Photoperiodic Effects on Somatic Growth and Gonadal Maturation in Mickey Mouse Platy, Xiphophorus maculatus (Gunther, 1866)

Photoperiod is important in initiation or suppression of reproductive timing and gonadal maturation which varies with species. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of two photoperiodic manipulating regimes, i.e., long (18L:6D) and short (10L:14D) photoperiods for a period of 60 days on somatic growth and gonadal maturation of a live-bearer ornamental fish, Mickey Mouse platy (Xiphophorus maculatus). The control fish were further kept under the laboratory environmental condition. The results showed a significant increase in weight gain, specific growth rate, and gonadosomatic index in fish under long photoperiod than those exposed to short photoperiod and control condition (P < 0.05). A condition factor showed significant variations between long photoperiod and control groups. Furthermore, a long photoperiod also induced a significant increase in the number of fish with mature embryo and middle-eyed embryo in the ovary. Similarly, histological analysis of testes of males showed an increase in the number of mature spermatid and spermatozoa under long photoperiod when compared to those of control and short photoperiod ones. Thus, it can be concluded that long-day photoperiodic manipulation may be applied for healthy growth and early gonadal maturation of live-bearer ornamental fishes

Reversible Hydration of the Perchlorate-Intercalated Layered Double Hydroxides of Li and Al: Structure Models for the Dehydrated Phases

Imbibition of lithium sulphate into aluminium hydroxide is known to result in a sulphate-intercalated layered double hydroxide (LDH) of Li and Al. The perchlorate ion has the same size and molecular symmetry as the sulphate ion,but only half its charge. Consequently, twice the number of ClO$^−_4$ ions is needed to balance LDHs the charge on the metal hydroxide layer, compared to the SO$^{2−}_4$ ions. In this work, the ClO$^−_4$-intercalated LDHs were obtained from both the bayerite and gibbsite precursors. Inclusion of the hydration sphere along with the ClO$^−_4$ anion, induced turbostratic disorder in the stacking of the metal hydroxide layers. Temperature-induced dehydration ($T \sim 100$–140$^{\circ}$C) brought about a partial ordering in the interlayer region and the ClO$^−_4$ ion oriented itself with one of its $C_2$-axes parallel to the metal hydroxide layer. The close packing of ClO$^−_4$ ions could be realized by the complete dehydration of LDH and the distribution of the ClO$^−_4$ ions in all the available interlayer sites. In contrast, within the crystal of the sulphate analogue, the sulphate ions occupy only half the number of interlayer sites. The other half is occupied by the residual water molecules, as the sulphate analogue does not fully dehydrate even at elevated temperatures. This difference in the behaviour of the two LDHs has its origin in the largedifference in the hydration enthalpies of the two anions

2-Aminoaryl-3,5-Diaryl Pyrazines: Synthesis, Biological Evaluation against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Docking Studies

Rationally designed Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) inhibitors were synthesized under Buchwald conditions using Pd2(dba)3/xantphos and the compounds were investigated for their biological activity against the Mtb standard strain H37Rv and two other clinically isolated multidrug-resistant strains with different drug resistance patterns. Compounds 5e, 6e, 7e, and 8e exhibited excellent antituberculosis activity against H37Rv with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value of 15 μg/ml. Compounds 5a, 6c, 7b, 8a, 8b, and 8d also displayed their potency with a MIC value in the range of 15–25 μg/ml. In addition to the Mtb studies, compounds 4e, 5e, 7e, and 8e were tested for cytotoxicity on HEK-293 cells and compounds 7e and 8e were identified to have low toxicities of up to 200 and 300 μM, respectively. The synthesized compounds docked with the 2FUM protein of Mtb and the docking studies revealed that compounds 5e, 6e, 7e, and 8e can bind strongly in the active site of the enzyme and showed binding energies of -9.62, -10.7, -11.48, and -12.06 kcal/mol, respectively. Compound 7e forms four hydrogen bonds, whereas compound 8e forms five hydrogen bonds with amino acids, respectively. Based on these results, compounds 7e and 8e might be considered potential lead compounds with good anti-Mtb potency

Biomedical Applications of Biogenic Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Manufactured from Leaf Extracts of Calotropis gigantea (L.) Dryand.

Green synthesis has made us an exciting approach in the field of nanotechnology. Biogenic zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) were synthesized using leaf extracts of Calotropis gigantea (L.) Dryand. in the presence of zinc nitrate hexahydrate as a precursor molecule. ZnONPs were characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis and further in understanding the biomedical applications of antimicrobial (minimum inhibitory concentration method) and anticancer (apoptosis assay) activities, cytology (flow cytometry) and cytotoxicity (% cell viability), deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) fragmentation (reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)), and caspase assay (polymerase chain reactions (PCR)) studies. The morphology of nanoparticles was determined by SEM analysis. XRD pattern showed the value of highest peak of 36.15° with 101 plane region among the ten recorded peaks. FTIR spectrum indicated stretching vibration of O-H at 3441.77 cm-1. The antibacterial activity of biogenic ZnO nanoparticles was studied against human pathogenic bacteria—Campylobacter jejuni ATCC 29428 and Neisseria gonorrhoeae ATCC 49226—and showed 50% zone of inhibition. A cytotoxic study against the breast cancer cell lines of MDAMB-231 revealed that the ZnONPs as a good anticancer agent could be sliced by all existing and metabolically active cells. Biosynthesized ZnONPs potentially alter the apoptotic protein expression and trigger apoptosis in the MDAMB-231 cells. Therefore, the biogenic ZnO nanoparticles would be useful and have the great potential in the field of biomedical applications

Map Reduce Based Association Rule Mining from Big Data

In today’s world, the shopping is the largest fashionable trend where the transaction processing is meticulous to fetch the items from the shopping transaction history by using traditional Apriori algorithm. An Apriori algorithm is the one which is used for finding frequent pattern from the given dataset. The problem of Apriori is to find useful itemsets for business purpose was time consuming. To overcome this problem, we have proposed Map Reduce based Apriori algorithm which generates frequent itemset and association rules by using parallel computations to reduce computations. The Spark distributed Systems along with data bricks technology have been used. The experimental result shows that have been reduced the time taken fetch the data from the database

Biological Evaluation of Ethyl Acetate Extract of Chaetomium cupreum against Ehrlich Ascites Carcinoma Cells in Swiss Albino Mice

Background Chaetomium genus is a natural source of different types of secondary metabolites or pigments. These secondary metabolites display a broad spectrum of biological properties including antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer activity. Objective The objective of the study was to evaluate the anticancer activity of ethyl acetate extract of Chaetomium cupreum against Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) cells in Swiss albino mice. Materials and methods Methods involved are evaluation of acute toxicity study, tumor induction using EAC cells, estimation of various hematobiochemical parameters, and evaluation of antioxidant enzymes and markers of oxidative stress. Results The ethyl acetate extract of C. cupreum-treated EAC-bearing mice at the concentration of 200 mg/kg body weight (bwt) reduced ascitic fluid volume (1.65±0.70 ml) and ascitic fluid weight (1.32±0.69 g) as compared with ascitic fluid volume (4.79±0.52 ml) and ascitic fluid weight (3.93±0.57 g) in EAC control group. Similarly, the cell apoptosis was higher in EAC-bearing mice treated with standard 5-fluorouracil at 50 mg/kg bwt (96.04%) as compared with treatment with ethyl acetate extract at 50 mg/kg bwt (21.92%) followed by 100 mg/kg bwt (36.63%) and increased further at 200 mg/kg bwt (47.48%) in treated groups. In hematological estimation, the EAC-bearing mice treated with ethyl acetate extract at 200 mg/kg bwt showed increased red blood cell count (3.78±0.07×106/μl) and hemoglobin content (6.02±01 g/dl) and decreased white blood cells count (5.45±0.01×103/μl). In biochemical estimation, ethyl acetate extract treatment in EAC-bearing mice at 200 mg/kg bwt decreased aspartate aminotransferase activity (64.10±0.07 U/l), alanine aminotransferase (55.71±0.65 U/l), alkaline phosphatase (107.04±0.02 U/l), cholesterol (124.38±0.04 mg/dl), and triglycerides (155.38±0.04 mg/dl). Similarly, in enzymatic antioxidants and oxidative stress, the ethyl acetate extract-treated EAC-bearing mice at 200 mg/kg bwt increased superoxide dismutase (27.10±0.03 U/mg protein), catalase (20.20±0.02 U/mg protein), and reduced glutathione (24.04±0.03 U/mg protein), whereas decreased glutathione peroxidase (38.04±0.07 U/g hemoglobin) and malondialdehyde content (170.50±0.06 nmol/mg protein) significantly. Conclusion The results of the present finding showed that ethyl acetate extract of C. cupreum possesses significant anticancer potential

Energy Storage Applications of Cobalt and Manganese Metal–Organic Frameworks

This work highlights the electrochemical properties of as-synthesized cobalt and manganese metal–organic frameworks. The electrochemical redox behavior of Co-MOF and Mn-MOF electrode was investigated in 0.1 M KOH solution by cyclic voltammetry. The rectangular CV curve obtained by the Mn-MOF electrode implies the pseudocapacitor act from the surface redox reaction of Mn. Well separated oxidation and reduction peaks achieved by the Co-MOF electrode implied the battery like behavior. For battery, the charge is represented as the capacity and the calculated capacity for the Co-MOF was 1064.3 mhAg-1 at 0.1 Ag-1. For pseudocapacitor, capacitance should be used, and achieved capacitance by Mn-MOF electrode was 483 Fg-1 at constant current density 1 Ag-1. With this delineation in mind, it should be clear that Co-MOF is suitable for battery purpose and Mn-MOF is suitable for pseudocapacitor application

Synthesis and Crystal Structure of Thiazolopyrimidine Derivatives: Insights into Weak Interactions

Thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidines namely ethyl 2-acetyl-5-(2-fluorophenyl)-3,7-dimethyl-5H-thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine-6-carboxylate 3a, ethyl 2-acetyl-5-(3-fluorophenyl)-3,7-dimethyl-5H-thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine-6-carboxylate 3b, and ethyl 2-acetyl-5-(4-fluorophenyl)-3,7-dimethyl-5H-thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine-6-carboxylate 3c were obtained by one pot synthesis using substituted 3,4 dihydropyrimidine2-thione (1a–1c) and 3-chloro-2,4-pentanedione in ethanol and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The variation in the position of fluorine atom on pyrimidine nucleus and insight into the self-assembly of compounds with varied types of non-covalent interactions has great influence on crystal packing

A hybridized semantic trust-based framework for personalized web page recommendation

The World Wide Web is constantly evolving and is the most dynamic information repository in the world that has ever existed. Since the information on the web is changing continuously and owing to the presence of a large number of similar web pages, it is very challenging to retrieve the most relevant information. With a large number of malicious and fake web pages, it is required to retrieve Web Pages that are trustworthy. Personalization of the recommendation of web pages is certainly necessary to estimate the user interests for suggesting web pages as per their choices. Moreover, the Web is tending towards a more organized Semantic Web which primarily requires semantic techniques for recommending the Web Pages. In this paper, a framework for personalized web page recommendation based on a hybridized strategy is proposed. Web Pages are recommended based on the user query by analyzing the

Photometric features and intense blue light emanation of Nd3+ doped SrTiO3 based nanophosphor for multi-functional applications

Herein, a series of SrTiO3:Nd3+ (1–11 mol %) nanophosphors has been prepared via a conventional hydrothermal route. Their anti-counterfeiting and latent fingerprint visualization applications are reported, which show important level-III features and unclonable tags. The cubic structure was confirmed by powdered X-ray diffraction studies with space group Pm-3m (No-221). The photoluminescence (PL) characterization results evinced that the nanophosphor emits intense blue light. The optimized nanophosphors were used to visualize latent fingerprints through recognizing level I-III ridges by a reduced background hindrance and can be utilized for visualizing latent fingerprints on difficult substrate surfaces with superior sensitivity, high contrast and selectivity. Further, a furthermost possible stochastic process to make unclonable anti-counterfeiting tags using optimized nanophosphor was designed to reduce counterfeit products. Therefore, it is believed that this optimized nanophosphor for visualization of latent fingerprints as well as unclonable anti-counterfeiting tags will find widespread use in forensic investigations and product safety applications