EXPLORING PSYCHO-SOMATIC IMPLICATIONS OF YOGA PRACTICES – A STRATEGIC INQUIRY

Benefits of yogic practices are well documented, and its popularity is increasing day by day across the world. Yoga has gained new avenues and has started to explore the new facts and hidden benefits by objectively testing the potential benefits of yogic practices for human well-being and holistic health. The present research adopts a philosophical descriptive approach to analyze the popular belief regarding the psychosomatic qualities developed through yogic practices. An opinionnaire consisting to two broad themes was designed to obtain the responses from the surveyed yoga practitioners (N=400: Male=200 and Female=200), aged 18 to 25 years. Data was statistically analyzed to find out the somatic and psychological qualities that the subjects perceived were developed through yoga practices. The results indicated that the female participants believed that yoga practices will much contribute to their Stability and Balance, while the male subjects believed it will help them in developing their Core Strength. With regard to the psychological qualities, both male and female subjects listed Self-Confidence as their first preference. Overall, the subjects believed that the yogic practices can be quite useful to promote somatic qualities of stability and balance, and core strength. Regarding the psychological qualities, self-confidence and mental rejuvenation were found to be most favorable reasons to practice yoga. Implications of the study have been discussed and the recommendations for future research have been made.  Article visualizations

A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF MENTAL PERSEVERANCE AND MENTAL CONCENTRATION AMONG ELITE AND SUB-ELITE WRESTLERS

Sports itself is a stressor and it demands a high level of resolutions, unflagging eagerness and obstinate persistence from its participants. It is believed that athletes having strong mental hardiness, concentration and optimum skill level do have a dominant hand upon the psychological weaker opponents. In sports, right from the motor acquisition stage to the highest competitive performance level, concentration plays an exceptionally vital role. It is a psycho-physiological process, an intense function of mind which is carried out through cognitive abilities and supplemented by emotional and conational factors. This research is an attempt to examine the dimensions of mental toughness and concentration abilities among wrestlers performing at national and international levels. It also attempts to find the interrelationship between these two parameters. The subjects (N=80) were wrestlers performing at two different levels i.e. national (N=40) and international (N=40). The subjects were asked to complete the Mental Toughness Questionnaire and to work on the Concentration Grid Exercise against time. The data was statistically analyzed. The results indicate that the international level wrestlers possessed significantly higher level of mental toughness as compared to the national level wrestlers. Female wrestlers have been found to possess significantly higher level of concentration abilities. No significant correlation was, however, observed between these two parameters

HYPERCOMPETITIVE ATTITUDE AMONG ATHLETES: A BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS

Maintaining competitive attitude provides confidence, focus and ability to achieve but over competitiveness can result in maladjusted behavior and lead to neurotic behavior. The present investigation was focused to explore the hypercompetitive attitude among track and field athletes across gender. The subjects were intercollegiate medalist and non-medalist athletes, age ranging from 18 to 25 years. The subjects objectively responded to a 26 items’ Hypercompetitive Attitude Scale (Ryckman et al., 1990). Researchers tested the Null hypothesis by employing ‘t’ test to find out the comparative differentials in hypercompetitive attitude between track and field athletes, medalist and non-medalist athletes and the gender groups. Findings of the study revealed that the athletic groups i.e. the track and field groups and medalist and non-medalist groups had not demonstrated any significant differences. However, significant differences were noticed among the gender groups. Results revealed that only medalist female athletes exhibited significantly higher level of hypercompetitive attitude as compared to the male athletes. Further in-depth investigation is needed to observe the intense attributes of hyper competitiveness in relation to sports performance.  Article visualizations

Reversible dementia as a presenting manifestation of racemose neurocysticercosis

Racemose cysticercosis is a less frequent presentation of neurocysticercosis (NCC). It′s presentation and management is quite different from cerebral parenchymal NCC. Diagnosis of racemose cysticercosis is based on the combination of clinical, epidemiologic, radiographic, and immunologic information. Compared with cysticercus cellulose, which most commonly presents as seizures, racemose NCC due to its extraaxial location presents with raised intracranial pressure and meningitis, and frequently requires neurosurgical intervention. Dementia as a sole presenting feature of NCC is rare. We report a case of racemose NCC with dementia as the presenting manifestation. The outcome of dementia patients with NCC seems favorable in most cases therefore a high index of suspicion for NCC should be kept especially in endemic areas

Synthesis, Isolation and Characterization of Process-Related Impurities in Salbutamol Sulphate

Three known and one unknown impurities in salbutamol sulphate bulk drug at level 0.1% (ranging from 0.05-0.1%) were detected by gradient reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography. These impurities were preliminarily identified by the mass number of the impurities. Different experiments were conducted and finally synthesized and characterized the known and unknown imputities

Global <i>De Novo</i> Protein–Protein Interactome Elucidates Interactions of Drought-Responsive Proteins in Horse Gram (<i>Macrotyloma uniflorum</i>)

Inspired by the availability of <i>de novo</i> transcriptome of horse gram (<i>Macrotyloma uniflorum</i>) and recent developments in systems biology studies, the first ever global protein–protein interactome (PPI) map was constructed for this highly drought-tolerant legume. Large-scale studies of PPIs and the constructed database would provide rationale behind the interplay at cascading translational levels for drought stress-adaptive mechanisms in horse gram. Using a bidirectional approach (interolog and domain-based), a high-confidence interactome map and database for horse gram was constructed. Available transcriptomic information for shoot and root tissues of a sensitive (M-191; genotype 1) and a drought-tolerant (M-249; genotype 2) genotype of horse gram was utilized to draw comparative PPI subnetworks under drought stress. High-confidence 6804 interactions were predicted among 1812 proteins covering about one-fourth of the horse gram proteome. The highest number of interactions (33.86%) in horse gram interactome matched with <i>Arabidopsis</i> PPI data. The top five hub nodes mostly included ubiquitin and heat-shock-related proteins. Higher numbers of PPIs were found to be responsive in shoot tissue (416) and root tissue (2228) of genotype 2 compared with shoot tissue (136) and root tissue (579) of genotype 1. Characterization of PPIs using gene ontology analysis revealed that kinase and transferase activities involved in signal transduction, cellular processes, nucleocytoplasmic transport, protein ubiquitination, and localization of molecules were most responsive to drought stress. Hence, these could be framed in stress adaptive mechanisms of horse gram. Being the first legume global PPI map, it would provide new insights into gene and protein regulatory networks for drought stress tolerance mechanisms in horse gram. Information compiled in the form of database (<i>Mau</i>PIR) will provide the much needed high-confidence systems biology information for horse gram genes, proteins, and involved processes. This information would ease the effort and increase the efficacy for similar studies on other legumes. Public access is available at http://14.139.59.221/MauPIR/

CSF p-Tau levels in the prediction of Alzheimer's disease

Summary The two hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. Neurofibrillary tangles are formed due to the hyperphosphorylation of tau protein. There is an urgent need to develop a reliable biomarker for the diagnosis of AD. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is surrounding the brain and reflects the major neuropathological features in the AD brain. Diagnosis, disease progression and drug actions rely on the AD biomarkers. Mainly CSF tau and phosphorylated tau (p-Tau) have been observed to serve the purpose for early AD. Keeping in view the early appearance of p-Tau in CSF, we analyzed p-Tau levels in 23 AD, 23 Non AD type dementia (NAD), 23 Neurological control (NC) and 23 Healthy control (HC) North Indian patients. The levels of p-Tau were found to be increased in AD patients (67.87±18.05 pg/ml, SEM 3.76) compared with NAD (47.55±7.85 pg/ml, SEM 1.64), NC (34.42±4.51 pg/ml, SEM 0.94) and HC (27.09±7.18 pg/ml, SEM 1.50). The resulting sensitivity for AD with NAD was 80.27% whereas with respect to the NAD, NC and HC was 85.40%. Therefore elevated levels of p-Tau in AD can be exploited as a predictive biomarker in North Indian AD patients