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The paleogeographic history of the Indian subcontinent is unique among Earth’s landmasses. From being part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana for most of the Mesozoic, through a period of isolation as a drifting entity in the Late Cretaceous, to colliding with Asia near the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, the Indian subcontinent has been associated with, and dissociated from, a variety of landmasses. This paleogeographic history has been invoked to explain aspects of the subcontinent’s modern-day fauna, with a combination of endemic radiations, remnants from Gondwana, and more recent immigrants from Laurasia. Here, 2 network approaches document how vertebrate faunas of the Indian subcontinent, and specifically their relationships to those of other landmasses, changed during the subcontinent’s isolation from close faunal relationships with Madagascar and South America in the Late Cretaceous to a more Laurasian fauna most similar to those of Europe by the Eocene.

Millions of surveillance cameras operate at 24x7 generating huge amount of visual data for processing. However, retrieval of important activities from such a large data can be time consuming. Thus, researchers are working on finding solutions to present hours of visual data in a compressed, but meaningful way. Video synopsis is one of the ways to represent activities using relatively shorter duration clips. So far, two main approaches have been used by researchers to address this problem, namely synopsis by tracking moving objects and synopsis by clustering moving objects. Synopses outputs, mainly depend on tracking, segmenting, and shifting of moving objects temporally as well as spatially. In many situations, tracking fails, thus produces multiple trajectories of the same object. Due to this, the object may appear and disappear multiple times within the same synopsis output, which is misleading. This also leads to discontinuity and often can be confusing to the viewer of the synopsis. In this paper, we present a new approach for generating compressed video synopsis by grouping tracklets of moving objects. Grouping helps to generate a synopsis where chronologically related objects appear together with meaningful spatio-temporal relation. Our proposed method produces continuous, but a less confusing synopses when tested on publicly available dataset videos as well as in-house dataset videos.

This study attempted to probe a geologically more stable IR stimulated luminescence signal (IRSL) that explored so far. IRSL, probes the proximal pairs and, pIRSL measurements at elevated temperatures consume more distant pairs. We surmised that the residual IRSL after pIR-IRSL should arise from most distant pairs and hence should be more stable. A thermal stimulation after pIR-IRSL leads to redistribution of charges including distant pairs and this can be probed by further IRSL and pIRSL (post IR IRSL) measurements. This post IRSL following a thermal treatment is termed as redistributed IRSLs (RD IRSL and RD pIRSL) and contributes about 10% of total IRSL counts from a pristine sample. As expected RD, IRSLs are poor to be solar bleachable. Burial age of around 800 ka(with 30e40 %) using RD-IRSL and RDpIRSL were comparable with the palaeomagnetic dating and were a factor of three higher than conventional pIR-IRSL, TRL, IR-RL and VSL ages. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The potential neuroprotective efficacy of dynorphin A antiserum on BBB dysfunction, edema formation and brain pathology was examined in a closed head injury (CHI) model in the rat. The CHI was produced by an impact of 0.224 N on the right parietal bone under anesthesia by dropping a weight of 114.6 g on the skull from a height of 20 cm through a guide tube. This concussive brain injury resulted in profound BBB disruption as evidenced by leakage of Evans blue and radioiodine in the brain. Edema formation and swelling at 5 h were most pronounced in the contralateral cerebral hemisphere. Pretreatment with dynorphin A antiserum (1:20, monoclonal) infused into the left lateral cerebral ventricle (30 mu L in PBS) either 30 min before or 30 min after CHI significantly attenuated BBB dysfunction, brain edema formation, volume swelling and brain pathology. However, no reduction in brain edema, BBB permeability or improved brain pathology was seen when the antiserum was given 60 min post-CHI. These observations are the first to suggest that antiserum to dynorphin when administered into the CSF during early phase of CHI is neuroprotective. Our work further indicates that dynorphin is actively involved in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of edema formation and BBB breakdown in CHI.

The possibility that drugs attached to nanowires enhance their therapeutic efficacy was examined in a rat model of spinal cord injury (SCI). Three Acure compounds AP-173, AP-713 and AP-364 were tagged with TiO2-based nanowires (50-60 nm) and applied over the traumatized cord either 5 or 60 min after SCI in rats produced by a longitudinal incision into the right dorsal horn of the T10-11 segments under equithesin anaesthesia. Normal compounds were used for comparison. After 5 h SCI, behavioral outcome, blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB) permeability, edema formation and cell injury were examined. Topical application of nanowired compound AP-713 (10 mu g in 20 mu L) when applied either 5 or 60 min after injury markedly attenuated behavioral dysfunction at 2-3 h after SCI and reduces BSCB disruption, edema formation and cord pathology at 5 h compared to other compounds. Whereas normal compounds applied at 5 min after injury (but not after 60 min) had some significant but less beneficial effects compared to their nanowired combinations. On the other hand, nanowires alone did not influence spinal cord pathology or motor function after SCI. Taken together, our results indicate that the nanowired-drug-delivery enhances the neuroprotective efficacy of drugs in SCI and reduces functional outcome compared to normal compounds even applied at a later stage following trauma, not reported earlier.

Closed head injury (CHI) often results in profound brain swelling and instant death of the victims due to compression of the vital centers. However, the neurochemical basis of edema formation in CHI is still obscure. Previous studies from our laboratory show that blockade of serotonin synthesis prior to CHI in a rat model attenuates brain edema, indicating a prominent role for serotonin in head injury. Thus, neutralization of endogenous serotonin activity and/or blocking of its receptors will induce neuroprotection in CHI. Since serotonin has more than 14 receptors and selective serotonin antagonists are still not available, we used serotonin antiserum to neutralize its in vivo effects before or after CHI in a rat model. CHI was produced by an impact of 0.224 N on the right parietal skull bone under Equithesin anesthesia by dropping a weight of 114.6 g from a height of 20 cm through a guide tube. This concussive brain injury resulted in blood–brain barrier (BBB) disruption, brain edema formation, and volume swelling at 5 h that were most pronounced in the contralateral cerebral hemisphere. The plasma and brain serotonin levels were increased several-fold at this time. Intracerebroventricular administration of serotonin antiserum (1:20, monoclonal) into the left lateral cerebral ventricle (30 μL in PBS) 30 min before or 30 min (but not 60 min) after CHI significantly attenuated BBB disruption, brain edema formation, volume swelling, and brain pathology. The plasma and brain serotonin levels continued to remain high. These observations are the first to suggest that antiserum to serotonin when administered into the CSF during the early phase of CHI are capable of inducing neuroprotection.

The possibility that drugs attached to innocuous nanowires enhance their delivery within the central nervous system (CNS) and thereby increase their therapeutic efficacy was examined in a rat model of spinal cord injury (SCI). Three compounds-AP173 (SCI-1), AP713 (SCI-2), and AP364 (SCI-5) (Acure Pharma, Uppsala, Sweden)-were tagged with TiO2-based nanowires using standard procedure. Normal compounds were used for comparison. SCI was produced by making a longitudinal incision into the right dorsal horn of the T10-T11 segments under Equithesin anesthesia. The compounds, either alone or tagged with nanowires, were applied topically within 5 to 10 min after SCI. In these rats, behavioral outcome, blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB) permeability, edema formation, and cell injury were examined at 5 h after injury. Topical application of normal compounds in high quantity (10 mu g in 20 mu L) attenuated behavioral dysfunction (3 h after trauma), edema formation, and cell injury, as well as reducing BSCB permeability to Evans blue albumin and I-131. These beneficial effects are most pronounced with AP713 (SCI-2) treatment. Interestingly, when these compounds were administered in identical conditions after tagging with nanowires, their beneficial effects on functional recovery and spinal cord pathology were further enhanced. However, topical administration of nanowires alone did not influence trauma-induced spinal cord pathology or motor functions. Taken together, our results, probably for the first time, indicate that drug delivery and therapeutic efficacy are enhanced when the compounds are administered with nanowires.