Occurrence of algal stem blotch in ber (Ziziphus mauritiana) under coastal Odisha conditions in India

The investigation was carried out during 2017-18 to identify and document the emerging diseases of Indian Jujube or ber (Ziziphus mauritiana Lamk.) in Odisha state located in Eastern part of India. Periodical visit and subsequent investigations revealed the occurrence of a new kind of stem blotch disease in ber caused by alga. Symptoms were observed on bark of the stem and branches as bright red velvety blotch colonies during July- September 2017. However dull grey blotches were visible throughout the year. Leaves and fruits were left unaffected. The algal stem blotch occurrence was assessed during the year 2018 and disease severity rangedfrom 9.4-14.8 per cent. The green alga was identified and confirmed as Trentepohlia arborum (Agardh) Hariot based on key morphological characters. The stem blotches lead to death of young twigs measured between 3 to 8 mm thickness on primary and secondary branches wherein thickness of branches was more than 10 mm, algal blotches caused cracking of bark. Present study highlights the causal agent of stem blotch of ber, its symptomatology, impact of disease and suggested management practices

Evaluation of Antioxidant and Antibacterial Activities of Bubble Belly Massage Oil and their Crude Ingredients

Bubble Belly massage oil is popular among Malaysians since its commercialization in 2018. The massage oil contains lemon oil, vitamin E oil, aloe vera oil, eucalyptus oil, ginger oil, black pepper, fenugreek, Caesalpinia sappan, Usnea barbata, and Helicteres isora. The massage oil is believed to reduce weight, cellulite, menstrual pain, body ache, and scar appearances. The study evaluated oil and its crude ingredients for antioxidant activity using DPPH and ABTS assays, antibacterial activity was evaluated by using disc diffusion, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) assays. The crude ingredients soaked in the massage oil were dried and underwent aqueous extraction. Phenols, tannins, and quinones were detected qualitatively in the samples. Highest DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging of 73.1% at 0.78% (v/v), and 98.2% at 12.5% (v/v), respectively were shown by the oil. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Klebsiella pneumonia, and Enterococcus faecalis were susceptible to the oil at 100% (v/v) with a zone of inhibition of 15.0 mm, 14.0 mm, 12.0 mm, 9.0 mm, and 14.0 mm, respectively. All the tested bacteria were resistant to the crude ingredients. The MIC values against B. cereus, MRSA, K. pneumonia, and E. coli treated with oil were in the range of 0.39 to 0.78% (v/v). Both the crude ingredients and oil showed MBC values of 12.5 mg/mL and 0.39% against B. cereus and MRSA, respectively. In a nutshell, the massage oil showed significant inhibitory and radical scavenging activities and thus is potential as an antibacterial and antioxidant agent

Studies on Antioxidant and Anti-obesity Activity of Salvia hispanica (Chia) Seeds Extracts

Obesity is a condition in which large amount of fat is stored in adipose tissue. Obesity is the greatest risk for many diseases like coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes millions associated with insulin resistance, arthritis disorder, hypertension and cancers. Currently, the available drugs for obesity have been associated with number of side effects when compared with allopathic drugs. Salvia hispanica was one of the member of Lamiaceae family, collected to study the antiobesity activity. Extraction of Salvia hispanica using different solvents was done and tested for the presence of phytochemical constituents and the antimicrobial activity was monitored to evaluate the zone of inhibition. Further, antioxidant potential activity such as DPPH, FRAP and H2O2 assay was studied. Percentage of inhibition of Salvia hispanica was calculated and was observed as in capturing the free radicals present in the body. The surface and cross-sectional morphology Salvia hispanica extract nanoparticles was examined by using SEM. High ALA content make chia a perfect as it is associated with lower incidence of Cardiovascular diseases. This metabolic syndrome is mediated by inflammatory pathways. Hence, the in vitro activity of anti-inflammatory assay was performed by inhibition of albumin denaturation and anti-obesity activity was performed by lipase inhibition assay. Thus the result indicates that the seed extracts of Salvia hispanica possess antiobesity activity. Keywords: Salvia hispanica, anti-obesity, cholesterol, Antioxidant, lipase inhibitio

Early Prediction of Gestational Diabetes with Parameter-Tuned K-Nearest Neighbor Classifier

Diabetes is one of the quickly spreading chronic diseases causing health complications, such as diabetes retinopathy, kidney failure, and cardiovascular disease. Recently, machine-learning techniques have been widely applied to develop a model for the early prediction of diabetes. Due to its simplicity and generalization capability, K-nearest neighbor (KNN) has been one of the widely employed machine learning techniques for diabetes prediction. Early diabetes prediction has a significant role in managing and preventing complications associated with diabetes, such as retinopathy, kidney failure, and cardiovascular disease. However, the prediction of diabetes in the early stage has remained challenging due to the accuracy and reliability of the KNN model. Thus, gird search hyperparameter optimization is employed to tune the K values of the KNN model to improve its effectiveness in predicting diabetes. The developed hyperparameter-tuned KNN model was tested on the diabetes dataset collected from the UCI machine learning data repository. The dataset contains 768 instances and 8 features. The study applied Min-max scaling to scale the data before fitting it to the KNN model. The result revealed KNN model performance improves when the hyperparameter is tuned.  With hyperparameter tuning, the accuracy of KNN improves by 5.29% accuracy achieving 82.5% overall accuracy for predicting diabetes in the early stage. Therefore, the developed KNN model applied to clinical decision-making in predicting diabetes at an early stage. The early identification of diabetes could aid in early intervention, personalized treatment plans, or reducing healthcare costs reducing associated risks such as retinopathy, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease

Explainable extreme boosting model for breast cancer diagnosis

This study investigates the Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) of the extreme boosting (XGBoost) model for breast cancer diagnosis. The study employed Wisconsin’s breast cancer dataset, characterized by 30 features extracted from an image of a breast cell. SHAP module generated different explainer values representing the impact of a breast cancer feature on breast cancer diagnosis. The experiment computed SHAP values of 569 samples of the breast cancer dataset. The SHAP explanation indicates perimeter and concave points have the highest impact on breast cancer diagnosis. SHAP explains the XGB model diagnosis outcome showing the features affecting the XGBoost model. The developed XGB model achieves an accuracy of 98.42%

Measurement of 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction cross section and covariance analysis using extended unscented transformation technique at the incident neutron energy of 13.9 MeV

351-357In this paper, the measurement and covariance analysis of the cross section of 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction, with the 197Au (n, 2n)196 Au reaction being used as the monitor, at the incident neutron energy of 13.9 MeV is reported. The 3H (d, n) 4He nuclear reaction is used as the neutron source. The experiment was performed at the Purnima neutron facility, BARC. The method of activation with off-line -ray spectrometry is used. The covariance analysis of the 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction is also performed, for the first time, using the extended unscented transformation (EUT) technique1, which is an extension of unscented transformation (UT) technique2, for the determination of partial uncertainties arising due to attributes in combination with the micro-correlation technique of Geraldo and Smith3. The present results obtained for 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction cross section are found to be in good agreement with EXFOR data and the theoretically calculated value using the TALYS 1. 8 code. Comparisons with the data in the available basic evaluated nuclear data libraries, such as ENDF/B-VIII.0, JEFF-3.3, JENDL-4.0, ROSFOND-2010, CENDL-3.1 and TENDL 2017 are also presented and discussed

Measurement of 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction cross section and covariance analysis using extended unscented transformation technique at the incident neutron energy of 13.9 MeV

In this paper, the measurement and covariance analysis of the cross section of 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction, with the 197Au (n, 2n)196 Au reaction being used as the monitor, at the incident neutron energy of 13.9 MeV is reported. The 3H (d, n) 4He nuclear reaction is used as the neutron source. The experiment was performed at the Purnima neutron facility, BARC. The method of activation with off-line -ray spectrometry is used. The covariance analysis of the 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction is also performed, for the first time, using the extended unscented transformation (EUT) technique1, which is an extension of unscented transformation (UT) technique2, for the determination of partial uncertainties arising due to attributes in combination with the micro-correlation technique of Geraldo and Smith3. The present results obtained for 100Mo (n, 2n) 99Mo reaction cross section are found to be in good agreement with EXFOR data and the theoretically calculated value using the TALYS 1. 8 code. Comparisons with the data in the available basic evaluated nuclear data libraries, such as ENDF/B-VIII.0, JEFF-3.3, JENDL-4.0, ROSFOND-2010, CENDL-3.1 and TENDL 2017 are also presented and discussed

Fucoxanthin, a Marine Carotenoid Present in Brown Seaweeds and Diatoms: Metabolism and Bioactivities Relevant to Human Health

The marine carotenoid fucoxanthin can be found in marine brown seaweeds, the macroalgae, and diatoms, the microalgae, and has remarkable biological properties. Numerous studies have shown that fucoxanthin has considerable potential and promising applications in human health. In this article, we review the current available scientific literature regarding the metabolism, safety, and bioactivities of fucoxanthin, including its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, anti-obese, antidiabetic, antiangiogenic and antimalarial activities, and its protective effects on the liver, blood vessels of the brain, bones, skin, and eyes. Although some studies have shown the bioavailability of fucoxanthin in brown seaweeds to be low in humans, many studies have suggested that a dietary combination of fucoxanthin and edible oil or lipid could increase the absorption rate of fucoxanthin, and thus it might be a promising marine drug

Numerical modeling of the non-isothermal liquid droplet impact on a hot solid substrate

The heat transfer from a solid phase to an impinging non-isothermal liquid droplet is studied numerically. A new approach based on an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite element method for solving the incompressible Navier Stokes equations in the liquid and the energy equation within the solid and the liquid is presented. The novelty of the method consists in using the ALE-formulation also in the solid phase to guarantee matching grids along the liquid solid interface. Moreover, a new technique is developed to compute the heat flux without differentiating the numerical solution. The free surface and the liquid solid interface of the droplet are represented by a moving mesh which can handle jumps in the material parameter and a temperature dependent surface tension. Further, the application of the Laplace-Beltrami operator technique for the curvature approximation allows a natural inclusion of the contact angle. Numerical simulation for varying Reynold, Weber, Peclet and Biot numbers are performed to demonstrate the capabilities of the new approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Modeling of the non-isothermal liquid droplet impact on a heated solid substrate with heterogeneous wettability

A comprehensive numerical investigation on the impingement and spreading of a non-isothermal liquid droplet on a solid substrate with heterogeneous wettability is presented in this work. The time-dependent incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are used to describe the fluid flow in the liquid droplet, whereas the heat transfer in the moving droplet and in the solid substrate is described by the energy equation. The arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation with finite elements is used to solve the time-dependent incompressible Navier-Stokes equation and the energy equation in the time-dependent moving domain. Moreover, the Marangoni convection is included in the variational form of the Navier-Stokes equations without calculating the partial derivatives of the temperature on the free surface. The heterogeneous wettability is incorporated into the numerical model by defining a space-dependent contact angle. An array of simulations for droplet impingement on a heated solid substrate with circular patterned heterogeneous wettability are presented. The numerical study includes the influence of wettability contrast, pattern diameter, Reynolds number and Weber number on the confinement of the spreading droplet within the inner region, which is more wettable than the outer region. Also, the influence of these parameters on the total heat transfer from the solid substrate to the liquid droplet is examined. We observe that the equilibrium position depends on the wettability contrast and the diameter of the inner surface. Consequently. the heat transfer is more when the wettability contrast is small and/or the diameter of inner region is large. The influence of the Weber number on the total heat transfer is more compared to the Reynolds number, and the total heat transfer increases when the Weber number increases. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved