Isolation and characterization of phenol degrading Xanthobacter flavus

A soil bacterium isolated from a contaminated site degraded phenol as the sole carbon and energy source was identified as Xanthobacter flavus MTCC 9130. This microbial strain was able to tolerate phenol up to 1100 mg/l concentration. The lag phase increased with the increase in phenolconcentration. The optimum growth temperature was 37°C. The organism could degrade completely within 120 h when initial concentration was less than 600 mg/l. Enzyme assay through cell free extract showed the presence of catechol-1,2-dioxygenase. The specific activity was 0.146 ìmol/min/mg protein. However higher concentrations of phenol in the medium showed a negative effect on the growth of the bacterium. Hence X. flavus can be effectively used for bioremediation of phenol-contaminated sites

Mechanistic insights into the analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects of alcoholic extracts from Curcuma longa

Background: Aim of the study was to scientifically validate the traditional Indian claims of Curcuma longa's (turmeric) antinociceptive (pain-relieving) and anti-inflammatory effects. Methods: The alcoholic extract of C. longa was tested in three rodent nociceptive models: acetic acid-induced writhing: examines visceral pain, formalin test: evaluates both acute and chronic neurogenic and inflammatory pain and tail immersion test to assess thermal pain. The extract's effects were compared to a control group and morphine (reference drug). Results: C. longa extract significantly reduced abdominal constrictions in the acetic acid test (59.36% inhibition). In the formalin test, the extract significantly decreased paw licking response time in both early (54.12% inhibition) and late phases (78.59% inhibition). C. longa extract significantly increased the tail flick reaction time in the immersion test, indicating pain relief. Conclusions: This study confirms the antinociceptive and anti-inflammatory activities of C. longa, providing scientific evidence for its traditional use in pain management

Natural treasures from Picrorhiza kurrooa: a computational exploration of drug-like properties and bioactivity of kutkin, cucurbitacin, apocynin and lupanine

Background: To analyse and predict the basic pharmacokinetic and toxicological properties of four compounds of interest found in Picrorhiza kurroa (Kutkin, cucurbitacin, apocynin and lupanine) using computational bioinformatics tools. Methods: The chemical structures and molecular properties of the compounds were obtained from authentic sources and processed for data profiling. 2D structures were converted to 3D structures using ChemSketch software and PHASE module. In silico screening of the 3D structures was performed using bioinformatics prediction software to assess drug-likeness, absorption, blood-brain barrier penetration, enzyme interaction potential, skin penetration, and acute oral toxicity. Results: Kutkin exhibited poor drug-likeness and low oral absorption, while the other three compounds showed promising drug-like properties and good oral absorption. Cucurbitacin and lupanine were predicted to cross the blood-brain barrier, while Kutkin and Apocynin were not. None of the compounds were substrates for P-glycoprotein, but Kutkin and cucurbitacin were substrates for CYP3A4. All four compounds had low skin penetration. Acute oral toxicity varied, with cucurbitacin classified as highly toxic and the others as slightly toxic. Conclusions: Cucurbitacin, apocynin, and lupanine have potential for further development as therapeutic agents due to their favorable drug-like properties and good absorption. Kutkin's poor drug-likeness and low absorption make it less suitable for oral drug development. This information provides valuable insights for further research on the medicinal properties of Picrorhiza kurroa and the development of new drugs based on its active compounds

A clinical, epidemiological and therapeutic scenario of dermatophytosis in a tertiary care hospital in the state of Telangana, India

Background: Dermatophytosis is a superficial fungal infection of the keratinized tissue. The infection generally designated as Tinea. Objectives of the study were to analyze the epidemiological, clinical and therapeutic scenario of the patients of the dermatophytosis attending a tertiary care hospital in the state of Telangana. As these infection falls into differential diagnosis of many skin disorders it is necessary to make early laboratory tests for better management. These infections spread through occlusive foot wear, hot humid climate, malnutrition, endocrinal disorders like Cushing syndrome.Methods: The present study was a prospective study conducted on individual patients who visited DVL department of Malla Reddy Medical College for women, Suraram, Hyderabad in the Telangana state between 23/11/2015 to 22/3/2016.Results: Males were more than females. Maximum patients were seen in the age group of 21-30 years. Very few cases were seen above the age of 60 years. Maximum cases presented with T. corporis followed by T. cruris. Five cases had more than one type of Tinea. Maximum cases were KOH positive. 26.3% of cases were culture positive. 17.5% of cases were both KOH and culture positive Maximum i.e. 70.2% of cases were treated with miconazole followed by clotrimazole in 10.5% of cases Maximum cases were treated with terbinafine in 56.14% of cases followed by itraconazole in 12.3% of cases.Conclusions: This study provides an incidence of T. corporis with male predominance of cases and responding well to the standard therapeutic line of management along with proper personal counseling about the lifestyle modifications in a tertiary care hospital

A VALIDATED STABILITY INDICATING RP-HPLC METHOD FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINTION OF ATORVASTATIN CALCIUM AND EZETIMIBE HYDROCHLORIDE IN BULK AND TABLET DOSAGE FORM

Objective: To develop a simple, selective and precise stability indicating reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography method for the simultaneous estimation of atorvastatin calcium and ezetimibe hydrochloride in bulk and tablet dosage form.Methods: The chromatographic separation was performed by Agilent Zorbax column (250×4.6 mm, 5 µm) using methanol: 0.1 % v/v orthophosphoric acid in water (65:35) as mobile phase at flow rate of 1.0 ml/min with injection volume 20 µl and the detection was carried out using UV detector at 240 nm. The method was validated as per ICH guidelines.Results: The retention time for atorvastatin calcium (ATV) and ezetimibe hydrochloride (EZT) was found to be 6.81 min and 4.96 min respectively. The linear regression analysis data for the calibration plots showed good linear relationship in the concentration range of 5-50 µg/ml for both ATV and EZT. The percentage recoveries of ATV and EZT in the marketed dosage form were found to be 100.82 and 94.27 respectively. The correlation coefficients for ATV and EZT were 0.9983 and 0.998 respectively. The percentage degradation at different stress conditions like acid, alkaline, oxidative and photolytic for atorvastatin calcium were found to be 14.91, 8.26, 8.02 and 2.65 respectively and for ezetimibe hydrochloride, found to be 9.70, 32.18, 2.51 and 0.16 respectively.Conclusion: The developed method was successfully validated as per ICH guidelines. This method is simple, selective, linear, precise, accurate and sensitive, and can be used for routine analysis of tablet dosage forms containing both the drugs.Keywords: Atorvastatin calcium, Ezetimibe hydrochloride, RP-HPLC, Stress degradatio

Properties of Al-doped ZnS films grown by chemical bath deposition

Zinc sulphide (ZnS) buffer layers are a cadmium free, wider energy band gap, alternative to the cadmium sulphide(CdS) buffer layers commonly used in copper indium gallium diselenide (CuInGaSe2)-based solar cells. However extrinsic doping of the ZnS is important to lower the resistivity of the layers and to improve flexibility of device design. In this work, Al-doped ZnS nanocrystalline films have been produced on glass substrates using a chemical bath deposition (CBD) method. The Al- concentration was varied from 0 at. % to 10 at. %, keeping other deposition parameters constant. The elemental composition of a typical sample with 6 at. % ‘Al’ in ZnS was Zn=44.9 at. %, S=49.8 at. % and Al=5.3 at.%. The X-ray diffraction data taken on these samples showed a broad peak corresponding to the (111) plane of ZnS while the crystallite size varied in the range, 8 – 15 nm, depending on the concentration of Al in the layers. The films with a Al-doping content of 6 at. % had an optical transmittance of 75 % in the visible range and the energy band gap evaluated from the data was 3.66 eV. The films n-type electrical conductivities and the electrical resistivity varied in the range, 107-103 Ωcm, it decreasing with an increase of the Al-concentration in the solution

ETMS: Efficient Traffic Management System for Congestion Detection and Alert using HAAR Cascade

Rapid social development has resulted in the emergence of a new major societal issue: urban traffic congestion, which many cities must address. In addition to making  it more difficult for people to get around town, traffic jams are a major source of the city's pollution crisis. In order to address the problems of automobile exhaust pollution and congestion, this paper uses the system dynamics approach to develop a model to study the urban traffic congestion system from the perspectives of trucks,private cars, bikes and public transportation. This project proposes a system for detecting vehicles and sending alerts when traffic levels rise to dangerous levels using Haar Cascade and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCP). The proposed system uses Haar Cascade to detect moving vehicles, which are then classified using FCP. The system can make decisions based on partial or ambiguous information by utilising FCP, a soft computing technique, which allows it to learn from past actions. An algorithm for estimating traffic density is also used by the system to pinpoint active areas. In congested areas, the system will alert the driver if it anticipates a collision with another vehicle and also Experiments show that the proposed system is able to accurately detect vehicles and provide timely alerts to the driver, drastically lowering the probability of accidents occurring in heavily travelled areas. The importance of introducing such a system cannot be overstated in today's transportation system. It's a big deal for the future of intelligent urban planning and traffic control. Congestion relief, cleaner air, and increased security are just some of the long-term benefits that justify the high initial investment. To add, this system is adaptable to suburban and rural areas, which can also experience traffic congestion issues

Altering the ribosomal subunit ratio in yeast maximizes recombinant protein yield

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.Abstract Background The production of high yields of recombinant proteins is an enduring bottleneck in the post-genomic sciences that has yet to be addressed in a truly rational manner. Typically eukaryotic protein production experiments have relied on varying expression construct cassettes such as promoters and tags, or culture process parameters such as pH, temperature and aeration to enhance yields. These approaches require repeated rounds of trial-and-error optimization and cannot provide a mechanistic insight into the biology of recombinant protein production. We published an early transcriptome analysis that identified genes implicated in successful membrane protein production experiments in yeast. While there has been a subsequent explosion in such analyses in a range of production organisms, no one has yet exploited the genes identified. The aim of this study was to use the results of our previous comparative transcriptome analysis to engineer improved yeast strains and thereby gain an understanding of the mechanisms involved in high-yielding protein production hosts. Results We show that tuning BMS1 transcript levels in a doxycycline-dependent manner resulted in optimized yields of functional membrane and soluble protein targets. Online flow microcalorimetry demonstrated that there had been a substantial metabolic change to cells cultured under high-yielding conditions, and in particular that high yielding cells were more metabolically efficient. Polysome profiling showed that the key molecular event contributing to this metabolically efficient, high-yielding phenotype is a perturbation of the ratio of 60S to 40S ribosomal subunits from approximately 1:1 to 2:1, and correspondingly of 25S:18S ratios from 2:1 to 3:1. This result is consistent with the role of the gene product of BMS1 in ribosome biogenesis. Conclusion This work demonstrates the power of a rational approach to recombinant protein production by using the results of transcriptome analysis to engineer improved strains, thereby revealing the underlying biological events involved.Published versio

Experimental investigation of Green Concrete

Currently, construction costs and sand shortages are increasing day by day. To combat this problem, sand in plastic form is partially replaced by other materials. Plastic waste is recycled in the form of new production materials that can be used as optional components of concrete, making it one of the best ways to deal with plastic waste. These techniques have also proven to be much more cost-effective than traditional methods. This paper proposes using plastic waste as random substitutes (10%, 20%, 30%) for natural river sand and testing for compressive strength, tensile strength, flexural strength and sustainability. purpose. With the amount of plastic used increasing day by day, the disposal of used plastic is a big problem. It was therefore concluded that sand must be replaced by plastic within 20 years so that the shortage of natural aggregates can be effectively dealt with and the used plastic are disposed effectively

Progress in interspecific hybridization between Cicer arietinum and wild species C. bijugum.

This paper reports the production of hybrid plants between C. arietinum and C. bijugum in vitro and the transfer of hybrid plants to soil. Four chickpea cultivars, ICCV 92318, ICCV 2, ICCV 10 and KAK 2, were used as female parents. The wild species C. bijugum (accession ILWC 73) from germplasm collection at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, Aleppo, Syria, was used as male parent. Seeds of cultivated and wild chickpea were sown in the glasshouse and in the field in Andhra Pradesh, India. Crosses were carried out from October 2001 to February 2005 (4 postrainy seasons) in the field. Formation of viable green hybrid plants from the cross C. arietinum and C. bijugum with intermediate morphology between the two parents show that it is possible to obtain hybrid plants between C. arietinum and C. bijugum and that concerted efforts will yield hybrids in large numbers. Our study confirms that it is possible to cross C. bijugum with cultivated chickpea, and it would be feasible to produce a large number of hybrids to exploit the genes/traits present in C. bijugum for the improvement of cultivated species