EVALUATING THE ANTI-MICROBIAL EFFECT OF EUGENOL EXTRACTED FROM OCIMUM SANCTUM

Eugenol is a phytochemical present in herbal and medicinal plants. It possess anti tubercular, anti-inflammatory, anti-mutagenic properties. Commercial or synthesised eugenol is used extensively in the market nowadays. The aim is to evaluate the anti-microbial property of eugenol extracted from both the powder and leaf samples of Ocimum sanctum (tulsi) and to have a comparative analysis of the synthetic eugenol and the naturally extracted eugenol from tulsi leaves. The eugenol is extracted from tulsi leaves by steam distillation. For quantitative analysis of the natural eugenol, HPLC and UV Spectroscopy are performed with commercial eugenol as the reference. While Raman Spectroscopy is performed for qualitative analysis of the constituents of tulsi leaves. Membrane casting is done with eugenol as the core ingredient and porosity of the membrane is checked by SEM. Further microbial assay is performed to evaluate the effect of eugenol. From the results it can be concluded that the eugenol extracted from the powder and fresh leaves of tulsi has anti-microbial effect and the membrane composed of eugenol has the capability to retain the eugenol. Keywords: Ocimum sanctum, eugenol, anti-microbial, membrane,anti-microbial

Nuances of Completion: Improving Student Outcomes by Unpacking the Numbers

“Accountability” is one of most loaded terms in education today. State governments, students, parents and taxpayers are demanding to know whether public education institutions are spending their money wisely and producing results. In response, colleges are investing enormous amounts of time, energy and resources in trying to increase the number of certificates and degrees awarded and transfers achieved. Increasingly, “completion” numbers often become the litmus test for the success or failure of an entire institution. Amidst this frenzy of activity to improve student completion rates, few colleges have had time to “unpack” the numbers and examine the student experiences being represented by these figures. No matter how big or small, each and every community college serves a diverse group of students with a broad range of backgrounds, talents and goals. These students have not only widely varied starting points and end goals, but also varied pathways to completion. How can colleges better understand the factors that affect diverse students’ ability to achieve completion

Principles of Redesign: Promising Approaches to Transforming Student Outcomes

Community colleges across the country are working hard to help their students succeed. With increasing demands for accountability from the public and state governments, many colleges are feeling the pressure to make changes—now. Even more importantly, practitioners want their students to be successful so they can reap the benefits of their educational achievements: associate’s degree holders earn 33% more than those with a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree holders earn 70% more. Many colleges have been frustrated with the limited results stemming from past efforts to promote student success. With new approaches to improvement emerging and waning every few years, and expanding expectations contrasting with shrinking college budgets, many leaders and practitioners have become rightfully skeptical of the very idea of “change.” Too often, community colleges have begun to feel like enormous battle ships— no matter who is in charge and what changes are made, the ship is too big to move more than a degree or two from its original course. In the face of these challenges, this guide offers a distillation of eight core principles of redesign that any community college leader or practitioner can use to begin thinking about change through a different lens. Based on research and practice conducted and observed by organizations such as Community College Research Center (CCRC), Jobs for the Future (JFF), WestEd, Public Agenda, the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, these principles reflect a fresh approach to thinking about student outcomes: one that looks at the institution from the students’ perspective and asks colleges to align structures, systems, programs and services in a coherent way

Identification and validation of Triamcinolone and Gallopamil as treatments for early COVID-19 via an in silico repurposing pipeline

SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus of COVID-19 continues to cause an ongoing global pandemic. Therapeutics are still needed to treat mild and severe COVID-19. Drug repurposing provides an opportunity to deploy drugs for COVID-19 more rapidly than developing novel therapeutics. Some existing drugs have shown promise for treating COVID-19 in clinical trials. This in silico study uses structural similarity to clinical trial drugs to identify two drugs with potential applications to treat early COVID-19. We apply in silico validation to suggest a possible mechanism of action for both. Triamcinolone is a corticosteroid structurally similar to Dexamethasone. Gallopamil is a calcium channel blocker structurally similar to Verapamil. We propose that both these drugs could be useful to treat early COVID-19 infection due to the proximity of their targets within a SARS-CoV-2-induced protein-protein interaction network to kinases active in early infection, and the APOA1 protein which is linked to the spread of COVID-19.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure

Results from the centers for disease control and prevention's predict the 2013-2014 Influenza Season Challenge

Background: Early insights into the timing of the start, peak, and intensity of the influenza season could be useful in planning influenza prevention and control activities. To encourage development and innovation in influenza forecasting, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) organized a challenge to predict the 2013-14 Unites States influenza season. Methods: Challenge contestants were asked to forecast the start, peak, and intensity of the 2013-2014 influenza season at the national level and at any or all Health and Human Services (HHS) region level(s). The challenge ran from December 1, 2013-March 27, 2014; contestants were required to submit 9 biweekly forecasts at the national level to be eligible. The selection of the winner was based on expert evaluation of the methodology used to make the prediction and the accuracy of the prediction as judged against the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet). Results: Nine teams submitted 13 forecasts for all required milestones. The first forecast was due on December 2, 2013; 3/13 forecasts received correctly predicted the start of the influenza season within one week, 1/13 predicted the peak within 1 week, 3/13 predicted the peak ILINet percentage within 1 %, and 4/13 predicted the season duration within 1 week. For the prediction due on December 19, 2013, the number of forecasts that correctly forecasted the peak week increased to 2/13, the peak percentage to 6/13, and the duration of the season to 6/13. As the season progressed, the forecasts became more stable and were closer to the season milestones. Conclusion: Forecasting has become technically feasible, but further efforts are needed to improve forecast accuracy so that policy makers can reliably use these predictions. CDC and challenge contestants plan to build upon the methods developed during this contest to improve the accuracy of influenza forecasts. © 2016 The Author(s)

VERITAS discovery of very high energy gamma-ray emission from S3 1227+25 and multiwavelength observations

We report the detection of very high energy gamma-ray emission from the blazar S3 1227+25 (VER J1230+253) with the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS). VERITAS observations of the source were triggered by the detection of a hard-spectrum GeV flare on May 15, 2015 with the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT). A combined five-hour VERITAS exposure on May 16th and May 18th resulted in a strong 13$\sigma$ detection with a differential photon spectral index, $\Gamma$ = 3.8 $\pm$ 0.4, and a flux level at 9% of the Crab Nebula above 120 GeV. This also triggered target of opportunity observations with Swift, optical photometry, polarimetry and radio measurements, also presented in this work, in addition to the VERITAS and Fermi-LAT data. A temporal analysis of the gamma-ray flux during this period finds evidence of a shortest variability timescale of $\tau_{obs}$ = 6.2 $\pm$ 0.9 hours, indicating emission from compact regions within the jet, and the combined gamma-ray spectrum shows no strong evidence of a spectral cut-off. An investigation into correlations between the multiwavelength observations found evidence of optical and gamma-ray correlations, suggesting a single-zone model of emission. Finally, the multiwavelength spectral energy distribution is well described by a simple one-zone leptonic synchrotron self-Compton radiation model.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ

A VERITAS/Breakthrough Listen Search for Optical Technosignatures

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is conducting a program using multiple telescopes around the world to search for "technosignatures": artificial transmitters of extraterrestrial origin from beyond our solar system. The VERITAS Collaboration joined this program in 2018, and provides the capability to search for one particular technosignature: optical pulses of a few nanoseconds duration detectable over interstellar distances. We report here on the analysis and results of dedicated VERITAS observations of Breakthrough Listen targets conducted in 2019 and 2020 and of archival VERITAS data collected since 2012. Thirty hours of dedicated observations of 136 targets and 249 archival observations of 140 targets were analyzed and did not reveal any signals consistent with a technosignature. The results are used to place limits on the fraction of stars hosting transmitting civilizations. We also discuss the minimum-pulse sensitivity of our observations and present VERITAS observations of CALIOP: a space-based pulsed laser onboard the CALIPSO satellite. The detection of these pulses with VERITAS, using the analysis techniques developed for our technosignature search, allows a test of our analysis efficiency and serves as an important proof-of-principle.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

NeuroBench:A Framework for Benchmarking Neuromorphic Computing Algorithms and Systems

Neuromorphic computing shows promise for advancing computing efficiency and capabilities of AI applications using brain-inspired principles. However, the neuromorphic research field currently lacks standardized benchmarks, making it difficult to accurately measure technological advancements, compare performance with conventional methods, and identify promising future research directions. Prior neuromorphic computing benchmark efforts have not seen widespread adoption due to a lack of inclusive, actionable, and iterative benchmark design and guidelines. To address these shortcomings, we present NeuroBench: a benchmark framework for neuromorphic computing algorithms and systems. NeuroBench is a collaboratively-designed effort from an open community of nearly 100 co-authors across over 50 institutions in industry and academia, aiming to provide a representative structure for standardizing the evaluation of neuromorphic approaches. The NeuroBench framework introduces a common set of tools and systematic methodology for inclusive benchmark measurement, delivering an objective reference framework for quantifying neuromorphic approaches in both hardware-independent (algorithm track) and hardware-dependent (system track) settings. In this article, we present initial performance baselines across various model architectures on the algorithm track and outline the system track benchmark tasks and guidelines. NeuroBench is intended to continually expand its benchmarks and features to foster and track the progress made by the research community

A comprehensive analysis of common genetic variation around six candidate loci for intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy.

OBJECTIVES: Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) has a complex etiology with a significant genetic component. Heterozygous mutations of canalicular transporters occur in a subset of ICP cases and a population susceptibility allele (p.444A) has been identified in ABCB11. We sought to expand our knowledge of the detailed genetic contribution to ICP by investigation of common variation around candidate loci with biological plausibility for a role in ICP (ABCB4, ABCB11, ABCC2, ATP8B1, NR1H4, and FGF19). METHODS: ICP patients (n=563) of white western European origin and controls (n=642) were analyzed in a case-control design. Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers (n=83) were selected from the HapMap data set (Tagger, Haploview 4.1 (build 22)). Genotyping was performed by allelic discrimination assay on a robotic platform. Following quality control, SNP data were analyzed by Armitage's trend test. RESULTS: Cochran-Armitage trend testing identified six SNPs in ABCB11 together with six SNPs in ABCB4 that showed significant evidence of association. The minimum Bonferroni corrected P value for trend testing ABCB11 was 5.81×10(-4) (rs3815676) and for ABCB4 it was 4.6×10(-7)(rs2109505). Conditional analysis of the two clusters of association signals suggested a single signal in ABCB4 but evidence for two independent signals in ABCB11. To confirm these findings, a second study was performed in a further 227 cases, which confirmed and strengthened the original findings. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis of a large cohort of ICP cases has identified a key role for common variation around the ABCB4 and ABCB11 loci, identified the core associations, and expanded our knowledge of ICP susceptibility