1,316 research outputs found
Antagonistic Activity of Probiotic Organism Against Vibrio cholerae and Cryptococcus neoformans
The microbes are useful in many ways in the modern world. Probiotics one of them, which refers to, acid adherence bacteria in the intestinal cells, are able to survive at low pH and produce large amount of lactic acid. The present investigation deals with the antagonistic activity of Lactobacillus acidophilus organism against pathogens. The organism was isolated from the curd sample. Identification of bacteria was done by various biochemical testing. The present study revealed that L. acidophilus inhibits Vibrio cholerae more efficiently than Streptococcus pneumoniae and Shigella dysentriae. When L. acidophilus and V. cholerae were grown together, L. acidophilus dominated the growth and competitively inhibited the growth of V. cholerae. L. acidophilus was also found to inhibit Cryptococcus neoformans
Obesity: Current and Potential Pharmacotherapeutics and Targets
Obesity is a global epidemic that contributes to a number of health complications including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and neuropsychiatric disorders. Pharmacotherapeutic strategies to treat obesity are urgently needed. Research over the past two decades has increased substantially our knowledge of central and peripheral mechanisms underlying homeostatic energy balance. Homeostatic mechanisms involve multiple components including neuronal circuits, some originating in hypothalamus and brain stem, as well as peripherally-derived satiety, hunger and adiposity signals that modulate neural activity and regulate eating behavior. Dysregulation of one or more of these homeostatic components results in obesity. Coincident with obesity, reward mechanisms that regulate hedonic aspects of food intake override the homeostatic regulation of eating. In addition to functional interactions between homeostatic and reward systems in the regulation of food intake, homeostatic signals have the ability to alter vulnerability to drug abuse. Regarding the treatment of obesity, pharmacological monotherapies primarily focus on a single protein target. FDA-approved monotherapy options include phentermine (Adipex-P®), orlistat (Xenical®), lorcaserin (Belviq®) and liraglutide (Saxenda®). However, monotherapies have limited efficacy, in part due to the recruitment of alternate and counter-regulatory pathways. Consequently, a multi-target approach may provide greater benefit. Recently, two combination products have been approved by the FDA to treat obesity, including phentermine/topiramate (Qsymia®) and naltrexone/bupropion (Contrave®). The current review provides an overview of homeostatic and reward mechanisms that regulate energy balance, potential therapeutic targets for obesity and current treatment options, including some candidate therapeutics in clinical development. Finally, challenges in anti-obesity drug development are discussed
Micro Expression Spotting through Appearance Based Descriptor and Distance Analysis
Micro-Expressions (MEs) are a typical kind of expressions which are subtle and short lived in nature and reveal the hidden emotion of human beings. Due to processing an entire video, the MEs recognition constitutes huge computational burden and also consumes more time. Hence, MEs spotting is required which locates the exact frames at which the movement of ME persists. Spotting is regarded as a primary step for MEs recognition. This paper proposes a new method for ME spotting which comprises three stages; pre-processing, feature extraction and discrimination. Pre-processing aligns the facial region in every frame based on three landmark points derived from three landmark regions. To do alignment, an in-plane rotation matrix is used which rotates the non-aligned coordinates into aligned coordinates. For feature extraction, two texture based descriptors are deployed; they are Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Local Mean Binary Pattern (LMBP). Finally at discrimination stage, Feature Difference Analysis is employed through Chi-Squared Distance (CSD) and the distance of each frame is compared with a threshold to spot there frames namely Onset, Apex and Offset. Simulation done over a Standard CASME dataset and performance is verified through Feature Difference and F1-Score. The obtained results prove that the proposed method is superior than the state-of-the-art methods
Voltage driven, local, and efficient excitation of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond
Magnetic sensing technology has found widespread application in industries as
diverse as transportation, medicine, and resource exploration. Such use cases
often require highly sensitive instruments to measure the extremely small
magnetic fields involved, relying on difficult to integrate Superconducting
Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) and Spin-Exchange Relaxation Free (SERF)
magnetometers. A potential alternative, nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in
diamond, has shown great potential as a high sensitivity and high resolution
magnetic sensor capable of operating in an unshielded, room-temperature
environment. Transitioning NV center based sensors into practical devices,
however, is impeded by the need for high power RF excitation to manipulate
them. Here we report an advance that combines two different physical phenomena
to enable a highly efficient excitation of the NV centers: magnetoelastic drive
of ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and NV-magnon coupling. Our work demonstrates
a new pathway to combine acoustics and magnonics that enables highly energy
efficient and local excitation of NV centers without the need for any external
RF excitation, and thus could lead to completely integrated, on-chip, atomic
sensors.Comment: Fixed an issue with the display of figure
FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF SYNTHESIZED QUINAZOLINONE DERIVATIVE FOR COLON SPECIFIC DRUG DELIVERY
ABSTRACTObjective: The current research deals with the formulation and evaluation of synthesized quinazolinone derivative for colon site specific delivery.Methods: The synthesized quinazolinone derivative was enteric coated 5% Eudragit L-100 with by wet granulation method using guar gum, pectin,and guar gum pectin combination as hydrophilic polymer. The prepared matrix tablet was characterized by differential scanning calorimetry andevaluated for different pre-compression and post-compression studies and drug release profiles.Results: All the matrix tablets were within the range of pharmacopeial limits with better flow properties. All the six formulations of matrix tablets haddisintegrated within 5-6 minutes. The optimized formulation selected was F6 formulation combination of guar gum and pectin with 95.79% of drugrelease than compared to the remaining formulation. The optimized matrix tablets followed zero order kinetics with Fickian diffusion.Conclusion: The results proposed that the combination of guar gum and pectin coated tablet with 5% Eudragit L-100 of synthesized quinazolinonederivative is a promising colon site specific delivery.Keywords: Quinazolinone derivative, In vitro drug release, Disintegration time, Guar gum, Pectin, 5% Eudragit L-100, Colon site-specific delivery, Wetgranulation, Compression
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