Development of smart machine for sorting of deceased onions

Today, we are thinking to raise Farmer’s income through various means and measures. Implementation of new crop patterns, technology inclusion and promoting the eshtablishment of numerous agro processing industries will play a major role in agriculture sector. The labour issue is also one of the main concerns in many of the agricultural activities. In this paper we propose a technological evolvement in onion detection process, where we apply image processing and sensory mechanism to identify sprouted and rotten onions respectively. This will yield to quick, accurate and prompt supply of goods to the market, irrespective of lack of consistent but costly manpower. The efficiency of this prototype in identifying the sprouted onions with the help of camera is observed to be upto 87% and also the response of Gas sensing system in detecting rooten onions under prescribed chamber dimensions is analysed and obtained encouraging results.

Metabolic control of YAP via the acto-myosin system during liver regeneration

The mechanisms of organ size control remain poorly understood. A key question is how cells collectively sense the overall status of a tissue. We addressed this problem focusing on mouse liver regeneration, which is controlled by Hippo signalling. Using digital tissue reconstruction and quantitative image analysis, we found that the apical surface of hepatocytes forming the bile canalicular network expands concomitant with an increase of F-actin and phospho-Myosin, to compensate an overload of bile acids. Interestingly, these changes are sensed by the Hippo transcriptional co-activator YAP, which localizes to the apical F-actin-rich region and translocates to the nucleus in dependence of the acto-myosin system. This mechanism tolerates moderate bile acid fluctuations under tissue homeostasis, but activates YAP in response to sustained bile acid overload. Using an integrated biophysical-biochemical model of bile pressure and Hippo signalling, we explained this behaviour by the existence of a mechano-sensory mechanism that activates YAP in a switch-like manner. We propose that the apical surface of hepatocytes acts as a self-regulatory mechano-sensory system that responds to critical levels of bile acids as readout of tissue status.

Ethylene: a gaseous signal in plants and bacteria

Ethylene was the first gaseous growth regulator discovered due to its pronounced effects on plant growth and development. Besides plants, many bacteria also have ethylene-binding proteins, indicating that the ability to bind and respond to ethylene is an evolutionarily ancient sensory mechanism. The recent characterization of an ethylene receptor from cyanobacteria and the finding that it plays a role in phototaxis confirms a prokaryotic role for the ethylene receptors and is consistent with the hypothesis that plants acquired ethylene receptors from the endosymbiont that gave rise to the chloroplast. The signalling pathway acting downstream of the plant ethylene receptors is considerably diverged from that found in bacteria, pointing to adaptations that can occur in transitioning from a prokaryotic to a eukaryotic cellular environment. Interestingly, although pathways for ethylene biosynthesis and signalling are conserved in plant lineages extending back to the green algae, there are examples of plants where these pathways have been lost, with ethylene no longer playing a regulatory role.