Anti-nutritional compounds in pulses: Implications and alleviation methods

Pulses are a rich source of protein and minerals particularly for the vegetarian and vegan population. However, several anti-nutritional compounds, such as trypsin inhibitor, phenolic compounds, phytates, cyanogenic compounds, lectins and saponins are also found in the legumes. Most of the anti-nutritional compounds of the pulses are present in the seed coat. Most of these compounds are sensitive to heat and can be substantially reduced by milling, cooking, germination, fermentation and heat processing. This review paper summarizes anti-nutritional compounds present in different pulses including their fractions, significance and beneficial and adverse effect on human health. The aim of this paper is to enlighten the readers about the anti-nutritional compounds present in the pulses and possible processing methods to enhance utilization of pulses

Analyzing W.B. Yeats Selected Poetry Through Feminist Epistemology: A Reassessment

W.B. Yeats stands out as one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. His symbolic poetry and his political and philosophical ideas are all prominently reflected in his work. During his lifetime, he was deeply influenced by a few remarkable women who made significant contributions to his poetic development and played a pivotal role in shaping his personality. Yeats's poems chosen for this study offer a profound insight into the predicament of women within various socio-cultural and economic contexts. This analysis will explore how Yeats projected female voices through multiple images and symbols in poems such as 'A Prayer for My Daughter,' 'Among School Children,' and 'Leda and the Swan.' While Maud Gonne is widely recognized as a central figure in Yeats's love poems, it's essential to acknowledge that she wasn't the sole woman who influenced the artist's evolution. Others, like Lady Gregory, Olivia Shakespeare, and George Hyde-Lees, the wife of W.B. Yeats, played significant roles in the later phase of his life, particularly in developing his philosophical treatise, "A Vision." In his final poems, Yeats attempted to convey his ultimate understanding of love, emphasizing its perfection in the unbroken relationship between the body and the mind. Works like 'Among School Children,' 'Leda and the Swan,' 'The Second Coming,' 'Sailing to Byzantium,' 'A Man Young and Old,' and many other universally acclaimed poems were inspired by his complex relationships with Maud Gonne and others

Nutrient and microbial water quality of the upper Ganga river, India: identification of pollution sources

The Ganga River is facing mounting environmental pressures due to rapidly increasing human population, urbanisation, industrialisation and agricultural intensification, resulting in worsening water quality, ecological status and impacts on human health. A combined inorganic chemical, algal and bacterial survey (using flow cytometry and 16S rRNA gene sequencing) along the upper and middle Ganga (from the Himalayan foothills to Kanpur) was conducted under pre-monsoon conditions. The upper Ganga had total phosphorus (TP) and total dissolved nitrogen concentrations of less than 100 μg l−1 and 1.0 mg l−1, but water quality declined at Kannauj (TP = 420 μg l−1) due to major nutrient pollution inputs from human-impacted tributaries (principally the Ramganga and Kali Rivers). The phosphorus and nitrogen loads in these two tributaries and the Yamuna were dominated by soluble reactive phosphorus and ammonium, with high bacterial loads and large numbers of taxa indicative of pathogen and faecal organisms, strongly suggesting sewage pollution sources. The high nutrient concentrations, low flows, warm water and high solar radiation resulted in major algal blooms in the Kali and Ramganga, which greatly impacted the Ganga. Microbial communities were dominated by members of the Phylum Proteobacteria, Bacteriodetes and Cyanobacteria, with communities showing a clear upstream to downstream transition in community composition. To improve the water quality of the middle Ganga, and decrease ecological and human health risks, future mitigation must reduce urban wastewater inputs in the urbanised tributaries of the Ramganga, Kali and Yamuna Rivers

Leprosy drug clofazimine activates peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ and synergizes with imatinib to inhibit chronic myeloid leukemia cells

Leukemia stem cells contribute to drug-resistance and relapse in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and BCR-ABL1 inhibitor monotherapy fails to eliminate these cells, thereby necessitating alternate therapeutic strategies for patients CML. The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) agonist pioglitazone downregulates signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5) and in combination with imatinib induces complete molecular response in imatinib-refractory patients by eroding leukemia stem cells. Thiazolidinediones such as pioglitazone are, however, associated with severe side effects. To identify alternate therapeutic strategies for CML we screened Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs in K562 cells and identified the leprosy drug clofazimine as an inhibitor of viability of these cells. Here we show that clofazimine induced apoptosis of blood mononuclear cells derived from patients with CML, with a particularly robust effect in imatinib-resistant cells. Clofazimine also induced apoptosis of CD34+38− progenitors and quiescent CD34+ cells from CML patients but not of hematopoietic progenitor cells from healthy donors. Mechanistic evaluation revealed that clofazimine, via physical interaction with PPARγ, induced nuclear factor kB-p65 proteasomal degradation, which led to sequential myeloblastoma oncoprotein and peroxiredoxin 1 downregulation and concomitant induction of reactive oxygen species-mediated apoptosis. Clofazimine also suppressed STAT5 expression and consequently downregulated stem cell maintenance factors hypoxia-inducible factor-1α and -2α and Cbp/P300 interacting transactivator with Glu/Asp-rich carboxy-terminal domain 2 (CITED2). Combining imatinib with clofazimine caused a far superior synergy than that with pioglitazone, with clofazimine reducing the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of imatinib by >4 logs and remarkably eroding quiescent CD34+ cells. In a K562 xenograft study clofazimine and imatinib co-treatment showed more robust efficacy than the individual treatments. We propose clinical evaluation of clofazimine in imatinib-refractory CML

A dual-band stacked rectangular microstrip antenna

163-169A dual-band characteristic of stacked rectangular microstrip antenna is experimentally studied. It is a probe fed antenna for impedance matching with 50Ω coaxial cable. This antenna works well in the frequency range 2.86-4.63 GHz. It is basically a low cost, light weight medium gain antenna which is used for mobile communication. The variations of the length and width (1 mm) of the stacked rectangular patch antenna have been done. It is found to have dual resonance with increasing lower resonance frequency and almost constant upper resonance frequency with increases of the length and width of rectangular microstrip antenna. The input impedance and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) return loss have been measured with the help of network analyzer

Shorting pin loaded microstrip antenna for dual-band operation

281-284The series and shunt inductivity introduced by the probe and shorting pin respectively, in a single-feed shorted rectangular microstrip antenna has been evaluated theoretically using transmission line method. The proposed structure provides compact dual band operation using single feed mechanism. The input impedance, VSWR, is calculated theoretically. It is found that the ratio of the resonant frequencies highly depends on the position of shorting pin

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Sustainability Evaluation of the Stormwater Drainage System in Six Indian Cities

Over the past several decades, urbanisation has spread rapidly over the globe. Research on the viability of urban stormwater drainage systems and the search for solutions to the related problems constitute an important prerequisite for their sustainability evaluation. The Government of India’s sub-committee for the development of “National sustainable habitat parameters on urban stormwater management” has proposed twenty key indices to promote and monitor the sustainable urban stormwater management paradigm. Their evaluation may be taken up at various stages of development, including planning/design, execution, post-operation audits, impact assessment, etc. Eleven of these sustainability indices, including the “Natural drainage system index (NDSI), the Drainage coverage (constructed) index (DCI), the Permeability Index (PI), Water bodies rejuvenation index (WBRI), Water body vulnerability index (WBVI), Water logging index (WLI), Area vulnerability index (AWI), Stormwater discharge quality index (SWDQI), and Rainfall intensity index (RII)” were evaluated for three Tier I cities (Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai) and three Tier II cities (Varanasi, Chandigarh, and Roorkee) in India based on the available data for 2010 as the datum year and 2020 as the test year. All the considered cities serve as economically and institutionally important urban centres, fall in different climatic zones, and are distributed in two major categories based on the scale of development and population density. All the indices enumerated individually fell within the range of 0 to 1, the two extremities of the sustainability range. Further, ranking of various indices was done employing the Analytical Hierarchy Process, and after deriving the weights for each, aggregation of all these indices was performed to yield an “Overall sustainability index” for each city. Different values were demonstrated along the sustainability scale for all the cities based on performance with regard to various constituent indices in a standalone mode and their interplay in an aggregated mode. The findings are expected to provide important insights to meet the goal of the developing sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDSs)

Evaluation of Speech Production Skills After Unilateral Cochlear Implantation in 45 Prelingual Deaf Patients

Objectives: To determine speech production skills in everyday situations following unilateral Cochlear Implantation.Methods: 45 prelingual deaf patients who underwent unilateral Cochlear Implantation under B.J. Medical College Cochlear and Hearing Implant Programme from April 2007 to August 2010 were included in the study. Participants were divided into five groups on basis of age at which participants underwent implantation: ≤3 years, 3 to 6 years, 6 to 9 years, 9 to 12 years, 12 to 15 years. MUSS Questionnaire was administered before implantation unaided and at three post-implant switch-on time periods 6 months, 1 year and 2 years with Cochlear Implant alone. The study was retrospective and prospective comparative interventional type with quantitative approach. The study was based on individual children evaluated with repeated measures, each child serving as his own control. The significance of the difference between the individual preoperative and postoperative scores was evaluated using the post hoc test of repeated measure analysis.Results: Pre-op average MUSS Questionnaire score was ≤ 4/40 in all implanted age groups with scores increasing over time to attain average score ranging from 27.5 to 34.78/40 in all implanted age groups after two years of implantation. The score increased significantly (p<0.05) in all implanted age groups from pre- to post- CI. Improved ratings were found for those implanted at younger age (≤ 3 years) than those implanted later.Discussion: There is significant improvement in speech production skills after cochlear implantation which continues to improve over time, highlighting the need for continuous auditory-verbal training. This study highlights the importance of age of implantation. Better results seen in those implanted at younger age

Thin Layer Drying Kinetics of Indian Blackberry (Syzygium cumini L.) Pulp

Drying kinetics of fruit has importance in estimating optimum nutritional retainability, preservation requisites and process economy while processing into useful products. Drying kinetics of pulp of local variety of Indian blackberry was studied in a cabinet dryer. The drying experiment was conducted at 50 ºC, 60 ºC and 70 ºC, and moisture losses were recorded at 30-min intervals. Drying took place in two falling rate periods. Shift of first to second falling rate period was found to be irrespective of temperature, and started from 1.08 g water.g−1 dry matter. The drying data of Indian blackberry pulp was fitted into five commonly used Newton, Page, Peleg, Henderson and Pabis, and Logarithmic thin layer drying models. The logarithmic model adequately described the drying of Indian blackberry pulp. The activation energy values in first and second falling rate periods were 42.20 kJ.mol−1 and 61.62 kJ.mol−1, respectively