The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education of medical, dental and non-medical healthcare professionals in Bangladesh : findings and connotation

Lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic had an appreciable impact on the education of all medical, dental, and non-medical healthcare professional (HCP) students. These included the closure of universities necessitating a rapid move to e-learning and new approaches to practical’s. However initially, there was a lack of knowledge and expertise regarding e-learning approaches and the affordability of internet bundles and equipment. We initially con-ducted two pilot studies to assess such current challenges, replaced by a two-stage approach including a full investigation involving 32 private and public universities during the early stages of the pandemic followed by a later study assessing the current environment brought about by the forced changes. Top challenges at the start of the pandemic included a lack of familiarity with e-learning approaches, cost of the internet, lack of IT equipment and the quality of the classes. Universities offered support to staff and students to a varying degree to address identified challenges. Since then, e-learning approaches have widened the possibilities for teaching and learning at convenient times. However, challenges remain. In conclusion, there were considerable challenges at the start of them pandemic. Several key issues have been addressed with hybrid learning here to stay. Remaining challenges include a lack of ICT equipment. However, new innovations will continue

Synthesis of <i>p-</i>tolyl<i> </i>3,4-<i>O</i>-isopropylidene-2-<i>O</i>-(methylthiomethyl)-β-<img src='http://www.niscair.res.in/jinfo/smaller.gif' border=0>-fucopyranose

639-641Treatment of p-tolyl 3,4-O-isopropylidene-6-deoxy-1-thio-β--galactopyranoside and related compounds with methyl sulfoxide in the presence of acetic anhydride afford the formation of a methylthiomethyl ether namely p-tolyl 3,4-O-isopropylidene-2-O-(methylthiomethyl)-β--fucopyranose in place of the expected 2-keto compound

Function induction, gene expression, and evolutionary representation construction

Di erent portions of the DNA, the primary information career of a living organism, are evaluated in di erent cells through the process of gene expression (DNA!mRNA!Protein). Such distributed evaluation of the tness is possible only when its distributed representation using a set of basis functions is available in a living body. This paper argues that unless the evolution was provided with such a representation, we have every reason to believe that there must be an e cient mechanism to construct such a distributed representation. This paper considers functionally complete Walsh basis functions and shows that e cient polynomial-time computation of the Walsh representation (WR) is possible for problems with bounded non-linearity. It also o ers a highly e cient algorithm O(2k r) to compute the WR for problems with non-negative Walsh coe cients, where r is the total number of non-zero terms in its WR.

Receptor-mediated endocytosis of fucosylated neoglycoprotein by macrophages

The characteristics of the recognition system involved in the receptor mediated endocytosis of the neoglycoprotein, fucose human serum albumin (HSA) were studied. It was found that (i) fucose-HSA showed strong affinity binding and uptake by various macrophages; (ii) binding was specific for L-fucose and D-mannose; (iii) binding was found to be inhibited by oxidant like H2O2 and swainsonine whereas it was elevated by dexamethasone; (iv) clearance of125I-fucose-HSA was rapid and strongly inhibited by unlabelled fucose-HSA. Greater than 70% of fucose-HSA was found in liver and more than 60% of this was found in liver lysosomes; (v) uptake of fucose-HSA was thirty-fold more efficient in liver macrophages (Kupffer cells) than in hepatocytes; (vi) moreover, mannose-HSA and ovalbumin which are potent inhibitors of mannose/N-acetylglucosamine receptors inhibited clearance and uptake of fucose-HSA by liver as well as by isolated Kupffer cells suggesting the involvement of both fucose and mannose receptors or a single type of receptor having greater affinity for fucose-HSA than for mannose-HSA. These results emphasize the important role of fucose-terminated glycoproteins in site-specific drug targeting

Sequence Specific Binding of Beta Carboline Alkaloid Harmalol with Deoxyribonucleotides: Binding Heterogeneity, Conformational, Thermodynamic and Cytotoxic Aspects

<div><p>Background</p><p>Base dependent binding of the cytotoxic alkaloid harmalol to four synthetic polynucleotides, poly(dA).poly(dT), poly(dA-dT).poly(dA-dT), poly(dG).poly(dC) and poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC) was examined by various photophysical and calorimetric studies, and molecular docking.</p><p>Methodology/Principal Findings</p><p>Binding data obtained from absorbance according to neighbor exclusion model indicated that the binding constant decreased in the order poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC)>poly(dA-dT).poly(dA-dT)>poly(dA).poly(dT)>poly(dG).poly(dC). The same trend was shown by the competition dialysis, change in fluorescence steady state intensity, stabilization against thermal denaturation, increase in the specific viscosity and perturbations in circular dichroism spectra. Among the polynucleotides, poly(dA).poly(dT) and poly(dG).poly(dC) showed positive cooperativity where as poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC) and poly(dA-dT).poly(dA-dT) showed non cooperative binding. Isothermal calorimetric data on the other hand showed enthalpy driven exothermic binding with a hydrophobic contribution to the binding Gibbs energy with poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC), and poly(dA-dT).poly(dA-dT) where as harmalol with poly(dA).poly(dT) showed entropy driven endothermic binding and with poly(dG).poly(dC) it was reported to be entropy driven exothermic binding. The study also tested the <i>in vitro</i> chemotherapeutic potential of harmalol in HeLa, MDA-MB-231, A549, and HepG2 cell line by MTT assay.</p><p>Conclusions/Significance</p><p>Studies unequivocally established that harmalol binds strongly with hetero GC polymer by mechanism of intercalation where the alkaloid resists complete overlap to the DNA base pairs inside the intercalation cavity and showed maximum cytotoxicity on HepG2 with IC₅₀ value of 14 µM. The results contribute to the understanding of binding, specificity, energetic, cytotoxicity and docking of harmalol-DNA complexation that will guide synthetic efforts of medicinal chemists for developing better therapeutic agents.</p></div

myjournal manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) On-board Vehicle Data Stream Monitoring using MineFleet and Fast Resource Constrained Monitoring of Correlation Matrices

Abstract This paper considers the problem of monitoring vehicle data streams in a resource-constrained environment. It particularly focuses on a monitoring task that requires frequent computation of correlation matrices using lightweight onboard computing devices. It motivates this problem in the context of the Mine-Fleet Real-Time system and offers a randomized algorithm for fast monitoring of correlation (FMC), inner product, and Euclidean distance matrices among others. Unlike the existing approaches that compute all the entries of these matrices from a data set, the proposed technique works using a divide-and-conquer approach. This paper presents a probabilistic test for quickly detecting whether or not a subset of coefficients contains a significant one with a magnitude greater than a user given threshold. This test is used for quickly identifying the portions of the space that contain significant coefficients. The proposed algorithm is particularly suitable for monitoring correlation and related matrices computed from continuous data streams.

ITC derived binding and thermodynamic profiles for the interaction of harmalol to various polynucleotides^a.

a<p>Average of three determinations in CP buffer of 15 mM [Na⁺], pH 6.8. Values of Δ<i>G^o</i> were determined using the equation Δ<i>G^o</i> = −<i>RT ln K</i>_b and <i>T</i>Δ<i>S^o</i> = Δ<i>H^o</i>−Δ<i>G^o</i>. n denotes the binding site size.</p><p>ITC derived binding and thermodynamic profiles for the interaction of harmalol to various polynucleotides^{<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0108022#nt103" target="_blank">a</a>}.</p

Synthesis and Radiobiological Evaluation of a new 99mTc-Labeled small Peptide:99mTc-YGGSLAK as Imaging Agent

Peptides are known as receptor-specific molecules that play an important role not only in diagnosis and therapy of neoplastic diseases, but also in the pathogenesis of other diseases. In an effort to develop a peptide-based radiopharmaceutical for scintigraphic studies, a small peptide Tyr-Gly-Gly-Ser-Leu-Ala-Lys (YGGSLAK) was synthesized by Fmoc solid-phase peptide synthesis using an automated synthesizer. This peptide was analyzed by TLC, HPLC and mass spectroscopy. Then, we investigated its analytical and pharmacokinetic study after radiolabeling with technetium-99m (99mTc) using SnCl2. The radiochemical purity of the complex was over 95% and log p value was 1.46. In vivo biodistribution studies in rat showed that most activity of this injected radiolabeled peptide (99mTc-YGGSLAK) was accumulated in the liver and followed by gallbladder, intestines and kidney. Scintigraphy studies on rabbits also showed very high uptake and retention in the liver and gallbladder, and after 1 h slowly excreted through the hepatobiliary system and a little amount was also excreted through the renal system. The radiochemical and in vitro and in vivo characterization indicates that 99mTc-YGGSLAK has certain favorable properties and it might be used as a new radiopharmaceutical for hepatobiliary scintigraphy

ITC profile for the binding of 1200 µM of (A) poly(dA-dT).poly(dA-dT), (B) poly(dA).poly(dT), (C) poly(dG-dC).poly(dG-dC) and (D) poly(dG).poly(dC) to harmalol (20 µM) at 25±0.5°C, pH 6.8.

<p>Each heat burst curve (in the bottom part of upper panel) is the result of a 1.5 µL sequential injection of the polynucleotide into harmalol (curves at the bottom). The top part of upper panel show the heat burst for the injection of the polynucleotide into the same buffer as control in each experiment (curves offset for clarity). The lower panel represent the corresponding normalized heat data against the molar ratio (P/D) (E, F, G and H). The data points (•-•) reflect the experimental injection heats while the solid line represents the calculated best fit of the data. The values of the various thermodynamic parameters obtained are presented in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0108022#pone-0108022-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>.</p