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Calcium ion (Ca2+) is a multifaceted signaling molecule that acts as an important second messenger. During the course of evolution, plants and animals have developed Ca2+ signaling in order to respond against diverse stimuli, to regulate a large number of physiological and developmental pathways. Our understanding of Ca2+ signaling and its components in physiological phenomena ranging from lower to higher organisms, and from single cell to multiple tissues has grown exponentially. The generation of Ca2+ transients or signatures for various stress factor is a well-known mechanism adopted in plant and animal systems. However, the decoding of such remarkable signatures is an uphill task and is always an interesting goal for the scientific community. In the past few decades, studies on the concentration and dynamics of intracellular Ca2+ are significantly increasing and have become a trend in modern biology. The advancement in approaches from Ca2+ binding dyes to in vivo Ca2+ imaging through the use of Ca2+ biosensors to achieve spatio-temporal resolution in micro and milliseconds range, provide us phenomenal opportunities to study live cell Ca2+ imaging or dynamics. Here, we describe the usage, improvement and advancement of Ca2+ based dyes, genetically encoded probes and sensors to achieve extraordinary Ca2+ imaging in plants and animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on human gut microbiome, regarded as the black box of the human body, is still at the stage of infancy as the functional properties of the complex gut microbiome have not yet been understood. Ongoing metagenomic studies have deciphered that the predominant microbial communities belong to eubacterial phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Verrucomicrobia and archaebacterial phylum Euryarchaeota. The indigenous commensal microbial flora prevents opportunistic pathogenic infection and play undeniable roles in digestion, metabolite and signaling molecule production and controlling host's cellular health, immunity and neuropsychiatric behavior. Besides maintaining intestinal health via short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production, gut microbes also aid in neuro-immuno-endocrine modulatory molecule production, immune cell differentiation and glucose and lipid metabolism. Interdependence of diet and intestinal microbial diversity suggests the effectiveness of pre- and pro-biotics in maintenance of gut and systemic health. Several companies worldwide have started potentially exploiting the microbial contribution to human health and have translated their use in disease management and therapeutic applications. The present review discusses the vast diversity of microorganisms playing intricate roles in human metabolism. The contribution of the intestinal microbiota to regulate systemic activities including gut–brain–immunity crosstalk has been focused. To the best of our knowledge, this review is the first of its kind to collate and discuss the companies worldwide translating the multi-therapeutic potential of human intestinal microbiota, based on the multi-omics studies, i.e. metagenomics and metabolomics, as ready solutions for several metabolic and systemic disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although multi-core processors enhance the performance yet the challenge of estimating Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) of a task remains in such systems due to interference in shared resources like Last Level Caches (LLC). Cache partitioning has been used to reduce the interference problem by isolating the shared cache among each thread to ease the WCET estimation. However, it prevents information shared among parallel threads running in different cores. In current work, we propose sharing and reuse aware partitioned cache (SRCP) framework such that replication of shared information, data, or instruction, in different partitions could be avoided in LLC. Further, enhancement in existing cache replacement policy is proposed, which avoids eviction of cache blocks shared among multiple cores accessing partitioned last level cache. Tighter WCET, as well as improved resource utilization, is thereby ensured with the proposed framework. Experimental results show that SRCP shows significant improvement in cache hit-rate for PARSEC and SPLASH2 benchmarks as compared to least recently used cache replacement policy and outperforms EHC and TA-DRRIP, which are state-of-the-art replacement policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of indigenous bacteria in mobilization of sediment bound arsenic (As) into groundwater is investigated using subsurface sediment from Brahmaputra River Basin (BRB) and the Bacillus sp. strain IIIJ3-1, an indigenous species to BRB. Anaerobic sediment microcosms with varying organic carbon sources and terminal electron acceptors (TEAs) are used to illustrate the role of the test bacterium in As mobilization. The aquifer sediment shows an asymmetric distribution of As and Fe in its different phases. Among the TEAs added, NO3 amendment promotes higher cell growth, oxalic acid production and maximum release of sediment bound As. X-ray diffraction analysis further suggests that weathering of As bearing secondary minerals through bacterial action enhances As bioavailability, followed by dissimilatory reduction and thus promotes its mobilization into aqueous phase. Co-release pattern of other elements from the sediment indicates that release of As is decoupled from that of Fe. This study confirms that microbe-mediated mineral weathering followed by respiratory reduction of As facilitates mobilization of sediment hosted As into aqueous phase, and provides a better insight into the catabolic ability of groundwater bacteria in mobilization of sediment hosted As in BRB region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catastrophic failure of a forged work roll used in a cold rolling mill was investigated. The spalled roll showed fatigue arrest marks in a smooth continuous path along the circumferential direction. Characteristic features of the fracture surface were similar to that of surface initiated spalling which is known as ribbon fatigue spalling. The investigation consisted of visual observation, profiling of crack using ultrasonic testing, microstructural characterization by optical and scanning electron microscopy, XRD analysis, and hardness measurements. Ultrasonic evaluation confirmed the initiation of root crack on the roll surface followed by an extensive sub-surface propagation (~815 mm length) of fatigue crack. Microstructural analysis revealed the presence of dendritic columnar structure and coarse irregular carbides indicating improper manufacturing process. Retained austenite content (~12%) as measured using XRD was higher than the usual desirable limit for such application. These microstructural abnormalities deteriorated the fatigue resistance of the roll. Since the roll failed within few hours of the running campaign and there was no operational abnormality reported in the campaign, it can be inferred that the initiation of the fatigue crack was conceived prior to the running campaign. It was an inspection deficiency that the crack was not detected prior to the start of the campaign. Initiation of fatigue crack which could not be detected during inspection led to the premature failure of roll in the early stage of campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ring-like and jet-like events produced in O-AgBr interactions at 60 AGeV are analyzed in terms of multifractal G-moment method and factorial moment method in both η space and ϕ space for emitted pions. Further, the Levy indices and multifractal specific heat c have been calculated. The results clearly indicate that μ and c both are different in ring-like and jet-like events depicting different mechanism in the production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fused tricyclic oxazaquinolinium salts were synthesized using Amberlite IRA 402(OH) in water and assessed for their sperm-immobilizing efficacy in vitro by modified Sander-Cramer test followed by double fluoroprobe staining of rat sperm. Out of 11 derivatives 3 showed potent spermicidal effect. The mode of spermicidal action was assessed by (a) Hypoosmotic swelling tests, (b) Lipid peroxidation studies, and (c) scanning electron microscopy. Antimicrobial efficacies of the potent derivatives, assessed by disc diffusion as well as by agar and broth dilution methods using human isolates of bacteria and fungi, revealed their moderate antimicrobial potential. The compounds, found to be nontoxic to rabbit erythrocytes by haemolytic assay, may be exploited as microbicidal spermicides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedilanthus tithymaloides (PT) leaves are widely used in Indian medicine to treat inflammation and pain, but until recently no systematic study of these activities were reported. This study aimed to evaluate the antiinflammatory, antinociceptive, and antipyretic activity of the chloroform (CE) and methanol extract (ME) of PT leaves and its isolated constituents in animal models. The results revealed significant antiinflammatory activity of CE and ME in carrageenan-induced paw edema (acute), vascular permeability and cotton pellet granuloma (chronic) models. Both extracts also produced significant increase in hot-plate reaction time but decrease in writhing response in a dose-dependent manner, indicating their antinociceptive activity. Moreover, significant antipyretic activity was recorded in yeast-induced pyrexia model. Chemical study of CE and ME yielded five known compounds, namely epifriedelanyl acetate ( 1), friedelanol ( 2), β-sitosterol ( 3), ursolic acid ( 4), and luteolin ( 5), along with the new compound 1,2-tetradecanediol 1-(hydrogen sulfate) sodium salt ( 6). This is the first report showing isolation of compound 5 from PT leaves, and of compound 6, from any plant source. Among these, compounds 4 and 5 (10 mg/kg, p.o.) produced significant inhibition of pain response elicited by acetic acid, increased latency in hot-plate, and caused inhibition of carrageenan-induced edema and cotton pellet-induced granuloma formation in mice. Thus, our results clearly demonstrated the justification of the traditional use of P. tithymaloides leaves as an antiinflammatory drug in primary health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friedel-Crafts reaction of differently substituted anilines with ninhydrin in the presence of molecular iodine at ambient temperature constitutes a facile, cost effective, and regioselective synthesis of a series of 2-mono/2,2-bis-(amino-phenyl)-indane-1,3-dione derivatives. Under identical conditions, use of different substituents in aniline ring led to the formation of different products, emphasizing the pivotal role of the nature and position of the substituents in product formation. In vitro antimicrobial activity evaluation of the synthesized molecules against eight bacterial and four fungal strains revealed that four of them possess duel efficacies (bactericidal as well as fungicidal). The activities are attributed to the disruption of architecture of the microbes as revealed from ultrastructural studies (SEM). Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors influencing school districts' participation in the voluntary open enrollment program in Massachusetts. It investigates whether school districts engage in strategic interaction when making the participation decision. The motivation for testing the strategic interaction hypothesis is to determine whether the driving force behind the participation decision of a district is the competition from neighboring districts, with a potential threat of taking away students and funding. The discrete choice participation decision is modeled using a Bayesian spatial probit model. The results suggest that a given district's probability of participation is positively affected by the participation decisions of its neighbors and this provides strong evidence of horizontal interaction in school choice policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient syntheses of a series of novel bisquinolines have been accomplished from 8-hydroxy quinolines under phase transfer catalyzed conditions using tetrabutylamoniumbromide as phase transfer catalyst. In vitro antibacterial and antifungal study of the synthesized analogues revealed six of them to show significant antibacterial and four to show significant antifungal activity. Among them 3c and 6c show most significant antibacterial activities with minimum inhibitory concentration value 32 μg/mL against four bacterial strains. Ultra structural studies of the microbes treated with 6c demonstrated deformation of cell wall and cell agglomeration. The bisquinolines exhibiting bacteriostatic or fungistatic activity may be developed as newer antimicrobial agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral administration of antibiotics to treat dental problems mostly yields slow actions due to slow onset and hepatic “first-pass.” Again, commonly used dental paints are generally washed out by saliva within few hours of application. To overcome the challenges, polymeric molds to be placed on an affected tooth (during carries and gum problems) were prepared and evaluated in vitro for sustained drug release for prolonged local action. Here, amoxicillin trihydrate and lidocaine hydrochloride were used as model drugs. Dental molds were prepared using corn zein, carbopol 934 P, gum karaya powder, and poloxamer 407 by mixing and solvent evaporation technique. Different physicochemical evaluation studies such as tooth adhesion test, surface pH, swelling index, and drug-distribution pattern were carried out. Percentage swelling varied from 56% to 93%. Average tooth adhesion strength and mean initial surface pH of the formulations were 50 g and 6.5, respectively. As assessed by scanning electron microscopy, drug distribution was uniform throughout the matrix. Cumulative percentage release of lidocaine hydrochloride and amoxicillin trihydrate in simulated saliva were 98% and 50%, respectively. In vitro drug-release studies revealed the sustained-release patterns of the drugs in simulated saliva at least for 24 h. The stability study shows that the drugs were stable in the formulations following the conditions as per ICH guideline. The formulation is a novel approach to deliver the drug(s) for a prolonged period for local action upon its application on an affected tooth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Downregulation of microRNA-31 has been linked with enhanced stress resistance, while its overexpression leads to cell death. In this study, we found mediatory role of microRNA-31 in γ-radiation-induced apoptosis in a model insect cell line Sf9 carrying well-conserved apoptotic machinery. Mature microRNA-31 is perfectly conserved amongst insects; hence we used biotinylated probes designed from Bombyx mori sequence for its successful detection in Sf9 cells. Target identification using Bombyx mori 3′UTRs predicted miR-31′s potential role in Lepidopteran apoptosis, which prompted us to investigate alterations in its expression during radiation-induced cell death. We found significant overexpression of Sf-miR-31 following lethal dose (1,000Gy-3,000Gy) irradiation. Its mediatory role was finally confirmed as antisense-microRNA-31 could successfully inhibit radiation-induced cytochrome-c release, caspase-3 activation and apoptosis. While Bax/Bcl-2 expression remained unchanged, lethal radiation doses induced Bim overexpression and direct Bim-Bax interaction (co-immunoprecipitation) which is not yet unequivocally demonstrated during apoptosis. Quite important, these events were found to be dependent on radiation-induced miR-31 overexpression, as antisense-miR-31 inhibited both the responses and resulted in significant inhibition of cell death. Pro-apoptotic role of miR-31 was further confirmed when miR-31 mimic induced apoptosis involving similar Bim/Bax alterations. Therefore, our study reveals an important mediatory role of miR-31 in radiation-induced cell death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]