A Randomized Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Effects of Magnetized Water Oral Rinsing on Salivary pH, Salivary Flow Rate and Colony Count of Streptococcus Mutans in Healthy Individuals

BACKGROUND: Health starts from the mouth. Having good oral health is the best initiation for general health and well-being of our body. This study is to evaluate the effect of magnetized water oral rinsing on salivary pH, salivary flow rate, and streptococcus mutan colony count in healthy individuals. This study concludes that magnetized water can be used as a product that helps to maintain good oral health. METHODS: A total of 50 subjects were randomly assigned into two groups as study group (n=25) and control group (n=25) after satisfying the selection criteria. Study group underwent magnetized water oral rinsing for 2 minutes per day in morning and control group used normal water for their oral rinsing of 2 minutes daily. Salivary pH, salivary flow rate, and streptococcus mutan colony count were collected before and after 2 weeks of magnetized water oral rinsing. RESULTS: The study showed significant changes in study group, means reduction in streptococcus mutan colony count in between group analysis and increase in salivary flow rate within the group analysis. CONCLUSION: Based on this study it is concluded that magnetized water could be used as effective mouth wash against Streptococcus mutan and Xerostomia

IMMUNOMODULATORY EFFECTS OF HEMAGGLUTINATING LECTINS FROM POTATO (SOLANUM TUBEROSUM) AND GARLIC (ALLIUM SATIVUM) ON HUMAN AND MURINE LYMPHOCYTES

Objective: Potato (Solanum tuberosum) and garlic (Allium sativum) are an important ubiquitously consumed dietary components and known to contain lectins, with potent and diverse biological functions. Present study aims to evaluate the mitogenicity and immunomodulatory potential of these lectins on human and murine lymphocytes.Methods: The lectin activity of raw and heat processed extracts along with purified proteins were confirmed by heamagglutination and glycoprotein binding assays. MTT assay employed to evaluate the mitogenic and cytotoxic potential. Nitric oxide and NBT assays were performed for NO and ROS induction from lymphocytes and macrophages respectively.Results: Raw and heat processed extracts of potato and garlic induced heamagglutination and demonstrated binding affinity to glycoproteins. Potato lectin was identified as pan agglutinin whereas garlic lectins, were blood group specific with differential glycan recognition. Garlic extracts and lectins (ASAs) exhibited a strong mitogenicity towards human and murine lymphocytes. The proliferation index for ASA I (70-75%) and ASA II (35-40%) are comparable to those of the reference mitogens. However, Potato extracts and lectin (STA) was non-mitogenic and found cytotoxic for both human and murine lymphocytes. Raw garlic extract showed a significant increase in ROS generation. Both potato and garlic lectins failed to induce ROS from macrophages and nitric oxide (NO) from human PBLs.Conclusions: Both potato and garlic lectins were capable of interacting with cell surface glycoproteins and it is evident that the garlic lectins have stimulatory effect whereas the potato lectin has an inhibitory effect on lymphocyte proliferation. There by, study indicates that garlic lectins are mitogenic and co-mitogenic, whereas potato lectin is non-mitogenic or anti-mitogenic in nature.Â

Formulation and evaluation of herbal face cream with green tea extract

Face cream is a semi-solid preparation for improving skin colour. The purposes of the present research work was to formulate and evaluate herbal face cream with green tea extract, turmeric, aloe vera gel as a skin toner. Herbal creams offer several advantages over synthetic creams. The majority of existing creams which has prepared from drugs of synthetic origin and gives extras fairness to face, but it has several side effects such as itching or several allergic reactions. Herbal creams do not have any of these side effects, without side effects it gives the nourishment to skin. Method carried out to prepare herbal cream was vanishing cream formulation. Firstly, oil phase was prepared, Secondly aqueous phase was prepared. Then aqueous phase was added into the oil phase at 700 c with continuous stirring. Now, once the transfer was completed it was allowed to come at room temperature all the while being stirred. Perfume was added at last just before the finished product was transferred to suitable container. The above prepared herbal cream was evaluated with parameters such as pH, homogeneity by visual and by touch, appearance (colour), rub out (spread ability, wetness), washability, consistency and emolliency. The study suggests that the composition of extract and the base of the cream F1 are more stable and safe

An Integrated Pipeline of Open Source Software Adapted for Multi-CPU Architectures: Use in the Large-Scale Identification of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms

The large amounts of EST sequence data available from a single species of an organism as well as for several species within a genus provide an easy source of identification of intra- and interspecies single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). In the case of model organisms, the data available are numerous, given the degree of redundancy in the deposited EST data. There are several available bioinformatics tools that can be used to mine this data; however, using them requires a certain level of expertise: the tools have to be used sequentially with accompanying format conversion and steps like clustering and assembly of sequences become time-intensive jobs even for moderately sized datasets. We report here a pipeline of open source software extended to run on multiple CPU architectures that can be used to mine large EST datasets for SNPs and identify restriction sites for assaying the SNPs so that cost-effective CAPS assays can be developed for SNP genotyping in genetics and breeding applications. At the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the pipeline has been implemented to run on a Paracel high-performance system consisting of four dual AMD Opteron processors running Linux with MPICH. The pipeline can be accessed through user-friendly web interfaces at http://hpc.icrisat.cgiar.org/PBSWeb and is available on request for academic use. We have validated the developed pipeline by mining chickpea ESTs for interspecies SNPs, development of CAPS assays for SNP genotyping, and confirmation of restriction digestion pattern at the sequence level

Cotton based bioactive wound dressing material with high absorbency and antibacterial activity

63-68Cotton gauze fabrics with improved absorbency through yarn twist optimization and antimicrobial property using nanosilver have been prepared. The absorbency, mass loss (%), dehydration rate, wicking rate, surface morphology, surface chemical nature and antibacterial activity of cotton gauze fabrics have been evaluated. The gauze fabric with low twisted yarn shows better absorbency and vertical wicking rate as compared to that with higher twisted yarn. The cotton gauze fabric with optimized twist multiplier (3.0 TM) is then treated with silver nitrate precursor to form in-situ nanosilver on the surface of cotton by applying elevated pressure and temperature. The surface morphology has been studied by SEM and chemical nature by FTIR. The in-situ technique produces an average nanosilver particle size of 120 ± 48 nm and shows 100% reduction for Klebsiella pneumoniae (Gram-negative bacterium) and 99.99% for Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive bacterium)

Cotton based bioactive wound dressing material with high absorbency and antibacterial activity

Cotton gauze fabrics with improved absorbency through yarn twist optimization and antimicrobial property using nanosilver have been prepared. The absorbency, mass loss (%), dehydration rate, wicking rate, surface morphology, surface chemical nature and antibacterial activity of cotton gauze fabrics have been evaluated. The gauze fabric with low twisted yarn shows better absorbency and vertical wicking rate as compared to that with higher twisted yarn. The cotton gauze fabric with optimized twist multiplier (3.0 TM) is then treated with silver nitrate precursor to form in-situ nanosilver on the surface of cotton by applying elevated pressure and temperature. The surface morphology has been studied by SEM and chemical nature by FTIR. The in-situ technique produces an average nanosilver particle size of 120 ± 48 nm and shows 100% reduction for Klebsiella pneumoniae (Gram-negative bacterium) and 99.99% for Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive bacterium

Investigation of Interfacial Charge Transfer in Solution Processed Cs2SnI6 Thin Films

Cesium tin halide based perovskite Cs2SnI6 has been subjected to in-depth investigations owing to its potentiality toward the realization of environment benign Pb free and stable solar cells. In spite of the fact that Cs2SnI6 has been successfully utilized as an efficient hole transport material owing to its p-type semiconducting nature, however, the nature of the majority carrier is still under debate. Therefore, intrinsic properties of Cs2SnI6 have been investigated in detail to explore its potentiality as light absorber along with facile electron and hole transport. A high absorption coefficient (5 × 104 cm–1) at 700 nm indicates the penetration depth of 700 nm light to be 0.2 μm, which is comparable to conventional Pb based solar cells. Preparation of pure and CsI impurity free dense thin films with controllable thicknesses of Cs2SnI6 by the solution processable method has been reported to be difficult owing to its poor solubility. An amicable solution to circumvent such problems of Cs2SnI6 has been provided utilizing spray-coating in combination with spin-coating. The presence of two emission peaks at 710 and 885 nm in the prepared Cs2SnI6 thin films indicated coexistence of quantum dot and bulk parts which were further supported by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations. Time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) and transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) were employed to investigate the excitation carrier lifetime, which revealed fast decay kinetics in the picoseconds (ps) to nanoseconds (ns) time domains. Time-resolved microwave photoconductivity decay (MPCD) measurement provided the mobile charge carrier lifetime exceeding 300 ns, which was also in agreement with the nanosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (ns-TAS) indicating slow charge decay lasting up to 20 μs. TA assisted interfacial charge transfer investigations utilizing Cs2SnI6 in combination with n-type PCBM and p-type P3HT exhibited both intrinsic electron and hole transport

Application of nanotechnology in antimicrobial finishing of biomedical textiles

In recent years, the antimicrobial nanofinishing of biomedical textiles has become a very active, high-growth research field, assuming great importance among all available material surface modifications in the textile industry. This review offers the opportunity to update and critically discuss the latest advances and applications in this field. The survey suggests an emerging new paradigm in the production and distribution of nanoparticles for biomedical textile applications based on non-toxic renewable biopolymers such as chitosan, alginate and starch. Moreover, a relationship among metal and metal oxide nanoparticle (NP) size, its concentration on the fabric, and the antimicrobial activity exists, allowing the optimization of antimicrobial functionality.Andrea Zille (C2011-UMINHO-2C2T-01) acknowledges funding from Programa Compromisso para a Ciencia 2008, Portugal

Biosynthesis of Gold Nanoparticles by Foliar Broths: Roles of Biocompounds and Other Attributes of the Extracts

Biosynthesis of nanoparticles has arisen as a promising alternative to conventional synthetic methodologies owing to its eco-friendly advantages, and the involved bioprotocol still needs further clarification. This research, for the first time from the standpoint of statistics, confirmed an electrostatic force or ionic bond-based interaction between the chloroauric ions and the involved bioconstituents and manifested that reducing sugars and flavonoids were both important reductants responsible for conversion of Au(III) to Au(0). The result also demonstrated that the proteins were not the reducing agents, yet they might be protection agents in biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles (GNPs). Besides, a significant linear relationship was found between the anti-oxidant ability of the foliar broths and their capability to reduce Au(III) into Au(0). Furthermore, the preliminary investigation based on the boxplot on the size/shape distribution of the biosynthesized GNPs revealed that gold nanospheres with higher degree of homogeneity in size tended to be promoted by foliar broths containing higher content of reducing sugars/flavonoids and proteins. Otherwise, i.e., for those broths with lower content of the above biocompounds, sphere GNPs of wider size distribution or even gold nanotriangles tended to be fabricated

Biofabrication of Anisotropic Gold Nanotriangles Using Extract of Endophytic Aspergillus clavatus as a Dual Functional Reductant and Stabilizer

Biosynthesis of metal and semiconductor nanoparticles using microorganisms has emerged as a more eco-friendly, simpler and reproducible alternative to the chemical synthesis, allowing the generation of rare forms such as nanotriangles and prisms. Here, we report the endophytic fungus Aspergillus clavatus, isolated from surface sterilized stem tissues of Azadirachta indica A. Juss., when incubated with an aqueous solution of chloroaurate ions produces a diverse mixture of intracellular gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), especially nanotriangles (GNT) in the size range from 20 to 35 nm. These structures (GNT) are of special interest since they possess distinct plasmonic features in the visible and IR regions, which equipped them with unique physical and optical properties exploitable in vital applications such as optics, electronics, catalysis and biomedicine. The reaction process was simple and convenient to handle and was monitored using ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–vis). The morphology and crystalline nature of the GNTs were determined from transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force spectroscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy. This proposed mechanistic principal might serve as a set of design rule for the synthesis of anisotropic nanostructures with desired architecture and can be amenable for the large scale commercial production and technical applications