Incidence of human pathogenic bacteria in shrimp feeds - a study from India

The incidence of various human pathogenic bacteria in commercially available and home-made shrimp feeds used on some farms in India was analyzed. The Total Heterotrophic Bacteria in the commercial feed samples ranged between 103–105 cfu g-1 and those in the farm-made feeds between 106-107 cfu g-1. No bacteria of significance to human health were found to be associated with any of the commercial feed samples analyzed, while farm-made feeds analyzed during the study showed a high incidence of various human pathogens such as Vibrio parahaemolyticus, V. cholerae, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Possible modes of contamination in feeds and ways to prevent them are discussed

Optimally squeezed spin states

We consider optimally spin-squeezed states that maximize the sensitivity of the Ramsey spectroscopy, and for which the signal to noise ratio scales as the number of particles $N$. Using the variational principle we prove that these states are eigensolutions of the Hamiltonian $H(\lambda)=\lambda S_z^2-S_x,$ and that, for large $N$, the states become equivalent to the quadrature squeezed states of the harmonic oscillator. We present numerical results that illustrate the validity of the equivalence

Measurement of the mass difference between top quark and antiquark in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Weight–length relation of an Asian catfish, Horabagrus brachysoma (Günther, 1864), (Siluriformes: Horabagridae) from rivers of the Western Ghats, Kerala, India

Background. The weight–length (W–L) relation was estimated for an endemic catfish, Horabagrus brachysoma (known also as Asian sun catfish, Günther’s catfish, Manjaletta, or Manjakoori). The fish were collected from the four major river systems of Kerala, part of the Western Ghats mountain range, between January 2005 and February 2006. The estimates for the parameter b of the W–L relation (W = aLb) ranged between 2.7623 and 3.17968. Linear regressions on log- transformed data were highly significant (P < 0.01) for the species in all the riverine habitats studied. Analysis of covariance revealed significant difference between sexes of H. brachysoma in the Chalakudy River for the slopes of the regression line