Life Sciences

This research project was undertaken to examine the economic effect of fires to commercial exotic forestry in Zimbabwe. Charter Estate of Border Timbers Limited (BTL) was used as a case study, and the area of its plantations damaged by fire between 2008 and 2009 were established together with the cost implications of each of these threats. Secondary data from BTL records and primary data gathered through structured questionnaires and informal interviews were used to determine the relative significance of each of the fires.

Even in humid tropical Malaysia where rainfall is abundant, water fluctuations due to a lack of rainfall do happened as in the 1998 and 2014 drought which brought unpleasant water supply disruptions in many parts of the country. Following this water crisis, the Government has expressed interest in designing houses to collect rainwater and produced a Guideline on Installing a Rainwater Collection and Utilization System. Rainwater harvesting system becomes popular in domestic usages for schools and households.

Web mining – the application of data mining techniques is used to extract knowledge from web documents. Web has become the root for emerging online business or shopping websites. Increasing number of ecommerce websites has put users in turmoil to search for shopping sites to buy a specific product in interest with best price and quality. The paper describes overview of the web system (website) which increases the user experience .The website enables the online users to analyze the product specifications and compare prices of the specific product available on other e-shopping sites.

 Studies on post anthesis salt stress are very important in order to know the growth, enzyme biomarkers against salt stress.  A pot culture experiment was conducted to know the responses of different Kodomillet varieties under salt stress.

The Climate variability and proper production potential in agricultural sector allow increasing export earnings by focusing on agricultural exports' development. Comparative advantage measurement is one of very useful criteria for optimized resources' allocation in countries with an open economy and an important role in international trade. Comparative advantage shows a country's ability in goods' production and exportation with lower cost compared to other competitors.

The Solanum nigrum L. Leaves were selected to screen pharmacognostic and phytochemical studies. Plant material was collected from farmlands in Coimbatore district, Tamilnadu, India. Solanum nigrum L. is a well-known leafy vegetable and also a medicinal plant, which has been valued in ancient system of medicine. The leaf extracts were subjected to organoleptic, fluorescence analysis, physicochemical analysis and preliminary phytochemical screening. The study contributes to the development of standardization parameters of herbal drugs used in our system of medicine

In the present study, eight pure monoterpenes: citronellol, geraniol, linalool, eugenol, thymol, cinnamaldehyde, p-cymene and α-pinene were tested for their fumigant toxicity against four stored product pests, Callosobruchus analis, Sitophilus oryzae, Stegobium paniceum and Tribolium castaneum. Monoterpenes tested showed varying degrees of fumigant toxicity against different species of stored product pests but were highly dependent upon dosage and exposure duration.

Nutritional quality of a food is very important. The nutritional importance of seafood has increased substantially because of beneficial effects of eating seafood fats and oils. The present study deals with nutritional and microbial quality of edible marine fish Sardinella longiceps. The proximate composition of protein, carbohydrate and lipid content were analysed. The results of proximate analysis showed that landing center sample had higher protein content (22.50%) and carbohydrate content (3.02%) then the market samples. However market sample showed the higher lipid content (1.96%).

A naphthalimide derivative was successfully synthesized and characterized as an Al3+-selective fluorescent probe. An obvious red-shift of the signal was observed in the presence of Al3+ in ethanol solution. This proposed probe exhibited a dynamic response range for Al3+ from 1.3 × 10-6 to 7.0 × 10-6 M with a detection limit of 8.2 × 10-7 M.

The current study was conducted to develop Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocol for mature seed-derived callus tissues of Citrus cultivar ‘GWZ’ (Gailiangcheng orange x Weizhang Satsuma mandarin) using gfp as reporter. Transformation experiments were performed with Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain ‘EHA-105’, harboring a binary vector ‘pBin19’.