VACHA (ACORUS CALAMUS LINN.): A VALUABLE MEDICINAL PLANT

Last few decades have again shown a notable resurgence of interest in medicinal plants. The reason behind is the increasing awareness about the limitations of the synthetic chemotherapeutic agents. Now herbal medicines and natural products are in big demand all over the world. One of the important medicinal plant used in Ayurveda traditional medicine to treat different ailments and maintain health condition is Vacha (Acorus calamus Linn.). It is a herbaceous perennial belonging to family Araceae. Vacha is one of the most renowned herbs of the ancient Vedic seer as a rejuvenative for the brain and nervous system. Vacha stimulates the power of self expression and intelligence. Rhizome of Acorus calamus Linn. Contain calamediol, essential oil, tanning substances and vitamin C. These constituents are valuable in a vast range of diseases. Vacha has a special potency as a nervine tonic. It is a very vigorous brain tonic, because it shows results in a very short time. It increases the overall memory of the person and strengthens the nervous system. Vacha is prescribed to people who have amnesia. Improving the memory is a quest on which human beings have embarked centuries ago. In almost all civilizations, there have been attempts to discover the best herbs for brain enhancement with minimum side effects. Perhaps, Ayurveda wins the race in this. All the herbs Ayurveda uses for its brain tonics have minimum side effects and are quite safe for the human beings. Western science is now warming up to these herbs and is looking upon them as effective supplements for the human brain. It works well in digestive ailments like flatulence, loss of appetite, distaste, abdominal dull pain and worms. Vacha relieves the phlegm, eases cough and asthma. It is also useful to reduce fever. It is also highly useful for the treatment of epilepsy and other mental ailments

A CASE REPORT ON BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA WITH HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is characterized by proliferation of the cellular elements of the prostate. The complications faced by elderly people need to be minimized and most of elderly don not prefer a surgical approach. Therefore, treatment of BPH with medicines is prioritized by elderly people. The present case report adds a little to the field that how to treat BPH cases in elderly without surgical approach but with homeopathic formulations. Case report presented here is diagnosed case of BPH having grade III prostatomegaly on USG. Patient presented with increased frequency of urination in feeble stream and sudden urging occasionally. Patient was treated with homoeopathic medication and assessed using Ultrasonography, International Prostate Symptom Score, and Uroflowmetry with significant improvement. Hence, it is suggestive that homoeopathic treatment could be effective in the management of cases of BPH in elderly people. Keywords: Homoeopathy, BPH, Uroflowmetry, International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), Constitutional medicine, Organopathic medicine, Sabal serrulat

Genetic Algorithms as a Feature Selection Tool in Heart Failure Disease

A great wealth of information is hidden in clinical datasets, which could be analyzed to support decision-making processes or to better diagnose patients. Feature selection is one of the data pre-processing that selects a set of input features by removing unneeded or irrelevant features. Various algorithms have been used in healthcare to solve such problems involving complex medical data. This paper demonstrates how Genetic Algorithms offer a natural way to solve feature selection amongst data sets, where the fittest individual choice of variables is preserved over different generations. In this paper, a Genetic Algorithm is introduced as a feature selection method and shown to be effective in aiding understanding of such data

Resistance Status of the Malaria Vector Mosquitoes, Anopheles stephensi and Anopheles subpictus Towards Adulticides and Larvicides in Arid and Semi-Arid Areas of India

Susceptibility studies of malaria vectors Anopheles stephensi Liston (Diptera: Culicidae) and An. subpictus Grassi collected during 2004–2007 from various locations of Arid and Semi-Arid Zone of India were conducted by adulticide bioassay of DDT, malathion, deltamethrin and larvicide bioassay of fenthion, temephos, chlorpyriphos and malathion using diagnostic doses. Both species from all locations exhibited variable resistance to DDT and malathion from majority of location. Adults of both the species were susceptible to Deltamethrin. Larvae of both the Anopheline species showed some evidence of resistance to chlorpyriphos followed by fenthion whereas susceptible to temephos and malathion

Septins restrict inflammation and protect zebrafish larvae from Shigella infection

Shigella flexneri, a Gram-negative enteroinvasive pathogen, causes inflammatory destruction of the human intestinal epithelium. Infection by S. flexneri has been well-studied in vitro and is a paradigm for bacterial interactions with the host immune system. Recent work has revealed that components of the cytoskeleton have important functions in innate immunity and inflammation control. Septins, highly conserved cytoskeletal proteins, have emerged as key players in innate immunity to bacterial infection, yet septin function in vivo is poorly understood. Here, we use S. flexneri infection of zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae to study in vivo the role of septins in inflammation and infection control. We found that depletion of Sept15 or Sept7b, zebrafish orthologs of human SEPT7, significantly increased host susceptibility to bacterial infection. Live-cell imaging of Sept15-depleted larvae revealed increasing bacterial burdens and a failure of neutrophils to control infection. Strikingly, Sept15-depleted larvae present significantly increased activity of Caspase-1 and more cell death upon S. flexneri infection. Dampening of the inflammatory response with anakinra, an antagonist of interleukin-1 receptor (IL-1R), counteracts Sept15 deficiency in vivo by protecting zebrafish from hyper-inflammation and S. flexneri infection. These findings highlight a new role for septins in host defence against bacterial infection, and suggest that septin dysfunction may be an underlying factor in cases of hyper-inflammation

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Reactions of Cre with Methylphosphonate DNA: Similarities and Contrasts with Flp and Vaccinia Topoisomerase

Chien-Hui Ma is with UT Austin, Aashiq H. Kachroo is with UT Austin, Anna Macieszak is with Polish Academy of Sciences, Tzu-Yang Chen is with UT Austin, Piotr Guga is with Polish Academy of Sciences, Makkuni Jayaram is with UT Austin.Background -- Reactions of vaccinia topoisomerase and the tyrosine site-specific recombinase Flp with methylphosphonate (MeP) substituted DNA substrates, have provided important insights into the electrostatic features of the strand cleavage and strand joining steps catalyzed by them. A conserved arginine residue in the catalytic pentad, Arg-223 in topoisomerase and Arg-308 in Flp, is not essential for stabilizing the MeP transition state. Topoisomerase or its R223A variant promotes cleavage of the MeP bond by the active site nucleophile Tyr-274, followed by the rapid hydrolysis of the MeP-tyrosyl intermediate. Flp(R308A), but not wild type Flp, mediates direct hydrolysis of the activated MeP bond. These findings are consistent with a potential role for phosphate electrostatics and active site electrostatics in protecting DNA relaxation and site-specific recombination, respectively, against abortive hydrolysis. Methodology/Principal Findings -- We have examined the effects of DNA containing MeP substitution in the Flp related Cre recombination system. Neutralizing the negative charge at the scissile position does not render the tyrosyl intermediate formed by Cre susceptible to rapid hydrolysis. Furthermore, combining the active site R292A mutation in Cre (equivalent to the R223A and R308A mutations in topoisomerase and Flp, respectively) with MeP substitution does not lead to direct hydrolysis of the scissile MeP bond in DNA. Whereas Cre follows the topoisomerase paradigm during the strand cleavage step, it follows the Flp paradigm during the strand joining step. Conclusions/Significance -- Collectively, the Cre, Flp and topoisomerase results highlight the contribution of conserved electrostatic complementarity between substrate and active site towards transition state stabilization during site-specific recombination and DNA relaxation. They have potential implications for how transesterification reactions in nucleic acids are protected against undesirable abortive side reactions. Such protective mechanisms are significant, given the very real threat of hydrolytic genome damage or disruption of RNA processing due to the cellular abundance and nucleophilicity of water.This work was supported by the NIH award GM035654 to M. J. Partial support was provided by the Robert F. Welch Foundation (F-1274) and a Faculty Research Award from the University of Texas at Austin. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Microbiolog

Elliptic flow of charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV

We report the first measurement of charged particle elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region (|$\eta$|<0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2< $p_{\rm T}$< 5.0 GeV/$c$. The elliptic flow signal v$_2$, measured using the 4-particle correlation method, averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential elliptic flow v$_2(p_{\rm T})$ reaches a maximum of 0.2 near $p_{\rm T}$ = 3 GeV/$c$. Compared to RHIC Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, the elliptic flow increases by about 30%. Some hydrodynamic model predictions which include viscous corrections are in agreement with the observed increase.Comment: 10 pages, 4 captioned figures, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/389