88 research outputs found
BIOFORTIFICATION IN VEGETABLE CROPS - A REVIEW
No full textBIOFORTIFICATION IN VEGETABLE CROPS – A REVIEW
Merin, E. G.* and Sarada, S
College of Agriculture, Kerala Agricultural University, Trivandrum, Kerala
ABSTRACT
Increasing population, inadequate food and nutrition, hunger, malnourishment of vitamins and micronutrients etc. are the greatest challenges faced by most of the nations across the world. According to Global nutrition report 2017, India carries a serious burden of anemia, obesity and malnutrition. Iodine, vitamin A, iron, and zinc malnutrition are major concerns in world. Biofortification refers to the nutrient enrichment of crops to address the negative economic and health consequences of vitamin and mineral deficiencies in humans. Biofortified crops are of increased content of essential micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) and produced through agronomic practices, plant breeding and genetic engineering. Cumulatively, more than 150 biofortified varieties of 10 crops have been released in 30 countries. Agronomic biofortification is the application of micronutrient-containing mineral fertilizer to the soil and/or plant leaves, to increase micronutrient contents of the edible part of food crops. In plant breeding, parent lines with high vitamin or mineral levels can be crossed over several generations to produce plants that have the desired nutrients. Transgenic approaches have been used in vegetable crops to improve traits such as higher nutritional status, to reduce anti-nutritional factors etc. No single intervention will alleviate micronutrient deficiencies, and biofortification complements existing interventions, such as supplementation and industrial food fortification. In order to achieve the goals of biofortification there is need for promoting large-scale prospective studies on nutritional aspects and productivity along with consumer preference. The studies must also be in collaboration with plant breeders, molecular biologists and nutrition scientists.
KEY WORDS: Biofortification, Malnutrition, Plant breeding
* - corresponding author- [email protected]
From symmetry breaking to symmetry swapping: is Kasha's rule violated in multibranched phenyleneethynylenes?
No full textThe phenomenon of excited-state symmetry breaking is often observed in multipolar molecular systems, significantly affecting their photophysical and charge separation behavior. As a result of this phenomenon, the electronic excitation is partially localized in one of the molecular branches. However, the intrinsic structural and electronic factors that regulate excited-state symmetry breaking in multibranched systems have hardly been investigated. Herein, we explore these aspects by adopting a joint experimental and theoretical investigation for a class of phenyleneethynylenes, one of the most widely used molecular building blocks for optoelectronic applications. The large Stokes shifts observed for highly symmetric phenyleneethynylenes are explained by the presence of low-lying dark states, as also established by two-photon absorption measurements and TDDFT calculations. In spite of the presence of low-lying dark states, these systems show an intense fluorescence in striking contrast to Kasha's rule. This intriguing behavior is explained in terms of a novel phenomenon, dubbed “symmetry swapping” that describes the inversion of the energy order of excited states, i.e., the swapping of excited states occurring as a consequence of symmetry breaking. Thus, symmetry swapping explains quite naturally the observation of an intense fluorescence emission in molecular systems whose lowest vertical excited state is a dark state. In short, symmetry swapping is observed in highly symmetric molecules having multiple degenerate or quasi-degenerate excited states that are prone to symmetry breaking
El liberal á los bajos escritores
No full textPamphlet discussing the Spanish monarchy and Constitution, those who write about and abuse the constitution, the armed forces, city councils and provincial elections. Dated 27 September 1820, possible author Feliz Merin
Intelligent supplies replenishment process
No full textThis electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Thesis: M.B.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2019Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Operations Research Center, in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.Company X is facing high cost to serve customers such as hospitals and clinics, due to irregular ordering pattern. Currently, the customer ordering process is not well planned and leads to multiple orders in a month, thereby excessive shipping and increased cost to serve. The supplies provided to customers are used for specimen collection, and the collected specimen are sent to diagnostic laboratories for analysis. Historical data on order quantities of specimen collection items (SCIs) and specimen containers returned to lab are available. This project takes advantage of the closed loop nature of the system to predict order quantities of SCIs. This project explores two replenishment strategies and compares it with the current method, through simulation.The simulation models the daily consumption of SCIs at a chosen Patient Service Center (PSC), and estimates average inventory levels and the number of occurrences of stockouts for each SCI at the PSC, for varying values of parameters such as review period and safety stock levels. The two replenishment strategies are (a) constant order quantity, in which fixed replenishment quantities of SCIs are supplied every review period, and (b) predictive modelling replenishment strategy, in which the order quantities of SCIs are predicted using the data on specimen containers returned to diagnostic lab for analysis. For the latter strategy, multiple models for prediction, such as penalized regression, Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and Random Forest are used. Two parameters, the total replenishment costs and the number of occurrences of stockouts, are measured to evaluate the performance of the replenishment strategies.The total cost of replenishment for constant quantity strategy is comparable to that of baseline case, whereas predictive modelling strategies have much higher cost. The constant quantity strategy with increased levels of safety stock gives best results of reducing the total cost of replenishment and minimizing the number of occurrences of stockouts.by Merin Thomas.M.B.A.S.M.M.B.A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of ManagementS.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Operations Research Cente
Claims-aware middleware for securing IoT services
No full textTake a look at the world around us. There has been tremendous change in the way of living. With the world around us getting smart, Internet of Things is gaining ground in our life. Applications like smart home and eHealth are so user friendly that any person with zero programming background is able to use it. But for the developer, due to the ubiquitous nature and distributed architecture of IoT which includes devices, applications and humans, it presents a complex structure. Also, the incorporation of thousands of heterogeneous things with different configurations into a single network creates the risk of threat against security and privacy. These challenges make the significance of a middleware important. Middleware is a software layer that provides the platform for various devices with different protocols to communicate with ease and provides all the functions intended for a particular task. Hosting these tasks as microservices simplifies the job of an application developer. In this thesis work, we introduce a claims-aware middleware to address one of the major challenges in IoT which is security. A proof of concept has been developed by implementing a prototype of our framework. The evaluation results of the prototype show the feasibility and the stability of the security framework.University of Ontario Institute of Technolog
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No full textNot AvailablePhytobeneficial root endophytes of root (wilt) disease resistant coconut palm
Indhuja S1*, Anju R2, Merin Babu1, A.A.Haris1, Krishnakumar, V1
1ICAR-Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, Regional Station, Kayamkulam, Krishnapuram P.O., Alappuzha-690 533, Kerala, India
2Department of Microbiology, St. Mary’s College for women, Paliakkara, Thiruvalla
*Corresponding author
Plant-endophytes interaction and its beneficial role in host fitness and stress mitigation is well established. Endophytes represent a selected fraction of microbial communities of diverse heterotrophs inhabiting the rhizosphere. Endophytic bacteria colonize the roots in high numbers and often exhibit systemic occurrence in the plants without causing negative impact. Plant growth promotion, defense response elicitation and stress modulation are a few functional responsibilities evinced in plant-endophytes interaction. This study is attempted to understand the plant growth promoting functions of culturable bacterial root endophytes of root (wilt) disease (RWD) resistant coconut palm. Fresh feeding roots of apparently healthy (field resistant) coconut selected based on RWD indexing method were sampled for bacterial root endophytes isolation. Plate count showed an average of 2 x 103 cfu/g of fresh root sample on trypticase soya agar. Seventeen bacteria with distinct colony morphotypes were screened for phytobeneficial traits. Of the seventeen, 9 bacteria produced indoleacetic acid ranging from 0.2 to 4.7 µg/mL. Qualitative assessment of nitrogen fixing ability and aminocyclopropane carboxylate (ACC) deaminase activity were made based on their growth on respective media. Six of 17 bacteria grew on nitrogen (N) free media indicating their N fixing potential among which 4 were IAA producers. Seven isolates utilized ACC as their sole N source indicative of their ACC deaminase activity, of which 4 had nitrogen fixation and 3 had IAA production potential. All the 17 bacterial isolates showed growth compatibility with the biocontrol agent Trichoderma harzianum CPTD-28. Three isolates CRE2, CRE9 and CRE15 with all the above plant growth promoting traits were selected for further characterization. All the three bacteria were Gram positive rods with indole negative and catalase positive reactions. Based on 16S rRNA sequence analysis, CRE 2 and CRE 9 were identified belonging to Bacillus subtilis. CRE 15 showed a close similarity with Bacillus Shackletonii. Studies on endophytes of RWD resistant coconut palm in RWD tract are limited and remain a prospective strategy for root (wilt) disease management of coconut.Not Availabl
Short communication Break Through Infection Following Covid 19 Vaccination Among Health Care Workers In South India .
No full textWe here reported Covid 19 break through infections among HCWs following any of the above vaccines in our institution .Breakthrough infections were defined as “the detection of SARS-Cov2RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person >14 days after they have completed two recommend doses of Covid 19 vaccines”. Total we have received 737 responses from our HCWs ,out of which 677 (92%) were vaccinated. Majority of them 642 (95%) received Covishield and rest 35 (5%) received Covaxin. Out of this 89 persons have developed any symptoms tested positive fourteen days after receiving full course vaccines
Implementation of NN controlled DVR for Enhancing The Power Quality By Mitigating Harmonics
No full textNow a days there is a widespread use of semiconductor devices, which are mostly implemented as the power switches for converters and inverters. These converters and inverters play a vital role in power systems both in transmission and distribution systems. This provides a way for the introduction of harmonics in the power system which leads to poor power quality. To overcome this many solutions have been suggested by the research community but each solution holds its own merits and demerits. Of all these suggested solutions, the Dynamic Voltage Restorer is one of the most cost effective systems for various power quality issues. In this paper the DVR is considered for enhancing the power quality by reducing the harmonics generated because of sensitive loads. Here the power quality is enhanced by controlling the DVR using Neural Network Controller which is trained by Levenberg Marquardt algorithm. In this paper the THD analysis of the voltage quantity is analysed by introducing an unbalanced three phase fault in the system. The simulation is done by using MATLAB/Simulink. From the results, it is verified that the harmonics are reduced by the NN controlled DVR unit. Also the simulation results are verified with the hardware results.
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