Total phenolic and flavonoid contents, cytotoxic, immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory potential of whole plant of Astragalus creticus (Fabaceae)

Purpose: To determine total phenolic and flavonoid contents, as well as the cytotoxic, immunemodulatoryand anti-inflammatory potentials of the whole plant of Astragalus creticus (Fabaceae).Methods: Folin-Ciocalteu (FCR) method was used for determination of total phenolic and flavonoid contents of the methanol and dichloromethane extracts of Astragalus creticus. The cytotoxic potential of the extracts on 3T3 and HeLa cell lines were evaluated using MTT assay. Brine shrimp larvae mortality was determined by lethality bioassay, while inhibitory effects were determined on mouse fibroblast (3T3)and cervical cancer (HeLa) cell lines. In vitro immunomodulatory and in vivo anti-inflammatory effectswere assessed using reactive oxygen species (ROS) chemiluminescence and formalin-induced rat paw edema assays, respectively.Results: Dichloromethane extract had higher contents of phenolics (TPC = 324.75 ± 2.47 mg GAE/g) and flavonoids (TFC = 95.51 ± 0.82 QE/g) than the methanol extract (TPC = 79.82 ± 1.53 mg GAE/g, TFC = 56.11 ± 0.93 QE/g). The dichloromethane extract exhibited high cytotoxic andimmunomodulatory potentials, with 76.66 % mortality in brine shrimp lethality bioassay and 83.9 % inhibition (IC50 = 18.0 ± 1.1 μg/mL) in chemiluminescence assay. The extract also resulted in 22 and 13 % inhibition of viability of HeLa and 3T3 cells, respectively, while the methanol extract produced 13 % inhibition of both cell lines. The methanol extract produced very significant anti-inflammatory activity,with a maximum of 49 % inhibition of paw edema at a dose of 160 mg/kg (p < 0.01).Conclusion: These results suggest that the dichloromethane and methanol extracts of Astragalus creticus (Fabaceae) exert cytotoxic, immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory effects. These findings provide scientific validation for the traditional medicinal use of the Astragalus genus

Increasing Employee Organizational Commitment by Correlating Goal Setting, Employee Engagement and Optimism at Workplace

The aim of this study is to explore the link among important factors with effect organizational commitment. Secondly this study focuses to make a positive significant relation in setting of goals, engagement of employee and optimistic approach of behavior at work place environment in order to enhance organizational commitment level of employee. The data for that hypothesized model will be collected form individual belongs to from different organizations and research institutions. The results of this study will contribute new improved ways to achieve maximum level of organizational commitment from employees. This study will provide new insight for the field of performance management. Key words: Organizational commitment, Employee engagement, Work place optimism, Enhancing performance, Goal Settin

Neotectonics of Zindapir Anticline and Sulaiman Fold and Thrust Belt: Inferences from SRTM DEM

The current study deals with the significance of surface dynamics (SDs) and its relationship to tectonics and active erosion in Zindapir Anticline (ZPA) and neighboring Sulaiman Fold and Thrust Belt (SFTB) which is a direct result of transform plate movement between Indo-Pak continent and Eurasia. The Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission Digital Elevation Model SRTM DEM with 30 m resolution was employed to compute SDs; Isobase (IBL), drainage density (DD), relative relief (RR) and vertical dissection (VD) thematic maps for the study area. The results obtained show that the DD, RR, VD and IBL have higher values in north west, central segments and south west of the SFTB, whereas the Zindapir anticline represents dextral movement on its east side while sinistral sense of movement is observed on its western edge. High values of RR and VD correspond to highly incised topography with great surface roughness. The enhanced values of IBL and DD in the northwest, south west and central SFTB correspond to uplifted active topography segments and can trigger medium level earthquakes in this region. The conjugate movement of ZPA is an indication of its neotectonic nature and recent uplift is causing surface deformation which needs to be understood in the context of SFTB development as a result of India-Eurasia transform movemen

Evolution of Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase encoding transcripts in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Background: Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC; EC 4.1.1.31) is an important enzyme encoded by a gene family of at least 2-8 plant type and 1-2 bacterial type genes depending upon genome size or species complexity. This enzyme functions as catalyst for the β-carboxylation of phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) to form oxaloacetate in cytoplasm. It is involved in carbon fixation and various other plant metabolic pathways.Methods: In this study we characterized the evolutionary perspective of PPC transcripts and their abundance pattern in different plant tissues of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.).Results: The current study revealed that PEPC enzyme in chickpea is encoded by a gene family of at least 6 transcripts. All active site residues of C3 PEPCs were found in transcripts. Phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid sequences showed two major groups PTPC and BTPC from different ancestral lineages. Divergence of PTPC in two groups and further convergence within species was found in most of the plants while multiple evolutionary divergences was likely to be specific in legumes including chickpea.Conclusion: CaPPC genes are regulated under various abiotic stress. Furthermore, the expression pattern of the identified genes can be helpful to explore plant metabolism of chickpea under abiotic stresses, which can be the next step to explore more into this gene family in chickpea.Keywords: Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase transcripts; Chickpea; Phylogen

Comparative Analysis of Different Remote Sensing Techniques for Mapping of Supraglacial Lakes on Hispar Glacier

The glacier changes are very significant in quantifying the direct effects of climate change. The glaciers inthe northern Pakistan especially in the Karakoram pose a large change in relief and are difficult to access due tocomplex topography. The global WOS (Web of Science) database indicate only a few studies conducted so far in thisregion in the domain of climate and cryosphere. The studies relating to glacial hazards in this region are even less. Thisstudy involves the mapping of supraglacial lakes on Hispar glacier using multiple remote sensing methods. Theaccuracy of results from those methods is discussed. Remote Sensing and GIS techniques have been applied to timeseries of Landsat images of years 2017, 2016, 2010, 2000 and 1990 (in the descending order) to quantify thesupraglacial lakes on the Hispar glacier. The remote sensing techniques include Band Rationing, Normalized WaterIndex (NDWI), Classification i.e. Unsupervised and Panchromatic Sharpening Image Enhancement Technique for theyears of 2017 and 2016 imageries. After defining the Hunza basin (involving of high resolution DEMs), all the satellitederived imageries have been preprocessed and processed. GIS tools have been used to calculate the areal extents ofyearly obtained supraglacial lakes and compare temporally with passing years, which in turn gave an accuratecomparative analysis among different remote sensing techniques. The satellite derived time series map layouts of eachtechnique have been formulated. The vulnerable supraglacial lakes on Hispar glacier of areal sizes ≤ 0.05 sq.km havealso been identified and delineate

The Relationship of Leader-Member Exchange and Organizational Citizenship Behavior, the Moderating Impact of the Role of Subordinate LMX

The fundamental purpose of the study is to check the impact of leader-member exchange (LMX) with reference to having in view the superior authority LMX and Subordinate LMX on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study also focus on the role of subordinate-LMX on OCB, the role of subordinate-LMX would be examined as moderating variable. The estimated results described that LMX form the superior side has a good impact on OCB, while the impact of LMX by subordinate has not significant impact on OCB. Findings of this study enhancing the existing Research work. Moreover managerial implication and findings of this research work are based on extensive literature. Key words: Leader-member exchange, Organizational citizenship behavio

A Statistical-Textural-Features Based Approach for Classification of Solid Drugs Using Surface Microscopic Images

The quality of pharmaceutical products plays an important role in pharmaceutical industry as well as in our lives. Usage of defective tablets can be harmful for patients. In this research we proposed a nondestructive method to identify defective and nondefective tablets using their surface morphology. Three different environmental factors temperature, humidity and moisture are analyzed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Multiple textural features are extracted from the surface of the defective and nondefective tablets. These textural features are gray level cooccurrence matrix, run length matrix, histogram, autoregressive model and HAAR wavelet. Total textural features extracted from images are 281. We performed an analysis on all those 281, top 15, and top 2 features. Top 15 features are extracted using three different feature reduction techniques: chi-square, gain ratio and relief-F. In this research we have used three different classifiers: support vector machine, K-nearest neighbors and naïve Bayes to calculate the accuracies against proposed method using two experiments, that is, leave-one-out cross-validation technique and train test models. We tested each classifier against all selected features and then performed the comparison of their results. The experimental work resulted in that in most of the cases SVM performed better than the other two classifiers