[(Methyl­carbamothio­yl)disulfan­yl]methyl N-methyl­carbamodithio­ate

The title compound, C5H10N2S5, was unintentionally obtained as the product of an attempted synthesis of a methyl­carbamodithioic acid using methyl­amine and carbon disulfide. In the mol­ecule, two dithio­carbamate groups are bridged by a –CH2S– unit. The C—S—S—C torsion angle is −90.13 (11)°. The crystal structure is stabilized by N—H⋯S inter­actions between neighbouring mol­ecules. An intra­molecular N—H⋯S hydrogen bond also occurs

Water quality assessment of River Kabul at Peshawar, Pakistan: industrial and urban wastewater impacts

Untreated wastewater discharges may have significant short term and long term effects on the quality of a river system. Present study was undertaken to assess the present status of the water quality of River Kabul near Peshawar in Pakistan. Seven sites were sampled upstream and downstream in River Kabul in 2009. Samples were also taken from waste water channel (Budni Drain) that carries wastewater of Peshawar Industrial Estate as well as the domestic sewers to assess the pollution contribution of these sources to River Kabul. Physico-chemical and microbiological parameters of the samples were analyzed during the study, as well as possible sources of contamination were investigated. The study showed that the pollution level in river is rising from upstream (at city entrance) to downstream (at city exit) due to discharge of domestic waste water effluents, agricultural activities, and solid waste dumping directly into the river

Anti-nociceptive and Anti-inflammatory Activities of Asparacosin A Involve Selective Cyclooxygenase 2 and Inflammatory Cytokines Inhibition: An in-vitro, in-vivo, and in-silico Approach

Triterpenes possess anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive effects. In this study anti-inflammatory activities of Asparacosin A were evaluated' using in-vitro cyclooxygenases 1 and 2 (COX-1/2) inhibition assays. Moreover, anti-nociceptive activities were assessed in-vivo by carrageenan-induced paw edema test, xylene-induced ear edema tests, and acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin tests. Additionally molecular docking was conducted to elucidate the binding mechanism of the compound and to correlate the in-vitro findings with the in-silico data. Oral administration of Asparacosin A at the doses of 10, 20, and 40 mg/kg induced significant anti-inflammatory effects (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.001) in a dose-dependent manner in both models. Asparacosin A also inhibited the human recombinant COX-2 enzyme and caused a dose-dependent decrease in the levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, and PGE2 in the carrageenan-induced paws. Moreover, Asparacosin A displayed significant anti-nociceptive effects (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001) at the doses of 10, 20, and 40 mg/kg in acetic-acid induced writhing test. However, in formalin test, Asparacosin A (10–40 mg/kg, p.o) produced anti-nociceptive effects only in the late phase, similar to the effect observed with the reference drug celecoxib (50 mg/kg, p.o). Molecular docking was carried out on both COX-1 and COX-2 structures which revealed that Asparacosin A targets allosteric binding site similar to the binding mode of the selective COX inhibitor. In conclusion, Asparacosin A exhibits anti-inflammatory and peripheral anti-nociceptive activities which are likely mediated via inhibition of COX-2 enzyme and inflammatory cytokines. Furthermore, Asparacosin A can serve as a model to obtain new and more selective potent anti-inflammatory and anti-nociceptive drugs

Crystal structure of 4-[(2-methoxyphenyl)carbamoyl]butanoic acid, C12H15NO4

C12H15NO4, triclinic, P1̄ (no. 2), a = 7.4325(3) Å, b = 7.5171(3) Å, c = 23.7377(9) Å, α = 87.780(3)°, β = 89.105(3)°, γ = 61.299(4)°, V = 1162.42(9) Å3, Z = 4, Rgt(F) = 0.0566, wRref(F2) = 0.1652, T = 100(2) K

Urdu Handwritten Characters Data Visualization and Recognition Using Distributed Stochastic Neighborhood Embedding and Deep Network

This study was supported by the China University of Petroleum-Beijing and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities under Grant no. 2462020YJRC001.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effective video summarization approach based on visual attention

Video summarization is applied to reduce redundancy and develop a concise representation of key frames in the video, more recently, video summaries have been used through visual attention modeling. In these schemes, the frames that stand out visually are extracted as key frames based on human attention modeling theories. The schemes for modeling visual attention have proven to be effective for video summaries. Nevertheless, the high cost of computing in such techniques restricts their usability in everyday situations. In this context, we propose a method based on KFE (key frame extraction) technique, which is recommended based on an efficient and accurate visual attention model. The calculation effort is minimized by utilizing dynamic visual highlighting based on the temporal gradient instead of the traditional optical flow techniques. In addition, an efficient technique using a discrete cosine transformation is utilized for the static visual salience. The dynamic and static visual attention metrics are merged by means of a non-linear weighted fusion technique. Results of the systemare compared with some existing stateof- the-art techniques for the betterment of accuracy. The experimental results of our proposed model indicate the efficiency and high standard in terms of the key frames extraction as output.Qatar University - No. IRCC-2021-010

Protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B inhibitors isolated from Artemisia roxburghiana

Artemisia roxburghiana is used in traditional medicine for treating various diseases including diabetes. The present study was designed to evaluate the antidiabetic potential of active constituents by using protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) as a validated target for management of diabetes. Various compounds were isolated as active principles from the crude methanolic extract of aerial parts of A. roxburghiana. All compounds were screened for PTP1B inhibitory activity. Molecular docking simulations were performed to investigate the mechanism behind PTP1B inhibition of the isolated compound and positive control, ursolic acid. Betulinic acid, betulin and taraxeryl acetate were the active PTP1B principles with IC50 values 3.49 ± 0.02, 4.17 ± 0.03 and 87.52 ± 0.03 µM, respectively. Molecular docking studies showed significant molecular interactions of the triterpene inhibitors with Gly220, Cys215, Gly218 and Asp48 inside the active site of PTP1B. The antidiabetic activity of A. roxburghiana could be attributed due to PTP1B inhibition by its triterpene constituents, betulin, betulinic acid and taraxeryl acetate. Computational insights of this study revealed that the C-3 and C-17 positions of the compounds needs extensive optimization for the development of new lead compounds