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This study examines the consumer decision-making styles with respect to shopping behavior among Indian adolescents. Specifically, Sproles and Kendall's Consumer Style Inventory was used to determine the various decision-making styles of the respondents. An initial sample of 250 school-going children completed the inventory, which was found to be unreliable. Further, a study was conducted on a sample of 283 students to develop a new scale using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Six decision-making styles of the original scale,

We used an in silico approach to survey and compare microsatellites in transcript sequences of four sequenced members of genus Fusarium. G + C content of transcripts was found to be positively correlated with the frequency of SSRs. Our analysis revealed that, in all the four transcript sequences studied, the occurrence, relative abundance and density of microsatellites varied and was not influenced by transcript sizes. No correlation between relative abundance and transcript sizes was observed. The relative abundance and density of microsatellites were highest in the transcripts of Fusarium solani when compared with F. graminearum, F. verticillioides and F. oxysporum. The maximum frequency of SSRs among all four sequence sets was of trinucleotide repeats (67.8%), whereas the dinucleotide repeat represents <1%. Among all classes of repeats, 36.5% motifs were found conserved within Fusarium species. In order to study polymorphism within Fusarium isolates, 11 polymorphic genic-SSR markers were developed. Of the 11 markers, 5 were from F. oxysporum and remaining 6 belongs to F. solani. SSR markers from F. oxysporum were found to be more polymorphic (38%) as compared to F. solani (26%). Eleven polymorphic markers obtained in this study clearly demonstrate the utility of newly developed SSR markers in establishing genetic relationships among different isolates of Fusarium.

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Bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) is an economically important vegetable crop grown in tropical parts of the world. In this study, a high-density linkage map of M. charantia was constructed through genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) technology using F2:3 mapping population generated from the cross DBGy-201 × Pusa Do Mausami. About 2013 high-quality SNPs were assigned on a total of 20 linkage groups (LGs) spanning over 2329.2 CM with an average genetic distance of 1.16 CM. QTL analysis was performed for six major yield-contributing traits such as fruit length, fruit diameter, fruit weight, fruit flesh thickness, number of fruits per plant and yield per plant. These six quantitative traits were mapped with 19 QTLs (9 QTLs with LOD > 3) using composite interval mapping (CIM). Among 19 QTLs, 12 QTLs derived from ‘Pusa Do Mausami’ revealed a negative additive effect when its allele increased trait score whereas 7 QTLs derived from ‘DBGy-201’ revealed a positive additive effect when its allele trait score increased. The phenotypic variation (R2%) elucidated by these QTLs ranged from 0.09% (fruit flesh thickness) on LG 14 to 32.65% (fruit diameter) on LG 16 and a total of six major QTLs detected. Most QTLs detected in the present study were located relatively very close, maybe due to the high correlation among the traits. This information will serve as a significant basis for marker-assisted selection and molecular breeding in bitter gourd crop improvement.

We report coarse-grained Langevin dynamics simulations of homogeneous mixtures of lobed colloidal particles with opposite charges. We show that dumbbell, trigonal planar, tetrahedral, square planar, trigonal bipyramidal, and octahedral shaped particles form distinct self-assemblies including chains, sheets, crystalline, and spherical structures. The dumbbell and square planar particles predominantly form chains and sheets while other particles form network-like self-assembled morphologies. At higher temperatures and lower charges, non-planar particles form three-dimensional aggregates. We further report on packing arrangements of particles which lead to differences in porosities within self-assembled morphologies. Our results show that the trigonal planar particles form larger porous structures. The self-assembled structures that we report are potentially useful in designing porous biomaterials for biomedical applications.

The present study was carried out at Central Potato Research Station, Shillong during 2013 and 2014 to assess the growth and yield performance of three grades of in-vitro produced micro-tubers viz. >8 mm, 4-8 mm and <4 mm of two potato (Solanum tuberosum) cultivars namely Kufri Girdhari and Kufri Megha under field planting conditions. The experiment was laid out in a randomised block design with four replications using a common spacing of 50 × 20 cm. The larger grade micro-tubers generally exhibited better physiological growth as well as yield parameters. The larger sized micro-tuber (>8 mm) showed significantly superior plant survival, canopy cover, plant height, number of compound leaves per plant, number of stems per plant and plant vigour followed by 4-8 mm grade and <4 mm grade micro-tubers. Similar trend was observed for all the yield parameters. Among varieties, Kufri Girdhari out performed Kufri Megha in all the growth and yield parameters in all the micro-tuber grades. Thus both micro-tuber size and genotype influenced the field performance. The overall finding indicates that micro-tubers irrespective of the size for both the varieties can produce mini-tubers successfully under direct field conditions in the NEH region which will facilitate quality seed production.

:In this paper a semi-blind algorithm is been developed using DWT-DCT and SVD