Remote sensing in marine fisheries - Indian experience

Remote sensing is a new and rapidly developing science that is finding applications in diverse areas like agriculture, meteorology, forestry, hydrology, fisheries etc. in the country. The associated technology covers a wide range of techniques that enable features and properties of an object or an area to be measured without the instruments coming into direct contact with particular object or area

Small-scale fisheries at Lawson's Bay Waltair

One of the most important fish landing centres in Andhra Pradesh is perhaps the centre at Lawson's Bay Waltair. Here fishermen from three adjacent fishing villages viz., Jalaripeta, Vasavanipallem and Moolapalem with indigenous and traditional craft and gear land their catches which are chiefly disposed off in local markets. Data on fish catches at Lawsons' Bay collected over a period of 9 years from 1970 to 1978 show that on an average 560 tonnes of fish per annum are landed at this centre. Considering the fact that large scale fishing by mechanised boats has been established and conducted off Visakhapatnam and substantial expansion and exploitation of demersal fisheries are contemplated, the present result is of significance because of the very nature of the small-scale fisheries at Lawson's Bay and there is no reason to believe that conflicts of interest exist

The mud bank prawn fishery of Kerala - Declining trend

The mud bank fishery, locally known as chaakara fishery is a unique phenomenon along the Kerala coast during the south-west monsoon period. The duration and the location of the fishery show slight variations from year to year. During the rainy season concentrations of mud occur in different areas very close to the shore, providing much calmer seas for operations of fishing boats in comparison to the stormy surf of the monsoon seas of the surrounding localities.In the years in which the fishery fails the condition of the entire population of fishermen who depend on and look forward to this fishery is deplorable.In view of the habits of these prawns of utilising the adjoining estuaries and backwaters of the area as their nursery grounds to a large extent, the increasing amount of exploitation of their young ones in the fishery in the inside waters may probably be one of the reason for the failure of the prawn fishery in the inshore and mud bank areas

Proceedings of the workshop on acquisition and dissemination of data on marine living resources of Indian seas

In the workshop on acquisition and dissemination of data on marine living resources of Indian seas different sessions were carried out and these were, Present status of marine living resources statistics in India, Identification of data requirements of user sectors and standardisation of suitable proformae for collection of data, Operation of large vessels in the Exclusive Economic Zone, Processing and dissemination of data on marine living resources of indian sea

List of titles Marine Fisheries Information Service, Technical and Extension Series No.1-50

Marine Fisheries Information Service, Technical and Extension Series No.1-5

Trypanosoma brucei editosomes have a single, bifunctional reaction center - Evidence for a non-collisional reaction mechanism

Most mitochondrial transcripts in African trypanosomes are edited to generate translatable transcripts. The reaction is catalyzed by a macromolecular protein complex, the 20S editosome. Editing is characterized by the site-specific insertion and/or deletion of exclusively U nucleotides and in order to catalyze the reaction, editosomes must bind a panel of different substrate pre-mRNAs. The experiments documented in chapter one verify that 20S editosomes bind different “in vivo-sized” transcripts with nanomolar affinities and association/dissociation rate constants typical for RNA/protein complexes. The editosome/RNA interaction is non-discriminative, thus enabling the interaction with different pre-edited mRNAs as well as with partially edited mRNAs and guide RNAs. Using immunogold-labeling in combination with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) I was able to demonstrate that editosomes have only one RNA substrate-binding site, which suggests that both subtypes of the RNA editing reaction (U-insertion and U-deletion) are catalyzed within a single, bifunctional reaction center. In chapter two I present the first atomicforce microscopy (AFM)-based pictures of 20S editosomes and 20S editosome/RNA complexes. The data confirm that editosomes have a single RNA binding domain and further demonstrate that editosomes contain a so far unknown “chaperone-type” RNA unwinding activity. Upon RNA binding, transcripts become progressively unwound, ultimately enabling multiple 20S editosomes to interact with one substrate RNA. RNA editing is a pre-requisite for the survival of Trypanosoma brucei. The life cycle of the parasite involves the cyclic transmission between a mammalian host and the Tsetse fly as the insect vector. Since RNA editing has been shown to be regulated between the two developmental stages, I analyzed in chapter three whether RNA editing is also regulated within the cell cycle of the parasite. Editosome isolates from the G1- and G2-phase of the trypanosome cell cycle were tested for their RNA editing activity. The experiments identified catalytic activity in both phases thus demonstrating that the processing reaction is not cell cycle-regulated. The basic steps of the editing reaction cycle have been unraveled with the help of an in vitro assay that is per-formed at dilute solvent conditions. However, in vivo the reaction takes place inside the highly “crowded” mitochondrial environment. In chapter four I analyzed the effects of macro-molecular crowding on RNA editing using defined conditions from dilute to semidilute to crowded solvent proper-ties. I was able to demonstrate that the thermodynamic stabilities of the pre-mRNA/gRNA hybrid RNAs differ at these conditions. Crowded solvent properties stabilize the RNA molecules and alter the rate constants for the association and dissociation of the substrate RNAs to editosomes. Ultimately, the processing reaction is inhibited. These results imply that the in vivo reaction cannot rely on a diffusionally-controlled, collision-based mechanism. The data advocate a scenario in which RNA editing is conducted by a “hand-over” or “channeling” of substrate RNAs from one processing machinery to the next

The Case for Smartwatch-based Diet Monitoring

Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier

Sea truth data collection: estimation of diffuse attenuation coefficient in ocean colour mapping

Phytoplankton pigments in the ocean waters are the prime synthesisers in marine food chain which in turn terminate as pelagic or benthic nekton. They perform about half of the total global photosynthesis and compr is ethe upper consumption and production. These are the substances that have definite spectral characteristics and thereby govern the ocean colour