TANDULIYAKA (AMARANTHUS VIRIDIS): A HIGHLY NUTRITIONAL HERB

In the past 20 years, very little progress has been achieved in reducing food insecurity, child malnutrition and hunger in Africa. Under-nutrition and micronutrients deficiencies are widespread and affect mainly women and children. To address these problems, increased consumption of African leafy vegetables is promoted as sources of both micronutrients and bio-active compounds. Widely promoted African leafy vegetables include Amaranthus sp., Species of this genus are used as pseudo-cereals in Europe and America, and are mostly planted as vegetables in Africa. Amaranthus has been rediscovered as a promising food crop mainly due to its resistance to heat, drought, diseases and pests, and the high nutritional value of both seeds and leaves. Leaves are rich in proteins and micronutrients such as iron, calcium, zinc, vitamin C and vitamin A. All parts of the plant are used as medicine to heal many diseases in African communities. Tanduliyaka (A. viridis) is grown and utilized in many areas of the world as both a wild and cultivated pot herb. The plant is rich in calcium and iron and is a good source of vitamins B and C. Due to its small seed size and use as a pot herb, A. viridis is moved, both on purpose and unwittingly, throughout the world. The seeds can survive in the digestive tract of chickens. It is good cattle fodder, and is used medicinally and for making soap, but is poisonous to pigs.

A COMPARATIVE CLINICAL STUDY TO EVALUATE THE EFFECT OF TANDULIYAKA IN GARBHINI PANDU W.S.R. TO ANAEMIA DURING PREGNANCY

Under-nutrition and micronutrient deficiencies are widespread and affect mainly women and children. To address these problems, increased consumption of leafy vegetables is promoted as sources of both micronutrients and bio-active compounds. Widely promoted leafy vegetables include Amaranthus sp., Species of this genus are used as pseudo-cereals in Europe and America, and are mostly planted as vegetables in Africa. Amaranthus has been rediscovered as a promising food crop mainly due to its resistance to heat, drought, diseases and pests, and the high nutritional value of both seeds and leaves. Leaves are rich in proteins and micronutrients such as iron, calcium, zinc, vitamin C and vitamin A. Pregnancy induces some physiological changes that often confuse the diagnosis of several disorders and the assessment of the suitable treatments. This is especially true in case of anaemia. The World Health Organization estimates that 58% of pregnant women in developing countries are anaemic. The two most common causes of anaemia during pregnancy are iron deficiency and acute blood loss. Iron deficiency anaemia is the most common nutritional disorder in the world that affects particularly women of reproductive age. In the present study Amaranthus capsules showed significant improvement in terms of subjective parameters like Panduta, Hrid-drava, Shrama, Swasa, Aruchi, as well as objective parameters like Hb%, MCV, PCV, RBC etc. This study has revealed that Amaranthus capsules provided statistically significant improvement in the cardinal features of Garbhinipandu as well as it has showed good effect on jatharagni and nourishment of pregnant women and foetus without any side-effects, due to its properties like deepana, pachana, and high nutritional value

AJAMODA (APIUM LEPTOPHYLUM)- A NATURAL PAINKILLER

Ajamoda is an important drug of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani systems of medicine, which consists of umbelliferous fruits.  The drug to be used in the formulations are fruits of Apium leptophyllum. Apium is a genus of about 20 species of flowering plants in the family Apiaceae. Some species are edible, notably Apium graveolance, Apium leptophylum, which includes the commercially important vegetables celery, celeriac and chinese celery. It is grown extensively in the South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia. Its aromatic dried fruits, like its close relative ajwain, are often used in Bengali cuisine but are rarely used in the rest of India. The fresh leaves are used as an herb in Thailand and it is used medicinally in Myanmar. The small dried fruits, commonly referred to as seeds, are similar in appearance to those of ajwain, celery, and caraway. Because of their similarity in both appearance and flavor, it is often confused or substituted with celery seed. Ajamoda consists of dried, aromatic fruits of Apium leptophyllum (Pers.) F. V. M. ex Benth. (Fam. Umbelliferae); an annual herb cultivated in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka; collected by thrashing plants on a mat and dried in shade or in drying sheds. The oil of seeds of Ajamoda is also used in compounding Ayurvedic formulations. While, fatty oil of seeds is antispasmodic and nerve stimulant, seeds of celery are rich in vitamin-B

\u3ci\u3eosr1\u3c/i\u3e Is Required for Podocyte Development Downstream of \u3ci\u3ewt1a\u3c/i\u3e

Odd-skipped related 1 (Osr1) encodes a zinc finger transcription factor required for kidney development. Osr1 deficiency in mice results in metanephric kidney agenesis, whereas knockdown or mutation studies in zebrafish revealed that pronephric nephrons require osr1 for proximal tubule and podocyte development. osr1-deficient pronephric podocyte progenitors express the Wilms\u27 tumor suppressor wt1a but do not undergo glomerular morphogenesis or express the foot process junctional markers nephrin and podocin. The function of osr1 in podocyte differentiation remains unclear, however. Here, we found by double fluorescence in situ hybridization that podocyte progenitors coexpress osr1 and wt1a. Knockdown of wt1a disrupted podocyte differentiation and prevented expression of osr1. Blocking retinoic acid signaling, which regulates wt1a, also prevented osr1 expression in podocyte progenitors. Furthermore, unlike the osr1-deficient proximal tubule phenotype, which can be rescued by manipulation of endoderm development, podocyte differentiation was not affected by altered endoderm development, as assessed by nephrin and podocin expression in double osr1/sox32-deficient embryos. These results suggest a different, possibly cell-autonomous requirement for osr1 in podocyte differentiation downstream of wt1a. Indeed, osr1-deficient embryos did not exhibit podocyte progenitor expression of the transcription factor lhx1a, and forced expression of activated forms of the lhx1a gene product rescued nephrin expression in osr1-deficient podocytes. Our results place osr1 in a framework of transcriptional regulators that control the expression of podocin and nephrin and thereby mediate podocyte differentiation

Theoretical Study on the Optoelectronic Properties of Merocyanine- Dyes

Merocyanines, as prototypes of highly polar π-conjugated molecules, have been intensively investigated for their self-assembly and optoelectronic properties, both experimentally and theoretically. However, an accurate description of their structural and electronic properties remains challenging for quantum-chemical methods. We assessed several theoretical approaches, TD-DFT, GW-BSE, STEOM-DLPNO-CCSD, and CASSCF/ NEVPT2-FIC for their reliability in reproducing optoelectronic properties of a series of donor/acceptor (D/A) merocyanines, focusing on the first excitation energy. Additionally, we tested an all-electron perturbative method based on time-dependent coupled-perturbed density functional theory, denoted as TDCP-DFT. Particular focus was set on direct and indirect solvent effects, which affect excited-state energies by electrostatic interaction and molecular geometry. The molecular configuration space was sampled at the semiempirical tight-binding level. Our results corroborate previous investigations, showing that the S0 − S1 excitation energy strongly depends on the merocyanine molecular structure and the dielectric constant of the solvent. We found significant effects of the polar solution environment on the geometry of the merocyanines, which strongly affect the calculated excitation energies. Taking these effects into account, the best agreement between calculated and measured excitation energies was obtained with TDCP-DFT and GW-BSE. We also calculated excitation energies of molecular crystals at the TDCP-DFT level and compared the results to the corresponding monomers

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Not AvailableLegumes play an important role in improving livelihood, nutritional security of farmers and populations in less developed countries as well as sustainability of agriculture in dry areas worldwide. Grain legumes are important rotational crops in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Great Plains of the United States and central California. The introduction of pulse crops into the agricultural systems in Western Australia is relatively recent and has been supported by considerable research to adapt and develop varieties and production systems to suit this Mediterranean environment. Traditionally grain legume or pulses have been an important constituent of predominantly vegetarian diet of the people of India. These are cultivated over a vast area-nearly 25 million hectares constituting 18 per cent of the total cultivated area in this country, the largest in the world. Legume crops, which include pulses are important source of protein for a large population of vegetarian people of India. The important grain and seed legumes of India are Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.), faba bean (Vicia faba L.), grasspea (Lathyrus sativus L.) and fieldpea (Pisum sativum L.) are grown in cool season, while Clusterbean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub.), pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.), blackgram (Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper), mungbean (V. radiata (L.) Wilczek), horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum (Lam.) Verdc.), cowpea (V. unguiculata (L.) Walp) and soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) are the warm season legumes. These grain legumes grown worldwide are prone to attack by a large number of plant pathogens, from fungi, bacteria, phytoplasmas, and viruses to nematodes and parasitic angiosperms, which resultin severe economic losses globally. Among these, fungi and viruses are the largest and perhaps the most important groups affecting all parts of the plant at all stages of growth (Table 16.1). In the present chapter the diseases of guar, cowpea, mothbean and horse gram have been reviewedNot Availabl

Common fixed point theorems via generalized condition (B) in quasi-partial metric space and applications

The aim of this paper is to introduce generalized condition (B) in a quasi-partial metric space acknowledging the notion of Künzi et al. [Künzi H.-P. A., Pajoohesh H., Schellekens M. P., Partial quasi-metrics, Theoret. Comput. Sci., 2006, 365, 237-246] and Karapinar et al. [Karapinar E., Erhan M.,Öztürk A., Fixed point theorems on quasi-partial metric spaces, Math. Comput.Modelling, 2013, 57, 2442-2448] and to establish coincidence and common fixed point theorems for twoweakly compatible pairs of self mappings. In the sequelwe also answer affirmatively two open problems posed by Abbas, Babu and Alemayehu [Abbas M., Babu G. V. R., Alemayehu G. N., On common fixed points of weakly compatible mappings satisfying generalized condition (B), Filomat, 2011, 25(2), 9-19]. Further in the setting of a quasi-partial metric space, the results obtained are utilized to establish the existence and uniqueness of a solution of the integral equation and the functional equation arising in dynamic programming. Our results are also justified by explanatory examples supported with pictographic validations to demonstrate the authenticity of the postulates

SEISMIC VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF BRIDGES USING FRAGILITY-BASED APPROACH

Dynamic loads can cause severe damage to bridges, and lead to malfunction of transportation networks. A comprehensive understanding of the nature of the dynamic loads and the structural response of bridges can prevent undesired failures while keeping the cost-safety balance. Dissimilar to the static behaviour, the dynamic response of bridges depends on several structural parameters such as material properties, damping and mode shapes. Furthermore, dynamic load characteristics can significantly change the structural response. In most cases, complexity and involvement of numerous parameters require the designer to investigate the bridge response via a massive numerical study. Depending on the seismicity of the bridge local site, seismic vulnerability assessment of the bridges can be done based on the fragility curves. These curves are conditional probability functions which give the probability of a bridge attaining or exceeding a particular damage level for an earthquake of a given intensity level. In this dissertation, analytical fragility curves are developed for the ordinary highway bridges in the assessment of their seismic vulnerability. Bridges are first grouped into certain major bridge classes based on their structural attributes and sample bridges are generated to account for the structural variability. Nonlinear response history analyses are conducted for each bridge sample with their detailed 3-D analytical models under different earthquake ground motions having varying seismic intensities. Several engineering demand parameters are employed in the determination of seismic response of the bridge components as well as defining damage limit states in terms of member capacities. Fragility curves are obtained from the probability of exceeding each specified damage limit state for each major bridge class. Skew and single-column bent bridges are found to be the most vulnerable ones in comparison with the other bridge classes. Developed fragility curves can be implemented in the seismic risk assessment packages for mitigation purposes