Assessment of Water Quality of Soan River using Physicochemical Parameters and Aquatic Insects Diversity

Biology Bulletin - In the present study, the effect of pollutants produced by human dwelling, agricultural and industrial activities on aquatic invertebrate’s communities of Soan River,...     

Indices of availability of soil calcium to plants

Summary The four soils, Delhi (alluvial), Pusa (calcareous), Ratnagiri, (red) and Ujjain (black) were equilibrated with solutions of 30 and 120 me/l salinities and 7, 11, 15, 19, 27 and 40 S.A.R.'s. Exchangeable cations of the alcohol washed salt-free soils were determined. The dry weight and calcium and magnesium in the rye seedlings used in the Neubauer seedlings technique for these soils were also estimated. The correlation co-efficients of available calcium (as measured by the Neubauer seedlings technique) with S.A.R. of the equilibrating solution, modified calcium adsorption ratio (a new function of the equilibrating solution) and exchangeable soil calcium, were calculated.The soils equilibrated at higher salinity have low amounts of calcium and magnesium at any value of the S.A.R. of the equilibrating solutions as was shown by the reduction of the plant weight and less calcium and magnesium uptakes by stem and root. There was also a considerable reduction in the calcium uptake by the rye seedlings due to an increase in the S.A.R. of the equilibrating solutions.The investigation showed that m.Ca.A.R. (a new function of the equilibrating solution) was superior to the other indices in five out of the eight cases. The exchangeable calcium is superior in two cases and S.A.R. in one.     

Chronic theophylline administration has no apparent effect on theophylline concentrations required to produce seizures in rats

Theophylline, the widely used antiasthmatic drug, can cause life-threatening, generalized seizures when administered in excessive doses. The plasma concentrations of theophylline associated with these seizures vary widely among patients, thereby complicating efforts to prevent seizures by timely initiation of appropriate treatment. Some investigators suspect that chronic administration increases the neurotoxicity of theophylline but others have suggested the opposite. We have studied this problem in an animal model of theophylline-induced seizures. Osmotic pumps containing theophylline solution or drug-free solvent (for the surgical control group) were implanted in adult female Lewis rats, yielding almost constant serum theophylline concentrations of about 14 mg/liter for 7 days in the treated group. On the seventh day, theophylline was administered by much more rapid iv infusion to the two groups of animals and to one nonimplanted (nonsurgical) control group until onset of maximal seizures. There were no statistically significant differences between the three groups with respect to the concentrations of theophylline in serum, serum water, brain, and cerebrospinal fluid at onset of seizures. The concentrations of theophylline metabolites were either very low or undetectable. Under the experimental conditions, preexposure of rats for 7 days to theophylline in the human therapeutic concentration range had no apparent effect on the acute neurotoxicity of the drug.     

First theoretical framework of di-substituted donor moieties of triphenylamine and carbazole for NLO properties: quantum paradigms of interactive molecular computation

The dependence of polarisability (α) and hyperpolarisability (β) on donor strength has been systematically studied by employing density functional theory method on triphenylamine (TPA) and carbazole (CZ) based compounds. The electronic structures, absorption spectra and non-linear optical (NLO) response were calculated by using quantum chemical methods. All the calculations were performed in gas phase in presence of solvent. The results reveal that the polarizability (α) and hyperpolarizability (β) significantly increased by the addition of second donor moiety. Similarly, the oscillator strength and light harvesting efficiency were also increased, while absorption wavelength was red-shifted by the addition of second donor moiety. These results indicate that the di-substituted donor is an effective way to improve NLO response. The TPA dyes possess a large second-order non-linear response and this is primarily because of the strong donor-π-acceptor conjugation that is ascribed to the excited state intramolecular charge transfer. These theoretical frameworks of carbon architecture might be advantageous to design other organic charge-transfer compounds.     

Genome-wide characterization and expression analysis of pseudo-response regulator gene family in wheat

Molecular Biology Reports - Pseudo-response regulator (PRR) gene family members play a significant role in plant circadian clocks, flowering time inflorescence architecture development during...