Virtual screening for NS5B inhibitors of Hepatitis C virus

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection is a serious cause of chronic liver disease worldwide with more than 170 million infected individuals at a risk of developing significant morbidity and mortality. To date there is no effective drug for the treatment or vaccine to prevent this infection. The present study aims to discover novel inhibitors which target an allosteric binding site of RNA dependent RNA polymerase enzyme of HCV. A structure based virtual screening of Zinc database by computational docking and the post docking analysis of energy calculations and interactions followed by ADMET studies were conducted. Our study revealed 10 compounds which has more potential than the existing inhibitor to be considered as lead compounds.
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Large Magnetoresistance and Jahn Teller effect in Sr2_2FeCoO6_6

Neutron diffraction measurement on the spin glass double perovskite Sr$_2$FeCoO$_6$ reveals site disorder as well as Co$^{3+}$ intermediate spin state. In addition, multiple valence states of Fe and Co are confirmed through M\"{o}ssbauer and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The structural disorder and multiple valence lead to competing ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions and subsequently to a spin glass state, which is reflected in the form of an additional $T$-linear contribution at low temperatures in specific heat. A clear evidence of Jahn-Teller distortion at the Co$^{3+}$-O$_6$ complex is observed and incorporating the physics of Jahn-Teller effect, the presence of localized magnetic moment is shown. A large, negative and anomalous magnetoresistance of $\approx$ 63% at 14K in 12T applied field is observed for Sr$_2$FeCoO$_6$. The observed magnetoresistance could be explained by applying a semi-empirical fit consisting of a negative and a positive contribution and show that the negative magnetoresistance is due to spin scattering of carriers by localized magnetic moments in the spin glass phase

Changes in the measured image separation of the gravitational lens system, PKS 1830-211

We present eight epochs of 43 GHz, dual-polarisation VLBA observations of the gravitational lens system PKS 1830-211, made over fourteen weeks. A bright, compact ``core'' and a faint extended ``jet'' are clearly seen in maps of both lensed images at all eight epochs. The relative separation of the radio centroid of the cores (as measured on the sky) changes by up to 87 micro arcsec between subsequent epochs. A comparison with the previous 43 GHz VLBA observations (Garrett et al. 1997) made 8 months earlier show even larger deviations in the separation of up to 201 micro arcsec. The measured changes are most likely produced by changes in the brightness distribution of the background source, enhanced by the magnification of the lens. A relative magnification matrix that is applicable on the milliarcsecond scale has been determined by relating two vectors (the ``core-jet'' separations and the offsets of the polarised and total intensity emission) in the two lensed images. The determinant of this matrix, -1.13 +/-0.61, is in good agreement with the measured flux density ratio of the two images. The matrix predicts that the 10 mas long jet, that is clearly seen in previous 15 and 8.4 GHz VLBA observations (Garrett et al. 1997, Guirado et al. 1999), should correspond to a 4 mas long jet trailing to the south-east of the SW image. The clear non-detection of this trailing jet is a strong evidence for sub-structure in the lens and may require more realistic lens models to be invoked, e.g. Nair & Garrett (2000).Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure