Identification of seed storage protein markers for drought tolerance in mungbean

A set of 292 mungbean germplasm accessions including 62 popularly adapted local land races and two wild forms (Vigna radiata var. sublobata), important breeding lines and standard ruling varieties were screened for drought stress tolerance at seedling stage.  Eight genotypes e.g., C. No. 35, OUM 14-1, OUM 49-2, Pusa 9072, OM 99-3, Banapur local B, Nipania munga, Kalamunga 1-A) have been identified to possess drought tolerance.  Globulin seed storage protein profiling was carried out in 19 selected mungbean genotypes comprising eight drought tolerant, seven drought sensitive, two wild forms of mungbean (TCR 20 and TCR 213) and two standard checks (LGG 460 and T 2-1) to explore differentially expressed polypeptides. Seed protein profiles revealed 15 scorable polypeptide bands with molecular weights ranging from 10.0 to 102.2kD. A specific 12.8kD polypeptide band was present in all above drought tolerant test genotypes including the wild accession TCR 20. Such a polypeptide band may serve as useful biochemical marker for identification of drought tolerant genotypes in mungbean.             Key words: Genetic diversity, seed storage protein profile, wild and cultivated Vigna radiata

Globulin seed storage protein based genotyping and Study of genetic diversity in core accessions of mungbean under drought stress

Globulin seed storage protein profiles of 19 mungbean genotypes including two wild forms of Vigna radiata var. sublobata(TCR 20 and TCR 213) and two standard  checks(T 2-1 and LGG 460) were analysed by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Thirteen genotypes could be clearly identified based on genotype-specific seed protein fingerprints. The combined dendrogram showed six genetic clusters within 68% phenon level. The clustering based on the combined clustering analysis revealed discrimination of all test genotypes even immediately beyond 88% phenon level, whereas individual clustering analysis based on protein and agro-morphological level failed to do so. Nipania munga, TCR 213, T 2-1, LGG 460, TCR 20 and Banapur local B were identified to be highly divergent genotypes. TCR 20 appears to have more genetic proximity to the mungbean genotypes than TCR 213. T 2-1, LGG 460 and TCR 20 are potentially high yielding. These may serve as valuable materials for recombination breeding in mungbean

Artificial Light at Night: A Global Threat to Plant Biological Rhythms and Eco-Physiological Processes

Light is crucial environmental factor for primary resource and signalling in plants and provide optimum fitness under fluctuating environments from millions of year. However, due to urbanization, and human development activities lot of excess light generated in environment during night time and responsible for anthropogenic generated pollution (ALAN; artificial night light pollution). This pollution has cause for serious problem in plants as it affects their processes and functions which are under the control of light or diurnal cycle. Plant biorhythms mostly diurnal rhythms such as stomatal movements, photosynthetic activity, and many more metabolic processes are under the control of period of light and dark, which are crucially affected by artificial light at night. Similarly, the crucial plant processes such as pollination, flowering, and yield determining processes are controlled by the diurnal cycle and ALAN affects these processes and ultimately hampers the plant fitness and development. To keep in mind the effect of artificial light at night on plant biorhythm and eco-physiological processes, this chapter will focus on the status of global artificial night light pollution and the responsible factors. Further, we will explore the details mechanisms of plant biorhythm and eco-physiological processes under artificial light at night and how this mechanism can be a global threat. Then at the end we will focus on the ANLP reducing strategies such as new light policy, advanced lightening technology such as remote sensing and lightening utilisation optimisation

Male Use of Female Sex Work in India: A Nationally Representative Behavioural Survey

Heterosexual transmission of HIV in India is driven by the male use of female sex workers (FSW), but few studies have examined the factors associated with using FSW. This nationally representative study examined the prevalence and correlates of FSW use among 31,040 men aged 15–49 years in India in 2006. Nationally, about 4% of men used FSW in the previous year, representing about 8.5 million FSW clients. Unmarried men were far more likely than married men to use FSW overall (PR = 8.0), but less likely than married men to use FSW among those reporting at least one non-regular partner (PR = 0.8). More than half of all FSW clients were married. FSW use was higher among men in the high-HIV states than in the low-HIV states (PR = 2.7), and half of all FSW clients lived in the high-HIV states. The risk of FSW use rose sharply with increasing number of non-regular partners in the past year. Given the large number of men using FSW, interventions for the much smaller number of FSW remains the most efficient strategy for curbing heterosexual HIV transmission in India

Investigation of Multifunctional Off-Board EV Battery Charger with Solar PV Grid Interface

Increasing environmental pollution and limiting petroleum fuels resulted in two significant changes in the world. The first change is adopting renewable energy sources (RESs) by replacing conventional energy sources, and the second is adopting electric vehicles (EVs) by replacing combustion engine-based vehicles. However, in the current scenario, an enormous increase in EVs resulted in the massive installation of charging stations powered mainly by the grid. As a result, grid power quality (PQ) issues, such as voltage and current distortions, appear in the power system. Therefore, designing a multifunctional charging infrastructure that can be used for EV charging and simultaneously improve grid PQ is essential. Considering the PQ issues, this thesis deals with designing, controlling, and implementing the multifunctional EV charging system to power the EV batteries and simultaneously provide grid support services. Furthermore, integrating Solar PV and storage systems into the EV Charging system reduces the energy needed from thermal generating stations. It promotes reduced greenhouse gas emissions, charging costs, environmental constraints, and EV grid dependability. The multifunctional chargers are designed to operate in grid connected operation and standalone operation, with smooth and seamless transition from one to another to provide uninterruptable power to EVs and utility loads. In addition, the charger locally mitigates harmonic distortions that appear at the grid side due to EV charging and nonlinear charging station loads to avoid penalty on the charger owner. The charger facilitates bidirectional active power exchange in grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to grid (V2G) operating modes. Furthermore, the charger provides other multifunctional operations in charger-for-grid (C4G) operations like grid current harmonic compensation (GCHC), reactive power compensation (RPC), and reactive power support (RPS) to the grid. Moreover, the charger also supports vehicle-to-home (V2H), Energy storage-to-home (E2H), vehicle-to-energy storage (V2E), and vehicle-to vehicle (V2V) operation, which increases the operational efficiency of the charger. In this thesis, a single excited three-phase seven-level cascaded H-bridge bidirectional AC-DC converter (CHBDC) topology is adopted for the grid converter of the charger. During multifunctional operation, the CHBDC control algorithm manages energy management between sources, maximum power point tracking of solar photovoltaic (PV), DC link voltage regulation, and PQ services. Particularly, different CHBDC control algorithms are presented to achieve efficient multifunctional operation of the charger without compromising grid PQ, irrespective of abnormal system conditions like grid outages, load fluctuations, and nonideal grid voltages (unbalanced and distorted). The presented multifunctional EV charger configurations are modeled in Sim Power System (SPS)/ MATLAB Simulink environment, and the same has been validated by an experimental prototype developed in the laboratory. Furthermore, the thesis analyzes and presents the charger performance during various steady state and dynamic conditions

Has expansion of mobile phone and internet use spurred financial inclusion in the SAARC countries?

Abstract Exclusion from the mainstream financial world is a burden on the poor of many countries. The proliferation of new mobile and online financial services, such as e-banking, money transfers, and payment processing has the potential to provide access to basic financial products and services to financially excluded people. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the growth of mobile phone and Internet use on financial inclusion in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries from 2004 to 2014. We applied principal component analysis to construct a financial inclusion index that served as a proxy variable for the accessibility of financial services in the SAARC countries. Using three different models-the fixed effect, random effect, and panel correction standard errors models-this study discovered a positive and significant relationship between the growth of financial inclusion and expansion of both mobile phone and Internet services. Moreover, an empirical study of the control variables showed that the levels of income and education were positively associated with financial inclusion, whereas the size of the rural population and unemployment were negatively related to financial inclusion. In addition, the empirical estimates posit a unidirectional causal flow from the growth of mobile and Internet services to expanded financial inclusion in the SAARC countries

Performance of audio-assisted confidential voting interview for assessment of sexual behavior among young adults in Chandigarh Union Territory

A cross-sectional study was conducted in Chandigarh Union Territory to evaluate the performance of an audio-assisted confidential voting interview (AVI), for assessing the sexual behavior among young adults aged 20 - 34 years. Using systematic random sampling 625 males and 630 females were interviewed alternately, either by AVI or by face-to-face interview (FFI). More men revealed having sex with men in AVI (2.6%) than FFI (0.6%) (P 0.06). Women reported having sex with non-regular partners more often in AVI (4.8%) compared to FFI (0.3%) (P < 0.001). AVI performed better than FFI for eliciting sensitive sexual behaviors

Power System Stability Improvement of FACTS Controller and PSS Design: A Time-Delay Approach

The existence of low-frequency oscillations in power systems is the cause of power angle instability, limiting the transmission of maximum tie-line power. One of the effective ways to improve the stability limits is by installing a power system stabilizer and supplementary excitation control to augment with an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) supplemental feedback stabilizing signal. This paper proposes a new strategy for simultaneously tuning the power system stabilizer (PSS) and FACTS controller, considering time delays. The design of the proposed controller is modeled as an optimization problem, and the parameters of the controller are optimized through the grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA). The suggested controller’s efficacy is evaluated for both single-machine infinite bus systems and multi-machine power systems under various disturbances. It also investigated the performance of the proposed controller with variations in signal transmission delays. The results obtained from GOA optimized proposed controller are compared with those obtained from the differential evolution algorithm, genetic algorithm, and whale optimization algorithm. In this context, the proposed GOA optimized controller reduced the objective function value by 16.32%, 14.56%, and 13.72%, respectively, in the SMIB system and 1.41%, 9.98%, and 13.31%, respectively, for the multi-machine system compared with the recently published WOA, and the well-established GA and DE. Further, the proposed controller is found to be stable and effectively increases stability even under small disturbances