Agrobacterium mediated transformation of annexin gene in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)

The present study involves the development of genetically engineered tobacco plants with annexin gene. The plasmid pUC 119 with the Annexin gene and pGPTV vector were isolated from the Escherichia coli. These plasmids were subjected to restriction digestion with EcoRI and Xbal where the Annexin gene is released from the pUC 119 as a linearised band was eluted from the gel. The recombinant PGPTV plasmid with the annexin gene in Agrobacterium tumefaciens MTCC 431 was mobilized and transferred to plant system through the mobilization helper plasmid pRK2013. The kanamycin resistance gene (NPT II) was used as a selective marker. The calli used for isolating the genomic DNA which was then amplified for confirmation of annexin gene. The nptII gene of 800 bp serves as a selectable marker system in plants and its amplification confirmed the presence of annexin gene in transgenic plants by PCR method

Influence of Chloride Ion on the Toxicity of Heavy Metal Mercury upon Vibrio parahaemolyticus

Heavy metal pollutants released into the coastal region certainly influence the bacterial population leading to the formation of metal resistant forms. The toxicity of mercury to different species of bacteria also vary. Among bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus play an important role in the disease of marine animals and human beings as pathogens. Hence the present study was aimed to understand the effect of mercury on the survival of two V. parahaemolyticus strains isolated from polluted uppanar estuary at different concentrations. (0, 1, 10, 25, 50 and 100 ppm) in the absence and presence of Nacl (1.75 and 3.5%) was carried out. Toxicity of mercury showed that  V. parahaemolyticus gradually decreased upto 1 ppm mercury and then there was a decline at higher concentration of mercury

Effectiveness of tegaderm Versus dynaplaster upon pain perception and occurence of infection during removal among children

A Comparative Study to assess the Effectiveness of Tegaderm Versus Dynaplaster upon Pain Perception and Occurrence of Infection during Removal among Children at Selected Hospitals, Chennai. OBJECTIVES: 1. To assess the level of pain perception and occurrence of infection during removal of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 2. To compare the effectiveness of tegaderm versus dynaplaster upon pain perception and occurrence of infection among children. 3. To determine the effectiveness of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 4. To determine the association between selected demographic variables and pain perception during removal of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 5. To determine the association between selected clinical variables and pain perception during removal of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 6. To determine the association between selected demographic variables and occurrence of infection during presence of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 7. To determine the association between selected clinical variables and occurrence of infection during presence of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 8. To determine the association between selected demographic variables and effectiveness of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 9. To determine the association between selected clinical variables and effectiveness of tegaderm versus dynaplaster among children. 10. To assess the level of satisfaction of nurses using tegaderm and dynaplaster. The conceptual framework for the study was based on king’s Goal Attainment Theory. A comparative study with Post-test only design was used. The study was conducted at Apollo Children Hospitals, Chennai. The study included 60 children who were selected by purposive sampling 30 were in the intervention group I and 30 were in the intervention group II. The variables of the study were pain perception and prevalence of infection. An extensive review of literature and guidance by experts laid the foundation of development of demographic variable proforma, clinical variable proforma, effectiveness checklist, infection check list, wong baker’s pain scale and rating scale on level of satisfaction of nurses. The data collection tools were validated and reliability was established. The main study was conducted after the pilot study. The level of pain perception and prevalence of infection and effectiveness was assessed for tegaderm versus dynaplaster of children. The level of satisfaction of nurses was assessed among both the groups. The data obtained was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. MAJOR FINDINGS: 1. Most of the children were aged 1-3yrs (50%, 26%) Significant percentage of children were males (50%, 60%), from nuclear family (53%, 33%) with a family monthly income of 20000-30000 (40%, 30%) and majority of the children were in primary school (47%,67%) in both tegaderm & dynaplaster group of children respectively. 2. Majority of the children with tegaderm and dynaplaster had no co morbid illness (97%, 93%), significant percentage of children had orthopaedic and surgical problems (63.3%, 83.3%), most of the children received medications (57%, 27%) through peripheral line (80%,93%) placed in Bracheo cephalic vein (80%,93%). Most of the children were intravenous line dependent for more than three days (47%, 63%) and which was secured with tegaderm and dynaplaster (47%, 83.3%). Sixty percent of children with dynaplaster had complications. 3. It was noted that majority of children with tegaderm experienced no pain and had no infection during removal (63.3%,80%) and majority of children with dynaplaster experienced severe pain and had infection during removal (75%,43%). 4. It was noted that majority of the children using tegaderm had effective out come (90%) and (27%) had effective out come with dynaplaster. 5. Mean and standard deviation with regard to pain perception of children while removing tegaderm was (M-1.06,SD-0.9) and while removing dynaplaster was (M-8.4,SD-2.46).The difference was significant at p<0.001level. The findings also revealed that the occurrence of infection in children while removing tegaderm was (M-0.2, SD-0.1) and while removing dynaplaster was (M-1, SD-0.4).The difference was significant at p<0.001 level. Hence null hypothesis H01 was rejected. 6. The mean and standard deviation with regard to effectiveness of tegaderm was (M-26, SD-6.1) and dynaplaster group of children was (M-17, SD-2.6). The difference was significant at p<0.001 level. Hence the null hypothesis H02 was rejected. 7. There was significant association between selected demographic variables and pain perception with regard to monthly income ( χ2 =12.1df = 1) among children with tegaderm and in children with dynaplaster age of child (χ2=5.25df =1),type of family(χ2=3.9,df =1) at p<0.001 p<0.05. Hence the null hypothesis H0 3was rejected. 8. There was significant association between selected clinical variables and pain perception in children on tegaderm with regard to diagnosis ( χ2 =4.3df = 1)and in children with dynaplaster with regard to dynaplaster insitu (χ2=4.78df =1), site of intravenous line insertion, (χ2=4.5df =1) at p<0.05.Hence the null hypothesis H04 was rejected. 9. There was significant association between selected demographic variables and presence of infection among children with tegaderm in regard to area of residence, (χ2 =4.39df =1) and in children with dynaplaster with regard to type of family (χ2=4.7df =1) at p<0.05 dynaplaster. Hence the null hypothesis H05 was rejected. 10. There was significant association between selected clinical variables and presence of infection among children with tegaderm and dynaplaster with regard to number of days of intravenous line insitu, (χ2 =4.39df = 1) at p<0.05. Hence the null hypothesis H06 was rejected. 11. There was significant association between selected demographic variables and effectiveness of tegaderm with regard to age, (χ2 =5.0df = 1) and dynaplaster with regard to type of family (χ2=4.78,df =1) at p<0.05. Hence the null Hypothesis H07 was rejected. 12. There was significant association between selected clinical variables and effectiveness of tegaderm with regard to diagnosis, ( χ2 =4.2,df = 1) and dynaplaster with regard to indications for intravenous line ( χ2 =5.37,df = 1) at p<0.05. Hence the null hypothesis H08 was rejected. 13. The findings revealed that most of the tegaderm group of nurses were highly satisfied with tegaderm (90%), whereas (73%) of nursed using dynaplaster were moderately satisfied (73%). RECOMMENDATIONS: 1. A study can be conducted on cost effectiveness of tegaderm versus dynaplaster. 2. A similar study can be done on umbilical vein securing in preterm babies. 3. A similar study can be done on a larger population to generalize results. 4. A study can be conducted to assess the occurrence of infection tegaderm pads used for surgical dressing among post operative children. 5. Similar study can be done on Endo tracheal tube intubation securing in preterm, term, neonates and children

Hand Vein Pattern Recognition using Natural Image Statistics

Biometrics is the science of identifying a person using physiological or behavioural characteristics. Hand vein pattern is a recent and unique biometric feature which is used for high secure authentication of individuals. The dorsal hand contains dorsal metacarpal veins, dorsal venous network, cephalic vein and basilic vein.  This paper presents an image descriptor which uses statistical structure of natural images. In this work, stack of natural image patches are used as filters and these transform an image into integer labels describing the small-scale appearance of the image. These labels are converted into histogram and it is used for further image analysis. The feature space contains binarized statistical image features. The proposed work is tested on NCUT dataset with state-of-the-art algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed work outperforms of the state-of-the-art algorithms with the recognition rate of 99.80 per cent.Defence Science Journal, Vol. 65, No. 2, March 2015, pp.150-158, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.65.731

A Dorsal Hand Vein Recognition-based on Local Gabor Phase Quantization with Whitening Transformation

The hand vein pattern is a biometric feature in which the actual pattern is the shape of the vein network and its characteristics are the vein features. This paper investigates a new approach for dorsal hand vein pattern identification from grey level dorsal hand vein information. In this study Gabor filter quadrature pair is employed to compute locally in a window for every pixel position to extract the phase information. The phases of six frequency coefficients are quantized and it is used to form a descriptor code for the local region. These local descriptors are decorrelated using whitening transformation and a histogram is generated for every pixel which describes the local pattern.  Experiments are evaluated on North China University of Technology  dorsal hand vein image dataset with minimum distance classifier and the results are analyzed for recognition rate, run time and equal error rate. The proposed method gives 100 per cent recognition rate and 1 per cent EER for fusion of both left and right hands.Defence Science Journal, 2014, 64(2), pp. 159-167. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.64.465

A Study on Bacterial Profile of Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in Geriatric Population

ABSTRAC

The role of pregnancy-associated plasma protein-a level in the first trimester of pregnancy and clinical outcome in an urban referral centre

Background: Estimation of serum PAPP-A levels studied predictability for adverse perinatal outcome. This case control study tries to establish the association between low PAPP-A levels among the pregnant woman and adverse maternal foetal outcome.Methods: This is an case-control study during 2017-2018 in the women delivered at Department of OBG at Mehta Hospitals. Women delivered in the labour room  had a first trimester screening of PAPP-A level were explained, taken informed consent, questionnaire which include detailed antenatal history, mode of delivery and baby data.  Depending upon outcome, the subjects are classified as case group or control group, out of the study sample of 264 subjects, 88 patients who had complications were taken as cases and 176 patients with no complications taken as control were undertaken.Results: Low PAPP-A level (&lt;0.5 MoM) showed high incidence of PIH and preeclampsia, followed by IUGR and Preterm. PAPP-A level &gt;0.5 MoM, normal outcome is more than the adverse outcome. The difference in the PAPP-A levels is statistically significant. In women with low PAPP A level, low birth weight found statistically significant when compared with &lt;0.5 PAPP A level. The sensitivity of PAPP A levels in identifying the complicated outcomes was 17.04%.The specificity was 98.85%. The positive predictive value of predicting the complications was 88.23% and negative predictive value of 70.44%.Conclusions: The low PAPP-A levels confirmed during first trimester of pregnancy is associated with adverse maternal and foetal outcome such as PIH, preeclampsia, preterm, IUGR and LBW

G × E interactions in QTL introgression lines of Spanish-type groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.)

Multi-environment testing at five locations for rust and late leaf spot (LLS) resistance with 41 introgressed lines (ILs) bred using marker-assisted backcross breeding in the genetic background Spanish- type groundnut varieties identified significant genotype, and genotype 9 environment interactions (GEI) for LLS disease resistance and yield parameters. Significant GEI effects suggest the need to identify location specific breeding lines to achieve gains in pod yield and LLS resistance. The observed variable LLS disease reaction among the ILs in part suggests influence of background genotype on the level of resistance. A breeding scheme with early generation selection using molecular markers followed by phenotyping for LLS, and multi-location testing of fixed breeding lines was optimized to enhance selection intensity and accuracy in groundnut breeding. The ILs, ICGVs 14431, 14436 and 14438 with pooled LLS score at 90 DAS of 3.5–3.7 were superior to respective recurrent parent for pod yield, with early maturing similar to recurrent parents. The pod yield advantage in ILs is attributed by more number of pods, besides resistance to LLS that contributes to better filling

Molecular breeding tools improved drought tolerant groundnut variety for resistance to foliar fungal diseases

A largely rainfed crop in India, drought tolerance, particularly mid- and end-season tolerance, is a key trait in groundnut varieties. A combination of both empirical and trait-based approaches was used in breeding programs of ICAR and ICRISAT, resulting in release of few tolerant varieties that have superior pod yield under drought stress and/or have enhanced water-use-efficiency. There is a need to breed varieties with drought tolerance, disease resistance and quality traits that suit different production ecologies as well as meet the needs of the farmers, consumers and industries. ICRISAT has released an early-maturing (90-95 d) and drought- tolerant variety ICGV 91114 for the drought-prone Ananthapur district of Andhra Pradesh, India, where about 0.7 m ha area is under groundnut cultivation and has low (300 mm) and erratic (30-40 rainy days) rainfall. On-farm studies conducted with ICGV 91114 during 2008-10 showed 30% reduction in yield variability over the years. Following screening in hot-spots of both rust and LLS disease during 2014 rainy season, a total of 27 introgression lines derived from ICGV 91114 were selected and advanced for evaluation in multi-location trials at six locations in 2015 under rainfed conditions. Based on the pod yield under rainfed conditions and disease resistance, three superior introgression lines (ICGV 14410, ICGV 13189, ICGV 14421) were proposed for the first-ever NILs trial (near-isogenic lines trial) along with eight others conducted under All India Coordinated Research Project on Groundnut (AICRP-G) at national level