Assessment of Allelopathic Potential of an Obnoxious Weed-Hyptis Suaveolens (l.) Piot. on the Seed Germination of Crops-Triticum Aestivum L. and Eleusine Coracana Gaertn

The plant, Hyptis suaveolens (L.) Poit. commonly known as Wilayati tulsi belongs to the family Lamiaceae .The plant has been considered as an obnoxious weed, distributed throughout the tropics and subtropics. It is naturalized in India and is considered as a potent invader. Although it has several medicinal properties and used in folklore remedies but its spread is so fast that in due course of its establishment it disrupts the recruitment pattern in the nearby occupied. Not only it restricts the area for other species but it increases livestock pressure on the native species because of its unpalatable nature due to presence of essential oils. However, no information is available in the literature on the allelopathic activity of this obnoxious weed on the germination of the crop plants like Triticum aestivum L., (wheat) and Eleusine coracana Gaertn., (Ragi). The allelopathy of Hyptis suaveolens (L.) Piot., was studied by extracting the crude aqueous extracts- leachates from the leaves of this plant and 3 different concentrations – 0.01%, 0.25% and 1% of these extracts were assessed on the germination of test crops - Triticum aestivum L and Eleusine coracana Gaertn. The linear growth - Root length and Shoot length and the Fresh and Dry matter accumulation were recorded. The Growth equations- Percent Germination of seeds, Percentage Seed mortality, Relative Growth Ratio, Relative Elongation of Shoot, Relative Elongation of Roots, Relative Biomass Ratio and Seed Vigour index of seeds were calculated for the above test crops. The results show that the 1% leachate showed inhibition on all the above mentioned parameters analyzed in Wheat while the same 1% concentration in case of Ragi showed inhibitory effect on Percent Germination of seeds, Percentage Seed mortality, Relative Growth Ratio, Relative Elongation of Shoot and Relative Biomass Ratio While, the Relative Elongation of Roots and Seed Vigour index of seeds were promoted by the sam

INLINE ELASTICITY MEASURE OF TEXTILE USING ANN

In this paper, we propose a technique to measure the Elasticity Modulus of the textile material using flex LVDT. Elasticity modulus is measured indirectly by measuring stiffness of the material first. The material whose stiffness is to be measured is subjected to a known force and the deflection caused in the material due to applied load is measured using the LVDT. Here the whole measurement is done dynamically without halting the manufacturing line of process. The output of LVDT is AC voltage. AC-DC converter is used to convert the AC output voltage of LVDT to DC output voltage. This is cascaded to the ANN block programmed on the LabVIEW platform. The results show that the proposed technique has achieved its proposed objectives

Unraveling the genetic architecture of subtropical maize (Zea mays L.) lines to assess their utility in breeding programs

Background Maize is an increasingly important food crop in southeast Asia. The elucidation of its genetic architecture, accomplished by exploring quantitative trait loci and useful alleles in various lines across numerous breeding programs, is therefore of great interest. The present study aimed to characterize subtropical maize lines using high-quality SNPs distributed throughout the genome. Results We genotyped a panel of 240 subtropical elite maize inbred lines and carried out linkage disequilibrium, genetic diversity, population structure, and principal component analyses on the generated SNP data. The mean SNP distance across the genome was 70 Kb. The genome had both high and low linkage disequilibrium (LD) regions; the latter were dominant in areas near the gene-rich telomeric portions where recombination is frequent. A total of 252 haplotype blocks, ranging in size from 1 to 15.8 Mb, were identified. Slow LD decay (200-300 Kb) at r2 <= 0.1 across all chromosomes explained the selection of favorable traits around low LD regions in different breeding programs. The association mapping panel was characterized by strong population substructure. Genotypes were grouped into three distinct clusters with a mean genetic dissimilarity coefficient of 0.36. Conclusions The genotyped panel of subtropical maize lines characterized in this study should be useful for association mapping of agronomically important genes. The dissimilarity uncovered among genotypes provides an opportunity to exploit the heterotic potential of subtropical elite maize breeding lines

Elevated Expression of Squamous Cell Carcinoma Antigen (SCCA) Is Associated with Human Breast Carcinoma

Squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCA) belongs to the serine protease inhibitor (Serpin) family of proteins. Elevated expression of SCCA has been used as a biomarker for aggressive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in cancers of the cervix, lung, head and neck, and liver. However, SCCA expression in breast cancer has not been investigated. Immunohistochemical analysis of SCCA expression was performed on tissue microarrays containing breast tumor tissues (n = 1,360) and normal breast epithelium (n = 124). SCCA expression was scored on a tiered scale (0-3) independently by two evaluators blind to the patient's clinical status. SCCA expression was observed in Grade I (0.3%), Grade II (2.5%), and Grade III (9.4%) breast cancers (p<0.0001). Comparing tissues categorized into the three non-metastatic TNM stages, I-III, SCCA positivity was seen in 2.4% of Stage I cancers, 3.1% of Stage II cancers, and 8.6% of Stage III breast cancers (p = 0.0005). No positive staining was observed in normal/non-neoplastic breast tissue (0 out of 124). SCCA expression also correlated to estrogen receptor/progesterone receptor (ER/PR) double-negative tumors (p = 0.0009). Compared to SCCA-negative patients, SCCA-positive patients had both a worse overall survival and recurrence-free survival (p<0.0001 and p<0.0001, respectively). This study shows that SCCA is associated with both advanced stage and high grade human breast carcinoma, and suggests the necessity to further explore the role of SCCA in breast cancer development and treatment

Associations Between Discrimination and Cardiovascular Health Among Asian Indians in the United States

Asian Indians (AI) have a high risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The study investigated associations between discrimination and (1) cardiovascular risk and (2) self-rated health among AI. Higher discrimination scores were hypothesized to relate to a higher cardiovascular risk score (CRS) and poorer self-rated health. Asian Indians (n = 757) recruited between 2010 and 2013 answered discrimination and self-reported health questions. The CRS (0–8 points) included body-mass index, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose levels of AI. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to evaluate relationships between discrimination and the CRS and discrimination and self-rated health, adjusting for psychosocial and clinical factors. There were no significant relationships between discrimination and the CRS (p ≥ .05). Discrimination was related to poorer self-reported health, B = −.41 (SE = .17), p = .02. Findings suggest perhaps there are important levels at which discrimination may harm health

Digitization of project reports: An experience with GSDL

The explosion of interest in research and practice of digital libraries has spanned the boundaries of computing, networking and information science. A digital library has dissolved the barriers to 'information equity' and acting as an information highway for the knowledge to every citizen of the country. A digital library is "an organization that provides the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities" (Digital library federation)

An Hierarchical Framework for Classroom Events Classification

In this paper, a model for classroom events classification is proposed. Major classroom events which are considered in this work are drowsiness of a student, group discussion, steady and alert, and noisy classroom. These events are classified using a two level classification model. It makes use of simple threshold based classifiers for classification. In the first level, classes such as noisy classroom and drowsiness are separated from that of remaining classes based on global threshold. The global threshold is computed based on correlation coefficients, computed across the intensity values of the video frames. The correlation scores obtained from each video are used for classification. During second level, a partially labeled video is classified as a member of any of the said four classes based on the local threshold computed from each class of videos. Local threshold is computed based on the global characteristics extracted from the videos. For classification purpose, the events which are considered here are strictly mutually exclusive events. Due to the lack of classroom events video datasets, the dataset has been created consisting of 96 videos spread across 4 different classes. The proposed model is validated using suitable validity measures viz., accuracy, precision, recall, and f-measure. The results show that the proposed model performs better in classifying the said events

Facile green reduction of graphene oxide using Ocimum sanctum hydroalcoholic extract and evaluation of its cellular toxicity

Currently, biological application of graphene family materials is widely explored from drug delivery to biosensing. In this study, we reduced graphene oxide (GO) using hydroalcoholic extract of Ocimum sanctum (holy basil) by refluxing with 5 extract solution. Total phenols and flavonoids present in extract were assayed using appropriate methods as these phytocompounds are known to influence reducing capacity. 2, 2-diphenyl 1- picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay and IC 50 value determination was carried out to know the potency of plant extract as antioxidant. Total phenolic content in hydroalcoholic extract of O sanctum was found to be 20 and total flavonoid content was found to be 7.5. DPPH assay showed ∼90 inhibition of free radicals by extract at 10 μg/mL concentration and ∼42 inhibition at 0.75 μg/mL and IC 50 value of 1.3 μg/mL showing that the extract is a potential antioxidant. Characterization of GO and O sanctum reduced GO (ORGO) showed that PXRD of ORGO had a broad peak centred at 2θ = 25° as against 2θ = 10.69° of GO indicating efficient removal of oxygen containing group. SEM images of GO showed typical flake like morphology whereas ORGO appeared like overlapped folded curtains, typical of their respective morphologies. To assay the concentration dependent toxicology profile of GO and ORGO, efflux of haemoglobin from suspended red blood corpuscles was estimated spectroscopically at 541 nm. Viability of mouse fibroblast cells (Balb 3T3 cells) under the influence of different concentrations of GO/ORGO was examined with water soluble tetrazolium salt using cell counting kit assay (CCK-8). GO here showed higher haemolytic activity of 6.9 and higher inhibition of growth of 3T3 cells at all tested concentrations than ORGO, which is probably due to removal of oxygen functionalities by plant extract in the latter. From this study, we conclude that O sanctum hydroalcoholic extract has been efficiently employed as a reductant in removal of functionalities of GO and thus synthesized ORGO showed lesser hematologic and cellular toxicity and the material can be a good entrant for biological applications after further in vivo studies