Synthesis and characterization of silver nanoarticles from extract of Eucalyptus citriodora

The primary motivation for the study to develop simple eco-friendly green synthesis of silver nanoparticles using leaf extract of Eucalyptus citriodora as reducing and capping agent. The green synthesis process was quite fast and silver nanoparticles were formed within 0.5 h. The synthesis of the particles was observed by UV-visible spectroscopy by noting increase in absorbance. Characterization of the particles was carried out by X-ray diffraction, FTIR and electron microscopy. The developed nanoparticles demonstrated that E. citriodora is good source of reducing agents. UV-visible absorption spectra of the reaction medium containing silver nanoparticles showed maximum absorbance at 460 nm. FTIR analysis confirmed reduction of Ag+ to Ag0 atom in silver nanoparticles. The XRD pattern revealed the crystalline structure of silver nanoparticles. The SEM analysis showed the size and shape of the nanoparticles. The method being green, fast, easy and cost effective can be recommended for large scale production of AgNPs for their use in food, medicine and materials

Pathology of Eupatorium adenophorum (Sticky snakeroot) toxicity in mice

The leaves of Eupatorium adenophorum Spreng were powdered and extracted with methanol.  An acute oral toxicity study was conducted in male Swiss albino mice and a LD50 of 3501 mg/kg was obtained during 14 days observation period. Twenty Swiss albino mice (male) randomly divided into four groups were administered orally with vehicle (5% tween 80), 1/20th (i.e. 175 mg/kg), 1/10th (i.e. 350 mg/kg) and 1/5th (i.e. 750 mg/kg) LD50 doses of methanolic leaf extract of E. adenophorum Spreng; respectively for a period of 30 days. The mice were sacrificed on day-31 and the liver dissected out freed from adherent tissue weighed to nearest milligram. The  liver histology, estimations of biochemical contents and enzyme activities were carried out. Treatment of the mice with methanolic extract of E. adenophorum at the dose level of 750 mg/kg (i.e. 1/5th LD50) elicited hepatotoxicity and the animals had yellow discoloration of liver, subcutaneous tissue and musculature indicating jaundice. Study on liver enzymes revealed marked increase in the activities of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), while significant increase in serum bilirubin level. Histopathological examination of the livers of the group IV animals had focal areas of necrosis and bile duct proliferation. Elevation in plasma bilirubin concomitant with alterations in enzyme profile and histopathological lesions are consistent with liver injury and cholestasi

Mediastinal mass diagnosed as a benign schwannoma

Neurogenic tumours of the mediastinum are most commonly present in the posterior mediastinal compartment. Schwannomas, being the most frequently encountered type, can be either benign or malignant, although the former is more common. They typically appear as an asymptomatic mass on radiographic imaging. These tumours with spindle-shaped cells are often asymptomatic, and are routinely detected on standard pulmonary radiography. However, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, especially for posterior mediastinal tumours, provide additional information and help to determine its possible extension to adjacent structures. Therefore, radiographic and histopathological examinations are vital diagnostic tools in the detection of these silent tumours. Complete surgical resection using video-assisted thoracic surgical technique is the mainstay of treatment, and offers an excellent prognosis

Bloom-epistemic and sentiment analysis hierarchical classification in course discussion forums

Online discussion forums are widely used for active textual interaction between lecturers and students, and to see how the students have progressed in a learning process. The objective of this study is to compare appropriate machine-learning models to assess sentiments and Bloom\'s epistemic taxonomy based on textual comments in educational discussion forums. Our proposed method is called the hierarchical approach of Bloom-Epistemic and Sentiment Analysis (BE-Sent). The research methodology consists of three main steps. The first step is the data collection from the internal discussion forum and YouTube comments of a Web Programming channel. The next step is text preprocessing to annotate the text and clear unimportant words. Furthermore, with the text dataset that has been successfully cleaned, sentiment analysis and epistemic categorization will be done in each sentence of the text. Sentiment analysis is divided into three categories: positive, negative, and neutral. Bloom\'s epistemic is divided into six categories: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. This research has succeeded in producing a course learning subsystem that assesses opinions based on text reviews of discussion forums according to the category of sentiment and epistemic analysis.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

THE CONSERVATION OF MARINE ECOSYSTEM FROM TRAWL USAGE BY THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BASED ON SUSTAINABLE MARINE PRESERVATION PRINCIPLE

Fisheries practice using trawl and seine nets in Indonesia are still numerous since fishermen round that it will yield much more. However, the practice also threatens the life of small and young fishes as well as destroys the coral reef. The government then issued the regulation namely the Regulation of Minister on Marine Affairs and Fishery Number 2/Permen-KP/2015 about the Prohibition of Trawl and Seine Nets Usage which apply to the whole area of fisheries in Indonesia. It was one of the efforts by the Government of the Republic of Indonesia in conserving its marine ecosystem. The aim of this study was to evaluate the application of regulation to prohibit the trawl and seine nets usage based on sustainable marine preservation principle. This study was a doctrinal research applying case approach and statute approach. The study was held on several regions in Indonesia where the regulation has been enforced. The findings then elaborated with legal sources, such as Act number 32 year 2009 about Environment Conservation and Management, Act number 31 year 2004 about Fisheries, and Regulation of Minister of Marine and Fishery Number 2/Permen-KP/2015 as primary legal sources. The secondary legal sources used were journals, articles, and other relevant sources. The result showed that there is a need to establish a model for ideal implementation of the regulation based on sustainable marine preservation principle in order to conserve the marine environment as well as to increase the welfare of traditional fishermen

Produção de antissoro policlonal utilizando a proteína capsidial recombinante do Rupestris stem pitting-associated virus.

O Rupestris stem pitting-associated virus (RSPaV) é o agente causal das caneluras do lenho da videira. Este trabalho teve como objetivo produzir antissoro policlonal a partir da proteína capsidial (CP) recombinante do RSPaV e avaliar a sua especificidade e sensibilidade. O gene da CP do RSPaV, com 780pb, foi previamente caracterizado. Esse gene foi subclonado no sítio de restrição EcoRI, no vetor de expressão pRSET-B e o plasmídeo recombinante foi utilizado para induzir a expressão da CP em Escherichia coli. A CP, ligada a uma cauda de seis histidinas, foi purificada por meio de cromatografia de afinidade em coluna de Ni-NTA a partir do extrato de proteínas totais extraídas de E. coli. A identidade da proteína purificada foi confirmada em SDS-PAGE e Western blot, utilizando-se anticorpos comerciais contra a cauda de seis histidinas. A CP recombinante expressada in vitro apresentou massa molecular de cerca de 31kDa. A proteína purificada foi quantificada e 2,55mg foram utilizados para a imunização de um coelho. O antissoro policlonal obtido reagiu com diferentes isolados deste vírus, extraídos de videiras em ELISA indireto.Nota técnica

Modeling user rating preference behavior to improve the performance of the collaborative filtering based recommender systems

One of the main concerns for online shopping websites is to provide efficient and customized recommendations to a very large number of users based on their preferences. Collaborative filtering (CF) is the most famous type of recommender system method to provide personalized recommendations to users. CF generates recommendations by identifying clusters of similar users or items from the user-item rating matrix. This cluster of similar users or items is generally identified by using some similarity measurement method. Among numerous proposed similarity measure methods by researchers, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) is a commonly used similarity measure method for CF-based recommender systems. The standard PCC suffers some inherent limitations and ignores user rating preference behavior (RPB). Typically, users have different RPB, where some users may give the same rating to various items without liking the items and some users may tend to give average rating albeit liking the items. Traditional similarity measure methods (including PCC) do not consider this rating pattern of users. In this article, we present a novel similarity measure method to consider user RPB while calculating similarity among users. The proposed similarity measure method state user RPB as a function of user average rating value, and variance or standard deviation. The user RPB is then combined with an improved model of standard PCC to form an improved similarity measure method for CF-based recommender systems. The proposed similarity measure is named as improved PCC weighted with RPB (IPWR). The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the IPWR similarity measure method is performed using five state-of-the-art datasets (i.e. Epinions, MovieLens-100K, MovieLens-1M, CiaoDVD, and MovieTweetings). The IPWR similarity measure method performs better than state-of-the-art similarity measure methods in terms of mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), precision, recall, and F-measure

Electrolyte (Na, K, Cl, Ca, Pi and Mg) profile of Zovawk pigs of Mizoram, India in different age groups

A study was carried out to find out the electrolyte profile of different age groups of an indigenous pig locally called Zovawk of Mizoram, India. The plasma Na and Cl were not influenced by age. The plasma concentration of Na was found to be in higher ranges while that of K was in lower range. Adult pigs had higher K (

Effect of age on the haematological and biochemical profile of Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica)

The haemato-biochemical profile of the Japanese quail was estimated at different stages of growth. The parameters which were evaluated include serum glucose, cholesterol, total protein, albumin, globulin, uric acid, calcium, magnesium, chloride, potassium, Hb, TEC, PCV, MCV, MCH and MCHC. The biochemical profile showed changes in the level with age of the bird but does not seem to affect the haematological parameters. The glucose content of the birds decreased with age while the other parameters like cholesterol, total protein, albumin, globulin, uric acid calcium etc. increased with age