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Objective: To determine the efficacy of Open Anderson-Hynes pyeloplasty in unilateral congenital UPJO in terms of GFR, free drainage of urine from the pelvis to the ureter and symptomatic improvement in children aged 5 to 15 years. Keywords: Pyeloplasty, Anderson-Hynes, Pediatric Pyeloplasty, Uretero-Pelvic Junction Obstruction

Aim: The research discusses the indications, tumour size, operational time, duration of analgesic required postoperatively, postoperative complications, recovery of bowel function and mortality associated with laparoscopic colonic surgery. Methods: This Case series studies were undertaken at the surgical department of DHQ Teaching Hospital, Rawalpindi and Bacha Khan Medical Complex, Swabi for duration of one year from 15th September 2020 to 15th September 2021. Clinical and operational data were collected from all laparoscopic-assisted colonic surgeries. Results: During this time, 85 laparoscopic-assisted colonic procedures were conducted. There were 76 carcinoma cases, 6 TB cases, and 3 polyp cases. From all, 60 cases were of right hemicolectomy, 12 cases of left hemicolectomy were performed, 5 cases of sigmoid colectomy were performed, 6 cases of segmental resection of splenic flexure were performed, and 2 cases of transverse colostomy were performed. Four cases were converted to open surgery due to locally advanced disease, one due to haemorrhage, and one due to failure to distinguish the tumour. The average time of the surgery was 140 minutes. The tumours were on average 5 cm in diameter. The average duration of analgesic use was 2.2 days. The average time for bowel activity to recover was 2.9 days, with a 6-day hospital stay. In one patient, traction injury to the small intestine occurred during surgery. Two patients got local wound infection after surgery, and two patients acquired lung infection. Conclusions: Colonic surgeries with laparoscopic assistance are linked with a smaller incision, a faster resumption of bowel activity, less painkiller use, a shorter hospital stay, and low incidence of pulmonary infection. Colon surgery may be performed laparoscopically and is an excellent first step toward obtaining advanced laparoscopic outcomes Keywords: Laparoscopy, Laparoscopic assisted colonic surgery, Colon cancer

The cation-π interaction and the hydrophobic effect are important intermolecular forces in chemistry and play major roles in controlling recognition in biological systems. We compared their relative contributions to the binding of molecular "dumbbell" guests in synthetic container hosts in water. The guests offered direct, intramolecular competition between trimethylammonium groups, -N+(CH3)3, and tert-butyl groups, -C(CH3)3, for the internal surfaces (aromatic panels) of the containers. In contrast with previous studies, the container molecules consistently preferred binding to the uncharged tert-butyl groups, regardless of the presence of anionic, cationic, or zwitterionic groups on the container peripheries. This preference is determined by solvation of the polar trimethylammonium group in water, which outcompetes the attraction between the positive charge and the π-surfaces in the container. The synthetic container complexes provide a direct measure of the relative strengths of cation-π interactions and desolvation in water. Interactions with the uncharged tert-butyl group are more than 12 kJ mol-1 more favorable than the cation-π interactions with the trimethylammonium group in these cavitand complexes.

Cistanche deserticola is a traditional and precious Chinese herbal medicine, known as "desert ginseng", with anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, improving immunity, nourishing the kidneys and other pharmacological effects. Its chemical components mainly include phenylethanol glycosides, iridoids, polysaccharides and volatile components, among which polysaccharides have received extensive attention due to their biological activities such as regulating immune activity, anti-aging, anti-spleen deficiency and antitumor. In recent years, a large number of research have been carried out on the extraction and isolation, chemical structure analysis and biological activity of Cistanche deserticola polysaccharides. The methods of polysaccharide extraction mainly include traditional extraction method, ultrasonic assisted method, microwave assisted method and enzyme assisted method, etc. The extracted polysaccharides were analyzed by chemical methods including methylation, acid hydrolysis and Smith degradation and spectroscopy methods such as NMR and IR. A variety of polysaccharides with new structures were obtained, and some polysaccharides with known structures were also investigated for their biological activities and their structure-activity relationships. However, the relationship between polysaccharides structure and their biological activities is still unclear due to the large number of polysaccharide components, their complex structures and the lack of systematic research and analysis on them. It is expected that the subsequent study of polysaccharide structure and active conformational relationship will be highly valuable for the application of Cistanche deserticola in pharmaceutical sciences and health food.

In today’s world where an individual is becoming more and more busy and independent, the use of recommendation-based systems is steadily increasing. Thus, making available professional knowledge to the common man in a short-span quite necessary. The aim of our recipe recommendation system is to recommend recipes to users based on their questions. To make the recommendation model important as well as meaningful, it is pertinent to display only those recommendations that have a greater probability to be fit for the asked question. We have addressed this challenge by working on a threshold parameter generated from the recommendation engine. Apart from this, we have also included a question classification (QC) task together with the question answering (QA) module. The QA module is used to extract the requisite answers from the recommended recipe based on the class label obtained from QC. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a robust recommendation approach by enabling analysis of threshold estimation and proposal of a suitable dataset. The final output of the recommendation system obtains benchmark results on the human evaluation (HE) metric. Our code, pretrained models and the dataset will be made publicly available.

The chalcogen-bonded homo-cavitand and hetero-cavitand AY+AY′ capsules (Y, Y′ = Se, Te), as well as their encapsulated complexes with one or two guest molecules have been studied theoretically via density functional theory (DFT), while the 1H NMR spectra of the homo-cavitand encapsulated complexes (in ASe+ASe) have been measured experimentally. There is excellent agreement between theoretical and experimental spectra. In all cases, we found significant 1H upfield shifts which are more intense in the ASe+ASe cage compared to the ATe+ATe and ASe+ATe cages. The non-uniform electron distribution which gives rise to an inherent electric field and a non-zero electric dipole moment of the encapsulated complexes, the induced electric field effects, the magnetic anisotropy which is enhanced due to the polarizability of chalcogen atoms, and the peripheral chains, which are responsible for the solubility of the cages, increase the upfield shifts of 1H of the encapsulated molecules; the peripheral chains lead to an increase of the upfield shifts by up to 1.8 ppm for H of the rim and up to 1.2 ppm for the terminal H in the interior of the cage. Hence, substantial 1H upfield chemical shifts of the guests in these capsules are consequences of (i) the enhanced aromaticity of the walls of the capsules due to the polarizability of chalcogen atoms, (ii) the induced and inherent electric field effects, and (iii) the peripheral chains.

A water-soluble cavitand bearing a benzotriazole upper rim was prepared and characterized. It exists as a dimeric velcraplex in D

C10H8BrN3, orthorhombic, P 1 ‾ $P‾{1}$ (no. 2), a = 12.114(7) Å, b = 12.254(8) Å, c = 13.186(8) Å, α = 71.659(10)°, β = 84.744(10)°, γ = 89.725(10)°, V = 1850(2) Å3, Z = 4, R gt (F) = 0.0511, wR ref (F 2) = 0.1644, T = 293 K.

The command line has always been the most efficient method to interact with UNIX flavor based systems while offering a great deal of flexibility and efficiency as preferred by professionals. Such a system is based on manually inputting commands to instruct the computing machine to carry out tasks as desired. This human-computer interface is quite tedious especially for a beginner. And hence, the command line has not been able to garner an overwhelming reception from new users. Therefore, to improve user-friendliness and to mark a step towards a more intuitive command line system, we propose two predictive approaches that can benefit all kinds of users specially the novice ones by integrating into the command line interface. These methods are based on deep learning based predictions. The first approach is based on the sequence to sequence (Seq2seq) model with joint learning by leveraging continuous representations of a self-curated exhaustive knowledge base (KB) comprising an all-inclusive command description to enhance the embedding employed in the model. The other is based on the attention-based transformer architecture where a pretrained model is employed. This allows the model to dynamically evolve over time making it adaptable to different circumstances by learning as the system is being used. To reinforce our idea, we have experimented with our models on three major publicly available Unix command line datasets and have achieved benchmark results using GLoVe and Word2Vec embeddings. Our finding is that the transformer based framework performs better on two different datasets of the three in our experiment in a semantic deficit scenario like UNIX command line prediction. However, Seq2seq based model outperforms bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) based model on a larger dataset.

Supramolecular capsules are desirable containers for the study of molecular behavior in small spaces and offer applications in transport, catalysis, and material science. We report here the use of chalcogen bonding to form container assemblies that are stable in water. Cavitands

International audience; Cancer is one of the most aggressive diseases with poor prognosis and survival rates. Lipids biogenesis play key role in cancer progression, metastasis and tumor development. Suppression of SREBP-mediated lipid biogenesis pathway has been linked with cancer inhibition. Platinum complexes bearing good anticancer effect and multiple genes activation properties are considered important and increase the chances for development of new platinum-based drugs. In this study, we synthesized pyridine co-ligand functionalized cationic complexes and characterized them using multiple spectroscopic and spectrophotometric methods. Two of these complexes were studied in solid state by single crystal X-ray analysis. The stability of these complexes were measured in solution state using 1 H NMR methods. These complexes were further investigated for their anticancer activity against human breast, lung and liver cancer cells. MTT assay showed potential cytotoxic activity in dose-dependent manner and decrease survival rates of cancer cells was observed upon treatment with these complexes. Biological assays results revealed higher cytotoxicity as compared to cisplatin and oxaliplatin. Further we studied C2, C6 and C8 in detailed mechanistic anticancer analyses. Clonogenic assay showed decrease survival of MCF-7, HepG2 and A549 cancer cells treated with C2, C6 and C8 as compared to control cells treated with DMSO. TUNEL assay showed more cell death, these complexes suppressed invasion and migration ability of cancer cells and decreased tumor spheroids formation, thus suggesting a potential role in inhibition of cancer metastasis and cancer stem cells formation. Mechanistically, these complexes inhibited sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1 (SREBP-1) expression in cancer cells in dosedependent manner and thereby reduced lipid biogenesis to suppress cancer progression. Furthermore, expression level was decreased for the key genes LDLR, FASN and HMGCR, those required for sterol biosynthesis. Taken together, these complexes suppressed cancer cell growth, migration, invasion and spheroids formation by inhibiting SREBP-1 mediated lipid biogenesis pathway.

Bacteria of the Arcobacter-like spp. represent emerging foodborne zoonotic pathogens in humans and animals. Their increasing presence in seafood, suggesting higher occurrence in seawater due to marine pollution, is raising some environmental concern. Although Arcobacter is frequently detected in diseased oysters and stressed bivalve species, no data are available so far on its potential pathogenicity or interactions with the immune system of the bivalve host. In this work, responses to challenge with two strains of Malaciobacter marinus IRTA-19-131 and IRTA-19-132, R1 and R2), isolated from adult Crassostrea gigas during a mortality event in 2019 in Spain, were investigated in the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis. In vivo experiments were performed in larvae (48 h post-fertilization), and in adult mussels at 24 h post-injection, in order to evaluate the pathogenicity for early developmental stages, and the hemolymph immune responses, respectively. Both R1 and R2 were moderately pathogenic to early larvae, with significant decreases in the development of normal D-veligers from 104 and 103 CFU/mL, respectively. In adults, both strains decreased hemocyte lysosomal membrane stability (LMS), and stimulated extracellular defense responses (ROS production and lysozyme activity). The interactions between mussel hemocytes and M. marinus were investigated in in vitro short-term experiments (30–90 min) using the R1 strain (106–108 CFU/mL). R1 decreased LMS and induced lysosomal enlargement, but not cell detachment or death, and stimulated extracellular ROS production and lysozyme release, confirming in vivo data. Moreover, lysosomal internalization and degradation of bacteria were observed, together with changes in levels of activated mTor and LC3, indicating phagocytic activity. Overall, the results indicate the activation of both extracellular and intracellular immune defenses against M. marinus R1. Accordingly, these responses resulted in a significant hemolymph bactericidal activity, with a large contribution of hemolymph serum. The results represent the first data on the potential pathogenicity of Arcobacter isolated from a shellfish mortality to bivalve larvae and adults, and on their interactions with the immune system of the host. info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

Vitamin B6 is an essential vitamin that serves as a co-enzyme in a number of enzymatic reactions in metabolism of lipids, amino acids, and glucose. In the current study, we synthesized vitamin B6 derived ligand (L) and its complex Pt(L)Cl (C1). The ancillary chloride ligand of C1 was exchanged with pyridine co-ligand and another complex Pt(L)(py).BF4 (C2) was obtained. Both these complexes were obtained in excellent isolated yields and characterized thoroughly by different analytical methods. Thyroid cancer is one of the most common malignancies of the endocrine system, we studied the in vitro anticancer activity and mechanism of these vitamin B6 derived L and Pt(II) complexes in thyroid cancer cell line (FTC). Based on MTT assay, cell proliferation rate was reduced in a dose-dependent manner. According to apoptosis analysis, vitamin B6 based Pt(II) complexes treated cells depicted necrotic effect and TUNEL based apoptosis was observed in cancer cells. Furthermore, qRT-PCR analyses of cancer cells treated with C1 and/or C2 showed regulated expression of anti-apoptotic, pro-apoptosis and autophagy related genes. Western blot results demonstrated that C1 and C2 induced the activation of p53 and the cleavage of Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP). These results suggest that these complexes inhibit the growth of FTC cells and induce apoptosis through p53 signaling. Thus, vitamin B6 derived Pt(II) complexes C1 and C2 may be potential cytotoxic agents for the treatment of thyroid cancer.

International audience; Triple-negative-breast cancer (TNBC) and HER-2 enriched positive aggressive types of breast cancer and are highly metastatic in nature. Anticancer agents those target TNBC and HER-2 enriched positive breast cancers are considered important in the field of breast cancer research. In search of the effective anticancer agents, we synthesized Pt(II) complexes to target these cancers. Platinum complexes (C1-C8) were prepared in single step by the reaction of commercially available K2PtCl4 with the readily prepared ligands (L1-L8). All these compounds were characterized successfully by different spectroscopic and spectrophotometric analyses. Structures of C1, C3 and C8 were characterized by single crystal X-ray analysis that confirmed the exact chelation mode of the SNO-triply coordination ligand. All these complexes inhibited the in vitro growth of MCF-7 (luminal-like), MDA-MB-231(TNBC) and SKBR3 (HER-2 enriched) breast cancer cells. C1, C3 and C7 induced cell death and suppressed the clonogenic potential of these cancer cells. Importantly, C1, C3 and C7 showed potentials to suppress cancer stem cells/mammosphere formation and cell migration ability of MDA-MB-231 and SKBR3 breast cancer 1 These authors have equal contribution cells. These complexes also induced cellular senescence in MDA-MB-231 and SKBR3, thus suggesting a cell retardation mechanism. Similarly, these complexes induced DNA damage by activating p-H2AX expression and promoted autophagy via ATG3/LC3B axis activation in MDA-MB-231 and SKBR3 cells. Furthermore, these complexes decreased the expression of oncogenic proteins such as BCL2 and cylin-D1 those are involved in cancer cell survival and cell cycle progression. To further gain insight, we found that C1 and C7 targeted glycolytic pathways by regulating PKM and LDHA expression, which are involved in glycolysis. Moreover, C1 and C7 suppressed the formation of ATP production that is required for cancer cell growth. Taken together, the easy synthesis and biological assays results point towards the importance of these complexes in MDA-MB-231(TNBC) and SKBR3 (HER-2 enriched) breast cancer cells by targeting multiple signaling pathways those are considered important during breast cancer progression. This study produces bases for further deeper in vitro or in vivo study that could lead to the effective breast cancer agents which we are working on.

Topoisomerase IIIβ (Top3β), the only dual-activity topoisomerase in mammals that can change topology of both DNA and RNA, is known to be associated with neurodevelopment and mental dysfunction in humans. However, there is no report showing clear associations of Top3β with neuropsychiatric phenotypes in mice. Here, we investigated the effect of Top3β on neuro-behavior using newly generated Top3β deficient (Top3β−/−) mice. We found that Top3β−/− mice showed decreased anxiety and depression-like behaviors. The lack of Top3β was also associated with changes in circadian rhythm. In addition, a clear expression of Top3β was demonstrated in the central nervous system of mice. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) analysis revealed significantly altered connectivity between many brain regions in Top3β−/− mice, including the connectivity between the olfactory bulb and the cerebellum, the connectivity between the amygdala and the olfactory bulb, and the connectivity between the globus pallidus and the optic nerve. These connectivity alterations in brain regions are known to be linked to neurodevelopmental as well as psychiatric and behavioral disorders in humans. Therefore, we conclude that Top3β is essential for normal brain function and behavior in mice and that Top3β could be an interesting target to study neuropsychiatric disorders in humans.

The chalcogen-bonded homo-cavitand and hetero-cavitand AY+AY' capsules (Y, Y' = Se, Te), as well as their encapsulated complexes with one or two guest molecules have been studied theoretically

Aim: Gallstones are responsible for many hospitalizations and surgical interventions in our local population. Our main goal was to evaluate the relationship between age and gallstones as a risk factor in our local population. Methods: Cross-sectional study of all cholecystectomy patients with prior informed consent was conducted in the department of Surgery at Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zaid Hospital (PGMI), Quetta and Bacha Khan Medical Complex, Swabi for the duration of 06 months from 15th March 2021 to 15th August 2021. The stones are divided into 3 groups according to their colour: light yellow and whitish like a cholesterol stone, black and black-brown like a pigment stone, and laminated brownish or greenish yellow as mixed stones. The collected data was statistically processed using SPSS version 21. The types of stones were correlated with the age groups of the patients using the student’s test and / or the Chi-square test as appropriate. The confidence level was defined as 95% CI and p values below 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The study included 100 patients 14(14%) men and 86 (86% women) with a female to male ratio of 13.2: 1, chi-square = 1190.70, p < 0.0001 and their mean age was 46.2 years (SD ± 9.4) (Range, 30 to 75 years). The most common pigment stones were found in 44 (44%). The highest incidence of gallstones was found in the age groups 41-50 and 31-40, 44% and 26%, respectively (p

C11H9C12N5Zn, monoclinic, C2/c (no. 15), a = 10.256(3) Å, b = 17.110(5) Å, c = 7.967(3) Å, β = 104.361(4)°, V = 1354.36 Å3, Z = 4, R gt (F) = 0.0270, wR ref(F 2) = 0.0659, T = 293 K.

E2F3, a member of the E2F family, plays a critical role in cell cycle and proliferation by targeting downstream, retinoblastoma (RB) a tumor suppressor family protein. The purpose of this study, was to investigate the role and function of E2F3 in vivo. We examined phenotypic abnormalities, by deletion of the E2f3 gene in mice. Complete ablation of the E2F3 was fully penetrant, in the pure C57BL/6N background. The E2f3+/- mouse embryo developed normally without fatal disorder. However, they exhibited reduced body weight, growth retardation, skeletal imperfection, and poor grip strength ability. Findings suggest that E2F3 has a pivotal role in muscle and bone development, and affect normal mouse growth.

We describe here the effects of metal complexation on the molecular recognition behavior of cavitands with quinoxaline walls. The nitrogen atoms of the quinoxalines are near the upper rim of the vase-like shape and treatment with Pd(II) gave 2:1 metal:cavitand derivatives. Characterization by (1)H, (13)C NMR spectroscopy, HR ESI-MS, and computations showed that the metals bridged adjacent quinoxaline panels and gave cavitands with C(2v) symmetry. Both water-soluble and organic-soluble versions were prepared and their host/guest complexes with alkanes, alcohols, acids, and diols (up to C12) were studied by (1)H NMR spectroscopy. Analysis of the binding behavior indicated that the metals rigidified the walls of the receptive vase conformation and enhanced the binding of hydrophobic and even water-soluble guests, compared to related cavitands reported previously. The results demonstrated that the conformational dynamics of the cavitand were slowed by the coordination of Pd(II) and stabilized the host’s complexes.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common cancer worldwide, which is related with poor prognosis and resistance to chemotherapy. Notably, ruthenium-based complexes have emerged as good alternative to the currently used platinum-based drugs for cancer therapy. In the present study, we synthesized a novel bis-pyrimidine based ligand 1,3-bis(2-methyl-6-(pyridin-2-yl)pyrimidin-4-yl)benzene (L) and used it in the synthesis of a dimetallic Ru(II) cymene complex [(Ru(η6-p-cymene)Cl)2(1,3-bis(2-methyl-6-(pyridin-2-yl)pyrimidin-4-yl)benzene)] (L-Ru). We checked the stability of this complex in solution state in D2O/DMSO‑d6 mixture and found it to be highly stable under these conditions. We determined the anticancer activity and mechanism of action of L-Ru in human NSCLC A549 and A427 by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and related biological analyses. These results revealed that L-Ru exerted a strong inhibitory effect on the cells proliferation,G0/G1-arrest, accompanied with upregulation of p53, p21, p15, cleaved Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) protein and downregulation of cell cycle markers. L-Ru inhibited cell migration and invasion. The mitochondria-mediated apoptosis of NSCLC induced by L-Ru was also observed followed by the increase of apoptosis regulator B-cell lymphoma 2 associated X (BAX), and activation of caspase-3/-9. The effects of L-Ru on the cell viability, Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) positive cells and Annexin V-positive cells apoptosis induction were remarkably attenuated. This complex induced DNA damage, cell cycle arrest and cell death via caspase-dependent apoptosis involving PARP activation and induction of p53-dependent pathway. These findings suggested that this ruthenium complex might be a potential effective chemotherapeutic agent in NSCLC therapy.

Reverse osmosis is becoming popular for the purification of water resources e.g. sea and brackish water. However, one of the major limitations in efficient operation are the fouling of membranes and relevant technique used to inhibit scaling due to the presence of sparingly soluble salts. The occurrence of this type of fouling results in a significant increase in both operation and maintenance. This review begins by providing a general overview of membrane fouling by minerals usually found in sea and inland water resources. The paper then discusses some important aspects of the phenomena itself: different mechanisms; concentration polarization; the major types of mineral scales including their prevalence and characteristics; and consequences of fouling on membrane performance. This is followed by a discussion of the major strategies currently considered for the control and prevention of scale formation. The penultimate section discusses the drawbacks and deficiencies of current systems in operation and highlights potential future directions that need to be pursued in order to achieve overall process improvements in terms of sustainability. In particular, the need for evaluation under more realistic conditions, studying the interactions between membrane and spacer surface and foulants, and the development of environmentally benign antiscalants are stressed.

Aims: Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) increases intracellular Ca2+ concentrations, resulting in insulin secretion from pancreatic β-cells through the sequential production of Ca2+ mobilizi...

A new water-soluble cavitand was synthesized which showed isomeric conformations in different solvents. The cavitand displayed multiple conformations – vase, kite, velcrand and intermediate shapes – in CD3OD. The binding properties with hydrophobic (cycloalkanes) and amphiphilic (cycloalkyl carboxylic acids) guests in D2O indicated a deep aromatic pocket.

Water-soluble host molecules offer a range of environments to their guests. Polar functions of guests are exposed to the medium while hydrophobic groups are generally buried in the containers and hidden from reagents in solution. Here, we apply these preferences to convert α,ω-dienes to epoxy alkenes using cavitands as reaction vessels. Reaction of one end of a diene with NBS in water gives a bromohydrin that binds in the cavitand with the hydroxyl exposed and the remaining alkene buried. Treatment with base converts the bromohydrin to an epoxide. The reaction sequence provided up to 84% yields of monoepoxides from symmetrical dienes separated by 4 to 10 methylene groups. With 1,4-diisopropenyl benzene, a nearly quantitative yield of the monoepoxide was obtained. The application should be general for converting symmetrical hydrophobic guests to unsymmetrical, amphiphilic ones.

Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) plays important roles in the regulation of development and the response to biotic and abiotic stresses in plants. Serotonin-N-acetyltransferase (SNAT) functions as a key catalytic enzyme involved in melatonin biosynthesis. In this study, the candidate gene VvSNAT1 (SNAT isogene) was isolated from grape (Vitis vinifera L. cv. Merlot). Tissue-specific expression and external treatment revealed that VvSNAT1 is a salt-inducible gene that is highly expressed in leaves. Subcellular localisation results revealed that VvSNAT1 was located in the chloroplasts, which is similar to other plant SNAT proteins. Ectopic overexpression of VvSNAT1 in Arabidopsis resulted in increased melatonin production and salt tolerance. Transgenic Arabidopsis overexpressing VvSNAT1 exhibited enhanced growth and physiological performance, including a lower degree of leaf wilting, higher germination rate, higher fresh weight, and longer root length under salt stress. Moreover, overexpression of VvSNAT1 in Arabidopsis protected cells from oxidative damage by reducing the accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). These results indicate that VvSNAT1 positively responds to salt stress. Our results provide a novel perspective for VvSNAT1 to improve salt tolerance, mediated by melatonin accumulation, plant growth promotion and oxidative damage reduction.

Evaluation of volatile aroma compounds from Chinese wild grape species aimed to explore new grape species via fruit aroma. In this study, the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from ten grape cultivars belonging to nine different grape species were detected, by using headspace solid-phase microextraction with GC-MS. Chinese wild grape species were studied along with table grape (Muscat Hamburg, Concord) and wine grape (Cabernet Sauvignon) cultivars belonging to different origins. Total forty-five volatile compounds were detected, upon which several VOCs including pentanoic acid, cyclobutyl ester, maltol, (+)-neoisomenthol, and 8-methyloctahydrocoumarin were detected in Chinese wild grapes that have not been detected in other Vitis species. The results revealed that C6 volatile compounds were pre-dominant VOCs. Esters were found abundant in V. labrusca (Concord) and terpenoids were dominant in V. vinafera (Hamburg Muscat). The principal component analysis showed that Chinese wild grape cultivars V. yeshanensis, V. facifolia, V. davidii, V. betulifolia V. heyneana, V. amurensis and V. adenoclada are correlated with wine grape cultivar ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’, while table grape cultivars are distributed separately. These results can provide a reference for the utilization of new germplasm for specific purposes.

The huge influx of published papers in the field of machine learning makes the task of summarization of scholarly documents vital, not just to eliminate the redundancy but also to provide a complete and satisfying crux of the content. We participated in LongSumm 2021: The 2nd Shared Task on Generating Long Summaries for scientific documents, where the task is to generate long summaries for scientific papers provided by the organizers. This paper discusses our extractive summarization approach to solve the task. We used TextRank algorithm with the BM25 score as a similarity function. Even after being a graph-based ranking algorithm that does not require any learning, TextRank produced pretty decent results with minimal compute power and time. We attained 3rd rank according to ROUGE-1 scores (0.5131 for F-measure and 0.5271 for recall) and performed decently as shown by the ROUGE-2 scores.

Machine translation performs automatic translation from one natural language to another. Neural machine translation attains a state-of-the-art approach in machine translation, but it requires adequate training data, which is a severe problem for low-resource language pairs translation. The concept of multimodal is introduced in neural machine translation (NMT) by merging textual features with visual features to improve low-resource pair translation. WAT2021 (Workshop on Asian Translation 2021) organizes a shared task of multimodal translation for English to Hindi. We have participated the same with team name CNLP-NITS-PP in two submissions: multimodal and text-only NMT. This work investigates phrase pairs injection via data augmentation approach and attains improvement over our previous work at WAT2020 on the same task in both text-only and multimodal NMT. We have achieved second rank on the challenge test set for English to Hindi multimodal translation where Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) score of 39.28, Rank-based Intuitive Bilingual Evaluation Score (RIBES) 0.792097, and Adequacy-Fluency Metrics (AMFM) score 0.830230 respectively.

In today’s world where all the information is available at our fingertips, it is becoming more and more difficult to retrieve vital information from large documents without reading the whole text. Large textual documents require a great deal of time and energy to understand and extract the key components from the text. In such a case, summarized versions of these documents provide a great deal of flexibility in understanding the context and important points of the text. In our work, we have attempted to prepare a baseline machine learning model to summarize textual documents, and have worked with various methodologies. The summarization system takes the raw text as an input and produces the predicted summary as an output. We have also used various evaluation metrics for the analysis of the predicted summary. Both extractive and abstractive based text summarization have been described and experimented with. We have also verified this baseline system on three different evaluation metrics i.e. BLEU, ROUGE, and a textual entailment method. We have also done an in-depth discussion of the three evaluation techniques used, and have systematically proved the advantages of using a semantic-based evaluation technique to calculate the overall summarization score of a text document.

The exponential growth in fake news and its role in deteriorating general public trust and democratic standards certainly calls for some counter combat approaches. The prediction of chances of news to be fake is deemed to be hard task since most of the deceptive news has its roots in true news. With a minor fabrication in legitimate news, influential fake news can be created that can be used for political, entertainment, or business-related gains. This work provides a novel intuitive approach to exploit data from multiple sources to segregate news into real and fake. To efficiently capture the contextual information present in the data, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer (BERT) have been deployed. It attempts to further enhance the performance of the deceptive news detection model by incorporating information about the speaker profile and the credibility associated with him/her. A hybrid sequence encoding model has been proposed to harvest the speaker profile and speaker credibility data which makes it useful for prediction. On evaluation over benchmark fake news dataset LIAR, our model outperformed the previous state-of-the-art works. This attests to the fact that the speaker’s profile and credibility play a crucial role in predicting the validity of news.

Arcobacter-like species are found associated with many matrices, including shellfish in marine environments. The culture media and conditions play a major role in the recovery of new Arcobacter-like species. This study was aimed to develop a culture media for isolation and enhanced growth of Arcobacter-like spp. from marine and shellfish matrices. For this purpose, 14 different Arcobacter-like spp. mostly isolated from shellfish, were grown in 24 different formulations of enrichment broths. The enrichment broths consisted of five main groups based on the organic contents (fresh oyster homogenate, lyophilized oyster either alone or in combination with other standard media), combined with artificial seawater (ASW) or 2.5% NaCl. Optical density (OD420nm) measurements after every 24 h were compared with the growth in control media (Arcobacter broth) in parallel. The mean and standard deviation were calculated for each species in each broth and statistical differences (p Arcobacter-like species growth was significantly higher in Arcobacter broth + 50% ASW and the same media supplemented with lyophilized oysters. This is the first study to have used fresh or lyophilized oyster flesh in the enrichment broth for isolation of shellfish-associated Arcobacter-like spp.

A pot study was performed under greenhouse condition to check the possibility that using Trichoderma harzianum could improve the growth, production and quality of watermelon genotype. Plant growth medium inoculated with T. harzianum at 1 × 104 cfu, 1.25 × 104 cfu and 1.50 × 104 cfu respectively, while un-inoculated with fungi used as control treatment. Plant growth medium inoculated with higher concentration (1.50 × 104 cfu) of T. harzianum significantly increased plant root and shoot length and brings early flowering. The higher values of plant fresh and dry weight, leaf area, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, net photosynthesis rate and number of fruit per plant of watermelon was obtained with 1.50 × 104 cfu. However, T. harzianum levels of 1.50 × 104 cfu and 1.25 x 104 cfu produced statistically similar results for carbohydrate content, total soluble solids, vitamin A content and ?-carotene of watermelon. It was observed that plant grown in growth medium inoculated with T. harzianum has direct relation with growth and quality of watermelon. Compared to all tested levels, the higher level of T. harzianum 1.5 × 104 cfu is the most effective in improving growth, yield and quality of watermelon genotype (cv. Sugar baby). Um estudo em vasos foi realizado em casa de vegetação para verificar a possibilidade do uso de Trichoderma harzianum para melhorar o crescimento, a produção e a qualidade da melancia ‘Sugar baby’ (Citrullus lanatus). Para tanto, foram utilizados meios de crescimento vegetal inoculado com T. harzianum a 1 × 104 ufc, 1,25 × 104 ufc e 1,50 × 104 ufc, respectivamente, enquanto o meio não inoculado com fungos foi utilizado como tratamento controle. O meio de crescimento das plantas inoculado com maior concentração (1,50 × 104 ufc) de T. harzianum aumentou significativamente o comprimento da raiz e da parte aérea das plantas e promoveu o florescimento precoce. Os maiores valores de peso fresco e seco da planta, área foliar, condutância estomática, taxa de transpiração, taxa líquida de fotossíntese e número de frutos por planta de melancia foram obtidos com 1,50 × 104 ufc. No entanto, os níveis de T. harzianum de 1,50 × 104 ufc e 1,25 × 104 cfu produziram resultados estatisticamente semelhantes para o teor de carboidratos, sólidos solúveis totais, teor de vitamina A e ?-caroteno de melancia. Observou-se que as plantas cultivadas em meio de crescimento inoculado com T. harzianum têm relação direta com o crescimento e a qualidade da melancia. Comparado a todos os níveis testados, o nível mais alto de T. harzianum 1,5 × 104 ufc é o mais eficaz para melhorar o crescimento, o rendimento e a qualidade do genótipo da melancia ‘Sugar baby’.

We present a theoretical study of chalcogen bonded container capsules (AX +AX ) where X=O, S, Se, and Te, and their encapsulation complexes with n-C9 H20 (n-C9 H20 @AX +AX ). Both Se and Te encapsulation complexes have significant experimental and computed binding energies, analogous to the hydrogen bonded counterparts, while the S and O capsules and their encapsulation complexes show only weak binding energies, which are attributed to different types of bonding: chalcogen S⋅⋅⋅N bonds for S-capsules and π-π stacking and weak hydrogen bonds for the O case. All AX +AX and C9 H20 @AX +AX present unusually high magnetic anisotropies in their interiors. The 1 H NMR spectra of the encapsulation complexes display the proton signals of the encapsulated n-nonane highly upfield shifted, in agreement with the available experimental data for the Se capsule. We found that different factors contribute to the observed magnetic anisotropy of the capsule's interior: for the Te capsule the most important factor is Te's large polarizability; for the O analogue the inductive effects produced by the electronegative nature of the O and N heteroatoms; and for the S and Se capsules, the polarizability of the heteroatoms combines with electric field effects.

Text classification has become a key operation in various natural language processing tasks. The efficiency of most classification algorithms predominantly confide in the quality of input features. In this work, we propose a novel multi-class text classification technique that harvests features from two distinct feature extraction methods. Firstly, a structured heterogeneous text graph built based on document-word relations and word co-occurrences is leveraged using a Graph Convolution Network (GCN). Secondly, the documents are topic modeled to use the document-topic score as features into the classification model. The concerned graph is constructed using Point-Wise Mutual Information (PMI) between pair of word co-occurrences and Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) score for words in the documents for word co-occurrences. Experimentation reveals that our text classification model outperforms the existing techniques for five benchmark text classification data sets.