In conclusion, our findings indicate that RNA editing of GLI1 is a regulatory mechanism that modulates the output of the HH signaling pathway. Copyright © 2013 Landes Bioscience

Novel thermal energy recovery system testing

Thermal energy recovery systems, based on thermoelectric generator (TEG) units, used in the internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, enable recovery of wasted heat energy, generated from the combustion process by converting it into electrical energy. Recovery systems are placed into the exhaust subsystems, just before and after the catalytic converters, where temperatures range is from 200 °C to 400 °C. This modest arrangement is a result of TEG units working temperatures and limitations. In the early stages TEG units were placed into the exhaust mufflers where the temperatures are around 200 °C. This paper is a report on the green transportation project that carries on from the previous research, testing and validation conducted in the School of Engineering. We investigated process where, the exhaust port of the engine cylinder head was identified as an optimal location to place the latest technology, high temperature, TEG units. Maximum working temperature of these new devices is 850 °C so that it is safe to place them into the exhaust port of the cylinder head, where the temperatures are around 800 °C

Oil slick in the inshore waters to the north of Cochin Port Channel

The oil samples resembles that of Gulf crude oil and was not seen in Fort Cochin area south of the fairway channel, the oil slick might have caused extensive damage to the intertidal organisms including bivalve spat populations attached to the granite wall constructed to check sea erosion. Strict enforcement of preventive measures is recommended against such oil spillage

Sweet sorghum: food, feed, fodder and fuel crop

This book contains the following chapters: Energy needs and feed stocks, sweet sorghum, comparative advantages of sweet sorghum, how does the farmer benefit?, sweet sorghum research at ICRISAT, technology sharing, Agri-Business Incubator (ABI), ABI support to M/s Rusni Distilleries Pvt Ltd, product profile of M/s Rusni Distilleries Pvt Ltd, sweet sorghum-based ethanol production

A deep search for prompt radio emission from the short GRB 150424A with the Murchison Widefield Array

© 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We present a search for prompt radio emission associated with the short-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) 150424A using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) at frequencies from 80 to 133 MHz. Our observations span delays of 23 s-30 minutes after the GRB, corresponding to dispersion measures of 100-7700 pc cm-3. We see no excess flux in images with timescales of 4 s, 2 minutes, or 30 minutes and set a 3ó flux density limit of 3.0 Jy at 132 MHz on the shortest timescales: some of the most stringent limits to date on prompt radio emission from any type of GRB. We use these limits to constrain a number of proposed models for coherent emission from shortduration GRBs, although we show that our limits are not particularly constraining for fast radio bursts because of reduced sensitivity for this pointing. Finally, we discuss the prospects for using the MWA to search for prompt radio emission from gravitational wave (GW) transients and find that while the flux density and luminosity limits are likely to be very constraining, the latency of the GW alert may limit the robustness of any conclusions

Limits on fast radio bursts from four years of the V-FASTR experiment

The V-FASTR experiment on the Very Long Baseline Array was designed to detect dispersed pulses of milliseconds duration, such as fast radio bursts (FRBs). We use all V-FASTR data through February 2015 to report V-FASTR's upper limits on the rates of FRBs, and compare these with re-derived rates from Parkes FRB detection experiments. V-FASTR's operation at lambda=20 cm allows direct comparison with the 20 cm Parkes rate, and we derive a power-law limit of \gamma<-0.4 (95% confidence limit) on the index of FRB source counts, N(>S)\propto S^\gamma. Using the previously measured FRB rate and the unprecedented amount of survey time spent searching for FRBs at a large range of wavelengths (0.3 cm > \lambda > 90 cm), we also place frequency-dependent limits on the spectral distribution of FRBs. The most constraining frequencies place two-point spectral index limits of \alpha_{20cm}^{4cm} < 5.8 and \alpha_{90cm}^{20cm} > -7.6, where fluence F \propto f^\alpha if we assume true the burst rate reported by Champion et al. (2016) of R(F~0.6 Jy ms) = 7 x 10^3 sky^{-1} day^{-1} (for bursts of ~3 ms duration). This upper limit on \alpha suggests that if FRBs are extragalactic but non-cosmological, that on average they are not experiencing excessive free-free absorption due to a medium with high optical depth (assuming temperature ~8,000 K), which excessively invert their low-frequency spectrum. This in turn implies that the dispersion of FRBs arises in either or both of the intergalactic medium or the host galaxy, rather than from the source itself.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap