Analysis of Oil and Gas Industry in Asia with Reference to Investment and Expansion Strategies of Asian National Oil Companies (ANOC’s)

Demand for crude oil and natural gas in the Asian region has increased over the past few years at a rate of 1.3% during 2000-2012 and the demand for natural gas is likely to increase at an average annual growth rate of 6.8% during 2009-2020. Scarcity of resources forced many Asian National Oil Companies (ANOCs) to explore the opportunities in various corners of the world looking for prospective lands and partnerships which led them to aggressively invest in global acquisition of oil and gas assets. This paper deals with the strategies adopted by the ANOCs to secure their energy needs and conducts an in-depth analysis of Asian Oil and Gas industry. It also analyses the investments, mergers & acquisitions and growth strategies of major ANOCs. Results of the study show that increasing domestic needs have driven ANOCs’ decision to expand overseas. It can be concluded that acquiring of assets internationally will play a prominent role in ANOCs’ future operations. Key words: Crude oil, Natural gas, Energy needs, Mergers, Acquisitions

Diuretic activity of aqueous extract of roots of Cissampelos pareira in albino rats

Background: Diuretic compounds that stimulate the excretion of water with small traceable ions are potentially useful in most of disorders including those exhibiting edema such as congestive heart failure, nephritis, toxemia of pregnancy, premenstrual tension, and hypertension. The aim was to evaluate the diuretic activity of aqueous extract of roots of Cissampelos pareira (AQERCP) by Lipschitz method in albino rats.Methods: Five groups of Albino rats were used to evaluate the diuretic activity of AQERCP by using metabolic cages. The Group I serves as normal control received vehicle (carboxymethyl cellulose 2% in normal saline), the Group II furosemide (10 mg/Kg, p.o) in vehicle; other Groups III, IV, and V were treated with low (100 mg/kg), medium (200 mg/kg), and high (400 mg/kg) doses of AQERCP in vehicle. Immediately, after the extract treatment all the rats were hydrated with saline (15 ml/kg, p.o) and placed in the metabolic cages (3/cage), specially designed to separate urine and faeces, kept at 21°C±0.5°C.The total volume of urine collected was measured at the end of 5th hr. During this period, no food and water was made available to animals. Various parameters such as total urine volume and concentration of sodium, potassium, chloride ions in the urine were measured and estimated respectively.Results: In this model, when compared to vehicle treated control group the AQERCP at different dose levels (100, 200 and 400 mg/kg) has significantly increased the urine volume and also enhanced the elimination of sodium, potassium and chloride ions in urine.Conclusion: The results showed that single dose administration of AQERCP as 100, 200 and 400 mg/Kg and standard frusemide (10 mg/kg b.wt) has significantly (p<0.05*, p<0.01**, p<0.001***) increased the urine output along with an increase in concentration of sodium, potassium, and chloride. AQERCP 400 mg/Kg produced a greater diuretic activity, which is comparable to the effect of standard furosemide (10 mg/kg).The present study has supported and justified the basis for folklore use of roots of C. pareira as a diuretic agent

TPX: Biomedical literature search made easy

TPX is a web-based PubMed search enhancement tool that enables faster article searching using an alysis and exploration features . These features include identification of relevant biomedical concepts from search results with linkouts to source databases, concept based article categorization, concept assisted search and filtering, query refinement. A distinguishing feature here is the ability to add user-defined concept names and/or concept types for named entity recognition. The tool allows contextual exploration of knowledge sources by providing concept association maps derived from the MEDLINE repository. It also has a full-text search mode that can be configured on request to access local text repositories, incorporating entity co-occurrence search at sentence/paragraph levels. Local text files can also be analyzed on-the-fly

Baicalein, a flavonoid causes prolonged estrus and suppressed fertility output upon prenatal exposure in female mice

Objective(s): Baicalein (BC), a phytoestrogen of the flavonoid family shows beneficiary and adverse effects. Effect of BC on reproduction is still not understood. Reproductive toxic effects on female mice were tested in this study.Materials and Methods: Inseminated Wistar mice were divided into four groups and administered IP with 30, 60, and 90 mg/Kg body weight of BC on gestation daydays 11, 13, 15, and 17, and controls treated with DMSO. They were allowed to deliver pups and offspring were separated gender-wise on day 21. The stages of the estrus cycle and its lengthlengths of three successive cycles were measured from day 38 of young females. The mature female offspring of at 60 days age havewere cohabited with control males and the female reproductive endpoints and body weights of dams were measured. Results: The BC exposure increased the length of the estrus cycle, especially the metestrus and diestrus phases were prolonged among other phases of the estrus cycle. Recorded significant reduction in the body weights (

Achieving Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma, and Anesthesia (SOTA) care for all in South Asia

South Asia is a demographically crucial, economically aspiring, and socio-culturally diverse region in the world. The region contributes to a large burden of surgically-treatable disease conditions. A large number of people in South Asia cannot access safe and affordable surgical, obstetric, trauma, and anesthesia (SOTA) care when in need. Yet, attention to the region in Global Surgery and Global Health is limited. Here, we assess the status of SOTA care in South Asia. We summarize the evidence on SOTA care indicators and planning. Region-wide, as well as country-specific challenges are highlighted. We also discuss potential directions—initiatives and innovations—toward addressing these challenges. Local partnerships, sustained research and advocacy efforts, and politics can be aligned with evidence-based policymaking and health planning to achieve equitable SOTA care access in the South Asian region under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)

GNU Privacy Guard- A Tool for Safe Computing

In the modern era, digital communications play a vital role. For an elementary security, encryption is preventing a huge number of problems. When a data is passed through many number of nodes, we don’t know what vulnerability is present at each node. Our data may be affected. GPG encryption is a tool for encrypting emails, digital materials. It uses the concept of key pairs like public key, private key. The public keys are exchanged between the sender and the receiver. The private key is kept as a secret by user. This paper focus on new GNU privacy guard which is a tool to ensure security in huge users traffic and reliable data transmission