Enhanced solar light photocatalytic performance of Fe-ZnO in the presence of H2O2, S2O82−, and HSO5− for degradation of chlorpyrifos from agricultural wastes: Toxicities investigation

This study reported Fe doped zinc oxide (Fe-ZnO) synthesis to degrade chlorpyrifos (CPY), a highly toxic organophosphate pesticide and important sources of agricultural wastes. Fourier transform infrared, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopic analyses showed successful formation of the Fe-ZnO with highly crystalline and amorphous nature. Water collected from agricultural wastes were treated with Fe-ZnO and the results showed 67% degradation of CPY by Fe-ZnO versus 39% by ZnO at 140 min treatment time. Detail mechanism involving reactive oxygen species production from solar light activated Fe-ZnO and their role in degradation of CPY was assessed. Use of H2O2, peroxydisulfate (S2O82−) and peroxymonosulfate (HSO5−) with Fe-ZnO under solar irradiation promoted removal of CPY. The peroxides yielded hydroxyl ([rad]OH) and sulfate radical ([Formula presented]) under solar irradiation mediated by Fe-ZnO. Effects of several parameters including concentration of pollutant and oxidants, pH, co-existing ions, and presence of natural organic matter on CPY degradation were studied. Among peroxides, HSO5− revealed to provide better performance. The prepared Fe-ZnO showed high reusability and greater mineralization of CPY. The GC-MS analysis showed degradation of CPY resulted into several transformation products (TPs). Toxicity analysis of CPY as well as its TPs was performed and the formation of non-toxic acetate imply greater capability of the treatment technology

Clozapine-Induced Microseizures, Orofacial Dyskinesia, and Speech Dysfluency in an Adolescent with Treatment Resistant Early Onset Schizophrenia on Concurrent Lithium Therapy

Clozapine is an atypical antipsychotic used in the treatment of refractory schizophrenia. It has a well-known side effect profile, including agranulocytosis, decreased seizure threshold, and tardive dyskinesia. In addition, numerous case reports have described clozapine-induced stuttering in adults. However, there has been only one previous case report describing it in the adolescent population. In addition, concurrent lithium therapy has been shown to enhance the neurotoxic effects of antipsychotics and lower the seizure threshold. Here, we report on the development of clozapine-induced microseizures, orofacial dyskinesia, and stuttering in a 17-year-old adolescent male with treatment of refractory early onset schizophrenia on clozapine and concurrent lithium therapy. The patient’s symptoms of schizophrenia responded well to the clozapine regimen. However, with the escalating dose of clozapine, the patient developed speech dysfluency in the form of stuttering and perioral twitching. An electroencephalogram confirmed seizure activity. Due to similarities with tardive dyskinesia, symptoms of microseizures induced by atypical antipsychotics may not be accurately diagnosed. A multidisciplinary treatment of speech dysfluency is of particular importance in the adolescent schizophrenic patients, who are expected to have longer duration of lifetime exposure to antipsychotics and in whom peer group interaction is crucial for normal personal and social development

Analytical evaluation of RSA and AES using Windows Azure for cloud computing environment

Cryptography is a very useful tool to protect the properties of data like integrity, privacy, confidentiality in any environment. This paper explores some useful aspects of cryptography in cloud computing environment. There are different types of encryption algorithms used in order to ensure the data security. These algorithms are of different types like symmetric, a symmetric and hashing algorithms. The objective of this paper is performance analysis of selected set of algorithms on the basis of different parameters, so that the best out of all these options is chosen or combinations of some of them can be utilized to secure data in cloud computing environment. The algorithms included in this study are RSA, AES. The parameters which are used for performance analysis are CPU utilization, running time of the code, data encryption capacity. These are the performance parameters which are calculated for every algorithm in cloud based environment i.e. windows azure simulator by utilizing visual studio IDE and profiler services by integrating windows azure SDK. The interpretation of these results are done by using various graphs which shows trend of a particular algorithms on basis of time of encryption and decryption

Development of Quality Assessment Criteria for Burnt Clay Bricks of Different Ages Based on Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity Test

Burnt clay bricks are widely used as a construction material in Pakistan, and their testing for quality confirmation is frequently needed for new and old bricks used in existing structures. The destructive testing methods are time-consuming and not always feasible for testing the bricks used in existing structures. The current study investigated the feasibility of using the ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) test as a non-destructive technique to assess the quality of both new and old bricks in masonry structures. A relationship was developed after performing the UPV test followed by a compression test on burnt clay brick samples of five different ages acquired from different sources. The acquired brick samples ranged from new to a century old. Consequently, as a novel contribution, brick quality assessment criteria based on UPV were proposed according to which a UPV value greater than 3000 m/s represents an excellent first-class brick whereas a UPV value lower than 2000 m/s shows a second-class brick. Further, the effectiveness of the UPV test to assess the compressive strength of old bricks was demonstrated with a case study of a 100-year-old masonry structure. The research concluded with the remarks that the compressive strength of bricks can be assessed with reasonable accuracy using the UPV test. The developed quality assessment criteria can be used to quickly check the quality of new and old burnt clay bricks

Impact of Mineralocorticoid Receptor Gene NR3C2 on the Prediction of Functional Classification of Left Ventricular Remodeling and Arrhythmia after Acute Myocardial Infarction

Background: The NR3C2 gene encodes the mineralocorticoid receptor, which is present on cardiomyocytes. Prior studies reported an association between the presence of NR3C2 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and an increased cortisol production during a stress response such as acute myocardial infarction (AMI), which may lead to adverse cardiac remodeling. Objective: To study the impact of the NR3C2 rs2070950, rs4635799 and rs5522 gene polymorphisms on left ventricular (LV) remodeling, rhythm and conduction disorders in AMI patients. Methods: A cohort of 301 AMI patients who underwent revascularization was included. SNPs of the NR3C2 gene (rs2070950, rs4635799 and rs5522) were evaluated. A total of 127 AMI patients underwent transthoracic echocardiography follow-up after 72 h and 6 months. Results: The rs2070950 GG genotype and rs4635799 TT genotype were most common in patients who had LV end-diastolic volume increase < 20% and the same or increased LV ejection fraction, indicating a possible protective effect of these SNPs. The rs5522 TT genotype was associated with a higher frequency of arrhythmias, while the presence of at least one rs5522 C allele was associated with a lower risk of arrhythmias. Conclusion: SNPs of the NR3C2 gene appear to correlate with better ventricular remodeling and a reduced rate of arrhythmias post-AMI, possibly by limiting the deleterious effects of cortisol on cardiomyocytes

Biogenic Silver Nanoparticles for Trace Colorimetric Sensing of Enzyme Disrupter Fungicide Vinclozolin

We report a novel, simple, efficient, and green protocol for biogenic synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in aqueous solution using clove (Syzygium aromaticum) extract as a reducing and protecting agent. Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy was employed to monitor the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) band of clove extract-derived AgNPs prepared under various conditions. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis provided information about the surface interaction of the clove extract with the AgNPs. Ultrahigh-resolution transmission electron microscopy (UHRTEM) results confirmed the formation of spherical, uniformly distributed clove extract-capped AgNPs with sizes in the range of 2–20 nm (average size: 14.4 ± 2 nm). Powder X-ray diffractometry analysis (PXRD) illustrated the formation of pure crystalline AgNPs. These AgNPs were tested as a colorimetric sensor to detect trace amounts of vinclozolin (VIN) by UV-Vis spectroscopy for the first time. The AgNP-based sensor demonstrated very sensitive and selective colorimetric detection of VIN, in the range of 2–16 µM (R2 = 0.997). The developed sensor was green, simple, sensitive, selective, economical, and novel, and could detect trace amounts of VIN with limit of detection (LOD) = 21 nM. Importantly, the sensor was successfully employed for the determination of VIN in real water samples collected from various areas in Turkey

Machine Vision Approach for Diagnosing Tuberculosis (TB) Based on Computerized Tomography (CT) Scan Images

Tuberculosis is curable, still the world’s second inflectional murderous disease, and ranked 13th (in 2020) by the World Health Organization on the list of leading death causes. One of the reasons for its fatality is the unavailability of modern technology and human experts for early detection. This study represents a precise and reliable machine vision-based approach for Tuberculosis detection in the lung through Symmetry CT scan images. TB spreads irregularly, which means it might not affect both lungs equally, and it might affect only some part of the lung. That’s why regions of interest (ROI’s) from TB infected and normal CT scan images of lungs were selected after pre-processing i.e., selection/cropping, grayscale image conversion, and filtration, Statistical texture features were extracted, and 30 optimized features using F (Fisher) + PA (probability of error + average correlation) + MI (mutual information) were selected for final optimization and only 6 most optimized features were selected. Several supervised learning classifiers were used to classify between normal and infected TB images. Artificial Neural Network (ANN: n class) based classifier Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) showed comparatively better and probably best accuracy of 99% with execution time of less than a second, followed by Random Forest 98.83%, J48 98.67%, Log it Boost 98%, AdaBoostM1 97.16% and Bayes Net 96.83%

Novel 4,6-Disubstituted s-Triazin-2-yl Amino Acid Derivatives as Promising Antifungal Agents

A novel series of 4,6-disubstituted s-triazin-2-yl amino acid derivatives was prepared and characterized. Most of them showed antifungal activity against Candida albicans compared to clotrimazole (standard drug). Compounds bearing aniline derivatives, piperidine and glycine on the triazine core showed the highest inhibition zones at concentrations of 50, 100, 200, and 300 μg per disc. In addition, docking studies revealed that all the compounds accommodated well in the active site residues of N-myristoltransferase (NMT) and exhibited complementarity, which explains the observed antifungal activity. Interestingly, none of these compounds showed antibacterial activity.Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, research group no. (RGP-1441-234). National Research Foundation (NRF) (# 105892 and Blue Sky’s Research Programme # 120386).Peer reviewe

Exploring pyrrolidinyl-spirooxindole natural products as promising platforms for the synthesis of novel spirooxindoles as EGFR/CDK2 inhibitors for halting breast cancer cells

Cancer represents a global challenge, and the pursuit of developing new cancer treatments that are potent, safe, less prone to drug resistance, and associated with fewer side effects poses a significant challenge in cancer research and drug discovery. Drawing inspiration from pyrrolidinyl-spirooxindole natural products, a novel series of spirooxindoles has been synthesized through a one-pot three-component reaction, involving a [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction. The cytotoxicity against breast cancer cells (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) and safety profile against WISH cells of the newly developed library were assessed using the MTT assay. Compounds 5l and 5o exhibited notable cytotoxicity against MCF-7 cells (IC50 = 3.4 and 4.12 μM, respectively) and MDA-MB-231 cells (IC50 = 8.45 and 4.32 μM, respectively) compared to Erlotinib. Conversely, compounds 5a-f displayed promising cytotoxicity against MCF-7 cells with IC50 values range (IC50 = 5.87–18.5 μM) with selective activity against MDA-MB-231 cancer cells. Compound 5g demonstrated the highest cytotoxicity (IC50 = 2.8 μM) among the tested compounds. Additionally, compounds 5g, 5l, and 5n were found to be safe (non-cytotoxic) against WISH cells with higher IC50 values ranging from 39.33 to 47.2 μM. Compounds 5g, 5l, and 5n underwent testing for their inhibitory effects against EGFR and CDK-2. Remarkably, they demonstrated potent EGFR inhibition, with IC50 values of 0.026, 0.067, and 0.04 μM and inhibition percentages of 92.6%, 89.8%, and 91.2%, respectively, when compared to Erlotinib (IC50 = 0.03 μM, 95.4%). Furthermore, these compounds exhibited potent CDK-2 inhibition, with IC50 values of 0.301, 0.345, and 0.557 μM and inhibition percentages of 91.9%, 89.4%, and 88.7%, respectively, in contrast to Roscovitine (IC50 = 0.556 μM, 92.1%). RT-PCR analysis was performed on both untreated and 5g-treated MCF-7 cells to confirm apoptotic cell death. Treatment with 5g increased the gene expression of pro-apoptotic genes P53, Bax, caspases 3, 8, and 9 with notable fold changes while decreasing the expression of the anti-apoptotic gene Bcl-2. Molecular docking and dynamic simulations (100 ns simulation using AMBER22) were conducted to investigate the binding mode of the most potent candidates, namely, 5g, 5l, and 5n, within the active sites of EGFR and CDK-2