ISOLATION OF POTENTIAL ANTIMICROBIAL METABOLITE FROM ENDOPHYTIC BACILLUS AMYLOLIQUEFACIENS DL06 OF CARNIVOROUS PLANT DROSERA BURMANNII VAHL.

Objectives: Exploitation of bacterial endophytes for production of antimicrobial substances has led to the discovery of novel natural metabolites of diverse chemical nature. The present study focuses attention toward optimization of cultural conditions for production of antimicrobial compound(s) by an endophytic bacterium DL06 followed by its extraction and partial purification. Methods: The leaf endophytic bacterium Bacillus amyloliquefaciens DL06 (GenBank Accession no. MK696415, Microbial Culture Collection Accession no. 4186) isolated from carnivorous plant Drosera burmannii has been identified as a potent producer of antimicrobial metabolite following agar cup assay against several test bacterial and fungal strains. Cultural conditions for production of antimicrobials were optimized by “one variable at a time” method. The active fraction was isolated and purified partially using solvent extraction, thin-layer chromatography, and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. Results: B. amyloliquefaciens DL06 produced maximum antimicrobial compound in tryptic soy broth and Davis–Mingioli’s medium when grown under shake culture. Production of the antimicrobial metabolite has been optimized for the inoculum density, aeration, temperature, pH as well as carbon, and nitrogen sources. The antimicrobial metabolite was extracted from the cell-free culture filtrate in butanol and partially purified by silica gel column chromatography and HPLC. Conclusions: The antimicrobial metabolite, tentatively identified as quercetin showed broad spectrum bioactivity affecting several fungi and a number of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria

Effect of Progressive Muscle Relaxation in Female Health Care Professionals

Background: Increasing population, fast paced industrialization, increased, competitiveness, unanticipated problems in the work place have increased the stress among the females working in health care in recent times.Aim: The aim of the following study is to detect the stress levels among female health care professionals in the age group of 25-35 years and its impact on health. Subjects and Methods: A prospective cross-sectional pilot project was conducted in a tertiary care hospital in Eastern part of India, after receiving approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee and informed consent form was taken from the subjects. Stress level in the subjects was  assessed according to the presumptive life event stress scale. Females withscores above 200 were selected. For these, initial assessment of  anthropometric measurement, electrocardiogram and lipid profile analysis, resting pulse rate, blood pressure, physical fitness index (PFI), breath holding time (BHT), isometric hand grip (IHG) test results were evaluatedand recorded. All subjects were given training of progressive muscle  relaxation (PMR) for 3 months. After 3 months, the lipid profile and vital parameters, Perceived Stress Scale values were re-evaluated and subjects were asked to repeat the same exercises and data thus recorded were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16 (SPSS Inc. Released 2007. SPSS for Windows, Version 16.0. Chicago, SPSS Inc.).Results: Significant decrease in resting heart rate, blood pressure and Perceived Stress Scale levels was seen after PMR training in the subjects. Results of BHT, IHG tests and PFI were significantly increased after PMR training. There was a significant decrease in total cholesterol, triglyceride and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in subjects after practicing PMR for 3 months. Conclusions: Increasing stress among female health care professionals is a cause for concern and there is a need to adopt early life-style  modification by practicing relaxation exercises to ameliorate stress and to improve not only their quality-of-life in general, but patient care in  particular.Keywords: Female stress, relaxation techniques, health care professional

Comparative Study of Clonidine versus Lignocaine for Attenuation of Hemodynamic Responses during Laparoscopic Hysterectomy

Background: Hemodynamic changes due to reflex sympathetic discharge are of great concern in laparoscopic surgeries.Aim: To compare hemodynamic changes following premedication with lignocaine or clonidine during laparoscopic hysterectomy.Subjects and Methods: This prospective cross‑sectional randomized double blinded controlled trial was conducted one year in a tertiary care hospital in West Bengal. After taking institutional ethical clearance and consent of patients, hundred subjects of ASA Grade I and II undergoing elective laparoscopic hysterectomy were included in the study. Patients were allocated into two groups. Group A received clonidine and Group B received lignocaine. Baseline clinical parameters were recorded. Patients received clonidine or lignocaine as a bolus over a period of 15 minutes before induction and as continuous intravenous infusion throughout the surgical procedure. The dose of clonidine was 2.25 μg/kg bolus and 0.9 μg/kg/hr infusion while that of lignocaine was 1.5 mg/kg bolus and 0.6 mg/kg/hr infusion. Patients were given 1 μg/kg of fentanyl citrate intravenously. Following inductionwith intravenous propofol, endotracheal intubation was facilitated by atracurium. Anaesthesia was maintained by nitrous oxideIN and oxygen and along with propofol infusion. Muscle relaxation was achieved by intermittent bolus doses of atracurium. The patients were mechanically ventilated to keep EtCO2 between 35 and 40 mm Hg. Residual neuromuscular block was reversed by an appropriate dose of neostigmine and glycopyrrolate. All patients were shifted to PACU/POCU. Ramsay Sedation Score was assessed. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 16. Results: In comparison to group B, attenuation of heart rate, Systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressures were significantly more in group A. There was no difference in sedation score between the two groups. Conclusion: In an attempt to attenuate both the effects of layngoscopy and insufflations with carbon dioxide in laparoscopic surgery infusions of clonidine and lignocaine were run all through the procedures in the present study and it was found that use of clonidine and lignocaine attenuated the haemodynamic responses. However clonidine being found to be more effective.Keyword: Clonidine, hemodynamic responses, hysterectomy, lignocain

Toward Interpretable Deep Reinforcement Learning with Linear Model U-Trees

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has achieved impressive success in many applications. A key component of many DRL models is a neural network representing a Q function, to estimate the expected cumulative reward following a state-action pair. The Q function neural network contains a lot of implicit knowledge about the RL problems, but often remains unexamined and uninterpreted. To our knowledge, this work develops the first mimic learning framework for Q functions in DRL. We introduce Linear Model U-trees (LMUTs) to approximate neural network predictions. An LMUT is learned using a novel on-line algorithm that is well-suited for an active play setting, where the mimic learner observes an ongoing interaction between the neural net and the environment. Empirical evaluation shows that an LMUT mimics a Q function substantially better than five baseline methods. The transparent tree structure of an LMUT facilitates understanding the network's learned knowledge by analyzing feature influence, extracting rules, and highlighting the super-pixels in image inputs.Comment: This paper is accepted by ECML-PKDD 201

Role of Magnesium Sulfate in Prolonging the Analgesic Effect of Spinal Bupivacaine for Cesarean Section in Severe Preeclamptics

Background: Magnesium sulfate, N‑methyl‑d‑aspartate receptor antagonist, has both analgesic and sedative properties. Aim: The aim was to evaluate the analgesic efficacy of perioperative intravenous (i.v) magnesium sulfate in severe preeclamptic patients scheduled for cesarean section under spinal anesthesia. Subjects and Methods: A double blind prospective randomized controlled study was designed conducted on 80 patients randomly allocated into two equal groups (n = 40) to receive either bupivacaine heavy intrathecally – Group B (control group) or bupivacaine heavy intrathecally along with i.v magnesium sulfate – Group BM (study group). Magnesium sulfate 40 mg/kg diluted in 100 ml of normal saline was administered over 15 min about 30 min prior to surgery followed by continuous infusion at the rate of 10 mg/kg/h for the next 24 h while the other group received similar volume of normal saline in the same manner. Intraoperatively, patients were monitored for hemodynamic perturbations, respiratory rate, urine output, Apgar score, uterine tonicity, and any other adverse effects. Postoperatively, duration of analgesia, number of rescue analgesics, signs of any magnesium toxicity, and incidence of postpartum eclampsia in the first 24 h were recorded. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 16. Results: At different time intervals, patients in Group BM had less pain than Group B when compared on visual analog scale. Patients in Group BM were significantly more sedated as compared to Group B patients. None of the patients demonstrated bradycardia, hypotensive episodes, hypoxia, or hypoventilation in the postoperative period in the recovery room. There was no significant respiratory depression, Apgar score was comparable, and uterine tonicity was adequate in both the groups. Postoperatively, time required for first analgesic dose was significantly more in Group BM 270 (35.1) min than Group B 223 (31.4) min. There was a significant decrease in total rescue analgesic requirement in Group BM 2.5 (0.4) compared to Group B 3.6 (0.4). Incidence of postpartum eclampsia in study group (one patient) was less than the control group (four patients). Conclusion: Preoperative i.v magnesium sulfate, in severe preeclampsia not only reduces the probability of developing peripartum eclampsia, but also significantly prolongs the duration of analgesia and reduces postoperative analgesic consumption without any significant side effects.Keywords: Intravenous magnesium sulphate, preecclempsia, spinal anaesthesi

A gene signature for post-infectious chronic fatigue syndrome

Background: At present, there are no clinically reliable disease markers for chronic fatigue syndrome. DNA chip microarray technology provides a method for examining the differential expression of mRNA from a large number of genes. Our hypothesis was that a gene expression signature, generated by microarray assays, could help identify genes which are dysregulated in patients with post-infectious CFS and so help identify biomarkers for the condition. Methods: Human genome-wide Affymetrix GeneChip arrays (39,000 transcripts derived from 33,000 gene sequences) were used to compare the levels of gene expression in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of male patients with post-infectious chronic fatigue (n = 8) and male healthy control subjects (n = 7). Results: Patients and healthy subjects differed significantly in the level of expression of 366 genes. Analysis of the differentially expressed genes indicated functional implications in immune modulation, oxidative stress and apoptosis. Prototype biomarkers were identified on the basis of differential levels of gene expression and possible biological significance Conclusion: Differential expression of key genes identified in this study offer an insight into the possible mechanism of chronic fatigue following infection. The representative biomarkers identified in this research appear promising as potential biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment

Binding of Gemini Bisbenzimidazole Drugs with Human Telomeric G-Quadruplex Dimers: Effect of the Spacer in the Design of Potent Telomerase Inhibitors

The study of anticancer agents that act via stabilization of telomeric G-quadruplex DNA (G4DNA) is important because such agents often inhibit telomerase activity. Several types of G4DNA binding ligands are known. In these studies, the target structures often involve a single G4 DNA unit formed by short DNA telomeric sequences. However, the 3′-terminal single-stranded human telomeric DNA can form higher-order structures by clustering consecutive quadruplex units (dimers or n-mers). Herein, we present new synthetic gemini (twin) bisbenzimidazole ligands, in which the oligo-oxyethylene spacers join the two bisbenzimidazole units for the recognition of both monomeric and dimeric G4DNA, derived from d(T2AG3)4 and d(T2AG3)8 human telomeric DNA, respectively. The spacer between the two bisbenzimidazoles in the geminis plays a critical role in the G4DNA stability. We report here (i) synthesis of new effective gemini anticancer agents that are selectively more toxic towards the cancer cells than the corresponding normal cells; (ii) formation and characterization of G4DNA dimers in solution as well as computational construction of the dimeric G4DNA structures. The gemini ligands direct the folding of the single-stranded DNA into an unusually stable parallel-stranded G4DNA when it was formed in presence of the ligands in KCl solution and the gemini ligands show spacer length dependent potent telomerase inhibition properties

OLAP queries context-aware recommender system

It becomes hard and tedious to easily obtain relevant decisional data in large data warehouses. In order to ease user exploration during on-line analytical processing analysis, recommender systems are developed. However some recommendations can be inappropriate (irrelevant queries or non-computable queries). To overcome these mismatches, we propose to integrate contextual data into the recommender system. In this paper, we provide (i) an indicator of obsolescence for OLAP queries and (ii) a context-aware recommender system based on a contextual post-filtering for OLAP queries