A bovine model to study reproductive aging

Decline in fertility with age has been well documented in women. There are ethical limitations to use humans as a model for basic research, and there is a lack of well characterized animal model. The objective was to characterize and validate a bovine model for the study of age-associated subfertility. All experiments were conducted on the same group of 13-14 year old cows (n=10), and their 1-4 year old young daughters (n=10). Mother-daughter pairs were used to reduce genetic variations. Follicular wave pattern in a natural reproductive cycle was maintained in old cows similar to that in daughters. We hypothesized that aging in cattle is associated with elevated circulating concentrations of FSH, and reduced concentrations of steroid hormones. As stated, circulating FSH concentrations were higher (P=0.009) during follicular waves in old than young cows. The ovulatory follicle in 2-wave cycles was smaller in old cows (P=0.04), but plasma estradiol concentrations were higher (P=0.01). Luteal phase progesterone tended to be lower in old than young cows (P=0.1). The number of 4-5 mm follicles recruited into a follicular wave was lower (

Development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Quadcopter)With Real-Time Object Tracking

In the previous decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have turned into a subject of enthusiasm for some exploration associations. UAVs are discovering applications in different regions going from military applications to activity reconnaissance. This thesis is an overview of a particular sort of UAV called quadrotor or quadcopter. Scientists are often picking quadrotors for their exploration because a quadrotor can precisely and productively perform assignments that future of high hazard for a human pilot to perform. This thesis includes the dynamic models of a quadrotor and model-autonomous control systems. It also explains the complete description of developed quadcopter used for surveillance purpose with real-time object detection. In the present time, the focus has moved to outlining autonomous quadrotors. Ultimately, it examines the potential applications of quadrotors and their part in multi-operators frameworks. The Unmanned aerial vehicle (Quadcopter) has been developed that could be used for search and surveillance purpose. This project comprised of both hardware and software part. The hardware part comprised of the development of unmanned aerial vehicle (Quadcopter). The main components that were used in this project are KK2 flight controller board, outrunner brushless DC motor, Electronic Speed Controllers (ESC), GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, video transmitter and receiver, HD (High Definition) camera, RC (Radio Controlled) transmitter and receiver. Software part comprised of real-time object detection and tracking algorithm for detecting and tracking of human beings that were done with the help of Matlab software. After achieving the stable flight, the camera installed on the quadcopter would transmit a video signal to the receiver placed on the ground station. Video signal from the receiver would then be transferred to Matlab software for further processing or for tracking human beings using real-time object detection and tracking algorith

A new course on sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) provide a number of challenges in addressing poverty worldwide. To create momentum towards achieving these goals and the sub-goals (or targets), in many cases developing entrepreneurial solutions may be the best approach. We have developed and offered a new course based on an experiential learning pedagogy to educate students on creating entrepreneurial solutions to the UN SDGs. The course begins with an overview of the UN SDGs and an introduction to entrepreneurship. The course then focuses on ideation and opportunity identification for solutions addressing one of the SDGs. The students are then introduced to the business model canvas, including the Presidio graduate school extension that enhances the Business Model Canvas by adding questions specifically related to sustainability considerations of the business model development. The next step in the course development is teaching the students how to develop minimum viable products through a process of rapid prototyping. In parallel with the formal teaching and activities in the classroom, the students are required to develop a venture concept outside the classroom. This concept is posted to a discussion board where the students’ peers and the professor are asked to provide feedback to the students posting their venture ideas. The next step in the course is to go through a customer discovery process in which students are asked to learn from potential customers what are the customers’ pains, difficulties that they are looking for solutions. Again, the results of these interviews with potential customers are posted on the course discussion board for peer and professor review and feedback. The business model and concept is refined by the students and then the students move into a customer validation phase where the talk to a number of potential customers/early adopters to refine their prototype solution. Finally, the students are then taught how to develop a sales strategy and to actualize some sales of their products. The course work is supported by local expertise including a sales consultant, a logo design/branding expert, a supply chain expert, and experts in corporate structures, venture financing and intellectual property. The students present their final product/service design, their venture strategy, and sustainability metrics that they will use to gauge the performance of their ventures specifically against the sustainability aspects of the solution. This paper will present more details of the activities conducted in the class, a description of the student outcomes and how well they were achieved and plans on further developing the course based on student feedback

Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Address the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) were developed in 2015 to address many global development challenges. Some of these goals include bringing affordable and clean energy to all (UN SDG7), provide clean water and sanitation for all (UN SDG6), providing quality education from early childhood to adults (UN SDG4), and decent work and economic growth (UN SDG 8). Technology has been advancing and can be deployed to address these challenges through entrepreneurial ways. In this chapter we will describe how technology-enabled innovative and entrepreneurial solutions are being brought to address these goals. The specific research questions to be addressed are: What types of Innovation and Entrepreneurship models are most effective in addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals? This book chapter reviews different innovations in technologies and business models in the energy sector, particularly off-grid renewable energy, health care, water and sanitation, agriculture, and education sectors. The common themes of innovations in business models and technologies will be drawn from these case study reviews to guide researchers in developing new entrepreneurial approaches to addressing the UN SDGs

Nitrate Accumulation and Utilization in Fodder Oats Varieties as Affected by Different Nitrogen Levels

Importance of fodder crops in agriculture needs no emphasis because of the fact that regular fodder availability is basic requirement for livestock production. The area under fodder in Punjab is 2.03 million hectares with total production of 45 million tons, which is not sufficient to meet the maintenance requirements of livestock. To improve the quality of milk production it is important that animals are fed with good quality of fodder. Nitrogen is an essential primary nutrient for plant growth and plays an important role in productivity of forage crops. The application of N at various growth stages is one of the ways to increase forage productivity of crops. The excessive use of nitrogen can lead to deteriorate soil health and accumulation of nitrate-N in fodders above the permissible limit (\u3e 5000 ppm) which is toxic to animals. Some of the crops such as Sudan grass, pearl millet and oats are potent accumulators of nitrate. Oats is the most important winter cereal crop grown in northern, western and central India. Oats is gaining importance throughout the world due to its uses as human food, animal feed and fodder crop. One of reasons of nitrate toxicity in oats is high input of fertilizer. When growing conditions are favorable, plants take up nitrogen in form of nitrate. The nitrate is rapidly converted into ammonia which is incorporated into the plant protein. Unfavorable growing conditions can interfere with nitrate use and cause it to accumulate in the plant. Nitrate toxicity arises when nitrate conversion into nitrite is faster than its utilization into ammonia Nitrate reductase (NR) is considered a key enzyme in nitrogen metabolism. It is not only rate limiting enzyme in inorganic nitrogen assimilation but also the major regulatory step in N metabolism (Young et al., 2009). NR is considered to catalyze the NO3 - assimilation because it initiates the reaction when NO3 - is available. NR activity is modified rapidly in response to level of nitrate, CO2, light, carbon skeletons and nitrogen metabolites. In the present study inter relationship between crude protein level, nitrate-N value and NR activity in relation to N inputs has been worked out

Using ICT and Energy Technologies for Improving Global Engineering Education

Information, communication, and energy technologies have the potential to improve engineering education worldwide. With the availability of low cost, open-source microcontrollers/microcomputers, such as the Arduino and Raspberry Pi platforms, and a wide variety of sensors and communication tools, a range of engineering applications and innovations may be developed at a low price. Furthermore, the cost of solar panels and LED lamps have also dropped dramatically in recent years and these also allow for improved energy support in regions that lack energy access or require autonomous monitoring/processing. Also, low-cost 3D printers are now widely available for making simple prototypes of hardware. Finally, low-cost educational software tools have also become available. Combining these technologies enables engineering education to be brought into traditionally inaccessible communities in the world. In this book chapter, examples of how ICT and energy technologies are being used to teach students engineering technologies in underserved communities will be described. Application areas to be described will include environmental monitoring, clean water systems, and remote learning

Academic perceptions of educational technology: towards communicative rationality in the higher education institution

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Enquiry.This thesis explores the management of change in higher education by applying a Habermasian conceptual framework to understand, explore and operationalise academic perceptions of Educational Technology. It questions the uncritical acceptance of techgerialism (i.e. managerialism through technology) in the Higher Education Institution (HEI) in a case study of academic perceptions of Educational Technology over a decade of change in one post-1992 HEI. Perceptions were drawn from participants in one school in the HEI to counter the paucity of research focusing on academics’ views of Educational Technology. Increasingly in-depth interviews were conducted over three rounds of data collection in an emergent research design based on narrative analysis. Each phase of change was interpreted as an example of formal, political and then more collegial change respectively. Academic participants expressed broadly similar negative perceptions of Educational Technology change in their HEI: suspicion, resistance, displacement and lack of confidence in leadership. These were categorised as examples of Habermasian social pathologies (anomie, alienation, disintegration and social instability) rooted in concerns about an increasingly powerful HEI systemworld. When discussing Educational Technology, participants expressed socio-cultural concerns more readily than they addressed pedagogic issues and demonstrated both critical and tolerant beliefs towards the management of change. The insider-outsider position of the researcher changed during the research which influences its development. The impact of this shifting perspective is considered reflexively throughout the thesis. The main contribution to knowledge is the augmentation of a Habermasian conceptual framework around lifeworld, systemworld and communicative rationality. Adapting his theory of social pathologies, the thesis suggests that there are corollary values, predominantly unarticulated by the participants, which may ameliorate these pathologies. The Educational Technology pathologies found in the data are ‘inverted’ to values (e.g. anomie to enculturation, alienation to solidarity) as part of the analysis. The thesis concludes by presenting a mechanism for operationalising a Habermasian public sphere, informed by these identified values, as a forum for developing intersubjective consensus and undistorted communication in the HEI

Electrochemical studies on zirconium phosphoborate based heterogeneous membranes

Electrode potential measurements have been applied to study electrical characteristics like transport numbers, permselectivity & fixed charged density of zirconium phosphoborate ion exchange membranes. The potential measurements were made across the cation exchange membrane maintained at 27±0.1 °C, using halide and nitrate salts of alkali and alkaline earth metals as electrolytes. The membrane potentials, transport numbers and permselectivity values increase with increase in average concentration from 0.0055 M to 0.0495 M for 1:1 and 1:2 electrolytes. With the increase in concentration of the electrolyte, the number of counter ions interacting with the membrane surface increases leading to enhanced Donnan exclusion responsible for the increase of transport numbers. Fixed charge density of the membrane (X) for 1:2 electrolytes is higher in magnitude than for 1:1 electrolytes indicating that the cation exchange is taking place as hydrated species. This hypothesis is supported by higher transport numbers for alkaline earth metal ions than alkali metal ions throughout the range of concentration

Proposed Guidance and Counseling Program for the Secondary Schools in Punjab State

Punjab State is bounded on the west by Pakistan, on the north by Kashmire, a block of Himchal Prodesh (names of States in India) and Tibet, and on the east by the river Jumna. The State lies between 27 ½ and 34 degrees north and encompasses the length of Rajatham, Uthat Pradesh, and Delhi on the southeast. The population of Punjab State, according to the 1962 census, is 20 million people. This state has 4.63% of the total population of India, with 4.01% of the total land area and ranks eleventh in area. The main occupation of the people is farming. (2) Statement of the Problem: The major purpose of the study is to (1) examine the guidance concepts prevalent in the United States and to determine in what way they can be adopted in Punjab, India with respect to present circumstances, (2) to determine the present guidance status in Punjab State, and (2) to propose a guidance program in the secondary schools of Punjab State. (see more in text

Creating variability through interspecific hybridization and its utilization for genetic improvement in mungbean [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek]

Interspecific hybridization is important for genetic enhancement of crop plants. The present study was conducted to study genetic variation in advanced interspecific lines of mungbean for yield and its component traits, to determine the association among different traits and their contribution towards seed yield through correlation and path coefficient analysis. A set of 64 genotypes including 51 advanced interspecific lines derived from mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) × urdbean (Vigna mungo L. Hepper) and mungbean (Vigna radiata L. Wilczek) × ricebean (Vignaumbellata Thumb.) crosses and 13 parents (mungbean, urdbean and ricebean) was the experimental material for this study. The mean sums of squares for genotypes were highly significant for all the traits. Mean sum of squares for replications were also highly significant for all traits except days to 50 % flowering, days to maturity and harvest index at 1 % and 5 % level of significance. This indicated substantial magnitude of diversity and variability in the interspecific lines and parents under study, which could be further exploited. High to moderate PCV and GCV along with high heritability and genetic advance was observed for biological yield per plant, seed yield per plant and plant height, indicating that these traits could be easy targets for phenotypic selection and consequently, may be improved genetically via simple plant selection methods. On the basis of correlation studies, it could be concluded that all the traits under investigation except number of seeds per pod and harvest index were important for selection for yield improvement. Path analysis further revealed that harvest index could also be one of the criteria of selection for higher yield in these interspecific lines