STATUS OF WOMEN CONTRACT WORKER

The contract labour system is a very old system. The contract labour system was started in the latter half of the nineteenth century when there was the problem of recruitment of workers. The employers were unable to solve the problem. So, to solve this problem they took the help of contractors who supplied labour to the Industries and at other places of employment. This was the historical reason for the start of the contract labour system. In India contract workers work in various fields and sectors like agriculture sector, construction sector, and manufacturing and also in unorganized sector. 93% of total labour employment i.e 36.9 crore labours are engaged in unorganized sector. Although contract labour act, 1970 and acts like Equal remuneration act, 1976, Minimum wages act, 1948, Interstate migration act, 1979 are applicable to contract labour but because of several reasons they are unable to get benefit of these legal provisions

Solar Cells for Ecological Sustainable Development: A Review

Solar energy is considered an environmentally friendly and never-ending renewable source of energy. Solar cells are an essential component of ecological sustainability. This energy can be harnessed for generating electricity without any pollutants even in remote areas. This renewable source of energy has been used to eliminate fossil sources. Through the photovoltaic effect, solar energy is transformed into electrical energy in a solar cell. Engineers and scientists are constantly working to improve solar cell efficiency, lower their cost, and develop technologies that maximize the quantity of sunshine turned into electrical power. These efforts culminate into four generations of solar cells – first, second, third, and fourth generations. Various models have been utilized to conceptually analyze solar cells, which is also beneficial to improve the solar cell's performance. In this study, advancement in the generations of solar cells, their types, manufacturing processes, various models, and future aspects have been discussed

Acute viral Hepatitis E in antenatal women: a multicenter prospective study

Background: Hepatitis E has poor prognosis in pregnancy and leads to 20-30% mortality in term cases. The Aim of the study was to observe the trend of maternal and perinatal outcome in acute viral hepatitis E.Methods: A prospective study conducted in two high risk obstetric center of Jabalpur district in January 2015 to December 2017. The inclusion criteria were all antenatal women diagnosed with acute viral Hepatitis E entering to the Intensive care unit of any gestational age who later delivered in the same center. Other than acute hepatitis E all acute hepatitis cases and women missed in follow up in delivery were excluded from the study. The data collected on demographic, clinical and biochemical variables in excel sheet and descriptive analysis done by SPSS system.Results: There were 72 antenatal women enrolled with mentioned criteria in study duration. Out of these only 67 were in follow up and alive till their delivery in the same set ups. Out of these 70.14% were Primigravida of median age 27 year. The mean gestational age at detection of hepatitis E was 30.3week. The maternal mortality observed was 17.9% (12/67) in the total study population. The high grade of mortality was significantly associated with high grade of disease. There were 19.4% (13/67) perinatal (mortality seen which included intrauterine (14.9%) and neonatal (4.4%).Conclusions: The severity of Hepatitis and high grade of hepatic encephalopathy following poor primary care in the beginning of disease results in poor perinatal and maternal outcome

Interview

Jasbir Jain, formerly Professor of English at the University of Rajasthan, where she was also Director, Academic Staff College (1992-1997), UGC Emeritus Fellow (2001-2003) and Sahitya Akademi's Writer in-Residence(2009) is currently the Founder Director of IRIS, Jaipur (Institute for Research in Interdisciplinary Studies). Professor Jain is an elected life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, U.K. Sheis the recipient of several awards including the K. K. Birla Foundation Fellowship for Comparative Literature (1997-1999); Lifetime Achievement Award IACS (2004); and the SALA award for distinguished scholarship (2008). Professor Jain has published extensively in a wide range of areas, especially Indian literature. This includes language literatures, an area where she has published three volumes on the history of the Indian novel from 1860-2002. These are: Feminizing Political Discourse (1996), Contextualising Modernism (2001) and Beyond Post Colonialism (2006). Other thrust areas in which she has made her mark are feminism, drama, culture, theory and narratology. Some of her well-known publications include Deconstructing Character: Transformations in American Drama (1997); Theorising Resistance (2012); You Ask, I Tell-a translation of Hansa Wadkar's autobiography that she co-edited with Shobha Shinde (2013);The Diaspora Writes Home (2015); Forgiveness: Between Memory and History (2016) and Bridge Across the Rivers (2017), co-edited with Tripti Jain. Her latest publication, Subcontinental Histories: Literary Reflections on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is expected to be out by the end of 2017. Her work is widely citedand is evidence of her unrelenting pursuit of intellectual inquiry and exploration of ideas

Characterisation of cell-wall-derived polypeptide antigens from different species of mycobacterium

Cell walls from different species of mycobacterium were purified on a sucrose step gradient. The components derived from these preparations were characterised by sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, followed by staining or by western blotting. Surface-exposed polypeptide molecules were also identified by biotinylation. Many protein and glycoprotein molecules were identified in the cell walls. Some of these molecules were immunogenic in man and experimental animals and showed wide variability from species to species. The data suggest that these molecules could be of significance in the diagnosis and pathophysiology of mycobacterial diseases

Formulation, Optimization and Evaluation of Nano Based Novel Ophthalmic Drug Delivery System for Glaucoma

Drugs delivered topically using traditional administration methods have a low bioavailability. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to create and refine the in-situ gel of carteolol-loaded chitosan nanoparticles (CHNPs), which were made using the ionotropic gelation method. Using formulation variables such as CH (A), STPP concentration (B), and stirring speed (C), the formulation was optimised by the application of box-Behnken design. Their impacts on the independent variables, such as entrapment efficiency (Y2) and particle size (Y1), were assessed. Additionally, the physicochemical properties, in-vitro drug release, ex-vivo permeability, bioadhesive studies, corneal hydration, histopathology, and HET-CAM of Carteolol-CHNPs were assessed. Nanoparticles loaded in-situ gel were also analysed. The tiny particle size (153 ± 6 nm) of the optimised formulation (Carteolol-CHNP opt) is ideal for ocular administration. In addition, it had a spherical form, a high encapsulation rate (71.06%), and a positive zeta potential (+36.3 mV). A sustained drug release profile (83.99 ± 3.6% over 12 hours) was found in the drug release research. Hydration, histology, and the HET-CAM test all reveal that the excised goat cornea in the CHNPs loaded in-situ gel did not show any signs of injury. The outcomes shown that glaucoma patients with a longer precorneal residency length and better patient compliance could benefit from the use of Carteolol-CHNPs loaded in-situ gel by reducing the dosage frequency

calcium-binding protein 1 of entamoeba histolytica transiently associates with phagocytic cups in a calcium-independent manner

EhCaBP1, a calcium-binding protein of the parasite Entamoeba histolytica, is known to participate in cellular processes involving actin filaments. This may be due to its direct interaction with actin. In order to understand the kinetics of EhCaBP1 in such processes, its movement was studied in living cells expressing GFP-EhCaBP1. The results showed that EhCaBP1 accumulated at phagocytic cups and pseudopods transiently. The time taken for appearance and disappearance of EhCaBP1 was found to be around 12 s. Site-directed mutagenesis was used to generate an EhCaBP1 mutant with reduced Ca2+- and G-actin binding ability without any defect in its ability to bind F-actin. The overexpression of this mutant EhCaBP1 in the E. histolytica trophozoites resulted in the impairment of erythrophagocytosis, uptake of bacterial cells, killing of target cells but not fluid-phase pinocytosis. However, the mutant protein was still found to transiently localize with f-actin at the phagocytic cups and pseudopods. The mutant protein displayed reduced ability to activate endogenous kinase(s) suggesting that phagosome formation may require Ca2+-EhCaBP1 transducing downstream signalling but initiation of phagocytosis may be independent of its intrinsic ability to bind Ca2+. The results suggest a dynamic association of EhCaBP1 with F-actin-mediated processes

Ras hyperactivation versus overexpression : Lessons from Ras dynamics in Candida albicans

We thank Prof. Neta Dean for the CIp10ADH1-Cherry plasmid and Prof. Aaron Mitchell for the BWP17 strain. We gratefully acknowledge Prof. Sudipta Maiti, TIFR, Mumbai, India for providing the data acquisition software. We also appreciate the feedback and discussions with Dr. Rohini Muthuswami, SLS, JNU as well as from the Protein Society group, New Delhi while this study was taking shape. We thank Prof. Alok Bhattacharya for Cytochalasin D. The GC-MS and fluorescence lifetime measurements were carried out at the Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility (AIRF), JNU. Confocal images were recorded either at the central instrumentation facility (CIF), SLS, JNU or at AIRF, JNU. This work was supported by project grants from Department of Biotechnology (DBT, Project grant no. BT/PR20410/BRB/10/1542/2016) and Department of Science and Technology (DST, Project grant no. SB/SO/BB-011/2014), India to S.S.K; and project grants from Department of Information Technology, (DIT, Project grant no. 12(4)/2007-PDD), India to S.S. for FCS setup. In addition, both S.S. and S.S.K. thank DBT-BUILDER for funding support (Project grant no. BT/PR5006/INF/153/2012). S.S.K. also acknowledges funding support from UGC Resource Networking grant to the School of Life Sciences. We thank DST-PURSE and JNU for assistance with funding for publication. G.S.V. and S.C.S. received a fellowship from UGC; V.A.P., B.Y., P.J., N.P., M.F.K. acknowledge CSIR for fellowships. S.L.S. received a fellowship from ICMR. D.T.H. and M.F.K. thank DBT-BUILDER for funding.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

N- and C-Terminal Domains of the Calcium Binding Protein EhCaBP1 of the Parasite Entamoeba histolytica Display Distinct Functions

Entamoeba histolytica, a protozoan parasite, is the causative agent of amoebiasis, and calcium signaling is thought to be involved in amoebic pathogenesis. EhCaBP1, a Ca2+ binding protein of E. histolytica, is essential for parasite growth. High resolution crystal structure of EhCaBP1 suggested an unusual arrangement of the EF-hand domains in the N-terminal part of the structure, while C-terminal part of the protein was not traced. The structure revealed a trimer with amino terminal domains of the three molecules interacting in a head-to-tail manner forming an assembled domain at the interface with EF1 and EF2 motifs of different molecules coming close to each other. In order to understand the specific roles of the two domains of EhCaBP1, the molecule was divided into two halves, and each half was separately expressed. The domains were characterized with respect to their structure, as well as specific functional features, such as ability to activate kinase and bind actin. The domains were also expressed in E. histolytica cells along with green fluorescent protein. The results suggest that the N-terminal domain retains some of the properties, such as localization in phagocytic cups and activation of kinase. Crystal structure of EhCaBP1 with Phenylalanine revealed that the assembled domains, which are similar to Calmodulin N-terminal domain, bind to Phenylalanine revealing the binding mode to the target proteins. The C-terminal domain did not show any of the activities tested. However, over-expression in amebic cells led to a dominant negative phenotype. The results suggest that the two domains of EhCaBP1 are functionally and structurally different from each other. Both the domains are required for structural stability and full range of functional diversity