An On-Campus Botanical Tour to Promote Student Satisfaction and Learning in a University Level Biodiversity or General Biology Course

Outdoor, hands-on and experiential learning, as opposed to instruction-based learning in classroom, increases student satisfaction and motivation leading to a deeper understanding of the subject. However, the use of outdoor exercises in undergraduate biology courses is declining due to a variety of constraints. Thus, the goal of this paper is to describe a convenient, no-cost and flexible exercise using an on-campus botanical tour for strengthening specific knowledge areas of major plant groups. Its assessment on conduct and coverage, and student-perceived and actual knowledge gain is also described. Data presented derived from traditional biology undergraduates in sophomore year over nine fall and three spring semesters. Conduct and coverage was assessed using a summative survey including open-ended questions administered to 198 students. A pre- and post-exercise survey addressing 10 knowledge categories was administered to 139 students to evaluate student-perceived knowledge gain. Quiz grades from the on-campus tour exercise were compared with average quiz grades from two in-class plant-related labs of 234 students to assess actual knowledge gain. Each student reporting on the conduct and coverage indicated either one or a combination of outcomes of the exercise as positive engagement, experiential learning, or of interest. Student-perceived improvement was evident in all ten knowledge categories with a greater improvement in categories learned anew during exercise compared to subjects reviewed. Quiz grades from the exercise were \u3e11% greater than quiz grades from the two in-class plant-related labs. Active learning with interest likely contributed to the increased perceived and actual knowledge gains. Suggestions for adoption of the exercise in different settings are presented based on both student comments and instructor’s experience

On the theory of point-particles

It is deduced from the conservation of the energy-momentum tensor that if the flow of energy and momentum into a tube surrounding a time-like world-line, on which the field is singular, become singular as the size of the tube is contracted to zero, then the singular terms are necessarily perfect differentials of quantities on the world-line with respect to the proper time along the world-line. The same can be proved of any other tensor, as, for example, the angular-momentum tensor, which is conserved. It is proved from this that for any point-particle whatever having charge, spin or other properties, which need not be specified, it is always possible to deduce exact equations of motion which are finite. It is proved further that if the energy-momentum tensor is altered by the addition of partial Kμ ν σ/partial xσ, where Kμ ν σ is any tensor antisymmetric in ν and σ , then the equations of motion are unaltered, but it is possible to choose Kμ ν σ in such a way as to make the flow of energy and momentum into a given tube non-singular

Phylogenetic Study of Indian Collembolan: an Evaluation in Uttar Pradesh

Springtails (Collembola) from the largest of the three lineages of modern hexapods that are no longer considered insects (the other two are the Protura and Diplura). Although the three orders are sometimes grouped together in a class called Entognatha because they have internal mouthparts, they do not appear to be any more closely related to one another than they all are to insects, which have external mouthparts. Collembolans are omnivorous, free-living organisms that prefer moist conditions. They do not directly engage in the decomposition of organic matter but contribute to it indirectly through the fragmentation of organic matter and the control of soil microbial communities. The word "Collembola" is from the ancient Greek "Glue" and "Peg"; this name was given due to the existence of the collophore, which was previously thought to stick to surfaces in order to stabilize the insect. It is necessary to study the phylogeny of collembolans to explore evolutionary status

Sertraline induced hyponatremia

A 53 year old female patient with a history of carcinoma of the breast in remission and dilated cardiomyopathy on treatment was newly diagnosed with depression. She was started on Sertraline 50mg once a day. 2 days later she developed severe hyponatremia (serum sodium 114mEq/l). Her condition further deteriorated and on the 6th day her medication was stopped and replaced with mirtazapine. Osmolality studies she was diagnosed with SIADH (Syndrome of Inappropriate Antidiuretic Hormone secretion). She was treated with IV sodium chloride for her hyponatremia. At discharge serum sodium levels improved (127mEq/l)  and subsequent follow up 4 weeks later showed normal sodium values (138mEq/L)Keywords: Sodium chloride, Syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone, Serum sodium, Serum osmolarity

ISOLATION OF CYTOTOXIC CONSTITUENT FROM BIOACTIVITY GUIDED FRACTION OF ALYSICARPUS MONILIFER L. (DC.)

Objective: Alysicarpus monilifer (Family Papilionaceae) has been used in the Indigenous system of medicine in tumor removal. The present study was designed to isolate and identify the constituent responsible for cytotoxic (anti-tumor) effects of the plant Alysicarpus monilifer. Methods: The plant was powdered and extracted to give a methanolic extract. Initially, Hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanolic fractions of the methanolic extract of the plant were subjected to cytotoxic screening using cell line based assay (MTT assay and NRU assay). The chloroform fraction showed significant cytotoxicity, so it was further subjected to column chromatography, to separate the cytotoxic phytoconstituent. The cell lines selected were breast cancer cells (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-468) and Liver cancer cells (HepG2 and HLE cell). Results were calculated as percentage growth inhibition with respect to untreated (control) cells versus treated cells. Result: A triterpene, Betulinic acid, was isolated from the aerial parts of Alysicarpus monilifer. The cytotoxic activity of the identified compound against MCF-7, MDA-MB-231, HLE and HepG2 cells was also found to be highly significant with 90% growth inhibition. Conclusion: The triterpene was identified to be betulinic acid, to which the cytotoxic activity can be attributed. It is a first report of isolation of betulinic acid from the Alysicarpus species

Sentiment Analysis on IMDb Movie Reviews Using Hybrid Feature Extraction Method

Social Networking sites have become popular and common places for sharing wide range of emotions through short texts. These emotions include happiness, sadness, anxiety, fear, etc. Analyzing short texts helps in identifying the sentiment expressed by the crowd. Sentiment Analysis on IMDb movie reviews identifies the overall sentiment or opinion expressed by a reviewer towards a movie. Many researchers are working on pruning the sentiment analysis model that clearly identifies and distinguishes between a positive review and a negative review. In the proposed work, we show that the use of Hybrid features obtained by concatenating Machine Learning features (TF, TF-IDF) with Lexicon features (Positive-Negative word count, Connotation) gives better results both in terms of accuracy and complexity when tested against classifiers like SVM, Naïve Bayes, KNN and Maximum Entropy. The proposed model clearly differentiates between a positive review and negative review. Since understanding the context of the reviews plays an important role in classification, using hybrid features helps in capturing the context of the movie reviews and hence increases the accuracy of classification

CYTOTOXIC EFFECT OF CORCHORUS DEPRESSUS AGAINST HEPG2 AND HLE HUMAN LIVER CANCER CELLS

Objective: The present study was designed to examine the cytotoxic effects of methanolic extract of aerial parts of Corchorus depressus and hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and aqueous fractions of the same extract in the human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (HepG2) and invasive hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines (HLE).Methods: Anti-proliferative effects were evaluated using 3-(4,5-dimethythiazol2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) and neutral red uptake (NRU) assay. Human HCC (HepG2) and invasive hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines (HLE) were treated with different concentrations of methanolic extract (10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 μg/mL) of aerial parts of C. depressus as well as hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and aqueous fractions (200 μg/mL) for 24 and 48 h. The cell viability and the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) were determined.Results: The maximum cytotoxic effect was noticed with a maximum dose of methanolic extract (500 μg/mL) and alkaloidal fraction (200 μg) in this study with an IC50 value of about 200 μg.Conclusion: The set of studies showed that methanolic extract of aerial parts of C. depressus and alkaloidal, chloroform and ethyl acetate fractions fractions was capable of inhibiting cell growth and cell proliferation by inducing cytotoxicity of HepG2 and HLE cells