ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF CYCAS CIRCINALIS.L AND IONIDIUM SUFFRUTICOSUM. GING

Herbs with antioxidants and antimicrobial activity play a vital role in prevention and cure of certain complex diseases. Cycas circinalis and Ionidium Suffruticosum are the herbs taken to study its antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. The ethanolic extract of the above 2 herbs were taken and the antimicrobial activity was studied by Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method and the antioxidant activity was analyzed by percentage inhibition of DPPH activity. Around 8 species of microorganisms were taken for antimicrobial assay. The Cycas circinalis showed 0.7mm of zone of inhibition for Staphylococcus aureus in culture whereas Ionidium Suffruticosum showed 1mm and 0.4 mm of zone of inhibition for Escherichia colli and Salmonella typhi respectively. The rest of all species were non-reactive for both the herbal extracts. The IC50 values of I.suffruticosum at various concentrations were 95.6, 96.0 and 97.6 respectively whereas for C.circinalis, it was 78.7, 85.9 and 87.5 respectively. The IC50 value of I.suffruticosum shows that the herb has more antioxidant property when compared to that of C.circinalis and standard (ascorbic acid). The study shows that I.suffruticosum and C.circinalis both have mild antimicrobial activity acting only on 2 species of bacteria and the rest were dormant. I.suffruticosum and C.circinalis both were found to have antioxidant activity. This is a preliminary study done on the above 2 herbs which is a part of vast ongoing research work

Redemptive benefit of atorvastatin in the risk factors of coronary artery disease

Cardiovascular disease, in particular coronary artery disease (CAD), is the principal cause of mortality in developed countries. The classical acute phase protein, C-reactive protein (CRP) is an exquisitely sensitive systemic marker of disease with broad clinical utility for monitoring and differential diagnosis. In recent years, acute phase reactants have been shown to predict future cardiovascular events in individuals with and without established CAD. Atorvastatin, a 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitor, substantially reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and recently their anti-inflammatory properties have been investigated. The present study was therefore designed to determine the effects of atorvastatin on CRP in patients with CAD. Ninety two patients with or without or at the risk of CAD were recruited for the study, of which 35 belongs to control (untreated) and 57 were test group, in which, 30 of them received daily with 20 mg/day of atorvastatin and the remaining 27 were untreated. The patients were followed for over a period of 6 weeks. For entire study population, CRP along with lipid profile, SGOT, SGPT, urea and creatinine were measured 1st day and at the end of 6th week of the treatment. For patients with or at risk of CAD, the reduced rate of progression of atherosclerosis associated with intensive atorvastatin treatment, as compared with control is significantly related to greater reduction in the levels of both atherogenic lipoproteins and CRP. This may be important with respect to the early benefits of atorvastatin therapy

APHRODISIAC ACTIVITY OF CYCAS CIRCINALIS.L AND IONIDIUM SUFFRUTICOSUM.GING ON MALE WISTER ALBINO RATS

Introduction: Cycas circinalis .L and Ionidium suffruticosum. Ging are the two herbs used in Siddha system of medicine (Indian Medicine) for years together to improve the fertility of male. Objective: The aphrodisiac activities of the two herbs Cycas circinalis .L and Ionidium suffruticosum. Ging were tested on male albino rats and compared the effect with normal and positive control male albino rats. Materials and Methods: The present study involves 4 groups, each group has 6 healthy sexually active male albino rats. The Cycas circinalis and Ionidium suffruticosum extract (200mg/kg body weight) were administered orally to 2 experimental group of albino rats and its sexual performance was compared to the normal albino rats (given normal saline) and positive control albino rats (given Sildenafil citrate 4.5mg/kg body weight). The aphrodisiac activities of rats due to the effect of the herb were observed by various parameters such as mount frequency, mount latency, intromission frequency, intromission latency, ejaculation latency, post ejaculatory Interval and total sexual behavior. The data's were analyzed using one way ANOVA and found to be statistically significant. Results: The herbs showed significant positive results in improving various parameters involved in maintaining maleness. The study proves that Cycas circinalis and Ionidium suffruticosum both have aphrodisiac activity and Ionidium suffruticosum was proved to be more effective and almost has the similar effect of Sildenafil citrate. Conclusion The herbal extracts possessing aphrodisiac activity will be of great use for males suffering from sexual disorders like impotence. KEYWORDS: Ionidium suffruticosum, Cycas circinalis, Aphrodisiac activity, Mount frequency, Mount latency, Intromission frequency, Intromission latency, Ejaculation latency, Post ejaculatory interval, Total sexual behavior

Laboratory Column flotation studies for reduction of alumina and silica in iron ore slimes of an operating plant

A typical iron ore washing plant for treating iron ore fines (<10 mm) consist of sizing of the ore by dry / wet screening, washing, classification by screw classifiers followed by single or multi-stage hydrocycloning of screw classifiers overflow. The underflow of the hydrocyclones forms the concentrate which is suitable for pellets making. Since the cut-point of hydrocyclones is usually at 20 µm or less, relatively lower diameter cyclones in a cluster with parallel feeding are used. This is found to, often, result in choking of the spigots, at times, by extraneous material reporting along with the slurry. It is observed to lead to sub-optimum performance of the cyclones with loss of iron values into cyclone overflow and thereafter into tailings. Analysis of the data of an operating beneficiation plant (Beneficiation plant - 1) of M/s Jindal South West (JSW) Steel Limited, Karnataka, India over a period of one year indicated that weight recovery of the concentrate from two-stage hydrocycloning was 45.9% (with respect to feed to the cyclones) and assaying 63.43% Fe, 4.43% SiO2 and 2.23% Al2O3. Considering the fineness of the slimes (d80: 40.5 µm), generated as screw classifier overflow, flotation is thought to be better alternative vis-à-vis hydrocyclones to recover iron values from it. The present study aims at improving the recovery of the iron values from the screw classifier overflow by adopting reverse cationic column flotation technology. After selecting a suitable collector, process parameters like collector and depressant dosages are optimized by statistically designed experiments on a Denver D12 flotation cell. Later, the effect of important operating parameters of flotation column like air flow-rate, froth depth and wash water on the separation process is studied and optimized. It was established that a typical screw classifier overflow analyzing 60.43% Fe, 6.88% SiO2 and 3.26% Al2O3 could be improved to 63.30% Fe, 4.04% SiO2 and 2.32% Al2O3 with 59.10% weight and 61.70% Fe recovery. This is an improvement of 29% in weight recovery of the concentrate at equivalent metallurgy compared to what is being obtained, by two-stage cycloning

Application of Soft Computing for the Prediction of Warpage of Plastic Injection

This paper deals with the development of accurate warpage prediction model for plastic injection molded parts using softcomputing tools namely, artificial neural networks and support vector machines. For training, validating and testing of thewarpage model, a number of MoldFlow (FE) analyses have been carried out using Taguchi’s orthogonal array in the designof experimental technique by considering the process parameters such as mold temperature, melt temperature, packing pressure,packing time and cooling time. The warpage values were found by analyses which were done by MoldFlow PlasticInsight (MPI) 5.0 software. The artificial neural network model and support vector machine regression model have beendeveloped using conjugate gradient learning algorithm and ANOVA kernel function respectively. The adequacy of the developedmodels is verified by using coefficient of determination. To judge the ability and efficiency of the models to predictthe warpage values absolute relative error has been used. The finite element results show, artificial neural network modelpredicts with high accuracy compared with support vector machine model

Preparation and Characterization of Nano-Dy 2

Composite polymer electrolyte films containing various concentrations of nano-Dy2O3 (1.0 to 4.0%) in PVA + sodium citrate (90 : 10) are synthesized adopting solution cast method and are characterized using FTIR, XRD, SEM, and DSC techniques. The investigations indicate that all components are homogenously dispersed. Films containing 3% of nano-Dy2O3 are more homogenous and less crystalline, and the same is supported by DSC studies indicating the friendly nature to ionic conductivity. Transference number studies reveal that the major charge carriers are ions. With the increase in % of nano-Dy2O3, the conductivity increases and reaches maximum in 3% film with a value of 1.06 × 10−4 S/cm (at 303 K). Further, the conductivity of the film increases with raise in temperature due to the hopping of interchain and intrachain ion movements and fall in microscopic viscosity at the matrix interface of the film. Electrochemical cells are fabricated using these films with the configuration “anode (Mg + MgSO4)/[PVA (90%) + Na3C6H5O7 (10%) + (1–4% nano-Dy2O3)]/cathode (I2 + C + electrolyte),” and various discharge characteristics are evaluated. With 3% nano-Dy2O3 film, the maximum discharge time of 118 hrs with open-circuit voltage of 2.68 V, power density of 0.91 W/kg, and energy density of 107.5 Wh/kg are observed. These findings reflect the successful adoption of the developed polymer electrolyte films in electrochemical cells

Determination of forecasts errors arising from different components of model physics and dynamics

This paper addresses a procedure to extract error estimates for the physical and dynamical components of a forecast model. This is a two-step process in which contributions to the forecast tendencies from individual terms of the model equations are first determined using an elaborate bookkeeping of the forecast. The second step regresses these estimates of tendencies from individual terms of the model equations against the observed total tendencies. This process is executed separately for the entire horizontal and vertical transform grid points of a global model. The summary of results based on the corrections to the physics and dynamics provided by the regression coefficients highlights the component errors of the model arising from its formulation. This study provides information on geographical and vertical distribution of forecast errors contributed by features such as nonlinear advective dynamics, the rest of the dynamics, deep cumulus convection, large-scale condensation physics, radiative processes, and the rest of physics. Several future possibilities from this work are also discussed in this paper