Fuzzy logic approach in prioritization of crop growing parameters in protected farms: a case in North East India

 Global food demand is rising exponentially as the population is increasing.  Protected farming is becoming increasingly popular among the farming communities for fast growing vine crops round the year.  Consideration of crop growing parameters while designing and maintaining a protected farm is very important for optimal crop growth and profit.  Many farmers does not consider all the crop growing parameters and does not know the importance of all factors in the optimal crop growth.  In this paper, an attempt has been made to prioritize 12 crops growing parameters using fuzzy approach.  12 crop growing parameters were selected from the literature and scored by four different evaluation methods viz., food consumer importance, expert’s importance, farmer importance and food dealer importance.  The results revealed that the descending order of relative importance of the 12 crop factors are water quality, light intensity, nutrient availability, crop cultivar, substrate media, daylight length, moisture availability, crop spacing, temperature, air freshness, air circulation and relative humidity respectively.  Priority for crop growing factors must be considered while designing and maintaining a protected farm for optimal crop growth and net return

Development and Validation By RP-HPLC Method For the Estimation of Piperine Coenzyme Q10 In Bulk and Pharmaceutical Dosage Form

Safety is the fundamental principle in the provision of pharmaceutical products for health care of human being. Nutritional supplements used in medical practice are gaining considerable momentum in the world during the past decades. But this supplement is needed to be analysed before releasing in market to avoid any complications. A combination of piperine and coenzyme Q10 is used as nutritional supplement. As no analytical method has been developed for their simultaneous estimation a simple, specific, sensitive, precise and accurate RP-HPLC method was developed for the determination of CoQ10 and piperine in bulk or pharmaceutical dosage form. Coenzyme is very popular for its antioxidant property for protecting LDL from oxidation and piperine maintains cardiovascular system and increases bioavailability of coenzyme Q10. In this developed method, Waters X Bridge C8 column (250mm x 4.6mm,5μm) was used as a stationary phase and acetonitrile, tetrahydrofuran(THF), and water used in 65:32:3 (v/v) ratio as mobile phase with 1 ml/min flowrate with PDA detector detection at 275nm. The RP-HPLC was developed according to ICH guideline parameters. The retention times of Coenzyme Q10 and Piperine were 4.56 and 8.19 min respectively. The linearity ranges have lied between 4-6μg/ml, 240-360μg/ml. Correlation coefficient for both is 0.997. The present successfully validated method was applicable for the assay of piperine and coenzyme Q10 in bulk and pharmaceutical dosage forms

ANTIPROLIFERATIVE AND APOPTOGENIC EFFICACY OF ANTIDIABETIC DRUGS METFORMIN AND SITAGLIPTIN AGAINST MCF7 AND HEPG2 CANCER CELLS: A COMPARATIVE MOLECULAR STUDY

Lifestyle and diet-related disorder type 2 diabetes (T2D), has reached epidemic margin globally. The relationships between diabetes and cancer are complex. However, evidence supports the hypothesis that obesity raises the risks of both T2D and certain cancers. A further complication arises from the controversy that drugs used in the treatment of T2D increase or decrease cancer risk or influence cancer diagnosis. Herein, we hypothesized that the antidiabetic medications can improve cancer outcome. In this study, we have studied the potency and efficacy of two well-known antidiabetic drugs metformin and sitagliptin. Although there are controversies for the usage of DDP4 inhibitors, we found that sitagliptin has a potent cytotoxic effect on both type of cancer cells (MCF7 and HepG2). It has also shown certain impact on early apoptogenic efficacy in HepG2 and late apoptogenic efficacy on MCF7 as well as the caspase-3 activity expression in both cell lines. In the line of our study, it might be concluded that sitagliptin has significant antiproliferative and apoptogenic efficacy in MCF7 and HepG2 cancer cells, though it was observed to be lesser than that of metformin. Further thorough investigation in a cancer-diabetes animal model, as well as the trial on cancer-diabetic human subjects, is required to establish the efficacy of type 2 antidiabetic drugs in treating diabetic cancer patients. Keywords: Metformin; Sitagliptin; DPP4 inhibitor; Cancer; Diabetes; Proliferation;  Apoptosis

Pomegranate and sweet lime juices along with green coconut water promote rapid restoration of haematological parameters in patient infected with dengue: A case report

We report a case of dengue fever in a 9-years old Indian child. She was given “anti-hyper thermic” drug paracetamol and anti-biotic amoxicillin for 5 days. The patient was detected with dengue infection (NS1 positive) with a 5 days history of high fever and headache. After scrutinizing the haematology data, the medications (paracetamol & amoxicillin) were stopped and only diet which was continued is fruit juices (pomegranate and sweet lime juices along with green coconut water) as nutritional supplement. After 48 hours of continuous administration of nutritional supplements, blood parameters showed immense change. From this case study it can be stated that, infection with dengue and subsequent decline in the platelet and leukocyte count can well be restored with pomegranate, sweet lime and green coconut water. Keywords: Dengue, Pomegranate, Sweet Lime, Green Coconut Wate

Application of Electrical Network Frequency of Digital Recordings for Location-Stamp Verification

Electrical network frequency (ENF) is a signature of a power distribution grid. It represents the deviation from the nominal frequency (50 or 60 Hz) of a power system network. The variations in ENF sequences within a grid are subject to load fluctuations within that particular grid. These ENF variations are inherently located in a multimedia signal, which is recorded close to the grid or directly from the mains power line. Thus, the specific location of a recording can be identified by analyzing the ENF sequences of the multimedia signal in absence of the concurrent power signal. In this article, a novel approach to location-stamp authentication based on ENF sequences of digital recordings is presented. ENF patterns are extracted from a number of power and audio signals recorded in different grid locations across the world. The extracted ENF signals are decomposed into low outliers and high outliers frequency segments and potential feature vectors are determined for these ENF segments by statistical and signal processing analysis. Then, a multi-class support vector machine (SVM) classification model is developed to verify the location-stamp information of the recordings. The performance evaluations corroborate the efficacy of the proposed framework

Suitable Substrate for Crop Growth under Protected Farms – An Assessment

With the advent of civilization, open field agriculture is facing some major challenges; most importantly decrease in per capita land availability. In this paper, an attempt has been made to review crop growing substrates for protected farms. Substrate selection is a critical factor for optimal production of high-quality vegetables. Rooting depth determines the volume of substrate from. Consideration of optimal crop growing substrate and irrigation method while designing and maintaining a protected farm is very important for optimal crop growth and profit. Most farmers do not consider all the crop growing parameters for the optimal crop growth. &nbsp