Laser induced elastico mechano luminescence of SrAl2O4 : Eu phosphor

When γ – irradiated elastic mechano luminescent materials SrAl2O4 : Eu are exposed to 1060 nm infrared pulse of nanosecond duration from CO2 laser, then stress produced in the crystals excites visible luminescence due to piezoelectric field in SrAl2O4 : Eu phosphor because they are non – centro symmetric.  In the present investigation SrAl2O4 : Eu crystals are given laser shocks and ML intensity recorded. During laser induced shocks, ML intensity increases linearly with stress and attains a peak value at a particular time and then decays exponentially with time. A theoretical approach has been proposed to explain the experimental results.&nbsp

Energy Budget of Crops and Weed Management to Enhance Crop Productivity in Cold Arid Ladakh Region

Small scale agriculture is still the predominant characteristic of the Ladakh. It still has a great role in the economy. The region produces barley, wheat, vegetables and also involved in rearing livestock. The farming systems are unique and adapted to the harsh environmental conditions of Ladakh. Currently, the largest commercial agricultural produce is vegetable, which is sold in large quantity to defence establishments and as well as in the local market. It was recorded that production remains mainly in the hands of small land owners. In all the surveyed villages, majority of area (75%) is under vegetable crops as compared to cereals such as wheat and barley (25%). Efforts/ energy (unit in each case= value X 105 k cal/ha/year) being put to grow vegetables are significantly higher than the total output and the situation is just reverse in case of cereals. Survey revealed the need of small scale interventions including scientific weed management. From total energy point of view, staple crop production was found to be energy efficient. Even though subsistence-oriented production remains the economic mainstay, livelihood strategies have diversified in the light of growing geostrategic relevance and significant socio-economic changes

Weedy diversity of subsistence agriculture and their traditional uses in cold arid region of India

810-821In Ladakh, a cold arid region, subsistence agriculture has been in practice and is associated with livestock rearing in very small-scale stone-built terrace farming. Due to poor resources, public distribution systems, import/mutual exchange of plant materials and higher labour cost, high-altitude default organic farming has become a complex activity where weeds have become a recurrent problem. Moreover, they have become an integral part of fodder resources under small-scale stone-built terraced farming in barren ecosystems for enriching straw with supplementary weedy stuff. As a result, cropped areas suffer severe weed pressure as it requires 4-5 weedings under high-altitude solar radiation. An intensive survey revealed that the majority of weeds constituted of Amaranthaceae, Asteraceae, Poaceae and Fabaceae families, and they varied attitudinally. In this region, weeds are the major associated plant species, limiting the performance of crops in terms of seed quality and yields significantly. Hence, weed menace is overlooked in crops that impact the invasive weedy species to move upward to high altitudes under climate change. Conversely, people across this region have identified many of the weedy species for their day-to-day consumption as green leafy vegetables and for medicinal uses under the harsh climate of the cold arid region. This article describes the weedy species identified in crops and their utilization under low-land holding subsistence agriculture

Efficacy of potassium salt of glyphosate on weed control and yield in transgenic corn

A field experiment was carried out at Directorate of Weed Research, Jabalpur for the consecutive two years during kharif 2009 and 2010 to evaluate the weed control efficiency and crop productivity with K salt of glyphosate formulation in field conditions. Treatments consisted of two transgenic stacked hybrids named Hishell and 900M Gold applied with glyphosate as early post-emergence at 900, 1 800 and 3 600 g a.i./ha during kharif season of 2010 with two conventional hybrids namely Proagro-4640 and HQPM-1. Among the treatments, early post-emergence application of glyphosate at all doses registered lower weed density and higher weed control efficiency, i.e. 100% in all transgenic corn hybrids at 21 DAS and at harvest. Significantly higher numbers of cobs/plot were observed in transgenic hybrids as compared to conventional entries. While more cob length was observed with Hishell Transgenic hybrids at all doses as compared to 900 M Gold transgenic hybrids. Hishell transgenic hybrids at 3 600 g/ha registered significantly higher number of grains per row as compared to with its conventional control, 900 M Gold transgenic hybrid (1 800g/ha), 900 M Gold conventional and national checks. Significantly higher values of 20 cob weight, 20 cob grain weight and total cob weight was observed with Hishell and 900 M Gold transgenic hybrids as compared to other conventional hybrid entries and national checks. Hishell and 900 M Gold transgenic hybrids performed better with regard to grain yield ranging between 6-10 tonnes/ha which was approximately 3 to 4 times higher than the average yield of maize crop per ha, i.e. 2.30 tonnes/ha during both the years. Hishell at all rates of glyphosate application performed equally well in terms of yield but the yield of 900 M Gold decreased as the dose was enhanced from 1 800 to 3 600 g/ha during second year of experimentation

Kinetics of biodegradation of diethylketone by Arthrobacter viscosus

The performance of an Arthrobacter viscosus culture to remove diethylketone from aqueous solutions was evaluated. The effect of initial concentration of diethylketone on the growth of the bacteria was evaluated for the range of concentration between 0 and 4.8 g/l, aiming to evaluate a possible toxicological effect. The maximum specific growth rate achieved is 0.221 h-1 at 1.6 g/l of initial diethylketone concentration, suggesting that for higher concentrations an inhibitory effect on the growth occurs. The removal percentages obtained were approximately 88%, for all the initial concentrations tested. The kinetic parameters were estimated using four growth kinetic models for biodegradation of organic compounds available in the literature. The experimental data found is well fitted by the Haldane model (R2 = 1) as compared to Monod model (R2 = 0.99), Powell (R2 = 0.82) and Loung model (R2 = 0.95). The biodegradation of diethylketone using concentrated biomass was studied for an initial diethylketone concentration ranging from 0.8–3.9 g/l in a batch with recirculation mode of operation. The biodegradation rate found followed the pseudo-second order kinetics and the resulting kinetic parameters are reported. The removal percentages obtained were approximately 100%, for all the initial concentrations tested, suggesting that the increment on the biomass concentration allows better results in terms of removal of diethylketone. This study showed that these bacteria are very effective for the removal of diethylketone from aqueous solutions.The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of this project by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT), Ministerio da Ciencia e Tecnologia, Portugal and Fundo Social Europeu (FSE). Cristina Quintelas thanks FCT for a Post-Doc grant

Enhancement of immune response of HBsAg loaded poly(L-lactic acid) microspheres against Hepatitis B through incorporation of alum and chitosan

Purpose: Poly (L-lactic acid) (PLA) microparticles encapsulating Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) with alum and chitosan were investigated for their potential as a vaccine delivery system. Methods: The microparticles, prepared using a water-in-oil-in-water (w/o/w) double emulsion solvent evaporation method with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) or chitosan as the external phase stabilising agent showed a significant increase in the encapsulation efficiency of the antigen. Results: PLA-Alum and PLA-chitosan microparticles induced HBsAg serum specific IgG antibody responses significantly higher than PLA only microparticles and free antigen following subcutaneous administration. Chitosan not only imparted a positive charge to the surface of the microparticles but was also able to increase the serum specific IgG antibody responses significantly. Conclusions: The cytokine assays showed that the serum IgG antibody response induced is different according to the formulation, indicated by the differential levels of interleukin 4 (IL-4), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and interferon gamma (IFN-γ). The microparticles eliciting the highest IgG antibody response did not necessarily elicit the highest levels of the cytokines IL-4, IL-6 and IFN-γ

Human Centric Facial Expression Recognition

Facial expression recognition (FER) is an area of active research, both in computer science and in behavioural science. Across these domains there is evidence to suggest that humans and machines find it easier to recognise certain emotions, for example happiness, in comparison to others. Recent behavioural studies have explored human perceptions of emotion further, by evaluating the relative contribution of features in the face when evaluating human sensitivity to emotion. It has been identified that certain facial regions have more salient features for certain expressions of emotion, especially when emotions are subtle in nature. For example, it is easier to detect fearful expressions when the eyes are expressive. Using this observation as a starting point for analysis, we similarly examine the effectiveness with which knowledge of facial feature saliency may be integrated into current approaches to automated FER. Specifically, we compare and evaluate the accuracy of ‘full-face’ versus upper and lower facial area convolutional neural network (CNN) modelling for emotion recognition in static images, and propose a human centric CNN hierarchy which uses regional image inputs to leverage current understanding of how humans recognise emotions across the face. Evaluations using the CK+ dataset demonstrate that our hierarchy can enhance classification accuracy in comparison to individual CNN architectures, achieving overall true positive classification in 93.3% of cases