Effect of different plant hormones on callus induction in Gymnema sylvestris R.Br. (Asclepiadaceae)

The use of Gymnema sylvestris as an alternative remedy for diabetes was well known from ancient times in India and the plant is valuable for its pharmaceutical properties. The present study describes callus induction of the plant G. sylvestris using internodal explants and the influence of different plant hormones like 2,4-D, kinetin, IAA, BAP on the growth of calli. Internodes were proved to be the best explant for culture, which were grown on MS basal medium (Murashige and Skoog, 1962) with differentconcentration of various growth regulators. The standard plant tissue culture protocol for callus culture and/or micropropagation was adopted. The highest efficiency of callus formation was observed in themedium containing different concentration of 2,4-D and kinetin

EC Agricultural Prices. Price Indices and absolute prices-Quarterly Statistics 1-1993

We propose MAD-GAN, an intuitive generalization to the Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and its conditional variants to address the well known problem of mode collapse. First, MAD-GAN is a multi-agent GAN architecture incorporating multiple generators and one discriminator. Second, to enforce that different generators capture diverse high probability modes, the discriminator of MAD-GAN is designed such that along with finding the real and fake samples, it is also required to identify the generator that generated the given fake sample. Intuitively, to succeed in this task, the discriminator must learn to push different generators towards different identifiable modes. We perform extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets and compare MAD-GAN with different variants of GAN. We show high quality diverse sample generations for challenging tasks such as image-to-image translation and face generation. In addition, we also show that MAD-GAN is able to disentangle different modalities when trained using highly challenging diverse-class dataset (e.g. dataset with images of forests, icebergs, and bedrooms). In the end, we show its efficacy on the unsupervised feature representation task

Visualization of Minkowski operations by computer graphics techniques

We consider the problem of visualizing 3D objects defined as a Minkowski addition or subtraction of elementary objects. It is shown that such visualizations can be obtained by using techniques from computer graphics such as ray tracing and Constructive Solid Geometry. Applications of the method are found in solid modelling and shape description.

Antihydrogen-hydrogen elastic scattering at thermal energies using an atomic-orbital technique

In view of the recent interest in the trapping of antihydrogen atom (H) over bar, at very low temperatures, (H) over bar -H scattering has been investigated at low incident energies using a close-coupling model with the basis set (H) over bar (1s,2s,2 (p) over bar)+H(1s,2s,2 (p) over bar). The predicted s-wave elastic phase shifts, scattering length, and effective range are in a good agreement with the other recent predictions of Jonsell and of Armour and Chamberlain. The results indicate that the atomic orbital expansion model is suitable to study the (H) over bar -H scattering at ultracold temperatures.67

Classification of Corrosion Severity in Concrete Structures Using Ultrasonic Imaging and Linear Discriminant Analysis

The deterioration of concrete structures due to rebar corrosion is a key issue affecting the safety and service life of civil infrastructure. Reinforced concrete (RC) structures in coastal areas are subjected to harsh environmental conditions that cause rebar corrosion. From the perspective of safety, repair, and structural rehabilitation, it is essential to ascertain the level of corrosion severity and associated damage in RC structures through non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques. In this study, the potential of pattern recognition techniques for ascertaining the severity damage at various stages of rebar corrosion in concrete samples was explored. A contact ultrasonic compressional wave transducer pair with 250 kHz centre frequency was used as source and reflected signals from the rebar were acquired using a tied-together scanning approach. To expedite the corrosion process in the laboratory, accelerated corrosion of the embedded rebar was employed. The synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) was applied to reconstruct the image of the concrete subsurface from the acquired B-scans. Two approaches, i.e., the Mahalanobis distance (MD) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), were adopted; both methods correctly classified the level of corrosion severity and damage to the concrete. The developed pattern recognition techniques can, therefore, be potential tools for generating important information towards economical and timely repair of damaged concrete structures affected by rebar corrosion

Metabolism of 2-Chloro-4-Nitrophenol in a Gram Negative Bacterium, Burkholderia sp. RKJ 800

A 2-Chloro-4-nitrophenol (2C4NP) degrading bacterial strain designated as RKJ 800 was isolated from a pesticide contaminated site of India by enrichment method and utilized 2C4NP as sole source of carbon and energy. The stoichiometric amounts of nitrite and chloride ions were detected during the degradation of 2C4NP. On the basis of thin layer chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, chlorohydroquinone (CHQ) and hydroquinone (HQ) were identified as major metabolites of the degradation pathway of 2C4NP. Manganese dependent HQ dioxygenase activity was observed in the crude extract of 2C4NP induced cells of the strain RKJ 800 that suggested the cleavage of the HQ to γ-hydroxymuconic semialdehyde. On the basis of the 16S rRNA gene sequencing, strain RKJ 800 was identified as a member of genus Burkholderia. Our studies clearly showed that Burkholderia sp. RKJ 800 degraded 2-chloro-4-nitrophenol via hydroquinone pathway. The pathway identified in a gram negative bacterium, Burkholderia sp. strain RKJ 800 was differed from previously reported 2C4NP degradation pathway in another gram-negative Burkholderia sp. SJ98. This is the first report of the formation of CHQ and HQ in the degradation of 2C4NP by any gram-negative bacteria. Laboratory-scale soil microcosm studies showed that strain RKJ 800 is a suitable candidate for bioremediation of 2C4NP contaminated sites

Preparación y caracterización físicoquímica de una microemulsión de macrogol -8- glicéridos de caprilocaproilo para la administración oral de fármacos

The performance of caprylocapryl macrogol -8- glycerides in the development of pharmaceutically acceptable, stable, selfemulsifyingmicroemulsion was assessed. The suitability of the concentration of surfactant with respect to the oil phasewas assessed by interfacial tension measurement. A pseudoternary microemulsion system was constructed using caprylocaprylmacrogol -8- glycerides / polyglyceryl 6-dioleate / medium chain triglycerides and water. The model microemulsion wascharacterised with regard to its electroconductive behaviour and droplet size measurement after dilution with water aswell as with simulated gastric fluid, surface charge, centrifugal stability, viscosity and stability studies. The percolationtransition theory, which makes it possible to determine the percolation threshold and to identify the bicontinuousstructures, was applied to the system. The interfacial tension changes associated with the microemulsion formation showsultra low values upto 30% oil at a surfactant / cosurfactant ratio 4:1. Moreover, the investigated particle size after dilutionwith excess of water as well as with simulated gastric fluid proved the efficiency of the microemulsion system as a potentialcarrier for oral drug delivery.Se evaluó el rendimiento de los macrogol -8- glicéridos de caprilocaproilo en el desarrollo de una microemulsiónautoemulsionante, estable y aceptable desde el punto de vista farmacológico. Se evaluó la idoneidad de la concentraciónde surfactante en relación con la fase oleosa a través de la medición de la tensión interfacial. Se elaboró unsistema de microemulsiones pseudoternario con macrogol -8- glicéridos de caprilocaproilo/poligliceril 6-dioleato/triglicéridos de cadena media y agua. La microemulsión modelo se caracterizó en relación con su comportamientoelectroconductivo y la medición del tamaño de las gotitas tras su dilución en agua y fluido gástrico simulado, y serealizaron estudios de carga de superficie, estabilidad centrífuga, viscosidad y estabilidad. Se aplicó la teoría de latransición de percolación al sistema, lo que hizo posible la determinación del umbral de percolación y la identificaciónde las estructuras bicontinuas. Los cambios de tensión interfacial asociados a la formación de las microemulsionesmostraron valores muy bajos, hasta un 30% de aceite en una proporción 4:1 de surfactante/cosurfactante. Además,el tamaño de las partículas investigadas tras la dilución en agua abundante y en fluido gástrico simulado demostraronla eficacia del sistema de microemulsiones como un posible sistema de transporte para la administración oral defármacos

Phosphorylation of the androgen receptor is associated with reduced survival in hormonerefractory prostate cancer patients

Cell line studies demonstrate that the PI3K/Akt pathway is upregulated in hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) and can result in phosphorylation of the androgen receptor (AR). The current study therefore aims to establish if this has relevance to the development of clinical HRPC. Immunohistochemistry was employed to investigate the expression and phosphorylation status of Akt and AR in matched hormone-sensitive and -refractory prostate cancer tumours from 68 patients. In the hormone-refractory tissue, only phosphorylated AR (pAR) was associated with shorter time to death from relapse (<i>P</i>=0.003). However, when an increase in expression in the transition from hormone-sensitive to -refractory prostate cancer was investigated, an increase in expression of PI3K was associated with decreased time to biochemical relapse (<i>P</i>=0.014), and an increase in expression of pAkt<sup>473</sup> and pAR<sup>210</sup> were associated with decreased disease-specific survival (<i>P</i>=0.0019 and 0.0015, respectively). Protein expression of pAkt<sup>473</sup> and pAR<sup>210</sup> also strongly correlated (<i>P</i><0.001, c.c.=0.711) in the hormone-refractory prostate tumours. These results provide evidence using clinical specimens, that upregulation of the PI3K/Akt pathway is associated with phosphorylation of the AR during development of HRPC, suggesting that this pathway could be a potential therapeutic target

Classical kinetic energy, quantum fluctuation terms and kinetic-energy functionals

We employ a recently formulated dequantization procedure to obtain an exact expression for the kinetic energy which is applicable to all kinetic-energy functionals. We express the kinetic energy of an N-electron system as the sum of an N-electron classical kinetic energy and an N-electron purely quantum kinetic energy arising from the quantum fluctuations that turn the classical momentum into the quantum momentum. This leads to an interesting analogy with Nelson's stochastic approach to quantum mechanics, which we use to conceptually clarify the physical nature of part of the kinetic-energy functional in terms of statistical fluctuations and in direct correspondence with Fisher Information Theory. We show that the N-electron purely quantum kinetic energy can be written as the sum of the (one-electron) Weizsacker term and an (N-1)-electron kinetic correlation term. We further show that the Weizsacker term results from local fluctuations while the kinetic correlation term results from the nonlocal fluctuations. For one-electron orbitals (where kinetic correlation is neglected) we obtain an exact (albeit impractical) expression for the noninteracting kinetic energy as the sum of the classical kinetic energy and the Weizsacker term. The classical kinetic energy is seen to be explicitly dependent on the electron phase and this has implications for the development of accurate orbital-free kinetic-energy functionals. Also, there is a direct connection between the classical kinetic energy and the angular momentum and, across a row of the periodic table, the classical kinetic energy component of the noninteracting kinetic energy generally increases as Z increases.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Theor Chem Ac

Case studies on heat stress related perceptions in different industrial sectors in southern India

Linkages between thermal loads and its physiological consequences have been widely studied in non-tropical developed country settings. In many developing countries like India, despite the widespread recognition of the problem, limited attempts have been made to estimate health impacts related to occupational heat stress and fewer yet to link heat stress with potential productivity losses. This is reflected in the ubiquity of workplaces with limited or no controls to reduce exposures. As a prelude to understanding the feasibility of alternative interventions in different industrial sectors, we present case studies from 10 different industrial units in Tamil Nadu, Chennai, which describe perceptions of occupational heat stress among the workers and supervisors/management