Plant Resources Utilization among Different Ethnic Groups of Ladakh in Trans-Himalayan Region.

The nomadic pastoral indigenous communities of the Ladakhi people share roots with Tibetan culture in terms of food, clothing, religion, festivals, and habits, and rely widely on plant resources for survival and livelihood. This survey was conducted during 2019-2021 to document the indigenous knowledge about plant resources of the Balti, Beda, and Brokpa communities of the Ladakh region, trans-Himalayas. Open- and close-ended semi-structured interviews (N = 184) and group discussions (N = 17) were used to collect the data. Quantitative data was further analyzed using various statistical tools. A total of 105 plant species belonging to 82 genera and 39 families were used as medicine, fuel wood, fragrance, oil, food, flavor, fodder, decoration, and dye. Among these, medicinal use was most prevalent, with 70% of use reports, followed by fodder and fuel wood. Leaves (27%) were the most preferred plant part used, followed by roots and flowers. The principal component analysis revealed five clusters of ethnobotanical usage, i.e., food, medicine, fuel wood, fodder, and fragrance, oil, dye, and flavor. The maximum number of plant species used was reported by the Brokpa, while the Beda reported the minimum number of plant species uses. Delphinium brunonianum, Waldheimia tomentosa, and Juniperus indica played a significant role in the cultural and religious ritual aspects, whereas Allium przewalskianum, Waldheimia tomentosa, Juniperus indica, and Hippophae rhamnoides were commonly used as a livelihood source among Ladakhi communities. The local people collected most plants (65%) for self-consumption, while the rest (35%) were sold in markets as a source of income. The sustainable utilization and management of plant resources by local people is a strategy to boost livelihoods and food security and alleviate poverty.

Exploring the Functional Properties of Sodium Phytate Doped Polyaniline Nanofibers Modified FTO Electrodes for High-Performance Binder Free Symmetric Supercapacitors.

The performance of high-rate supercapacitors requires fine morphological and electrical properties of the electrode. Polyaniline (PANI), as one of the most promising materials for energy storage, shows different behaviour on different substrates. The present study reports on the surface modification of fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) with the sodium phytate doped PANI without any binder and its utilization as a novel current collector in symmetric supercapacitor devices. The electrochemical behaviour of the sodium phytate doped PANI thin film with and without a binder on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) as current collector was investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The electrode without a binder showed higher electrocatalytic efficiency. A symmetrical cell configuration was therefore constructed with the binder-free electrodes. The device showed excellent electrochemical performance with high specific capacities of 550 Fg-1 at 1 Ag-1 and 355 Fg-1 at 40 Ag-1 calculated from galvanostatic discharge curves. The low charge transfer and solution resistances (RCT and RS) of 7.86 Ωcm² and 3.58 × 10-1 Ωcm², respectively, and superior rate capability of 66.9% over a wide current density range of 1 Ag-1 to 40 Ag-1 and excellent cycling stability with 90% of the original capacity over 1000 charge/discharge cycles at 40 Ag-1, indicated it to be an efficient energy storage device. Moreover, the gravimetric energy and power density of the supercapacitor was remarkably high, providing 73.8 Whkg-1 at 500 Wkg-1, respectively. The gravimetric energy density remained stable as the power density increased. It even reached up to 49.4 Whkg-1 at a power density of up to 20 Wkg-1.

A Reliable Auto-Robust Analysis of Blood Smear Images for Classification of Microcytic Hypochromic Anemia Using Gray Level Matrices and Gabor Feature Bank.

Accurate blood smear quantification with various blood cell samples is of great clinical importance. The conventional manual process of blood smear quantification is quite time consuming and is prone to errors. Therefore, this paper presents automatic detection of the most frequently occurring condition in human blood-microcytic hyperchromic anemia-which is the cause of various life-threatening diseases. This task has been done with segmentation of blood contents, i.e., Red Blood Cells (RBCs), White Blood Cells (WBCs), and platelets, in the first step. Then, the most influential features like geometric shape descriptors, Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Gray Level Run Length Matrix (GLRLM), and Gabor features (mean squared energy and mean amplitude) are extracted from each of the RBCs. To discriminate the cells as hypochromic microcytes among other RBC classes, scanning is done at angles (0∘, 45∘, 90∘, and 135∘). To achieve high-level accuracy, Adaptive Synthetic (AdaSyn) sampling for imbalance learning is used to balance the datasets and locality sensitive discriminant analysis (LSDA) technique is used for feature reduction. Finally, upon using these features, classification of blood cells is done using the multilayer perceptual model and random forest learning algorithms. Performance in terms of accuracy was 96%, which is better than the performance of existing techniques. The final outcome of this work may be useful in the efforts to produce a cost-effective screening scheme that could make inexpensive screening for blood smear analysis available globally, thus providing early detection of these diseases.

An Amazingly Simple, Fast and Green Synthesis Route to Polyaniline Nanofibers for Efficient Energy Storage.

The major drawbacks of the conventional methods for preparing polyaniline (PANI) are the large consumptions of toxic chemicals and long process durations. This paper presents a remarkably simple and green route for the chemical oxidative synthesis of PANI nanofibers, utilizing sodium phytate as a novel and environmentally friendly plant derived dopant. The process shows a remarkable reduction in the synthesis time and usage of toxic chemicals with good dispersibility and exceedingly high conductivity up to 10 S cm-1 of the resulting PANI at the same time. A detailed characterization of the PANI samples has been made showing excellent relationships between their structure and properties. Particularly, the electrochemical properties of the synthesized PANI as electrode material for supercapacitors were analyzed. The PANI sample, synthesized at pre-optimized conditions, exhibited impressive supercapacitor performance having a high specific capacitance (Csp) (832.5 Fg-1 and 528 Fg-1 at 1 Ag-1 and 40 Ag-1, respectively) as calculated from galvanostatic charge/discharge (GCD) curves. A good rate capability with a capacitance retention of 67.6% of its initial value was observed. The quite low solution resistance (Rs) value of 281.0 × 10-3 Ohm and charge transfer resistance value (Rct) of 7.44 Ohm represents the excellence of the material. Further, a retention of 95.3% in coulombic efficiency after 1000 charge discharge cycles, without showing any significant degradation of the material, was also exhibited.