Rotifer communities of religious water bodies of Haryana (India): Biodiversity, distribution and ecology

The rotifer communities of eight religious water bodies of Haryana characterized by different trophic status reveal 44 species belonging to 15 genera and 12 families, represent the richest biodiversity of rotifers. Brachionus, Asplanchna and Keratella genus were found to be pollution tolerant species and common at all the selected water bodies viz., Brahmsarovar and Jyotisar at Kurukshetra; Saraswati tirth, Pehowa; Kapalmochan, Yamunanagar; Phalgu tirth, Kaithal; Banganga tirth , Dayalpur; Pandu Pindara, Jind and Kultarn Tirth, Kirmach. whereas Gastropus, Testudinella, Monostyla clasterocerca, Lecane arcula, Filina terminalis were found to be specific at Brahmsarovar (site 1); Filinia longiseta at Phalgu (site 2); Lecane ploenensis, Euchlanis dilata at Pehowa (site 3); B. budapestinensis, B. nilsoni, Asplanchna brightwelli, Asplanchna sieboldii, Polyurthera were specific to Kirmach (site 4); Monostyla decipiens, Anauraepsis nevicula at Jyotisar (site 5); Trichocera porcellus at Kapal mochan (site 7); Keratella cochlearis, Trichocera capucina were found to be specific at the BanGanga (site 8,). However, no specific species appeared at Pandu Pindara (site 6). Seasonal variations were also observed at all the sites during spring, monsoon, post monsoon and in winters. A positive correlation of rotifer abundance was observed with temperature (r = 0.356, P < 0.05), BOD (r = 0.413, P < 0.05) and Ammonia (r = 0.378, P < 0.05) whereas a negative correlation was observed with DO (r = -0.385, P < 0.05) showing that these were the main factors affecting the richness, diversity and density of rotifers. The rotifer communities of each site can be reconstructed from the tables and figures making this inventory an important benchmark for evaluating future regional environment change

MAG: A Multilingual, Knowledge-base Agnostic and Deterministic Entity Linking Approach

Entity linking has recently been the subject of a significant body of research. Currently, the best performing approaches rely on trained mono-lingual models. Porting these approaches to other languages is consequently a difficult endeavor as it requires corresponding training data and retraining of the models. We address this drawback by presenting a novel multilingual, knowledge-based agnostic and deterministic approach to entity linking, dubbed MAG. MAG is based on a combination of context-based retrieval on structured knowledge bases and graph algorithms. We evaluate MAG on 23 data sets and in 7 languages. Our results show that the best approach trained on English datasets (PBOH) achieves a micro F-measure that is up to 4 times worse on datasets in other languages. MAG, on the other hand, achieves state-of-the-art performance on English datasets and reaches a micro F-measure that is up to 0.6 higher than that of PBOH on non-English languages.Comment: Accepted in K-CAP 2017: Knowledge Capture Conferenc

Impact of Mass Bathing and Religious Activities on Water Quality Index of Prominent Water Bodies: A Multilocation Study in Haryana, India

The present study was designed to assess the impact of mass bathing and religious activities on water quality index (WQI) of prominent water bodies (eight) in Haryana, India. Water quality characteristics revealed significant increase in the values of nitrate, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), turbidity, total dissolved solids (TDS), conductivity, total hardness, total alkalinity, and MPN count after the religious activities. The computed WQI at all the eight selected sites varied from 47.55 to 211.42. The results revealed that there was a significant increase in the value of WQI after mass bathing or any other ritual performed. Out of eight water bodies studied three (sites 3, 4, and 5) were found under good water quality status; four sites (1, 2, 6, and 7) depicted medium water quality but site 8 was found under poor water quality after the religious activities. The good water quality status of water bodies was correlated with larger size of the water bodies and less number of pilgrims; however, the poor WQI values may be attributed to smaller size of the water body and heavy load of pilgrims on such sites. Therefore, water of these religious water bodies needed to be regularly changed after mass bathing to protect the aquatic component from different contaminations

Evaluation of mass bathing effects on water quality status of eight prominent ponds of Haryana (India): A multi-location study

Amongst the various anthropogenic activities, mass bathing and other religious rituals also affect the water quality of aquatic ecosystem. The present research has been conducted to evaluate the impact of mass bathing and other religious activities on the eight famous religious water bodies of Haryana (Kapalmochan tirth, Kulotarn tirth, Ban-Ganga tirth, Brahmsarovar, Jyotisar, Saraswati tirth, Phalgu tirth and Pandu-Pindara tirth). The water samples were collected from three sampling stations (A, B and C) at each of the eight selected sites (S1 to S8) before and after the religious rituals and also seasonally. The samples were analyzed for Dissolved oxygen (DO), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) ammonia and heavy metals . The study highlighted the seasonal variations of physicochemical characteristics and also the effects of mass bathing and religious activities on water quality of the religious sites. Although the water was reported as safe in terms of DO content, total ammonia, BOD and the values of COD before the religious rituals but the values exceeded the maximum permissible limit {DO (0.8±0.1, 0.76±0.11), BOD (25.07±0.13, 18.13±0.13),COD (131.9±2.08), Ammonia (2.31±.23, 6.57±0.02) Iron (5890 µg L-1) and Zinc (200 µg L-1)} after mass bathing and religious rituals indicating that the water was not suitable for drinking as well as bathing purposes after the rituals/mass bathing. So, bathing during/after such rituals may become a health hazards to the bathers or users of the water and also may affect the aquatic biota, further depleting it. There is thus a need of regular monitoring and regular application of suitable remedial measures to prevent the depletion of the quality of lentic waters

Salt hyperaccumulation in Amaranthaceae: understanding the physiology behind salinity adaptation in nature

Salt hyperaccumulating plants have drawn significant attention for their potential use in phytoremediation due to their ability to absorb ions from the soil and store them in their aboveground tissues, particularly in their succulent leaves. Several species, including S. fruticosa, S. nudiflora, S. baryosma, C. ambrosoides, C. murale, C. album, A. nummularia, A. amnicola, A. lentiformis, A. aspera, A. tomentosa, and H. recurvum, belong to this category of hyperaccumulators. Elevated levels of salt stress have a detrimental impact on the growth and development of plants. This is attributed to the heightened accumulation of ions, resulting in both ionic and osmotic stress. Specifically, the ratios of Na+/K+, Na+/Ca2++Mg2+, and Cl-/SO42- tend to skew towards higher values under increased salinity conditions from normal to 16 dS m-1. Furthermore, the total ionic content per plant showed a noticeable increase, escalating from 152.43 to 306.8 units. Notably, ash content and total dissolved solids also exhibited augmentation with rising levels of salinity (from control to 16 dS m-1). EC and pH varied with the different species in comparison to the values before plantation. Sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) varied from 23.16 to 24.87 with the species. These halophytes are to be a source of genes for developing salinity-resistant crops that can be oppressed during conventional and molecular plant breeding programs. Considering their unique traits, these halophytes hold promise as a source of genes for developing salt-resistant crops, and they can be integrated into conventional and molecular plant breeding programs to combat salinity-related challenges

Spatial relationship between CMEs and prominence eruptions during SC 24 and SC 25

During their propagation, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and prominences sometimes display a nonradial motion. During the years after the solar minimum, the CME central position angle tended to be offset closer to the equator compared to that of the associated prominence eruptions (PE). No such effect was observed during solar maximum. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the latitudinal offsets of CMEs with respect to their source regions. We study 256 events from SC 24 and SC 25, listed in the Coordinate Data Analysis Workshop Data Center. We analyzed the CMES radial offset from the associated PEs by comparing their latitudes in the plane of the sky. This work is an extension of the previous work by Gopalswamy et al., but with an independent data set. We have confirmed the systematic equatorward offset of CME from the solar source region for the rising phase of Solar Cycle 25. Our analysis of the relation between CME linear speed and PE-CME latitudinal offset indicated that the velocities of the deflected CMEs are mainly in the range of 200 and 800 km s$^{−1}$. In this study, we compared the nonradial offsets for the rising and decay phases of SC 24 and our analysis has shown that during the decay phase more events deflected toward the pole can be observed. The observed variation is attributed to the presence of a substantial number of low-latitude coronal holes during the decay phase and to the influence from nearby active regions

Cross-sectional study to evaluate various cardiovascular manifestations in pregnant women with preeclampsia using 2d echocardiogram

Preeclampsia is one of the most frequent complications found in pregnancy. Preeclampsia was initially thought to cause poor long-term cardiovascular outcomes, but recent studies have shown its effect to be more early and severe. Aims: To reduce the morbidity and mortality for all patients with hypertension in pregnancy through any cardiovascular problem that is directly caused by hypertension in pregnancy Methods: it is a cross-sectional and observational study of pregnant women with preeclampsia in the reproductive age group (15–44 years) diagnosed with preeclampsia in the antenatal ward/HDU/MICU at Niloufer hospital were evaluated with 2d echo on diagnosis and a follow up 2d echo after delivery was done and changes in 2d echo were noted, patients with prior changes in 2d echo have been excluded from the study. About 113 preeclamptic patients were studied and further classified as non-severe and severe preeclampsia, and their results were compared. Results: This study shows significant cardiovascular dynamics changes in subjects with preeclampsia (both severe and non-severe) which can be studied by 2 D echo. Non-severe preeclampsia was associated with more normal birth weight. This was found statistically significant in our study. IUD and early neonatal death were more associated with severe preeclampsia when compared to non-severe preeclampsia, which was found statistically significant. Conclusions: Early identification of preeclamptic patients at higher risk of developing cardiovascular complications later in life by undergoing timely echocardiography

Comparison of various decalcifying agents to evaluate their efficacy

Background: Bone is a biological complex structure primarily comprising collagen and minerals. It is important to demineralize these mineralized tissues to remove their calcium apatite crystals for analysing the sub-cellular, cellular, and fibrillar architecture. Six demineralizing agents’ efficacy was examined by assessing their duration, ease of handling tissue, staining, and histological criteria. The present study aimed to evaluate six commonly used demineralizing agents to identify the best decalcifying agent. Methods: Twenty resected hard tissue specimens (1 cm × 1 cm x 1 cm) from the archives were used in the study. These segments were decalcified by solutions namely 10% nitric acid, 10% formic acid, 14% ethylene di amine tetra acetic acid (EDTA), a mixture of formic acid and hydrochloric acid (formic + HCL) 4% each, and a mixture of formic acid and nitric acid 4% each (formic + HNO3), 10% formal nitric acid further subjected to radiographic endpoint test. Results: The present study confirmed the fact that samples treated with EDTA showed the best overall impression in terms of tissue integrity and histology followed by 10% formal nitric acid which gave fairly good cellular details and was also rapid in the action. Conclusions: Based on the present study findings, we suggest that 10% formal nitric acid is the better decalcifying agent available, considering time and tissue integrity as two main factors

In Vivo Antidiabetic Activity and GCMS Analysis of Ethanolic Extracts of Rabdosia Rugosa (Wal ex Benth) H Hara

The current study examined the effects of an ethanolic extract of R. rugosa (Rabdosia rugosa (Wall. ex Benth.) H. Hara) on alloxan-induced diabetes rats, detailing its hypoglycemic potential and using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze its phytoconstituents. The FTIR spectrum verified the presence of various functional groups in the active ingredients. This research opted to use an extract from fresh leaves and flowers. Chichiri is the local name for the shrub R. rugosa, which belongs to the sage family (Labiatae) and is used as traditional medicine. To determine the hypoglycemic activity of plant extracts the rats were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups for two weeks of experiments: a normal control group that received no treatment, a diabetic control group that received only alloxan (150 mg/kg BW), a drug control group that received glibenclamide (5mg/kg BW), and a treatment group that received R. rugosa extract (50 mg/kg BW). Our results demonstrated that the extract and medication group saw statistically significant improvement (p≤0.001) in body weight, blood glucose levels, lipid profile, liver and renal parameters. The GCMS analysis showed that numerous active phytoconstituents were present. Phenols, alkanes, alcohols, and other compounds were detected in the FTIR spectrum. After examining the data, we determined that the leaves and inflorescences of R. rugosa have hypoglycemic potential. Continued study of the naturally separated chemicals can aid in the creation of organic medications for diabetic treatment