Phytochemical Investigation of Rhododendron Lepidotum

Throughout the ages, humans have relied on Nature for their basic needs for the production of food-stuffs, shelters, clothing, means of transportation, fertilizers, flavours and fragrances, and, not the least, medicines. Plants have formed the basis of sophisticated traditional medicine systems that have been in existence for thousands of years and continue to provide mankind with new remedies. Although some of the therapeutic properties attributed to plants have proven to be erroneous, medicinal plant therapy is based on the empirical findings of hundreds and thousands of years. The first records, written on clay tablets in cuneiform, are from Mesopotamia and date from about 2600 BC; among the substances that were used were oils of Cedrus species (Cedar) and Cupressus sempervirens (Cypress), Glycyrrhiza glabra (Licorice), Commiphora species (Myrrh) and Papaver somniferum (Poppy juice), all of which are still in use today for the treatment of ailments ranging from coughs and colds to parasitic infections and inflammation

Bio-prospecting natural products for the development of Lead molecules.

Healing with medicinal plants is as old as mankind itself. The connection between man and his search for drugs in nature dates from the far past, of which there is ample evidence from various sources. Plants produce an enormous variety of natural products with high structural diversity. Chemical features of medicinal plants serve as an integral determinant of their pharmacological properties and enable their wide use in medical practice. Natural products have been the single most productive source of leads for the drug development. The use of combinatorial chemistry approaches are also based on natural product scaffolds to create screening libraries that closely resemble drug-like compounds. Currently various screening approaches are being taken up to improve the ease with which natural products can be used in drug discovery. In the area of cancer, more than 60% drugs are either natural products or directly derived there from. In other areas, the influence of natural product structures is quite marked, with, the anti-infective area mostly being dependent on natural products and their analogs. It is hoped that the more efficient and effective application of natural products will improve the drug discovery process.Digital copy of Ph.D thesis.University of Kashmir

Simulation of the total efficiency of cylindrical scintillation gamma-ray detectors for disk sources

The total efficiency of cylindrical scintillation γ-ray detectors has been determined using a novel, primary interaction based Monte Carlo algorithm. With the use of biasing in these simulations, this approach has been made computationally efficient, yielding converged results with standard errors less than a fraction of a percent for about 104 histories which is about two orders of magnitude smaller than the conventional stochastic techniques. This methodology has been implemented in a MATLbased computer program, DSEMC. For thin disk sources of various radii having coaxial configurations, the predictions of the DSEMC code have been found in excellent agreement with the corresponding results obtained by using the direct analytical technique. Similar agreement has also been found in the DSEMC calculated values of total efficiency and the corresponding results obtained by the direct analytical technique for coaxial thin disk sources of various radii over a wide range of γ-energies. The DSEMC program has been used for the determination of total detection efficiency for off-axial configurations. As the disk source radius increases, results show a gradual decreasing trend in total efficiency. For these configurations, energy dependency of the total efficiency is found to follow the variation of the corresponding total attenuation coefficient which is consistent with the expected behavior. For coaxial thin disk sources, the total detection efficiency has been found to approach a corresponding maximum value as length is increased in the 1-20 cm range for various values of radii of disk sources and γ-ray energy, while keeping the diameter of the detector fixed at 7.62 cm. A similar behavior is observed when the radius of the detector is increased from 1-20 cm, while keeping the length of the detector fixed at 7.62 cm for various values of radii of disk sources and γ-ray energy

Comparative analysis of the aroma chemicals of Melissa officinalis using hydrodistillation and HS-SPME techniques

AbstractHeadspace solid-phase micro extraction (HS-SPME) coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) has been used for the chemical analysis of Melissa officinalis (leaves) cultivated in Institute Germplasm. The HS-SPME analysis led to the identification of 22 components constituting 99.1% of the total volatile constituents present in the leaves whereas its hydrodistillate led to the identification of 24 volatile constituents constituting 98.1% of the volatile material. The chemical composition of the SPME and hydrodistilled extract of M. officinalis leaves comprised mainly of oxygenated monoterpenes (78.5% and 57.8% respectively) and sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (14.9% and 29.7% respectively). The major components identified in the HS-SPME extract were citronellal (31.1%), citronellol (18.3%), β-caryophyllene (12.0%), (E)-citral (11.9%), (Z)-citral (9.6%), geraniol (3.6%), (Z)-β-ocimene (3.1%) and 1-octen-3-ol (2.0%) whereas hydrodistilled essential oil was rich in (Z)-citral (19.6%), β-caryophyllene (13.2%), (E)-citral (11.2%), citronellal (10.2%), germacrene-d (8.3%), δ-3-carene (5.0%), 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one (3.7%) and citronellyl acetate (3.7%). The comparative analysis of volatile constituents of M. officinalis leaf extract using HS-SPME and hydrodistillation techniques shows both qualitative as well as quantitative differences. The current study is the first report involving rapid analysis of volatile components of M. officinalis by HS-SPME

Noval soliton solution, sensitivity and stability analysis to the fractional gKdV-ZK equation

Abstract This work examines the fractional generalized Korteweg-de-Vries-Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation (gKdV-ZKe) by utilizing three well-known analytical methods, the modified $$\left( \frac{G^{'}}{G^2}\right)$$ G ′ G 2 -expansion method, $$\left( \frac{1}{G^{'}}\right)$$ 1 G ′ -expansion method and the Kudryashov method. The gKdV-ZK equation is a nonlinear model describing the influence of magnetic field on weak ion-acoustic waves in plasma made up of cool and hot electrons. The kink, singular, anti-kink, periodic, and bright soliton solutions are observed. The effect of the fractional parameter on wave shapes have been analyzed by displaying various graphs for fractional-order values of $$\beta$$ β . In addition, we utilize the Hamiltonian property to observe the stability of the attained solution and Galilean transformation for sensitivity analysis. The suggested methods can also be utilized to evaluate the nonlinear models that are being developed in a variety of scientific and technological fields, such as plasma physics. Findings show the effectiveness simplicity, and generalizability of the chosen computational approach, even when applied to complex models