Antioxidant Properties of Bitter Gourd (Momordica Charantia L.)

Bitter gourd is regarded as an antioxidant rich vegetable with beneficial properties for the circulatory, respiratory, digestive and nervous systems according to the Indian indigenous system of medicine. Several methods have been used to determine antioxidant activity of plants. The present study, therefore, involved four various established methods to evaluate anti oxidative activity of bitter gourd fruit, namely, total antioxidant capacity, DPPH radical scavenging activity, hydroxyl radical scavenging activity and super oxide anion radical scavenging activity by using different types of solvents like petroleum ether, acetone, ethanol and methanol. The present study revealed that light green big sample had the highest DPPH activity with an IC50 value of 50.88 µg/ ml in methanol solvent. In the case of bitter gourd dried samples, highest DPPH activity with an IC50 value of 50.10 µg/ ml was reported in light green big type. The hydroxyl radical scavenging activity of light green big was found to be highest both in the case of fresh and dried bitter gourd samples with an IC50 values of 50.95 µg/ml and 50.10 µg/ml respectively. Light green small sample showed higher superoxide anion radical scavenging activity with an IC50 value of 50.36 µg/ ml in fresh samples and 49.76 µg/ ml in dried samples, in solvents like petroleum ether and acetone respectively. Antioxidant activity ranged with an IC50 value of 50.09 µg/ml to 61.90 µg/ml in fresh bitter gourd samples and maximum antioxidant capacity was observed in light green big (50.09 µg/ ml) whereas dried samples, the highest antioxidant activity was observed in light green dried (50.07 µg/ ml) in acetone solvent

High Tc Superconductors -- A Variational Theory of the Superconducting State

We use a variational approach to gain insight into the strongly correlated d-wave superconducting state of the high Tc cuprates at T=0. We show that strong correlations lead to qualitatively different trends in pairing and phase coherence: the pairing scale decreases monotonically with hole doping while the SC order parameter shows a non-monotonic dome. We obtain detailed results for the doping-dependence of a large number of experimentally observable quantities, including the chemical potential, coherence length, momentum distribution, nodal quasiparticle weight and dispersion, incoherent features in photoemission spectra, optical spectral weight and superfluid density. Most of our results are in remarkable quantitative agreement with existing data and some of our predictions, first reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 87}, 217002 (2001), have been recently verified.Comment: (Minor revisions, 1 figure added, version to appear in PRB) 23 RevTeX pages, 11 eps figs, long version of cond-mat/0101121, contains detailed comparisons with experiments, analytical insights, technical aspects of the calculation, and comparison with slave boson MF

DNA Barcoding of Fish Fauna using Mitochondrial CO1 Gene

This study aimed to investigate the quantitative relationships between four fish species from three genera based on molecular analyses (barcoding) of nine species from five genera utilizing the mitochondrial COI gene. Species within the same genus showed more transitional incompatibilities than transversional mismatches. The samples were divided into four main groups by a phylogenetic tree built from the sequencing data (cytochrome COI) of samples from the two populations using the neighbour-joining method. As dissimilar species were clustered under separate nodes and similar species were clustered under the same nodes, the neighbour-joining tree revealed various clusters corresponding to the taxonomic status of the species. In conclusion, the mitochondrial CO1 gene is a useful molecular marker for DNA barcoding.

Ectopic production of human placental lactogen by human breast tumors

Serum samples from 72 patients with established carcinoma of the breast were investigated for ectopic presence of hPL. Further, the relationship of ectopically-secreted hPL and hCG-β in breast cancer was investigated. Ten of 72 patients examined had detectable hPL and 12 had detectable hCG-β, at 1-2 ng/ml serum sensitivity of the assay. The presence of hPL in serum of breast cancer patients was found to be independent of that of hCG-β. Sera of 13 patients with cystic mastitis, five with fibroadenoma, two with acute inflamation of breast, 20 normal women (non-pregnant) and 20 normal men did not show any detectable serum hPL or hCG-β at the above mentioned sensitivity of the assay. Since these hormones were not detectable in normal men, normal non-pregnant women, and in patients having other pathological conditions of breast, the possible use of them as markers in cancer is expected

Membrane-initiated nuclear trafficking of the glucocorticoid receptor in hypothalamic neurons

Glucocorticoid binding to the intracellular glucocorticoid receptor (GR) stimulates the translocation of the GR from the cytosol to the nucleus, which leads to the transactivation or transrepression of gene transcription. However, multiple lines of evidence suggest that glucocorticoid signaling can also be initiated from the plasma membrane. Here, we provide evidence for membrane-initiated glucocorticoid signaling by a membrane-impermeant dexamethasone-bovine serum albumin (Dex-BSA) conjugate, which induced GR nuclear trafficking in hypothalamic neurons in vitro and in vivo. The GR nuclear translocation induced by a membrane-impermeant glucocorticoid suggests trafficking of an unliganded GR. The membrane-initiated GR trafficking was not blocked by inhibiting ERK MAPK, p38 MAPK, PKA, Akt, Src kinase, or calcium signaling, but was inhibited by Akt activation. Short-term exposure of hypothalamic neurons to dexamethasone (Dex) activated the glucocorticoid response element (GRE), suggesting transcriptional transactivation, whereas exposure to the Dex-BSA conjugate failed to activate the GRE, suggesting differential transcriptional activity of the liganded compared to the unliganded GR. Microarray analysis revealed divergent transcriptional regulation by Dex-BSA compared to Dex. Together, our data suggest that signaling from a putative membrane glucocorticoid receptor induces the trafficking of unliganded GR to the nucleus, which elicits a pattern of gene transcription that differs from that of the liganded receptor. The differential transcriptional signaling by liganded and unliganded receptors may contribute to the broad range of genetic regulation by glucocorticoids, and may help explain some of the different off-target actions of glucocorticoid drugs

Support Vector Machine based Image Classification for Deaf and Mute People

A hand gesture recognition system provides a natural, innovative and modern way of nonverbal communication. It has a wide area of application in human computer interaction and sign language. The whole system consists of three components: hand detection, gesture recognition and human-computer interaction (HCI) based on recognition; in the existing technique, ANFIS(adaptive neuro-fuzzy interface system) to recognize gestures and makes it attainable to identify relatively complex gestures were used. But the complexity is high and performance is low. To achieve high accuracy and high performance with less complexity, a gray illumination technique is introduced in the proposed Hand gesture recognition. Here, live video is converted into frames and resize the frame, then apply gray illumination algorithm for color balancing in order to separate the skin separately. Then morphological feature extraction operation is carried out. After that support vector machine (SVM) train and testing process are carried out for gesture recognition. Finally, the character sound is played as audio output

Stability and Effective Process Control for Secure Email Filtering

A fantastic tool for both commercial and personal communication is electronic mail. It has increasingly become a necessary component of our working life since it is straightforward, available, and simple to use. Spam emails have started to tarnish internet experiences and threaten the integrity of email. Due to the exponential growth of spam, both people and organisations are under a great deal of financial and other strain. In order to prevent the future of email itself from being in jeopardy, a solution to the spam problem must be discovered. There is an urgent need to solve the Email spam issue since spam volume has been rising over the last several decades. As part of this effort, many effects of spam emails on businesses and people were noted and thoroughly examined. In order to properly assess current technologies, solutions, and methods, a comprehensive literature review was conducted throughout the procedures. The goals of this work is to develop new methodologies for the implementation of new strategies for the efficient management of email spam and to construct a proof-of-concept software system for the Process controlled assessment of such strategies

EVALUATION OF THYROID DISEASES BY HORMONAL ANALYSIS IN PEDIATRIC AGE GROUP

  Introduction: Among endocrine disorders commonly encountered in pediatric age group, thyroid diseases are more frequent. Congenital hypothyroidism is one of the major problems in this age with worldwide incidence of 1:3000-4000 live birth and in India it is 1:2500-2800. Objectives: The aim of this study is to know the prevalence of thyroid diseases in newborn and children by hormonal evaluation. Methodology: We have studied 50 children suspected of having signs and symptoms of thyroid diseases. Hormonal evaluation was done by the estimation of serum TSH, T3 and T4. Results: Out of total 50 children, 16 were detected with abnormal hormone level and diagnosed having thyroid diseases. Out of 16 affected children, 4 had congenital hypothyroidism (25%), 6 had subclinical or acquired hypothyroidism (37.5%), 3 had autoimmune thyroiditis (18.75%) and 3 had goiter with graves disease (18.75%). Conclusion: Congenital hypothyroidism is one of the major preventable thyroid disease if diagnosed early. Other thyroid diseases commonly seen in pediatric age are subclinical hypothyroidism, autoimmune thyroiditis, goiter and rarely hyperthyroidism

Superconductor-Insulator Transition in a Disordered Electronic System

We study an electronic model of a 2D superconductor with onsite randomness using Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The superfluid density is used to track the destruction of superconductivity in the ground state with increasing disorder. The non-superconducting state is identified as an insulator from the temperature dependence of its d.c. resistivity. The value of $\sigma_{\rm dc}$ at the superconductor-insulator transition appears to be non-universal.Comment: PostScript, 4 pages, figures include