High phenotypical plasticity has been identified within the species Rubus glaucus Benth, commonly known as ‘mora de castilla’ or Castilla blackberry, in Colombia’s coffee-growing area using AFLP molecular markers as well as morphological characters. Thornless plants have been observed among the blackberry materials grown. These plants present the same characteristics of productivity as thorny varieties are widely distributed. A first approximation to the genetic relationship between thorny and thornless materials indicated that thornless blackberry could possibly originate from the departments of Risaralda or Quindío. This work focuses on identifying the genetic and morpho-agronomic differences in thornless R. glaucus materials found in the coffee-growing region, especially in the department of Risaralda. Materials were collected from five different locations: two in the department of Risaralda, one in the department of Caldas, and two in the department of Quindío. For the morpho-agronomic characterization, 40 farmers were selected in the municipalities of Santa Rosa de Cabal and Guática, Risaralda, each farmer planting 50 plants from each of the five different collection sites, which had been multiplied in vitro, as well as 50 plants of thornless blackberry propagated by farmers, totaling 12,000 plants. Eight microsatellite (SSR) sequences were used to study 23 regional accessions of Rubus, including thorny and thornless R. glaucus, both cultivated and wild. Genetic and molecular differences were observed between thornless blackberry materials of different origins

Diabetic neuropathy is generally considered to be one of the most common complications of diabetes. Neuropathic pain is the most troublesome and early symptom of diabetic neuropathy, and has been recognized as one of the most difficult types of pain to treat due to its multifactorial pathogenesis. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the antinociceptive effect of volatile oil from Cinnamomum zeylanicum on hyperalgesia due to alloxan induced diabetes in rats. Diabetes was induced with single intra peritoneal injection of alloxan monohydrate (150mg/kg b.w.). Animals were divided into different groups. Treatment groups received cinnamon oil from 3rd day onward upto 14th day at different doses (5, 10 and 20mg/kg b.w.; i.p.). Diabetic control animals received normal saline (0.9% NaCl; 1ml/kg). After 2 weeks, rats were tested in tail immersion and hot plate assays. Diabetic control rats exhibited significant hyperalgesia along with increased plasma glucose levels as compared with normal rats. Cinnamon oil treatment significantly decreased thermal hyperalgesia and the plasma glucose levels as compared with diabetic control rats. These results indicate the protective effect of volatile oil from the bark of Cinnamomum zeylanicum on hyperalgesia due to alloxan induced diabetes in rats.

Responses of cowpea (Vigna sinensis L.) to different levels of spiked arsenic in pots with two soil series viz., Sonargaon and Dhamrai were investigated. Arsenic (As) content in plant increased with increasing As application to soil. Arsenic treated plants of cowpea were shorter in heights and at 50 mg As/L treatment, all leaves were shed after 60 days of growth. The number and size of nodules showed gradual decrease with increasing As application. The plant N decreased while plant P increased with increasing As concentration. The nodule nitrogen content showed a decreasing tendency with increasing As accumulation in plant, thus demonstrating a negative impact on Rhizobium-legume symbiotic association

Mono-dispersed tin doped indium oxide (ITO) nanopowders were prepared by wet chemical co-precipitation method at 3000C for 3h with maintaining the In/Sn atomic ratio 90:10, 70:30 and 50: 50 wt.%. The grain size of the prepared samples was determined by TEM technique. Structural characterization of the prepared samples was studied by X-ray diffraction analysis. It is found that the samples were a mixture of cubic and rhombohedra crystals with sharp diffraction peaks except for the sample with atomic ratio 50:50 shows very poor crystalline and no peaks ascribed to the phase of the compounds are observed which confirms the amorphicity of this sample. The dielectric properties including dielectric constant, ? and dielectric loss, ?`` of the prepared samples were evaluated from the observed capacitance values in the frequency range 100 Hz to 5 MHz and in the temperature range of 25 0C to 1600C. Further, from the dielectric properties studies AC- conductivity was evaluated. The activation enthalpy ?H and the entropy change ?S of the prepared samples were calculated. The obtained data were correlated to the structure of the prepared samples

A rapid alternative technique for the extraction of propranolol from tablets is reported. Traditionally, propranolol has been extracted using sonication, but this has proved to be significantly solvent consuming. In this study, propranolol has been extracted successfully from tablets using an optimised microwave-assisted solvent extraction (MASE) method. The optimum conditions for MASE for this application were: extraction solvent, methanol; extraction time, 45 s (5 s heat and 40 s cool); and extraction solvent volume, 5.00 mL. The recovery of propranolol from tablets by the optimised MASE method was 89.8% with a RSD of 3.7%. This performance was acceptable and comparable with sonication. The determination and identification of the extracts was performed using high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection at 290nm. A domestic microwave oven was used for the study, because an industrial MASE apparatus was uncompetitive with sonication with respect to extraction time due to the amount of time required to cool the sample following microwave heating. Safety considerations for domestic microwave ovens are discussed, including the use of a novel two-vial sample cell.

Gibberllin A3 is a plant growth regulator hormone used to increase the growth and flowering of fruits and vegetables. In the present work, the cytogenetic effect of different concentrations of gibberellin A3 (0.1, 0.5, 1 and 2 mg) was studied in human lymphocyte culture. Treating cultures with gibberellin A3 induced chromosomal aberrations, sister chromatid exchanges and DNA damage. The chromosomal aberrations include gap, break, deletion and centromeric attenuation. DNA damage was detected by comet assay and by total genomic damage method using gel electrophoresis. By increasing the concentration of gibberellin A3, the number of damage cells and the damage DNA spots increase. Moreover, the gel electrophoresis method showed that there was an increase of released DNA and RNA as the concentration of gibberellin A3 increase. Green tea (Camellia sinensis) is one of the most popular bervages consumed. Green tea and its constituents were found to have a variety of therapeutic effects. The results obtained in the present investigation showed that when green tea and gibberellin A3 were simultaneously applied in the culture media, the mutagenic changes induced by gibberellin A3 were significantly reduced.

Khaya senegalensis is an herbal medicinal plant, used locally in Nigeria and South Africa for the treatment of cough and sexually transmitted diseases. This antibacterial activity prompted the phytochemical and antibacterial investigation of this herbal plant. The stem bark of K. senegalensis was subjected to phytochemical studies using standard experimental procedures testing for secondary metabolites. The crude extract was evaluated for its antimicrobial activity using methicillin resistant strains of Staphyloccocus aureus MRSA. The result of the study revealed the presence of alkaloids, saponins, tannins and flavonoids in the plant extract. The extract exhibited significant antibacterial and MRSA activities against the tested organisms. The study therefore provides natural source for drugs used for the treatment of methicillin resistant strains (MRSA) infections.

Blood is removed from animals for a variety of scientific purposes. As suffering and distress in animals can result in physiological changes which are likely to add another variable to experimental results care should be taken to minimize stress in these laboratory animals as much as possible so that appropriate experimental results could be obtained. Various methods are in use for blood sampling in rodents like tail-clipping, retro-orbital puncture, tail puncture, jugular vein puncture, cardiac puncture, decapitation etc. Vascular cannulations are among the most widely used surgeries in research labs around the world. Cannulation for the repeated blood samples are suitable for use in all strains of rats and can be used to take blood from the femoral artery and vein, carotid artery, jugular vein, vena cava and dorsal aorta. Venous cannulation is said to have advantages which outweigh the arterial cannulation as the former is easier to implant, easier to fill, more likely to maintain patency than the latter. In this respect in addition blood sampling through the jugular catheter offers the advantage that, lost volume can easily be replaced. Thus it is possible to collect sequential samples to evaluate the time course of a response or the acquisition of a larger volume for measurement of hormones which are present at low concentrations in the circulation. Present article is a review with an attempt to provide an elaborate piece of information regarding jugular vein cannulation with precise focus in rats.

This report investigates variations in time derivatives of the geomagnetic field observed during great storms known to have caused disruption and to have had other adverse effects on power grids. The geomagnetic storms considered were those of 24th November 2004, 30th October 2003 and 28th October 2004, which occurred during the Autumnal event, and also 7th April 2000 and 31st March 2001 which occurred during the Spring events. Geomagnetic field variations are associated with geoelectric field variation at the surface of the Earth which is influenced by the conductivities of different structures of the Earth’s interior. The induced electric field is proportional to the rate of change of the geomagnetic field, which explains why many researchers have used time derivatives of the geomagnetic field as a measure of GIC strength. Koen and Gaunt (2002) established that variation exceeding 30nT/min of the time derivatives of the geomagnetic field component appears to be significant, causing undesirable consequences in power grids.

Dielectric properties of some edible and medicinal oils have been studied at 455 KHz, 9.1 GHz and optical frequency for the temperature range of 2930K to 323OK. It has been observed that the dielectric constant at optical frequency (?oe) is almost same for all oil samples where as variation in dielectric permittivity (?’) is more prominent at lower frequencies for pure oils. The static dielectric constant (?0) and dielectric constant at optical frequency (?oe) decrease slightly with increase in temperature for all the oil samples. Dielectric permittivity (?’) and loss tangent (tan ?) of different oil samples at 9.1 GHz show some interesting behaviour at particular temperature. The macroscopic relaxation time ( ?m) and molar free energy of activation (?F?) is also determined which show systematic variation with temperature for most of the oil samples under consideration.

We shall show in this paper a class of computable convex functions, which have their first two solutions specified, and for which, all the polynomial solutions are uniquely determined. We shall also prove that the class of functions are convex, computable and represents a set of partial functions. Analyses indicate that it is double recursive, which can be composed from its primitive recursive functions. The class of convex functions can be shown to be reducible to Ackermann’s functions with some modifications to the algorithm, which lend themselves to computability in the form of Turing machines and ? -calculus, according to Church. Least search operator or minimisation conditions can be imposed on this class of functions, such that, either no solution is returned for a certain term of the function or a term for which, the solution is zero. However, this set of computable convex functions find application in solving optimisation problems in operations research, load and demand side management in electrical power systems engineering, switching operations in computer science and electronics engineering, mathematical logic and several other application areas in industry.

Lignite soil was found to be an effective coagulant aid for color removal of textile dyes from aqueous solutions. A comparative study with conventional coagulant had been done. Results show that lignite soil can effectively remove reactive, vat and disperse dyes from their 50mg/L aqueous solutions. Parameters such as color, settled sludge volume have been evaluated. Results showed an increase of color removal, reduction in settled sludge volume when lignite soil was used as coagulant aid with alum and MgCl2. It was found that color removal for reactive blue, vat blue and disperse red was 93%, 92%, 96% for alum, 100% respectively for all dyes with alum and lignite, 100%, 80%, 92% for MgCl2 and 100% respectively for all dyes with magnesium chloride and lignite. For the textile waste water, the color removal was found to be 85% and 91% for alum and alum with lignite, 84% and 90% for MgCl2 and MgCl2 with lignite. The mechanism for coagulation by lignite was found to be a charge adsorption neutralization process. The optimum pH range for lignite coagulant was from 3 to 6. It was found that the settled sludge volume reduced from 90ml to 55ml, and 150ml to 75ml when lignite was used as coagulant aid for alum and MgCl2, for reactive dyes, 50ml to 10ml and 80ml to 30ml when lignite was used as coagulant aid for alum and MgCl2 for vat dyes, 78ml to 55ml and 92ml to 78ml when lignite was used as coagulant aid for alum and MgCl2 for disperse dyes and 84ml to 55ml and 100ml to 80ml when lignite was used as coagulant aid for alum and MgCl2 for textile waste water.

In this paper we have studied the threshold voltage sensitivity to process variation like channel length, silicon film thickness (tSi) and gate oxide thickness (tOX) in undoped symmetric Double gate (SDG) metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) after developing an analytical model of threshold voltage (VTh). In the proposed model we have introduced a parameter ? to take care of Drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) effect and quantum confinement effect in sub micron SDG metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) devices. To verify the validity of our developed model, we have compared the simulation results of threshold voltage model with two-dimensional MINIMOS simulator results and found a close agreement. These analytical expressions for sensitivity are solved numerically and compared with published results. The analytical expressions of the sensitivity strongly depend on the device parameter combinations. The study suggests that the threshold voltage sensitivity to length imposes a serious constrain on the scaling of SDG MOS devices. The VTh sensitivity to tOX is not a serious issue for longer SDG MOS devices whereas in deep sub-micron regime, its effect can not be ignored which put restriction on the choice of the gate oxide thickness value.

A variety of 1-(s-phenyl)-[1,2,4]triazolo[4,3-a]quinoxalin-4(5H)-one (3a-3h) and 1-(s-furan-2-yl)-[1,2,4]triazolo[4,3- a]quinoxalin-4(5H)-one (5a-d) were synthesized from thermal annelation of corresponding hydrazones (2a-h) and (4a-d) respectively in the presence of ethylene glycol which is a high boiling solvent. The structures of the compounds prepared were confirmed by analytical and spectral data. Also, the newly synthesized compounds were evaluated for possible antimicrobial activity. 3-(2-(4-hydroxylbenzylidene)hydrazinyl)quinoxalin-2(1H)-one (2e) was the most active antibacterial agent while 1-(5-Chlorofuran-2-yl)-[1,2,4]triazolo[4,3-a]quinoxalin-4(5H)-one (5c) stood out as the most potent antifungal agent.

The influence of top layer’s material of membrane and flow direction on gas transport has been investigated. A simulation analysis has been done to study the influence of the material of permselective layer (top membrane layer), temperature and the direction of gas flow on the mass transfer through a composite membrane. Dusty gas model for single gas permeation has been used to study these effects. It is obvious from analysis that apart from top layer’s material, flow direction have also an influnce on the mass transfer though composite membrane

In this paper, a new proof for the Euler equation ( exp( ix ) = cos x + i sin x ) has been presented. At first, a new and general formula has been proved from which the Euler equation has been derived. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 30A99, 30B40