• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.747-752
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• 1992

Protein polymorphism of native and red jungle fowls in Nepal was analyzed by electrophoresis. Blood samples were collected in the areas of Solu, Jomson road, Kathmandou, Pokhara and Low land. Out of 17 loci, polymorphism were found at nine loci in native fowls and at three loci in red jungle fowls. The proportion of polymorphic loci ($P_{poly}$) of native and red jungle fowls were $0.529{\pm}0.121$ and $0.176{\pm}0.095$, respectively. The five fowl populations in Nepal formed a different cluster from Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi fowl populations. When the gene frequencies of polymorphic loci were compared between the native fowl populations of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, $Amy-1^A$, $Es-1^A$ and $Akp-2^A$ genes showed inclination of south to north.

• Food Science and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.1761-1769
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• 2018

Enzyme-assisted extraction is a cost-effective, safe, and efficient method to obtain bioactives from plant materials. During this study, 10 different marine algae from Sri Lanka were individually extracted by using five commercial food-grade carbohydrases. The enzymatic and water extracts of the seaweeds were analyzed for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. The highest DPPH, hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$) and intracellular $H_2O_2$ scavenging abilities were observed from the Celluclast extract of Sargassum polycystum (CSp). CSp exerted protective effects against oxidative stress-induced cell death in hydrogen peroxide-induced Chang cells and in model zebrafish. The Celluclast extract of Chnoospora minima (CCm) showed the strongest anti-inflammatory activity against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced NO production in RAW 264.7 macrophages ($IC_{50}=44.47{\mu}g/mL$) and in model zebrafish. CCm inhibited the levels of iNOS, COX-2, $PGE_2$, and TNF-${\alpha}$ in LPS stimulated RAW 264.7 macrophages. Hence, CSp and CCm could be utilized in developing functional ingredients for foods, and cosmeceuticals.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.571-582
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• 1994

Three livestock/crop demonstration-cum-training farms have been established on plots of half, one and two acres, typical of the "Kandyan Forest Garden System" Vegetables, bananas, pepper, coffee, coconut and fruit trees are widely spaced, for intercropping with grass, and have been surrounded with live fences that also provide fodder for livestock to increase the family income. Each unit is operated by a selected employee and his family under a monthly incentive scheme based upon the gross margin. On these farms the technical parameters in dairying are better than elsewhere in the Mid-Country. Economic performance over 1985-1992 showed that dairying contributed most to the total gross margin of the half, one and two acre units, i.e. 31, 63 and 69%, respectively. Next came crops (29%, 37% and 19%), poultry (22%, 0% and 9%), and goats (18%, 0% and 3%). In the three farms the cash income per Sri Lankan Rupee spent was 1.5, 4.6 and 2.1, respectively. The overall ratio was 3.2 for dairying, 1.1 for poultry, 4.5 for goats and 9.9 for crops. Actual family labour in the three farms was 548, 548 and 639 days, compared to the 270, 330 and 440 days anticipated in the initial feasibility study. The average incentive payments, which were 20% (half acre), 61% (one acre) and 133% (two acres) of the parastatal salary of the employee, were only insufficient for the extra labour applied in the half acre unit. Dairying and goats proved to be attractive cash earners with a domestic fuel were important benefits. Poultry did little to improve farm income.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.227-232
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• 2015

Background: Breast cancer is the commonest cancer among Sri Lankan females, accounting for 26% of the cancer incidence in women. Early detection of breast cancer is conducted by public health midwives (PHMs) in the Well Woman Clinics. The aim of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of an educational intervention on improving knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) on breast cancer screening among PHMs in the district of Gampaha. Materials and Methods: Two Medical Officer of Health (MOH) areas in Gampaha district were selected using random sampling as intervention (IG) and control (CG) groups. All the PHMs in the two MOH areas participated in the study, with totals of 38 in IG and 47 in CG. They were exposed to an educational intervention with the objective of using them to subsequently conduct the same among 35-59 year women in the community. Following the intervention, post-intervention assessments were conducted at one month and six months to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Results: The overall median scores for KAP among PHMs respectively were as follows. Pre-intervention: IG:58%(IQR: 53-69%), 90%(IQR: 70-100%) and 62%(IQR: 57-70%). CG: 64%(IQR: 56-69%), 90%(IQR: 70-90%) and 62%( IQR: 50-77%). Post-intervention: one month, IG:96%(IQR: 93-96%), 100%(IQR: 100-100%), and 85%(IQR: 81-89%). CG:67%(IQR: 60- 73%), 90%(IQR: 80-100%) and 65%(IQR: 50-73%). Post-intervention: six months, IG: 93% (IQR: 91-93%), 100%(IQR: 90-100%), and 81%(IQR: 77-89%). CG: 67%(IQR: 58- 71%), 90%(IQR: 90-100%), and 62%( IQR: 58-73%). All the above post-intervention scores of PHMs in the IG were significantly higher in comparison to CG (p<0.001). Conclusions: This planned educational intervention had a significant impact on improving KAP of PHMs for early detection of breast cancer in the Gampaha district.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.86-92
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• 2022

Background: A laboratory where chemicals are handled can be considered a hazardous environment, and hence, prudent practices should be strictly enforced. If not, deadly accidents and incidents could occur due to a lack of safety practices and poor safety culture. The purpose of this study is to analyze the existing safety culture and propose potential recommendations to enhance the level of safety education in the chemical laboratories in the Western Province of Sri Lanka. Methods: A survey questionnaire was administered among the laboratory supervisors of the chemical laboratories in the Western Province of Sri Lanka in 2019. Results: Even though 80 surveys were distributed among prospective participants, only 46 surveys were submitted, which is 58% of the response rate. Most of the individuals who participated in the survey were females below 35 years old, and approximately 96% of the participants had at least one year of working experience in the same laboratory setting. The majority considered safety as an important factor that requires further improvements with third-party safety inspections; however, 54% of the respondents mentioned that those inspections were conducted by the employees from their laboratory. Conclusion: From the study, it has been discovered that employees have knowledge of safety culture to a certain extent. A significant percentage (83%) of participants believed that further safety measures are required for a safer laboratory. However, the study revealed that the attitudes of some employees should be changed to have a better safety culture. Hence the authors would like to suggest having annual training sessions and well-formulated safety policies to improve the safety culture.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.113-124
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• 2022

News in the form of web data generates increasingly large amounts of information as unstructured text. The capability of understanding the meaning of news is limited to humans; thus, it causes information overload. This hinders the effective use of embedded knowledge in such texts. Therefore, Automatic Knowledge Extraction (AKE) has now become an integral part of Semantic web and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Although recent literature shows that AKE has progressed, the results are still behind the expectations. This study proposes a method to auto-extract surface knowledge from English news into a machine-interpretable semantic format (triple). The proposed technique was designed using the grammatical structure of the sentence, and 11 original rules were discovered. The initial experiment extracted triples from the Sri Lankan news corpus, of which 83.5% were meaningful. The experiment was extended to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news dataset to prove its generic nature. This demonstrated a higher meaningful triple extraction rate of 92.6%. These results were validated using the inter-rater agreement method, which guaranteed the high reliability.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.27-65
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• 2014

Flourishing in the Central Dry Zone of Burma during a period from the mid-eleventh to the late-thirteenth century A.D., the historical kingdom of Pagan was one of the major Buddhist centers in Southeast Asia. The significance of Pagan as an important pilgrimage site of the region, where numerous relics of the Buddha were enshrined, had been maintained until long after the fall of its civilization. It is evident that the artistic influences of Pagan, particularly in the architectural and decorative domains, had been transmitted to various other Buddhist civilizations in the area. This study provides a detailed analysis on the relationships between the mural tradition of Pagan and those of its neighboring civilizations in Thailand-of the Ayutthayā, Lānnā and Sukhothai schools-dating from after the Pagan Period in the fourteenth century to the sixteenth century. Surprisingly, as the analysis of this study has suggested, such relationships seemed to be trivial, more on a minor stylistic basis than on substantial ideological and iconographic grounds. They suggest that transmission of the complex idea and superb craftsmanship of the mural tradition would not have been maintained adequately at Pagan after its civilization, probably due to the lack of royal patronage. It would have been extremely difficult for foreign pilgrims who visited Pagan after its dynastic period to appreciate the surviving murals of this lost tradition in terms of their complex programs and associated symbolism. Also, there had been a new center of the Sinhalese Buddhism firmly established in the Martaban area of lower Burma since the mid-fourteenth century that outcompeted Pagan in terms of supplying the new Buddhist ideas and tradition. Its fame spread wide and far among the Buddhist communities of Southeast Asia. Later, these Buddhist communities also established direct contact with Sri Lanka. The Sukhothai murals and the Ayutthayā murals in the crypt of Wat Rātchaburana, dating from the fourteenth/fifteenth century, show obvious Sri Lankan influence in terms of artistic style and Buddhist iconography. They could be a product of these new religious movements, truly active in Southeast Asia during that time.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.563-567
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• 2013

An ocular Toxocara canis infection is reported for the first time in Vietnam. A 34-year-old man residing in a village of Son La Province, North Vietnam, visited the National Eye Hospital (NEH) in August 2011. He felt a bulge-sticking pain in his left eye and loss of vision occurred over 3 months before visiting the hospital. The eye examination in the hospital showed damage of the left eye, red eye, retinal fibrosis, retinal detachment, inflammation of the eye tissues, retinal granulomas, and a parasitic cyst inside. A larva of Toxocara was collected with the cyst by a medical doctor by surgery. Comparison of 264 nucleotides of internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of ribosomal DNA was done between our Vietnamese Toxocara canis and other Toxocara geographical isolates, including Chinese T. canis, Japanese T. canis, Sri Lankan T. canis, and Iranian T. canis. The nucleotide homology was 97-99%, when our T. canis was compared with geographical isolates. Identification of a T. canis infection in the eye by a molecular method was performed for the first time in Vietnam.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.21-31
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• 2017

PURPOSES : One of the main components of road projects funded by the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) is the improvement or rehabilitation of existing pavements. The result is that pavement structures are critical to the success of a project. There is, however, no design standard available at present that reflects a region's specific features including climate conditions and quality of pavement materials. For this reason, a comparative study of the major EDCF borrowers' flexible pavement design standards was conducted. This study led to the proposal of a new method for applying flexible pavement designs which can be used for EDCF-funded projects in Asia. METHODS : The method has been produced by adjusting some input data of the "AASHTO Interim Guide for Design of Pavement Structures" in accordance with certain Asian countries' geometrical features, tropical and subtropical weather, and strength of pavement materials. The Philippine regional factors, having five different grades, have been selected after taking into consideration the amount of rainfall, strength of pavement materials, and characteristics of the Asia and Pacific regions. Structural layer coefficients have been prepared for two different regions according to the geometric difference between Southeast and Southwest Asia. The Philippine and Sri Lankan coefficients have been used for Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia, respectively. CONCLUSIONS : Owing to applying this new method, it was verified that the thickness of the pavement was underestimated by between 11 cm and 16 cm compared with the originally designed thickness. Having discovered that the use of the Korean and American-oriented factors and coefficients is not appropriate for other Asian countries, the new method is expected to enhance the quality of pavement in future projects.

• Korean Journal of Weed Science
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.230-239
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• 2012

Coconut (Cocos nucifera L) is one of the predominant plantation crops in Sri Lankan economy which is known to have existed for over thousands of years. During the past decades coconut production had been reduced by a significant quantity. The usage of poor quality planting materials is a major reason for the low coconut production. Thus much attention needs to be paid in coconut nurseries. Weed management is a critical management practice in the nursery. Though glyphosate application is becoming popular in nurseries it can affect weeds as well as coconut seedlings growth. Therefore the effects of glyphosate were evaluated by determining the growth of shoot and root of coconut seedlings. Poly bag nursery was prepared and three treatments were used. Treatments were no glyphosate and manual weeding ($T_1$), application of glyphosate 1.08 ai kg $ha^{-1}$ at 2 monthly interval ($T_2$) and application of glyphosate 1.44 ai kg $ha^{-1}$ at 2 monthly interval ($T_3$). Application of glyphosate at early stage of seedling growth had a no significant effect on growth parameters tested. However, the concentrations of glyphosate negatively affected numbers, volumes and dry weights of secondary, tertiary and quaternary roots at the latter stage of seedling growth. The leaf area and the height of seedling were significantly reduced by the highest concentration of glyphosate. Among the growth parameters tested, seedling girth and shoot dry weight were not affected by the application of glyphosate. These results revealed that the usage of glyphosate at both concentrations negatively affected root growth of coconut seedlings. Based on these results, the both concentration levels of glyphosate should be applied to coconut nurseries before sprouting the seed nuts.