Proton-Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) Analysis and DNA-chain Break study in rat hepatocarcinogenesis: A possible chemopreventive role by combined supplementation of vanadium and beta-carotene

Combined effect of vanadium and beta-carotene on rat liver DNA-chain break and Proton induced X-ray emission (PIXE) analysis was studied during a necrogenic dose (200 mg/kg of body weight) of Diethyl Nitrosamine (DENA) induced rat liver carcinogenesis. Morphological and histopathological changes were observed as an end point biomarker. Supplementation of vanadium (0.5 ppm ad libitum) in drinking water and beta-carotene in the basal diet (120 mg/Kg of body weight) were performed four weeks before DENA treatment and continued till the end of the experiment (16 weeks). PIXE analysis revealed the restoration of near normal value of zinc, copper, and iron, which were substantially altered when compared to carcinogen treated groups. Supplementation of both vanadium and beta-carotene four weeks before DENA injection was found to offer significant (64.73%, P < 0.001) protection against generation of single-strand breaks when compared with the carcinogen control counter parts. A significant stabilization of hepatic architecture of the cells was observed as compared to carcinogen control in vanadium plus beta-carotene treated group. This study thus suggests that vanadium, a prooxidant but potential therapeutic agent yield safe and effective pharmacological formulation with beta-carotene, an antioxidant, in the inhibition of experimental rat hepatocarcinogenesis

Evaluation of Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTC) for HIV in a District of India

ICTCs provide a critical entry point for prevention, care and support for both people affected by HIV/AIDS and general population. The study was conducted with the objective of evaluating ICTCs in terms of infrastructure and staffing, services provided, level of utilization and quality of counselling.The structure and process evaluation of 13 ICTCs under National AIDS control programme III (NACP III) was carried out in a Coastal District of South India. The evaluation was carried out using UNAIDS Tools between July and September of 2010.Twelve out of 13 ICTCs (92%) had adequate infrastructure and staff. Most of the general clients (75%) attending ICTCs were provider initiated and 84.5% of antenatal women in the district attended pre-test counselling and also underwent HIV testing. Twenty six pre-test counselling sessions and 12 post test sero-positive counselling sessions were observed. Pre-test counselling content assessment revealed that only 57.4% of sessions address all the issues whereas, 79% of post-test sessions addressed most of the issues during counselling. Counsellors’ skills assessment information gathering and information giving were found to be poorly done. It was found that post test counselling sessions were not conducted for clients with HIV negative report.The aspects of ICTCs such as services provided at the centers, utilization of services by the clients, infrastructure and staffing pattern were found to be adequate. Counselling forms the vital component of the ICTC needed improvement and post test counselling should be mandatory to all the clients

Temperatures and winds over tropical middle atmosphere during two contrasting summer monsoons, 1975 and 1979

Using the monthly geopotential heights and winds for 700 and 200 hPa for India during July and August, and the weekly M-100 Soviet rocketsonde temperature and wind data for Thumba (8.5°N, 76.9°E) during the last week of June and the first week of September for the two contrasting summer monsoon years 1975 (a very strong monsoon year) and 1979 (a very weak monsoon year), a study has been made to examine the mean circulation features of the trophosphere over India, and the structures of the temperatures and the winds of the middle atmosphere over Thumba. The study suggested that the axis of the monsoon trough (AMT) at 700 hPa shifted southward in 1975 and northward towards the foothills of the Himalayas in 1979, from its normal position. Superimposed on the low-pressure area (AMT) at 700 hPa, a well-defined divergence was noticed at 200 hPa over the northern India in 1975. The mean temperatures at 25, 50 and 60 km (middle atmosphere) over Thumba were cooler in 1975 than in 1979. While a cooling trend in 1975 and warming trend in 1979 were observed at 25 and 50 km, a reversed picture was noticed at 60 km. There was a weak easterly/westerly (weak westerly phase) zonal wind in 1975 and a strong easterly zonal wind in 1979. A phase reversal of the zonal wind was observed at 50 km. A tentative physical mechanism was offered, in terms of upward propagation of the two equatorially trapped planetary waves i.e. the Kelvin and the mixed Rossby-gravity waves, to explain the occurrence of the two spells of strong warmings in the mesosphere in 1975

Use of second-moment constraints for the refinement of determinantal wave functions

A constrained least-squares fit procedure wherein the integral F[&#961;(r)-&#961;0(r)]2 dr is minimized [&#961;0(r) is the reference near-Hartree-Fock (NHF) electron density distribution and &#961;(r) is the refined one obtained from a single Slater determinant] has been developed. The constraints applied are the exact theoretical &#961;2 and r2 expectation values. These expectation values are expected to tailor the electron density around the nuclear and tail regions, respectively. The procedure has been applied to lithium and beryllium atoms as test cases. Nearly all the rn and pn (for n=-2, -1, 1, 3, 4, and 5) expectation values have been improved with use of this procedure. The sacrifice in the electronic energy, in comparison to the corresponding NHF one, is about 0.02% in both cases

Application of rigorous bounds for efficient evaluation of molecular electrostatic potentials

Rigorous upper bounds to electrostatic potential integrals over Gaussian basis sets have been exploited for accurate and speedy evaluation of molecular electrostatic potentials (MESP). These bounds are applied to eliminate those pairs of Gaussians which contribute insignificantly to the total MESP. An efficient algorithm for MESP mapping has been developed with the help of these bounds. Further, rigorous inequalities to the auxiliary functions Fm(t), were derived. Some of these bounds are so tight that they are employed as a good approximation to Fm(t). The algorithm developed by incorporation of the above aspects is tested on trans-butadiene, cyclopropane and 1,2,3,4,5,6,7-octa-heptene molecules using 4-31G and 3G basis sets. A factor of six and more in terms of CPU time is obtained for all the test cases studied over the usual straightforward computation. A parallel version of this algorithm has also been developed

Cross-entropy minimization for refinement of Gaussian basis sets

Information theoretic techniques have been applied for the refinement of Gaussian basis sets. A refined distribution has been obtained by cross-entropy minimization starting from a near Hartree-Fock quality density distribution. For this purpose, the Kullback-Leibler cross-entropy, S[<SUP>&#961;</SUP>|<SUP>&#961;</SUP><SUB>0</SUB>]=&#8747;<SUP>&#961;</SUP>(r)ln[<SUP>&#961;</SUP>(r)/<SUP>&#961;</SUP><SUB>0</SUB>(r)] dr, has been minimized subject to exact, theoretical or experimental, second moment constraints in position and momentum spaces. Here, &#961;<SUB>0</SUB> is the starting density distribution and &#961; is the corresponding refined one. The procedure has been applied to hydrogen, helium, lithium and beryllium atoms as test cases. Nearly all moments (-2 through 4), in coordinate as well as momentum spaces have improved over the original ones at an average worsening of the total energy by a mere 0.04%

Molecular electrostatic potentials: a topographical study

The topography of the molecular electrostatic potential (MESP) is studied for some small neutral molecules and OH- ion. Different kinds of critical points (CP's) of rank 3 are identified and their occurrences are discussed. The correlation of these CP's with the molecular structure is brought out. Bond ellipticities are determined in terms of curvatures of bond CP's. These ellipticities show trends similar to those reported by Bader et al. [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 105, 5061 (1983)]. A typical example of OH- illustrates the existence of a degenerate nonisolated ring of CP's, which is a rather unique feature of the topology of the MESP of linear molecules. Some suggestive arguments with suitable examples, regarding indeterminacy of the nonisolated degenerate CP's, have been made

Opportunistic Infections among People Living with HIV (PLHIV) with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) Attending a Tertiary Care Hospital in Coastal City of South India.

HIV/AIDS and Diabetes Mellitus are the diseases' known to supress cell mediated immunity and predispose patients for opportunistic infections. Hence, we conducted a study to compare the common opportunistic infections (OIs) between People Living with HIV with DM (PLHIV-DM) and PLHIV without DM (PLHIV).PLHIV with DM and without DM (1:1) were prospectively included in the study from January 2011 to January 2012 at a tertiary care hospital in Mangalore city. Patients were classified as Diabetic if their fasting plasma glucose was ≥ 7.0 mmol/l (126 mg/dl) or 2-h plasma glucose was ≥11.1 mmol/l (200 mg/dl). Standard procedures and techniques were followed for diagnosis of OIs as per WHO guidelines. The data was entered and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 11.5.The study included 37 PLHIV with DM and 37 PLHIV without DM and both groups were treated with Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART). The median age was 47 years (IQR: 41-55 years) for PLHIV-DM as compared to 40 years (IQR: 35-45.5 years) for PLHIV (p<0.0001). PLHIV-DM had median CD4 counts of 245 (IQR: 148-348) cells/μl compared to 150(IQR: 70-278) cells/μl for PLHIV (p = 0.02). Common OIs included oral candidiasis (49% of PLHIV-DM and 35% of PLHIV); Cryptococcal meningitis (19% of PLHIV-DM and 16% of PLHIV); Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (5% of PLHIV-DM and 18% of PLHIV); extra pulmonary tuberculosis (22% of PLHIV-DM and 34.5% of PLHIV); and Cerebral toxoplasmosis (11% of PLHIV-DM and 13.5% of PLHIV). Microbiological testing of samples from PLHIV-DM, C krusei was the most common Candida species isolated from 9 out of 18 samples. Out of six pulmonary TB samples cultured, four grew Non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM) and two Mycobacterium tuberculosis complexes.Study did not identify any significant difference in profile of opportunistic infections (OIs) between PLHIV with and without Diabetes

Basis set dependence of the molecular electrostatic potential topography. A case study of substituted benzenes

The basis set dependence of the topographical structure of the molecular electrostatic potential (MESP), as well as the effect of substituents on the MESP distribution, has been investigated with substituted benzenes as test cases. The molecules are studied at HF-SCF 3�21G and 6�31G** levels, with a further MESP topographical investigation at the 3�21G, double-zeta, 6�31G*, 6�31G**, double-zeta polarized and triple-zeta polarized levels. The MESP critical points for a 3�21G optimized/6�31G** basis are similar to the corresponding 6�31G** optimized/6�31G** ones. More generally, the qualitative features of the MESP topography computed at the polarized level are independent of the level at which optimization is carried out. For a proper representation of oxygen lone pairs, however, optimization using a polarized basis set is required. The nature of the substituent drastically changes the MESP distribution over the phenyl ring. The values and positions of MESP minima indicate the most active site for electrophilic attack. This point is strengthened by a study of disubstituted benzenes

Common Opportunistic infections confirmed clinically or by culture among patients with PLHIV-Diabetic and PLHIV.

<p>^#Pearsons Chi square and Fisher exact tests</p><p>* 3 out of 8 cases diagnosed histo-pathologically</p><p>**diagnosed clinically.</p><p>Common Opportunistic infections confirmed clinically or by culture among patients with PLHIV-Diabetic and PLHIV.</p