Antimicrobial nature of specific compounds of Ampelomyces quisqualis identified from gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) analysis and their mycoparasite nature against powdery mildew of grapes

Grapevine powdery mildew is the world's most important plant disease, and Ampelomyces frequently fight them. While it does not usually cause plant death, its major infections can result in significant production losses and severely impact wine quality. Fungicides are frequently used to control the disease, which can have long-term adverse effects on the ecosystem. As a result, alternative and environmentally friendly disease management approaches must be developed. The study aimed to reduce costly and toxic fungicide use by using Ampelomyces, a natural biofungicide, against various powdery mildew fungi. GC-MS analysis was also used to determine the antagonistic potential and efficacy of volatile organic chemicals produced by several Ampelomyces spp. against Erysiphe necator, which causes powdery mildew of grapes. The molecular characterization of A. quisqualis isolates based on using rDNA ITS region was also carried out and sequenced. GC-MS analysis identified various antimicrobial compounds, such as squalene (4.643%), octadecanoic acid (3.862%), tetradecanoic acid (3.600%), and 9,12-octadecadienoic acid (Z,Z) (1.451%). The least abundant compounds were 2-Hexadecanol, 1-Tricosanol, and 2-propenyl ester, with percentages of 0.485, 0.519, and 0.560, respectively. These bioactive compounds revealed by GC-MS analysis in crude extracts of A. quisqualis had a stronger antifungal and antibacterial activity against E. necator. As a result, using A. quisqualis to control the powdery mildew of grapes significantly reduced pathogen growth and disease incidence

Traditional methods of purification (detoxification process) for Schedule E poisonous drugs

740-748Medicinal plants have different types of active phytochemicals, which are still in use, either in their crude form or after proper processing. Though most of the plant drugs are safe, few are poisonous and may cause immediate toxic effect or cumulative toxic effect for human health. There are 25 poisonous or toxic plants in Siddha texts listed in the Schedule E of Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940. The concept of Suthimuraigal in Siddha not only covers the process of purification and detoxification of physical and chemical impurities but also minimizes the side effects and improves the potency/therapeutic efficacy of the purified drugs. The aim of this review is to perceive the importance of the Schedule E drugs through their immense uses to treat diseases and to flourish the knowledge of purification processes to detoxify the poisonous elements, thus enhancing and utilizing them in curing challenging diseases. The distinct purification methods mentioned in Ayurvedic journals have also been reviewed for possible information. Methods of Suthi are variable and some of the important Siddha Suthimuraigal are reviewed in this paper. The traditional methods of purification may combat the toxic effects like ulceration, swelling, giddiness, skin rashes, pruritis also, thus enhancing the efficacy of the drugs in healing various ailments. Since these poisonous plants have very high potential to treat diseases, the chemical changes which transpired during the Suthi are to be revealed in further studies such as quantitative and qualitative analysis after their purification before they are applied in medicines

Traditional methods of purification (detoxification process) for Schedule E poisonous drugs

Medicinal plants have different types of active phytochemicals, which are still in use, either in their crude form or after proper processing. Though most of the plant drugs are safe, few are poisonous and may cause immediate toxic effect or cumulative toxic effect for human health. There are 25 poisonous or toxic plants in Siddha texts listed in the Schedule E of Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940. The concept of Suthimuraigal in Siddha not only covers the process of purification and detoxification of physical and chemical impurities but also minimizes the side effects and improves the potency/therapeutic efficacy of the purified drugs. The aim of this review is to perceive the importance of the Schedule E drugs through their immense uses to treat diseases and to flourish the knowledge of purification processes to detoxify the poisonous elements, thus enhancing and utilizing them in curing challenging diseases. The distinct purification methods mentioned in Ayurvedic journals have also been reviewed for possible information. Methods of Suthi are variable and some of the important Siddha Suthimuraigal are reviewed in this paper. The traditional methods of purification may combat the toxic effects like ulceration, swelling, giddiness, skin rashes, pruritis also, thus enhancing the efficacy of the drugs in healing various ailments. Since these poisonous plants have very high potential to treat diseases, the chemical changes which transpired during the Suthi are to be revealed in further studies such as quantitative and qualitative analysis after their purification before they are applied in medicines

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

Reliability and validity of the CONFbal scale in patients with hemiparesis following stroke

Background: The 10-item CONFbal scale is a measure used to assess balance confidence in geriatric population. However, its measurement properties have not been studied in the poststroke population. Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the CONFbal scale in poststroke patients. Methods: We did a cross-sectional study of 80 poststroke patients with hemiparesis attending the Neurology Outpatient Department, PSG Hospitals, Coimbatore. Participants completed the CONFbal scale and the activities-specific balance confidence (ABC) scale in a random order to assess balance confidence. Results: The Cronbach's alpha for CONFbal scale was 0.894, which showed that the items of the scale were internally consistent. The Pearson correlation coefficient (r) for CONFbal and ABC scales was −0.702, which showed that there was a moderate association between the two scales. Conclusion: The CONFbal scale is a reliable and valid scale to assess balance confidence in poststroke patients

Effect of addition agents on the electrodeposition of INVAR alloys

Iron-nickel alloy of 'INVAR' composition has been prepared from sulphate-chloride bath. The effect of operating variables on the composition and current efficiency of alloy deposition was evaluated. The effect was studied of seven different additives belonging to the aromatic sulphonic acid group and thiourea derivatives on the characteristics of alloy deposition. Their effect on deposit nature, composition, cathode efficiency and microstructure, hardness, etc., is reporte

Expresso: A database and web server for exploring the interaction of transcription factors and their target genes in Arabidopsis thaliana using ChIP-Seq peak data [version 1; referees: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

Motivation: The increasing availability of chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-Seq) data enables us to learn more about the action of transcription factors in the regulation of gene expression. Even though in vivo transcriptional regulation often involves the concerted action of more than one transcription factor, the format of each individual ChIP-Seq dataset usually represents the action of a single transcription factor. Therefore, a relational database in which available ChIP-Seq datasets are curated is essential. Results: We present Expresso (database and webserver) as a tool for the collection and integration of available Arabidopsis ChIP-Seq peak data, which in turn can be linked to a user’s gene expression data. Known target genes of transcription factors were identified by motif analysis of publicly available GEO ChIP-Seq data sets. Expresso currently provides three services: 1) Identification of target genes of a given transcription factor; 2) Identification of transcription factors that regulate a gene of interest; 3) Computation of correlation between the gene expression of transcription factors and their target genes. Availability: Expresso is freely available at http://bioinformatics.cs.vt.edu/expresso

Evaluation of impact of Siddha Suthi (purification) processes on nut of Serankottai (Semecarpus anacardium L.)

Introduction: Serankottai (Semecarpus anacardium L.) is a Schedule E (1) drug and is considered for treating all kinds of Vatha diseases, venereal disease, skin disease and cancerous conditions. Suthi murai denotes the purification process before any drug is employed in medicine. This study is aimed at evaluating the impact of Siddha purification processes on macro-microscopical and physico-chemical characteristics of Serankottai so that a justification for such classical processes can be derived. Materials and Method: The raw (S1) and purified Serankottai (S2 to S6) samples were analyzed for their macroscopic, microscopic and powder microscopic analysis followed by the physicochemical parameters like loss on drying (LOD), total ash (TA), water soluble ash (WSA), acid insoluble ash (AIA), water soluble extractive (WSE), alcohol soluble extractive (ASE) and pH values. Results: Prismatic crystals, oil globules, sclereids, resin, fiber were observed in the microscopical studies of raw sample and these are found in the purified samples except S2 which has revealed charred cell structure. Physical nature of Serankottai has been maintained in all the purification methods except for S2. The LOD was 5.53%, 2.90%, 6.47%, 5.03%, 4.6%, 5.05% in sampleS1, S2, S3, S4, S5 and S6 respectively. The TA values were 3.44%, 18.90%, 2.59%, 2.54% 2.7% and 3.65% in sample S1, S2, S3, S4, S5 and S6 respectively. Significant differences in physico-chemical parameters were observed in different purification methods. Conclusion: The present study revealed that the Siddha purification processes have impact on physicochemical characters of Semecarpus anacardium. The need of the purification, as mentioned in Siddha texts is hereby justified

Complex macroscale structures formed by the shock processing of amino acids and nucleobases -- implications to the origins of life

The building blocks of life, amino acids and nucleobases, are believed to have been synthesized in the extreme conditions that prevail in space starting from simple molecules containing hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. However, the fate and role of amino acids and nucleobases when they are subjected to similar processes largely remains unexplored. Here we report, for the first time, that shock processed amino acids and nucleobases tend to form complex macroscale structures. Such structures are formed on timescales of about 2 ms. This discovery suggests that the building blocks of life could have polymerized not just on Earth but on other planetary bodies. Our study also provides further experimental evidence for the 'threads' observed in meteorites being due to assemblages of (bio)molecules arising from impact induced shocks.by Vijay Thiruvenkatam et al