Soil Science & Agril. Chemistry

Soil is the truthful soul of infinite lives on the earth. The call of UN for food safety is on way of accomplishment, but the medically victimized community is looking for cure. Medical science is aimed at symptomatic or diagnostic or preventive medicines, but perhaps no protective medicine. Yoga is simply a way of life to keep the human health sustained, while soil or clay or both opens a new door in medical science for protective treatment, since food supply chain begins from soil and through various stages after excretion, undergo for recycling in soil. It is the soil that filters the underground as well as rain water for drinking and supports the plantation to sustain a friendly ecosystem and air to breathe. Not only a variety of ailments are cured, but more importantly, type specific clays have powerful potential to detoxify the toxic substances in the body. Today's global health problems like blood pressure, blood sugar, constipation, gastric, weight gain, mental strain etc. are all responsible to imbalance the life styles. However, on the eve of the International year of soil 2015, let's introduce soil or clay or both as the integral part of medical sciences even. If human body intakes safe and quality food for survival, nourishment and energy, let the same body be ready to use the type specific soil or clay for medical treatments too. Both indigenous as well as researchable knowledge supports the myth of truth.

An intelligent bicycle transmission system provides a solution that enables a bicycle rider to keep pedaling in his comfort speed range regardless of the torque or the speed requirement. The cadence or the pedaling speed has a preferred range for every rider. However, a rider can exceed or fall below his preferred range when in need of a torque or a velocity more than what the cycle offers to him. The designed transmission system presented in the paper senses the requisites of the rider, and hence, changes gears automatically so that cyclist can keep pedaling in his preferred cadence range. This paper proposes an extremely cost effective and novel solution that improves upon the existing designs of automatic gear shifting arrangement in bicycles. It incorporates special built-in sensors, electronic control unit and specially designed state-of-the-art actuator mechanism that augment the derailleur mechanism. It keeps the cost of the transmission system within an acceptable range with an uncompromised accuracy. In designing the solution, the preferred cadence range of a given user shall be employed.

The benchmark soils in twenty agro-ecological regions of the country are briefly explained in this chapter using the established soil series to interpret soils, their physical, chemical characteristics, problems and potentials. This would be helpful in identifying the use of soil resource inventory and classification in optimal land use and production system. In fact, a benchmark soil is widely extensive, holds a key position in the soil classification system and is of special significance to farming, engineering or other uses and focuses on its agronomic concepts for wider acceptability of interpretations and for extrapolation of research data. It is representative of the most extensive soils in major land resource area or agro-ecological zone. This chapter highlights the benchmark soils in conducting soil correlation, standardization of legends, prediction of soil behaviour, agro-technology transfer and planning for further research in soil science and allied disciplines. However, further refinement in its applications using GIS tools is of priority.

The high level exposure to arsenic induces marked oxidative and genotoxic stress. However, information on the potential of low level arsenic exposure in this context is still scanty. In the present study, the extent of oxidative stress and genetic toxicity induced by low arsenic exposure was explored in freshwater fish Channa punctatus. Fish were exposed to low levels of arsenic (10 and 50 µg L −1) as well as to its high level (500 µg L −1) using sodium arsenite in aquaria water for 14 consecutive days. The TBARS assay for lipid peroxidation exhibited the increased occurrence of oxidative damage in the erythrocytes of fish at both the lower and higher levels of arsenic exposure. The level of reduced glutathione was also elevated in all the three arsenic exposed groups of fish compared to control. In contrast, significant decline was observed in the levels of three major antioxidant enzymes namely, superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase, upon exposure to higher as well as lower levels of arsenic. Significant increases in micronucleus induction were found in the erythrocytes of fish even at the low levels of arsenic exposure. The study further revealed the occurrence of DNA fragmentation in the erythrocytes of fish at low arsenic exposures as well. The low level exposure to arsenic (using sodium arsenite), therefore, appeared to be capable of inducing noticeable oxidative stress as well as potential genotoxic effect in Channa punctatus. Moreover, the ability of arsenic to induce oxidative stress invariably appeared correlated with its genotoxic potential.