Molecular detection and characterization of phytoplasma associated with China aster (Callistephus chinensis) phyllody in India

China aster (Callistephus chinensis L.) is one of the most popular annual flowering plant grown through-out the world. Phyllody disease of China aster is a phytoplasma associated disease that induces severe economic losses. Phytoplasmal disease in China aster was assessed for phytoplasma by direct polymerase chain reaction primed by using phytoplasma universal primer pairs PI/P7. A 1.8 Kb DNA fragments encoding the portion of phyto-plasma 16SrDNA amplified by PCR was cloned and sequenced. Sequencing of the PCR product and BLAST analy-sis indicated that China aster phyllody phytoplasma strain shared maximum sequence identity (99%) with strains of Peanut Witches’ broom (16SrII) phytoplasma group. Phylogenetic relationship of 16SrDNA sequence of China aster phyllody phytoplasma strain in the present study confirmed association of Peanut Witches’ broom (16SrII) group of phytoplasmas with China aster phyllody disease in India

Low Temperature Electrical Resistivity Studies in Lead Thin Films

Thin lead films of thickness, 100 nm, 150 nm, 200 nm and 250 nm have been deposited using electron beam evaporation technique at room temperature onto glass substrates under high vacuum conditions. Films were investigated for electrical resistivity at low temperatures from 77 K to 300 K. Resistivity variation with temperature indicates transition from metallic to semiconductor behavior. Transition tem-perature increased with increasing film thickness. Temperature coefficient of resistance in the metallic re-gion has been determined for all the four films. Using Arrhenius relation, activation energy for conduction in metallic region has been determined. Mott’s small polaron hopping model has been employed to deter-mine activation energy in the semiconducting region. In a film of 250 nm thick, deviation from Mott’s small polaron hopping model for below 100 K was noted and that has been considered under Mott’s variable range hopping model. The complete understanding of electrical properties of Pb films has been necessitat-ed by the fact that the band gap in CdS decreases when Pb is incorporated into it, which in turn can be used to fabricated large efficient solar cells. It is for the first time that lead films of the present thickness have been investigated for low temperature resistivity. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3197

Esterase Activity from the Germinated Jatropha curcas Seeds in Different Extraction buffers.

The buffer solution plays a major role in protein stability and activity, thereby making the selection of a buffer to achievemaximum activity for a protein will be a formidable challenge. The present work constitutes an extension of this investigation to esterases from germinated Jatrophacurcas seeds. The 0.1 M NaCl solution, 0.1 M phosphate buffer pH7.0, 0.1 M citrate buffer pH 5.0 and 0.1 M Tris-HCl buffer pH 8.5, 0.1 M NaOH and distill water were used to extract protein from germinated Jatrophacurcas seeds. The esterase activity and specific activity for NaCl solution, phosphatebuffer, citrate buffer, Tris-HCl buffer, NaOH and Distilled water was 9.07, 8.6, 8.2, 6.46, 0.07 and 4.98 μmoles/min/gm and 0.09258, 0.0905, 0.088, 0.0715 0.0003 and 0.081 IU/mg, respectively.The Native-PAGE analysis showed the esterase enzyme activity in different extraction buffer.Among 13 esterase bands, 8 esterolytic bands were major bands (band no 1,3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12 and 13)and remaining were minor bands.The amount of proteins and esterase activity were found to bethe highest when extracted with 0.1 M NaCl solution

Multi-resolution texture classification based on local image orientation

The aim of this paper is to evaluate quantitatively the discriminative power of the image orientation in the texture classification process. In this regard, we have evaluated the performance of two texture classification schemes where the image orientation is extracted using the partial derivatives of the Gaussian function. Since the texture descriptors are dependent on the observation scale, in this study the main emphasis is placed on the implementation of multi-resolution texture analysis schemes. The experimental results were obtained when the analysed texture descriptors were applied to standard texture databases

Biological relationship of Bean common mosaic virus (BCMV) infecting cowpea with leguminous plant species

Bean common mosaic virus (BCMV) associated with cowpea mechanically inoculated to different legumi-nous plants. Out of nineteen including cowpea Var.C-152, the virus was easily transferred to ten different legumi-nous hosts. All other hosts assessed for the presence of BCMV were found to be uninfected. The number of days taken for symptom expression and symptoms were varied within plant species. Pole bean expressed mosaic symp-tom after long incubation period (15-18 days) whereas, shorter incubation period was observed in common bean and rice bean (7- 10 days). BCMV produced chlorosis, mosaic, leaf distortion, puckering, vein banding, vein clearing and vein netting on cowpea(C-152). A typical virus symptom, mosaic was observed in green gram, common bean, lime bean, rice bean and yard long bean, whereas, leaf rolling and leaf distortion was observed in black gram, pole bean and snap bean. The virus-host relationship was confirmed by back inoculation test to C. amaranticolor. Further symptomatic plants were subjected for Reverse Transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for molecular confirmation using BCMV coat protein (CP) specific primer pair. A PCR fragment size of 439bp was amplified for the symptomatic plants. The results generated indicated the ability of a plant to support virus expression and host speci-ficity of BMCV within the leguminous plant species

Prospective study on the knowledge and practice of foot care among diabetic patients

Background: The magnitude of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) and the amputation rates due to DFUs are high in India. Proper diabetic foot care can minimize these rates. Although numerous such studies have been done, reinforcement of awareness to practice diabetic foot care is necessary to reduce the incidents of DFUs.Methods: 134 voluntary participants from SSMC, Tumkur and Karnataka Institute of Endocrinology and Research, Bangalore were included following ethical clearance. The patients were requested to fill the validated knowledge and practice questionnaire which were presented to them in their own language. Demographic details of the participants were also collected. The responses were recorded and statistically analyzed. A score of >70% was gauged as good, 50 to 70% as satisfactory and <50% as poor.Results: Of the 134 participants, 73.13% had good knowledge on foot care, 22.8% had good foot care practice and 73.13% had a satisfactory practice score. Patients with history of foot ulcer had a mean score (±SD) of 12.75 (±1.91) knowledge score and 47.75 (±6.05) practice score which is lower compared to those without history of ulcers, 13.86 (±2.37) and 55.40 (±6.88) respectively. Patients from urban and rural areas had about the same mean scores, 13.51 (±2.50), 54.98 (±6.83) and 13.30 (±2.60), 54.73 (±7.49) (knowledge, practice score) respectively.Conclusions: Foot care among diabetics is only satisfactory and has to be improved. Knowledge is the key to better practice so early diagnosis, repeated counselling, regular follow ups and good sugar control is necessary to reduce incidents of DFUs

Analysis of Different Meta Heuristics Method in Intelligent Fault Detection of Multilevel Inverter with Photovoltaic Power Generation Source

Meta Heuristic methods have made a deep impact in the area of optimization in different streams of engineering. The performance of these algorithms is of importance because the hardware implementation of these algorithms is to be carried out for different engineering applications. As an important application in High Voltage DC (HVDC) transmission and Industrial Drives the multilevel inverter fault diagnosis is carried out using the different meta-heuristic methods with Neural Network as the decision making algorithm. The optimization of the weight and the bias values in the neural network diagnosis system is carried out in order to analyze the performance by means of comparing the Mean Square Error (MSE) while the Neural Network is getting trained for different fault conditions in the multilevel inverter. Matlab based implementation is carried out and the results are tabulated and inferred for a Multilevel Inverter fed from the Photovoltaic power generation system. In order to increase the robustness of the fault detection, with renewable energy based power generation system as the source for the Multilevel Inverter, the feature extracted from the multilevel inverter are positive, negative and zero sequence voltage along with the THD of the output voltage. The optimization algorithm used is Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Cuckoo Search Algorithm(CSA), Genetic Algorithm(GA) and Tabu Search Algorithm (TSA)

Novel insights into the cardio-protective effects of FGF21 in lean and obese rat hearts

Aims: Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) is a hepatic metabolic regulator with pleotropic actions. Its plasma concentrations are increased in obesity and diabetes; states associated with an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease. We therefore investigated the direct effect of FGF21 on cardio-protection in obese and lean hearts in response to ischemia. Methods and Results: FGF21, FGF21-receptor 1 (FGFR1) and beta-Klotho (βKlotho) were expressed in rodent, human hearts and primary rat cardiomyocytes. Cardiac FGF21 was expressed and secreted (real time RT-PCR/western blot and ELISA) in an autocrine-paracrine manner, in response to obesity and hypoxia, involving FGFR1-βKlotho components. Cardiac-FGF21 expression and secretion were increased in response to global ischemia. In contrast βKlotho was reduced in obese hearts. In isolated adult rat cardiomyocytes, FGF21 activated PI3K/Akt (phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt), ERK1/2(extracellular signal-regulated kinase) and AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) pathways. In Langendorff perfused rat [adult male wild-type wistar] hearts, FGF21 administration induced significant cardio-protection and restoration of function following global ischemia. Inhibition of PI3K/Akt, AMPK, ERK1/2 and ROR-α (retinoic-acid receptor alpha) pathway led to significant decrease of FGF21 induced cardio-protection and restoration of cardiac function in response to global ischemia. More importantly, this cardio-protective response induced by FGF21 was reduced in obesity, although the cardiac expression profiles and circulating FGF21 levels were increased. Conclusion: In an ex vivo Langendorff system, we show that FGF21 induced cardiac protection and restoration of cardiac function involving autocrine-paracrine pathways, with reduced effect in obesity. Collectively, our findings provide novel insights into FGF21-induced cardiac effects in obesity and ischemia

Hybrid Cloud-Based Privacy Preserving Clustering as Service for Enterprise Big Data

Clustering as service is being offered by many cloud service providers. It helps enterprises to learn hidden patterns and learn knowledge from large, big data generated by enterprises. Though it brings lot of value to enterprises, it also exposes the data to various security and privacy threats. Privacy preserving clustering is being proposed a solution to address this problem. But the privacy preserving clustering as outsourced service model involves too much overhead on querying user, lacks adaptivity to incremental data and involves frequent interaction between service provider and the querying user. There is also a lack of personalization to clustering by the querying user. This work “Locality Sensitive Hashing for Transformed Dataset (LSHTD)” proposes a hybrid cloud-based clustering as service model for streaming data that address the problems in the existing model such as privacy preserving k-means clustering outsourcing under multiple keys (PPCOM) and secure nearest neighbor clustering (SNNC) models, The solution combines hybrid cloud, LSHTD clustering algorithm as outsourced service model. Through experiments, the proposed solution is able is found to reduce the computation cost by 23% and communication cost by 6% and able to provide better clustering accuracy with ARI greater than 4.59% compared to existing works