The shape-controlling role of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) in biosynthesis of Au-nanoparticles is reported by using Gymnocladus assamicus pod extract. The Au-nanoparticles are spherical in ...presence of CTAB and the shape and size of the Au nanoparticles strongly depend on the concentration of CTAB. The bacterial activity of Au nanoparticles was investigated against the Gram negative bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Gram positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus. The bacterial growth kinetic was monitored in nutrient broth. It was observed that the Au nanoparticles show strong antibacterial activity against P. aeruginosa and S. aureus.
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•Synthesis of Au nanoparticles by using G. assamicus pod extract.•The CTAB effect the size/shape of Au nanoparticles.•The Au nanoparticles show suitable antibacterial activity.•The bacterial growth kinetic of Au nanoparticles with CTAB is monitored in nutrient broth.
A field experiment was carried out at ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region, Umiam to evaluate some botanicals against mustard aphid Lipaphis erysimi. The experiment was laid out in randomized block ...design with eight treatments and three replications. The mustard seeds(cv. Varuna) was sown during third week of October. The treatments viz., Bakain (Melia azedarach) leaf extract (5%aqueous solution), Lantana (Lantana camara) leaf extract (5% aqueous solution), Turmeric (Curcuma longa) rhizome powder (5% aqueous solution), Marigold (Tagetes erecta) leaf extract (5% aqueous solution), Vasaka (Adhatoda vasica) leaf extract (5% aqueous solution), chloropyrifos 20% EC (200 g a.i./ha) and imidacloprid 17.8% SL (25 g a.i./ha) along with control were applied at fifteen days interval. Results revealed that Melia azedarach was best among all botanicals with 50.5-61.9 per cent and 50.7-57.5 per cent reduction of aphid population during first and second spray, respectively. Next best treatment was Adhatoda vasica followed by Curcuma longa, Lantana camara and Tagetes erecta. Among all the treatments, chloropyrifos and imidacloprid recorded maximum reduction of aphid population after both the spray. Although all botanicals showed less toxicity towards non-target organisms whereas chlorpyriphos and imidacloprid were highly toxic to honey bees and coccinellid beetles.
Organizations dealing with B2B products experience significant challenges whencustomers are unhappy. As the number of customers is few and volumes oftransactions are high, customer satisfaction is ...essential for a company’s well-being.CalTech Thermal Plant Corporation, a coal customer, lost 203 crores due to substandardcoal being supplied by their long-term business ally UCL. As a result of areport by CalTech, the Minister of Natural resources and Power downgraded 250 coalmines of UCL after analyzing coal samples from various mines. UCL, a Governmentowned Maharatna status mining company, was a monopoly in coal extraction andselling in India for a long time. Over time, UCL has grown in size both in terms of thenumber of mines and employee strengths. However, a complacent and shelteredorganization UCL was exposed to a bouquet of challenges starting from the closureof coal mines in 2017, its own in-house HR problems, threats from internationalcompetitors, and substitutes for their customer’s products in the form of Solar power.The case study discusses the various environmental challenges influencing UCL to gofor major strategic decisions to endure the present crisis. The management of UCL isat a crossroads in making the organization profitable and ready for future challenges.
In this paper, we propose a deep learning based pipeline to predict the presence of Glaucoma, a neuro-degenerative eye condition, by applying object localization, image segmentation, and image ...classification techniques. The pipeline takes a full fundus image as input and provides Optic Disc and Optic Cup masks along with the likelihood measure to determining Glaucoma. The pipeline uses a lightweight U-Net model called ResNet based Disc Localization U-Net (RDLU-Net) for Optic Disc localization and Convolution mixed SegFormer Glaucoma Detection Network (CSGDN) for segmenting Optic Disc (OD) and Optic Cup (OC) structures and finally predicting the probability of the presence of Glaucoma by using the classification network in CSGDN. Our approach shows dice scores of 0.9871 and 0.9065 on OD and OC segmentation, respectively by using REFUGE dataset. The proposed frame-work obtains accuracy of 95.47% using MobileNet V2 as the detection network when applied on a custom Glaucoma dataset containing data from REFUGE and DRISHTI-GS datasets.
Considering the gradual progress of urbanization, urban health has now become as one of the most challenging task for the current decade in India. An exhaustive and harmonize effect has been ...initiated at the national level in order to standardize the service and initiate the challenge to put every health services across the country under a single umbrella. In the last decade, various socio-demographic factors forced to make a transitional shift towards non-communicable diseases which has significantly increases the number of health loss. City like Kolkata also faced the same challenges. Large archieve of unstructured health data furnish vital statistical measure on public health and valuable insight into different determinants of communicable & non-communicable diseases. The integration of various data sources along with analytical algorithm is used to assess risk factors and localized vulnerability to assist in developing effective prevention and control strategies for different diseases and to optimize allocation of limited public health resources. We propose an analytical framework based on multiple correlation, Gini Index and multiple Regression technique for analysing different causes related to NCD burden in Kolkata.
Composition and size dependent band gap engineering with longer excited state charge carrier lifetime assist CdS x Se1–x alloy semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) as a promising candidate for quantum ...dot solar cell (QDSC). Colloidal CdS x Se1–x alloy QDs were synthesized using the hot injection method where a stoichiometric mixture of S-TOP and Se-TOP were injected at 270 °C in a mixture of Cd-oleate. The electron decoupled from hole in the alloyed structure due to delocalization of electron in electronically quasi type-II graded CdS x Se1–x alloyed structure. As a result, intraband electron cooling time increases from 100s of fs to sub 10 ps time scale in the alloyed graded structure. Extremely slow electron cooling time (∼8 ps) and less charge recombination (∼50% in >2 ns) as compared to both CdS and CdSe QDs are found to be beneficial for charge carrier extraction in QD solar cells. Using polysulfide electrolyte and Cu2S-deposited ITO glass plates as photocathode, the efficiency of the QD solar cell was measured to be 1.1 (±0.07)% for CdS, 3.36 (±0.1)% for CdSe, and 3.95 (±0.12)% for CdS0.7Se0.3 QDs. An additional nonepitaxial CdS quasi-shell followed by ZnS passivation layer (TiO2/ CdS0.7Se0.3 /quasi-CdS/ZnS) was deposited on top of the CdS0.7Se0.3 film which showed a photo current conversion efficiency (PCE) of 4.5 (±0.18) %. The overall 14% increase of PCE is due to the quasi CdS shell helps to separate more electrons through passivating the surface states of TiO2.
RNA polymerase is known to bind and utilize the overlapping promoters P1 and P2 in Escherichia coli galactose operon. We have identified an additional specific site upstream of P2, where RNA ...polymerase binds in a heparin‐resistant manner. Binding of polymerase to this site, termed P3, occurs simultaneous to its binding at P1/P2. We have located this P3 site by DNase I footprinting. A 63 base pair region centered around position − 100 with respect to galP1 is protected by polymerase. Interestingly, a Pribnow box TATAAT is present within this protected region (−103 to −108). We have shown that transcription occurs from P3 in vitro. Primer extension analysis provides direct evidence that P3 is transcribed in vivo. The start site of transcription has been mapped at −96 position relative to galP1. β‐galactosidase assays with different gal promoter constructs reveal that while P3 alone functions as a weak in vivo promoter, it has a synergistic effect on transcription from the gal operon, since deletion of P3 or specifically mutating its −10 region result in a substantial reduction in the gal promoter activity.
This paper represents a currency recognition system using ensemble neural network (ENN). The individual neural networks (NN) in an ENN are trained via negative correlation learning. The object of ...using negative correlation learning (NCL) is to expertise the individuals in an ensemble on different parts or portion of input patterns. The available currencies in the market consist of new, old and noisy ones. It is often difficult for machine to recognize these currencies; therefore we propose a system that uses ENN to identify them. We performed our experiment for seven different types of TAKA (Bangladeshi currency) they are 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500 TAKA. The image of different types note is converted in gray scale and compressed in our desired range. Each pixel of the compressed image is given as an input to the network. This system is able to recognize highly noisy or old image of TAKA. Ensemble network is very useful for the classification of different types of currency. It reduces the chances of misclassification than a single network and ensemble network with independent training. In experimental results we have shown this. We also find good result for similar pattern available in market.
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