Arbuscular Mycorrhiza: Their distribution and association with plants in the revegetated mine spoils of India – an overview

Reclamation of mine spoils is receiving considerable attention in the recent years due to the ill effects of mining and dumping of the mine spoil waste leading to various environmental hazards. Mycorrhizal inoculation of mine spoils and mine spoil dumps is essential for the establishment of a diverse plant community and a better ecosystem.  This review focuses on the status of AM fungi, their distribution, diversity and density in the various mine spoils and mine spoil dumps of India. Species belonging to the genus Glomus was found to be widely distributed among the mine spoils. Legumes were the dominant and tolerant plants of the mine spoils supporting mycorrhizal colonisation

Effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge and attitude regarding importance of play needs among parents of under five children

Effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge and attitude regarding importance of play needs among parents of under five children OBJECTIVES To assess the pretest knowledge regarding importance of play needs among parents of under five children. To assess the pretest attitude regarding importance of play needs among parents of under five children. To assess the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on importance of play needs among parents of under five children. To correlate the knowledge and attitude regarding importance of play needs among parents of under five children. To find the association between the post test knowledge and attitude regarding importance of play needs among parents of under five children with the selected demographic variables. This study will help the under five parents to gain adequate knowledge and awareness on importance of play needs. This study help to share the information regarding importance of play needs of the surrounding mothers

Fatal Case of Diazepam and Paraquat Poisoning – A Case Report

Background: A very dangerous activity among youth and young adults is the indiscriminate mixing and sharing of prescription drugs, often in combination with alcohol or other drugs. The effects of these combinations of substances can be fatal.Case Report: A 28 years old adult male with alleged history of diazepam and paraquat poisoning was admitted with complaints of chest discomfort, epigastric pain, vomiting and drowsiness. The patient developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) and expired on the next day. To conclude, diazepam even though considered to be a safer drug, has risk of drug abuse and is fatal when taken in overdose along with other central nervous system depressants. Paraquat is a highly toxic compound widely used as herbicide and ingestion of the drug causes death due to respiratory failure. Conclusion: The present study emphasizes on the proper surveillance of diazepam intake in known psychiatric patients and strict rules must be enforced by the Government on marketing of herbicides and pesticides

On Contra gy-Continuous Functions

In this paper, we investigate further properties of the notion of contra gy-continuous functions which was introduced in [4]. We obtain some separation axioms of contra gy-continuous functions and discuss the relationships between contra gy-continuity and other related functions

Antifungal and Cytotoxic Activities of Some Marine Sponges Collected from the South East Coast of India

The present work describes the biological activities using the marine sponges collected from kanyakumari. The sponges are such as the Callyspongia diffusa, Echinodictyum gorgonoides, Callyspongia reticutis, Gelliodes cellaria, and Thalysias vulpine. It is revealed that the sponges showed the antifungal activity against the various fungal strains such as the Aspergillus niger, Pencillium notatum,and Candida albicans by using the agar well diffusion method. The sponge crude extracts seems to have effective cytotoxic property that was detected by Brine shrimp assay. Hence it is assumed that the marine sponges act as the vital source for the development of anticancer drugs

Insights from Modeling the 3D Structure of New Delhi Metallo-β-Lactamse and Its Binding Interactions with Antibiotic Drugs

New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1) is an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to a broad range of beta-lactam antibiotic drugs. This is because it can inactivate most beta-lactam antibiotic drugs by hydrolyzing them. For in-depth understanding of the hydrolysis mechanism, the three-dimensional structure of NDM-1 was developed. With such a structural frame, two enzyme-ligand complexes were derived by respectively docking Imipenem and Meropenem (two typical beta-lactam antibiotic drugs) to the NDM-1 receptor. It was revealed from the NDM-1/Imipenem complex that the antibiotic drug was hydrolyzed while sitting in a binding pocket of NDM-1 formed by nine residues. And for the case of NDM-1/Meropenem complex, the antibiotic drug was hydrolyzed in a binding pocket formed by twelve residues. All these constituent residues of the two binding pockets were explicitly defined and graphically labeled. It is anticipated that the findings reported here may provide useful insights for developing new antibiotic drugs to overcome the resistance problem

OCCURRENCE AND MORPHOLOGY OF ENDORHIZAL FUNGI IN CROP SPECIES

We surveyed 45 crop species in 39 genera of 21 families to explore the incidence and morphology of endorhizal fungal associations in roots. The survey indicated that 42 of the 45 crop species examined were associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. In addition, 20 of the mycorrhizal crop species were also associated with dark septate endophyte (DSE) fungi. Twenty crops had Arum-type and 22 had intermediate type AM morphologies. AM morphology has been described for the first time in 27 crop species. Three crop species lacked AM fungal association. Myristica fragrans though lacking AM association had DSE fungal association. The extent of colonization in roots ranged from 41% to 97% for AM an

An eco-friendly non-conventional adsorbent from silk cotton fiber for the removal of methylene blue dye

497-505Highly porous activated carbon fiber with excellent surface area has been prepared using silk cotton fiber as a precursor. The Activated Silk Cotton Fiber (ASC) has well developed porosity with rose flower like structure. The BET surface area of the prepared adsorbent is 1041.08 m2/g with a total pore volume of 0.4944 cm3/g. The adsorption capability of the prepared adsorbent ASC has been analyzed using methylene blue (MB) dye. The effect of pH indicates that ASC has its maximum adsorption at a pH of 10. On analyzing the kinetics of MB adsorption, the pseudo-second order kinetic model describes the adsorption with good r2 value of 0.9895 2 < 0.9997. The maximum Langmuir monolayer adsorption capacity is found to be 80.65 mg/g at 45°C. The experimental results and the thermodynamic studies prove the physisorption nature of MB adsorption onto ASC