Estimation of Biogas Potential of the Food Waste Generated in a Hostel Mess

This research work focusses on the estimation of biogas production from the food waste collected from a hostel mess in National Institute of Technology Rourkela. Vikram Sarabhai Hall of residence being the biggest hostel in the institute generates enough food waste and has a huge biogas potential. This paper focusses on the theoretical estimation of biogas that is an initial step towards establishing a biogas plant at the backyard of the hostel. Along with the waste treatment technology available today, characterization and chemical analysis of the raw material supplied to the machine becomes exceptionally important when figuring out the design and operational parameters of the biogas plant. Thorough research both quantitative and qualitative parameters are very important prior to the establishment of any engineering model. A food waste sample was collected from the hostel mess. In order to do the qualitative analysis and characterisation of food waste, the sample was dried in hot air oven and further it was crushed using the mortar pistol to powdered form. This powdered sample was subsequently used for characterisation of the food waste. Characterisation process includes the carbohydrate estimation, protein estimation, cholesterol estimation and CHNS analysis. This research work includes an MATLAB tool that was used to theoretical estimate the methane generation if the CHNS data is known to us. Even though very few number of samples were analysed, the results are extremely valuable for the biogas plant designers

Joint Forest Planning and Management (JFPM) in the Eastern Plains Region of Karnataka: A Rapid Assessment

Over the past decade Joint Forest Management (JFM) has become the key concept through which forest generation activities are being implemented in most parts of India. This study was a rapid independent assessment of the JFPM activities conducted by Karnataka Forest department under a massive loan from the Japanese Bank for International Co-operation, focusing on the northern and southern maidan regions. The assessment used data from various sources at different scales and depth, including macro-level data gathered by the department itself, responses to a mail-in questionnaire, observations from brief field visits to a number of villages, and from in-depth case studies in a few villages. The study uncovered several lacunae in the way JFPM was being undertaken. Many of the basic tenets of ‘joint planning and management’ like consultation with villagers and setting up of Village Forest Committees (VFCs) are being violated from the outset. The selection of villages has been poor. Most VFCs exist in name only with poor participation of the village general body.Some of the lacunae in JFPM implementation are due to lacunae in the basic framework for JFPM. It is also true that the Eastern Plains region presents special challenges to JFPM implementation. But genuine JFPM is generally absent even in pockets where favourable conditions exist. On the contrary, the few ‘success’ stories are often cases of exploiting existing hierarchies to meet narrowly defined goals. Thus, the major cause of the poor quality of JFPM processes and outcomes is the refusal of the implementation agency to seriously commit itself to the concept of participatory, people-oriented forestry

Effect of pre-harvest spray of calcium nitrate, boric acid and zinc sulphate on storability of Nagpur mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco)

An investigation was carried out at Fruit Research Farm, Department of Fruit Science at College of Horticulture and Forestry, Jhalawar during 16 September, 2014 to 1 March, 2015 to study the individual effect of Pre-harvest spray of Calcium nitrate, Zinc sulphate and Boric acid as well as their interaction on Storability of Nagpur mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco) after fruit set stage. Among different pre-harvest treatments, T27 treatment (Ca 3.0% + B 0.6% + Zn 0.6%) treated fruits had the longest shelf-life of 15 days at ambient conditions with lowest PLW (9.27 %), decay per cent (15.23 %) and better organoleptic ratting (8.41/10) and higher retention of juice percent (39.12 %) till end of storage period

Genetic variability studies for yield and its contributing traits in okra [Abelmoschus esculentus (L.) Moench]

The experiment comprising 30 okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) genotypes were grown and analysed for yield and its attributing traits at the Department of Vegetable science, Kumarganj, Faizabad during Zaid (2011) period. All the characters studied showed a wide range of variation. The variability for yield among the accessionsevaluated was also remarkable. The magnitude phenotypic coefficient of variation was higher than genotypic coefficient of variation for all traits. Both phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) were high for plant height (11.10 and 10.60, respectively). Fruit weight exhibited low value of GCV (2.31) and PCV (4.74) and likely to show less response under selection. High heritability (91.3) with high genetic advance (26.74) was recorded for plant height, whereas, ridges per fruit had high heritability (97.0) with moderate genetic advance (18.45). This study aimed to evaluate okra genotypes for variability with a view to providing information on the development of high yielding genotypes to meet the growing food demand of the populace

Current understanding on micro RNAs and its regulation in response to Mycobacterial infections

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved, naturally abundant, small, regulatory non-coding RNAs that inhibit gene expression at the post-transcriptional level in a sequence-specific manner. Due to involvement in a broad range of biological processes and diseases, miRNAs are now commanding considerable attention. Although much of the focus has been on the role of miRNAs in different types of cancer, recent evidence also points to a critical role of miRNAs in infectious disease, including those of bacterial origin. Now, miRNAs research is exploring rapidly as a new thrust area of biomedical research with relevance to deadly bacterial diseases like Tuberculosis (caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis). The purpose of this review is to highlight the current developments in area of miRNAs regulation in Mycobacterial diseases; and how this might influence the diagnosis, understanding of disease biology, control and management in the future

Short communication: The effect of depth of operation and soaking time on catch rates in the experimental tuna longline fisheries in Lakshadweep Sea, India

Most of the marine fish landings from the Indian waters are from the fishing operations in the coastal shelf area, especially from the shallower region ranging from 5 to 100 m depth. Heavy demand for seafood in domestic and international markets underlines the need for increasing the marine fish production. Catch trends indicated that the production from the coastal fisheries is almost stagnant and point towards the need for harvesting unexploited or under exploited oceanic fish resources. Present fleet size of the distant water fishing vessels is very less in spite of India’s vast EEZ of 2.02 million sq km and two Islands groups, viz., Andaman, Nicobar and Lakshadweep. ... Experimental longline operations were initiated in the Lakshadweep Sea to tap the unexploited oceanic tuna fishes. This paper discusses the effect of depth of operation and soaking time on the overall catching performance and species selectivity in the longlines operated

आनडमान द्वीपों की रीफ मछलियाँ – एक लघु सर्वेक्षण

कृपया पूरा लेखा पढ

Heat Transfer Study of Porous Media with a Temperature Jump Condition

Conjugate heat transfer in a porous media is investigated with a temperature jump condition obtained from kinetic gas theory. The temperature jump appears alongside flow boundary condition when the pressure is low, and considered to be in non-continuum regime. This investigation focuses on both one-dimensional and two-dimensional porous media models. The length scale of the pores is 100 microns. The temperature is ambient, and the pressure is low enough to reach the slip-flow regime. The thermal behavior of porous media is investigated using a slot model with a gas trapped between two solid blocks. Aluminum oxide and air are considered as a baseline combination. The steady-state results show the change in the temperature jump and net heat flux as a function of Knudsen number for gas-solid systems. For unsteady cases, a change in the amplitude and phase of the heat flux is shown over the range of frequencies between 10 Hz and 10 kHz. The effects of different solid-gas combinations are also investigated. The results show that the properties of the gas has a significantly larger impact than those of the solid. Steady-state heat transfer in two-dimensional porous media is also investigated using a brick model with a rectangular cavity of 90% void fraction. The results show the effects of pressure, void fraction and solid-gas combinations on the effective thermal conductivity of the porous media model. A multi-cell structure is also investigated to study the effective thermal conductivity and edge effects when low number of cells are considered. Pressure dependent thermal properties of the gases and silica based solid non-porous materials are also investigated due to their very low thermal conductivity

Mechanism of Mg 2+ -accompanied product release in sugar nucleotidyltransferases

The nucleotidyl transfer reaction, catalyzed by sugar nucleotidyltransferases (SNTs), is assisted by two active site Mg 2+ ions. While studying this reaction using X-ray crystallography, we captured snapshots of the pyrophosphate (product) as it exits along a pocket. Surprisingly, one of the active site Mg 2+ ions remains coordinated to the exiting pyrophosphate. This hints at the participation of Mg 2+ in the process of product release, besides its role in catalyzing nucleotidyl transfer. These observations are further supported by enhanced sampling molecular dynamics simulations. Free energy computations suggest that the product release is likely to be rate limiting in SNTs, and the origin of the high free energy barrier for product release could be traced back to the “slow” conformational change of an Arg residue at the exit end of the pocket. These results establish a dual role for Mg 2+, and propose a general mechanism of product release during the nucleotidyl transfer by SNTs