Synthesis and Characterization of Magnetic Colloids

Magnetic fluids which constitute a suspension of magnetic nanoparticles in a carrier liquid are termed ferrofluids. Ferrofluids are smart fluids exhibiting both magnetic and fluid like characteristics. In the present study, we report on ferrofluidswhich are suspensions of magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles in carrier fluids of varying viscosity. The magnetite nanoparticles have been synthesized by a chemical co-precipitation method.X-Raydiffraction of the as prepared sample revealsa single phase of magnetite.SEM characterisation reveals regular morphology and a narrow size distribution for the synthesized nanoparticles. These are dispersed in pure water and mixtures of water and glycerol using suitable surfactants and ultrasonicated. Our studies reveal that the stability of the ferrofluids have a strong dependence on the viscosity of the carrier fluid as well as the pH, with high viscosity and low pH yielding more stable ferrofluids. While low concentration of the magnetic component renders it impossible to see signatures of its presence in Raman spectroscopy, SQUID magnetometryreveals the presence of the magnetic component suggesting a distribution in size of the nanoparticles with a broad blocking temperature range. Further, a magnetic anomaly is seen at the freezing point of the carrier fluid in the ZFC-FC measurements for the ferrofluid made with 50 v/v aqueous glycerol solution. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinhei

Wheat flour, an inexpensive medium for in vitro cultivation of coprophilous fungus Coprinopsis cinerea

Coprinopsis cinerea, a coprophilous basidiomycetous fungus generally called as inky cap mushroom is used as a model organism to study the evolution of fruiting bodies in higher fungi. Herbivorous animal dung is a major source of Coprinopsis cinerea, as it contains high carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus elements. Due to the extensive application of Coprinopsis cinerea in Genetics, Molecular Biology and Microbial Biotechnology it is necessary to explore a suitable inexpensive medium for its in vitro cultivation. In our present study, we found that 2 wheat flour medium supported the vegetative growth and induced the fruiting body formation within 10 days at 30°C, pH 6 under dark compared to malt extract amended media. The number of fruiting bodies and biomass of fruiting bodies were also found higher in wheat flour medium compared to other media tested with similar cultural conditions. © Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences

Purification of Lovastatin from Aspergillus terreus (KM017963) and evaluation of its anticancer and antioxidant properties

Cervical cancer is the second most common malignancy in women worldwide and thus one of the leading causes of mortality in women. Lovastatin, a non polar, anticholesterol drug has previously been reported to exert antitumour activity in vitro. In the present study, lovastatin from Aspergillus terreus (KM017963) was purified by adsoprtion chromatography and evaluated for its anticancer and anti-oxidant properties with a human cervical cancer cell line (HeLa). Growth inhibitory and proapoptotic effects of purified lovastatin on HeLa cells were investigated by determining its influence on cell numbers, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), DNA fragmentation and antioxidant properties in terms of hydroxy radical scavenging effects as well as levels of total reduced glutathione. Cell cycle analysis by flow cytometry (propidium iodide staining) confirmed induction of apoptotic cell death and revealed cell cycle arrest in the G0/G1 phase. Results of the study give leads for the anticancer effects of lovastatin and its potential usefulness in the chemotherapy of cervical cance

HMDSAD: Hindi multi-domain sentiment aware dictionary

Sentiment Analysis is a fast growing sub area of Natural Language Processing which extracts user's opinion and classify it according to its polarity into positive, negative or neutral classes. This task of classification is required for many purposes like opinion mining, opinion summarization, contextual advertising and market analysis but it is domain dependent. The words used to convey sentiments in one domain is different from the words used to express sentiments in other domain and it is a costly task to annotate the corpora in every possible domain of interest before training the classifier for the classification. We are making an attempt to solve this problem by creating a sentiment aware dictionary using multiple domain data. The source domain data is labeled into positive and negative classes at the document level and the target domain data is unlabeled. The dictionary is created using both source and target domain data. The words used to express positive or negative sentiments in labeled data has relatedness weights assigned to it which signifies its co-occurrence frequency with the words expressing the similar sentiments in target domain. This work is carried out in Hindi, the official language of India. The web pages in Hindi language is booming very quickly after the introduction of UTF-8 encoding style. The dictionary can be used to classify the unlabeled data in the target domain by training a classifier

Efficacy and Safety of Stomatab Capsules® in Improving Oral Health in Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis: An Open-labeled Clinical Study

Background: Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) is a common ulcerative disease of the oral mucosa, which is difficult to treat. In Ayurveda, several medicinal plants have been evaluated for their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects in many oral diseases as an alternative for modern medicines. Method: A study with open-label, non-comparative single-arm design was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of “Stomatab” capsules in improving oral health in 30 subjects with RAS. The secondary objectives were to assess the improvement in oral health and tolerability of the herbal formulation. Subjects were instructed to take one capsule thrice daily after meals for 14 days. Patients were evaluated at three assessment points: screening and baseline (Visit 1, Day 0) with follow-ups done at Visit 2 (Day 5 ± 2) and Visit 3 at the end of the study (Day 14 ± 2). Results: There was a significant reduction in the mean ulcer size from 3.66 ± 1.27 mm (V1) to 0.64 ± 0.78 (V3). The mean number of ulcers reduced from 1.97 ± 0.72 (V1) to 0.90 ± 0.66 (V3). Significant improvement in ulcer-related symptoms of pain (Ruja), burning sensation (Daha) and redness (Raktavarnata) was noted. The total ulcer symptom scores decreased from 7.67 ± 2.38 (V1) to 0.63 ± 0.56 (V3). No side effects were reported by the study participants. Conclusion: These results show that the polyherbal formulation “Stomatab” capsule is safe and effective for the treatment of RAS

Combinatorial inhibition of Angiotensin converting enzyme, Neutral endopeptidase and Aminopeptidase N by N-methylated peptides alleviates blood pressure and fibrosis in rat model of dexamethasone-induced hypertension

Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), neutral endopeptidase (NEP) and aminopeptidase N (APN) are responsible for generation of vasoactive peptides that regulates vasoconstriction, vasodilation and natriuresis, which altogether regulate blood pressure. Cumulative inhibition of ACE, NEP and APN effectively blocks the progression of respective pathways. In this study, N-methylated peptide inhibitors F-N(Me)H-L, V-N(Me)F-R and R-N(Me)V-Y were synthesized against ACE, NEP and APN respectively, using their respective physiological substrates. F-N(Me)H-L inhibited ACE activity with an IC50 of 83 nmol/L, V-N(Me)F-R inhibited NEP activity with an IC50 of 1.173 mu mol/L and R-N(Me)V-Y inhibited APN activity with an IC50 of 3.94 nmol/L respectively. Further, the anti-hypertensive effect of N-methylated peptides was evaluated using rat model of dexamethasone-induced hypertension. Individual peptides and their cocktail treatment were started from day 6 of the study period and blood pressure was measured on every alternate day during 15 day study. Administration of F-N(Me) H-L (138 +/- 3 mmHg) and cocktail of all the three peptides at a dose of 100 mg/kg significantly reduced systolic blood pressure (SBP) compared to dexamethasone group (SBP of Groups-dexamethasone; (167 +/- 5 mmHg), F-N (Me)H-L (138 +/- 3 mmHg), and Cocktail (122 +/- 3 mmHg). Anti-hypertensive, anti-hypertrophic and anti-fibrotic effects of N-methylated peptides and cocktail was further reflected by the decreased levels of circulating Ang II and increased ANP levels in sera of hypertensive rats along with decrease in collagen deposition in heart and kidney. Though, ACE inhibition is adequate to reduce SBP, targeting NEP and APN along with ACE is beneficial in tackling hypertension and associated fibrosis of heart

In vitro antifungal screening of some medicinal plants against Macrophomina phaseolina

The medicinal plants present enormous reservoir of potential microbial compounds that could be useful alternative to synthetic microbicides and are being used to develop drugs. In the present study of five selected medicinal plants the leaf powder extracts were tested against Macrophomina phaseolina by disc diffusion method. It was found that ethanol extract strongly effective against Macrophomina phaseolina, is a causal agent for charcoal rot of sunflower fungal pathogen. &nbsp

Data Mining For Customer Relationship Management

Data mining has various applications for customer relationship management. In this article, we introduce a framework for identifying appropriate data mining techniques for various CRM activities. This article attempts to integrate the data mining and CRM models and to propose a new model of Data mining for CRM. The new model specifies which types of data mining processes are suitable for which stages/processes of CRM. In order to develop an integrated model it is important to understand the existing Data mining and CRM models. Hence the article discusses some of the existing data mining and CRM models and finally proposes an integrated model of data mining for CRM

Trauma y autodestrucción psicológica: Una visión general del exasperante desequilibrio emocional en El ídolo invisible de la luz de K R Meera

The present article discusses trauma and its impact on human emotions, particularly on women, in literature, with a focus on K R Meera's novel, The Unseeing Idol of Light. The research paper highlights the rise of trauma theory in literature and explores the cultural and psychological influence of trauma in literature. It also analyses the characters in the novel through the lens of emotional imbalance and interdependency and examines the interrelation between vision, love, and trauma. The prevalence of negative emotions over positive emotions in the novel has been discussed. The paper emphasises the importance of mental stability in contemporary society and discusses various themes such as psychic changes, loss, longing, and transformation. The researcher aims to analyse and relate the selected work with critical thinking to shed light on the cultural and psychological impressions of literature.El presente artículo analiza el trauma y su impacto en las emociones humanas, particularmente en las mujeres, en la literatura, con un enfoque en la novela de K R Meera, The Unseeing Idol of Light. El artículo de investigación destaca el surgimiento de la teoría del trauma en la literatura y explora la influencia cultural y psicológica del trauma en la literatura. También analiza los personajes de la novela a través de la lente del desequilibrio emocional y la interdependencia, y examina la interrelación entre la visión, el amor y el trauma. También se discute la prevalencia de las emociones negativas sobre las emociones positivas en la novela. El documento enfatiza la importancia de la estabilidad mental en la sociedad contemporánea y discute varios temas como los cambios psíquicos, la pérdida, el anhelo y la transformación. El investigador tiene como objetivo analizar y relacionar la obra seleccionada con el pensamiento crítico para arrojar luz sobre las impresiones culturales y psicológicas de la literatura