Bioefficacy of Plant Extracts to Control Cercospora Leaf Spot of Mungbean (Vigna radiata)

The experiment was conducted at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute farm, Joydebpur, Gazipur during March to July 2007 to evaluate the bioefficacy of some plant extracts in controlling Cercospora leaf spot of mungbean. Six indigenous plant species i.e. Neem leaves extract (1:4 w/v), Garlic cloves extract (1:5 w/v), Biskatali leaves extract (1:4 w/v), Alamanda leaves extract (1:6 w/v), Arjun leaves extract (1:4 w/v) and Debdaru leaves extract (1:5 w/v) were used in this experiment. The experiment was laid out in RCBD with seven treatments and four replications. Data on disease incidence, severity, yield contributing characters and yield of mungbean were recorded. Naturally, infection of the disease was considered in this experiment. The lowest disease incidence (7.33%) at 60 DAS was found in T1. Lowest and similar disease severity (PDI= 4.55) was found in T2 and T3 at the same DAS. Neem extract treated plots gave better response in yield (1.26 t ha-1) and all the yield contributing parameters like inflorescences plant-1 (13.45), tallest plant (51.44 cm), the maximum number of pods plant-1 (26.81), length of pod (8.56 cm), number of seeds pod-1 (12.64) and 1000 seeds weight (27.33 g) followed by T2 and T3. The highest disease incidence (26.50%) and disease index (13.65%) were recorded in treatment T7 at 60 DAS. Yield and all yield contributing factors were lowest in same treatment. The results of the experiment suggested that the use of neem leaves extracts are effective for minimizing Cercospora leaf spot incidence, severity and increasing yield of mungbean. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 3 (1): 60-65, June, 2013 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijarit.v3i1.1609

Detection and Processing Techniques of FECG Signal for Fetal Monitoring

Fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) signal contains potentially precise information that could assist clinicians in making more appropriate and timely decisions during labor. The ultimate reason for the interest in FECG signal analysis is in clinical diagnosis and biomedical applications. The extraction and detection of the FECG signal from composite abdominal signals with powerful and advance methodologies are becoming very important requirements in fetal monitoring. The purpose of this review paper is to illustrate the various methodologies and developed algorithms on FECG signal detection and analysis to provide efficient and effective ways of understanding the FECG signal and its nature for fetal monitoring. A comparative study has been carried out to show the performance and accuracy of various methods of FECG signal analysis for fetal monitoring. Finally, this paper further focused some of the hardware implementations using electrical signals for monitoring the fetal heart rate. This paper opens up a passage for researchers, physicians, and end users to advocate an excellent understanding of FECG signal and its analysis procedures for fetal heart rate monitoring system

Control of Phomopsis Blight of Egg Plant through Fertilizer and Fungicide Management

The experiments were conducted at Laboratory of the Department of Plant Pathology and in the farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh during Rabi season of the year 2007-2008. Four fungicides viz. Bavistin 50 WP (Carbendazim), Tilt 250 EC (Propiconazole), Cupravit 50 WP (Copperoxychloride) and Dithane M-45 (Mancozeb) and micronutrients (Gypsum, ZnO and Boric acid) were evaluated against Phomopsis vexans causing Phomopsis blight and fruit rot of eggplant. The fungicides and micronutrients either applied individually or in combination showed significant effect in terms of per cent leaf infection, fruit infection, leaf area diseased and fruit area diseased in comparison to control. Effect of each fungicide applied in combination with micronutrients always showed better performance in reducing disease incidence and disease severity than the fungicides applied alone. Among the fungicides, Bavistin 50 WP (0.1%) proved to be effective arresting the spore germination and mycelia growth of Phomopsis vexans assayed in in vitro test. Reduction of leaf area diseased caused by Bavistin 50 WP (0.1%) in combination with micronutrients were 58.17, 67.37, 78.41 and 85.25%, respectively at preflowering, post-flowering, fruiting and fruit ripening stages while Bavistin 50 WP (0.1%) alone reduced by 52.22, 58.67, 74.19 and 83.09%, respectively at those stages. Similarly reduction of fruit area diseased caused by Bavistin 50 WP (0.1%) in combination with micronutrients were 57.93 and 79.79%, respectively at fruiting and fruit ripening stages while Bavistin 50WP (0.1%) alone reduced by 56.93 and 76.14%, respectively at those stages. Micronutrients had little effect against the disease but significantly better than control.Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 3 (1): 66-72, June, 2013 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/ijarit.v3i1.1609

Studies on some morphological characters and yield attributes of synthetic Brassica hexaploids and their parents

Allopolyploidy plays an important role in plant evolution and confers better advantages on crop growth and breeding compared to low ploidy levels. The present investigation aimed to study the synthetic hexaploid Brassica (AABBCC genome) developed from Brassica cainata (BBCC genome) and Brassica rapa (AA genome) compared to their parental genotypes considering some morphological characters, yield attributes and yield. Increased vegetative growth in hexaploids over their parents was observed. Hexaploids exhibited wider ranges with higher coefficients of variations compared to the parents for all characters studied. Hexaploids had taller plants, higher number of siliqua and larger flowers than those of both parents. Though average pollen fertility in the hexaploids was lower than both parents but out of 420 hexaploids, seventeen had comparatively higher percentages of pollen fertility as well as siliqua setting. Number of seeds per siliqua and siliqua length were found to be lower than their parents. Mean seed weight per plant in the hexaploids was lower than the parents though the hexaploids had higher number of siliquae along with higher seed weight. Days to flowering and maturity in the hexaploids were in between the parents and closer to the B. carinata parent. Five hexaploid plants from BARIBatishak-1 × Carinata-1 and two from each of Carinata-1 × BARIBatishak-1 and Agrani × Carinata-1 were found to be promising because they have higher seed yield per plant than their parents. Those nine selected high yielding hexaploid plants could be evaluated in the subsequent generations to select the stable and desirable Brassica hexaploids.Keywords: Brassica hexaploid, morphological characters, yield attribute

Spatiotemporal Impact Analysis of Hurricanes and Storm Surges on Power Systems

This paper develops a spatiotemporal probabilistic impact assessment framework to analyze and quantify the compounding effect of hurricanes and storm surges on the bulk power grid. The probabilistic synthetic hurricane tracks are generated using historical hurricane data, and storm surge scenarios are generated based on observed hurricane parameters. The system losses are modeled using a loss metric that quantifies the total load loss. The overall simulation is performed on the synthetic Texas 2000-bus system mapped on the geographical footprint of Texas. The results show that power substation inundation due to storm surge creates additional load losses as the hurricane traverses inland.Comment: 5 pages, 9 figures, submitted to 2023 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting for revie

Enhanced Photocatalytic H2 Production in Core–Shell Engineered Rutile TiO2

The authors thank the Major Basic Research Program, Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2014CB239401), NSFC (Nos. 51422210, 51572266, 51561130157, 51172243, 51521091). GL thanks Newton Advanced FellowshipA rationally designed crystalline Ti3+ core/amorphous Ti4+ shell configuration can reverse the population disparity between holes and electrons reaching the surface of microsized rutile TiO2 photocatalyst, thus significantly enhancing its photocatalytic activity by two orders of magnitude in terms of the hydrogen production rate under the irradiation of UV–vis light.PostprintPeer reviewe

Rural road management in Botswana

This paper discusses the management of rural roads in Chobe in Botswana, which are mainly tertiary and access roads. These roads are low-volume roads and mostly gravelled. It was observed that the maintenance management of these roads was based on engineering judgement through visual inspection all over the country, without having any economic or technical analysis. Therefore, a comprehensive pavement management system for rural roads' maintenance is needed in Chobe and also in all the council areas of Botswana, which would consist of data collection, database, use of the Highway Development and Management Model to undertake efficient decision making project preparation, funding, implementation and feedback. A partial implementation of pavement management system in Chobe has been highlighted in this paper. The present analysis reveals that total demand for the road network in Chobe was 41·29 million pula, the backlog was 34·86 million pula and the first-year backlog demand was 20·63 million pula. Furthermore, the analysis found the long-term periodic maintenance strategy for the network at 6·43 million pula when there is no backlog. This huge backlog indicates that roads are not being maintained appropriately. The paper also estimates current road asset value in Chobe at 55·48 million pula. Finally, the paper recommends several solutions for the efficient preservation of road assets in Botswana

IoT-Enabled Big Data Analytics Architecture for Multimedia Data Communications

The present spreading out of the Internet of Things (IoT) originated the realization of millions of IoT devices connected to the Internet. With the increase of allied devices, the gigantic multimedia big data (MMBD) vision is also gaining eminence and has been broadly acknowledged. MMBD management offers computation, exploration, storage, and control to resolve the QoS issues for multimedia data communications. However, it becomes challenging for multimedia systems to tackle the diverse multimedia-enabled IoT settings including healthcare, traffic videos, automation, society parking images, and surveillance that produce a massive amount of big multimedia data to be processed and analyzed efficiently. There are several challenges in the existing structural design of the IoT-enabled data management systems to handle MMBD including high-volume storage and processing of data, data heterogeneity due to various multimedia sources, and intelligent decision-making. In this article, an architecture is proposed to process and store MMBD efficiently in an IoT-enabled environment. The proposed architecture is a layered architecture integrated with a parallel and distributed module to accomplish big data analytics for multimedia data. A preprocessing module is also integrated with the proposed architecture to prepare the MMBD and speed up the processing mechanism. The proposed system is realized and experimentally tested using real-time multimedia big data sets from athentic sources that discloses the effectiveness of the proposed architecture

Scutellaria baicalensis

Antimycin A (AMA) damages mitochondria by inhibiting mitochondrial electron transport and can produce reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS formation, aging, and reduction of mitochondrial biogenesis contribute to mitochondrial dysfunction. The present study sought to investigate extracts of Scutellaria baicalensis and its flavonoids (baicalin, baicalein, and wogonin), whether they could protect mitochondria against oxidative damage. The viability of L6 cells treated with AMA increased in the presence of flavonoids and extracts of S. baicalensis. ATP production decreased in the AMA treated group, but increased by 50% in cells treated with flavonoids (except wogonin) and extracts of S. baicalensis compared to AMA-treated group. AMA treatment caused a significant reduction (depolarized) in mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), whereas flavonoid treatment induced a significant increase in MMP. Mitochondrial superoxide levels increased in AMA treated cells, whereas its levels decreased when cells were treated with flavonoids or extracts of S. baicalensis. L6 cells treated with flavonoids and extracts of S. baicalensis increased their levels of protein expression compared with AMA-treated cells, especially water extracts performed the highest levels of protein expression. These results suggest that the S. baicalensis extracts and flavonoids protect against AMA-induced mitochondrial dysfunction by increasing ATP production, upregulating MMP, and enhancing mitochondrial function

Causal hierarchy within the thalamo-cortical network in spike and wave discharges

Background: Generalised spike wave (GSW) discharges are the electroencephalographic (EEG) hallmark of absence seizures, clinically characterised by a transitory interruption of ongoing activities and impaired consciousness, occurring during states of reduced awareness. Several theories have been proposed to explain the pathophysiology of GSW discharges and the role of thalamus and cortex as generators. In this work we extend the existing theories by hypothesizing a role for the precuneus, a brain region neglected in previous works on GSW generation but already known to be linked to consciousness and awareness. We analysed fMRI data using dynamic causal modelling (DCM) to investigate the effective connectivity between precuneus, thalamus and prefrontal cortex in patients with GSW discharges. Methodology and Principal Findings: We analysed fMRI data from seven patients affected by Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy (IGE) with frequent GSW discharges and significant GSW-correlated haemodynamic signal changes in the thalamus, the prefrontal cortex and the precuneus. Using DCM we assessed their effective connectivity, i.e. which region drives another region. Three dynamic causal models were constructed: GSW was modelled as autonomous input to the thalamus (model A), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (model B), and precuneus (model C). Bayesian model comparison revealed Model C (GSW as autonomous input to precuneus), to be the best in 5 patients while model A prevailed in two cases. At the group level model C dominated and at the population-level the p value of model C was ∼1. Conclusion: Our results provide strong evidence that activity in the precuneus gates GSW discharges in the thalamo-(fronto) cortical network. This study is the first demonstration of a causal link between haemodynamic changes in the precuneus - an index of awareness - and the occurrence of pathological discharges in epilepsy. © 2009 Vaudano et al