GM1 Ganglioside Modifies α-Synuclein Toxicity and is Neuroprotective in a Rat α-Synuclein Model of Parkinson\u27s Disease.

While GM1 may interact with α-synuclein in vitro to inhibit aggregation, the ability of GM1 to protect against α-synuclein toxicity in vivo has not been investigated. We used targeted adeno-associated viral vector (AAV) overexpression of human mutant α-synuclein (A53T) in the rat substantia nigra (SN) to produce degeneration of SN dopamine neurons, loss of striatal dopamine levels, and behavioral impairment. Some animals received daily GM1 ganglioside administration for 6 weeks, beginning 24 hours after AAV-A53T administration or delayed start GM1 administration for 5 weeks beginning 3 weeks after AAV-A53T administration. Both types of GM1 administration protected against loss of SN dopamine neurons and striatal dopamine levels, reduced α-synuclein aggregation, and delayed start administration of GM1 reversed early appearing behavioral deficits. These results extend prior positive results in MPTP models, are consistent with the results of a small clinical study of GM1 in PD patients that showed slowing of symptom progression with chronic use, and argue for the continued refinement and development of GM1 as a potential disease modifying therapy for PD

Stability of nonlinear one-dimensional laser pulse solitons in a plasma

In a recent one-dimensional numerical fluid simulation study [Saxena et al., Phys. Plasmas 13,032309 (2006)], it was found that an instability is associated with a special class of one-dimensional nonlinear solutions for modulated light pulses coupled to electron plasma waves in a relativistic cold plasma model. It is shown here that the instability can be understood on the basis of the stimulated Raman scattering phenomenon and the occurrence of density bursts in the trailing edge of the modulated structures are a manifestation of an explosive instability arising from a nonlinear phase mixing mechanism.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, Published in Phys. Plasma

Netarsudil: a novel intra-ocular pressure lowering agent

Optic disc health is an important indicator of visual functions. The first line of management to prevent/halt the damage to optic disc is to control responsible pathological condition, if identified. In absence of identifiable cause, the most validated approach is lowering of intra-ocular pressure (IOP). Individually, as well as combinations of currently available drugs are not fully effective in all patients of glaucoma in achieving desired IOP control. Hence, there is a need of newer alternatives which address this unmet need. Recently, a newer IOP lowering agent with a novel mechanism of action, netarsudil, has been approved by United States Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA) in December 2017. Netarsudil acts by inhibiting Rho-associated protein kinase resulting in lowering of overall tone of the contractible cells in trabecular meshwork thereby improving drainage of aqueous humor outflow and lowering of IOP. Though in its early days, this drug gives an armamentarium to ophthalmologists and physicians to control IOP in patients of open-angle glaucoma and ocular hypertension

PCR based detection of toxoplasmosis in tissue samples: A step towards detection of toxoplasmosis in meat and post mortem samples

The aim of the study was to find out a suitable marker gene for diagnosis of toxoplasmosis in tissue and meat samples during meat inspection and/or during post mortem studies. PCR was used to diagnose toxoplasmosis in ten inbred Swiss albino mice after experimental inoculation of 100 tachyzoites of laboratory maintained human RH strain of the parasite. Blood, peritoneal lavage and tissue from lung, liver spleen, brain, heart and kidney were taken from experimental murine models in duplicate. The samples were subjected to PCR, using primers directed to the multicopy of Surface Antigen 3 (SAG 3 gene). Blood, kidney and heart tissue were found negative while peritoneal lavage along with lung, liver spleen and brain tissue yielded desired positive amplicons. The significance of the studied molecule vis-à-vis future projections in regard to diagnosis of toxoplasmosis during meat sample examination and/or during routine post mortem is being described

Development and characterization of large-scale simple sequence repeats in jute

Jute is an important crop of the Indian subcontinent and comprises tossa jute (Corchorus olitorius) and white jute (C. capsularis). The yield and fiber quality of this crop remained stagnant for many years and could not be improved through conventional plant breeding. Also, no effort has been made to develop molecular markers on a scale required for marker-assisted selection (MAS) to supplement conventional plant breeding. As a first step toward deploying MAS for jute improvement, 2469 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were developed in tossa jute (JRO 524) using four SSR-enriched genomic libraries. A random subset of 100 SSRs (25 SSRs from each library) was used to detect polymorphism between the parental genotypes of each of the two recombinant inbred line (RIL) mapping populations. The RILs are being developed from JRO 524 × PPO4 (for fiber fineness) and JRC 321 × CMU 010 (for lignin content) crosses to prepare molecular maps and conduct quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses. Both SSR length polymorphism and ± polymorphism (null alleles, i.e., presence and absence of specific SSR) were detected; 50 SSRs detected polymorphism between the two genotypes of tossa jute, whereas 45 SSRs detected polymorphism between the two genotypes of white jute. This SSR allelic polymorphism in jute is higher than that reported in other crops and is adequate for construction of genetic maps for QTL analysis. The large-scale SSRs will also prove useful in studying genetic diversity, population structure, and association mapping

Talk2BEV: Language-enhanced Bird's-eye View Maps for Autonomous Driving

Talk2BEV is a large vision-language model (LVLM) interface for bird's-eye view (BEV) maps in autonomous driving contexts. While existing perception systems for autonomous driving scenarios have largely focused on a pre-defined (closed) set of object categories and driving scenarios, Talk2BEV blends recent advances in general-purpose language and vision models with BEV-structured map representations, eliminating the need for task-specific models. This enables a single system to cater to a variety of autonomous driving tasks encompassing visual and spatial reasoning, predicting the intents of traffic actors, and decision-making based on visual cues. We extensively evaluate Talk2BEV on a large number of scene understanding tasks that rely on both the ability to interpret free-form natural language queries, and in grounding these queries to the visual context embedded into the language-enhanced BEV map. To enable further research in LVLMs for autonomous driving scenarios, we develop and release Talk2BEV-Bench, a benchmark encompassing 1000 human-annotated BEV scenarios, with more than 20,000 questions and ground-truth responses from the NuScenes dataset.Comment: Project page at https://llmbev.github.io/talk2bev

Assessment of Biomass and Carbon Stock along Altitudes in Traditional Agroforestry System in Tehri District of Uttarakhand, India

Agroforestry represents an integration of agriculture and forestry to increase productivity and sustainability of farming systems and farm income. It has been recognized as carbon sinks due to the need of climate change mitigation. The objective of this study was to compare the carbon stock in living biomass between altitudes and agroforestry system in Tehri district, Uttarakhand. The system compared was: Agrihortisilviculture system (Trees, crops and fruits), Agrihorticulture system (Trees and Fruits) and Agrisilviculture system (Trees and crops.). 1350 sample plots were selected in three altitudes. Three altitudes were: Lower (286-1200 m), Middle (1200-2000 m) and Upper (2000-2800 m). Results indicated that carbon was influenced by the altitudes. Carbon stock in the lower altitude (286-1200 m) was higher compared to the middle and upper altitudes. Agrihortisilviculture system contained maximum carbon stock compare than other system. It is concluded that agroforestry systems are playing an important role in the biodiversity conservation, soil enrichment and carbon storage in Tehri district of Uttarakhand

GM1 ganglioside modifies microglial and neuroinflammatory responses to α-synuclein in the rat AAV-A53T α-synuclein model of Parkinson\u27s disease

Among the pathological events associated with the dopaminergic neurodegeneration characteristic of Parkinson\u27s disease (PD) are the accumulation of toxic forms of α-synuclein and microglial activation associated with neuroinflammation. Although numerous other processes may participate in the pathogenesis of PD, the two factors mentioned above may play critical roles in the initiation and progression of dopamine neuron degeneration in PD. In this study, we employed a slowly progressing model of PD using adeno-associated virus-mediated expression of human A53T α-synuclein into the substantia nigra on one side of the brain and examined the microglial response in the striatum on the injected side compared to the non-injected (control) side. We further examined the extent to which administration of the neuroprotective ganglioside GM1 influenced α-synuclein-induced glial responses. Changes in a number of microglial morphological measures (i.e., process length, number of endpoints, fractal dimension, lacunarity, density, and cell perimeter) were indicative of the presence of activated microglial and an inflammatory response on the injected side of the brain, compared to the control side. In GM1-treated animals, no significant differences in microglial morphology were observed between the injected and control striata. Follow-up studies showed that mRNA expression for several inflammation-related genes was increased on the A53T α-synuclein injected side vs. the non-injected side in saline-treated animals and that such changes were not observed in GM1-treated animals. These data show that inhibition of microglial activation and potentially damaging neuroinflammation by GM1 ganglioside administration may be among the many factors that contribute to the neuroprotective effects of GM1 in this model and possibly in human PD

Comprehensive analysis of phenotypic variation and selection strategies for yield-related traits in recombinant inbred lines of soybeans

In the present study, genetic diversity was assessed in RIL population developed at Indian Institute of Soybean Research (IISR) Indore by crossing of released varieties JS 97-52 and NRC 37. The Analysis of variance suggested that all the studied traits differed significantly. High heritability with high genetic advance as percent of mean was observed for plant height, number of primary branches, number of pods/plants, number of seeds/plants, days to maturity, biological yield, 100 seed weight, harvest index and seed yield per plant. Significant positive association with grain yield per plant was observed for days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of primary branches per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, biological yield per plant, harvest index and 100 seed weight. The highest positive direct effect towards grain yield was exerted by biological yield per plant, followed by harvest index and number of pods per plant. Diversity analysis revealed that Cluster VI and XII had highest inter cluster distance