Control of Optically Induced Currents in Semiconductor Crystals

The generation and control of optically induced currents has the potential to become an important building block for optical computers. Here, shift and rectification currents are investigated that emerge from a divergence of the optical susceptibility. It is known that these currents react to the shape of the impinging laser pulse, and especially to the shape of the pulse envelope. The main goal is the systematic manipulation of the pulse envelope with an optical pulse shaper that is integrated into a standard THz emission setup. The initial approach, the chirping of the laser pulse only has a weak influence on the envelope and the currents. Instead, a second approach is suggested that uses the combined envelope of a phase-stable pulse-pair as a parameter. In a laser pulse, the position of the maxima of the electrical field and the pulse envelope are shifted relative to each other. This shift is known as the Carrier-Envelope Phase (CEP). It is a new degree of freedom that is usually only accessible in specially stabilized systems. It is shown, that in a phase-stable pulse-pair, at least the relative CEP is usable as a new degree of freedom. It has a great influence on the shape of the pulse envelope and thus on the current density. It is shown that this approach enables the coherent control of the current density. The experiments are corroborated by a theoretical model of the system. The potential of this approach is demonstrated in an application. A framework is presented that uses an iterative genetic algorithm to create arbitrarily shaped THz traces. The algorithm controls the optical pulse shaper, and varies the phase of the impinging laser pulses until the desired target trace is found

Role of Antioxidants of Natural Herbs in Management of Male Infertility

If you and your spouse have been trying to conceive for a year and neither of you has been successful, there is a possibility that you are one of the 50–80 million people throughout the world who struggle with infertility. There is a male component present in approximately 20%-30% of these instances. It is common knowledge that low-quality sperm and oxidative stress (OS) both have a role in the aetiology of male infertility. Because of the oxidation of DNA, proteins, and lipids, excessive levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) have the potential to disrupt the viability, motility, and morphology of sperm cells. ROS are responsible for these changes. Methods: Through the use of the PubMed interface, we searched the MEDLINE database for studies that had been completed and published during the past ten years that analysed the effect that antioxidants had on sperm in infertile guys (2012–2022). A number of different phrases, including infertility, alpha-lipoic acid, zinc, folate, coenzyme Q10, selenium, and vitamin, were utilised during the search. The study\u27s findings indicate that inositol serves a purpose in a number of different mechanisms that foster contacts between sperm and oocytes, and that it also affects OS levels in sperm cells by way of its engagement in mitochondrial events. Alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) lessens the damage caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and improves the quality of sperm in a number of ways, including motility, morphology, and count. There might be a connection between not getting enough zinc in your diet and having low-quality sperm. Zinc and folate are two nutrients that can boost the quantity and quality of sperm. When taken orally, coenzyme Q10 increases the number of sperm as well as their overall motility and forward movement. A therapy with selenium (Se) results in an improvement in the sperm\u27s overall quality, and this improvement is connected with an increase in ejaculatory production. Only vitamin B12 has been found to improve the quality of sperm; it does this by boosting sperm count and motility and by decreasing sperm DNA damage. Vitamin B12 is the only vitamin that has been proved to do this. Conclusions: Dietary supplementation with antioxidants may improve sperm quality in men with low-quality semen by reducing OS-induced sperm damage and increasing hormone synthesis and spermatozoa concentration, motility, and morphology. This may be achieved in men who also have low levels of antioxidants in their semen. Antioxidants can exert their effects in a variety of ways; hence, it is important for researchers conducting future clinical trials to study the possibility of combining a number of antioxidants

Adaptive Neural Compilation

This paper proposes an adaptive neural-compilation framework to address the problem of efficient program learning. Traditional code optimisation strategies used in compilers are based on applying pre-specified set of transformations that make the code faster to execute without changing its semantics. In contrast, our work involves adapting programs to make them more efficient while considering correctness only on a target input distribution. Our approach is inspired by the recent works on differentiable representations of programs. We show that it is possible to compile programs written in a low-level language to a differentiable representation. We also show how programs in this representation can be optimised to make them efficient on a target distribution of inputs. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach enables learning specifically-tuned algorithms for given data distributions with a high success rate.Comment: Submitted to NIPS 2016, code and supplementary materials will be available on author's pag

A Unified View of Piecewise Linear Neural Network Verification

The success of Deep Learning and its potential use in many safety-critical applications has motivated research on formal verification of Neural Network (NN) models. Despite the reputation of learned NN models to behave as black boxes and the theoretical hardness of proving their properties, researchers have been successful in verifying some classes of models by exploiting their piecewise linear structure and taking insights from formal methods such as Satisifiability Modulo Theory. These methods are however still far from scaling to realistic neural networks. To facilitate progress on this crucial area, we make two key contributions. First, we present a unified framework that encompasses previous methods. This analysis results in the identification of new methods that combine the strengths of multiple existing approaches, accomplishing a speedup of two orders of magnitude compared to the previous state of the art. Second, we propose a new data set of benchmarks which includes a collection of previously released testcases. We use the benchmark to provide the first experimental comparison of existing algorithms and identify the factors impacting the hardness of verification problems.Comment: Updated version of "Piecewise Linear Neural Network verification: A comparative study

Dilution Phenomenon in Mixed Surfactant based Self Micro Emulsifying Formulations Of Ginger Oleoresin: Ex Vivo And In Vivo Performances

Abstract: Aqueous solubilization of Ginger Oleoresin (GO) in pseudo self micro emulsifying carrier and its influence on ex-vivo intestinal permeation and in-vivo performances was investigated. GO pre-concentrates was prepared using surfactants, Tween 80, Tween 20 and/or 1:1 mixture with a co-surfactant propylene glycol at S/Cos ratio 1:1. Aqueous dilutable region of GO in single or mixed surfactant systems was located from ternary phase diagram drawn between ternary components consisted of surfactant/co-surfactant ratio at 1:1, GO and aqueous phase. Various microstructures were characterized across the dilution line using conductometric and rheological method. Three formulations were selected across the dilution line from mixed surfactants phase diagram as microemulsion area was found to be larger in mixed surfactants over single surfactant based ternary system. GO SMEDDS formulations were physically characterized for refractive index, pH, droplet size and stability assessment. The permeability of GO in diluted pre-concentrate was determined across ex vivo rat intestinal method. Two fold enhancement (p<0.01) in intestinal permeability of GO was obtained from SMEDDS formulation  when diluted upto 9.0ml in comparison to under diluted (2 ml) or over-diluted (25 ml) and control formulation (GO in Tween 80). These findings strongly suggested that SMEDDS diluted upto 9ml behave like a pseudo self emulsifying carrier which inherently had microemulsion characteristics (droplet size 122nm). Modulation of intestinal permeability upon dilution was found closely related with dynamics of microemulsion system. Dilution mediated transitions in microstructure of GO SMEDDS was associated with the changes in the orientation of surfactant molecules at the oil-water interface of microstructures during solubilization of GO. In vivo studies revealed that orally administered GO preconcentrate produced 1.6 folds enhancement in oral bioavailability of GO  over control. Present study demonstrates that intestinal permeability and oral bioavailability can be modulated via exploration of fully dilutable pre-concentrate GO system which could be a possible carrier to enhance oral bioavailability of GO

Generalizations of Z-supercontinuous functions and Dδ-supercontinuous functions

[EN] Two new classes of functions, called ‘almost z-supercontinuous functions’ and ’almost Dδ-supercontinuous functions’ are introduced. The class of almost z-supercontinuous functions properly includes the class of z-supercontinuous functions (Indian J. Pure Appl. Math. 33(7), (2002), 1097-1108) as well as the class of almost clopen maps due to Ekici (Acta. Math. Hungar. 107(3), (2005), 193-206) and is properly contained in the class of almost Dδ-supercontinuous functions which in turn constitutes a proper subclass of the class of almost strongly θ-continuous functions due to Noiri and Kang (Indian J. Pure Appl. Math. 15(1), (1984), 1-8) and which in its turn include all δ-continuous functions of Noiri (J. Korean Math. Soc. 16 (1980), 161-166). Characterizations and basic properties of almost z-supercontinuous functions and almost Dδ-supercontinuous functions are discussed and their place in the hierarchy of variants of continuity is elaborated. Moreover, properties of almost strongly θ-continuous functions are investigated and sufficient conditions for almost strongly θ-continuous functions to have u θ-closed (θ-closed) graph are formulated.Kohli, J.; Singh, D.; Kumar, R. (2008). Generalizations of Z-supercontinuous functions and Dδ-supercontinuous functions. Applied General Topology. 9(2):239-251. doi:10.4995/agt.2008.1804.SWORD2392519

Validated HPLC Method for Concurrent Determination of Antipyrine, Carbamazepine, Furosemide and Phenytoin and its Application in Assessment of Drug Permeability through Caco-2 Cell Monolayers

The present work explains the development and validation of a simple, rapid and sensitive liquid chromatographic method for the simultaneous determination of antipyrine (ANT), carbamazepine (CBZ), furosemide (FSD) and phenytoin (PHTN). Chromatographic analysis was carried out by a reversed phase technique on a C18 column, using water pH 3.0 and 50:50 mixtures of methanol and acetonitrile (58:42 v/v) as the mobile phase, at a flow-rate of 1.0 ml/min and a column temperature of 40°C. Detection was carried out at 205 nm for CBZ and PHTN and at 230 nm for ANT and FSD. The proposed method was evaluated for validation parameters including linearity, range, accuracy, precision, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ) and specificity. Elution of drugs ANT, FSD, PHTN, and CBZ was observed at 4.1, 5.1, 12.3 and 13.5 min, respectively. The method was found to be linear (R2 ≥ 0.999) in the concentration range of 5–100 μM, with an acceptable accuracy and relative standard deviation. Results of intra- and inter-day validation (n=3) showed the method to be efficient for routine determination of these permeability markers in Caco-2 cell monolayer permeability studies. The method was successfully utilized for determination of standard compounds in Caco-2 permeability experiments

Prevalence of Dyslipidemia and Its Determinants in Rural Delhi

Introduction: Dyslipidemia is a known risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. For planning future strategies and approaches for prevention of cardiovascular diseases, it is essential to know the burden of dyslipidemia in the community.Objective: To find prevalence of dyslipidemia and its associated factors in a rural area of Delhi, India.Materials and Methods: It was a community-based cross-sectional study conducted in two rural areas in Delhi among 1005 subjects, selected using systematic random sampling method. WHO STEPS approach was used to collect data. Blood pressure, body mass index, blood sugar and lipid profile were measured. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 16. Odds of dyslipidemia among subjects with risk factors were calculated. P value less than 0.05 was considered significant.Results: The overall prevalence of hypercholesterolemia, raised triglycerides and reduced HDL was 31.2%, 21.8% and 95.7% respectively. Dyslipidemia was significantly higher in individuals more than 35 years than less than 35 years and among males. It was significantly higher in those who take alcohol, among overweight/obese and in subjects with diabetes mellitus Type 2. In multivariate analysis, age, occupation, tobacco use, BMI and diabetes mellitus Type 2 were independently associated with dyslipidemia.Conclusion: There is significant burden of dyslipidemia in rural areas in Delhi. Age, occupation, tobacco use, BMI and diabetes mellitus Type 2 were independent risk factors of dyslipidemia.

DIABETES MELLITUS: A REVIEW WITH EDGE OF SGLT2 INHIBITORS

The relative (Type 2 DM) or absolute (Type 1 DM) deficiency of insulin hormone could result into hyperglycemia, which is a characteristic feature of diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality because of its associated complications viz. Neuropathy, Nephropathy, Retinopathy, Cardiovascular disorders.The feature which has to be noted down is the death of individuals before the age of 70 y, which is attributable to high blood glucose levels. According to WHO diabetes mellitus will be the seventh leading cause of deaths till 2030.The induction of glycosuria as meant for gly­caemiac control in patients with DM is an extension of the physiological role of renal TmG to curb the menace of hyperglycemia. The first biologically derived SGLT2 inhibitor phlorizin, isolated in 1835 from the root bark of apple tree, was not developed as an antihyperglycaemic drug because of rapid degradation by lactase-phlorizin hydrolase and poor absorption from the gastrointestinal tract. Other glycoside moieties derived from phlorizin struc­ture have subsequently been developed recently