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Highlights: [•] First time biological synthesis of cerium oxide oxide nanoparticles using fungus Humicola sp. [•] Complete characterization of cerium oxide nanoparticles. [•] Biosynthesis of naturally protein capped, luminescent and water dispersible CeO2 nanoparticles. [•] Biosynthesized CeO2 nanoparticles can be used for many biomedical applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] First time fungal biotransformation of phase, size and shape of TiO2 at just 50°C. [•] TiO2 nanoparticles thus obtained are completely water dispersible, fluorescent and naturally protein capped. [•] Obtained brookite phase of TiO2 can be used for many diverse antimicrobial applications. [•] Bioleaching of nanosize TiO2 from bulk TiO2 can be beneficial in scaling up processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Naphthalene is widely used in households as an insect repellent, but its poisoning is rare, especially in adults. Naphthalene is a strong oxidant with a pungent smell. We report a case of a 16-year-old female who ingested three naphthalene mothballs 3 days prior to admission and presented with history of recurrent vomiting, severe pallor, jaundice, and hemoglobinuria. Investigation found severe hemolytic anemia, indirect hyperbilirubinemia, acute kidney injury, and evidence of intravascular hemolysis. Her urine output was normal throughout the course of illness. She was managed conservatively with i.v. fluid, oral ascorbic acid, and blood transfusion. With treatment our patient improved completely and was discharged in hemodynamically stable condition. She is doing fine after further follow-up. Emergency physician should keep the possibility of poisoning by an oxidizing agent, such as naphthalene, when a patient presents to the emergency department with rapid onset pallor, jaundice, and hemoglobinuria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Brucella abortus, a facultative intracellular pathogen, is of tremendous zoonotic importance because of its ability to induce spontaneous abortion in cattle and other livestock. It is also known to cause persistent undulant fever, endocarditis, arthritis, osteomyelitis and meningitis in humans. The available vaccines against this dreadful infection suffer from limitations like short-term immunity, increased risk of hypersensitivity and low prophylactic index in the recipients. In the present study, we have demonstrated that liposomal form of a recombinant ribosomal L7/L12 protein, a B–T cell antigen of B. abortus, activates strong immune response in the host. In contrast, free antigen generates moderate immune response in the immunised animals. The liposomisation of rL7/L12 protein causes tremendous increase in cell-mediated immune response in terms of delayed type hypersensitivity, T-cell proliferation and up-regulation in type I cytokine expression, etc. Moreover, the liposome encapsulated antigen elicited stronger humoral immune response as compared to standard vaccine (S-19) or IFA-L7/L12 combination in the immunised animals. The effectiveness of liposome-based vaccine was also substantiated by better systemic clearance of bacterial load after challenging the animals with B. abortus 544 pathogen. The results of the present study suggest the potential of liposome-based rL7/L12 antigen as prospective and efficient candidate vaccine capable of eliciting both cell mediated as well as humoral immune responses against experimental murine brucellosis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We propose a data-driven method for determination of orientations of brain fascicles. • We compute feature vectors that represent signal attenuation with orientation. • An MLP uses the feature vector to predict the angle to the closest fascicle. • Our method accurately estimates the number and orientations of fascicles in a voxel. • Our method also leads to superior tractography, assessed by experts. [Display omitted] Accurate modeling of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging measurements is necessary for accurate brain connectivity analysis. Existing methods for estimating the number and orientations of fascicles in an imaging voxel either depend on non-convex optimization techniques that are sensitive to initialization and measurement noise, or are prone to predicting spurious fascicles. In this paper, we propose a machine learning-based technique that can accurately estimate the number and orientations of fascicles in a voxel. Our method can be trained with either simulated or real diffusion-weighted imaging data. Our method estimates the angle to the closest fascicle for each direction in a set of discrete directions uniformly spread on the unit sphere. This information is then processed to extract the number and orientations of fascicles in a voxel. On realistic simulated phantom data with known ground truth, our method predicts the number and orientations of crossing fascicles more accurately than several classical and machine learning methods. It also leads to more accurate tractography. On real data, our method is better than or compares favorably with other methods in terms of robustness to measurement down-sampling and also in terms of expert quality assessment of tractography results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]