Nanoparticle size characterization by laser light scattering

Spherical semiconductor nanoparticles (ZnS) were specially fabricated by an inexpensive chemical route. The scattering profile of the nanoparticles was investigated by laser light scattering technique. A beam of polarized light from a diode laser (.0˜ 630 nm) was allowed to fall on the nanospheres embedded in flexible host matrix Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA). The light scattered from the samples were detected by means of analyzer mounted photodiode array from 10° to 170° in steps of 1°. Signals from the detectors were interfaced with a high resolution data acquisition system and the whole experiment was carried out in differential mode. Size of the nanoparticles was obtained by using Mie theory and verified by T-matrix approach. The results obtained agree with the XRD and TEM results.Nanoparticle size characterization by laser light scattering A Gogoi*, G A Ahmed and A Choudhury Optoelectronics and Photonics Laboratory, Department of Physics, Tezpur University, Tezpur-784 028, Assam, India E-mail : [email protected] and Photonics Laboratory, Department of Physics, Tezpur University, Tezpur-784 028, Assam, Indi

Seroprevalence of Japanese encephalitis amongst cases of acute encephalitis syndrome in a tertiary care centre of north east India: a four year retrospective study

Background: The present study was undertaken to investigate the trend of JE and the different parameters associated with it.Methods: It was a hospital-based retrospective study conducted from January 2014 to December 2017. A total of 3531 consecutive non-repetitive patients, satisfying the clinical case definition of AES as per the WHO guidelines, were included in the study. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum samples were tested for JEV-specific IgM antibodies by the NIV JE IgM Capture ELISA Kit.Results: Of the 3531 patients admitted, 838(23.7%) cases were positive for JE IgM antibodies. There was a significant reduction in the JE positivity rate from 32.9% in 2014 to 13.3% in 2017. The male-to-female ratio was 1.6:1. JE positivity rate was significantly higher in adults as compared to children. The majority of cases occurred during the monsoon and post-monsoon season. Fever (100%), change in mental status (87.8%), headache (70.5%), neck rigidity (32.4%), unconsciousness (35.4%), seizure (43.9%) and paralysis (5%) were the major clinical symptoms. JE positivity was seen to be higher in the rural areas of Assam.Conclusions: A declining trend of JE was seen in this study, however further research work needs to be done to look for non-JE causes of AES

An analysis of land dynamics in relation to urban sprawl in the Guwahati city of Assam, India

Urban sprawl is the growth of a settlement that occurs during urbanization. Guwahati city, located in the Kamrup Metropolitan District of Assam, India, is the hub of the northeastern states. To examine urban sprawl and the rate of population expansion during the past 30 years, research has been conducted to determine the built-up land characteristics. A temporal study using satellite images for two different years (1990 and 2020) has been carried out through GIS and remote sensing techniques, supervised classification using maximum likelihood for land use land cover preparation and raster calculator has been used to delineate NDVI and the Urban Index. The city has been divided into five buffer zones from the central growth point, and the sprawl has been analyzed for each buffer zone. The city's growth is so drastic that the built-up area has increased from 27.18% in 1990 to 47.87% in 2020. Zone-wise, the most remarkable changes have been seen in zone 2 and zone 5, up to 28.95% and 22.62%, respectively. Zone-3 counts as the minor changes in the built-up area, i.e., 6.2% due to the Ramsar site named Deeparbeel. This study will help urban planners understand the nature of sprawl and develop a feasible solution

Traditional handloom practices of Nyishi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, Eastern Himalaya

442-449The documentation of traditional handloom practices of Nyishi tribe and their cultural attire was done in Papum pare district of Arunachal Pradesh wherein 7 selected villages were surveyed during May 2018 to February 2019 through random sampling with semi-structured questionnaire. Rubung Ruekio, a traditional loin loom of Nyishi tribe is prepared from locally available resources, viz., Bambusa. tulda, B. pallida, Dendrocalamus hamiltonii, Gmelina arborea, Michelia species and Terminalia myriocarpa. Most of the weavers were female and weaved culturally important traditional dresses such as Pomo gale, Dumping gale, Jekum/Name-acham gale, Jinjab gale, Juhu/Junghang gale and Luch/lungch gale which are worn especially during auspicious occasions. Of these, Jekum gale, Pomo gale and Dumping gale culturally significant. The market price of gale varied tremendously depending on type of raw material and type of handloom used in the production

Impact of energy-momentum conservation violation on the configuration of compact stars and their GW echoes

This work investigates the impacts of energy-momentum conservation violation on the configuration of strange stars constraint with gravitational wave (GW) event GW190814 as well as eight recent observations of compact objects. The gravitational wave echoes from these interesting classes of compact objects are also calculated. To describe the matter of strange stars, we have used two different equations of state (EoSs): first an ad-hoc exotic EoS, the stiffer MIT Bag model and next realistic CFL phase of quark matter EoS. We choose Rastall gravity as a simple model with energy-momentum conservation violation with a set of model parameter values. Our results show that this gravity theory permits stable solutions of strange stars and the resulting structures can foster GW echoes. We illustrate the implication of the gravity theory and found that the negative values of the Rastall parameter result in more compact stellar configurations and lower GW echo frequency. With an increase in the Rastall parameter, both the compactness of the stellar configurations and echo time decrease. It is worth mentioning here that with the chosen set of some probable strange star candidates from observational data and also in light of GW 190814, we have evaluated the radii of stellar models. Also, the GW echo frequencies associated with strange stars are found to be in the range of $\approx 41-58$ kHz for both cases.Comment: 8 figures and 4 table

Traditional handloom practices of Nyishi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, Eastern Himalaya

The documentation of traditional handloom practices of Nyishi tribe and their cultural attire was done in Papum pare district of Arunachal Pradesh wherein 7 selected villages were surveyed during May 2018 to February 2019 through random sampling with semi-structured questionnaire. Rubung Ruekio, a traditional loin loom of Nyishi tribe is prepared from locally available resources, viz., Bambusa. tulda, B. pallida, Dendrocalamus hamiltonii, Gmelina arborea, Michelia species and Terminalia myriocarpa. Most of the weavers were female and weaved culturally important traditional dresses such as Pomo gale, Dumping gale, Jekum/Name-acham gale, Jinjab gale, Juhu/Junghang gale and Luch/lungch gale which are worn especially during auspicious occasions. Of these, Jekum gale, Pomo gale and Dumping gale culturally significant. The market price of gale varied tremendously depending on type of raw material and type of handloom used in the production

Ga3 assisted seed dormancy breaking in Abelmoschus moschatus Medik. subsp. moschatus

Abelmoschus moschatus Medik. subsp. moschatus is a wild uncultivated variety of common lady’s finger (Abelmoschus esculentus) possessing a high degree of seed dormancy. Methods of dormancy breaking in the seed of the plant were investigated through different physical and chemical methods. Different preconditioning treatments including hot water, dry heat, physical scarification and chemical treatments including exogenous GA3 were applied to explore the initiation in germination. Seeds were germinated under the controlled photoperiod and temperature. The viability of the test seeds was estimated by topographical 2, 3, 5-Triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) solution test. Highest germination percentage was obtained in the seeds treated with the exothermic reaction of H2SO4 and H2O, followed by exposure to gibberellic acid (GA3). The exposure time of exogenously applied GA3 had a significant influence on the germination response. The optimum germination temperature was found to be 30 ± 0.5°C. Treatment with 0.75% of 2, 3, 5-Triphenyltetrazolium chloride solution for 4 h at 35 ± 0.5°C enabled to correlate the viability of the seeds with the germinative values. Maximum germination was induced through this technique and dormancy of the seed can be attributed due to hard impermeable seed coat and endogenous physiological factor

DMSO/N2H4.H2O/I2/H2O/CH3CN : A new system for selective oxidation of alcohols in hydrated media

A new alternative system for the oxidation of secondaryalcoholstoketoneswithDMSO/N2H4‚H2O/I2/H2O/ CH3CN in hydrated media has been developed. The system also selectively oxidizes the secondary alcoholic groups to the corresponding ketones in the presence of primary alcoholic groups present within the same molecule in moderate to very good yields at reflux temperature

Hybrid Spectral-IRDx: Near-IR and Ultrasound Attenuation System for Differentiating Breast Cancer from Adjacent Normal Tissue

OBJECTIVE: While performing surgical excision for breast cancer (lumpectomy), it is important to ensure a clear margin of normal tissue around the cancer to achieve complete resection. The current standard is histopathology; however, it is time-consuming and labour-intensive requiring skilled personnel. METHOD: We describe a Hybrid Spectral-IRDx - a combination of the previously reported Spectral-IRDx tool with multimodal ultrasound and NIR spectroscopy techniques. We show how this portable, cost-effective, minimal-contact tool could provide rapid diagnosis of cancer using formalin-fixed (FF) and deparaffinized (DP) breast biopsy tissues. RESULTS: Using this new tool, measurements were performed on cancerous/fibroadenoma and its adjacent normal tissues from the same patients (N=14). The acoustic attenuation coefficient () and reduced scattering coefficient (s) (at 850, 940, and 1060 nm) for the cancerous/fibroadenoma tissues were reported to be higher compared to adjacent normal tissues, a basis of delineation. Comparing FF cancerous and adjacent normal tissue, the difference in s at 850 nm and 940 nm were statistically significant (p=3.17e-2 and 7.94e-3 respectively). The difference in between the cancerous and adjacent normal tissues for DP and FF tissues were also statistically significant (p=2.85e-2 and 7.94e-3 respectively). Combining multimodal parameters and s (at 940 nm) show highest statistical significance (p=6.72e-4) between FF cancerous/fibroadenoma and adjacent normal tissues. CONCLUSION: We show that Hybrid Spectral-IRDx can accurately delineate between cancerous and adjacent normal breast biopsy tissue. SIGNIFICANCE: The results obtained establish the proof-of-principle and large-scale testing of this multimodal breast cancer diagnostic platform for core biopsy diagnosis

Differentially expressed genes in platinum-resistant high-grade serous ovarian cancer

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify genes and pathways differentially expressed in platinum resistant high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) when compared to sensitive HGSOC. Methods: A total of 37 patients with HGSOC tissue samples underwent RNA sequencing performed by TEMPUS (N=37, 21 platinum sensitive, 16 resistant; 85% Stage III-IV; 58% received neoadjuvant chemotherapy). RNA gene expression data and significantly impacted pathways were analyzed using Advaita Bio\u27s iPathwayGuide. Differentially expressed (DE) genes were identified using FDR of 0.05 and fold-change of 1.5. Genes from several impacted canonical metabolic pathways were validated by PCR against external data sets in a separate ovarian cancer sample group (n=15), platinum resistant ovarian cancer mouse tumor model, and wild-type sensitive and platinum resistant ovarian cancer cell lines. Relative gene expression was calculated using the comparative Ct method, also referred to as the “2 DDCT”, using L27 as internal control gene. Results: We identified 177 differentially expressed (DE) genes out of a total of 16,607 genes (1.1%) with measured expression. 15 pathways were found to be significantly impacted. Of the 15 canonical pathways, all were up regulated in the resistant HGSOC and the majority of the most significantly altered (5/10) were related to metabolism (Retinol metabolism (p-value = 0.002); Tyrosine Metabolism (p-value = 0.005); Tryptophan Metabolism (p-value = 0.009); and Phenylalanine Metabolism (p-value = 0.012); CYP Drug Metabolism (p-value = 0.022)). A total of 3 separate genes from the CYP family and two from the Dopa Decarboxylase family of genes were validated against an external data set of human ovarian tissue samples, cell lines, mouse ovarian tumor model, and found to have similarly increased gene expression in the genes tested in the platinum resistant groups. Compilation of KEGG analysis and the common network genes revealed pathways associated with amino acid metabolism to be most significantly altered. Conclusions: We describe the identification of a unique transcriptomic profile associated with platinum resistance. Interestingly, the main pathways identified are related to metabolism, suggesting that the survival to chemotherapy demands a major metabolic adaptation. These findings also represent a first step towards the identification of biomarkers for the detection of chemo-resistant disease and metabolism-based drug targets specific for chemo-resistant tumors. Further validation of this model is required in order to determine its clinical value