Preliminary Phytochemical Studies and Antibacterial Activity of \u3cem\u3eOcimum sanctum\u3c/em\u3e L.

Ocimum sanctum, commonly known as ‘Sacred basil’ or ‘Holy basil’, is grown as a household plant in India. This preliminary phytochemical study was carried out in acetone, benzene and chloroform extracts and the results showed the presence of numerous phytochemical compounds. The antibacterial activity was analyzed using four different bacterial strains (E.coli, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumonia) by using agar disc diffusion method. Our bacterial assay revealed that the extracts showed good antibacterial activity, but the acetone extract didn’t show any specific activity. The presence of the phytochemicals signifies the potential of Ocimum sanctum as a source of therapeutic agents and may provide leads in the ongoing search for antimicrobial agent from plants

Immunomodulatory Effect of Coconut Protein on Cyclophosphamide Induced Immune Suppressed Swiss Albino Mice

The immunomodulatory properties of coconut protein were investigated in Swiss albino mice by immune suppressed with cyclophosphamide (CP). CP is a commonly used anti-cancer drug which causes toxicity by its reactive metabolites such as acrolein and phosphoramide mustard. In this study, the animals were grouped into four of 6 mice per group. Assessment of immunomodulatory activity was carried out by testing the RBC, WBC, Platelet and differential counts. Orally administered coconut protein in CP treated animals showed the increased levels of RBC, WBC and Platelet counts. The results of treated groups were RBC (1.84 mm3), WBC (5720.84 mm3) and platelet (3.79 mm3). The results showed Neutrophil (18.3%), Monocytes (9.58%), Eosinophil (7.54%), B-lymphocytes (0.705%), T-lymphocytes (3.15%) and Hb (3.834g/dl) respectively. The treated mice show an increased number of cells revealing the immune stimulated condition. The results of this experiment showed that coconut protein has strong immunomodulatory activity

Essential Oil Compounds and Antibacterial Activity of Leaves of \u3cem\u3eCinnamomum chemungianum\u3c/em\u3e Mohan et Henry (Lauraceae)

Essential oil of leaves of Cinnamomum chemungianum was obtained by hydro distillation and analyzed by GC-MS. The major components of the oil were Benzyl benzoate (66.36%), α-Terpine-4-ol (9.83%), Linalool (19.63%), and caryophyllene oxide (6.6%). Two compounds of the oils remained unidentified. The in vitro antibacterial activity was performed by agar disc diffusion method. It showed that maximum inhibition zone activity against staphylococcus aureus

Gapless Fermions and Quantum Order

Using 2D quantum spin-1/2 model as a concrete example, we studied the relation between gapless fermionic excitations (spinons) and quantum orders in some spin liquid states. Using winding number, we find the projective symmetry group that characterizes the quantum order directly determines the pattern of Fermi points in the Brillouin zone. Thus quantum orders provide an origin for gapless fermionic excitations.Comment: 23 pages. LaTeX. Homepage http://dao.mit.edu/~we

Quantum ether: photons and electrons from a rotor model

We give an example of a purely bosonic model -- a rotor model on the 3D cubic lattice -- whose low energy excitations behave like massless U(1) gauge bosons and massless Dirac fermions. This model can be viewed as a ``quantum ether'': a medium that gives rise to both photons and electrons. It illustrates a general mechanism for the emergence of gauge bosons and fermions known as ``string-net condensation.'' Other, more complex, string-net condensed models can have excitations that behave like gluons, quarks and other particles in the standard model. This suggests that photons, electrons and other elementary particles may have a unified origin: string-net condensation in our vacuum.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, RevTeX4. Home page http://dao.mit.edu/~we

Neutral triplet Collective Mode as a new decay channel in Graphite

In an earlier work we predicted the existence of a neutral triplet collective mode in undoped graphene and graphite [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 89} (2002) 16402]. In this work we study a phenomenological Hamiltonian describing the interaction of tight-binding electrons on honeycomb lattice with such a dispersive neutral triplet boson. Our Hamiltonian is a generalization of the Holstein polaron problem to the case of triplet bosons with non-trivial dispersion all over the Brillouin zone. This collective mode constitutes an important excitation branch which can contribute to the decay rate of the electronic excitations. The presence of such collective mode, modifies the spectral properties of electrons in graphite and undoped graphene. In particular such collective mode, as will be shown in this paper, can account for some part of the missing decay rate in a time-domain measurement done on graphite

g-on Mean Field Theory of the t-J Model

Implication of our recent proposal [J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 65 (1996) 687] to treat large-amplitude gauge-field fluctuations around the slave-boson mean-field theory for the t-J model has been explored in detail. By attaching gauge flux to spinons and holons and then treating them as free g-on's which respect the time-reversal symmetry, the optimum exclusion (g) and exchange (\a) statistics have been determined in the plane of doping rate and temperature. Two different relations between \a and g have been investigated, namely g=|\a| (Case1) and g=|\a|(2-|\a|) (Case2). The results indicate that slave fermion is favored at low doping while slave boson at high doping. For two dimension, in Case1 intermediate statistics are found in between, while in Case2 no intermediate statistics are found. The consequences of varying the dimensionality and strength of J have been studied also. The latter has no qualitative effect for both cases, while the former has a profound effect in Case1.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures two of them are figure 8; submitted to Phys. Rev. B; notes and citations are added, as seen in page 17; E-mails: [email protected], [email protected]

Large-UU limit of a Hubbard model in a magnetic field: chiral spin interactions and paramagnetism

We consider the large-$U$ limit of the one-band Hubbard model at half-filling on a non-bipartite two-dimensional lattice. An external magnetic field can induce a three-spin chiral interaction at order $1 / U^2 ~$. We discuss situations in which, at low temperatures, the chiral term may have a larger effect than the Pauli coupling of electron spins to a magnetic field. We present a model which explicitly demonstrates this. The ground state is a singlet with a gap; hence the spin susceptibility is zero while the chiral susceptibility is finite and paramagnetic.Comment: 12 pages, plain TeX, one figure available on request, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Regulation of stanniocalcin-1 secretion by BeWo cells and first trimester human placental tissue from normal pregnancies and those at increased risk of developing preeclampsia.

Stanniocalcin-1 (STC-1) is a multi-functional glycosylated peptide present in the plasma of healthy women postpartum and increased further in pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia. Although the STC-1 gene is expressed by the placenta what regulates its secretion and from which cells at the feto-maternal interface is unknown. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that the syncytiotrophoblast and cytotrophoblast are a major site of STC-1 protein expression in first trimester placental tissue. Further, in response to low oxygen, first trimester chorionic villous tissue from pregnancies at increased risk of developing preeclampsia secreted significantly more STC-1 than normal tissue under the same conditions. Using the human trophoblast cell line BeWo we have shown that low oxygen increased the secretion of STC-1 but it required co-stimulation with the Adenosine-3', 5'-cyclic monophosphate (cAMP) analogue, 8-Bromo adenosine-3', 5'-cyclic monophosphate cAMP (8 Br-cAMP) to reach significance. Inhibition of Hypoxia inducible factor 2α (HIF-2α) and the Phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3 -Kinase)/AKT/Serum and glucocorticoid-induced kinase-1(SGK-1) pathway resulted in significant inhibition of STC-1 secretion. As both low oxygen and cAMP are known to play a central role in placental function, their regulation of STC-1 points to a potentially important role in the maintenance of a normal healthy pregnancy and we would hypothesize that it may act to protect against prolonged placental hypoxia seen in preeclampsia

The Roton Fermi Liquid

We introduce and analyze a novel metallic phase of two-dimensional (2d) electrons, the Roton Fermi Liquid (RFL), which, in contrast to the Landau Fermi liquid, supports both gapless fermionic and bosonic quasiparticle excitations. The RFL is accessed using a re-formulation of 2d electrons consisting of fermionic quasiparticles and $hc/2e$ vortices interacting with a mutual long-ranged statistical interaction. In the presence of a strong vortex-antivortex (i.e. roton) hopping term, the RFL phase emerges as an exotic yet eminently tractable new quantum ground state. The RFL phase exhibits a ``Bose surface'' of gapless roton excitations describing transverse current fluctuations, has off-diagonal quasi-long-ranged order (ODQLRO) at zero temperature (T=0), but is not superconducting, having zero superfluid density and no Meissner effect. The electrical resistance {\it vanishes} as $T \to 0$ with a power of temperature (and frequency), $R(T) \sim T^\gamma$ (with $\gamma >1$), independent of the impurity concentration. The RFL phase also has a full Fermi surface of quasiparticle excitations just as in a Landau Fermi liquid. Electrons can, however, scatter anomalously from rotonic "current fluctuations'' and "superconducting fluctuations'', leading to "hot" and "cold" spots. Fermionic quasiparticles dominate the Hall electrical transport. We also discuss instabilities of the RFL to a conventional Fermi liquid and a superconductor. Precisely {\it at} the instability into the Fermi liquid state, the exponent $\gamma =1$, so that $R(T) \sim T$. Upon entering the superconducting state the anomalous quasiparticle scattering is strongly suppressed. We discuss how the RFL phenomenology might apply to the cuprates.Comment: 43 page