Development and sensory evaluation of ready to eat supplementary food using garden cress (Lepidium sativum) seeds

Ready-to-eat traditional supplementary food was prepared using different substitution levels of garden cress seeds and evaluated using 9 point hedonic scale for sensory attributes. Addition of garden cress seeds showed significant difference at 15 and 10 per cent for Indian food pinni and panjiri and 5 per cent level for laddu and burfi for overall acceptability. For chikki, non significant difference was found in the mean scores for overall acceptability (P<0.05). In case of biscuits, values did not differ significantly at 7.5 per cent while significant difference was shown at 10 per cent. Supplementation of garden cress did not affect texture of foods except burfi where at 15 percent level significant difference was found. Overall acceptability of all developed products was found to be highest for control which decreased gradually with the increase in the level of garden cress powder. It may be concluded that garden cress can be utilized successfully up to 10-25 per cent level to prepare ready-to-eat supplementary food with high nutritional value without imposing a negative impact on sensory perception, which may prove a boon to malnourished population

Sensory attributes, bioactive compounds, antioxidant activity and color values of jam and candy developed from Beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.)

Beetroot is a root vegetable with abundant bioactive compounds like phenols, flavonoids and betalains that give the beetroot a characteristic colour. The present study was conducted to develop preserved functional foods from fresh beetroot and analyze sensory attributes, physico-chemical properties, nutritional parameters, bioactive compounds, antioxidant activity and color values. Total soluble solids and acidity contents of raw beetroot, beetroot jam and candy was found to be 10.72° Brix and 0.06 %, 69.03 °Brix and 0.72 % and 69.43° Brix and 0.12 %, respectively. The TSS content of jam and candy was found to be 55.77±0.09 and 66.50±0.19, respectively. Total phenols, flavonoids, betalains and antioxidant activity of jam and candy were found to be 82.58 and 98.94 mg GAE/100g, 47.85 and 45.51 mg QE/100 g, 267.73 and 357 mg/100g and 35.43 and 42.13 %, respectively. The L* value indicating the lightness of a product decreased for beetroot jam as opposed to L* value of beetroot candy, which increased compared to raw beetroot. The a* value revealing the redness of jam increased whereas redness of candy decreased compared to raw beetroot. The present study indicated that; beetroot could be used for the preparation of jam and candy with good sensorial quality, which has a high market potential

Synthesis and characterization of divalent metal complexes of the macrocyclic ligand derived from isatin and 1,2-diaminobenzene

A novel series of complexes of the type [M(C28H18N6)X2], where M=Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II) or Zn(II) and X = Cl-, NO3- or CH3COO-, were synthesized by template condensation of isatin and 1,2-diaminobenzene in methanolic medium. The complexes were characterized with the help of various physico–chemical techniques, such as elemental analyses, molar conductance measurements, magnetic measurements, and NMR, infrared and far infrared spectral studies. The low value of molar conductance indicates them to be non-electrolytes. Based on various studies, a distorted octahedral geometry may be proposed for all the complexes. All the synthesized macrocyclic complexes were also tested for their in vitro antibacterial activity against some pathogenic bacterial strains. The MIC values shown by the complexes against these bacterial strains were compared with those of the standard antibiotics linezolid and cefaclor. Some of the complexes showed good antibacterial activities

Analytical Method Development and Validation for Assay of Rufinamide Drug

A simple, rapid, sensitive, cost effective, and reproducible reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) method was developed and validated for the stability testing of rufinamide. The proposed RP-HPLC method was developed on phenome-nex LunaR C-18 5μm,250 mm × 4.6 mm id. Column (at ambient temperature) and a mobile phase consisting of phosphate buffer: acetonitrile (60:40) was delivered at a flow rate of 1.0ml/ min. The analyte was detected by using a UV detector at the wavelength of 293 nm. The method was found to be linear over the concentration range of 50- 150 μgml-1 (r2=0.999). 30. The retention time of rufinamide was 4.717 min. Most searchable Keywords assay method development, analytical method development, method development, analytical method development and validation, analytical method development introduction, development and validation of analytical methods, method development and validation, assay method validation, analytical method development in pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical method development,&nbsp

Roots of Trumpism: Homophily and Social Feedback in Donald Trump Support on Reddit

We study the emergence of support for Donald Trump in Reddit's political discussion. With almost 800k subscribers, "r/The_Donald" is one of the largest communities on Reddit, and one of the main hubs for Trump supporters. It was created in 2015, shortly after Donald Trump began his presidential campaign. By using only data from 2012, we predict the likelihood of being a supporter of Donald Trump in 2016, the year of the last US presidential elections. To characterize the behavior of Trump supporters, we draw from three different sociological hypotheses: homophily, social influence, and social feedback. We operationalize each hypothesis as a set of features for each user, and train classifiers to predict their participation in r/The_Donald. We find that homophily-based and social feedback-based features are the most predictive signals. Conversely, we do not observe a strong impact of social influence mechanisms. We also perform an introspection of the best-performing model to build a "persona" of the typical supporter of Donald Trump on Reddit. We find evidence that the most prominent traits include a predominance of masculine interests, a conservative and libertarian political leaning, and links with politically incorrect and conspiratorial content.Comment: 10 pages. Published at WebSci2

Challenges and opportunities in mixed method data collection on mental health issues of health care workers during COVID-19 pandemic in India

Background: The present paper describes the key challenges and opportunities of mixed method telephonic data collection for mental health research using field notes and the experiences of the investigators in a multicenter study in ten sites of India. The study was conducted in public and private hospitals to understand the mental health status, social stigma and coping strategies of different healthcare personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in India.Methods: Qualitative and quantitative interviews were conducted telephonically. The experiences of data collection were noted as a field notes/diary by the data collectors and principal investigators.Results: The interviewers reported challenges such as network issues, lack of transfer of visual cues and sensitive content of data. Although the telephonic interviews present various challenges in mixed method data collection, it can be used as an alternative to face-to-face data collection using available technology.Conclusions: It is important that the investigators are well trained keeping these challenges in mind so that their capacity is built to deal with these challenges and good quality data is obtained

Factors associated with stigma and manifestations experienced by Indian health care workers involved in COVID-19 management in India: A qualitative study

Healthcare personnel who deal with COVID-19 experience stigma. There is a lack of national-level representative qualitative data to study COVID-19-related stigma among healthcare workers in India. The present study explores factors associated with stigma and manifestations experienced by Indian healthcare workers involved in COVID-19 management. We conducted in-depth interviews across 10 centres in India, which were analysed using NVivo software version 12. Thematic and sentiment analysis was performed to gain deep insights into the complex phenomenon by categorising the qualitative data into meaningful and related categories. Healthcare workers (HCW) usually addressed the stigma they encountered when doing their COVID duties under the superordinate theme of stigma. Among them, 77.42% said they had been stigmatised in some way. Analyses revealed seven interrelated themes surrounding stigma among healthcare workers. It can be seen that the majority of the stigma and coping sentiments fall into the mixed category, followed by the negative sentiment category. This study contributes to our understanding of stigma and discrimination in low- and middle-income settings. Our data show that the emergence of fear of the virus has quickly turned into a stigma against healthcare workers

Perioperative vision loss: A complication to watch out

Postoperative vision loss, a rare but devastating complication, has been reported after spine, cardiac, and head–neck surgeries. Its incidence following spine surgeries exceeds that after cardiothoracic surgeries. Various causes attributed to postoperative blindness include ischemic optic neuropathy, central or branch retinal artery occlusion, cortical blindness, and rarely external ocular injury. Other contributory factors described are microvascular diseases and intraoperative hemodynamic compromise. However, the exact association of these factors with postoperative blindness has not yet been confirmed. In this review, we describe causes, presentation, and treatment of postoperative blindness and also recommend practical guidelines to avoid this complication. The search strategies for this review included both search of electronic databases as well as manual search of relevant articles