Biological Sciences articles list

Nine fruit morphological traits were studied in ten stands of Jatropha curcas spread in eight forest divisions of Uttarakhand. Variation was examined at stand level as well as at tree level. Significant differences were found among stands for fruit length, fruit diameter, pericarp weight per fruit, seed: fruit weight ratio, kernel: fruit weight ratio and pericarp: fruit weight ratio traits while all morphological traits showed significant differences among trees within stands. The estimation of the variance components, however, revealed that the fruit traits, especially weight traits viz. fruit weight, total seed weight per fruit and total kernel weight per fruit have negligible contribution from stands and small contribution from trees. Maximum variation was found among fruits within trees (i.e. at fruit level or error). Pericarp weight per fruit and fruit ratio traits (i.e. seed: fruit weight ratio, kernel: fruit weight ratio and pericarp: fruit weight ratio) were affected to small extent by stand per se. The repeatability of all fruit traits at tree level were also low to moderate (0.105 to 0.278)

Kshitij Malhotra

India is a country of immense diversity. It is home to people of many different racial, languages, ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds. Groups of people in India differ from each other not only in physical or demographic characteristics but also in distinctive patterns of behavior and these patterns are determined by social and cultural factors like language, region, religion, and caste. Apart from behaviour, economic development, level of education and political culture of the people in various social segments differ from region to region. More you can say that economy and cultures have been enriched by the contributions of migrants from round the globe. In an increasingly globalised world, migratory movements is continuously shaping the countries all over the world. Some countries like India and Ireland, which set the example of economic development and social integration, have the positive impact of the migration by globalisation and some countries like USA, which recently witness racism, xenophobia and discrimination have the negative impact on the migrants. It does not mean India do not face fragmentation and USA do not have cohesion. USA have many stories which show successful integration process, that facilitated the lives of immigrant communities, but being a developed country it still suffers from cultural alienation. In these countries, borders are built within borders to create cultural divides that do not allow people to integrate. Recently, this problem has become more prominent due to the rise of terrorism, clash of cultures in the world, leading to the glorification of stereotypes. People are becoming less accepting towards anyone who does not belong to their region. Migration does not stop after people move from one place to another place. The main question start after that ‘now what’ they will do. That is why this topic needs to be discussed thoroughly in order to find better solutions. This paper will begin with an analysis of different approaches to Migration, discuss the target groups for integration policies, provide indicators of the current situation of migrants and proceed to an analysis of integration tools: legislation, social policies and participatory processes. It will focus not only on the impact of migration but also on social integration, mix culture like indo-western culture in a comparative basis.

Ekta Meena

India is a country of immense diversity. It is home to people of many different racial, languages, ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds. Groups of people in India differ from each other not only in physical or demographic characteristics but also in distinctive patterns of behavior and these patterns are determined by social and cultural factors like language, region, religion, and caste. Apart from behaviour, economic development, level of education and political culture of the people in various social segments differ from region to region. More you can say that economy and cultures have been enriched by the contributions of migrants from round the globe. In an increasingly globalised world, migratory movements is continuously shaping the countries all over the world. Some countries like India and Ireland, which set the example of economic development and social integration, have the positive impact of the migration by globalisation and some countries like USA, which recently witness racism, xenophobia and discrimination have the negative impact on the migrants. It does not mean India do not face fragmentation and USA do not have cohesion. USA have many stories which show successful integration process, that facilitated the lives of immigrant communities, but being a developed country it still suffers from cultural alienation. In these countries, borders are built within borders to create cultural divides that do not allow people to integrate. Recently, this problem has become more prominent due to the rise of terrorism, clash of cultures in the world, leading to the glorification of stereotypes. People are becoming less accepting towards anyone who does not belong to their region. Migration does not stop after people move from one place to another place. The main question start after that ‘now what’ they will do. That is why this topic needs to be discussed thoroughly in order to find better solutions. This paper will begin with an analysis of different approaches to Migration, discuss the target groups for integration policies, provide indicators of the current situation of migrants and proceed to an analysis of integration tools: legislation, social policies and participatory processes. It will focus not only on the impact of migration but also on social integration, mix culture like indo-western culture in a comparative basis.

Ekta Meena

In this paper, investigations are made to analyze the human body temperature during wound healing process due to surgery. Wound is considered after the skin graft. Skin graft is a technique used in plastic surgery. Skin is the first line of defense between the human and environment, it is very susceptible to damage. Internal body or core temperature (Tb) is one of the clinical vital signs along with pulse and respiratory rates. Any disturbance in body temperature will drive complexities in wound healing process. These studies are important in the mechanism of establishing the limits of thermal regulation of human body during the healing process in different situations and conditions. The Finite element method is used to analyze tissues temperature for normal tissues (donor site) and abnormal tissues (tissues after surgery). Appropriate boundary conditions have been framed. Numerical results are obtained using Crank Nicolson Method.

Manisha Jain

Considering the site (habitat) specific variations in the metabolic activities in the freshwater bivalves, we reported here the changes in the rate of oxygen consumption, rate of ammonia excretion and O: N ratio in the freshwater bivalve mollusc, Lamellidens marginalis (Lamark) from lotic and lentic water habitats on April-May during summer season. The adult freshwater bivalves, Lamellidens marginalis (82-84 mm shell length) from lotic and lentic water near Jayakwadi dam on Godavari river was selected for determination of rate of oxygen consumption, rate of ammonia excretion and O: N ratio. The adult bivalves from lotic water habitat showed high rate of oxygen consumption and low rate of ammonia excretion. The O: N ratio showed higher values in bivalves collected from lotic water than lentic water during summer season. The results of study are discussed in the light of possible physiological processes in freshwater bivalve molluscs.

Dr. Pritesh Ramanlal Gugale

The scaling of metabolic rates with body mass is one of the best known and most studied characteristics of aquatic animals. We studied here how size is related to oxygen consumption, ammonia excretion and O: N ratio in Freshwater Bivalve Mollusc Lamellidens marginalis species in an attempt to know how size specific changes affect their metabolism. The freshwater bivalve molluscs with specific size i.e. small (77 79 mm in shell length) and large (90 93 mm in shell length) were selected for experimental work from Bhima River at Siddhatek on December and January during winter. The adult bivalve molluscs with small size reported high value in oxygen consumption and O: N ratio but ammonia excretion was low value in small sized bivalves compared to large ones. The results are discussed in the glow of metabolic processes in fresh water bivalve molluscs.

Dr. Pritesh Ramanlal Gugale

The study of molluscan animals is called Malacology and the study of molluscan shell is called as conchology. The scaling of metabolic rates with body mass is one of the best known and most studied characteristics of aquatic animals. We studied here how body size is related to rate of oxygen consumption, ammonia excretion and O: N ratio in Freshwater Bivalve Mollusc Lamellidens marginalis species in an attempt to know how body size specific changes affect their metabolism. The freshwater bivalve molluscs with specific body size i.e. small (76-79 mm in shell-length) and large (90-94 mm in shell-length) were chosen for experimental work from Bhima River at Siddhatek on April and May during summer. The adult bivalve molluscs with small body size reported high value in rate of oxygen consumption and O: N ratio but rate of ammonia excretion was low value in small body sized bivalves compared to large ones. The results are discussed in the flush of metabolic processes in fresh-water bivalve molluscs.

Dr. Pritesh Ramanlal Gugale

Physically unclonable function (PUF) is a hardware security module preferred for hardware feature based random number and secret key generation. Security of a cryptographic system relies on the quality of the challenge-response pair, it is necessary that the key generation mechanism must unpredictable and its response should constant under different operating condition. Metastable state in CMOS latch is undesirable since it response becomes unpredictable, this feature used in this work to generate a unique response. A feedback mechanism is developed which forces the latch into the metastable region; after metastable state, latch settle to high or state depends on circuit internal condition and noise which cannot be predicted. Obtained inter hamming variation for 8 PUF is 51% and average intra hamming distance is 99.76% with supply voltage variation and 96.22% with temperature variation.

Abhishek Kumar

One of the unique features of Indian society is prevalence of caste system which was originated thousands of years back to demarcate the people engaged in different occupation or jobs. Initially it was not much rigid but gradually people belonging to upper castes for their own selfish means to maintain their monopoly made this arrangement hereditary and started treating people of lower castes disgracefully. For preservation of this system, people started controlling their women to prevent inter-caste marriages and the concept of endogamy came up. This robbed away many types of freedom from women. For women belonging to lower castes, this situation is worse as they are doubly subjugated on the basis on caste as well as gender. Men belonging to their own caste treat them as secondary beings. This paper throws light on this intersection. How intersection of these two kinds of inequalities place them at the lowest position in Indian society. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar rises as their leader who all his life worked for empowerment of downtrodden section of society. He argues that education is the primary tool for evading these differences among people. He further emphasizes to adopt the concept of exogamy to break the backbone of Indian caste system and to immediately leave a religion or culture which legitimizes such system of inequality among people of the same land.

Swati sharma

One of the unique features of Indian society is prevalence of caste system which was originated thousands of years back to demarcate the people engaged in different occupation or jobs. Initially it was not much rigid but gradually people belonging to upper castes for their own selfish means to maintain their monopoly made this arrangement hereditary and started treating people of lower castes disgracefully. For preservation of this system, people started controlling their women to prevent inter-caste marriages and the concept of endogamy came up. This robbed away many types of freedom from women. For women belonging to lower castes, this situation is worse as they are doubly subjugated on the basis on caste as well as gender. Men belonging to their own caste treat them as secondary beings. This paper throws light on this intersection. How intersection of these two kinds of inequalities place them at the lowest position in Indian society. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar rises as their leader who all his life worked for empowerment of downtrodden section of society. He argues that education is the primary tool for evading these differences among people. He further emphasizes to adopt the concept of exogamy to break the backbone of Indian caste system and to immediately leave a religion or culture which legitimizes such system of inequality among people of the same land.

Swati sharma

Recently studies showed that globally, more than 1.8 billion adults are overweight and in that around 650 million are obese. India is one among the most widely recognised countries which are identified with way of life today as being overweight. Obesity or overweight leads to heart diseases, Diabetes Mellitus, Hypertension etc. Objectives: Adulthood is a period where we have to pay at most attention tohealthy nutritional diet. Preventive measures through assuring the nutritional status of adults such as anthropometric, dietary survey, food consumption pattern, nutritional awareness, physical activity and alertness about diseases will assist the community from being overweight and thus the occurrences of metabolic disorders. Methods: zone chosen for the conduct of the study was Tirupati and based on the number of subjects required, their age profile; willingness to participate in the study; their health condition etc,. a private company which was willing was selected. The subjects chosen were in the age group of over 30-40 years. The selection was carried out using the purposive sampling technique. Results: The data indicates that some adults are in the border line of non-communicable diseases such as overweight or obesity, cardio vascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Conclusion: This could be rectified through regular practice of consuming a nutritious and appropriate diet in conjunction with physical exercise routine.

Kimeera Ambati

Crude methanol extracts of the leaves of Adenanthera pavonina L., Peltoforum roxburghii L, Prosopis cineraria L., and Prosopis juliflora DC., were evaluated for anti-emetic activity. Emesis was induced by the oral administration of copper sulphate 50mg/kg body weight to male chicks of four days age. The anti-emetic activity was determined by calculating the mean decrease in number of retching in contrast with those of control. All extracts (150 mg / kg body weight orally) showed anti-emetic activity when compared with standard drug Chlorpromazine at the same dose. Among all the extracts, Prosopis juliflora showed the highest (73.64%) and Adenanthera pavonina showed the lowest (50.17%) anti-emetic activity

Dr. Salman Ahmed

Here, we report the draft genome sequences of Bacillus subtilis A1, Sphingobacterium sp. strain A3, and Pseudomonas sp. strain A29; Sphingobacterium sp. A3 and Pseudomonas sp. A29 were identified as Bacillus velezensis strain A3 and Bacillus subtilis strain A29, respectively, after a quality control check of the wholegenome sequences deposited in the NCBI database. These bacteria exhibit tremendous production of siderophores and significant antimicrobial potential. When inoculated on maize, these isolates increase its yield

Oluwaseyi Samuel Olanrewaju

Argostemma quarantena, a new rubiaceous species from Vagamon Hills of southern Western Ghats, India is described and illustrated here. The species shows similarities with two south Indian endemics, A. anupama and A. courtallense, but differs in many qualitative attributes. The present status of genus Argostemma in India is briefly discussed. An artificial key for the identification of Argostemma in Western Ghats is also provided.

Dr. Anoop BALAN

Field studies were carried out in wet seasons of 2014 and 2015 in rice fields of College Farm, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad to understand the abundance and biodiversity of spiders in varied rice cultivation systems. Design of the experiment was split plot with three main modules, viz., transplanted, broadcasted and drum sown rice and subtreatments under each main module included three plant protection methods viz., organic protection, farmers’ practices and ‘no protection’ practices. Results showed that predator numbers in ‘no protection’ and organic protection plots of all main treatments were more than in farmers’ practices indicating the impact of the chemical pesticides. A total of 22 genera of spiders belonging to 12 families were recorded which comprised of seven guilds based on their hunting strategies and microhabitats. Shannon diversity index ranged between 1.83 and 2.26 and Pielou’s evenness index was 0.59-0.72 in two years of study indicating a stable ecosystem and even species distribution in rice crop at Rajendranagar. Study of the guild assemblage indicated that orb-weavers constituted 28.1% of the population, ground runners 23.51%, space web builders 18.38%, sheet-web builders 13.12%, stalkers 8.04% and ambushers made upto 0.38% of the spider population. Understanding the vertical stratification of various spider genera on the plant gave further insight into the prey preferences of these predators.

Gorthi ANITHA

Regression modeling analyses the relationship between two or more variables and can be used to predict the response variable from one or more independent variables. The present study uses linear regression analysis to evaluate the growth in the two fish species of genus Oreochromis, Nile tilapia and Jipe tilapia, under aquaculture conditions. The models were fitted using a collection of functions in the R-software library. The final models were selected using the goodness of fit criteria based on the coefficient of differentiation, the model p- values and Akaike information criteria. The significance of the linear relationship between predictor variables and the mean response was tested by comparing the computed standardized parameter estimates, whereas the confidence intervals were constructed to assess the uncertainty of predicting the response variable and determine outliers in the model. Generally, both species exhibited good condition during growth and all the measured water quality variables significantly afffected growth (p<0.05). However, only temperature and dissolved oxygen produced the most important linear relationship with fish weight. The study recommends that data from a controlled experiment should be used the determine the interactions between the two growth variables.

Omweno job

An experiment was carried out during kharif 2017 at Zonal Research Station, Chianki using sixteen promising genotypes of okra with three replications in randomized block design. Observations on ten important quantitative characters were recorded. Analyzed data revealed that all characters showed significant effect. The genotype Ajeet-121 gave significantly highest yield with the yield of 135.12 q/ha followed by NS-862 and Super green with the yield of 134.75 q/ha and 134.02 q/ha, respectively. Average fruit weight (15.33 g) and yield of fruits per plant (245.67 g/plant) were recorded significantly highest in the genotype Ajeet-121. On the basis of these observations, it may be concluded that the genotype Ajeet-121 was found most suitable okra genotype for kharif cultivation in the western plateau region (sub zone-V) of Jharkhand.

International Journal of Agricultural and Applied Sciences (IJAAS)

Strain improvement studies were conducted for the production of L-asparaginase from a marine fungus Beauveriabassiana SS18/14 by employing physical and chemical mutagens, in a systemic manner to obtain mutants that have higher L-asparaginase production. The wild strain produced 6.32 IU/mL of L-asparaginase activity while the UV mutant UVF-4 yielded 8.34 IU/mL and nitrous acid mutant UVF4-N-2 exhibited 10.44 IU/mL enzyme activity. The overall strain improvement programme increased L-asparaginase activity 1.65 times with respect to the parent wild strain

Dr.P.V.Kamala Kumari

Three species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (Glomus fasiculatum, Glomus mossae and Acaulispora laevis) were used as bio-agents to manage black bundle disease of maize caused by C.acremonium. The results revealed that colonization of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in root system of the host reduce the percentage of disease incidenceconsiderably.In the pots inoculated with G. fasiculatum no disease incidence (0.0%) was recorded whereas, in the pots inoculated with A. leavis and G. mossae 16.66 % of disease incidence was recorded and the pots treated with pathogen shows 66.66% of disease incidence compare to control. Among the three bio-agents, Glomus fasiculatumproved to be more effective in managing the disease followed by G.mossae and A. laevis. In addition, all the three AM fungi enhanced the plant growth when they are used alone as inoculum as compared to dual inoculation with the C. acremonium and overall control. This clearly suggests that, AM fungi if used, can serve dual purpose. It can be used as bio-control agent as it shows negative antagonistic interaction soil borne plant pathogens and used as growth promoter because of the ability to supply macro and micro nutrients to the host plants.

Veerabhadraswamy AL

Several diseases affect maize plants and one among them is black bundle disease, causal organism of which is yet to be confirmed with conflicting reports appearing in literature. In the present work, an effort was made to record the disease incidence by carry out filed surveys in Southern most district of Karnataka state, India and also to isolate and identify the causal organism. The surface sterilized pith tissue from the infected plants was cultured on PDA medium to identify the organism in the affected vascular tissue. The isolated tissue produce Cephalosporium acremonium which was confirmed based on morphological characters. In addition, Simplicillium sp. and Macrophomina phaseolina were also isolated from the same infected plant material and suspected to have participated in the disease development. In accordance with several reports in literature, Cephalosporium acremonium was tested and confirmed as the causal organism of disease in green house experiments by following the Koch’s postulates. This is in contrast with some earlier reports, wherein the exact symptoms of black bundle disease were reported as barren stalks in corn caused by Fusarium sp. The simplicillium sp. which had morphological similarity with C. acremonium and had an ambiguous taxonomic status in literature was confirmed as a distinct species through PCR based diagnosis.

Veerabhadraswamy AL