Web enabled paddy disease detection using Compressed Sensing

In agricultural industry, paddy diseases play a vital role to cause economic losses. Hence, the detection of diseases of paddy plants and give suggestions to the peasants is beneficial to increase the yield quantity of rice. In this paper, a novel web-based paddy disease detection using Compressed Sensing is proposed to detect and classify paddy diseases. First, the diseased leaf is pre-processed using contrast enhancement, and then LAB color space is applied. The segmentation is done using K-Means clustering. The storage complexity is reduced using the Compressed Sensing technique. The segmented leaf images are compressed and then uploaded to the cloud. In the transmitter section, the Compressed Sensing recovery algorithm is used to reconstruct the segmented image. Then Statistical Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) method is used to extract the features from the segmented image. Support Vector Machine classifier is used to classify the diseases. The performance of the proposed method is compared with other existing techniques. The proposed system is also experimentally tested with Arduino board. The proposed system achieves the disease recognition rate of 98.38%.

A thermostable bacterial cocaine esterase rapidly eliminates cocaine from brain in nonhuman primates

A long-acting, thermostable bacterial cocaine esterase (CocE) has been identified that rapidly degrades cocaine with a K(M) of 1.33+0.085 μM. In vivo evaluation of CocE has shown protection against convulsant and lethal effects of cocaine in rodents, confirming the therapeutic potential of CocE against cocaine overdose. However, the current study is the first to evaluate the effects of CocE on cocaine brain levels. Positron emission tomogrpahy neuroimaging of [(11)C]cocaine was used to evaluate the time course of cocaine elimination from brain in the presence and absence of CocE in nonhuman primates. Systemic administration of CocE eliminated cocaine from the rhesus-monkey brain approximately three times faster than control conditions via peripheral actions through attenuating the input function from blood plasma. The efficiency of this process is sufficient to alleviate or prevent adverse central nervous system effects induced by cocaine. Although the present study used tracer doses of cocaine to access brain clearance, these findings further support the development of CocE for the treatment of acute cocaine toxicity.

A tiered barcode authentication tool to differentiate medicinal Cassia species in India

DNA barcoding is a desirable tool for medicinal product authentication. DNA barcoding is a method for species identification using short DNA sequences that are conserved within species, but variable between species. Unlike animals, there is no single universal DNA barcode locus for plants. Coding markers, matK and rbcL, and noncoding markers, trnH-psbA (chloroplast) and ITS2 (nuclear), have been reported to be suitable for the DNA barcoding of plants with varying degree of success. Sixty-four accessions from 20 species of the medicinal plant Cassia were collected, and analyzed for these 4 DNA barcoding markers. PCR amplification was 100% successful for all 4 markers, while intra-species divergence was 0 for all 4 Cassia species in which multiple accessions were studied. Assuming 1.0% divergence as the minimum requirement for discriminating 2 species, the 4 markers could only differentiate 15 to 65% of the species studied when used separately. Adding indels to the divergence increased the percentage of species discrimination by trnH-psbA to 90%. In 2-locus barcoding, while matK+rbcL (which is recommended by Consortium for the Barcoding of Life) discriminated 90% of the species, the other combinations of matK+ITS and rbcL+trnH-psbA showed 100% species discrimination. However, matK is plagued with primer issues. The combination of rbcL+trnH-psbA provided the most accurate (100% species ID) and efficient tiered DNA barcoding tool for the authentication of Cassia medicinal products.

Angiosperms of Nanmangalam Reserve Forest, an urban forest in Metropolitan Chennai, India

Humans have altered the forests of urban regions drastically, thereby reducing the original forests to isolated fragments. Such fragments may contain remnants of the original vegetation. Nanmangalam Reserve Forest (NRF), located in the Metropolitan Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, is an example of such a forest fragment, covering an area of 321 ha. A total of 449 angiosperm species belonging to 313 genera representing 83 families were recorded from NRF. Amongst the species, 79% were dicots and 21% were monocots. The most genera/species rich families were Fabaceae (37/69) and Poaceae (34/52). The species rich genera included Cassia (10), Crotalaria (7), Erogrostis, Hedyotis and Phyllanthus (6 each). Six endemic species were recorded. This diversity amidst a rapidly expanding city has to be protected in order to enable the conservation agenda of urban areas.

Angiosperms of Sendirakillai Sacred Grove (SSG), Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu, India

We provide a checklist of Angiosperm alpha diversity of Sendirakillai Sacred Grove (SSG), a community conserved Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF) fragment located on the Coromandel Coast of Cuddalore district (11°44’24” N, 79°47’24” E), Tamil Nadu, South India. Plant specimens were collected either with flowers or fruits and were identified and confirmed with available regional floras, revisions and monographs. In the present study, we have enumerated a total of 180 species and 2 varieties belonging to 151 genera distributed in 66 families from 29 orders according to Angiosperm Phylogeny Group III Classification. More than 30% of the total flora is represented by six families namely Fabaceae (14), Rubiaceae (12), Cyperaceae (10), Apocynaceae (8), Poaceae (8) and Euphorbiaceae (7). Three endemic species to India and three species that are confined to peninsular India and Sri Lanka are recorded from the sacred grove. Threats to the biodiversity of sacred grove are identified and conservation strategies are proposed.