Pheromones and their role as aphrodisiacs: A review

AbstractSince the beginning of the human existence on the earth reproductive biology remained a main concern of research because of its importance. It is widely recognized and demonstrated that odors play an important role in mammalian reproduction. A large number of studies have been carried out in humans, in order to investigate possible pheromones, their properties, mechanism of action, and possible receptors for their action. Till now scientific studies indicated that humans use olfactory communication and are even able to produce and perceive certain pheromones. This review article aims to highlight the role of human pheromones as aphrodisiac

Several New Families of Jarratt’s Method for Solving Systems of Nonlinear Equations

In this study, we suggest and analyze a new and wide general class of Jarratt’s method for solving systems of nonlinear equations. These methods have fourth-order convergence and do not require the evaluation of any second or higher-order Fréchet derivatives. In terms of computational cost, all these methods require evaluations of one function and two first-order Fréchet derivatives. The performance of proposed methods is compared with their closest competitors in a series of numerical experiments. It is worth mentioning that all the methods considered here are found to be effective and comparable to the robust methods available in the literature

Aging, But Not Sex and Genetic Diversity, Impacts the Pathobiology of Bacterial Endophthalmitis

Purpose: Age, sex, and genetics are important biological variables in determining an individual\u27s susceptibility or response to infectious agents; however, their role has not been evaluated in intraocular infections. In this study, we comprehensively examined the impact of these host biological factors in the pathogenesis of experimental bacterial endophthalmitis. Methods: Endophthalmitis was induced by intravitreal injection of bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) in the eyes of male and female C57BL/6 mice of different ages: group I (young, 6-8 weeks), group II (mid-age, 18-20 weeks), and group III (old, 1 year). Highly heterogeneous outbred J:DO mice were used for genetic diversity analysis. Eyes were subjected to clinical examination, retinal function testing using electroretinography (ERG), histopathological analysis (hematoxylin and eosin staining), and bacterial burden estimation. The levels of inflammatory mediators were measured using qPCR and ELISA, and the infiltration of neutrophils was determined by flow cytometry. Results: Both inbred C57BL/6 and diversity outbred (J:DO) mice were equally susceptible to S. aureus endophthalmitis, as evidenced by a time-dependent increase in clinical scores, bacterial burden, intraocular inflammation, and retinal tissue damage, in addition to decreased retinal function. However, no significant differences were observed in disease severity and innate responses in male versus female mice. Older mice (group III) exhibited higher clinical scores coinciding with increased bacterial proliferation and intraocular inflammation, resulting in enhanced disease severity. Moreover, bone-marrow-derived macrophages from old mice exhibited reduced phagocytic activity but increased inflammatory response toward S. aureus challenge. Conclusions: Age, but not sex, is an important biological variable in bacterial endophthalmitis. Identification of pathways underlying altered innate immunity and impaired bacterial clearance in aging eyes could provide new insights into the pathobiology of intraocular infections in elderly patients

Traditional medicinal plants as scientifically proven Aphrodisiacs

Aphrodisiac is the word derived from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexual, love and beauty.An aphrodisiac is defined as an agent (food or drug) that arouses sexual desire. Current sexual dysfunction therapy lack satisfactory success due to adverse effect, hence patients are seeking complementary and alternative medicine to treat sexual dysfunction. This review reveals that some plants and their extract have aphrodisiac activity, which are helpful for researcher to develop new herbal aphrodisiac formulations. In the recent years (2016-2018), interest in drugs of plant origin has been progressively increased

Exploiting market size in service systems

W e study a profit-maximizing firm providing a service to price and delay sensitive customers. We are interested in analyzing the scale economies inherent in such a system. In particular, we study how the firm's pricing and capacity decisions change as the scale, measured by the potential market for the service, increases. These decisions turn out to depend intricately on the form of the delay costs seen by the customers; we characterize these decisions up to the dominant order in the scale for both convex and concave delay costs. We show that when serving customers on a first-come, first-served basis, if the customers' delay costs are strictly convex, the firm can increase its utilization and extract profits beyond what it can do when customers' delay costs are linear. However, with concave delay costs, the firm is forced to decrease its utilization and makes less profit than in the linear case. While studying concave delay costs, we demonstrate that these decisions depend on the scheduling policy employed as well. We show that employing the last-come, first-served rule in the concave case results in utilization and profit similar to the linear case, regardless of the actual form of the delay costs

Field based evaluation of wheat cultivars under graded nitrogen levels in North-West India

Nutrients uptake by plants from the soil depends on the fertilizers applied, the physical and chemical properties of the soil, and various environmental and biological factors. Each nutrients have a positive or negative interaction with other nutrients in terms of their availability in the soil and their uptake in plants. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of successive increases in nitrogen (N) fertilizers on macronutrient uptake, system productivity (SP), and wheat equivalent yield (WEY) by wheat. This study was carried out in a split plot design with three distinct N input (N0, N75, and N150) in the main plot and ten wheat cultivars in the sub-plot over two consecutive years (2020-21 and 2021-22) in New Delhi, India. The highest SP of 9.85 t/ha-1, P & K uptake in grain (PUG) of 21.6 & 23.8 kg/ha-1, straw (PUS) of 13 & 106.4 kg/ha-1, and total phosphorus uptake (TPU) of 34.6 & 130.4 kg/ha-1 were obtained by the ‘HD 3249’ cultivar, followed by ‘HD 3117’. The application of N75 and N150 increased SP by 57.9% and 99.2%, WEY by 45.2% and 61.5%, PUG by 105.2% and 227%, PUS by 94% and 182%, and TPU by 100.5% and 208.7%, respectively, over N0. The study findings indicate that N fertilization positively influences macronutrient uptake in wheat, with cultivars ‘HD 3249’ and ‘HD 3117’ emerging as efficient candidates for optimizing macronutrient utilization. These cultivars hold significant potential for wheat breeding programs aimed at enhancing nutrient uptake while maintaining system productivity. Furthermore, incorporating biological nitrification inhibition traits into these cultivars is recommended to develop climate-smart wheat varieties

On the trigger mechanisms for SGR giant flares

We examine two trigger mechanisms, one internal and the other external to the neutron star, that give rise to the intense soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) giant flares. So far, three giant flares have been observed from the three out of the seven confirmed SGRs on March 5, 1979, August 27, 1998, and December 27, 2004. The last two events were found to be much more powerful than the first, and both showcased the existence of a precursor, that we show to have had initiated the main flare. In the internal mechanism, we propose that the strongly wound up poloidal magnetic field develops tangential discontinuities and dissipates its torsional energy in heating the crust. The timescale for the instability to develop coincides with the duration of the quiescent state that followed the precursor. Alternatively, we develop a reconnection model based on the hypothesis that shearing motion of the footpoints causes the materialization of a Sweet-Parker current layer in the magnetosphere. The thinning of this macroscopic layer due to the development of an embedded super-hot turbulent current layer switches on the impulsive Hall reconnection, which powers the giant flare. Again, we show that the thinning time is on the order of the preflare quiescent time. This model naturally explains the origin of the observed nonthermal radiation during the flares, as well as the post flare radio afterglows.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, version accepted by MNRAS. Changes: New references, added a section to introduction, added a paragraph to discussion. The results of this study remain unchanged

Pediatric Headache: A Comprehensive Review

Pediatric headache is a common condition that often results in frequent outpatient visits. There are two broad etiological groups of headaches—primary and secondary headaches—with the former being more prevalent. Migraine, a type of primary headache, shares similarities with those experienced by adults, albeit with some variations in diagnostic criteria. The secondary causes of headache should be differentiated from the primary headaches with proper clinical evaluation and focussed investigations. The management of migraine focusses on lifestyle modifications, behavioral therapy, and pharmacotherapy for acute episodes and long-term preventive therapy. There are many novel promising treatment modalities. This review article provides an overview of pediatric headache epidemiology, classification, and pathophysiology and then elaborates on management and prevention strategies

Modernization and Shelf life extension of chhana based traditional sweetmeat by utilizing Theobroma cacoa, Vaccinia oxycoccos and different fruit powders

India is pre-eminent in milk production and in consonance with the estimates of dairy industry, 50% of comprehensive milk produced in India is processed into traditional milk products like ghee, paneer, khoa, chhana, dahi and diverse range of milk sweetmeats. Chhana and chhana based confections like rasogolla, ras-malai and cham-cham etc are highly perishable and limited research efforts have been made to aggrandize their shelf life, resulting in waning of dairy output in terms of value addition. So, the plenary investigation was based on the development of an improved confection utilizing chhana and fruits powders as core material, Theobroma cacoa (dark chocolate) as coating of core material and Vaccinia oxycoccos (cranberry extract) as natural preservative in core material. Storage studies were performed on four different formulations marked as control, T1, T2 and T3 (described in material/ methodology section) at storage interval of 10 days up to day 40 of refrigeration preservation. Total phenolic counts, flavonoid counts, pH and water activity of all the formulations exhibited substantial decrease while TBA values, TPC and YMC increased significantly with the advancement of storage interval. All the samples got the microbial counts (TPC and YMC) above permissible limit between 30 and 40 days of storage, indicating shelf life of 30 days versus few days shelf life of traditional chhana based confections