Induced spawning of two major species of Chinese carps, Ctenopharyngodon idellus and Aristychthys nobilis in Sri Lanka

Induced spawning of grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idellus) and bighead carp (Aristychthys nobilis) was carried out successfully in Sri Lanka for the first time in 1977 and 1978, respectively. This article describes the techniques involved in induced spawning in Sri Lanka at the Freshwater Fish Breeding and Experimental Station in Udawalawa

Sport Policy in UK: The Reforms, Policy Priority and its Effect to Sport Sector during 2000 to 2012

The governments of United Kingdom have introduced and amend several sport policies under their governing periods. The purpose of this report is understanding and examining UK sport policy reforms and its affect to country’s sport sector during last decade (from 2000 to 2012). This study is used basically secondary data and were collected by using purposive sample method according to the selected themes. While this period governments have more concerned about the development of elite level sport rather than community sport. However, it has been changed and has given attention to develop mass sport participation and community sport in mid of this decades due to 2012 London Olympic. However governments got their more attention for elite level sport development as well as gave fewer attentions for community sport as support for elite sport during this decade. The more details have been discussed in below regarding UK sport policies. Keywords: Community Sport, Mass Sport, Sport participation, sport polices, UK spor

EVALUATING THE MULTIVARIATE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BREASTFEEDING, EARLY CHILDHOOD OBESITY, ASTHMA, AND MENTAL ILLNESS IN DALLAS, TX

The aim of this study was to examine the associations between breastfeeding, asthma and mental illness in North Texas children aged two to five years, and to explore whether these associations are explained by the presence of obesity. The study population comprised of 1,174 children whose caregivers responded to a 2015 survey administered by Children’s Health and the Health & Wellness Alliance for Children. Information on breastfeeding, BMI, asthma, and mental illness were self-reported by primary caregivers. Of the 1,174 children, 61% were breastfed, 13% had asthma, and 17% had a mental illness. The odds of having asthma were 2.28 times higher among children who were obese compared to non-obese children (95% CI: 1.37-3.79; p-value= 0.001). There were no statistically significant relationships between breastfeeding, obesity, or mental health illness. Children living in a household where the caregivers had more than a college education (OR: 2.07, p-value= 0.007) or a household income of $50,000 to$100,000 (OR: 1.80, p-value= 0.006) were more likely to have been breastfed. Obesity was not found to be a statistically significant mediator in the relationship between breastfeeding, asthma, and mental illness. This study hopes to inform future studies about the complex relationship among breastfeeding, early childhood obesity, asthma, and mental illness

A Review of Sport Events Impact Evaluation Methods

“There is currently no internationally recognised method of analysing the benefits of hosting major sporting events. Every country and consultancy uses its own different methodology and there is no accepted standard that allows the comparison of major sporting events” (Global Sports Impact Survey, 2014, pp.3). Therefore this article has analysed to understand sport impact evaluation methods that have used researchers in the field of sport event for evaluate impact of sport events.  This research has used purposive sampling method for select the relevant articles for examine the sport evaluation methods. This article mainly focuses on event impacts such as environmental, economic and social. Keywords: Sport, economic, environment, socia

SPATIAL PATTERN ANALYSIS IN GEOSPATIAL APPROACH REFERENCE TO KADUWELA MUNICIPAL COUNCIL, SRI LANKA

Cities play a significant role in our lives, providing a place for fulfilling social, economic, and physical needs for more than half of the population in the entire world. The city is a dynamic entity with complex activities, and it faces gradual physical changes or urban growth. Urban growth occurs in a planned or unplanned way. Unplanned urban growth or urban sprawl aggravated huge urban problems in cities and the fringe. Identification of urban growth pattern is significant and measuring and predicting the urban growth in a methodical way is an essential for the decision-making process. Measuring the urban growth pattern is essential and ArcGIS 10 provides an impressive analytical tool for geographic pattern analysis that helps to understandthe geographical phenomenon using spatial autocorrelation. Spatial autocorrelation can be applied to detect the pattern of urban areas at a specific time. This study used those tools to analyse spatial pattern in the Sri Lankan urban area. Results show type of spatial pattern of the area

The Financial Performance Analysis of Nike Inc: with Special Reference Year 2015 Annual Report

Nike’s financial statement was analysed and studied thoroughly to understand Nike`s financial performance. That financial statement includes balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement. The financial performance of Nike has evaluated using methods of Horizontal analysis, vertical analysis tends analysis and selected key ratios for improvements to increase cash flow and improve dividend and reduce labilities. Therefore, analysed company`s latest annual report that is the 2015 annual report ending May 31st. That latest company annual report data was compared with the data from last five years from 2010 to 2015 to gain a understanding of company`s performance, which was shown in the trends analysis. According to the analysis data, recommendations have been given to ensure the company`s revenue and reduce liabilities. All the recommendation and suggestions were made according to key ratios which will directly influence  company`s performance: mainly the net profit margin, current ratios, quick ratio, and debt to equity ratio, earning per share ratio, working capital turn over and cash return on capital investment. Keywords : Nike, ratio analysis, Vertical analysis, Horizontal analysis, financial   performanc

Biodiversity of Sri Lanka Present Status and Future Needs

Even though Sri Lanka is a small island, its biodiversity is significantly important, both in a regional and global scale. Sri Lanka has the highest species density (number of species present per 10,000 km2) of flowering plants, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals in the Asian region. Furthermore, the wetzone of Sri Lanka along with Western Ghats of India is declared as one of the 34 “biodiversity hotspots” of the world. Even though Sri Lanka’s biodiversity is thought to be very high, at present, only a small fraction of Sri Lanka’s biodiversity is known to science. For instance, higher plants and vertebrates are the only groups that have been studied in sufficient detail to date. Lower plants and invertebrates are largely neglected except for few selected groups such as butterflies, dragonflies, land snails, and algae. However, vertebrates make up only about 2% of all the species described to date while insects alone make up about 54%. Even the vertebrates and for that matter higher plants are not completely listed as during the last two decade alone large number of new species of vertebrates have been described. There is no doubt that large number of insect species are awaiting to be discovered in Sri Lanka. It will be rather unfortunate if some of these organisms would perish even before we discover them. Sri Lanka has taken a lead among the Asian countries in assessing conservation status of species at a national level, which is mandatory requirement for conservation priority setting and planning. Yet we have failed to follow up on the red listing process, which has resulted in many species being driven more towards extinction. Sri Lanka has taken many steps over the years to conserve its rich biodiversity. The most important among these include establishment of a network of protected areas that makes up about 30% of Sri Lanka’s land extent. However, many of these protected areas have not been inventorised and most of the protected areas do not have clear management objectives or management plans. Therefore, these protected areas are not managed as efficiently as they should be and as a result they have failed to accrue the benefits to the nation. Even though Sri Lanka ranks second in Asia with respect to percentage of land being managed as protected areas, much of its biodiversity inhabits areas outside the protected area network and many of these species are in conflict with man which has been identified as an emerging conservation issue in Sri Lanka. Thus, if we are to conserve Sri Lanka’s rich biodiversity there are number of things that need to be addressed immediately. These include, inter alia, inventorying the species and habitats, managing the protected areas in more efficient manner and finding lasting solutions to human-wildlife conflicts. Also, we need a paradigm shift in the way we utilise land as the current land use approach is quite detrimental to achieving conservation objectives of the nation.Keywords: Biodiversity conservation, Conservation planning, Inventorying species, Human-wildlife conflict

Design, synthesis and evaluation of small molecules as inhibitors of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1

Plasminogen activator inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1) is a member of the serine protease inhibitor (serpin) superfamily. Excessive levels of PAI-1 inhibit urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA), which regulates fibrinolysis as well as the development of different pathological diseases like obesity, metabolic syndrome, tumor invasion and metastasis, and coronary heart disease. Currently, there is no Food and Drug Administration approval for inactivating higher levels of PAI-1. Therefore, PAI-1 is considered an attractive drug target. Due to PAI-1’s different structural conformations and multiple binding domains, development of PAI-1 inhibitors is a challenging situation. In this research study, we describe the synthesis and evaluation of novel low molecular weight amides containing various moieties, including para-chlorobenzyl, polyphenol, oxindole, or isatin-based units. By changing the architectural scheme of these compounds we hope to effectively change the potency of our inhibitors, and will be able to develop a structure-activity relationship that will allow us to design a more potent small molecule as a PAI-1 inhibitor. Therefore, the synthesis and structure-activity relationship of those novel small molecules are discussed in this paper

Callus induction and direct shoot formation in in vitro cultured immature inflorescence tissues of coconut

Abstract link with word file