Organic metabolites produced by Vibrio parahaemolyticus strain An3 isolated from Goan mullet inhibit bacterial fish pathogens

Identification and action of several antibacterial metabolites produced by a fish pathogen Vibrio parahaemolyticus strain An3 from marine ecosystem of Goa has been demonstrated. Antibacterial activity of the crude cell extract of the test bacterium has been evaluated against indicator pathogenic bacterial strains such as Acinetobacter sp. An2, Aeromonas hydrophila strain An4, Staphylococcus arlettae strain An1 and Alteromonas aurentia strain SE3 by agar well diffusion method which clearly demonstrated comparatively more significant inhibitory effect on indicator bacteria as compared to several commonly used antibiotics. Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of crude cell extract of the test organism interestingly revealed presence of indole, phenyl acetic acid, n-(3- methyl-1, 2, 4-oxadiazol-5-yl) - 1- pyrrolidine carboximidamide, pyrrolopyrazines, tetramethyl pyrazine and other important phenolic compounds which may be responsible for antibacterial activity against indicator microorganisms tested. It has been clearly demonstrated that V. parahaemolyticus strain An3 produced several medically important organic metabolites during cultivation suggesting it as a potential candidate for production of several antibacterial metabolites to control pathogenic bacterial strains causing serious fish and human diseases.Key words: Antibacterial, gas chromatography mass spectrometry, metabolites, pathogenic bacteria, welldiffusion

Distribution of hydro-biological parameters in coastal waters off Rushikulya Estuary, East Coast of India: A premonsoon case study

The hydro-biological parameters of coastal waters off Rushikulya estuary was investigated during premonsoon 2011. Important hydro-biological parameters such as water temperature, salinity, pH, DO, NO2, NO3, NH4, PO4, SiO4, TSM, Chl-α, phytoplankton and zooplankton were measured during the present study. Temperature established a strong positive correlation with salinity and pH during the present study. Chl-α found in positive relation with NO3, SiO4 and TSM. Analysis of variance revealed significant monthly variation in pH, salinity and TSM. Significant station wise variation was observed in DO and most of the nutrients i.e., NO3, NH4, PO4, SiO4. A total of 119 species of phytoplankton were identified of which 84 species are of diatoms, 22 species of dinoflagellates, 7 species of green algae, 5 species of cyanobacteria (blue green algae) and 1 species of cocolithophore. Phytoplankton abundance varied between 25543 (Nos. L-1) and 36309 (Nos. L-1). Diatoms dominated the phytoplankton community followed by dinoflagellates in all the months. Diatoms contributed to 82-89 of the total phytoplankton population density whereas dinoflagellates contributed to 6-12. The regression between Chl-α and phytoplankton abundance resulted with weak relation (R2 = 0.042). Zooplankton fauna composed of 134 species of holoplankton and 20 types of meroplankton were encountered during the study period. Zooplankton population dominated by copepod during all months and accounted for 74 to 85 to the total zooplankton. The population density ranged from 6959 to 35869 Nos./10 m3. Analysis of variance explained no significant variation in total zooplankton abundance and also for different groups of zooplankton

Ponseti method in the management of clubfoot under 2 years of age: A systematic review

© 2017 Ganesan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background: Congenital talipes equinovarus (CTEV), also known as clubfoot, is common congenital orthopedic foot deformity in children characterized by four components of foot deformities: hindfoot equinus, hindfoot varus, midfoot cavus, and forefoot adduction. Although a number of conservative and surgical methods have been proposed to correct the clubfoot deformity, the relapses of the clubfoot are not uncommon. Several previous literatures discussed about the technical details of Ponseti method, adherence of Ponseti protocol among walking age or older children. However there is a necessity to investigate the relapse pattern, compliance of bracing, number of casts used in treatment and the percentages of surgical referral under two years of age for clear understanding and better practice to achieve successful outcome without or reduce relapse. Therefore this study aims to review the current evidence of Ponseti method (manipulation, casting, percutaneous Achilles tenotomy, and bracing) in the management of clubfoot under two years of age. Materials and methods: Articles were searched from 2000 to 2015, in the following databases to identify the effectiveness of Ponseti method treatment for clubfoot: Medline, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINHAL), PubMed, and Scopus. The database searches were limited to articles published in English, and articles were focused on the effectiveness of Ponseti method on children with less than 2 years of age. Results: Of the outcome of 1095 articles from four electronic databases, twelve articles were included in the review. Pirani scoring system, Dimeglio scoring system, measuring the range of motion and rate of relapses were used as outcome measures. Conclusions: In conclusion, all reviewed, 12 articles reported that Ponseti method is a very effective method to correct the clubfoot deformities. However, we noticed that relapses occur in nine studies, which is due to the non-adherence of bracing regime and other factors such as low income and social economic status

Sparsity and cosparsity for audio declipping: a flexible non-convex approach

This work investigates the empirical performance of the sparse synthesis versus sparse analysis regularization for the ill-posed inverse problem of audio declipping. We develop a versatile non-convex heuristics which can be readily used with both data models. Based on this algorithm, we report that, in most cases, the two models perform almost similarly in terms of signal enhancement. However, the analysis version is shown to be amenable for real time audio processing, when certain analysis operators are considered. Both versions outperform state-of-the-art methods in the field, especially for the severely saturated signals

Systems analysis of avascular necrosis of femoral head using integrative data analysis and literature mining delineates pathways associated with disease

Avascular necrosis of femoral head (AVNFH) is a debilitating disease, which affects the middle aged population. Though the disease is managed using bisphosphonate, it eventually leads to total hip replacement due to collapse of femoral head. Studies regarding the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms with AVNFH, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, biophysical, ultrastructural and histopathology have been carried out. Functional validation of SNPs was carried out using literature. An integrated systems analysis using the available datasets might help to gain further insights into the disease process. We have carried out an analysis of transcriptomic data from GEO-database, SNPs associated with AVNFH, proteomic and metabolomic data collected from literature. Based on deficiency of vitamins in AVNFH, an enzyme-cofactor network was generated. The datasets are analyzed using ClueGO and the genes are binned into pathways. Metabolomic datasets are analyzed using MetaboAnalyst. Centrality analysis using CytoNCA on the data sets showed cystathionine beta synthase and methylmalonyl-CoA-mutase to be common to 3 out of 4 datasets. Further, the genes common to at least two data sets were analyzed using DisGeNET, which showed their involvement with various diseases, most of which were risk factors associated with AVNFH. Our analysis shows elevated homocysteine, hypoxia, coagulation, Osteoclast differentiation and endochondral ossification as the major pathways associated with disease which correlated with histopathology, IHC, MRI, Micro-Raman spectroscopy etc. The analysis shows AVNFH to be a multi-systemic disease and provides molecular signatures that are characteristic to the disease process

STABILITY-INDICATING VALIDATED REVERSED PHASE-HIGH PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY METHOD FOR SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINATION OF COBICISTAT AND ATAZANAVIR SULFATE IN BULK AND PHARMACEUTICAL DOSAGE FORM

ABSTRACTObjective: A simple, rapid, precise, accurate, and economical stability-indicating reversed phase-high performance liquid assay method was developedand validated for simultaneous estimation of cobicistat (COB) and atazanavir (ATV) sulfate in bulk drugs and their combined commercial tablets.Methods: The method has shown adequate separation of COB and ATV from their degradation products. Separation was achieved on a LunaCN (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm column at a detection wavelength of 239 nm) using a mobile phase consists of o-phthaldialdeyde (Ph2.5) IX buffer,acetonitrile, and methanol in the ratio of 40:40:20 in an isocratic elution mode at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. Results: The retention times for COB and ATV sulfate were found to be 3.606 and 6.113 min, respectively. COB and ATV sulfate, their combinationdrug product was subjected to acid, base, neutral hydrolysis, thermal, and photolytic stress conditions. Thus, stressed samples were analyzed by theproposed analytical method. Validation of the proposed analytical method was carried out as per ICH guidelines Q2R1. Quantitation was achievedwith UV detection at 239 nm based on peak area with linear calibration curves at concentration ranges 50-600 μg/ml for COB and 100-1200 μg/ml forATV sulfate (R2 = 0.999 for both drugs). The limits of detection were 0.25 μg/ml and 0.5 μg/ml for COB and ATV sulfate, respectively. Conclusion: The method was found to be specific and stability indicating as no interfering peaks of degradants and excipients were observed. Theproposed method is hence suitable for application in quality-control laboratories for quantitative analysis of both the drugs individually and incombination dosage forms since it is simple and rapid with good accuracy and precision.Keywords: Stability-indicating assay, Reversed phase-high performance liquid, Cobicistat, Atazanavir sulfate, Forced degradation studies

Functional Molecular System of Bis(pyrazolyl)pyridine Derivatives: Photophysics, Spectroscopy, Computation, and Ion Sensing

A new series of conjugated donor−π–acceptor type of 2,6-bis(pyrazolyl)pyridine derivatives (compounds IK-(3–9)) have been synthesized via Horner–Wadsworth–Emmons (HWE) reaction, starting from a common phosphonate precursor and diverse donor aromatic aldehydes and characterized by routine spectral analysis including elemental analysis. Compound IK-2, one of the starting precursors, and molecule IK-3, the first member of the donor−π–acceptor series, are additionally characterized by single-crystal X-ray structure determination. Compounds IK-2 and IK-3 are crystallized in P1̅ (triclinic) and P21/c (monoclinic) space groups, respectively. The absorption maxima in the electronic spectra of the title compounds shift mainly due to intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) between different donor (dibutyl and cyclic pyrrolidine) groups and the acceptor moiety [2,6-bis(pyrazolyl) pyridine]. Solution-state emission spectral studies of all these compounds show large solvent sensitive behavior with significant amounts of Stokes shifts. The large solvent dependence of the emission indicates that the excited state is stabilized in more polar solvents due to the ICT. All chromophores exhibit solid-state fluorescence behavior except compound IK-7. The role of the position and nature of the donor functionalities in the conjugated backbone of overall donor moiety of compounds IK-(3–9), on the electronic absorption properties of the title chromophores has been demonstrated, which has further been corroborated by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) computational studies. The emission spectral results of compounds IK-3, IK-5, and IK-7 have also been supported by the DFT and TDDFT calculations. A fluorescence lifetime study on this series also shows that the excited states are stabilized in more polar solvents. Finally, one of the chromophores (chromophore IK-4) in the title series has been shown to act as a selective molecular sensor (turn-off switch) for the Cu(II) ion

Data Fusion of Objects Using Techniques Such as Laser Scanning, Structured Light and Photogrammetry for Cultural Heritage Applications

In this paper we present a semi-automatic 2D-3D local registration pipeline capable of coloring 3D models obtained from 3D scanners by using uncalibrated images. The proposed pipeline exploits the Structure from Motion (SfM) technique in order to reconstruct a sparse representation of the 3D object and obtain the camera parameters from image feature matches. We then coarsely register the reconstructed 3D model to the scanned one through the Scale Iterative Closest Point (SICP) algorithm. SICP provides the global scale, rotation and translation parameters, using minimal manual user intervention. In the final processing stage, a local registration refinement algorithm optimizes the color projection of the aligned photos on the 3D object removing the blurring/ghosting artefacts introduced due to small inaccuracies during the registration. The proposed pipeline is capable of handling real world cases with a range of characteristics from objects with low level geometric features to complex ones

Abrasion resistance and compressive strength of unprocessed rice husk ash concrete

This paper investigates the effects of adding natural rice husk ash collected from uncontrolled burning and without previous grinding (NRHA) as cement replacement in concrete. To obtain an adequate particle size, NRHA was mixed with coarse aggregate for a convenient period of time before adding the other components. Compressive strength, water absorption, porosity, and abrasion resistance expressed as weight loss were examined. Test results show that decreasing the particle size through mixing with coarse aggregate improved the compressive strength, reduced the permeability, and increased the abrasion resistance of concrete. By mixing NRHA with aggregate for 8 min, abrasion resistance improved by 10.35 and 23.62% over the control concrete at 28 and 91 days, respectively. Incorporating NRHA in concrete by grinding with coarse aggregate during the mixing process could be suitable for making normal-strength concrete and for applications where abrasion resistance is an important parameter. In addition, using NRHA as a partial replacement cement contributes to the reduction of CO2 emissions due to the production of cement