HS-C reactive protein and red blood cell distribution width as effective markers for hypertension

Background: Hypertension or elevated blood pressure is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. HsCRP, which is a known marker for CVD, is also one of the predictive markers of inflammation processes which result in hypertension. Increased RDW is also believed to be associated with CVD morbidity and mortality in patients with previous myocardial infarction, brain vascular disease, strokes, septicemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hepatitis B. Methods: 200 patients 100 male and 100 females and 50 each of controls were selected for the study. Complete demographic details were collected from all the patients including the age, sex, height, weight, BMI, smoking/nonsmoking status, alcoholism etc. After a thorough clinical examination, venous blood was collected from all the patients after an overnight fast for lipid profile, hs-CRP and complete blood count. Results: The patients in both males and females had a higher BMI than that of the controls. Hs-CRP levels in males was 1.64 mg/L and in females it was 1.47 mg/L. Significant difference was seen in the RDW values also in the patients. Conclusions: Hs-CRP levels and RDW levels are both equally effective as a predictive marker for hypertension.Background: Hypertension or elevated blood pressure is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. HsCRP, which is a known marker for CVD, is also one of the predictive markers of inflammation processes which result in hypertension. Increased RDW is also believed to be associated with CVD morbidity and mortality in patients with previous myocardial infarction, brain vascular disease, strokes, septicemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hepatitis B. Methods: 200 patients 100 male and 100 females and 50 each of controls were selected for the study. Complete demographic details were collected from all the patients including the age, sex, height, weight, BMI, smoking/nonsmoking status, alcoholism etc. After a thorough clinical examination, venous blood was collected from all the patients after an overnight fast for lipid profile, hs-CRP and complete blood count. Results: The patients in both males and females had a higher BMI than that of the controls. Hs-CRP levels in males was 1.64 mg/L and in females it was 1.47 mg/L. Significant difference was seen in the RDW values also in the patients. Conclusions: Hs-CRP levels and RDW levels are both equally effective as a predictive marker for hypertension

Haptic Feedback for Injecting Biological Cells using Miniature Compliant Mechanisms

Abstract We present a real-time haptics-aided injection technique for biological cells using miniature compliant mechanisms. Our system consists of a haptic robot operated by a human hand, an XYZ stage for micro-positioning, a camera for image capture, and a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) miniature compliant device that serves the dual purpose of an injecting tool and a force-sensor. In contrast to existing haptics-based micromanipulation techniques where an external force sensor is used, we use visually captured displacements of the compliant mechanism to compute the applied and reaction forces. The human hand can feel the magnified manipulation force through the haptic device in real-time while the motion of the human hand is replicated on the mechanism side. The images are captured using a camera at the rate of 30 frames per second for extracting the displacement data. This is used to compute the forces at the rate of 30 Hz. The force computed in this manner is sent at the rate of 1000 Hz to ensure stable haptic interaction. The haptic cell-manipulation system was tested by injecting into a zebrafish egg cell after validating the technique at a size larger than that of the cell

Interspecific hybridization between Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. and C. lanceolatus (WV Fitgz) van der Maesen

Cultivated pigeonpea has a narrow genetic base. Wild relatives play an important role in the efforts to broaden its genetic base. In this report, we present a successful wide-cross between the cultivated pigeonpea and Cajanus lanceolatus, a wild relative from the secondary gene pool, native to Australia, with desirable traits such as frost and drought resistance. A range of F1 progeny were obtained and the resultant F1 hybrid plants set mature pods and seeds. The hybrids had intermediate morphology, sharing the traits of both the parents. All the F1 hybrids flowered profusely. Some of the hybrids were completely male sterile and some were partially fertile with pollen fertility ranging from 35 to 50 %. Meiotic analysis of the fertile F1 hybrids revealed a high degree of meiotic chromosome pairing between the two parental genomes. Meiotic analysis of the sterile F1 hybrids revealed that the breakdown of microsporogenesis occurred at the post-meiotic stage after the formation of tetrads. Fertile plants formed regular bivalents with normal disjunction, except for occasional asynchrony at meiotic II division

Callosbruchus maculatus Resistance in Some Wild Relatives and Interspecific Derivatives of Pigeonpea

The present study of Screening of some wild relatives of pigeonpea against bruchid revealed that amongst the 4 Cajanus species, comprising of seven accessions, bruchid damage ranged between 14 and 30%, compared to 78% in the commercially cultivated pigeonpea variety ICPL 85010. Wild species Cajanus scarabaeoides accession ICPW 130 and C. platycarpus accession ICPW 66 had lowest damage (14% and 16% respectively). The larval/pupal period was prolonged in wild accessions (42 – 55days) compared to 33 days on the susceptible control ICPL 85010 indicating the antibiosis mechanism of resistance in the wild species. Though there was high oviposition on the seeds of interspecific derivative of C. platycarpus A 4-10-7-19, it had the least damage (10%). In the rest of the derivatives the damage rating ranged between 10 and 55% compared to 80% damage in the susceptible control, reflecting the potential of utilizing these wild species derivatives in pigeonpea crop improvement to overcome the Bruchid damage

Technology for Kisan Samanvayam: Nutrition Intelligibility of Groundnut Plant using IoT-ML Framework

Neolithic Demographic transition resulting the reduction of habitable land for cultivation. Hence the smart agriculture is the only way to cater higher food demand. The farming community of developing countries like India needs Kisan Samanvayam with futuristic technologies for financially viable cultivation. Technology place vital role in economically nourishment of soil fertility and crop management. In this regard we proposed IoT-ML framework for remotely assessing the soil nutrients (N, P,K), PH and early stage detection of crop deceases. Android APP which is a part and parcel of the frame work enable the farmer to have real time visual statistics of the soil nutrients, notifications and suggestions regarding to the crop management. JXCT Soil NPK sensors, PH sensors, Dual Core ESP32 Controllers, Firebase Cloud and Random Forest Decision Tree machine Learning Algorithm, Micromlgen serve this purpose. Unlike Solitary sensor for entire field, we have divided a hector into four subregions for effective monitoring local region needs. The presence of IoT with TinyML increased the robustness of the framework and results are encouraging with sandy loam soil

Protease inhibitors of Cajanus conferring resistance to pod borer of pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L. Millsp.).

Pigeonpea is susceptible to pod borer damage with resistance lacking in its primary gene pool. Many Cajanus species harbor high levels of resistance. Host plant resistance can play an important role in minimizing the extent of losses due to insects and pests as well as the use of insecticides/pesticides and thus protect the environment. A major initiative was undertaken to tap the defence genes from wild relatives of secondary and tertiary gene pool through wide hybridization and thereby introgress resistance to pod borer. A range of interspecific derivatives derived from C. lanceolatus, C. cajanifolius, C. volubilis and C. platycarpus along with their parents were screened for the pod borer resistance under unprotected field conditions at ICRISAT, Patancheru, India. Biochemical basis of resistance was also identified by studying the levels of defence proteins active against bovine pancreatic trypsin, chymotrypsin and trypsin-like enzymes of H. armigera mid-gut proteases. Protease inhibitor profiles of parents and interspecific derivatives differed in terms of activity units, number and intensities of activity bands visualized on gelatin-PAGE. As the protease inhibitors are anti-nutritional factors, parents and interspecific derivatives, which resulted in high levels of Helicoverpa gut protease inhibitor (HGPI) units were screened for Human pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (HPTI) activity levels. Samples with high ratio of HGPI/HPTI represent less or no effect on human pancreatic trypsin and high effect on insect gut proteases

Research for practice in small human service organisations: doing and disseminating smallscale research

A series of novel alkynyl substituted 3,4-dihydropyrimidin-2(1H)-one (DHPM) derivatives were designed, synthesized and evaluated in vitro as potential inhibitors of chorismate mutase (CM). All these compounds were prepared via a multi-component reaction (MCR) involving sequential I2-mediated Biginelli reaction followed by Cu-free Sonogashira coupling. Some of them showed promising inhibitory activities when tested at 30 μM. One compound showed dose dependent inhibition of CM with IC50 value of 14.76 ± 0.54 μM indicating o-alkynylphenyl substituted DHPM as a new scaffold for the discovery of promising inhibitors of CM

Development of a new CMS system in pigeonpea utilizing crosses with Cajanus lanceolatus (WV Fitgz) van der Maesen

Cytoplasmic male sterility is an important biological tool which is now available to pigeonpea breeders to exploit heterosis/hybrid vigor. A variety of CMS systems have been developed when wild relatives of pigeonpea from different gene pools were crossed as the female parent with cultivated types as the male parent. This paper reports a second source of CMS developed by using the cultivated pigeonpea as the female parent and one of its wild relative Cajanus lanceolatus (WV Fitgz) van der Maesen as the pollen donor, as such the A5 CMS system derived from C. acutifolius. All the F1 hybrids were evaluated to confirm hybridity using 27 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. SSR marker analysis of parents provided 17 polymorphic markers from a total of 27 SSR markers used. Subsequently polymorphic SSRs were used to confirm the hybridity of the F1 plants. F1 hybrid plants were crossed with a range of pigeonpea cultivars to identify maintainers of male sterility. Morphology of the F1 and backcross generations, cytology of the sterile as well as fertile floral buds derived from the crosses between sterile F1 hybrids and unrelated pigeonpea cultivars were studied. An important observation made was that male sterility was a post meiotic process. Microsporogenesis was normal until the tetrad stage, but none of them formed pollen grains. Instead, they grouped together within the pollen mother cell wall and the tetrads did not separate into individual pollen grains