Salen and Related Ligands

The salen and related ligands are very popular among the inorganic chemists due to multiple reasons such as ease in synthesis, coordinating ability with very long range of metal ions, facilitating the metal ions to adopt various geometries, ability of stabilising the metal ion in variable oxidation states and potential applications of metallosalen in several fields. The most common application of metallosalen is in the field of catalysis because of their recoverability, reusability, high efficiency, high selectivity and their capability of working as homogeneous as well as heterogeneous catalysts for numerous functional group manipulations including asymmetric synthesis. Molecular magnetism, sensory applications, bioinorganic activities and medicinal applications of metallosalen are also very promising areas of their applications. Porous materials involving metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and supramolecular building blocks are increasingly getting attention of researchers for the gas absorption and heterogeneous catalysis

A concurrent parallel study to compare the efficacy and safety of oral iron chelators, defrasirox and defriprone in patients of beta thalassaemia major

Background: This study was planned to evaluate all the cases of β thalassaemia major, already receiving one of the oral iron chelators for a comparison among the efficacy, safety and economy of deferasirox and deferiprone to establish the better option in an Indian scenario.Methods: We identified two groups of patients: 38 treated with deferasirox and 35 treated with deferiprone. Laboratory parameters such as serum ferritin, creatinine, SGPT, Hb, CBC and urine were recorded at the time of inclusion and at 1, 3 and 6 months after the inclusion. The primary outcome variable was serum Ferritin level at the start and at the end of study. Serum ferritin level was carried out by microparticle enzyme linked immunoassay.Results: Before the study, the mean hemoglobin level was 7.32±1.50mg/dL ranged from 4 to 10.8 in deferasirox group and 7.54±1.15mg/dL ranged from 5.5 to 8.8 in deferiprone group. At the time of inclusion, study population was characterized by a mean serum ferritin value of 4735.11±450.01 SE in deferasirox and 4315.97±340.75 SE in deferiprone group. After one month the mean serum ferritin increases to 4578.66±371.96 in deferasirox and 4388.82±316.16 in deferiprone group. After three month the mean serum ferritin reduces to 4295.60±377.37 in deferasirox and 3988.88±349.84 in Deferiprone group.Conclusions: Thus, we conclude that deferasirox and deferiprone are well tolerated, have few adverse effects and almost have a comparable effect in lowering of the patient's serum ferritin level. Deferiprone is more cost effective but needs a strict control on compliance owing to requirement in three divided doses per day

Legume Genetic Resources: Status and Opportunities for Sustainability

Legumes are one of the most valuable gifts of nature to man, animal, and environment. These are sustainable, affordable, water-efficient, and low-carbon footprint crop. Globally, the share of grain legume accessions is 15% of 7.4 million accessions conserved in genebanks, of which more than half of germplasm in genebanks are without characterization and evaluation data which ultimately limit the utilization of germplasm in legume improvement programs. Characterization of all genebank accessions should be of utmost priority for enhancing the utilization. The development of core, mini-core, reference sets, and trait-specific germplasm has provided route to crop breeders for mining genebanks. Identification of new sources of variation became easy with these subsets, but the entire collection also needs to be evaluated for unique and rare traits. In crop species with narrow genetic base, utilization of crop wild relatives as well as new resources aids to widen the genetic base of legume cultigens

Procjena i vrednovanje PM2.5 u vanjskom okolišu u odnosu na njegove zdravstvene učinke u industrijskim područjima u kojima se koristi mineralni ugljen

Atmospheric PM2.5 pollution, has shown potential impact on the human health in general, thus it requires to look into the chemical characteristics of PM2.5 masses for designing effective policies to reduce health risks amongst public under exposure. The study carried out, here, has presented the ambient PM2.5 concentrations, concentrations of chemical components and associated health risks over rural and urban environments in the area of mineral based coal-fired industrial areas of central India for a period of one year (2015–16). Overall 260 PM2.5 samples, collected from rural, urban and industrial sites, were analyzed for various elements Al, As, Ca, Hg, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, K, Cd, Mo, Ni, Pb, Se, Sb, Na, Mg, K, V and Zn, ions such as Na+, Mg2+, K+, Ca2+, F–, Cl–, NH4+, NO3–, SO42– and carbonaceous matter. The annual average PM2.5 mass concentrations were found to be ~2 to ~6 folds higher than the annual National Ambient Air Quality standard (40 µg m–3). Further this study also evaluates, carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic health risks associated with ambient PM2.5 exposures (via ingestion, inhalation and dermal). The elemental species that have shown non-carcinogenic risks for both children and adults of all three sites are: Co, Mn, Ni (rural), As, Cd, Cr, Mn, Ni, V (urban and industrial sites). Similarly, the excess carcinogenic risks, in total, from Cd, Co, Cr, Ni, Pb was found to be higher than acceptable limits (10–6 to 10–4).Onečišćenje atmosfere lebdećim česticama (PM2.5) pokazalo je potencijalni utjecaj na zdravlje ljudi općenito. Stoga je potrebno sagledati kemijska svojstva čestica PM2.5 kako bi se postiglo učinkovito smanjenje zdravstvenih rizika izložene populacije. U ovome radu prikazuju se rezultati studije koncentracija PM2.5 i koncentracija kemijskih sastojaka u lebdećim česticama za jednogodišnje razdoblje (2015.–2016.) koji su povezani sa zdravstvenim rizicima u ruralnim i urbanim sredinama u industrijskim područjima u središnjoj Indiji u kojima se koristi mineralni ugljen kao pogonsko industrijsko gorivo. Ukupno je analizirano 260 uzoraka PM2.5 s ruralnih, urbanih i industrijskih lokacija za različite elemente: Al, As, Ca, Hg, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, K, Cd, Mo, Ni, Pb, Se , B, Na, Mg, K, V i Zn, ione poput Na+, Mg2+, K+, Ca2+, F–, Cl–, NH4+, NO3–, SO42– i spojeve ugljika. Utvrđeno je da su prosječne godišnje masene koncentracije PM2.5 od ~2 do ~6 puta više od dopuštenih godišnjih vrijednosti prema indijskom Nacionalnom standardu kvalitete zraka (40 µgm–3). Nadalje, ova studija također ocjenjuje kancerogene i nekancerogene rizike za zdravlje povezane s izloženošću česticama PM2.5 u okolišu (putem gutanja, udisanja i dodira s kožom). Elementi koji su pokazali nekancerogene rizike i za djecu i za odrasle na sve tri lokacije su: Co, Mn, Ni (ruralno područje), As, Cd, Cr, Mn, Ni i V (urbano i industrijsko područje). Slično, utvrđen je povećan kancerogeni rizik za Cd, Co, Cr, Ni i Pb, koji je veći od prihvatljivih granica (10–6 do 10–4)

Constraints on Astro-unparticle Physics from SN 1987A

SN 1987A observations have been used to place constraints on the interactions between standard model particles and unparticles. In this study we calculate the energy loss from the supernovae core through scalar, pseudo scalar, vector, pseudo vector unparticle emission from nuclear bremsstrahlung for degenerate nuclear matter interacting through one pion exchange. In order to examine the constraints on $d_{\cal U}=1$ we considered the emission of scalar, pseudo scalar, vector, pseudo vector and tensor through the pair annihilation process $e^+e^-\to {\cal U} \gamma$. In addition we have re-examined other pair annihilation processes. The most stringent bounds on the dimensionless coupling constants for $d_{\cal U} =1$ and $\Lambda_{\cal U}= m_Z$ are obtained from nuclear bremsstrahlung process for the pseudo scalar and pseudo-vector couplings $\bigl|\lambda^{\cal P}_{0,1}\bigr|\leq 4\times 10^{-11}$ and for tensor interaction, the best limit on dimensionless coupling is obtained from $e^+ e^-\to {\cal U} \gamma$ and we get $\bigl|\lambda^{\cal T}\bigr| \leq 6\times 10^{-6}$.Comment: 12 pages, 2 postscript figure

Preferred interpersonal distances: a global comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Global study of social odor awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10,794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics

Dilated ascending aorta is associated with the difficulty in correct placement of pulmonary artery catheter

The present case report highlights that a tense mega-sized aortic root and ascending aorta can mechanically resist the passage of fully inflated (1.5 ml air) balloon to wedge-trace position in the pulmonary artery. Any attempt to push the catheter rather predisposed its recoiling and rebutting into the right ventricle and the cardiac arrhythmia. Inflating continuous cardiac output catheter balloon with lesser volume of air (1 ml) is suggested to overcome this problem