Endophytic Mycoflora of Indian Medicinal Plant, Terminalia arjuna and their Biological Activities

Studies were undertaken to isolate, identify and evaluate the biological activities of endophytic mycoflora of Indian medicinal plant, Terminalia arjuna. A total of 20 isolates of endophytic fungi were obtained from the leaves, twigs and bark tissues of the Terminalia arjuna. Out of 20, six isolates exhibited promising antibacterial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory activities when cultivated at shake flask level. The selected isolates were identified on the basis of morphology and ITS gene sequencing. Three isolates, designated as TA BA 1, TA L1 and TA L2 were identified as Aspergillus flavus whereas; the remaining three endophytic fungi were identified as Diaporthe arengae (TA TW2), Alternaria Sp. (TA TW1) and Lasiodiplodia theobromae (TA BA2). Aspergillus flavus was found as the predominant endophyte in leaves and bark tissues of the plant. The crude extract of the test isolates showed considerable antimicrobial activity against common human bacterial (Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Proteus vulgaris, Salmonella abony and Bacillus subtilis) and fungal (Candida albicans, Aspergillus niger and Penicilium sp.) pathogens. The extract of Diaporthe arengae (TA TW2) significantly reduced the concentration of DPPH free radical as percent DPPH scavenging activity was found to be highest (69.56%) in comparison with other isolates. The % inhibition of hemolysis of RBCs was found to be highest (82.85%) with Diaporthe arengae (TA TW2) in comparison (83.26%) with standard drug (Ibuprofen). Among all, the extract of the Diaporthe arengae (TA TW2) showed excellent biological activities and hence was subjected to further characterization. The phytochemical investigation of the extract revealed the presence of terpenoids as the major phytoconstituents which was supported by TLC and UV spectroscopic studies. The results indicate that the isolated endophytes could be the valuable source of these bioactive molecules with diverse biological activities. The bioactivities may be attributed to the terpenoids present in the endophytic extract

Effect of weld parameter on mechanical and metallurgical properties of dissimilar joints AA6082–AA6061 in T6 condition produced by FSW

The effect of processing parameters on the mechanical and metallurgical properties of dissimilarjoints of AA6082–AA6061 produced by friction stir welding was analysed in this study. Different FSW sampleswere produced by varying the welding speeds of the tool as 50 and 62 mm/min and by varying the alloypositioned on the advancing side of the tool. In all the experiments the rotating speed is fixed at 1600rpm. Allthe welds were produced perpendicularly to the rolling direction for both the alloys. Microhardness (HV) andtensile tests performed at room temperature were used to evaluate the mechanical properties of the joints. Inorder to analyse the microstructural evolution of the material, the weld’s cross-sections were observed opticallyand SEM observations were made of the fracture surfaces. The corrosion tests of base alloy and welded jointswere carried out in 3.5%NaCl solution at a room temperature. Corrosion current and potential were determinedusing potentiostatic polarization measurements. It was found that the corrosion rates of welded joints werehigher than that of base alloy

Variable - temperature scanning optical and force microscope

The implementation of a scanning microscope capable of working in confocal, atomic force and apertureless near field configurations is presented. The microscope is designed to operate in the temperature range 4 - 300 K, using conventional helium flow cryostats. In AFM mode, the distance between the sample and an etched tungsten tip is controlled by a self - sensing piezoelectric tuning fork. The vertical position of both the AFM head and microscope objective can be accurately controlled using piezoelectric coarse approach motors. The scanning is performed using a compact XYZ stage, while the AFM and optical head are kept fixed, allowing scanning probe and optical measurements to be acquired simultaneously and in concert. The free optical axis of the microscope enables both reflection and transmission experiments to be performed.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, submitted to the journal "Review of Scientific Instruments

Nondescent vaginal hysterectomy: analysis of indications and complications

Background: Hysterectomy is the commonest major surgical procedure performed in gynecology. It can be done by abdominal or vaginal route and with the help of laparoscopy. Laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy (LAVH) and total laparoscopic hysterectomy (TLH) although gaining more popularity now a days, though it is associated with higher cost, longer duration of operation, and need general anaesthesia. The latest value study concluded that major haemorrhage, hematoma, ureteric injury, bladder injury, and anesthetic complications were more in laparoscopic assisted hysterectomy (LAVH) group when compared to abdominal and vaginal hysterectomies. In addition LAVH was accomplished in twice the time required for vaginal hysterectomy.The objective of the study was to analyse the indication and to study the complications of nondescent vaginal hysterectomy.Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study.  60 women who underwent nondescent vaginal hysterectomy in the department of OBG, B.G.S. Global Institute of Medical Sciences, Banglore, India were included in the study. Patients’ records were retrieved. Data regarding patient’s age, parity, indications for hysterectomy, uterine size in weeks, previous surgeries in the past, duration of surgery and complications were recorded. Data collected on a semi structured proforma and the same was analysed using suitable statistical analysis.Results: A total of 60 cases were operated for different indications. Among the study participants majority were in the age group of 41-45 years with 28 (46.7%). Most common indication for hysterectomies were dysfunctional uterine bleeding (DUB) with 27 (45%), followed by fibroid uterus 15 (25%). The mean duration of surgery time taken was 50+10minutes. Majority of the women who underwent hysterectomies had bulky uterus with 42 (70%).  Complications were very few. Fever, UTI (urinary tract infection) and headache were seen in 3 (5%) cases. There was one case of vault sepsis and one case of upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). In one patient vaginal hysterectomy could not be completed and abdominal hysterectomy was carried out. Mean hospital duration was 4 days.Conclusions: Vaginal hysterectomy is the least invasive with fewer complications and most economical route for hysterectomy. Nondescent vaginal hysterectomy should be the gynaecologists first choice for hysterectomy

Automatic Classification of Medicinal Plants Using State-Of-The-Art Pre-Trained Neural Networks

Now a days every mankind is suffering due to infections. Ayurveda, the science of life helped to take preventive measures which boost our immunity.  It is plant-based science. Many medicinal plants found useful in daily life of common people for boosting immunity. Identifying the plant species having medicinal plant is challenging, it requires botanical expert. In the process of manual identification, botanical experts use various plant features as the identification keys, which are examined adaptively and progressively to identify plant species. The shortage of experts and trained taxonomist created global taxonomic impediment problem which is one of the major challenges.  Various researchers have worked in the field of automatic classification of plants since the last decade. The leaf is considered as primary input as it is available throughout the whole year. The research paper mainly focuses on the study of transfer learning approach for medicinal plant classification, which reuse already developed model at the starting point for model on a second task. Transfer learning approach is a black box approach used for image classification and many more applications by extracting features from an image. Some of the transfer learning models are MobileNet-V1, VGG-19, ResNet-50, VGG-16. Here it uses Mendeley dataset of Indian medicinal plant species which is freely available. Output layer classifies the species of leaves. The result provides evaluation and variations of above listed features extracted models. MobileNetV1 achieves maximum accuracy of 98%

A review on mouth dissolving tablet

The demand for MDT (Mouth Disintegrating Tablet) has been increasing from the last decade particularly in geriatric, pediatric and patient with some sort of disabilities in swallowing. MDTs are those tablets which when placed in mouth get dissolved rapidly in saliva without the need of liquid and can be swallowed. European pharmacopoeia adopted the term Orodispersible tablet for MDTs. Mouth disintegrating tablets are also known as Fast melting tablets, Orodispersible tablets, fast dissolving/dispersing tablets or melt in mouth tablets. This article reviews the potential benefits offered by MDTs as an oral drug delivery system for various kinds of patients suffering from different diseases and disabilities. Desired characteristics and challenges for developing fast disintegrating drug delivery systems, quality control tests, various techniques used in the preparation of fast disintegrating drug delivery systems like lyophilization technologies, tablet molding method, sublimation techniques, spray drying techniques, mass extrusion technology, direct compression method and uses of super-disintegrates. It also reviews the patented technologies for fast dissolving tablets, advantages and disadvantages of different technologies for preparing fast disintegrating dosage form, future prospective for MDTs. The growing importance for MDTs is due to the potential advantages offered by this technology. MDT is a New Drug Delivery system with least disintegration time and ease of self administratio

Advanced Door Level Security For Theft Detection

Now a day?s many door access control systems are available in market but still the theft rates are increased. Protecting highly secured areas with single level biometric system for access control is not efficient. So in this paper we proposed a system with two level security checks. This system uses password with face recognition technique for theft detection. First system acquires password from user. If that password matched with authorized password, then current captured image will get compared with authorized image stored along with that password. This two level security reduces the number of comparisons required to match the image with authorized person. If any unauthorized person tries to get access of area, then system raises alarm and sends message to registered mobile number using GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) module. If any unauthorized person tries to harm the system, vibration sensor sends signal to microcontroller 89E51RD2 which in turns raises alarm. This system helps users for improvement of the door security of sensitive locations by using face detection and recognition. This system uses sensor, namely passive infrared receiver (PIR) which detects presence of human in front of door, Vibration sensors for detecting vibrations at door or window area, Microcontroller 89E51RD2 for sending signals to computer, Camera for capturing images, GSM module for sending messages and a buzzer for alerting authorized persons

The Cosmology of Massless String Modes

We consider the spacetime dynamics of a gas of closed strings in the context of General Relativity in a background of arbitrary spatial dimensions. Our motivation is primarily late time String Gas Cosmology, where such a spacetime picture has to emerge after the dilaton has stabilized. We find that after accounting for the thermodynamics of a gas of strings, only string modes which are massless at the self-dual radius are relevant, and that they lead to a dynamics which is qualitatively different from that induced by the modes usually considered in the literature. In the context of an ansatz with three large spatial dimensions and an arbitrary number of small extra dimensions, we obtain isotropic stabilization of these extra dimensions at the self-dual radius. This stabilization occurs for fixed dilaton, and is induced by the special string states we focus on. The three large dimensions undergo a regular Friedmann-Robertson-Walker expansion. We also show that this framework for late-time cosmology is consistent with observational bounds.Comment: 15 pages, no figures, references added (again

Limb position influences component orientation in Oxford mobile bearing unicompartmental knee arthroplasty: an experimental cadaveric study

Aims The mobile bearing Oxford unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (OUKA) is recommended to be performed with the leg in the hanging leg (HL) position, and the thigh placed in a stirrup. This comparative cadaveric study assesses implant positioning and intraoperative kinematics of OUKA implanted either in the HL position or in the supine leg (SL) position. Methods A total of 16 fresh-frozen knees in eight human cadavers, without macroscopic anatomical defects, were selected. The knees from each cadaver were randomized to have the OUKA implanted in the HL or SL position. Results Tibial base plate rotation was significantly more variable in the SL group with 75% of tibiae mal-rotated. Multivariate analysis of navigation data found no difference based on all kinematic parameters across the range of motion (ROM). However, area under the curve analysis showed that knees placed in the HL position had much smaller differences between the pre- and post-surgery conditions for kinematics mean values across the entire ROM. Conclusion The sagittal tibia cut, not dependent on standard instrumentation, determines the tibial component rotation. The HL position improves accuracy of this step compared to the SL position, probably due to better visuospatial orientation of the hip and knee to the surgeon. The HL position is better for replicating native kinematics of the knee as shown by the area under the curve analysis. In the supine knee position, care must be taken during the sagittal tibia cut, while checking flexion balance and when sizing the tibial component