Effects of Cynodon dactylon on Stress-Induced Infertility in Male Rats

Cynodon dactylon (Family: Poaceae) is known to be a tackler in Indian mythology and is offered to Lord Ganesha. It is found everywhere, even on waste land, road side, dry places, and spreads vigorously on cultivated ground. This study was carried out with an objective to test if the constituents of this plant are useful in coping stress-induced sexual In this study, we considered immobilization stress to induce male infertility and the effect of C. dactylon in restoration of the dysfunction was evaluated by considering sexual behavioral observations, sexual performance, fructose content of the seminal vesicles, epididymal sperm concentration and histopathological examinations as parameters. Treatment of rats under stress with methanolic extract of C. dactylon has shown a promising effect in overcoming stress-induced sexual dysfunction, sexual performance, fructose content, sperm concentration and its effect on accessory sexual organs and body weight. We conclude that active constituents of C. dactylon present in methanolic extract have a potent aphrodisiac and male fertility activity

Recent Developments in Helioseismic Analysis Methods and Solar Data Assimilation

MR and AS have received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 307117

Forward modeling of collective Thomson scattering for Wendelstein 7-X plasmas: Electrostatic approximation

In this paper, we present a method for numerical computation of collective Thomson scattering (CTS). We developed a forward model, eCTS, in the electrostatic approximation and benchmarked it against a full electromagnetic model. Differences between the electrostatic and the electromagnetic models are discussed. The sensitivity of the results to the ion temperature and the plasma composition is demonstrated. We integrated the model into the Bayesian data analysis framework Minerva and used it for the analysis of noisy synthetic data sets produced by a full electromagnetic model. It is shown that eCTS can be used for the inference of the bulk ion temperature. The model has been used to infer the bulk ion temperature from the first CTS measurements on Wendelstein 7-X

Recent developments of the e.VERDI Project at ISIS

Epithermal neutrons are unique probes for deep inelastic neutron scattering (DINS) at high-energy and high-momentum transfer and inelastic neutron scattering (INS) at high-energy and low-wave vector transfers. In the latter case the kinematic range has recently been revisited given that the high values of initial and final wave vectors achievable in a scattering process coupled to small scattering angles allow to access a so far unexplored region in q,w, i.e w > 1 eV and q < 10 A-1. In order to exploit DINS and INS in the high-energy and low-momentum range, a very low angle detector (VLAD) bank will be delivered within the e.VERDI Project together with a novel bank at intermediate scattering angles. The former will provide a new tool for investigating high-energy excitations in magnetic systems and semiconductors. The VLAD bank will be constructed following the concept of a resonance detector (RD) spectrometer, recently revised for DINS experiments in the range 1-100 eV.This is a more promising approach in terms of efficiency and signal-to-noise ratio compared to standard neutron counting techniques at eV energies. Results from two devices, cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) solid-state detectors and YAlO3 perovskite (YAP) scintillators used in RD configurations, will be presented