Aspirin regulates oxidative stress and physio-biochemical attributes in Brassica juncea under cadmium toxicity

The current study aimed to evaluate the effects of aspirin (Asp) on growth, physio-biochemical variables, and oxidative stress in Brassica juncea subjected to cadmium toxicity. Cadmium (Cd) toxicity decreased the root and shoot development by 67.53 % and 64.4 % respectively, over the control. However, treatment with Asp showed improved root and shoot growth in Cd treated seedlings. This study demonstrates elevation in total soluble sugar (TSS), proline, and glycine betaine levels and suppressed total protein concentrations in Cd treated seedlings over control. On the treatment of Asp to Cd exposed plants, an enhanced level of the above said variables was reported. The activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and ascorbate (ASC) increased in plants with Cd stress over control, followed by enhanced elevation of the same on supplementation of Asp. Supplementation of Asp reduces the accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA) and H2O2, confirming the plant metals' stress protection properties of Asp. Thus studies confirm aspirin's involvement in protecting plant growth and development against cadmium toxicity

Genetic Analysis of Chromosomal Regions Affecting Sperm Mobility in the Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus)

This project is focused on determining the contributions of particular genetic loci to low sperm mobility in the chicken. Sperm mobility has been shown to be a major determinant of male fertility in broiler breeders. A whole genome SNP scan identified chromosomal regions (QTLs) that control sperm mobility. I used microsatellites from 4 chromosomal regions ( 15.151 on chromosome 6, 12.435 on chromosome Z, 12.341 on chromosome Z, and 17.214 on chromosome Z) to determine the association of these regions with sperm mobility in experimental lines divergently selected for mobility phenotype. Determination of the genetics underlying sperm mobility will identify the genetics of one of the major determinants of male fertility in commercial broiler males

Physiological, Biochemical and Neurochemical responses of Cirrhinus mrigala upon short term exposure to Cerium oxide

The current study was performed to ascertain the biochemical and physiological impact of cerium oxide (CeO2) on freshwater fish Cirrhinus mrigala, which are widely consumed. Biochemical, neurochemical and physiological modifications were evaluated and LC50 of CeO2 was found to be 22 ppm, observed for 24 h. Further 1/10th of the LC50 concentration of CeO2 (2.2 ppm) was used for short term investigation at 96 h. The results demonstrate an increase in physiological levels of serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) compared to control groups. Studies revealed variations in oxidative stress markers with a significant reduction in the serum superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities and an increase in malondialdehyde (MDA). The study reported the increase in brain glutamate concentrations indicating possible brain tissue damage. The above analysis highlights the potential toxicological impact of CeO2 on freshwater fish and their ecosystem

Distribution pattern of freshwater cyanobacteria in Kaiga region of Western Ghats of Karnataka

This study deals with the identification of 59 cyanobacterial species belonging to 27 genera from different freshwater habitats of Kaiga in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka during the period from June 2009 to May 2011. Samplings were made during pre-monsoon; monsoon and post-monsoon sampling have been carried out for the duration of 2 years. The study deals with the occurrence of cyanobacterial species in five different aquatic habitats in Kaiga region, with respect to a change in the physico-chemical properties of water. The cyanobacterial diversity is maximum in monsoon season compared to post-monsoon; it was least during pre-monsoon. Among cyanobacteria non-heterocystous filamentous forms were dominant followed by unicellular forms, whereas heterocystous forms were least in number. It was also found that the physicho-chemical properties of water have the influence on the richness of cyanobacterial community. This study indicates the maximum occurrence and abundance of Chroococaceae (23.73%) and Phormidaceae (18.64%) members in all the sites, whereas Stigonemataceae (1.7%) shows very less occurrence. Among the cyanobacteria identified non-heterocystous filamentous forms were dominant followed by unicellular forms; whereas heterocystous forms were least in number.Â

Understanding and Measuring Psychological Stress using Social Media

A body of literature has demonstrated that users' mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, can be predicted from their social media language. There is still a gap in the scientific understanding of how psychological stress is expressed on social media. Stress is one of the primary underlying causes and correlates of chronic physical illnesses and mental health conditions. In this paper, we explore the language of psychological stress with a dataset of 601 social media users, who answered the Perceived Stress Scale questionnaire and also consented to share their Facebook and Twitter data. Firstly, we find that stressed users post about exhaustion, losing control, increased self-focus and physical pain as compared to posts about breakfast, family-time, and travel by users who are not stressed. Secondly, we find that Facebook language is more predictive of stress than Twitter language. Thirdly, we demonstrate how the language based models thus developed can be adapted and be scaled to measure county-level trends. Since county-level language is easily available on Twitter using the Streaming API, we explore multiple domain adaptation algorithms to adapt user-level Facebook models to Twitter language. We find that domain-adapted and scaled social media-based measurements of stress outperform sociodemographic variables (age, gender, race, education, and income), against ground-truth survey-based stress measurements, both at the user- and the county-level in the U.S. Twitter language that scores higher in stress is also predictive of poorer health, less access to facilities and lower socioeconomic status in counties. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of using social media as a new tool for monitoring stress levels of both individuals and counties.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of ICWSM 201

Comparative study of low dose aspirin versus combination of low dose aspirin and low molecular weight heparin in idiopathic recurrent pregnancy loss

Background: To compare the role of low dose aspirin versus combination of low dose aspirin and low molecular weight heparin in idiopathic recurrent pregnancy loss and assess the effectiveness of low dose aspirin and low molecular weight heparin in having a better obstetric outcome.Methods: This study was conducted in a private hospital in Mahabubnagar from June 2017 to May 2019. A total of 80 pregnant ladies who had previous 2 and or more pregnancy losses in the early (before 20 weeks) or late (after 20 weeks) pregnancy period was included in the study. 80 pregnant women with idiopathic/unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss were properly evaluated in regard to the history of previous period of gestation of loss, previous scans in regard to documentation of fetal pole and gestation, cardiac activity, anomaly scan and growth scan and any special investigations in previous pregnancies and present pregnancy.Results: A total 80 pregnant women with previous 2 and more unexplained pregnancy losses who were evaluated and found negative with major causes of pregnancy losses half of them (40) were treated with low dose aspirin alone and the other 40 women were treated with a combination of low dose aspirin (75 mg) and low molecular weight Heparin (20 mg) daily low molecular weight heparin till term. The aspirin alone group had 82.5% live birth rate and the combination group had 92.5% live birth rate which is quite satisfactory and more than the Aspirin alone group.Conclusions: Use of combination of low dose aspirin and low molecular weight heparin seems to be a good choice of drugs in treating the unexplained recurrent pregnancy losses than low dose aspirin alone

What Twitter Profile and Posted Images Reveal About Depression and Anxiety

Previous work has found strong links between the choice of social media images and users' emotions, demographics and personality traits. In this study, we examine which attributes of profile and posted images are associated with depression and anxiety of Twitter users. We used a sample of 28,749 Facebook users to build a language prediction model of survey-reported depression and anxiety, and validated it on Twitter on a sample of 887 users who had taken anxiety and depression surveys. We then applied it to a different set of 4,132 Twitter users to impute language-based depression and anxiety labels, and extracted interpretable features of posted and profile pictures to uncover the associations with users' depression and anxiety, controlling for demographics. For depression, we find that profile pictures suppress positive emotions rather than display more negative emotions, likely because of social media self-presentation biases. They also tend to show the single face of the user (rather than show her in groups of friends), marking increased focus on the self, emblematic for depression. Posted images are dominated by grayscale and low aesthetic cohesion across a variety of image features. Profile images of anxious users are similarly marked by grayscale and low aesthetic cohesion, but less so than those of depressed users. Finally, we show that image features can be used to predict depression and anxiety, and that multitask learning that includes a joint modeling of demographics improves prediction performance. Overall, we find that the image attributes that mark depression and anxiety offer a rich lens into these conditions largely congruent with the psychological literature, and that images on Twitter allow inferences about the mental health status of users.Comment: ICWSM 201