Analyzing the Prebiotic Potential of Glucosamine for Targeting the Gut Microbiome Health

Recognizing the composition and modulation of the microbiome, a viable therapeutic tool for multi-targeted therapy is a new strategy that has recently been explored. Glucosamine (GS) is being studied for its prebiotic potential in addition to being the most abundant and naturally occurring amino monosaccharide. The current study focuses on glucosamine’s prebiotic potential by assessing the stability of various GS concentrations (1% - 5%) in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and its ability to be fermented by the gut microbiota. The results showed that GS stimulated the most growth in L. acidophilus even after a longer incubation time than B. bifidum and L. acidophilus growth was concentration-dependent, with maximum growth at 3% with a simultaneous decrease in pH (5.6 - 1.7). The decrease in GS concentration with time also represented the growth of bacterial species, demonstrating the species’ utilization of GS. Furthermore, at 3%, GS also represented the prebiotic index of 1.9. In addition, the concentration of GS in various simulated GIT fluids was estimated in both fast and fed conditions to examine GS stability at various levels in the gut. The results showed that GS remained unaffected and non-digestible in all of the simulated GIT fluids (salivary, gastric, intestinal, and colonic), but there was a slight decrease in GS concentration (2.8%) in the fasted state of gastric fluid due to low pH levels (1.6). As a result, the findings are conclusive and suggest that GS possesses prebiotic properties.

Recent advances in catalytic combustion of AP-based composite solid propellants

Composite solid propellants(CSPs) have widely been used as main energy source for propelling the rockets in both space and military applications. Internal ballistic parameters of rockets like characteristic exhaust velocity, specific impulse, thrust, burning rate etc., are measured to assess and control the performance of rocket motors. The burn rate of solid propellants has been considered as most vital parameter for design of solid rocket motors to meet specific mission requirements. The burning rate of solid propellants can be tailored by using different constituents, extent of oxidizer loading and its particle size and more commonly by incorporating suitable combustion catalysts. Various metal oxides(MOs),complexes, metal powders and metal alloys have shown positive catalytic behaviour during the combustion of CSPs. These are usually solid-state catalysts that play multiple roles in combustion of CSPs such as reduction in activation energy, enhancement of rate of reaction, modification of sequences in reaction-phase, influence on condensed-phase combustion and participation in combustion process in gas-phase reactions. The application of nanoscale catalysts in CSPs has increased considerably in recent past due to their superior catalytic properties as compared to their bulk-sized counterparts. A large surface-to-volume ratio and quantum size effect of nanocatalysts are considered to be plausible reasons for improving the combustion characteristics of propellants. Several efforts have been made to produce nanoscale combustion catalysts for advanced propellant formulations to improve their energetics. The work done so far is largely scattered. In this review, an effort has been made to introduce various combustion catalysts having at least a metallic entity. Recent developments of nanoscale combustion catalysts with their specific merits are discussed. The combustion chemistry of a typical CSP is briefly discussed for providing a better understanding on role of combustion catalysts in burning rate enhancement. Available information on different types of combustion nanocatalysts is also presented with critical comments.

Evaluation of wound healing and antimicrobial potentials of Ixora coccinea root extract

Objective:To evaluate the wound healing and antimicrobial activity of root extracts of Ixora coccinea(I.coccinea).Methods:To investigate the wound healing efficacy of root extract of I.coccinea Linn,five groups of animals were divided each containing six animals.Two wound models including incision and excision wound models were used in this study.The parameters studied were tensile strength on incision wound model and in terms of wound contraction for excision wound model were compared with standard Nitrofurazone(NFZ) ointment(0.2%w/w). Six extracts(ethanol.aqueous,petroleum ether,benzene,chloroform and ethyl acetate ) of I. coccinea were screened for in vitro growth inhibiting activity against different bacterial strains riz. Staphylococcia aureus.Bacillus pumilius,Enterococcus facialis.Escherichia coli,Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and fungi Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger were compared with the standard drugs ciprofloxacin and chloramphenicol for antibacterial and griscofulvin for antifungal screening.The serial dilution and cup(or) well plate methods were used for the antimicrobial study and MIC was determined.Results:The ethanolic extract showed significant (P【0.001) wound healing activity when compared to standard drug NFZ with respect to normal control group.Amongst all.ethanolic extract showed highly significant antibacterial activity against all bacterial strains used in this study when compared to standard.The aqueous extract showed moderate significant inhibition against all bacterial strains when compared to standard. All the extracts were shown negligible activity against the fungal strains used in this study. Conclusions:The ethanolic root extract of I.coccinea showed pronounced wound healing and antibacterial activity.The probable reason to heal the wound was that the external application of the extract prevented the microbes to invade through the wound thus the protection of wound occurs against the infection of the various organisms.

Classification of features selected through Optimum Index Factor (OIF) for improving classification accuracy

The present investigation was performed to determine if the features selected through Optimum Index Factor （OIF） could provide improved classification accuracy of the various categories on the satellite images of the individual years as well as stacked images of two different years as compared to all the features considered together. Further, in order to determine if there occurs increase in the classification accuracy of the different categories with corresponding increase in the OIF values of the features extracted from both the individual years＇ and stacked images, we performed linear regression between the producer＇s accuracy （PA） of the various categories with the OIF values of the different combinations of the features. The investigations demonstrated that there occurs significant improvement in the PA of two impervious categories viz. moderate built-up and low density built-up determined from the classification of the bands and principal components associated with the highest OIF value as compared to all the bands and principal components for both the individual years＇ and stacked images respectively. Regression analyses exhibited positive trends between the regression coeffi- cients and OIF values for the various categories determined for the individual years＇ and stacked images respectively signifying the prevalence of direct relationship between the increase in the information content with corresponding increase in the OIF values. The research proved that features extracted through OIF from both the individual years＇ and stacked images are capable of providing significantly improved PA as compared to all the features pooled together.

Influence of scattering of SH-waves in dynamic interaction of shear wall with soil layers

The dynamic soil-structure interaction of a shear wall embedded in elastic isotropic and homogeneous soil layers underlain by bedrock,subjected to SH waves,is modeled in the present article.The soil layers consist of irregular interfaces and it has been shown that the scattering due to the roughness of the layers has significant effect on the displacement of both the foundation and the shear wall.To demonstrate the phenomena indirect boundary element method(IBEM)has been used on the basis of its validation in previous problems of similar type.The system response is compared with the analytical solution of the same type of model for vertically propagating incident SH waves.It is observed that for the low frequency of wave,displacement is abruptly high,and as a result the combination of shear wall and foundation perceives resonance.The thickness of the soil layer,mass of the shear wall,stiffness of the bedrock and the soil layers all affects the system frequency and displacement.

Bronchodilatory and mast cell stabilising activity of Cressa cretica L.:Evaluation through in vivo and in vitro experimental models

Objective:To evaluate the effect of ethylacetate fraction(Fr-Et) and methanolic fraction(FrMe) obtained from Cressa cretica L.(C.crelica) L on experimental models for bronchodilatory activity and mast cell stabilising activity.Methods:The effect of Fr-Et and Fr-Me were studied on acetylcholine and histamine aerosol-induced broncospasm using guinea pigs as experimental animals.Also,the effects of these fractions were evaluated on the isolated guinea pig tracheal preparations.Besides this mast cell degranulation effect was assessed using egg albumin and compound 48/80 on rat peritoneal mast cells.Results:Significant increase in nreconvulsion time was observed due to pretrealment with the fractions when guinea pigs were exposed to histamine and acetylcholine aerosol.Fr-Et and Fr-Me significantly increased the preconvulsion in a dose depended manner that suggestive of bronchodilating activity.Fr-Et and Fr-Me exhibited a significant concentration dependant relaxant effect on guinea pig trachea pre-contracted with CCh,K^+ and histamine.The results revealed that Fr-Et to be more potent than Fr-Me in relaxing histamine and K^+ and calcium induced contraction than CCh induced conlractions.Studies on the fractions in protecting mast cell degranulation,which were elicited by the egg albumin as well as synthetic compound 48/80 revealed both the fractions significantly protect the mast cell degranulation,which release mediators such as histamine and proinflammatory cytokines through various stimuli in a dose depended manner.Conclusions:Thus our study established the bronchodilator activity,and mast cell stabilizing activity which are important mediators that provoke or sustain in asthma.

Dual therapy of rosiglitazone/pioglitazone with glimepiride on diabetic nephropathy in experimentally induced type 2 diabetes rats

Diabetic nephropathy is a major cause of end-stage renal disease （ESRD） in the general population. It is estimated that diabetic nephropathy will eventually develop in about 40% of all patients with diabetes; therefore, prevention is critical for delaying the development and progression of diabetic kidney disease. Despite extensive efforts, medical advances are still not successful enough to prevent the progression of the disease. In the present study, we focused on the comparison of combination therapies and whether they offered additional renoprotection. Type 2 diabetes mellitus was induced by intraperitoneally administering streptozotocin （90 mg/kg） in neonatal rats and then these rats were treated with rosiglitazone （1.0 mg/kg） in combination with glimepiride （0.5 mg/kg） or with pioglitazone （2.5 mg/kg） in combination with glimepiride （0.5 mg/kg）. Diabetic nephropathy markers were evaluated by biochemical and ELISA kits and renal structural changes were examined by light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Results show that the combination of pioglitazone with glimepiride is more effective in amelioration of diabetic nephropathy than rosiglitazone with glimepiride drug therapy due to glycemic control, suppressing albumin excretion rate, total protein excretion rate and augmented TNF-α signaling during the development of streptozotocin induced type 2 diabetic nephropathy.

Capacity Calculation and Sub-Optimal Power Allocation Scheme for OFDM-Based Systems

For emerging cellular wireless systems, the mitigation of inter-cell interference is the key to achieve a high capacity and good user experience. This paper is devoted to the performance analysis of interference mitigation techniques for the downlink in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) network, with a focus on the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) standard. Here we have derived a general closed-form equation of system capacity taking multiple cells into consideration and then we have investigated a coordination technique for interference mitigation. For the given interference constraint, how power should be transmitted into each OFDM sub-carrier for prevailing channel condition such that the total transmission rate of the base station can be maximized.

Zinc and Chromium Load in Road Dust, Suspended Particulate Matter and Foliar Dust Deposits of Anand City, Gujarat

Anand, the milk capital of India, is a developing city with increasing vehicles and developmental activities going on at a fast pace. This study attempts to investigate the zinc and chromium concentration in street dust, suspended particulate matter and in foliar dust deposits. Ten sampling locations were selected based on the traffic density on the roads and different anthropogenic activity. Sampling was carried out in the dry months of January to March 2011. The range of Zn and Cr was 16.82 - 108.29 ppm and 118 - 151.5 ppm in the street dust respectively. Zn concentration in Suspended particulate matter lies in the range of 12.41 to 86 ppm and Cr concentration between 75 to 130 ppm. The range of Cr in foliar deposited dust varied from 79.54 ppm to 31 ppm. Whereas, for Zn maximum concentration was in S10 which is 42.34 ppm and minimum was in site S9, 23.73 ppm. ANOVA single factor showed that at 0.05 level of significance site wise variation of zinc and chromium concentration in SPM, Street dust and foliar deposited dust was not significant signifying similar source of contamination. Which is further strengthened by the good positive correlation found between the Zn and Cr concentration of street dust, leaf deposited dust and SPM. The Contamination Factor in the sites where metal concentration was high was 1.24 in S10 and 1.06 in S5 for Zn. For chromium the value of CF was 1.77 in S10 and 1.67 in S5. These values indicate that street dust is moderately contaminated with respect to zinc and chromium.

Biomass estimation of Shorea robusta with principal component analysis of satellite data

Spatio-temporal assessment of the above ground biomass （AGB） is a cumbersome task due to the difficulties associated with the measurement of different tree parameters such as girth at breast height and height of trees. The present research was conducted in the campus of Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India, which is predomi- nantly covered by Sal （Shorea robusta C. F. Gaertn）. Two methods of regression analysis was employed to determine the potential of remote sensing parameters with the AGB measured in the field such as linear regression analysis between the AGB and the individual bands, principal components （PCs） of the bands, vegetation indices （VI）, and the PCs of the VIs respectively and multiple linear regression （MLR） analysis be- tween the AGB and all the variables in each category of data. From the linear regression analysis, it was found that only the NDVI exhibited regression coefficient value above 0.80 with the remaining parameters showing very low values. On the other hand, the MLR based analysis revealed significantly improved results as evidenced by the occurrence of very high correlation coefficient values of greater than 0.90 determined between the computed AGB from the MLR equations and field-estimated AGB thereby ascertaining their superiority in providing reliable estimates of AGB. The highest correlation coefficient of 0.99 is found with the MLR involving PCs of VIs.

Effect of processing parameters on the electromagnetic radiation emission during plastic deformation and crack propagation in copper-zinc alloys

This paper presents some investigations on the effect of processing parameters on the emission of electromagnetic radiation （EMR） during plastic deformation and crack propagation in copper-zinc alloys. Timing of the EMR emissions, maximum stress during crack instability, stress-intensity factor, elastic strain energy release rate, maximum EMR amplitude, RMS value of EMR amplitude, EMR frequency and electromagnetic energy release rate were analysed for the effect of rolling directions at different percentage of zinc content in Cu-Zn alloy specimens. The same parameters were also analysed for 68-32 Cu-Zn alloy specimens at different annealing temperatures and at different angles 0, to the rolling direction. EMR emissions are observed to be highly anisotropic in nature. At θ=45° to 60°, marked changes in mechanical and electromagnetic parameters were observed. Specimens annealed at 500℃, just above the recrystallization temperature, and at 700℃, when grain-size growth is rapid, EMR responses have been found to have well-defined patterns.

Synthesis of silver nanoparticle with Colocasia esculenta(L.) stem and its larvicidal activity against Culex quinquefasciatus and Chironomus sp

Objective:To synthesize silver nanoparticles with Colocasia esculenta as a reducing agent and to evaluate their effect against Culex quinquefasciatus and Chironomus sp.Methods:The aqueous extract of Colocasia esculenta stem was used for nanosynthesis.The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by UV-Vis spectrophotometry,Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy,scanning electron microscope,transmission electron microscopy,energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy,X-ray diffraction and Zeta potential studies.The toxicity of Colocasia esculenta stem extract and the synthesized silver nanoparticles was evaluated against the larval stages of target human filarial vector Culex quinquefasciatus and non-target Chironomus sp.Results:Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy studies revealed almost spherical shape of the synthesized silver nanoparticles with size ranging from 13-50 nm.After 24 hours of exposure,the LC50 and LC90 of the plant extract against 4th instars larvae of Culex quinquefasciatus were 745.56 mg/L and 1258.28 mg/L,respectively,which were higher than those of synthesized silver nanoparticles(5.17 mg/L and 17.32 mg/L after 24 h;1.58 mg/L and 13.01 mg/L after 48 h).In addition,the LC50 and LC90 of silver nanoparticles against Chironomus sp.were 9.71 mg/L and 23.15 mg/L after 24 h as well as 2.38 mg/L and 19.49 mg/L after 48 h,respectively.Conclusions:The aqueous stem extract of Colocasia esculenta is a good agent for synthesis of silver nanoparticles,which are almost spherical with size less than 30 nm.The synthesized nanoparticles show good larvicidal activity without any harmful effect on non-target species.

A NOVEL TECHNIQUE FOR MULTIPLE FAULTS AND THEIR LOCATIONS DETECTION AND START ELECTRODE SELECTION IN MICROFLUIDIC DIGITAL BIOCHIP

A device,that is used for biomedical operation or safety-critical applications like point-of-care health asssment,massive parallel DNA analysis,automated drug discovery,air-quality monitoring and food-safety testing,must have the attributes like relia bility,dependability and correctness.As the biochips are used for these purposes;therefore,these devices must be fault free all the time.Naturally before usi ng these chips,they must be well tested.We are proposing a novel technique that can detect mutiple fults,locate the fault positions within the biochip,as well as calculate the traversal time if the biochip is fault free.The proposed technique also highlights a new idea how to select the appropriate base node or pseudo source(start electrode).The main idea of the proposed technique is to form multiple loops with the neighboring electrode arrays and then test each loop by traversing test droplet to check whether there is any fault.If a fault is detected then the propoed technique also locates it by backtracking the test droplet.In case,no fault is detected,the biochip is fault free then the proposed technique also calculates the time to traverse the chip.The result suggests that the proposed technique is eficient and shows significant improvement to ca lculate fault-free biochip traversal time over existing method.

Immunomodulatory and anticancer activity of Bombax ceiba Linn leaf extract

Objective:To evaluate the immunomodulatory and anticancer activity of the methanolic extract of Bombax ceiba leaves in vitro and in vivo.Methods:The antioxidant property of methanolic extract of Bombax ceiba leaves was determined by measuring hydrogen peroxide scavenging and DPPH scavenging activity.The effect on cellular immunity in vivo was determined by measuring neutrophil adhesion,carbon clearance,sheep red blood cell induced DTH response and cyclophosphamide-induced myelosuppression.In vitro anticancer activity was evaluated on human leukaemia cell line(HL-60)by MTT assay,caspase-3 activity,and cell cycle study.Results:The methanolic extract of Bombax ceiba leaves showed antioxidant activity and significantly increased neutrophil adhesion,carbon clearance from blood,DTH response and cyclophosphamideinduced myelosuppression.The MTT assay showed a significant increase in the death of HL-60 cell line.A rise in caspase-3 activity and sub-G1 population in the presence of methanolic extract of Bombax ceiba leaves was observed.Conclusions:The methanolic extract of leaves of Bombax ceiba L possesses anticancer activity,immunomodulatory activity,and antioxidant properties,proving its therapeutic usefulness in the treatment of immuno-compromised diseases and cancers.

Non-Darcy Mixed Convection between Differentially Heated Vertical Walls Filled with a Porous Material: Application of New Modified Adomian Decomposition Method

This paper presents non-Darcy mixed convective flow of an incompressible and viscous fluid in a differentially heated vertical channel filled with a porous material in the presence of a temperature dependent source/sink. The analytical solution of fourth order non-linear ordinary differential equation for temperature field, which is formed by eliminating velocity field from system of governing equations in non-dimensional form, is obtained by using new modified Adomian decomposition method (NMADM) in terms of various parameters. In order to illustrate the interactive influences of governing parameters on the temperature and velocity fields, a numerical study of the analytical solution is performed with respect to three categories of transport processes i) when forced convection is dominated, ii) when forced and natural convection are equal and iii) when natural convection is dominated. Analysis of all categories has revealed that the temperature and velocity profiles are increasing function of modified Darcy number while decreasing function of Forchheimer number.

Empirical Assessment of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin Vaccine to Combat COVID-19

COVID-19 has become one of the critical health issues globally,which surfaced first in latter part of the year 2019.It is the topmost concern for many nations’governments as the contagious virus started mushrooming over adjacent regions of infected areas.In 1980,a vaccine called Bacillus Calmette-Guérin(BCG)was introduced for preventing tuberculosis and lung cancer.Countries that have made the BCG vaccine mandatory have witnessed a lesser COVID-19 fatality rate than the countries that have not made it compulsory.This paper’s initial research shows that the countries with a longtermcompulsory BCGvaccination system are less affected by COVID-19 than those without a BCG vaccination system.This paper discusses analytical data patterns for medical applications regarding COVID-19 impact on countries with mandatory BCG status on fatality rates.The paper has tackled numerous analytical challenges to realize the full potential of heterogeneous data.An analogy is drawn to demonstrate how other factors can affect fatality and infection rates other than BCG vaccination only,such as age groups affected,other diseases,and stringency index.The data of Spain,Portugal,and Germany have been taken for a case study of BCG impact analysis.

Synthesis and Study of Anti Parkinsonism activity of 8-azabicyclo [3.2.1] octane Analogs

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative condition associated with the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the zona compacta of the substantia nigra. 3D QSAR study of 8-azabicyclo [3.2.1] octane analogs which serves as the pathfinder for the design of novel molecule for anti Parkinsonism. Five compounds of 8-azabicyclo [3.2.1] octane analogs are synthesized and the anti Parkinsonism activity and brain dopamine level were studied on albino mice. The anti Parkinsonian activity was determined by the effect of test compound A-F on drug induced catatonia using the method of Morpurgo. Atropine as well as compounds B and E significantly reduced the catatonic responses and tremors induced by chlorpromazine. The level of dopamine was measured after the administration of atropine and the test compounds in brain of mice. The study reveals that the compounds B and E have exhibited significant activity over atropine.

Efficient Scalable Template-Matching Technique for Ancient Brahmi Script Image

Analysis and recognition of ancient scripts is a challenging task as these scripts are inscribed on pillars,stones,or leaves.Optical recognition systems can help in preserving,sharing,and accelerate the study of the ancient scripts,but lack of standard dataset for such scripts is a major constraint.Although many scholars and researchers have captured and uploaded inscription images on various websites,manual searching,downloading and extraction of these images is tedious and error prone.Web search queries return a vast number of irrelevant results,and manually extracting images for a specific script is not scalable.This paper proposes a novelmultistage system to identify the specific set of script images from a large set of images downloaded from web sources.The proposed system combines the two most important pattern matching techniques-Scale Invariant Feature Transform(SIFT)and Template matching,in a sequential pipeline,and by using the key strengths of each technique,the system can discard irrelevant images while retaining a specific type of images.

Human and Machine Vision Based Indian Race Classification Using Modified-Convolutional Neural Network

The inter-class face classification problem is more reasonable than the intra-class classification problem.To address this issue,we have carried out empirical research on classifying Indian people to their geographical regions.This work aimed to construct a computational classification model for classifying Indian regional face images acquired from south and east regions of India,referring to human vision.We have created an Automated Human Intelligence System(AHIS)to evaluate human visual capabilities.Analysis of AHIS response showed that face shape is a discriminative feature among the other facial features.We have developed a modified convolutional neural network to characterize the human vision response to improve face classification accuracy.The proposed model achieved mean F1 and Matthew Correlation Coefficient(MCC)of 0.92 and 0.84,respectively,on the validation set,outperforming the traditional Convolutional Neural Network(CNN).The CNN-Contoured Face(CNN-FC)model is developed to train contoured face images to investigate the influence of face shape.Finally,to cross-validate the accuracy of these models,the traditional CNN model is trained on the same dataset.With an accuracy of 92.98%,the Modified-CNN(M-CNN)model has demonstrated that the proposed method could facilitate the tangible impact in intra-classification problems.A novel Indian regional face dataset is created for supporting this supervised classification work,and it will be available to the research community.

Cu–Co–O nano-catalysts as a burn rate modifier for composite solid propellants

Nano-catalysts containing copper–cobalt oxides(Cu–Co–O) have been synthesized by the citric acid(CA) complexing method. Copper(II) nitrate and Cobalt(II) nitrate were employed in different molar ratios as the starting reactants to prepare three types of nano-catalysts. Well crystalline nano-catalysts were produced after a period of 3 hours by the calcination of CA–Cu–Co–O precursors at 550 °C. The phase morphologies and crystal composition of synthesized nano-catalysts were examined using Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy(EDS) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy(FTIR) methods. The particle size of nano-catalysts was observed in the range of 90 nm–200 nm. The prepared nano-catalysts were used to formulate propellant samples of various compositions which showed high reactivity toward the combustion of HTPB/AP-based composite solid propellants. The catalytic effects on the decomposition of propellant samples were found to be significant at higher temperatures. The combustion characteristics of composite solid propellants were significantly improved by the incorporation of nano-catalysts. Out of the three catalysts studied in the present work, Cu Co-I was found to be the better catalyst in regard to thermal decomposition and burning nature of composite solid propellants. The improved performance of composite solid propellant can be attributed to the high crystallinity, low agglomeration and lowering the decomposition temperature of oxidizer by the addition of Cu Co-I nano-catalyst.