1,720,956 research outputs found
A BIRD EYE VIEW ON THE IMPACT AND CURRENT STATUS OF COVID-19 FROM INDIA
Get PDFVarious kinds of fatal diseases have confronted humankind in past centuries. Appearance of coronavirus disease caused by coronavirus COVID-19 is new addition to the list of the deadly diseases linked with unseen enemies. Coronavirus was first discovered ninety years back as an agent causing acute respiratory infection in chickens. A strain of coronavirus that has ability to infect human being was discovered in the year 1960. Various types of coronavirus have been shown to have a link with respiratory infections. An outbreak due to human coronavirus was identified in December 2019 from Wuhan, Hubei province of China. This pandemic, including India is now reported from 212 countries of the world with 4,026,838 cases confirming the presence of the coronavirus (as reported on May 09, 2020, 05:15 GMT). A closer look in to the reported cases present a deeper picture of the pandemic. Initial reports from China suggested it having 82,887 cases. France, Italy and Spain are with 176,079, 217,185 and 260,117 cases respectively. Largest number of cases is reported from United States of America, which is now having 30.54% of all the cases reported. This data speaks volumes about the nature of the coronavirus particularly its cellular pathogenesis, tissue tropism, portal of entry, replication at the entry site, dissemination, incubation, multiplication and shedding of this virus. As of now, Europe is the severely affected part of the world due to coronavirus. Other countries of the world are not immune to this pandemic. Breakneck research dedicated for the development of potent drug and effective vaccines is underway with varying degree of potency claims. It is not possible to present the complete aspects of coronavirus and its associated developments; the aim of this short communication is to present a bird eye view of the currents status of this pandemic from India
Screening of anti-nematode potential through inhibition of egg hatching in plant-parasitic nematode Meloidogyne javanica
Get PDFPlant-parasitic nematodes have emerged as nature’s most successful among all parasites known till today. These animals have been reported from all terrains of all ecosystems. Their capability to survive on a wide diversity of the host plants, circumvent host plant defence is a few of several of their secrets making them most successful of all known parasites. Among various groups of plant-parasitic nematodes, endo-parasitic nematodes are the most damaging one and also difficult to control. Meloidogyne sps. are commonly known as root-knot nematodes. Our inability to control them is primarily due to our poor understanding of the biology of these plant parasites. Due to the availability of the complete genome sequence of few Meloidogyne species, biotechnological interventions are used to unravel the secrets of their success. Chemical controls of these nematodes are extensively reported in the literature. Due to the environmental toxicity associated with these chemicals, and restrictions on the use of chemicals against nematodes led to screening and development of eco-friendly management strategies. The present study was conducted to screen nematotoxic properties of Neem (Azadirachta indica), Jatropha (Jatropha curcas), Kachnar (Bauhinia variegate), Bel (Aegle marmelos) and Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globules) leaf extracts against root-knot nematode Meloidogyne javanica in vitro. The aqueous extracts were used against the hatching of the nematode eggs, movement of second stage juveniles (J2) and the viability of the J2 in increasing concentration of the bioactive compound. The eggs were treated with various concentrations of the selected extracts for different time periods ranging from 24h to 6 days. A significant inhibition of egg hatching and increase in the mortality of the nematode juvenile in few of the aqueous extracts were recorded. Reduced egg hatching and increased mortality of the nematode juveniles could be maybe the indicators of the presence of anti-nematode potential in the selected plant leaves. The results from the study can pave the way for the development of eco-friendly management strategies for plant-parasitic nematodes
Survey on understanding of socio-demographic factors responsible for unmet need of family planning from the selected locality in Agra
Get PDFDespite the progress that has been recorded in area of family planning, an increasing number of women reporting the need for the contraceptives tells the urgency of the situation. Data collected from both developing and developed world put forth a whooping number as 120 million women who have reported that they are willing to delay the pregnancy but are not using any method of contraception. According to world health organization (WHO) Unmet need for family planning is defined as the percentage of women of reproductive age, either married or in a union, who have an unmet need for family planning. The concept of unmet need has already been defined through many studies, as it is the percentage of the women who wish to delay the childbirth but are not using any form of contraception. Since reporting of the unmet need of family planning depends upon the desire of the women to report such an issue which is still considered a taboo in Indian families. It is for this reason; unmet need is called as an inconsistent and fluid indicator of the reproductive potential of the women. It is postulated that, if the unmet need of the selected population is met through interventions, it could help in reducing the population and also help in bringing down child mortality in addition to maternal mortality and morbidity. This study from the selected location from Agra in Uttar Pradesh has brought in light certain observations among the women who were not using any method of contraception. We have through this study have reported that more than 73 percent of the women wanted to stop childbearing. Women who were using any of the choicest method of contraception, among them 34 percent of the women were reporting desire to become pregnant. 67 percent of the women wanted to delay the pregnancy for one to two years, 48 percent of the women from among the selected population in this category did not want to have any more children. The aim of this study was to establish a co-relation between various factors that exerts their affects on presence of unmet need for family planning and use of family planning methods with a reported decrease in pregnancy among the women who did not want any more children
Host-generated double stranded RNA induces RNAi in plant-parasitic nematodes and protects the host from infection
No full textSeveral species of nematodes parasitize a wide variety of plants and animals, including human. Human parasites such as the gut worm Ascaris lumbricoides, hook worms Ancylostoma duodenale and Necator americanus, and the causative agents of the lymphatic filariasis Wuchereria bancrofti and Brugia malayi infect and severely affect the health of about half the world’s population [1]. Similarly, gastrointestinal nematodes (Osterta�gia ostertagi) and liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica) infect livestock leading to considerable yield loss in animal husbandary [2]. The plant parasites such as the root-knot (Meloidogyne spp.) and cyst (Heterodera and Globodera spp.) nematodes cause significant damage to important crop plants such as legumes, vegetables and cereals in most parts of the world. Annual crop loss due to plant-parasitic nematodes is estimated to be over $ 125 billion [3]. Despite this enormous impact on world-wide agriculture, currently there is no effective and environmentally safe method available to prevent or treat plant nematode infections [3]. One of the main reasons for this is our limited understanding of the functions of nematode’s genes. Since these organisms require a suitable host for their growth and proliferation, it is nearly impossible to culture them in the laboratory. Because of this, it has not been possible to use the traditional genetic tools, which are widely used to determine gene function in the free-living model organisms, for the functional characterization of parasitic nematode genes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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