Preliminary structure-activity relationship studies on some novel s-substituted aliphatic analogues of 5-{1-[(4- chlorophenyl) sulfonyl]-3-piperidinyl}-1, 3, 4-oxadiazol-2-yl sulfide

Purpose: To study the structure-activity relationships of synthetic multifunctional sulfides through evaluation of lipoxygenase and anti-bacterial activities.Methods: S-substituted derivatives of the parent compound 5-(1-(4- chlorophenylsulfonyl) piperidin-3- yl)-1, 3, 4-oxadiazole-2-thiol were synthesized through reaction with different saturated and unsaturated alkyl halides in DMF medium, with NaH catalyst. Spectral characterization of each derivative was carried out with respect to IR, 1H - NMR, 13C - NMR and EI - MS. The lipoxygenase inhibitory and antibacterial activities of the derivatives were determined using standard procedures.Results: Compound 5e exhibited higher lipoxygenase inhibitory potential than the standard (Baicalein®), with % inhibition of 94.71 ± 0.45 and IC50 of 20.72 ± 0.34 μmoles/L. Compound 5b showed significant antibacterial potential against all the bacterial strains with % inhibition ranging from 62.04 ± 2.78, 69.49 ± 0.41, 63.38 ± 1.97 and 59.70 ± 3.70 to 78.32 ± 0.41, while MIC ranged from 8.18 ± 2.00, 10.60 ± 1.83, 10.84 ± 3.00, 9.81 ± 1.86 and 11.73 ± 5.00 μmoles/L for S. typhi, E. coli, P. aeruginosa, B. subtilis and S. aureus, respectively. Compounds 5d, 5e and 5g showed good antibacterial activity against S. typhi and B. subtilis bacterial strains.Conclusion: The results suggest that compound 5e bearing n-pentyl group is a potent lipoxygenase inhibitor, while compound 5b with n-propyl substitution is a strong antibacterial agent. In addition, compounds 5d, 5e and 5g bearing n-butyl, n-pentyl and n-octyl groups, respectively, are good antibacterial agents against S. typhi and B. subtilis.Keywords: Sulfides, Antibacterial activity, Lipoxygenase activity, Spectral analysi

Synthesis and Evaluation of some New 5-Substituted-1,3,4- oxadiazol-2yl-4-(morpholin-4yl Sulfonyl)benzyl Sulfides as Antibacterial Agent

Purpose: To synthesise a new series of 5-substituted-1,3,4-Oxadiazol-2yl-4-(morpholin-4yl sulfonyl)benzyl sulfide and evaluate their antibacterial activity.Methods: Different organic acids were converted consecutively into corresponding esters, hydrazides and 5-substituted-1,3,4-Oxadiazol-2-thiols (4a-e). The targets, 6a-e were synthesized by stirring 4a-e with 4-(4-(bromomethyl)phenylsulfonyl) morpholine (5) in the presence of N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) and sodium hydride (NaH). All the structures were elucidated by modern spectroscopic techniques and screened against bacteria using standard procedure and ciprofloxacin drug as positive control.Results: The yield of the synthesized compounds (4a-e and 6a-e) were moderate (65 - 90 %). Compounds 6a-e had antibacterial activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillis subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus while some had activity against the other bacteria used. One of the compounds, 6b, exhibited significant activity against all the bacterial strains, i.e., S. typhi (-), E. coli (-), K. pneumoniae (-), P. aeruginosa (-), B. subtilis (+) and S. aureus (+) with  MIC (μM) values of 11.01 ± 0.31, 15.37 ± 3.33, 16.11 ± 1.14, 9.70 ± 1.96, 10.01 ± 2.70 and 9.15 ± 0.29, respectively. However, none of the compounds had any inhibitory activity against any bacteria as high as that of ciprofloxacin.Conclusion: Five new compounds with antibacterial activities have been synthesized. Their potential as therapeutic agents is, however, yet to be evaluated.Keywords: 1,3,4-Oxadiazole, Benzyl sulfide, 4-(4-(bromomethyl)phenylsulfonyl)morpholine, Spectral analysis, Antibacterial activit

Janitorial Services of Pak Army Hospitals, a Critical Analysis

Objective: To identify the existing system of janitorial services in the army hospitals, and to give recommendations for standardized policy formulation in military hospitals. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Tertiary Care Hospitals, namely Hospital A, B and C, at Rawalpindi Pakistan, from Oct 2019 Jan 2020. Methodology: Responses from 401 Healthcare Administrators (HCAs), Nurses and Janitorial staff were collected through a validated questionnaire, and hospitals' documents/ SOPs, cleaning audit reports, feedback process documents, communication mechanisms and training schedules were reviewed. Results: Out of 401 respondents, the majority were females (54.4%, 5 were HCAs, 143 were Nurses, and 70 were Janitorial staff). The availability of SOPs was associated with cleaning functional areas of hospitals (p=0.001). Awareness of the risk of infection among healthcare workers was associated with Hepatitis B vaccination (p=0.03). Knowledge of hospital areas regarding cleanliness among hospital workers was linked to providing cleanliness training according to job requirements (p=0.001). Conclusion: Hospital A performed admirably in most areas but was found to need more human resources, with staff shortages, high turnover, and a lack of adherence to SOPs. To achieve optimum performance, existing and emerging technology must be integrated with sanitary worker preparation and career development; costs must be reduced. Keywords: Hospital environment, Infection control and disinfectants, Janitorial service, Training

Potential Applications of Rhizobacteria as Eco-Friendly Biological Control, Plant Growth Promotion and Soil Metal Bioremediation

Modern agriculture has an immense problem in the depletion of agricultural productivity owing to a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses. Agriculture’s sustainability and safety are dependent on ecologically friendly practices. Plant rhizobia have been proven to have an important role in disease control, as well as promoting plant growth, productivity, and biomass. Rhizobacteria are soil bacteria that live on the root surface and either directly or indirectly contribute to plant development. Rhizobia are used to induce mediated immune resistance through the manufacture of lytic enzymes, antibiotics, phytoalexins, phytohormone, metabolites. It supports the growth of plants through nitrogen fixation, nutrient enrichment, phosphate solubilization and phytohormone synthesis. In addition, it supports plants during different stresses such as temperature, osmotic, heavy metal and oxidative stress. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria have the ability to control heavy metal pollution of soils as well as enhancing plant growth in these soils. Efficient bioremediation is possible by using rhizobacterial inoculants, still, the distribution and functioning of microbes in the rhizosphere need to be fully explored. This review focuses on the effectiveness, biomonitoring processes and function in promoting plant development. Rhizobia application can be considered an alternative method for the improvement of biodiversity, agriculture, and the environment

Association Between Different Indicators of Obesity and Depression in Adults in Qingdao, China: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: This study was designed to investigate the perceived relationship between body weight and depression risk in a Chinese population in Qingdao, China.Methods: A population-based cross-sectional survey was performed with 4,573 participants (between 35 and 74 years) from the year 2009 to 2012 in Qingdao, China. We applied the Zung self-rating depression scale to ascertain the level of depression in participants. The associations between different indicators of obesity [body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR)] and depression were assessed by logistic regression based on the Chinese criteria of obesity. Sensitivity analysis was done based on the Asian and WHO criteria of obesity.Results: The Zung scores for the 243 participants (5.2%) were over 45 and they were entitled as depression. Furthermore, multivariable logistic analyses revealed that being overweight [odds ratios (OR): 1.48, 95% confidence intervals [95% CI]: 1.08–2.03] and having abdominal obesity (WC category in Chinese criteria) (OR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.08-2.00) were often associated with a higher risk for depression compared to normal weight subjects. Sensitivity analysis revealed that abdominal obesity (Asian criterion) (OR: 1.41, 95% CI: 1.03-1.91) was a significant risk factor for depression. Similarly, being overweight (WHO criterion) (OR: 1.39, 95% CI: 1.03-1.87) was an obvious risk factor for depression.Conclusion: Being overweight and having abdominal obesity (WC category) were found to be linked with a higher risk of depression. However, abdominal obesity (WHR category) was not associated with depression

HERVs establish a distinct molecular subtype in stage II/III colorectal cancer with poor outcome

© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most lethal malignancies. The extreme heterogeneity in survival rate is driving the need for new prognostic biomarkers. Human endogenous retroviruses (hERVs) have been suggested to influence tumor progression, oncogenesis and elicit an immune response. We examined multiple next-generation sequencing (NGS)-derived biomarkers in 114 CRC patients with paired whole-exome and whole-transcriptome sequencing (WES and WTS, respectively). First, we demonstrate that the median expression of hERVs can serve as a potential biomarker for prognosis, relapse, and resistance to chemotherapy in stage II and III CRC. We show that hERV expression and CD8+ tumor-infiltrating T-lymphocytes (TILs) synergistically stratify overall and relapse-free survival (OS and RFS): the median OS of the CD8-/hERV+ subgroup was 29.8 months compared with 37.5 months for other subgroups (HR = 4.4, log-rank P < 0.001). Combing NGS-based biomarkers (hERV/CD8 status) with clinicopathological factors provided a better prediction of patient survival compared to clinicopathological factors alone. Moreover, we explored the association between genomic and transcriptomic features of tumors with high hERV expression and establish this subtype as distinct from previously described consensus molecular subtypes of CRC. Overall, our results underscore a previously unknown role for hERVs in leading to a more aggressive subtype of CRC.The biobanking of CRC from Hospital Santa Maria, Lisbon, Portugal, was supported by a grant from the Official Portuguese Funding Agency for Science and Technology (FCT: PIC/IC/82821/2007).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Genetic and microenvironmental intra-tumor heterogeneity impacts colorectal cancer evolution and metastatic development

© The Author(s) 2022 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a highly diverse disease, where different genomic instability pathways shape genetic clonal diversity and tumor microenvironment. Although intra-tumor heterogeneity has been characterized in primary tumors, its origin and consequences in CRC outcome is not fully understood. Therefore, we assessed intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity of a prospective cohort of 136 CRC samples. We demonstrate that CRC diversity is forged by asynchronous forms of molecular alterations, where mutational and chromosomal instability collectively boost CRC genetic and microenvironment intra-tumor heterogeneity. We were able to depict predictor signatures of cancer-related genes that can foresee heterogeneity levels across the different tumor consensus molecular subtypes (CMS) and primary tumor location. Finally, we show that high genetic and microenvironment heterogeneity are associated with lower metastatic potential, whereas late-emerging copy number variations favor metastasis development and polyclonal seeding. This study provides an exhaustive portrait of the interplay between genetic and microenvironment intra-tumor heterogeneity across CMS subtypes, depicting molecular events with predictive value of CRC progression and metastasis development.This work was financed by national funds from FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences - UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy - i4HB. This research was also funded by: PTDC/MED-ONC/28660/2017 from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) to A.R.G. A.R.G is recipient of Researcher Grant CEECIND/02699/2017 from FCT. The biobanking of CRC samples from Hospital Santa Maria, Lisbon, Portugal was supported by FCT research grant PIC/IC/82821/2007. This work was produced with the support of INCD funded by FCT and FEDER under the project 22153-01/SAICT/2016.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

MONITORING HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (HABS) AND HAB MITIGATION BY MAGNETIC PHOTOCATALYSTS

Harmful algal bloom (HAB) has become a recurrent event in the freshwater system, posing a great threat to ecosystem, human health, and economy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) as an early monitoring tool of HABs, and then to mitigate HABs present at the Campus Lake of Southern Illinois University Carbondale by lab synthesized γFe2O3/TiO2 nanocomposite. In the first study, qPCR was utilized to determine gene copies of toxigenic bacterial species: mcyE for microcystin producers, rpoC for Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii and sxtA for saxitoxin producers in algal blooms from June to October 2021, the results were compared with the conventional monitoring methods: determination of Chl-a and phosphorus (dissolved phosphorus, DP) concentration. At the Campus Lake, C. raciborskii was not detected in any of the water samples, while mcyE was dominant (~51.2%) in the bloom during its peak bloom period in September. qPCR results indicated that it can quantify toxigenic cyanobacterial species at the early stage of bloom development and was more efficient and sensitive than Chl-a and DP determination. In the second study, synthesized γFe2O3/TiO2 nanocomposite was used to mitigate algal blooms by means of (i) inactivation of toxigenic cyanobacteria, (ii) photo-catalytic degradation of released cyanotoxins, and (iii) adsorption of nutrient phosphorus from water samples. γFe2O3/TiO2 nanocomposite inactivated toxigenic Microcystis aeruginosa and C. raciborskii cyanobacterial cultures by 95% and 90%, respectively, after 1 h interaction under simulated solar light. In the lake water samples, 88% inactivation of microcystin producing cyanobacteria was achieved by the nanocomposite. Natural organic matter (NOM) at final concentration of 75 mg/L DOC, slightly inhibited (~19% for 16S rRNA and ~23% for mcyE) the performance of the nanoparticles. Microcystin (MC-LR) and cylindrospermopsin (CYN) cyanotoxins in deionized water were removed by ~52% and ~46%, respectively, after 1 h interaction with γFe2O3/TiO2 under LZC-VIS (mostly visible) light. Additionally, γFe2O3/TiO2 nanocomposite was used as an adsorbent of nutrient phosphorus. Around 24% phosphorus was adsorbed after 3 h by the nanocomposite from lake water samples. Phosphorus adsorption by the nanocomposite was greatly reduced by NOM and bicarbonate ions. In comparison, effect of chloride ions on phosphorus removal was negligible. In summary, the lab fabricated γFe2O3/TiO2 nanocomposite can be potentially employed in HAB mitigation under solar light irradiation. The early monitoring and mitigation strategies developed in this study can help control the HABs for protecting public health and the ecosystems

Distribution of A. modesta, A. julibrissin And M. himalayana Gamble In Pir Lasura National Park

Pir Lasura National Park (PLNP) in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan is located in the Kotli Forest division and spans across an area of 13,900 acres. The list obtained through this study included 46 tree species of angiosperms, out of which only 3 species belong to the family Mimosaceae; A. modesta, A. julibrissin and M. himalayana gamble. A. modesta had 1.6 % constancy and belonged to class Ⅰ, A. julibrissin had 3.3% relative cover and belonged to class Ⅰ, whereas the relative vegetative cover of Mimosa himalayana gamble was too less to be tabulated. All the three species of the Mimosaceae family were scantily available. However, A. modesta and A. julibrissin had enough vegetative cover with respect to other species for them to be reported whereas M. himalayana gamble didn’t have any significant distribution in the selected area

Thermal Performance of Typical Residential Building in Karachi with Different Materials for Construction

This research work deals with a study of a residential building located in climatic context of Karachi with the objective of being the study of thermal performance based upon passive design techniques. The study helps in reducing the electricity consumption by improving indoor temperatures. The existing residential buildings in Karachi were studied with reference to their planning and design, analyzed and evaluated. Different construction?s compositions of buildings were identified, surveyed and analyzed in making of the effective building envelops. Autodesk® Ecotect, 2011 was used to determine indoor comfort conditions and HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning and Cooling) loads. The result of the research depicted significant energy savings of 38.5% in HVAC loads with proposed building envelop of locally available materials and glazing