Assessment of Neuropharmacological Profile of Ethanolic Extract of Lawsonia Inermis Flowers

On preliminary basis neuropharmacological profile of ethanolic extract of flowers of Lawsonia inermis was carried out. For assessing the activity of flowers on central nervous system locomotor activity using actophotometer, muscle relaxant activity using rotarod apparatus, pentobarbital-induced hypnosis and anticonvulsant activity by maximal electroshock test was performed.  Ethanolic extract of flowers of Lawsonia inermis decreased the motor activity by 48.63 % and showed 49.03% noteworthy muscle relaxation along with 127.73% potentiation of pentobarbital-induced sleeping time and 66.67% decreased the duration of tonic hind leg extension of seizures activity.  The results conclude that the extract of flowers of Lawsonia inermis has significant central nervous system depressant activity. Further investigations are, however, necessary to explore mechanism(s) of action involved in these pharmacological activities

Prospective study of surgical outcomes of cervical myelopathy based on its etiology, duration of affection and radiological patterns of compression

Background: Cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) is considered the commonest cause of spinal cord dysfunction in individuals above 55 years of age and if left untreated, permanent cord damage may occur. This could contribute to increased dependence and reduced quality of life in older individuals. A prospective cohort study done in patients with cervical myelopathy who were admitted and operated after considering inclusion and exclusion criteria.Methods: A prospective cohort study done in patients with cervical myelopathy who were admitted and operated after considering inclusion and exclusion criteria. Total 30 patients included in study. patients were operated according to patterns of compression. Anterior/posterior decompression SOS instrumentation was done according to POC. Pre-op and post-op Nurick’s grading, pre-op and post-op modified Japanese orthopaedics association (mJOA) scores were used for comparison. Patients were followed up for period of 1 year from surgical intervention. Recovery rate calculated using preop and post op mJOA scores.Results: Overall satisfactory surgical outcome found in patients of cervical myelopathy, out of 30 patients, 9 patients of pattern of compression I (POC I) had  recovery rate (RR) of (91.6±7.8) , 8 patients of POC II had RR of (78.4±14.8), 6 patients of POC III had RR of (73.5±11.1), 4 patients of POC IV had RR of (74.9±29.2), 3 patients of POC IVv had RR of (80.4±4.1).the assessment of the final outcome was done using mJOA scoring system  and Nurick’s grading system.Conclusions: Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) for POC I (one- or two-level anterior cord compression) and POC II (one or two levels of anterior and posterior cord compression) give good surgical outcome. Cervical laminectomy and SOS instrumentation is recommended for POC III (3 levels of anterior cord compression), IV (3 or more levels of anterior compression and development of narrow canal with multiple posterior compression) and IV variant (similar to POC IV with one or two levels, being more significant than the others).earlier diagnosis, prompt radiological investigations, individualizing surgical protocol, proper surgical techniques and proper follow-up evaluation are key in management of patients of cervical myelopathy

Maternal and foetal outcome of acute kidney injury in pregnancy single centre experience from North India

Background: The diagnosis and treatment of acute kidney injury in pregnancy is a challenge to the physician as various pathophysiological changes take place during pregnancy, variability of symptoms and occasionally overlapping laboratory and clinical features. The occurrences of feto-maternal mortality associated with it decreased in developing nations due to increased prenatal and postnatal care and improved medical facilities. This study was undertaken to provide insight into feto-maternal outcome in patients presenting with acute kidney injury (AKI) during pregnancy. Methods: This was an open label prospective hospital-based cohort study comprising patients admitted in obstetrics and nephrology wards, presenting with AKI and no known chronic illnesses prior to pregnancy. Following criteria were used to diagnose AKI during pregnancy: (a) Elevation of S. creatinine ≥ 1 mg/dl; (b) Oligo-anuria for ≥ 12 hours and (c) Need for RRT. 50 such cases were enrolled in the study. Results: Out of all patients enrolled, majority (60%) had improved renal function, 16% expired, and 24% had no recovery in renal function. Out of all patients taken for haemodialysis, 20% of patients had improved renal function, 20% expired and 60% had no recovery in renal function. Mean S. creatinine on 3 months follow-up in conservative group found-1.67±1.31 mg/dl. 60% pregnancies resulted in the birth of a live baby and rest resulted in foetal loss. Conclusions: In our study, it was found that acute kidney injury in pregnancy results in significant feto-maternal mortality and morbidity. Those patients, who had significant renal derangement and concomitant complications, had poorer outcome

Effects of micronutrient and spacing on growth and chlorophyll content of rice

An experiment was carried out at the research field of the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University (BSMRAU).There were four nutrient treatments i.e., E1= NPKS recommended dose; E2= NPKS + Zn 5 Kg ha-1; E3= NPKS + Zn (5 Kg ha-1) + B (3 Kg ha-1) E4= NPKS + Zn (5 Kg ha-1) + B (3 Kg ha-1) + Mo (2 Kg ha-1) and three spacing S1= 20 x 10 cm2; S2 = 20 x 15 cm2 and S3 = 20 x 20 cm2.Micronutrient and spacing combined had a distinct positive response in crop growth attributes and chlorophyll content of rice. The tallest plant height (147.0 cm) and root length (13.50 cm) highest panicle length (22.56 cm) was attained in the treatment E2S3 but the maximum tillers per hill (14.95) and effective panicle per hill (14.17) were recorded in treatment E2S2. Physiological parameter i.e., LAI, CGR, RGR, NAR, total chlorophyll content of rice also responded significantly and the appropriate combination was E4S2treatment. Based on vegetative growth, physiological parameters and yield attributes the treatment combination E4S2 showed the best performance

COMPARATIVE ADSORPTION STUDY ON RICE HUSK AND RICE HUSK ASH BY USING AMARANTHUS GANGETICUS PIGMENTS AS DYE

Low cost adsorbents such as Rice Husk (RH) and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) were used for removing dyes from aqueous medium and later Linear, Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms have been verified by using adsorption data. RH was activated by treating with nitric acid and RHA was prepared from RH by dolomite process. Natural dyes were extracted from the vegetable Amaranthus gangeticus by using a standard method. The removal efficiency of adsorbents was measured for the variation of parameters pH, contact time and adsorbents concentration. It has been noted that after changing time for same amount of adsorbent (1g/100ml) and dyes (10 ml) RH gave no efficiency trend but increased to 43.91% whereas for RHA efficiency was gradually increased to 59.62%. A reverse trend was noted when adsorption amounts were changed and others were put constant where RHA efficiency gradually increased to 99.30% but RH gave no trend with highest efficiency was close to 61.85%. The RH removal efficiency was good for pH 11 close to 62.86% and it was continuous from 3.95% at pH 2. Alternately, RHA gave 80.21% at pH 2 and later was decreased to 1.5% at pH 9 and again increased from pH 11. It is noted that RHA removal efficiency is better than RH and adsorptions are well fitted with isotherms

COMPARATIVE ADSORPTION STUDY ON RICE HUSK AND RICE HUSK ASH BY USING AMARANTHUS GANGETICUS PIGMENTS AS DYE

Low cost adsorbents such as Rice Husk (RH) and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) were used for removing dyes from aqueous medium and later Linear, Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms have been verified by using adsorption data. RH was activated by treating with nitric acid and RHA was prepared from RH by dolomite process. Natural dyes were extracted from the vegetable Amaranthus gangeticus by using a standard method. The removal efficiency of adsorbents was measured for the variation of parameters pH, contact time and adsorbents concentration. It has been noted that after changing time for same amount of adsorbent (1g/100ml) and dyes (10 ml) RH gave no efficiency trend but increased to 43.91% whereas for RHA efficiency was gradually increased to 59.62%. A reverse trend was noted when adsorption amounts were changed and others were put constant where RHA efficiency gradually increased to 99.30% but RH gave no trend with highest efficiency was close to 61.85%. The RH removal efficiency was good for pH 11 close to 62.86% and it was continuous from 3.95% at pH 2. Alternately, RHA gave 80.21% at pH 2 and later was decreased to 1.5% at pH 9 and again increased from pH 11. It is noted that RHA removal efficiency is better than RH and adsorptions are well fitted with isotherms

CNN-XGBoost fusion-based affective state recognition using EEG spectrogram image analysis

Recognizing emotional state of human using brain signal is an active research domain with several open challenges. In this research, we propose a signal spectrogram image based CNN-XGBoost fusion method for recognising three dimensions of emotion, namely arousal (calm or excitement), valence (positive or negative feeling) and dominance (without control or empowered). We used a benchmark dataset called DREAMER where the EEG signals were collected from multiple stimulus along with self-evaluation ratings. In our proposed method, we first calculate the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) of the EEG signals and convert them into RGB images to obtain the spectrograms. Then we use a two dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in order to train the model on the spectrogram images and retrieve the features from the trained layer of the CNN using a dense layer of the neural network. We apply Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier on extracted CNN features to classify the signals into arousal, valence and dominance of human emotion. We compare our results with the feature fusion-based state-of-the-art approaches of emotion recognition. To do this, we applied various feature extraction techniques on the signals which include Fast Fourier Transformation, Discrete Cosine Transformation, Poincare, Power Spectral Density, Hjorth parameters and some statistical features. Additionally, we use Chi-square and Recursive Feature Elimination techniques to select the discriminative features. We form the feature vectors by applying feature level fusion, and apply Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifiers on the fused features to classify different emotion levels. The performance study shows that the proposed spectrogram image based CNN-XGBoost fusion method outperforms the feature fusion-based SVM and XGBoost methods. The proposed method obtained the accuracy of 99.712% for arousal, 99.770% for valence and 99.770% for dominance in human emotion detection.publishedVersio

Mesodermal Nkx2.5 is necessary and sufficient for early second heart field development

AbstractThe vertebrate heart develops from mesoderm and requires inductive signals secreted from early endoderm. During embryogenesis, Nkx2.5 acts as a key transcription factor and plays essential roles for heart formation from Drosophila to human. In mice, Nkx2.5 is expressed in the early first heart field, second heart field pharyngeal mesoderm, as well as pharyngeal endodermal cells underlying the second heart field. Currently, the specific requirements for Nkx2.5 in the endoderm versus mesoderm with regard to early heart formation are incompletely understood. Here, we performed tissue-specific deletion in mice to dissect the roles of Nkx2.5 in the pharyngeal endoderm and mesoderm. We found that heart development appeared normal after endodermal deletion of Nkx2.5 whereas mesodermal deletion engendered cardiac defects almost identical to those observed on Nkx2.5 null embryos (Nkx2.5−/−). Furthermore, re-expression of Nkx2.5 in the mesoderm rescued Nkx2.5−/− heart defects. Our findings reveal that Nkx2.5 in the mesoderm is essential while endodermal expression is dispensable for early heart formation in mammals