Velocity Distribution in the Annuli of a Plane Reverse-Flow Combustor Model

This paper reports the yclodity profiles and flow distribution in the annuli of a plane reverse-flow gas turbine GOmbustor model. Based on these, flow-split through different liner holes and swirlers has been estimated. it is seen that percentage flow-split through the outer liner surface holes, compared to that through liner dome and inner liner surface holes, is not affected  significantly by increase in theinlet flow velocity

EFFECT OF IMIDACLOPRID INSECTICIDE RESIDUE ON BIOCHEMICAL PARAMETERS IN POTATOES AND ITS ESTIMATION BY HPLC

Pesticides are known to interfere with the biochemical processes of plants, lowering their food quality. The effects of imidacloprid insecticide (a very commonly used pesticide on vegetables) on some biochemical quality control parameters and some enzyme systems (CAT, PPO and POD) were studied. Estimation of imidacloprid residues in potatoes was done by HPLC. It was observed that insecticide treated potatoes have considerable amount of imidacloprid 0.35 mg/kg at the time of harvesting. Washing potatoes with tap water and boiling for 20min. decreased residue up to 33% and 80% respectively. It was also found that the imidacloprid insecticide treatment decreased the reducing sugar, total phenols, ortho-dihydroxy phenols and ascorbic acid contents of potatoes but increased the total protein content and enzyme (catalase, peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase) activity. Keywords: Imidacloprid, potato, HPLC, biochemical parameters, enzyme activit

Potential of Laceyella sacchari strain B42 crude xylanase in biobleaching of kraft pulp

Xylanase producing thermophilic actinomycetes strain B42 was isolated from bagasse. This strain was enriched on oat spelt xylan agar medium and screened onto xylan-congo red agar plate by the xylanolysis method. The phylogenetic analysis using 16S rDNA sequence data confirmed that strain B42 showed highest homology (99.0%) with Laceyella sacchari and was identified as Laceyella sacchari strain B42. Maximal xylanase production was achieved at the incubation period of 48 h with the xylanase and cellulase activities as 24.5 and 0.08 U/ml, respectively. The optimum pH and optimum temperature of L. sacchari strain B42 xylanase was found to be 9.0 and 60°C, respectively. Xylanase was thermostable at 60°C for 1 h and retained 90% of its activity up to 6 h at this temperature, and subsequently enzyme retained 75 and 60% activity at 70 to 80°C, respectively after 6 h. At biobleaching of kraft pulp, enzyme released sufficient amount of phenolic and hydrophobic compounds. The ultraviolet (UV absorption spectrum of the compounds released by enzyme treatment indicated the presence of lignin in the released coloring matter. The enzymatic biobleaching of kraft pulp caused ~12% reduction of kappa number, 6.67 fold releases of reducing sugars and 10% decrease of lignin content at xylanase optimum dose (60 U/g) and time (4 h).Keywords: Biobleaching, kappa number, pulp and paper industry, thermostable, xylanase, 16S rDNAAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(6), pp. 570-57

Evaluation of fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) germplasm for production and quality

Seventy four fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) accessions along with check varieties RF-101 and RF-125 were evaluated for yield and yield attributing characters. Eight promising accessions for seed yileld were then evaluated for volatile oil content. The oil content of three most promising acceSSIOns along with check varieties were analyzed on a CLC. The accession, UF-178, exhibited superiority over other accessions in respect of yield attributing characters such as branches plant-1, seeds umbel-1 and seed yield. UF-177 was found to be superior with respect to volatile oil content as well as volatile oil yield. UF-177 has the least fenchone content among the three. UF-179 was having maximum anethole content, which was found to be at par with variety RF-101. These three accessions may be exploited in breeding programmes for production and quality. &nbsp

Aggressive angiomyxoma presenting with huge abdominal lump: A case report

Agressive angiomyxoma is a rare mesenchymal neoplasm. It mainly presents in females. We here present a case of angiomyxoma presenting as huge abdominal lump along with gluteal swelling. Case note is described along with brief review of literature

Studies on plant regeneration and transformation efficiency of Agrobacterium mediated transformation using neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII) and glucuronidase (GUS) as a reporter gene

Plant transformation mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a soil plant pathogenic bacterium, is the most used method for the introduction of foreign genes into plant cells and the subsequent regeneration of transgenic plants. We have standardized the tissue culture media for the regeneration and transformation with the vector LBA 4404 (pCAMBIA 2301), so that in future, this system may be exploited for the expression of antibody fragment (single chain variable fragment) in plants (plantibody). The transformed green shoots tested positive for neomycin phosphotransferase II (nptII) gene and glucuronidase (GUS) were screened, rooted on MS medium and subsequently hardened to harvest seeds. The transformation frequency of Agrobacterium (LBA 4404) with the binary vector pCAMBIA 2301 on the basis of GUS resistance was found to be 2.9%.Key words: Agrobacterium, transformation, Nicotiana tabacum, tobacco, transformation frequency

High Throughput and Resource Efficient Pipelined Decoder Designs for Projective Geometry LDPC Codes

Projective geometry (PG) based low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder design using iterative sum-product decoding algorithm (SPA) is a big challenge due to higher interconnection and computational complexity, and larger memory requirement caused by relatively higher node degrees. PG-LDPC codes using SPA exhibits the best error performance and faster convergence. This paper presents an efficient novel decoding method, modified SPA (MSPA) that not only shortens the critical-path delay but also improves the hardware utilization and throughput of the decoder while maintaining the error performance of SPA. Three fully-parallel LDPC decoder designs based on PG structure, PG(2,GF( 2s )) of LDPC codes are introduced. These designs differ in their bit-node (BN) and check-node (CN) architectures. Fixed-point, 9-bit quantization scheme is used to achieve better error performance. Another significant contribution of this work is the pipelining of the proposed decoder architectures to further enhance the overall throughput. These parallel and pipelined designs are implemented for 73-bit (rate 0.616) and 1057-bit (rate 0.769) regular-structured PG-LDPC codes, on Xilinx Virtex-6 LX760 FPGA and on 0.18 μm CMOS technology for ASIC. Synthesis and simulation results have shown the better performance, throughput and effectiveness of the proposed designs

Customer segmentation in e-commerce: K-means vs hierarchical clustering

Customer segmentation is important for e-commerce companies to understand and target different customers. The primary focus of this work is the application and comparison of K-means clustering and hierarchical clustering, unsupervised machine learning techniques, in customer segmentation for e-commerce platforms. Clustering leverages customer search behavior, reflecting brand preferences, and identifying distinct customer segments. The proposed work explores the K-means algorithm and hierarchical clustering. It uses them to classify customers in a standard e-commerce customer dataset, mainly focused on frequently searched brands. Both techniques are compared based on silhouette scores and cluster visualizations. K-means clustering yielded well-separated segments compared to hierarchical clustering. Then, using the K-means algorithm, customers are classified into different segments based on brand search patterns. Further, targeted marketing strategies are discussed for each segment. Results show three customer segments: high searchers-low buyers, loyal customers, and moderate engagers. The proposed work provides valuable insights into customers that could be used for developing targeted marketing campaigns, product recommendations, and customer engagement strategies to enhance the conversion rate, customer satisfaction, and, in turn, the growth of an e-commerce platform