LIFE, DEATH, AND PHARMA IN INDIA: A CASE STUDY

The health of the people is really the foundation on which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.†- Benjamin Disraeli.A healthy society is obviously a healthy nation. Being healthy is a result of various factors such as lifestyle, income, choices, society, access to medical facilities, culture, and family. The life expectancy (LE) (i.e., average years a person is anticipated to live has almost doubled) in the past century and medical breakthroughs had a profoundly positive impact on human LE. The average LE of the people in India was 49.7 years during 1970-1975 gradually increased to the level of 68.45 years in 2016 according to the world LE reports. The objective here is to understand the factors determining LE and whether there are any possibilities for considerable improvements in LE in India due to various economic policies by the government. Statistical reports from various organizations are analyzed, and the conclusion is that the government spending on health care and awareness is to be enhanced.Keywords: Life expectancy, Health care, Mortality, Birth rate, Death rate, etc.Â

Long-term application of fertilizers on chemical and biological properties of an Alfisol

A long term fertilizer experiment (30 years) at Bengaluru had been started during 1986 with eleven treat-ments and four replications in an Alfisol on finger millet (Elusine coracana) maize (Zea mays) cropping sequence. The results of the ongoing experiment after 27 cycles of finger millet and maize on changes in soil chemical proper-ties revealed that application of inorganics alone resulted in impaired soil fertility status (soil pH, organic carbon con-tent and available nutrients in soil were decreased) over balanced fertilizer application. There was a decline in soil reaction over the initial status and the maximum decrease was observed in 100 % NP (-1.46), 100 % N (-1.20) and other treatments. Application of 100 % NPK+FYM+lime maintained the soil pH (6.2) compared to all the other treat-ments. Organic carbon content of soil in all the treatments was higher (6.46 g kg-1) compared to the initial status; however, maximum increase in organic carbon content was registered on application of NPK+FYM. Application of 10 t ha-1 along with recommended dose of fertilizers and lime was found promising in term of sustaining crop and soil productivity

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EFFICACY AND SAFETY OF DIACEREIN VERSUS S-ADENOSYL METHIONINE IN THE MANAGEMENT OF OSTEOARTHRITIS OF KNEE JOINT

Objective: Osteoarthritis (OA) the most common type of arthritis is a degenerative joint disease primarily affecting the articular cartilage and its surrounding tissue. Drugs like Diacerein and S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe) are used to remodel the cartilage and slow the progression of the disease, by acting through different mechanisms. Though there is documented evidence of the efficacy of both agents used individually in several clinical trials only a few studies report a comparison. To analyse the efficacy and safety of Diacerein Versus S-adenosyl methionine in the treatment of Osteoarthritis of knee joint.Methods: A prospective randomised interventional study was planned comparing diacerein with SAMe for 12 w in the management of OA of the knee. 40 patients in each group were randomly assigned to receive either diacerein 50 mg twice daily or S-adenosyl methionine 200 mg thrice daily for 12 w. Both groups received a short course of diclofenac 50 mg bd for one week, to tide over the acute symptoms.Results: Assessment of both drugs individually showed an equieffective potential in reducing osteoarthritis pain over a period of 12 w. But the comparison between the two groups showed a marginal improvement in pain relief from the 4th to 12th week of assessment in the diacerein group.Conclusion: Both the drugs for the treatment of OA, were shown to be effective in relieving pain but with a slower onset of action. Since no radiological changes were observed during the 12-week protocol, studies of longer duration are needed to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of these drugs

An Efficient Hardware Implementation of Detecting Targets from Remotely Sensed Hyperspectral Images

156-165Real-time implementation of hyperspectral imagery is an emerging research area which has notable remote sensing applications. It is challenging to process a huge volume of hyperspectral data under real-time constraints. Field programmable gate arrays are considered as an efficient hardware suited for onboard processing system. ATGP is a proven target detection algorithm which can automatically detect the target without any predefined data. In the traditional method, this algorithm involves orthogonal subspace projector which makes the hardware design too complex and slow. To speed up the process, Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization operator is used. Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization technique uses inner product instead of matrix inverse which makes the hardware design easy to implement in FPGA board. A detailed comparative analysis is carried out using three different hyperspectral images to emphasize the performance of the design which is adopted in this technique. The processing speed of the proposed ATGP-GS algorithm is 3.484 s for ROSIS Pavia University dataset, 1.781 s for HYDICE Urban dataset and 1.609 s for AVIRIS Cuprite dataset. The proposed algorithm is implemented in Virtex 6 ML605 evaluation board to evaluate the real-time performance of the system

Autonomous Motility of Active Filaments due to Spontaneous Flow-Symmetry Breaking

We simulate the nonlocal Stokesian hydrodynamics of an elastic filament which is active due a permanent distribution of stresslets along its contour. A bending instability of an initially straight filament spontaneously breaks flow symmetry and leads to autonomous filament motion which, depending on conformational symmetry, can be translational or rotational. At high ratios of activity to elasticity, the linear instability develops into nonlinear fluctuating states with large amplitude deformations. The dynamics of these states can be qualitatively understood as a superposition of translational and rotational motion associated with filament conformational modes of opposite symmetry. Our results can be tested in molecular-motor filament mixtures, synthetic chains of autocatalytic particles, or other linearly connected systems where chemical energy is converted to mechanical energy in a fluid environment.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; contains supplemental text; movies at http://proofideas.org/rjoy/gallery; published in Physical Review Letter

Homogeneous catalysis under ultra-dilute conditions: TAML/NaClO oxidation of persistent metaldehyde

This document is the unedited Author’s version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Journal of the American Chemical Society, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.6b11145TAML activators enable homogenous oxidation catalysis where the catalyst and substrate (S) are ultra-dilute (pM–low μM) and the oxidant is very dilute (high nM–low mM). Water contamination by exceptionally persistent micropollutants (MPs), including metaldehyde (Met), provides an ideal space for determining the characteristics and utilitarian limits of this ultradilute catalysis. The low MP concentrations decrease throughout catalysis with S oxidation (kII) and catalyst inactivation (ki) competing for the active catalyst. The percentage of substrate converted (%Cvn) can be increased by discovering methods to increase kII/ki. Here we show that NaClO extends catalyst lifetime to increase the Met turnover number (TON) threefold compared with H2O2, highlighting the importance of oxidant choice as a design tool in TAML systems. Met oxidation studies (pH 7, D2O, 0.01 M phosphate, 25 °C) monitored by 1H NMR spectroscopy show benign acetic acid as the only significant product. Analysis of TAML/NaClO treated Met solutions employing successive identical catalyst doses revealed that the processes can be modeled by the recently published relationship between the initial and final [S] (S0 and S∞, respectively), the initial [catalyst] (FeTot) and kII/ki. Consequently, this study establishes that S is proportional to S0 and that the %Cvn is conserved across all catalyst doses in multicatalyst-dose processes because the rate of the kII process depends on [S] while that of the ki process does not. A general tool for determining the FeTot required to effect a desired %Cvn is presented. Examination of the dependence of TON on kII/ki and FeTot at a fixed S0 indicates that for any TAML process employing FeTot < 1 10-6 M, small catalyst doses are not more efficient than one large dose.T.J.C thanks the Heinz Endowments for funding. NMR instrumentation at CMU was partially supported by NSF (CHE-0130903 and CHE-1039870)

A CEP215-HSET complex links centrosomes with spindle poles and drives centrosome clustering in cancer.

Numerical centrosome aberrations underlie certain developmental abnormalities and may promote cancer. A cell maintains normal centrosome numbers by coupling centrosome duplication with segregation, which is achieved through sustained association of each centrosome with a mitotic spindle pole. Although the microcephaly- and primordial dwarfism-linked centrosomal protein CEP215 has been implicated in this process, the molecular mechanism responsible remains unclear. Here, using proteomic profiling, we identify the minus end-directed microtubule motor protein HSET as a direct binding partner of CEP215. Targeted deletion of the HSET-binding domain of CEP215 in vertebrate cells causes centrosome detachment and results in HSET depletion at centrosomes, a phenotype also observed in CEP215-deficient patient-derived cells. Moreover, in cancer cells with centrosome amplification, the CEP215-HSET complex promotes the clustering of extra centrosomes into pseudo-bipolar spindles, thereby ensuring viable cell division. Therefore, stabilization of the centrosome-spindle pole interface by the CEP215-HSET complex could promote survival of cancer cells containing supernumerary centrosomes.S.C. is supported by UK Medical Research Council (MC_U105185859). This work was made possible by funding from Cancer Research UK (C14303/A17197). We acknowledge the support of the University of Cambridge and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1100

Central giant cell reparative granuloma of the maxilla in a 5-year-old child- A case Report

Central Giant Reparative Granuloma is a non-neoplastic lesion that most commonly affects the mandible and is uncommon in children. This case-report detailed the clinical features, diagnosis, treatment, and recall of a 5-year-old boy. The oral lesion is erythematous and consists of a 4x3 cm well-demarcated swelling on the anterior maxilla that extends across the midline and covers the entire length of the palate till the junction of the hard and soft palate. Upon radiographic and histologic investigation, it was conclusive of Central giant cell reparative granuloma (CGCG). The treatment comprised of a conservative approach that included excision of the lesion, thereby reducing the risk of tooth and bone loss