Lack of research aptitude in medical education

Students are attracted towards the medical profession to become a doctor and not to be a researcher. According to a recent study there are about 1,00,000 undergraduate medical students in India at a given point of time, out of them only 0.9% of the students have shown research aptitude. During their training period of graduation in medical sciences, they are so much burdened with the work load of exams, practicals, ward duties and tutorials. In such an over burdened situation very few of them can think about research. A study had shown that training in research methodology received early in medical school helps students to develop a positive attitude towards research. So changes in the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum are required to promote research among medical students

Physico-chemical attributes and organoleptic assessment of guava (Psidium guajava L.) cultivars grown in eastern Uttar Pradesh

A study was conducted to evaluate the different guava cultivars for their physico-chemical composition and organoleptic assessment during the year 2012-2013. Results of study indicated that Gorakh Bilas Pasand cultivar proved to be superior on the basis of physical characters (Length-7.64 cm, Breadth-7.79 cm , Weight-240.60 g, Number of seeds per fruit-251 etc.) followed by Lucknow-49. However, Lucknow-49 was found noteworthy in respect of chemical composition (TSS-13.00 oBrix, Acidity-0.50%, pH-5.86, Vitamin C-300.36 mg/100g etc). In organoleptic assessment, it was found that ‘liked very much’ rating was provided by consumer to Lucknow-49. On the basis of overall findings, it was concluded that ‘Lucknow-49’ was superior in most of characters studied and might be one of the promising cultivars for quality fruits under eastern Uttar Pradesh conditions

Immunosuppressant effect of Boswellia serrata extract on CFA induced arthritis in rats

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an immune-mediated arthropathy, so for the treatment disease modifying antirheumatoid drugs are required. In this study we are evaluating the immunomodulatory property of Boswellia serrata extract (BSE) as an alternative medicine.Methods: Complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA), 0.1ml was injected intradermally in the footpad of left hind paw in 36 Wistar rats to induce RA. Animals were divided into 6 groups. BSE in the doses of 45mg/kg, 90mg/kg and 180mg/kg was administered and cyclophosphamide as standard drug. Various parameters as body weight, paw thickness, ankle diameter, paw volume, arthritis index, TNF- α and histopathological changes were analyzed.Results: Marked reduction in paw thickness, ankle diameter, paw volume, arthritis index and an improved body weight was found in high dose BSE (180mg/kg) group but the effect was lesser than standard drug Cyclophosphamide.Conclusions: BSE has significant potential as an alternative medicine for treatment of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis

Restriction on animal experimentation for medical education and research: pros and cons

Recently, a lot have been written and discussed about animal experiments and ethics. Still there is too much confusion among academicians and researchers about the future of use of animals in biomedical research and up to what extent their use in laboratory, research institutions, and medical colleges. This article highlighted and discussed about various aspects of this burning issue along with several pros and cons

Process intensification for the small footprint compact heat transfer device

Process intensification for the development of compact heat exchanger with small footprint is greatest challenge of the heat exchanger technology today. In the present study, a heat transfer device, coiled flow inverter (CFI) is revamped for the better heat transfer efficiency with a smaller footprint. The proposed small foot-print coiled flow inverter (SFCFI) is fabricated by bending of helical coil at 90° with equal arm lengths before and after the bend with variable curvature radius. In integration to the improved centrifugal force due to variable curvature, the SFCFI additionally offers a complete 90 flow inversion caused by each 90 bend, which results in higher radial mixing and heat transfer. The velocity and temperature flow fields depict the improved radial mixing under the laminar flow regime for the Dean number ranges from 8 to 1581. The performance of existing CFI of same heat transfer area (0.17 m2) was studied and compared with the novel SFCFI device. The results suggest, the proposed SFCFI device provides three-fold heat transfer enhancement as compared to the straight tube of same heat transfer area at Dean number 400. Additionally, heat transfer coefficient in SFCFI enhanced by 48 % as compared to helical coil. Furthermore, SFCFI provides 18 % higher value of Nusselt number as compared to the CFI. The reason for improved heat transfer may be the enhanced centrifugal force due to additional curvature effect provided in each arm of SFCFI in the plane of vortex formation. It was interesting to note that the proposed device provides 11 % lower pressure drop as compared to the CFI. The present study may aids to the development of a novel design of compact coiled and small footprint heat transfer device.Papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Portoroz, Slovenia on 17-19 July 2017 .International centre for heat and mass transfer.American society of thermal and fluids engineers

PLAS-5k: Dataset of Protein-Ligand Affinities from Molecular Dynamics for Machine Learning Applications

Computational methods and recently modern machine learning methods have played a key role in structure-based drug design. Though several benchmarking datasets are available for machine learning applications in virtual screening, accurate prediction of binding affinity for a protein-ligand complex remains a major challenge. New datasets that allow for the development of models for predicting binding affinities better than the state-of-the-art scoring functions are important. For the first time, we have developed a dataset, PLAS-5k comprised of 5000 protein-ligand complexes chosen from PDB database. The dataset consists of binding affinities along with energy components like electrostatic, van der Waals, polar and non-polar solvation energy calculated from molecular dynamics simulations using MMPBSA (Molecular Mechanics Poisson-Boltzmann Surface Area) method. The calculated binding affinities outperformed docking scores and showed a good correlation with the available experimental values. The availability of energy components may enable optimization of desired components during machine learning-based drug design. Further, OnionNet model has been retrained on PLAS-5k dataset and is provided as a baseline for the prediction of binding affinities

Nucleic acid-based methods for the early detection of sepsis in heart transplant recipients

Nucleic acid-based tests (NABTs) were developed to decrease the time required to identify microorganism in the pathological specimens. The commercially available NABTs are of two types – one those can be applied to positive cultures grown in blood culture bottles and other those can be applied directly to blood samples. The latter tests are polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays which can amplify the existing load of microorganism nucleic acids many a times like a culture in a blood culture bottle. Both tests then identify the pathogenic organisms with the use of specific nucleic acid probes. These tests have proven useful in management of heart transplant sepsis management