Growth estimation during hardening phase of tissue cultured banana plantlets using bootstrapped artificial neural network

Aim: The study aims to develop an advanced non-destructive method to estimate the plant growth rate of tissue culture propagated banana plantlets during primary hardening phase inside the greenhouse using Bootstrapped Artificial Neural Network (BANN). Methodology: Both non-destructive growth parameters like plant height, girth, number of leaves, leaf length and leaf breadth, and destructive growth parameters like number of roots, longest root length, fresh and dry weight were measured periodically on selected plants of one week to nine week old which were kept in greenhouse at ICAR-National Research Centre for banana. In addition to plant growth parameters, greenhouse temperature, radiation and carbon dioxide concentration were also recorded daily. The experimental data obtained using destructive measurements were recorded on a small sample of size n, and hence re-sampling for bootstrap involves n repeated trials of simple random sampling with replacement. These sets of bootstrap samples were finally used as input to develop neural model using a novel methodology of bootstrap re-sampling based artificial neural network (ANN) for studying the progress of plant ontogeny. Results: The growth estimation analysis of plants in terms of its leaf area and biomass production was performed without physically handling the test plants using bootstrap ANN. The notion of prediction performance is validated through statistical indices namely Nash and Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient, root means square error and mean absolute error. The approximate estimates of mean relative growth and net assimilation rate of plants were 0.036 and 0.027, and the corresponding variance were 1.5 x 10-6 and 2.12 x 10-6, respectively. Interpretation: Based on the non-destructive plant growth observations, the measures to increase the overall plant growth can be significantly predicted well in advance. This projected plant growth statistics at an early stage of hardening serves as an essential component in planning and evaluation of investments on protected structure to improve the productivity and profitability of banana tissue culture industry.

Prevalence and Risk Correlates of Hypertension among Adults in Rural Field Practice Area of Tertiary Care Medical College at South India.

Background: In India, lifestyle diseases were considered in the urban setting; so the medical fraternity has concentrated more on the urban people. With epidemiological transition, a dramatic reduction in physical exercise has been observed in the rural areas with an increase in the stresses of life. According to World Health Report 2002, cardiovascular diseases will be the largest cause of death and disability by 2020 in India; the contributing factors are increasing hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, overweight or obesity, physical inactivity, and using tobacco. Our study aims to determine prevalence of hypertension in an adult rural community and to identify the risk factors of Hypertension among adults in Rural Field Practice Area Singanodi of Navodaya Medical College, Raichur, Karnataka. Methods: The present study is a cross sectional study, carried out in village Singanodi, which is designated as rural field practice area of Community Medicine Department, Navodaya Medical College. It has population coverage of 14,200.The study population include all subjects who were aged 30 years and above. The present study was a population based study. Results: Out of total population, 240 (37.3%) were in age group of 30-39 years, 222 (34.5%) were in age group of 40-49 years. Males and females were 386 (60.03%) and 257 (39.97%) respectively. Our study revealed that hypertension was significantly associated with body mass index, maximum in obese patients when compared to normal and underweight (p<0.0001) There is significant association between smoking and hypertension 77 (29.9%). (p<0.015) There is significant association with physical activity; that is sedentary people were more prone for getting hypertension when compared to heavy worker. However, salt intake > 6 grams/day and family history of hypertension were found to be significantly associated. (p=0.009; p=0.003 respectively) The prevalence of hypertension among subjects on vegetarian diet vs. mixed diet was 23.9% vs. 22.2%, respectively but the difference was not statistically significant. (p= 0.09) Conclusion: From our study we conclude that there is a high prevalence of hypertension even in rural area and advocate to flourish awareness regarding modifiable risk factors of hypertension among the people.

Epigenetics of the yeast galactose genetic switch.

The transcriptional activation of enzymes involved in galactose utilization (GAL genes) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is regulated by a complex interplay between three regulatory proteins encoded by GAL4 (transcriptional activator), GAL3 (signal transducer) and GAL80 (repressor). The relative concentrations of the signal transducer and the repressor are maintained by autoregulation. Cells disabled for autoregulation exhibit phenotypes distinctly different from that of the wild type cells, enabling us to explore the biological signifi cance of autoregulation. The redundancy in signal transduction due to the presence of GAL1 (alternate signal transducer) also makes it a suitable model to understand the phenomenon of epigenetics. In this article we review some of the recent attempts made to understand the importance of epigenetics in the establishment of cellular and transcriptional memory.

Performance evaluation of common effluent treatment plant for tanneries at Pallavaram CETP.

The Pallavaram Tanners Industrial Effluent Treatment Company Limited has been a forerunner in ensuring cleaner and safe environment. The project was implemented by a company formed by the tanners of the Pallavaram area. Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) was the counterpart of UNIDO and took the overall responsibility for implementation of the project. The present study has been undertaken to evaluate performance efficiency of the treatment plant. Water samples were collected at different stages of treatment units and analysed for the major water quality parameters, such as pH, biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS) and total dissolved solids (TDS). The performance efficiency of each unit in treating the pollutants was calculated. The generated data presented evidence to that the common effluent treatment plant has been working with the norms of TNPCB and meeting the discharge standard limits.

Cryptococcal meningitis in AIDS.

A study was carried out to determine the incidence of Cryptococcus species in AIDS patients and their susceptibility pattern to the different antifungal drugs used for therapy. PCR as a rapid diagnostic tool for cryptococcal meningitis was evaluated. All the isolates were senstive to the three antifungal drugs tested indicating that the development of drug resistance is not a major problem in the treatment of cryptococcosis. All the culture positive specimens were positive by PCR which can be evolved into a very useful, rapid diagnostic tool to detect cryptococci in clinical specimens.