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Medicinal mushrooms have been used in various treatments from a very long time, among which, Ganoderma lucidum is one of the most important medicinal mushroom. It is cultivated worldwide to meet its ever-increasing demand in the market. It is generally cultivated by bed log (Sawdust) and wood log (billet) method. This study was an attempt to observe the growth performance of G. lucidum on poplar billets (Populus deltoides) in the Sherpur Village (Dehradun) and Manjgaun village (Tehri Garhwal) of Garhwal Himalaya, India. The farmers’ field with empty house/ rooms having proper growing conditions especially humidity and light were used for the cultivation of G. lucidum. The G. lucidum spawn was inoculated in poplar wood billets and these billets were installed in well prepared soil. The results demonstrated that cropping cycle of G. lucidum was shorter (132–136 days) in Sherpur Village (Dehradun) as compared to Manjgaun village (141–145 days) in Tehri Garhwal. Further the results also revealed that yield was decreased in the subsequent flushes. In Village Sherpur, the fruiting bodies of G. lucidum were harvested between 64-66 days, 100-101 days and 135-136 days during first, second and third flush after the installation of billets, respectively. However; in village Manjgaun, the fruiting bodies of G. lucidum were harvested between 69 and 71 days, 107-108 days and 144-145 days in first, second and third after the installation of billets respectively. Warmer temperature in Village Sherpur resulted in the early emergence and development of the fruiting bodies as compared to village Manjgaun where pinhead and fruiting body development was delayed due to the lower temperature during cropping cycle.

Multipronged approach was used to synthesize a library of diverse C-8 cyclopentyl hypoxanthine analogs from a common intermediate III. Several potent and selective compounds were identified and evaluated for pharmacokinetic (PK) properties in Wistar rats. One of the compounds 14 with acceptable PK parameters was selected for testing in in vivo primary acute diuresis model. The compound demonstrated significant diuretic activity in this model.

A donor-acceptor-type conjugated copolymer (PBDT-PPD) composed of benzodithiophene (BDT) and pyrrolopyrroledione (PPD) was synthesized using the Stille cross-coupling reaction. Using both experimental and theoretical data, the optical, electrochemical, and photovoltaic properties of PBDT-PPD were compared with those of its sulfur analog, PBDT-TPD, which is composed of BDT and thienopyrroledione (TPD). The optical bandgaps of the polymers were determined to be 1.86 and 2.20 eV, respectively. While both materials possessed similar highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) levels, the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) level for PBDT-PPD was raised relative to that of PBDT-TPD. Devices incorporating PBDT-PPD had a higher open-circuit voltage and fill factor, yet drastically lower short-circuit current density ( J sc ) than PBDT-TPD leading to a lower power conversion efficiency (PCE). The lack of significant intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) combined with the high LUMO of PBDT-PPD resulted in poor spectral overlap with the solar spectrum, lowering J sc . Additionally, there was poor electron injection into PCBM, which also reduced the PCE.

Malware means malicious software. Detecting malware over a system is malware analysis. It consists of two parts static analysis and dynamic analysis. Static analysis includes analysing a suspicious file and dynamic analysis means observing a file during its process time. In this paper, we have proposed a framework for malware analysis based on semi automated malware detection usually machine learning which is based on dynamic malware detection. The framework shows the quality of experience (QoE) to maintain the efficiency tradeoffs and uses the method of classification. The samples of malware also shows that the framework create a strong detection method.

There is a lot of buzz around the market regarding crypto currencies but no one hardly knows what’s the technology behind it so we are talking about blockchain or the Next Generation Internet as many professionals refers it. Blockchain the recent revolutionizing technology of the IT sector right now and experts are taking a lot of interest in knowing this technology and the reason for the interest in Blockchain is its central attributes that provide security, anonymity and data integrity without any third party organization in control of the transactions, and therefore it creates interesting research areas, especially from the perspective of technical challenges and limitations finding its application all over the different industries. Although it has many applications in different fields such as Banking, Government and Healthcare etc. but we will be focusing on how blockchain can help us in transforming our legal system. In this paper we will discuss some of the basic problems that are faced by the system and due to which many persons face serious problems which in turn are really affecting their lives. So we are proposing an idea that how with the help of blockchain we can somehow lessen the burden of some authorities and helping them in a way possible we have built a small prototype which will basically explain what we are trying to do in this system.

Multi-focus image fusion is an essential method to merge the important information from a data-set of images with the similar scene. The fused image can be more informative than any previous source image. In this paper, a new scheme based on discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) is proposed. Multi-focus images are decomposed in different level and get the relevant results with few fusion metrics like standard deviation (SD), coefficient correlation (CC), entropy etc. In between, variance based fusion on approximation part and weighted fusion on detailed part have been used to generate the further process. Finally multi-focus images are all in one focus. The experimental work is applied to produce the good quality scale images; researched work established the qualitative approach impressively.

Self-stratifying coating is a promising and interesting coating system containing multi-resinous components, which instinctively stratify after coating on the substrate. Here, we have developed a new type of self-stratifying coating based on functional polyacrylate system. In this case a terpolymer of butyl acrylate, acetoacetoxy ethyl methacrylate and hydroxyethyl methacrylate was used as the polymer matrix. The whole coating system consists of a blend of a functional acrylic terpolymer (bearing acetoacetoxy, n-butyl as well as hydroxy ethyl functional group as the pendant group), phenyl methoxy functional siloxanes, hollow glass spheres (HGS) and aerogel particles (AP). 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane was used as a crosslinker. Hydrophilic hollow glass spheres (of 20 μm average particle size) and hydrophilic aerogel particles (of 5 μm average particle size) were used to generate desirable roughness on the surface. Low quantity of a non-silanated fluorinated surfactant was incorporated, which self-stratifies to the surface during coating film formation and imparts oleophobicity. An oil and water repellent (amphiphobic) surface was developed with high water as well as diiodomethane contact angle (∼130°) by varying the ratio of glass spheres and aerogel to each other and the polymer. Rolling effect of water and oil drops was also prominently visible. The surface showed excellent resistance to polar and non-polar solvents, good resistance to heat (150 °C) and sand impingement after which the water contact angle remains unchanged. The oil repellency was easily restored by spraying or dipping in a dilute solution of the non-silanated fluorinated compound. This coating can be applied by conventional techniques such as spray application and can have potential applications in anti-soiling and self-cleaning coatings.

Highly transparent amorphous SnO2 thin films were deposited using the thermal evaporation method and characterized. The influence of the UV radiation exposure (for approximately 2 h) on the morphology, linear and nonlinear optical properties of the films was evaluated for the first time. The optical switching performance of the as-deposited thin films was examined using the pump–probe technique. A continuous wave (CW) diode-pumped solid-state laser (532 nm with maximum power of 100 mW) and He-Ne laser (633 nm with maximum power of 35 mW) was used for the pump and probe beam, respectively. The band gap energies of the films were calculated using the Mott and Davis model fitting procedure. The films transmittance was increased and band gap was decreased upon the UV exposure. The signal modulations in the films were observed with the increase in the pump power. The signal intensities of both as-deposited and UV radiation exposed films were correspondingly dropped from 7.58 to 7.47 mW and from 8.16 to 8.05 mW, when the pump power was raised beyond 20 mW. The achieved SnO2 films displayed unaltered dynamic range under the UV radiation exposure. In addition, the nonlinear absorption coefficients of the UV radiation exposed films were increased from 0.10139 to 0.36435 cm W−1. This indicated the stabilization of the films upon the UV exposure and subsequent removal of the excess oxygen. The higher value of the nonlinear absorption by the films satisfied their figure of merit. The proposed SnO2 thin films may be effective for the development of the nonlinear optical devices working in the UV region.

A low electric resistive and stable back contact on p-type CdTe semiconductor is crucial for the commercial employment of high efficiency CdTe thin film solar cell. In this study, V 2 O 5 was deposited as a buffer layer between CdTe and metal electrode in the back contact of CdTe solar cells. Different back contact structures were fabricated on CdTe to study the effect of a V 2 O 5 buffer layer on cell device performance. Both the quantitative band alignment and the device performance of the CdTe solar cells with a V 2 O 5 buffer layer demonstrated that a much lower Schottky barrier was formed compared to the cells with an Au-only back contact. The defect states related to oxygen vacancy within the band gap of the V 2 O 5 played a crucial role in reducing the energy barrier for hole carrier transport. Employing a back contact structure of Cu/V 2 O 5 /Cu/Au, a CdTe solar cell with an efficiency as high as 14.0% was fabricated. Long term device stressing test demonstrated that, compared to the CdTe cells with a Cu/Au back electrode, solar cells with the insertion of a V 2 O 5 buffer layer showed much enhanced device stability.

Processing organic photovoltaic (OPV) blend solutions with high-boiling-point solvent additives has recently been used for morphological control in bulk-heterojunction OPV cells. Here we show that even low-boiling-point solvents can be effective additives. When P3HT:PCBM OPV cells were processed with a low-boiling-point solvent tetrahydrafuran as an additive in parent solvent o-dichlorobenzene, charge extraction increased leading to fill factors as high as 69.5%, without low work-function cathodes, electrode buffer layers or thermal treatment. This was attributed to PCBM demixing from P3HT domains and better vertical phase separation, as indicated by photoluminescence lifetimes, hole mobilities, and shunt leakage currents. Dependence on solvent parameters and applicability beyond P3HT system was also investigated.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) γ is known to be a key regulator of insulin resistance. We characterized the pharmacological profiles of NS-1 chemically known as (5Z)-5-[4-hydroxy-3-methoxy-phenyl) methylene] thiazolidine-2, 4-dione), as a selective partial activator of PPARγ. In transient transactivation assay in NIH3T3 cells, NS-1 showed a partial activation against human PPARγ with an EC (50) of 0.91 μM without activating human PPARα and PPARδ. In adipocyte differentiation assay, NS-1 induced adipocyte differentiation, which was ~ 25-fold weaker inducer of GPDH activities than pioglitazone and also showed weak adipogenic activity in C3H10T1/2 pluripotent stem cells using Oil Red O staining. NS-1 showed good in vivo pharmacokinetic profiles in C57BL/6J mice at 30 mg/kg oral dose with Cmax-26 μM, terminal elimination half-life— 2.5 h and bioavailability of 85%. Furthermore, NS-1 significantly improved hyperglycemia and insulin resistance in DIO animals when orally administered at a dose of 30 mg/kg/day for 45 days without significant weight gain. Overall, these studies suggest that NS-1 improves insulin resistance in such animal models through activation of PPARγ-mediated transcriptional activity and that it would be a new therapeutic candidate with potential for the treatment of type 2 diabetic patients.

To improve the efficiency of organic solar cells, it is essential to understand the role of morphology and to tailor fabrication process to get desired morphologies. In this context, a comprehensive set of computational tools to quantify and classify the 2D/3D heterogeneous internal structure of thin films is invaluable. We present a graph-based framework to efficiently compute a broad suite of physically meaningful morphology descriptors. These morphology descriptors are further classified according to the physical subprocesses within OSCs – photon absorption, exciton diffusion, charge separation, and charge transport. This approach is motivated by the equivalence between a discretized 2D/3D morphology and a labeled, weighted, undirected graph. We utilize this approach to pose six key questions related to structure characterization. These questions are the basis for a comprehensive suite of morphology descriptors. To advocate the appropriateness of the formulated suite, we correlate these morphology descriptors with analysis using a excitonicdrift–diffusion-based device model. A very high correlation between the fast graph-based approach and computationally intensive full scale analysis illustrates the potential of our formulation to rapidly characterize a large set of morphologies. Finally, our approach is showcased by characterizing the effect of thermal annealing on time-evolution of a model thin film morphology.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a very serious neurological disorder, and current methods of treatment fail to achieve long-term control. Previous studies suggest that stimulation of the metabotropic glutamate receptor 4 (mGluR4) represents a promising new approach to the symptomatic treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD). Preclinical models using both agonists and positive allosteric modulators of mGluR4 have demonstrated the potential for this receptor for the treatment of PD. In the present study, we describe the pharmacological characterization of an mGluR4 PAM, N-(2, 4-dichlorophenyl) pyridine-2-carboxamide (TAS-4), in several rodent PD models. TAS-4 is a potent and selective mGluR4 PAM of the human mGluR4 receptor (EC50- 287.8nM). TAS-4 showed efficacy alone or when administered in combination with l-DOPA. When administered alone, TAS-4 exhibited efficacy in reversing haloperidol-induced catalepsy. In addition, acute TAS-4 dose-dependently potentiated contralateral turning behavior induced by a threshold dose of l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-DOPA, 4mg/kg i.p.), a classical test for antiparkinson drug screening. Subchronic (28days, twice a day) TAS-4 (10mg/kg i.p.)+l-DOPA (4mg/kg i.p.) did not induce sensitization to turning behavior or abnormal involuntary movements during the course of treatment. Moreover, subchronic administration of a fully effective dose of l-DOPA (8mg/kg i.p.) significantly induces sensitization to turning behavior or abnormal involuntary movements. Results showed that TAS-4, in association with a low dose of l-DOPA, displayed antiparkinsonian activity similar to that produced by a full dose of l-DOPA without exacerbating abnormal motor side effects.