Study on mitigation of ammonia volatilization loss in urea through adsorbents

Volatilized ammonia loss (VAL) and toxicity are major disadvantages on urea amendment. In order to mitigate, slow (or) controlled release urea based fertilizers are prepared with low cost materials. Therefore, micro and nano-sized adsorbents such as zeolite, biochar were impregnated with urea @1:1 ratio for fertilizer formulations. The objective of the study was to evaluate the VAL rate. To study the effect of soil texture, incubation experiment on two different soils of Tamil Nadu (TypicHaplustalf and VerticUstropepts) with 4 physically mixed, 4 fabricated, conventional urea and control without urea determined. Fertilizer formulations were surface applied @ 250 kg N ha-1 and assessed the VAL rate for 16 days. The trapped ammonia was observed with colour change from pink to greenish and titrated with diluted sulfuric acid. Initial 3 days VAL rate was high on urea, physically mixed adsorbent fertilizers than urea impregnated fertilizers and colour change was observed on every 4-6 h of both soils. In contrast, the urea impregnated fertilizers had colour change after 9-10 h regardless of adsorbent and soils. The fabricated fertilizer observed VAL rate on gradual with low quantity on T5- Zeourea (13.5 days, 15.1 days) T6- Nano-zeourea (15.5 days, 16 days), T9- Biourea (7.5 days, 7.1 days) and T10- Nano-biourea (9 days, 9.7 days) than T2- Urea (5.5 days, 4.6 days) of Alfisols and Inceptisols respectively. Cumulative VAL rate percentage was low on T5- Zeourea (30 %, 34 %), T6- Nano-zeourea (28 %, 29.3 %) T9- Biourea (39 %, 41.5 %) and T10- Nano-biourea (36 %, 37.5 %) of Alfisols and Inceptisols, respectively on comparison with other fertilizer type.It is concluded that the surface amendment of physically mixed fertilizers not influenced any change on both soils. Urea impregnation influenced on days and cumulative VAL percentage. Our study elucidates that micro and nano porous adsorbents are potential substrate to reduce VAL rate of urea in both soils

Suppression of Adaptive Immune Cell Activation Does Not Alter Innate Immune Adipose Inflammation or Insulin Resistance in Obesity

Obesity-induced inflammation in visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is a major contributor to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Whereas innate immune cells, notably macrophages, contribute to visceral adipose tissue (VAT) inflammation and insulin resistance, the role of adaptive immunity is less well defined. To address this critical gap, we used a model in which endogenous activation of T cells was suppressed in obese mice by blocking MyD88-mediated maturation of CD11c⁺ antigen-presenting cells. VAT CD11c⁺ cells from Cd11cCre⁺Myd88^(fl/fl) vs. control Myd88^(fl/fl) mice were defective in activating T cells in vitro, and VAT T and B cell activation was markedly reduced in Cd11cCre⁺Myd88^(fl/fl) obese mice. However, neither macrophage-mediated VAT inflammation nor systemic inflammation were altered in Cd11cCre⁺Myd88^(fl/fl) mice, thereby enabling a focused analysis on adaptive immunity. Unexpectedly, fasting blood glucose, plasma insulin, and the glucose response to glucose and insulin were completely unaltered in Cd11cCre⁺Myd88^(fl/fl) vs. control obese mice. Thus, CD11c⁺ cells activate VAT T and B cells in obese mice, but suppression of this process does not have a discernible effect on macrophage-mediated VAT inflammation or systemic glucose homeostasis

GASTRO RETENTIVE NON-FLOATING DRUG DELIVERY APPROACH: A REVIEW

Gastro retardation is attractive approach to enhance bioavailability of narrow absorption window drugs. Drug retardation in stomach is more beneficial for certain gastro intestinal disorders like gastro esophageal reflex disease, ulcer and other gastro intestinal conditions. Gastric site retardation is one of the challenging technique, however various techniques are applied to keep the drug and achieve the enhancement of bioavailability. To achieve gastro retentive commonly two approaches are considered, they are floating drug delivery system and non-floating gastro retentive drug delivery system. The floating drug made-up by low density polymers, this approach was not fit many of the drug molecule and floating drug has some limitations like sufficient level fluids in stomach and not to be dosed just before going to bed. In this review describe the various high density (sinking) system (non-floating) drug delivery systems like super porous hydrogels, expanding system, bio/mucoadhesives system, and magnetic system and mechanism, desirable drug characters, advantages and disadvantages. Keyword: Bioavailability, gastro retentive, magnetic system, mucoadhesive, non-floating and sinking system

Typing of methicillin resistant and sensitive Staphylococcus aureus isolated from Tamilnadu, India using DNA fingerprints by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis

MRSA infection is alarming particularly in hospital set ups/community. We typed 43 isolates of Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA and MSSA) based on genomic DNA restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs). The genomic DNA of the test isolates was digested with SmaI enzyme, fractionated by PFGE and the patterns were assessed by dendrogram for percentage similarity. The SmaI restricted genomic DNA of 19 MRSA and 24 MSSA identified 27 different PFGE patterns, in which 11 and 16 were from MRSA and MSSA, respectively. Prevalence predominance was observed in few types/subtypes of MSSA (type B and subtype I-1) and MRSA (sub type A-2) and high percentage of similarity was noticed among the subtypes of PFGE types such as P and I of MSSA. During the epidemiological studies, to understand the dissemination of endemic/epidemic MRSA and MSSA, PFGE-based typing of pathogens may be used as a reliable and effective typing method

Deficiency of AXL in Bone Marrow-Derived Cells Does Not Affect Advanced Atherosclerotic Lesion Progression

AXL, a member of the TAM (Tyro3, Axl, MerTK) family of receptors, plays important roles in cell survival, clearance of dead cells (efferocytosis), and suppression of inflammation, which are processes that critically influence atherosclerosis progression. Whereas MerTK deficiency promotes defective efferocytosis, inflammation, and plaque necrosis in advanced murine atherosclerosis, the role of Axl in advanced atherosclerosis progression is not known. Towards this end, bone marrow cells from Axl−/− or wild-type mice were transplanted into lethally irradiated Ldlr−/− mice. These chimeric mice were then fed the Western-type diet (WD) for 17 weeks. We demonstrate that lesional macrophages in WT mice express Axl but that Axl deficiency in bone marrow-derived cells does not affect lesion size, cellularity, necrosis, or inflammatory parameters in advanced atherosclerotic plaques. Moreover, apoptosis of lesional cells was unaffected, and we found no evidence of defective lesional efferocytosis. In contrast to previously reported findings with MerTK deficiency, hematopoietic cell-Axl deficiency in WD-fed Ldlr−/− mice does not affect the progression of advanced atherosclerosis or lesional processes associated with TAM receptor signaling. These findings suggest a heretofore unappreciated TAM receptor hierarchy in advanced atherosclerosis

Recent trends in nano-based drug delivery systems for efficient delivery of phytochemicals in chemotherapy

The advent of nanotechnology has revolutionized various scientific inventions, out of which the debut of nanomedicine is outstanding. Especially, research has embarked on nano-drug delivery for treating cancer. Natural compounds present in plants, namely phytochemicals, have been extensively exploited for their anticancer properties. Despite their excellent anticancer abilities, phytochemicals are limited by their low water solubility and poor bioavailability. However, the field of nanotechnology has overcome these limitations. This review focusses on various methods of nano-drug delivery of phytochemicals against the killer disease, cancer. Common carriers that were employed ranged from micelles, with a polymeric base, to dendrimers, liposomes and nanoparticles. The phytochemicals were found to become more soluble when delivered by the nanocarriers and exhibited a remarkable effect on the cancer cells, compared to their free form. More interestingly, the half-maximal dose of the phytochemical was reduced significantly when it was delivered by the nanocarrier. On the whole, this review encourages the idea of "cancer-nanotechnology" after in-depth clinical studies on these phytochemical-loaded nanocarriers. Moreover, it will epitomize the nanocarriers as a crusader in improving cancer chemotherapy by reducing undesired effects and will invigorate site-specific drug deliver

DCAT: A Novel Transformer-Based Approach for Dynamic Context-Aware Image Captioning in the Tamil Language

The task of image captioning in low-resource languages like Tamil is fraught with challenges due to limited linguistic resources and complex semantic structures. This paper addresses the problem of generating contextually and linguistically coherent captions in Tamil. We introduce the Dynamic Context-Aware Transformer (DCAT), a novel approach that synergizes the Vision Transformer (ViT) with the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3), reinforced by a unique Context Embedding Layer. The DCAT model, tailored for Tamil, innovatively employs dynamic attention mechanisms during its Initialization, Training, and Inference phases to focus on pertinent visual and textual elements. Our method distinctively leverages the nuances of Tamil syntax and semantics, a novelty in the realm of low-resource language image captioning. Comparative evaluations against established models on datasets like Flickr8k, Flickr30k, and MSCOCO reveal DCAT’s superiority, with a notable 12% increase in BLEU score (0.7425) and a 15% enhancement in METEOR score (0.4391) over leading models. Despite its computational demands, DCAT sets a new benchmark for image captioning in Tamil, demonstrating potential applicability to other similar languages

An insight into the putative role of victuals like honey and its polyphenols in breast cancer

Diet plays a crucial role in cancer advancement as well as prevention. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women. Recent research links breast cancer with diet and some evidence for the preventive effect of diet against breast cancer was also documented. The growth of cancer cells is influenced by natural sweetener honey and its multitude of phenolic phytochemical components. Honey has been used medicinally by ancient Greeks and Egyptians and also traditionally exploited in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. In this paper, the anti-cancer properties of honey and its phytochemical's action against breast cancer have been summarized. They result in apoptosis by enhancing reactive oxygen species level, activating mitochondrial pathway, initiation of pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic proteins, induction of p53 pathway that finally cause DNA fragmentation. However, there is a necessity for more proteomic and genetic-based experiments to understand its molecular mechanism to promote honey and its phenolic markers as plausible candidates for breast cancer treatment. Further, there is a need for quality check of honey available in the market, which warrants significant investigation by researchers in the food industry to ensure their attributes