Diversity and distribution of the cetaceans along the Indian Sea and the contiguous sea

Biodiversity is a term that describes the ecosystem complexity or taxonomic diversity at the species, genus, family and order or phylum level and distributed unevenly across different environment (Allaby, 1998; Chase and Leibold, 2002). Marine and tropical environments maintain extremely diverse species assemblages, whereas others such as dessert and alpine support a restricted range of species (Gastan 2000). The ocean makes up 97% of the biosphere and support tremendous species diversity but understanding the most species diversity in marine environment remain extremely limited. The marine mammal is one of the major neglected communities in the pelagic ecosystem of most of the oceans

Optimization of Vehicle-to-Grid Scheduling in Constrained Parking Lots

An automatic Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology can contribute to the utility grid. V2G technology has drawn great interest in the recent years. Success of the sophisticated automatic V2G research depends on efficient scheduling of gridable vehicles in constrained parking lots. Parking lots have constraints of space and current limits for V2G. However, V2G can reduce dependencies on small expensive units in the existing power systems as energy storage that can decrease running costs. It can efficiently manage load fluctuation, peak load; however, it increases spinning reserves and reliability. As number of gridable vehicles in V2G is much higher than small units of existing systems, unit commitment (UC) with V2G is more complex than basic UC for only thermal units. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed to solve the V2G, as PSO has been demonstrated to reliably and accurately solve complex constrained optimization problems easily and quickly without any dimension limitation and physical computer memory limit. In the proposed model, binary PSO optimizes the on/off states of power generating units easily. Vehicles are presented by signed integer number instead of 0/1 to reduce the dimension of the problem. Typical discrete version of PSO has less balance between local and global searching abilities to optimize the number of charging/discharging gridable vehicles in the constrained system. In the same model, balanced PSO is proposed to optimize the V2G part in the constrained parking lots. Finally, results show a considerable amount of profit for using proper scheduling of gridable vehicles in constrained parking lots

Economic Load Dispatch Using Bacterial Foraging Technique with Particle Swarm Optimization Biased Evolution

This paper presents a novel modified bacterial foraging technique (BFT) to solve economic load dispatch (ELD) problems. BFT is already used for optimization problems, and performance of basic BFT for small problems with moderate dimension and searching space is satisfactory. Search space and complexity grow exponentially in scalable ELD problems, and the basic BFT is not suitable to solve the high dimensional ELD problems, as cells move randomly in basic BFT, and swarming is not sufficiently achieved by cell-to-cell attraction and repelling effects for ELD. However, chemotaxis, swimming, reproduction and elimination-dispersal steps of BFT are very promising. On the other hand, particles move toward promising locations depending on best values from memory and knowledge in particle swarm optimization (PSO). Therefore, best cell (or particle) biased velocity (vector) is added to the random velocity of BFT to reduce randomness in movement (evolution) and to increase swarming in the proposed method to solve ELD. Finally, a data set from a benchmark system is used to show the effectiveness of the proposed method and the results are compared with other methods

Unusual catch of flapnose ray in ring seine

An estimated 130 ring seiners are employed exclusively to exploit small pelagic resources such as sardines and mackerels along south Cuddalore coast. Occassionally large mobulid rays are also landed in stray numbers as by-catch in the ringseine landings at Cuddalore Fisheries Harbour. There has been no incidence of elasmobranch landings in large quantities by ring seines in this region. However on 15.07.2017, an unusually high landing of an estimated 1. 3 tonne (t) of the flapnose ray Rhinoptera javanica was observed

Development and Evaluation of Orally Disintegrating Tablets of Montelukast Sodium by Direct Compression Method

Purpose: To design an orally disintegrating montelukast sodium tablet (ODT) that disintegrates in the oral cavity leaving an easy-to-swallow residue especially for pediatric and elderly patients who have difficulty swallowing tablets.Methods: Two different formulations of montelukast sodium (5 mg) orally disintegrating tablets were designed and manufactured by direct compression method, using microcrystalline (Avicel PH-102), mannitol, sodium bicarbonate, crospovidone and magnesium stearate as key excipients, and with cherry flavor and aspartame as flavor and sweetener, respectively. These formulations were then evaluated using pharmacopoeial and non-pharmacopoeial physical and chemical tests. Dissolution and assay tests were performed using USP apparatus II and ultraviolet (UV) spectrophotometry, respectively. Formulations with better results were further subjected for optimization study using central composite design method.Results: The results of prototype formulation batch (Trial-02) and the finest optimization formulation batch (FOB-01) reflected the successful development of new formulation of orally disintegrating montelukast sodium 5 mg tablet by direct compression technique. The value of similarity factor (f2 > 50), indicating that both formulations have similar drug release profiles. The formulations were further evaluated for three and six months under accelerated conditions to ascertain their stability.Conclusion: The results obtained demonstrate the suitability of the formulation as an ODT for convenient delivery of montelukast sodium for asthmatic patients. However, clinical studies are required to confirm this.Keywords: Orally disintegrating tablets, Asthma, Disintegration, Dissolution, Montelukast sodiu

Assessment of Genetic Divergence in Long Day Onion (Allium cepa L.) through Principal Component and Single Linkage Cluster Analysis

To assess the nature and magnitude of genetic diversity in long day onion germplasm by using the principal component analysis and single linkage cluster analysis an experiment was carried out with 34 onion genotypes. High coefficient of variation with wide range in traits indicated an appreciable variability in germplasm. Genotypes were classified into seven principal components having Eigen value > 1, cumulatively accounted for 83.87% of total variability. Principal Component - I contributed for 24.73% of total variation for followed by principal component-II (15.27%). PC-I had high positive loading for bulb weight (0.401), marketable yield (0.338), total bulb yield (0.401) and PC-II had high positive loading for plant height (0.412), PC-III for high T.S.S. (0.276) PC -IV for A grade bulbs (0.436), PC-V for polar diameter of bulbs (0.514), PC-IV negatively loaded with purple blotch (-0.461) and PC-VII for narrow neck thickness (-0 .515). Plotting PC-I aganist PC-II differenciated CITH-O-13, CITH-O-4, CITH-O-22, CITH-O-19, CITH-O-9, CITH-O-6 and CITH-O2 as most divergent genotype.On the basis of single linkage cluster means cluster-I was most importent for average bulb weight, minimum bolters, high marketble bulb percentage high marketable and total bulb yield whereas cluster -II was important for maximum nuber of leaves/plant and minimum neck thicknes. Highest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluter II and Cluster-I(873.5% ).Most divergent genotypes with high inter cluter distance could be the most appropriate parents for crop impovement in onion