December 2010

A total of one hundred and fifty day old broiler chicks were used to comparably evaluate the performance of birds fed pelletized diet and those fed re-ground pelletized feed. At the end of brooding, the birds were grouped into three of fifty birds each, with each treatment group having five replicates of ten birds per replicate. The first group of birds were fed on 100% whole pelletized feed, the second group were fed on 100% reground pelletized feed, while the third group of birds were fed on 50% whole pelletized feed and 50% reground pelletized feed. The results showed significant (P<0.05) differences in the final weight, initial weight, feed conversion rate, weight gain and daily weight gain. The feed intake showed no significance (P<0.05) difference. Also there were significant (P<0.05) differences in the live weight, defeathered weight, dressed weight, wing weight, thigh weight, drumstick weight, chest cavity weight and backcut weight. There were no significant (P<0.05) differences in the cut parts expressed as percentage of the dressed weight. Furthermore, there were significant (P<0.05) differences in the weight of the liver, heart, gizzard and proventriculus. There were no significant (P<0.05) differences in the weight of the spleen and kidney. For the organs expressed as percentage of the defeathered weight, the heart, spleen and kidney were not significantly (P<0.05) different; while the liver, gizzard and proventriculus were significantly (P<0.05) different.

Rehabilitation of denuded patches using perennial grasses has been used extensively in semi-arid environments of Kenya. However, weeds continue to pose an enormous challenge to the success of many rehabilitation programmes. The aim of this study was to identify the common weeds that pose a challenge to rehabilitation success and establish the grass-weed interactions in rehabilitated areas of a semi-arid environment in Kenya. A survey questionnaire was administered to capture the farmers’ perception on the most problematic weeds and the challenge they pose to rehabilitation programmes. Experimental plots were laid out under simulated rainfall (sprinkler system). Three perennial grasses; Cenchrus ciliaris, Eragrostis superba, and Enteropogon macrostachyus, were used. These grasses were sown along ox-ploughed micro-catchments as pure stands and two grass mixtures and monitored at three phenological stages; early vegetative (15cm), elongation (30cm) and reproduction (60cm) representing high, medium and low grazing intensities respectively. Results from this survey showed Ipomoea kituensis posed the greatest challenge to rehabilitation programmes. Results also showed an inverse relationship in biomass yields between the weeds and established grasses across the three phenological stages. These results strongly suggest that selective weeding of rehabilitated semi-arid environments is critical for the success of rehabilitation programmes in semi-arid Kenya.

There is a specific response to the specific nature of a training load. This specific response will tend to emphasize one or more of the abilities that make up fitness. These abilities are basic and respond well to training. Each exercise in training tends to develop a particular biomotor ability. The game, tennis, requires high level of speed, agility, coordination and endurance. Different training methods are being adopted by tennis players to improve their biomotor abilities. The researcher is interested to find out the effect of core board and slide board training on performance of selected biomotor abilities of tennis players. The subjects, male tennis players (N=45), from the different colleges of Chennai were randomly selected as subjects and their age ranged between 19-23 years. They were divided into three groups namely core training group, slide board training group, and control group on random basis. Pre test was conducted for all the 45 subjects on selected biomotor abilities. The experimental groups participated in respective training for a period of six weeks. The control group did not participate in any of the training programme. The post test was conducted on the above said dependent variables after a period of six weeks for all the three groups. The obtained data were subjected statistical analysis using ANOVA. The results proved the experimental groups proved that core board and slide board exercises were significantly better than control group in improving speed, coordination and endurance comparing control group. It was concluded that core board training and slide board training can be used for improving of specific biomotor abilities of tennis players.

Radon and its radioactive progenies in indoor places are recognized as the main sources of public exposure from the natural radioactive sources. The tap water used for drinking and other household uses can increase the indoor radon level. In the present research data on radon concentrations in the water samples of Mashhad city has provided. Water samples were collected from various places and supplies of public water used in Mashhad. Then radon concentration has been measured by PRASSI system tree times for each sample in this research. Result shows about 75% of water samples have radon concentration gather than 10Bq/L which advised EPA as a normal level. According to measurements data, the mean radon concentration of all samples was 16.238 ± 9.322 Bq/L. The annual mean effective dose in stomach and long are 42.674 ± 24.525 and 45.305 ± 26.037 μSv/y, respectively, per person of Mashhad population which is more then 4 millions people. Results show about 75% of water samples have radon concentration gather than 10Bq/L as advised of EPA normal level. The radon and radium concentrations in drinking water samples actually used by people in Mashhad in some regions are not low enough and below the EPA proposed limits. Since a main section of radon come in body is due to drinking and household water, and for improvement of the social health level, we suggest using the low radon level water source, or public water supplies authority reducing the radon in the drinkable water before using by people.

The recent proliferation and the availability of the complete sequence information of the pathogenic fungi has made it possible to carry out the in silico subtractive genome analysis for identification of novel putative drug targets. In this present study subtractive genomic approach is employed to identify novel targets in Ascomycete (Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus nidulans, Gibberella zeae, Ashbya gossypii) and Basidiomycete species (Cryptococcus neoformans). These fungal species act as plant and animal pathogens. Our study reveals that 52 common core proteins are found in the 5 fungal pathogens of our interest from whole proteome comparisons. Further homolog identification was performed against plants and animals using BLASTp and tBLASTn. 17 out of 52 proteins gave considerable results. Unlike all the proteins, C6 transcription factor (XP_753029.1) was found to have no homolog (hits) in plants and animals. In the later step cellular localization of those 17 proteins was found using CELLO v.2.5. The results show that among those 17 proteins, 3 were nuclear proteins, 7 were cytoplasmic proteins, 5 were mitochondrial proteins & 2 were membrane proteins. Membrane proteins were considered for further analysis as they represent the largest group (70%) of effective drug targets. It was found that C6 transcription factor (XP_753029.1) was identified as a membrane protein. Homolog identification and cellular localization prediction results render C6 transcription factor (XP_753029.1) as promising putative drug target as it was involved in unique biochemical pathways in all the 5 fungal pathogens considered for the study and not present in animal or plant host. Molecular Modeling & further screening of the functional inhibitors against these novel targets may result in discovery of novel broad spectrum anti fungal therapy.

Environmental amenities and other site specific characteristics can affect the price and productivity of residential property in a variety of ways. An analysis of the demand for air quality in Cochin industrial agglomeration in India is presented using the survey data from 600 households. Hedonic property value model is used to identify and monetarize the benefits in the value of residential property due to an improvement in air quality. Incorporating a number of structural, neighborhood, environmental and socio economic variables as the determinants of the consumer's willingness to pay for reduced air quality, it is hypothesized that the major environmental variable SO2 was inversely related to the residential property values. Estimated implicit prices for different sites in different locations correspond to the individual willingness to pay (WTP) for a marginal unit of environmental good purchased. Adopting a two-stage estimation procedure to estimate these relationships, it is found that, on an average, an increase in the level of SO2 reduced property prices in the study area by 0.45 percent. Estimates further revealed that the households are willing to pay an additional amount of 1.48 percent for a reduction in SO2.

Interference due to transmissions by adjacent nodes in a multi-hop wireless network can be modeled using a Unit Disc Graph (UDG). We investigate the reliability associated with using the clique number instead of the chromatic number of the UDG while computing the interference. In our extensive simulations with UDGs of random networks, we observed that the clique number and the chromatic number values were typically very close to one another and the maximum deviation was much less than the theoretical bounds. This implies very high reliability in the proposed approximation.

Communication is the basic attribute of human life and language is the main tool of human communication. English became the language of international communication or international language. English is playing a vital role in political, social, educational, and economic concerns of the nations. Teachers in communicative classrooms will find themselves talking less and listening more--becoming active facilitators of their students. At present, in some places it has evolved into CALI or Computer Assisted Language Learning. Both CALI and CALL have not been adopted widely due to the obvious constraints of finance and the typically Indian mindset that learning cannot take place without the presence of a human teacher.

Objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on age at death of infant and child in the slum area. Methods: Data have been collected from one hundred and twenty five ever married women from slum dwellers in Rajshahi City through a structured questionnaire. A statistical tool, path analysis has been used to find out the direct and indirect effects on age at death of infant and child. Results: The study results reveal that respondent’s age, order of birth, income, education and immunization practice for their new born babies are directly and indirectly significantly associated with age at death of infant and child. The indirect effects of family income (36.05%) has the highest impact among other characteristics (education, length of breast feeding, and immunization practice) on age at death and also these have similar results in case of birth interval (45.66%) and immunization practice (39.08%) through age. The percentage of other variables (implied effect) is higher for the immunization (50.35%). The direct effects of birth interval, age and order of birth on age at death of infant and child are 0.035, 0.879 and 0.709 respectively which implies order of birth and age of mothers’ have much impact on age at death. Conclusion: Traditional maternal education and immunization practice system are not well recommended in Bangladesh. Slum dwellers of this country are always deprived from their fundamental needs such as treatment, housing, fooding, clothing and education. Thus, the study suggests that mother’s education and awareness about infant and child death should improve in slum areas as well.

In this paper, inspired by a postmodern reconceptualization of truth and the deconstruction of objectivity, I critique the notion of western-inspired psychotherapy as neutral, universal, apolitical, and normative for all cultures and groups. This value-free idea of clinical praxis, I argue, would advantageously give way to understandings that re-vision the therapeutic encounter as a deeply political context – subject to the vulnerabilities of normal social interactions. Consequently, in view of increasingly credible ideas about the embeddedness of human experience, the subjectivity that must attend ‘scientific’ work, and the deconstruction of hegemonies as givens, I frame the crises currently facing orthodox psychotherapeutic praxis, and challenge its assumed superiority over local espousals of mental distress. This is done in the hope that a new space for more pluralistic forms of therapy might evolve unconstrained.

Based on Erlang’s traffic formula, a package has been developed in C++ to simulate the size or number of circuits required in a trunk for selected and better quality grade of service(GoS). Package is useful for designing medium scale trunk networks.

In the present study, the sub-lethal effects of arsenic on various biochemical parameters of Tilapia mossambica were studied. The fish was exposed to sub- lethal concentration of arsenic for 15 days for chronic toxicity studies. In the present study, total protein, amino acid and acetylcholinesterase, glycogen and lactic acid were observed. The present study showed the protein content was decreased and amino acid content was increased significantly and also Acetylcholinesterase was increased in the liver tissue of arsenic treated fish, Tilapia mossambica. The present study shows the level of glycogen decreased and lactic acid increased in the liver tissue of fish exposed to arsenic. These changes were concentration dependent.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae was the cheapest strain available for the conversion of substrate. In the present study, it is used for bioethanol production from cashew apple juice. The influencing parameters that affect the production of bioethanol from cashew apple juice were optimized. Parameter optimization was done such as temperature, pH, inoculums size were studied, it was found to be pH of 4.5 temperature of 32°C and inoculum level 108 respectively. Under this optimum operating condition the maximum of yield 6.5 % bioethanol was achieved.

Vermicompost appears to be generally superior to conventionally produced compost in a number of important ways; (i) Vermicompost is superior to most composts as an inoculant in the production of compost (ii) Worms have a number of other possible uses on farms, includingvalue as a high-quality animal feed (iii) Vermicomposting and vermiculture offer potential to organic farmers as sources of supplemental income. All of the above will be discussed in detail later in this document. At the same time, the reader should take note at the beginning that working with worms is a more complicated process than traditional composting: (i) It can be quicker, but to make it so generally requires more labour (ii) It requires more space because worms are surface feeders and won’t operate in material more than a meter in depth (iii) It is more vulnerable to environmental pressures, such as freezing conditions and drought (iv) Perhaps most importantly, it requires more start-up resources, either in cash (to buy the worms) or in time and labour (to grow them).

The development of in vitro propagation of plants holds tremendous potential for the production of high-quality plant-based medicines. Aristalochia indica is used in traditional remedy. In the present study, attempts have been made to develop a simple, reliable and reproducible protocol for micropropagation from different explants of Aristalochia indica. Shoot tip and nodal segments showed elongation without multiplication when either NAA or KIN was used in MS medium. Shoot multiplication was obtained when cytokinins like BAP was used. BAP alone also induced multiple shoots. The regenerated individual shoots were rooted in MS medium containing 1 mg dm-3 indole-3-butyric acid (IBA). Regenerated plants grew well when transferred to soil.

A new sensitive analytical approach for determination of erythromycin A in tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) by a fast scanning stripping square wave voltammetry using the dropping mercury electrode (PSA-F) was developed and validated. Optimum parameters for erythromycin A quantification were: Ammonium acetate buffer 0.1 M, pH 8.0 as supporting electrolyte; acetonitrile as the solvents for disolving erythromycin standard; forward scanning; Vstart: -400 mV; Vstop: -1700 mv; Vstep: 6 mV; Vpulse: 40 mV; Tdop: 5000 ms; Velectrolide: -1100 mV; Telectrolide: 5s. Peak of erythromycin A appeared at E1/2 = -1430 mV, separated and distinguished with peaks of other antibiotics. This assay showed high recovery (> 85.07 %), high sensitivity (detection limit 0.52 µg/kg), high precision (RSD, 0.8  2.1 %), high accuracy (relative error - RE, 85.07 88.56 %) as well as excellent linearity (r2adjusted = 1.0). Simpler, reagent-saving and time-saving were other advantages of this assay method. An equivalence of analyzing results between PSA-F and LC-MS/MS could be obviously seen.

In this study, we analyzed the anticancer properties of luteolin in N-nitosodiethylamine induced group of rats. We found that the administration of luteolin (0.2mg) for 16 weeks to N-nitosodiethylamine induced rats provides protection against the oxidative stress caused by the carcinogen and thereby prevents hepatocellular carcinogenesis. On administration of the carcinogen, the level of lipid peroxidation elevated markedly, but it was found to be significantly reduced by luteolin administration. Besides, the antioxidant activities in serum were reduced in carcinogen administered animals, which were enhanced to normal level after luteolin treatment to N-nitrosodiethylamine induced group of rats and also this luteolin prevented the elevation of marker enzymes induced by N-nitrosodiethylamine. The bodyweight of the animals decreased and their relative liver weight increased significantly on N-nitrosodiethylamine administration when compared to control group. However, Treatment with luteolin significantly prevented the decrease of the body weight and increase in relative liver weight caused by DEN. In conclusion, these findings indicate that the compound prevent lipid peroxidation, hepatic cell damage and protect the antioxidant system in N-nitrosodiethylamine-induced hepatocellular carcinogenesis.