The Mystical Number 2997 (Kohli’s Number)

This paper is about discovering and figuring out the working behind the magical number 2997. Take any three-digit number, say XYZ and multiply each digit by 111 and take the sum, i.e., x*111 + y*111 + z*111.[Note: Does not have to be a 3-digit number] For any number, repeating these steps of multiplying and adding will guarantee that the answer becomes 2997 in a maximum of 4 repetitions

Rapid drug-susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates to first-line antitubercular drugs by nitrate reductase assay: A comparison with proportion method

AbstractObjective/backgroundEarly initiation of therapy in patients with tuberculosis is imperative for its control. Conventional methods of susceptibility testing such as the proportion method (PM) require visual detection and counting of colonies that takes up to 6weeks. Rapid and simple phenotypic methods that have been endorsed by the World Health Organization can serve as alternatives.MethodsIn this study, we evaluated the colorimetric nitrate reductase assay, which utilizes the detection of nitrate reduction as an indicator of growth much earlier compared with PM (within 7–14days). The susceptibility of 75 clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to four first-line antitubercular drugs was tested by nitrate reductase assay and compared with the standard PM. In this assay, inoculation was done on both drug-free and drug-containing Löwenstein–Jensen medium containing sodium nitrate. After incubation for 7–14days, reduction to nitrite was taken as an indicator of growth, which was detected by color change on addition of Griess reagent.ResultsAgreement between nitrate reductase assay and PM was 100% for rifampicin, 97.30% for isoniazid, 93.30% for streptomycin, and 98.60% for ethambutol. Cost/isolate with this assay was found to be approximately two times lesser than that of PM. All results were obtained in 7–14days by nitrate reductase assay, which was significantly rapid compared with 42days taken for obtaining results by PM.ConclusionNitrate reductase assay can be used as a rapid and inexpensive method for drug-susceptibility testing of M. tuberculosis for first-line antitubercular drugs without compromising accuracy of standard methods

Radon and childhood cancer

British Journal of Cancer (2002) 87, 1336–1337. doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6600671 www.bjcancer.co

Insulin Concentration Modulates Hepatic Lipid Accumulation in Mice in Part via Transcriptional Regulation of Fatty Acid Transport Proteins

Fatty liver disease (FLD) is commonly associated with insulin resistance and obesity, but interestingly it is also observed at low insulin states, such as prolonged fasting. Thus, we asked whether insulin is an independent modulator of hepatic lipid accumulation.In mice we induced, hypo- and hyperinsulinemia associated FLD by diet induced obesity and streptozotocin treatment, respectively. The mechanism of free fatty acid induced steatosis was studied in cell culture with mouse liver cells under different insulin concentrations, pharmacological phosphoinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) inhibition and siRNA targeted gene knock-down. We found with in vivo and in vitro models that lipid storage is increased, as expected, in both hypo- and hyperinsulinemic states, and that it is mediated by signaling through either insulin receptor substrate (IRS) 1 or 2. As previously reported, IRS-1 was up-regulated at high insulin concentrations, while IRS-2 was increased at low levels of insulin concentration. Relative increase in either of these insulin substrates, was associated with an increase in liver-specific fatty acid transport proteins (FATP) 2&5, and increased lipid storage. Furthermore, utilizing pharmacological PI3K inhibition we found that the IRS-PI3K pathway was necessary for lipogenesis, while FATP responses were mediated via IRS signaling. Data from additional siRNA experiments showed that knock-down of IRSs impacted FATP levels.States of perturbed insulin signaling (low-insulin or high-insulin) both lead to increased hepatic lipid storage via FATP and IRS signaling. These novel findings offer a common mechanism of FLD pathogenesis in states of both inadequate (prolonged fasting) and ineffective (obesity) insulin signaling

Impact of land-use changes on soil properties and carbon pools in India: A meta-analysis

Not AvailableLand-use changes (LUC), primarily due to deforestation and soil disturbance, are one of the major causes of soil quality degradation and greenhouse gas emissions. Effects of LUC on soil physicochemical properties and changes in soil quality and land use management strategies that can effectively restore soil carbon and microbial biomass levels have been reported from all over the world, but the impact analysis of such practices in the Indian context is limited. In this study, over 1,786 paired datasets (for meta-analysis) on land uses (LUs) were collected from Indian literature (1990–2019) to determine the magnitude of the influence of LUC on soil carbon, microbial biomass, and other physical and chemical properties at three soil depths. Meta-analysis results showed that grasslands (36.1%) lost the most soil organic carbon (SOC) compared to native forest lands, followed by plantation lands (35.5%), cultivated lands (31.1%), barren lands (27.3%), and horticulture lands (11.5%). Our findings also revealed that, when compared to forest land, the microbial quotient was lower in other LUs. Due to the depletion of SOC stock, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq) emissions were significantly higher in all LUs than in forest land. Results also showed that due to the conversion of forest land to cultivated land, total carbon, labile carbon, non-labile carbon, microbial biomass carbon, and SOC stocks were lost by 21%, 25%, 32%, 26%, and 41.2%, respectively. Changes in soil carbon pools and properties were more pronounced in surface (0–15 cm) soils than in subsurface soils (15–30 cm and 30–45 cm). Restoration of the SOC stocks from different LUs ranged from a minimum of 2% (grasslands) to a maximum of 48% (plantation lands). Overall, this study showed that soil carbon pools decreased as LUC transitioned from native forestland to other LUs, and it is suggested that adopting crop-production systems that can reduce CO2 emissions from the intensive LUs such as the ones evaluated here could contribute to improvements in soil quality and mitigation of climate change impacts, particularly under Indian agro-climatic conditions.Not Availabl

Prospective study of patients with persistent symptoms of dengue in Brazil

Dengue is an arboviral infection clinically recognized as an acute and self-limited disease. Persistence of dengue symptoms is known, but it has been little studied. The aim of this study was to characterize persistent symptoms in 113 patients with dengue followed up clinically and by laboratory testing at a tertiary hospital. Symptoms that persisted for more than 14 days were observed in 61 (54.0%) patients, and six (6.2%) of them had symptoms for 6 months or more. The persistent symptoms identified were myalgia, weakness, hair loss, memory loss, reduced resistance to physical effort, headache, reasoning problems, arthralgia, sleepiness- and emotional lability. The progression to persistent symptoms was significantly associated with hospitalization, older age, more severe disease, the presence of bleeding and comorbidities upon univariate analysis. Upon multivariate analysis, the presence of persistent symptoms continued to be significantly associated only with increased age and dengue with warning signs. The platelet count during the acute phase of the disease was significantly lower in the group with persistent symptoms. In conclusion, the frequency of progression to persistent symptoms in dengue is relevant in patients seen at a tertiary hospital and the persistence of symptoms is more common in patients with dengue with warning signs

GATE : a simulation toolkit for PET and SPECT

Monte Carlo simulation is an essential tool in emission tomography that can assist in the design of new medical imaging devices, the optimization of acquisition protocols, and the development or assessment of image reconstruction algorithms and correction techniques. GATE, the Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission, encapsulates the Geant4 libraries to achieve a modular, versatile, scripted simulation toolkit adapted to the field of nuclear medicine. In particular, GATE allows the description of time-dependent phenomena such as source or detector movement, and source decay kinetics. This feature makes it possible to simulate time curves under realistic acquisition conditions and to test dynamic reconstruction algorithms. A public release of GATE licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License can be downloaded at the address http://www-lphe.epfl.ch/GATE/

Infrastructure for Detector Research and Development towards the International Linear Collider

The EUDET-project was launched to create an infrastructure for developing and testing new and advanced detector technologies to be used at a future linear collider. The aim was to make possible experimentation and analysis of data for institutes, which otherwise could not be realized due to lack of resources. The infrastructure comprised an analysis and software network, and instrumentation infrastructures for tracking detectors as well as for calorimetry.Comment: 54 pages, 48 picture

Development of a phenotyping protocol for combined drought and salinity stress at seedling stage in rice

Introduction: The case of combined drought and salinity stress is increasingly becoming a constraint to rice production, especially in coastal areas and river deltas where low rainfall not only reduces soil moisture levels but also reduces the flow of river water, resulting in intrusion of saline sea-water. A standardized screening method is needed in order to systematically evaluate rice cultivars under combined drought+salinity at the same time because sequential stress of salinity followed by drought or vice-versa is not similar to simultaneous stress effects. Therefore, we aimed to develop a screening protocol for combined drought+salinity stress applied to soil-grown plants at seedling stage. Methods: The study system used 30-L soil-filled boxes, which allowed a comparison of plant growth under control conditions, individual drought and salinity stress, as well as combined drought+salinity. A set of salinity tolerant and drought tolerant cultivars were tested, together with several popular but salinity and drought-susceptible varieties that are grown in regions prone to combined drought+salinity. A range of treatments were tested including different timings of the drought and salinity application, and different severities of stress, in order to determine the most effective that resulted in visible distinction among cultivars. The challenges related to determining a protocol with repeatable seedling stage stress treatment effects while achieving a uniform plant stand are described here. Results: The optimized protocol simultaneously applied both stresses by planting into saline soil at 75% of field capacity which was then allowed to undergo progressive drydown. Meanwhile, physiological characterization revealed that chlorophyll fluorescence at seedling stage correlated well with grain yield when drought stress was applied to vegetative stage only. Discussion: The drought+salinity protocol developed here can be used for screening rice breeding populations as part of a pipeline to develop new rice varieties with improved adaptation to combined stresses