Psycho-Historical Perceptions of Gandhi

The literature on leadership has its roots in the “Great Man” Theory of Thomas Carlyle, who declared that “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. These works which emphasised only political, economic, and social motivations for events, gave way to Erikson‟s, “Gandhi‟s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence”, is an attempt at understanding Gandhi through a Psycho-biographical study. Psycho-history analyses the incidents that left a deep impression on Gandhi and examines these experiences that Gandhi used on his techniques such as fasting, Ahimsa and Satyagraha later on. The present paper is a historiographical account of the psycho-historical writings on Gandhi. Erikson‟s seminal work which actually gained for Psychohistory its recognition, forms the major source of this paper and also includes some more recently published works such as Wolpert, Richards and Lelyveld. These narratives have explored the varied facets of his personality and his identity which had blurred between myth and history. Gandhi in most writings is raised to the stature of the Mahatma, but psycho-history has done justice to his character as it brings out the human side of the leader with all his frailties

Plant Products as Biopesticides: Building On Traditional Knowledge of Vrkshayurveda: Traditional Indian Plant Science

Today there is a global search for alternatives to chemical pesticides and as part of this process there are various efforts to test the use and efficacy of natural products for pest control and crop protection. Our Centre has been involved in exploring the traditional knowledge regarding the use of natural products for pest control and crop protection. As part of this effort, we have looked at the traditional folk practices prevalent among farmers as well as information from classical literature on the subject drawn from Vrkshayurveda (traditional Indian plant science). Following this, we have carried out experiments for standardizing and field testing promising natural products by determining the precise range and kind of pests controlled by them, determining the optimum concentration where they can be effective against pests without being harmful to useful organisms and predators as well as studying their mode of action. Subsequently, we have also developed storage forms of various of these products by using methods based on Ayurveda. Studies on the stability and shelf life of these products are also being carried out through an insect rearing laboratory. Finally, we have also set up village based biopesticides units where a range of these products are being prepared thus providing valuable inputs to sustainable agriculture and a means of livelihood to rural women and farmers

A reinforcing circuit action of extrasynaptic GABAA receptor modulators on cerebellar granule cell inhibition.

GABAA receptors (GABARs) are the targets of a wide variety of modulatory drugs which enhance chloride flux through GABAR ion channels. Certain GABAR modulators appear to acutely enhance the function of δ subunit-containing GABAR subtypes responsible for tonic forms of inhibition. Here we identify a reinforcing circuit mechanism by which these drugs, in addition to directly enhancing GABAR function, also increase GABA release. Electrophysiological recordings in cerebellar slices from rats homozygous for the ethanol-hypersensitive (α6100Q) allele show that modulators and agonists selective for δ-containing GABARs such as THDOC, ethanol and THIP (gaboxadol) increased the frequency of spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (sIPSCs) in granule cells. Ethanol fails to augment granule cell sIPSC frequency in the presence of glutamate receptor antagonists, indicating that circuit mechanisms involving granule cell output contribute to ethanol-enhancement of synaptic inhibition. Additionally, GABAR antagonists decrease ethanol-induced enhancement of Golgi cell firing. Consistent with a role for glutamatergic inputs, THIP-induced increases in Golgi cell firing are abolished by glutamate receptor antagonists. Moreover, THIP enhances the frequency of spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents in Golgi cells. Analyses of knockout mice indicate that δ subunit-containing GABARs are required for enhancing GABA release in the presence of ethanol and THIP. The limited expression of the GABAR δ subunit protein within the cerebellar cortex suggests that an indirect, circuit mechanism is responsible for stimulating Golgi cell GABA release by drugs selective for extrasynaptic isoforms of GABARs. Such circuit effects reinforce direct actions of these positive modulators on tonic GABAergic inhibition and are likely to contribute to the potent effect of these compounds as nervous system depressants

CLUSTER HEAD ELECTION MECHANISM-BASED ON FUZZY LOGIC (CHEF) WITH TDMA IN WSN

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are being used for huge range of applications where the traditional infrastructure based network is mostly infeasible. The most challenging aspect of WSN is that they are energy resource-constrained and that energy cannot be replenish. the wireless sensor network of power limited sensing devices called sensor deployed in a region to sense various types physical information from the environment, when these sensors sense and transmit data to other sensors present in the network, even the cluster head is elected according to check their residual energy considerable amount of energy will drain automatically to overcome this drawback by considering the protocol a fuzzy logic approach is used to elect the cluster head based on three descriptors-energy, centrality & distance and second CH is elected according to TDMA to overcome the data lost during energy drain occur in the CH .NS-2 simulation shows that proposed protocol provides higher energy efficiency. This paper proposes the mechanism or device is capable of utilizing its own system of control simply called as self-configurable clustering mechanism to detect the disordered CHs and replace them with other nodes. And results have been derived from simulator ns-2 to show the better performance

OTKRIVANJE I KLASIFIKACIJA BOLESTI USJEVA NA TEMELJU INFORMACIJSKOG HIBRIDNOG PRISTUPA

The objective of this paper to identify the diseases in the leaves of the all plants. Plant disease diagnosis helps to improve both the quality and quantity of crop productivity. In existing, to detect the diseases they used the spectroscopic techniques. These techniques are very expensive and can only be utilized by trained persons only. This work proposes an approach for the detection of leaf diseases based on the characterization of texture, shape and color properties. The detection of diseases which are detected using ISRC(improved sparse Representation Classifier) technique. First the GENABC clustering approach is applied to the input image to segment the affected area. Then extract the features from the affected area by using feature extraction techniques. In this paper Improved Transform Encoded Local Pattern used to extract the texture feature, Enhanced Gradient Feature (EGF) to extract the shape and Improved Color Histogram Techniques(ICH) are used to extract the color. And then these features are given to the ISRC classifier to get the exact type of disease on affected leaves. To analyze the performance of the proposed method we use four metrics. They are classification accuracy, error rate, precision value and recall value. From the analysis of experimental results, the ISRC method provides the best result than the existing approach.Cilj ovog rada je identificirati bolesti u listovima svih biljaka. Dijagnoza biljnih bolesti pomaže poboljšati kvalitetu i količinu produktivnosti usjeva. Za otkrivanje bolesti koriste se spektroskopske tehnike. Te tehnike su vrlo skupe i mogu ih koristiti samo obučene osoba. Ovaj rad predlaže pristup za otkrivanje bolesti listova na temelju karakterizacije svojstava teksture, oblika i boja. Otkrivanje bolesti koje se detektiraju uporabom ISRC tehnike. Najprije se primjenjuje GENABC klastering pristup na ulaznu sliku za segmentiranje pogođenog područja. Zatim se ekstrahiraju značajke sa zahvaćene površine pomoću tehnika ekstrakcije značajki. U ovom se radu koristi poboljšana transformirana enkodirana lokalna shema koja se koristi za izdvajanje značajki teksture, poboljšane značajke gradijenata (EGF) za izdvajanje oblika i poboljšane tehnike hektologije boja (ICH) za izdvajanje boje. Zatim se ove značajke daju ISRC klasifikatoru kako bi dobili točnu vrstu bolesti na zahvaćenom lišću. Za analizu izvedbe predložene metode koristimo četiri metrike. To su točnost klasifikacije, stopa pogrešaka, preciznost i vrijednost opoziva. Iz analize eksperimentalnih rezultata ISRC metoda daje bolji rezultat od postojećeg pristupa

Prevalence of vaginitis during pregnancy and its fetomaternal outcome in the rural setup

Background: Increasing evidence associates abnormalities in vaginal flora during pregnancy with preterm labor and delivery with potential neonatal sequelae due to prematurity and poor perinatal outcome. So the objective of this study is to study the prevalence of different type of vaginal infection during pregnancy and its fetomaternal outcome.Methods: This study was conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and with the help of Dept of Microbiology in Adichunanagiri institute of Medical College (AIMS) BG Nagar, over a period of one year extending from October 2013 to September 2014. This study was conducted on 920 pregnant women, evaluated for vaginitis during pregnancy and studied for the fetomaternal outcome.Results: After vaginal microflora evaluation of the 920 women, revealed that 840 (91.3%) women had normal vaginal flora, 38 (4.13%) of them were diagnosed as candidiasis, and 26 (2.83%) had BV, 10 (1.09%) had Trichomonasis and 6 (0.65%) had mixed infection. From 80 patients with vaginitis, 35 of them had PROM (term and preterm), 22 of them had preterm delivery, 11 of them had anemia, 6 of them had oligohydramions and 10 of them had pueperial sepsis with vaginitis during pregnancy. So the association of vaginitis with fetomaternal outcome was highly significant (p < 0.0001).Conclusions: Vaginal ecosystem study with the detection of pathogens is a key instrument in the prevention of preterm delivery, pPROM, chorioamnionitis, neonatal, puerperal and maternal-fetal infections