Molecular Basis of Blood Glucose Regulation

Blood glucose level is regulated by multiple pancreatic hormones, which regulate it by different pathways in normal and abnormal conditions by expressing or suppressing multiple genes or molecular or cellular targets. Multiple synthetic drugs and therapies are used to cure glucose regulatory problems, while many of them are used to cure other health issues, which arise due to disturbance in blood glucose regulations. Many new approaches are used for the development of phytochemical-based drugs to cure blood glucose regulation problems, and many of the compounds have been isolated and identified to cure insulin resistance or regulate beta cell function or glucose absorption in the guts or GLP-1 homoeostasis or two/more pathways (e.g., either cure hyperglycemia or raise insulin resistance or cure pancreatic beta cell regeneration or augmentation of GLP-1, production of islet cell, production and increased insulin receptor signaling and insulin secretion or decreased insulin tolerance or gluconeogenesis and insulin-mimetic action or production of α-glucosidase and α-amylase inhibitor or conserve islet mass or activate protein kinase A (PKA) and extracellular signal regulated kinases (ERK) or activate AMPK and reduce insulin sensitivity or suppress α-glucosidase activity and activate AMPK and downstream molecules or prevents cell death of pancreatic β-cell and activates SIRT1 or lower blood glucose due to their insulin-like chemical structures or decrease lipid peroxidation

Determination of Caffeine Content in Coffee Beverages Using Fourier Transform Infra-Red Spectroscopy

Caffeine is a chemical substance that is a component in many beverages that are a part of so many people’s daily routines. Its chemical formula is C8 H10N4 O2 and it can be naturally sourced through a variety of plants. Because an excessive consumption of caffeine (greater than 400 mg a day) can lead to serious health complications, it is important to be aware of how much caffeine is in different caffeinated beverages. In this experiment, the concentration of the caffeine contained in Cold Brew, Espresso, Decaffeinated coffee and Tea was analyzed and determined

Relyzer+: An open source tool for application-level soft error resiliency analysis

In the modern era of computing, processors are increasingly susceptible to soft errors. Current solutions in both hardware and software enable error detection and correction. Some of these errors, however, go unnoticed by detectors and manifest as silent data corruptions (SDCs) at the application level. Injecting errors into the system and evaluating the outcomes is one method to uncover SDC-causing errors and determine an application's overall resilience to soft errors. The number of possible locations that errors may appear in is large, therefore requiring many injection experiments. One resiliency analysis tool, Relyzer, addresses this issue by performing a comprehensive program analysis to create a small subset of the error injection experiments that can account for the entire application. The limitation of Relyzer is that current analysis can only be performed on one hardwarware instruction set architecture (ISA). Software is usually compiled to multiple ISAs in order to support users with varying hardware configurations. The primary contribution of this thesis is building Relyzer, an open source version of Relyzer implemented using the gem5 simulator. This enables the capability to analyze multiple ISAs and consequently support multiple hardware configurations in the long-term. Specifically, in this work, we develop support for x86. We also evaluate applications across ISAs by generating error resiliency profiles for both x86 and SPARC. After studying five workloads from different domains, we find that in general, application soft error resiliency varies based on the selection of the ISA. The percentage of static instructions that yield SDCs is, on average, 68\% for x86 and 60\% for SPARC, for the applications we studied. Furthermore, this work opens doors to future research in application-level soft error resiliency analysis

Effective Crisis Communication is the Key in Fighting Coronavirus

Covid-19 outbreak has created economic and health emergencies throughout the world. There is an urgent need to bring Covid-19 under control by employing the principles of behavioural science. The behaviours of hand washing, face touching, self-isolation and effective crisis communications are all important parameters of Covid-19 control equation. This paper will discuss the importance of each of the above mentioned parameters with main focus on effective communication

Infrared Jntensities of Liquids IV: Recent Measurements of Infrared Optical Constants and Absolute Infrared Absorption Intensities of Liquids by Multiple Attenuated Total Reflectance

Recent refinements are described to the CIRCLE, multiple attenuated total reflection method for measuring infrared optical and dielectric constants, absolute integrated intensities and, hence, molecular dipole derivatives. Attention is focussed on the accuracy of the method, which is estimated from measurements on H20 (1) and D20 (1).The real and imaginary optical constants agree with literature values to < 1.5% and about 6%, respectively, which is about the agreement of the literature values. The integrated areas agree with literature values to < 2%, and OH and OD bond dipole derivatives for H20 and D20 agree to < 10f0. pATR, refractive index, dielectric constant, and absorption cross section spectra are reported from 8000to 350 cm? for 2-butanol, and integrated absolute absorption intensities and bond dipole derivatives are presented for 2-butanol, 2-hexanol, and 2-octanol and compared with those for primary alcohols and water

Rearing the Cotton Bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, on a Tapioca-Based Artificial Diet

The impact of a tapioca-based artificial diet on the developmental rate, life history parameters, and fertility was examined over five consecutive generations for the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera Hubner (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), a highly polyphagous pest of many agricultural crops. The study showed that when fed the tapioca-based artificial diet during larval stage, larval and pupal developmental period, percent pupating, pupal weight, emergence rate of male and female, longevity, fecundity and hatching were non-significantly different than that of the control agar-based artificial diet. Moreover, the cost to rear on tapioca-based diet approached 2.13 times less than the cost of rearing on the agar-based artificial diet. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and potential cost savings of the tapioca-based artificial diet for rearing H. armigera

Infrared Jntensities of Liquids IV: Recent Measurements of Infrared Optical Constants and Absolute Infrared Absorption Intensities of Liquids by Multiple Attenuated Total Reflectance

Recent refinements are described to the CIRCLE, multiple attenuated total reflection method for measuring infrared optical and dielectric constants, absolute integrated intensities and, hence, molecular dipole derivatives. Attention is focussed on the accuracy of the method, which is estimated from measurements on H20 (1) and D20 (1).The real and imaginary optical constants agree with literature values to < 1.5% and about 6%, respectively, which is about the agreement of the literature values. The integrated areas agree with literature values to < 2%, and OH and OD bond dipole derivatives for H20 and D20 agree to < 10f0. pATR, refractive index, dielectric constant, and absorption cross section spectra are reported from 8000to 350 cm? for 2-butanol, and integrated absolute absorption intensities and bond dipole derivatives are presented for 2-butanol, 2-hexanol, and 2-octanol and compared with those for primary alcohols and water

SARS-CoV-2 omicron (B.1.1.529)-related COVID-19 sequelae in vaccinated and unvaccinated patients with cancer: results from the OnCovid registry

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 sequelae can affect about 15% of patients with cancer who survive the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection and can substantially impair their survival and continuity of oncological care. We aimed to investigate whether previous immunisation affects long-term sequelae in the context of evolving variants of concern of SARS-CoV-2. METHODS: OnCovid is an active registry that includes patients aged 18 years or older from 37 institutions across Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK with a laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 and a history of solid or haematological malignancy, either active or in remission, followed up from COVID-19 diagnosis until death. We evaluated the prevalence of COVID-19 sequelae in patients who survived COVID-19 and underwent a formal clinical reassessment, categorising infection according to the date of diagnosis as the omicron (B.1.1.529) phase from Dec 15, 2021, to Jan 31, 2022; the alpha (B.1.1.7)-delta (B.1.617.2) phase from Dec 1, 2020, to Dec 14, 2021; and the pre-vaccination phase from Feb 27 to Nov 30, 2020. The prevalence of overall COVID-19 sequelae was compared according to SARS-CoV-2 immunisation status and in relation to post-COVID-19 survival and resumption of systemic anticancer therapy. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04393974. FINDINGS: At the follow-up update on June 20, 2022, 1909 eligible patients, evaluated after a median of 39 days (IQR 24-68) from COVID-19 diagnosis, were included (964 [50·7%] of 1902 patients with sex data were female and 938 [49·3%] were male). Overall, 317 (16·6%; 95% CI 14·8-18·5) of 1909 patients had at least one sequela from COVID-19 at the first oncological reassessment. The prevalence of COVID-19 sequelae was highest in the pre-vaccination phase (191 [19·1%; 95% CI 16·4-22·0] of 1000 patients). The prevalence was similar in the alpha-delta phase (110 [16·8%; 13·8-20·3] of 653 patients, p=0·24), but significantly lower in the omicron phase (16 [6·2%; 3·5-10·2] of 256 patients, p<0·0001). In the alpha-delta phase, 84 (18·3%; 95% CI 14·6-22·7) of 458 unvaccinated patients and three (9·4%; 1·9-27·3) of 32 unvaccinated patients in the omicron phase had sequelae. Patients who received a booster and those who received two vaccine doses had a significantly lower prevalence of overall COVID-19 sequelae than unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (ten [7·4%; 95% CI 3·5-13·5] of 136 boosted patients, 18 [9·8%; 5·8-15·5] of 183 patients who had two vaccine doses vs 277 [18·5%; 16·5-20·9] of 1489 unvaccinated patients, p=0·0001), respiratory sequelae (six [4·4%; 1·6-9·6], 11 [6·0%; 3·0-10·7] vs 148 [9·9%; 8·4-11·6], p=0·030), and prolonged fatigue (three [2·2%; 0·1-6·4], ten [5·4%; 2·6-10·0] vs 115 [7·7%; 6·3-9·3], p=0·037). INTERPRETATION: Unvaccinated patients with cancer remain highly vulnerable to COVID-19 sequelae irrespective of viral strain. This study confirms the role of previous SARS-CoV-2 immunisation as an effective measure to protect patients from COVID-19 sequelae, disruption of therapy, and ensuing mortality. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health and Care Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and the Cancer Treatment and Research Trust