A PORTRAYAL OF THE SOCIODEMOGRAPHICS AND OPTIMAL UPTAKE OF ANTENATALCARE SERVICES AMONG PREGNANT WOMEN OF URBAN SLUMS IN INDIA: AN INITIAL DATASET DEPICTION

Escalating deployment of maternal healthcare services has considerably impacted maternal mortality rates. However, urban slums have remained an understudied area in this context. Aim: To assess maternal healthcare service utilization patterns and influencing factors during antenatal period in urban slums. The analysis encompasses Fertility, Family Planning Practices, Dietary Habits, Health Quality, and implications of COVID-19 on Pregnancy. Method: Cross-sectional research conducted between April and June 2022, among urban slums in South Delhi, targeting pregnant women aged 18-44 years. Data from 250 ongoing pregnancies, accessed through Aganwadi centers, were collected electronically following study porotocol. Result: Results indicated that 98% of participants were under 40 years of age, with 67% falling below 28 years. About 93% of sample population was educated, with 93% as homemakers. Among women with parity, 82% had one child. Awareness of ANC was widespread, with 78% demonstrating medium level of knowledge. Media exposure and family planning adoption were minimal (47% and 51%, respectively). ANC utilization rates were high, with 98%, 97%, and 94% receiving iron and folic acid, tetanus toxoid, and ultrasound examinations, respectively. Only 2% were exposed to COVID-19 during pregnancy. Conclusion: This initial investigation indicates low media exposure and family planning adoption. However, ANC awareness and utilization were significant. Strategies should prioritize women's education to enhance awareness of ANC and postnatal care. Strengthening public health infrastructure is vital for optimizing maternal service utilization

Effect of heat shock protein 70 polymorphism on thermotolerance in Tharparkar cattle

Abstract Aim: Out of various members of heat shock protein (HSP) superfamily which act a molecular chaperon by binding to the denaturing protein thus stabilizing them and preserving their activity, HSP70 are of major importance in thermotolerance development. Thus, present investigation aimed at a screening of HSP70 gene for polymorphisms and possible differences in thermotolerance in Tharparkar breed of cattle. Materials and Methods: A 295 bp fragment of HSP70 gene was subjected to polymerase chain reaction-singlestrand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) followed by sequencing of different SSCP patterns in 64 Tharparkar cattle. A comparative thermotolerance of identified genotypes was analyzed using heat tolerance coefficients (HTCs) of animals for different seasons. Results: Three SSCP patterns and consequently two alleles namely A and B were documented in one fragment of HSP70 gene. On sequencing, one single-nucleotide polymorphism with G > T substitution was found at a position that led to a change of amino acid aspartate to tyrosine in allele A. It was found that in maintaining near normal average rectal temperature, genotype AA was superior (p≤0.01). Genotype AA, thus, was found to be most thermotolerant genotype with the highest HTC (p≤0.01). Conclusion: The polymorphism at HSP70 is expected to be a potent determinant for heat tolerance in cattle, which may aid in selection for thermotolerance in cattle

Cucurbitacin D Reprograms Glucose Metabolic Network in Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer (PrCa) metastasis is the major cause of mortality and morbidity among men. Metastatic PrCa cells are typically adopted for aberrant glucose metabolism. Thus, chemophores that reprogram altered glucose metabolic machinery in cancer cells can be useful agent for the repression of PrCa metastasis. Herein, we report that cucurbitacin D (Cuc D) effectively inhibits glucose uptake and lactate production in metastatic PrCa cells via modulating glucose metabolism. This metabolic shift by Cuc D was correlated with decreased expression of GLUT1 by its direct binding as suggested by its proficient molecular docking (binding energy -8.5 kcal/mol). Cuc D treatment also altered the expression of key oncogenic proteins and miR-132 that are known to be involved in glucose metabolism. Cuc D (0.1 to 1 µM) treatment inhibited tumorigenic and metastatic potential of human PrCa cells via inducing apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in G2/M phase. Cuc D treatment also showed inhibition of tumor growth in PrCa xenograft mouse model with concomitant decrease in the expression of GLUT1, PCNA and restoration of miR-132. These results suggest that Cuc D is a novel modulator of glucose metabolism and could be a promising therapeutic modality for the attenuation of PrCa metastasis

VERU-111 suppresses tumor growth and metastatic phenotypes of cervical cancer cells through the activation of p53 signaling pathway

In this study, we investigated the therapeutic efficacy of VERU-111 in vitro and in vivo model systems of cervical cancer. VERU-111 treatment inhibited cell proliferation and, clonogenic potential, induce accumulation of p53 and down regulated the expression of HPV E6/E7 expression in cervical cancer cells. In addition, VERU-111 treatment also decreased the expression of phosphorylation of Jak2 (TyR1007/1008) and STAT3 at Tyr705 and Ser727. VERU-111 treatment arrested cell cycle in the G2/M phase and modulated cell cycle regulatory proteins (cyclin B1, p21 p34cdc2 and pcdk1). Moreover, VERU-111 treatment induced apoptosis and modulated the expression of Bid, Bcl-xl, Survivin, Bax, Bcl2 and cleavage in PARP. In functional assays, VERU-111 markedly reduced the tumorigenic, migratory, and invasive potential of cervical cancer cells via modulations of MMPs. VERU-111 treatment also showed significant (P\u3c0.05) inhibition of orthotopic xenograft tumor growth in athymic nude mice. Taken together, our results demonstrate the potential anti-cancer efficacy of VERU-111 in in vitro and in vivo. VERU-111 can be explored as a potent therapeutic agent for the treatment of cervical cancer

Ameliorative Effects of Dimetylthiourea and N-Acetylcysteine on Nanoparticles Induced Cyto-Genotoxicity in Human Lung Cancer Cells-A549

We study the ameliorative potential of dimetylthiourea (DMTU), an OH• radical trapper and N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a glutathione precursor/H2O2 scavenger against titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) induced cyto-genotoxicity in cultured human lung cancer cells-A549. Cytogenotoxicity was induced by exposing the cells to selected concentrations (10 and 50 µg/ml) of either of TiO2-NPs or MWCNTs for 24 h. Anti-cytogenotoxicity effects of DMTU and NAC were studied in two groups, i.e., treatment of 30 minutes prior to toxic insult (short term exposure), while the other group received DMTU and NAC treatment during nanoparticles exposure, i.e., 24 h (long term exposure). Investigations were carried out for cell viability, generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), micronuclei (MN), and expression of markers of oxidative stress (HSP27, CYP2E1), genotoxicity (P53) and CYP2E1 dependent n- nitrosodimethylamine-demethylase (NDMA-d) activity. In general, the treatment of both DMTU and NAC was found to be effective significantly against TiO2-NPs and MWCNTs induced cytogenotoxicity in A549 cells. Long-term treatment of DMTU and NAC during toxic insults has shown better prevention than short-term pretreatment. Although, cells responded significantly to both DMTU and NAC, but responses were chemical specific. In part, TiO2-NPs induced toxic responses were mediated through OH• radicals generation and reduction in the antioxidant defense system. While in the case of MWCNTs, adverse effects were primarily due to altering/hampering the enzymatic antioxidant system. Data indicate the applicability of human lung cancer cells-A549 as a pre-screening tool to identify the target specific prophylactic and therapeutic potential of drugs candidate molecules against nanoparticles induced cellular damages

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

Quantum Learning Enabled Green Communication for Next Generation Wireless Systems

Next generation wireless systems have witnessed significant RandD attention from academia and industries to enable wide range of applications for connected environment around us. The technical design of next generation wireless systems in terms of relay and transmit power control is very critical due to the ever-reducing size of these sensor enabled systems. The growing demand of computation capability in these systems for smart decision making further diversified the significance of relay and transmit power control. Towards harnessing the benefits of Quantum Reinforcement Leaning (QRL) in the design of next generation wireless systems, this paper presents a framework for joint optimal Relay and transmit Power Selection (QRL-RPS). In QRL-RPS, each sensor node learns using its present and past local state’s knowledge to take optimal decision in relay and transmit power selection. Firstly, RPS problem is modelled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), and then QRL optimization aspect of the MDP problem is formulated focusing on joint optimization of energy consumption and throughput as network utility. Secondly, a QRL-RPS algorithm is developed based on Grover’s iteration to solve the MDP problem. The comparative performance evaluation attests the benefit of the proposed framework as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques

Not Available

Not AvailableTo unravel equid trypanosomosis caused by Trypanosoma evansi in Punjab state of India, a cross sectional study was designed by utilizing parasitological and sero-molecular tools with objective to assess the prevalence of T. evansi in association with various risk factors in all agroclimatic zones of Punjab state of India. Parasitological Romanowksy stained thin blood smears (RSTBS) to detect patent infection, molecular techniques polymerase chain reaction I (PCR I; TBR 1/2 primers; targeting minichromosomal satellite DNA of T. evansi), polymerase chain reaction II (PCR II; TR 3/4 primers; targeting variable surface glycoprotein region DNA of T. evansi) & LAMP (Loop mediated isothermal amplification) assay to detect latent infection and serological assays card agglutination test (CATT/T. evansi) & ELISA (Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) to detect exposure status of trypanosomosis were utilized in the present study. A total 429 equid blood and serum samples from all the five agroclimatic zones of Punjabstate tested by these techniques showed a prevalence of 1.39 % (CL: 0-15.28) by RSTBS, 6.52% (10.94-45.09) by both TBR 1/2 PCR and LAMP assay, 5.82% (11.57-38.42) by TR 3/4 PCR, 15.15 % (36.57-135.42) with CATT/T. evansi and 22.84 % (17.77-840.22) with ELISA. Interpretation of various risk factors revealed that the donkey/mules population (RR= 5.46, 95% [CI] = 0.15-15.56) was found to be at higher risk of T. evansi infection predominantly at ‘unorganized’ farms (RR =4.06, 95% [CI] = 0.12-4.51). Animal used for commercial purposes (RR = 3.25, 95% [CI] =0.06-7.42), rearing of equids with other domestic animals (RR =2.36, 95% [CI] =0.10-17.11) and farms without application of fly repellant/insecticides/net (RR =3.68, 95% [CI] =0.08-5.94) made them more prone to the disease. This comprehensive report utilizing the classical, serological and molecular diagnostic tools for epidemiology of T. evansi establishes the endemic stability of this infection in all agro climatic zones of Punjab with LAMP assay to be a promisingly sensitive and specific technique for the diagnosis of T. evansi under isothermal conditions in field situationsNot Availabl

Not Available

Not AvailableTo unravel equid trypanosomosis caused by Trypanosoma evansi in Punjab state of India, a cross sectional study was designed by utilizing parasitological and sero-molecular tools with objective to assess the prevalence of T. evansi in association with various risk factors in all agroclimatic zones of Punjab state of India. Parasitological Romanowksy stained thin blood smears (RSTBS) to detect patent infection, molecular techniques polymerase chain reaction I (PCR I; TBR 1/2 primers; targeting minichromosomal satellite DNA of T. evansi), polymerase chain reaction II (PCR II; TR 3/4 primers; targeting variable surface glycoprotein region DNA of T. evansi) & LAMP (Loop mediated isothermal amplification) assay to detect latent infection and serological assays card agglutination test (CATT/T. evansi) & ELISA (Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) to detect exposure status of trypanosomosis were utilized in the present study. A total 429 equid blood and serum samples from all the five agroclimatic zones of Punjab state tested by these techniques showed a prevalence of 1.39% (CL: 0-15.28) by RSTBS, 6.52% (10.94-45.09) by both TBR 1/2 PCR and LAMP assay, 5.82% (11.57-38.42) by TR 3/4 PCR, 15.15% (36.57-135.42) with CATT/T. evansi and 22.84% (17.77-840.22) with ELISA. Interpretation of various risk factors revealed that the donkey/mules population (RR = 5.46, 95% [CI] = 0.15-15.56) was found to be at higher risk of T. evansi infection predominantly at 'unorganized' farms (RR = 4.06, 95% [CI] = 0.12-4.51). Animal used for commercial purposes (RR = 3.25, 95% [CI] = 0.06-7.42), rearing of equids with other domestic animals (RR = 2.36, 95% [CI] = 0.10-17.11) and farms without application of fly repellant/insecticides/net (RR = 3.68, 95% [CI] = 0.08-5.94) made them more prone to the disease. This comprehensive report utilizing the classical, serological and molecular diagnostic tools for epidemiology of T. evansi establishes the endemic stability of this infection in all agro climatic zones of Punjab with LAMP assay to be a promisingly sensitive and specific technique for the diagnosis of T. evansi under isothermal conditions in field situations.Not Availabl

Association of ATP1A1 gene polymorphism with thermotolerance in Tharparkar and Vrindavani cattle

Aim: One of the major biochemical aspects of thermoregulation is equilibrium of ion gradient across biological membranes. Na+/K+-ATPase, a member of P type-ATPase family, is a major contributor to the mechanism that actively controls crossmembrane ion gradient. Thus, we examined ATP1A1 gene that encodes alpha-1 chain of Na+/K+-ATPase, for genetic polymorphisms. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 Vrindavani (composite cross strain of Hariana x Holstein-Friesian/Brown Swiss/Jersey) and 64 Tharparkar (indigenous) cattle were screened for genetic polymorphism in ATP1A1 gene, using polymerase chain reaction single-strand conformation polymorphism and DNA sequencing. For association studies, rectal temperature (RT) and respiration rate (RR) of all animals were recorded twice daily for 3 seasons. Results: A SNP (C2789A) was identified in exon 17 of ATP1A1 gene. Three genotypes namely CC, CA, and AA were observed in both, Vrindavani and Tharparkar cattle. The gene frequencies in Tharparkar and Vrindavani for allele A were 0.51 and 0.48, and for allele C were 0.49 and 0.52, respectively, which remained at intermediate range. Association study of genotypes with RT and RR in both cattle population revealed that the animals with genotype CC exhibited significantly lower RT and higher heat tolerance coefficient than CA and AA genotypes. Conclusion: Differential thermoregulation between different genotypes of ATP1A1 gene indicate that the ATP1A1 gene could be potentially contributing to thermotolerance in both, Tharparkar, an indigenous breed and Vrindavani, a composite crossbred cattle