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In this research, chemical precipitation technique used to create a novel Pr/HA and Pr/PLA codoped nanohydroxyapatite composite and characterized using like TEM, SAED, SEM, AFM, XRD and FTIR techniques. Sample binding strengths for Pr/HA and Pr/PLA were extremely similar to 17.65 MPa and 24.65 MPa, respectively. Hv values of 322 and 332 were obtained from the Vickers micro-hardness test on samples of as-developed Pr/HA and Pr/HA/PLA, respectively. Antibacterial activity against K.pneumoniae and S. epidermidis aureus was tested using the synthesized Nano biomaterials. These results show that HA/Pr/PLA with improved antibacterial activity and mechanical qualities may be useful in medical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non healing ulcers constitute a potentially serious medical and as well as surgical illness. Wounds that contain necrotizing and less perfused (low oxygen content) tissue take longer to close and heal without proper clearing of dead or non viable tissue. The Siddha formulation “Oon Poochu Thailam” (OPT) is indicated for curing sloughing ulcers, sinuses and fistulae, supposedly by acting as a chemical debriding agent (like topical debriding agent). In this present study it was aimed for screening the antimicrobial activities of the ingredients of Oon Poochu Thailam and to analyze the elemental constituents of the ingredients [salt of Achyranthes aspera (AA), and salt of Sesamum indicum (SI) plant] by using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The antimicrobial activity of the ingredients of OPT were studied in the concentration of 100mg/ml against Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Proteus mirabilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Shigella sonnei, Aeromonas hydrophila, Salmonella typhimurium, Vibrio cholera, Bacillus cereus and Candida albicans. Antibacterial and antifungal potential of the OPT ingredients were assessed both individually and together in terms of zone of inhibition of bacterial and fungal growths. The test items 1(AA), 2(SI) and 4(Mixture of AA, SI & SA) have shown a broad spectrum of anti-microbial activity against bacteria and fungi.

Aims: This study is aimed at determining the prognostic factors influencing successful pregnancy following intrauterine insemination (IUI). Settings and design: Retrospective analysis. Materials and Methods: A total of 2123 cycles undergone by 871 couples during the period of 5 years (2011–2015) were retrospectively studied. Statistical Analysis Used: Each of the factors was compared with pregnancy outcome (PO) using statistical analysis with a confidence interval of 95% in SPSS software version 19. Chi-square test and logistic regression analysis method were used to determine the significance of each factor with the PO. Results: Among the various factors included in our study population, male habits (P = 0.004), male occupational environment (P = 0.025), male age (P = 0.002), and female age (P = 0.001) were found to significantly influence the PO following IUI. Conclusion: Our results indicate that avoiding smoking and alcohol consuming prior and during the IUI treatment along with working in low-heat-generating environment might lead to better success following the treatment.

Conventionally, many biomarkers are being in use as a measure to genotoxicity in occupational exposure to chemicals, pesticides, radiation, and drug screening. Of which, the micronucleus assay is a preferred choice for many of those applications owing to its simplicity and rapidity. The assay methodology has evolved in cell preparations, staining, and scoring methods: from quantifying the DNA damage in mononucleated cells and binucleated cells; solid (Giemsa) and fluorescence staining (propidium iodide/DAPI); and manual and automated microscopy scoring and flow cytometry. Despite the advantages, preparation of cells with good morphology to interpret DNA damage from a different type of cells remains a challenge in particular for laboratory being the processes of developing the assay. Therefore, the aim of the present report was to explain the micronuclei (MN) assay and means to overcome the troubleshoot for reliable outcome measure using cytokinesis-arrested micronucleus (CBMN) assay from suspension and adherent cultures.

Field study was conducted to assess the harvest time residues of clothianidin 50 WDG in sugarcane at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 2016 and 2017. Clothianidin was treated as soil drenching at 200 and 400 g a.i. ha-1 at the time of planting. Sampling was done at the time of harvest. The whole plant sampling was done and canes were chopped in to small pieces, homogenized separately in a mixer grinder and used for analysis. The validation of analytical method in UHPLC was performed for specificity, linearity, Limit of Detection (LOD), Limit of quantitation (LOQ), recovery, repeatability and ruggedness along with measurement uncertainty. Method was developed and validated with the good specificity to clothianidin. Linearity was obtained with R2 value of 0.991 and with acceptable recovery range between 80 to 120 Per cent. The LOQ and LOD values for clothianidin were 0.01 and 0.003 μg g-1 for sugarcane. Satisfactory repeatability ruggerdness was ensured. In the field experiment the harvest time residues of clothianidin 50 WDG applied at 200 and 400 g a.i. ha-1 at the time of planting as soil drenching were at below detectable level (BDL). Hence, the recommended dose of clothianidin 50 WDG (200 g a.i. ha-1) at the time of planting as soil drenching will not leave any residues in the harvested cane.

Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and wireless medical sensor networks have significantly improved remote healthcare monitoring. In a healthcare monitoring system, many resource-limited sensors are deployed to sense, process and communicate the information. However, continuous and accurate operations of these devices are very important, especially in the infant incubator monitoring system. Because important decisions are made on the received information. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure the authenticity between the incubator monitoring system and doctors. In this work, a public key encryption based computationally efficient mutual authentication protocol is proposed for secure data transmission between incubator monitoring systems and doctors or administrators. The proposed protocol improves performance and reduces the computational cost without compromising the security. The security analysis part shows the strength of the proposed protocol against various attacks, performance analysis part shows that the proposed protocol performs better than other existing protocol based on Rivest–Shamir–Adleman and elliptic-curve cryptography schemes.

Two field experiments were conducted to study the efficacy of clothionidin 50WDG against termites Odontotermes obesus Rambur (Isoptera: Termitidae) of sugarcane at the Department of Agricultural Entomology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore during 2015 -2017. The experiments were conducted in a randomized block design with seven treatments replicated thrice with a plot size of 8 x 5 m. Applications of insecticides were made at the time of planting. Germination of sugarcane setts recorded at 30 days after planting (DAP) and termite infestation was observed at 60, 120 DAP and at harvest and the per cent infestation was calculated. Results revealed that, the per cent germination data indicated that the clothianidin 50 WDG @ 150 g a.i. ha-1 treatment recorded higher germination and it was on par with clothianidin 50 WDG @ 125 g a.i. ha-1. The above two treatments showed significantly higher germination per cent than all other treatments including standard checks and untreated control recorded the least germination per cent. The termite damage was minimum in the plots treated with the test chemical clothianidin 50 WDG @ 150 g a.i. ha-1 at all the days of observation and it was on par with the clothianidin 50 WDG @ 125 g a.i. ha-1. The above two treatments resulted significantly superior in controlling termite damage over other treatments. Clothianidin 50 WDG @ 125 g a.i. ha-1 and 250 g a.i. ha-1 does not have any phytotoxicity effect on sugarcane. The study on the impact of clothianidin 50 WDG on natural enemies in the sugarcane agroecosystem revealed that, insecticidal treatments in the planting did not adversely affect the population of natural enemies in the crop. Clothianidin 50 WDG at 150 g a.i. ha-1 registered significantly more cane yield followed by clothianidin 50 WDG at 125 g a.i. ha-1. Effect of clothianidin 50 WDG on yield parameters were recorded at the time of harvest and results indicated that commercial cane sugar (CCS) yield followed similar trend like cane yield whereas, Brix unit and POL per cent (Sucrose per cent) did not show any significant difference among the treatments. Hence it is concluded that, clothianidin 50 WDG @ 150 g a.i. ha-1 remained on par with clothianidin 50 WDG @ 125 g a.i. ha-1 have effectively controlled the termite infestation in sugarcane ecosystem.

This article explores the motivational needs of doctors to retain in the rural areas by reducing their turnover intention. The study investigates the effect of Existential, Relatedness, and Growth (ERG) dimensions on turnover intention of Community Health Centre (CHC) doctors when they are placed in rural and remote areas of Tamil Nadu. This article discovered and examined the link between ERG needs and turnover intention. The study is based on a cross-sectional analytic study design, wherein primary data were gathered using a structured questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale from 318 doctors and processed through descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling using Smart PLS 3. The element of 'growth needs' within the ERG framework has been identified as the most significant predictor of rural CHC doctors' intention to leave their positions. Therefore, policymakers should focus on developing strategies related to this aspect to retain doctors in rural areas. Additionally, researchers and public health practitioners can employ validated ERG instruments to analyse doctors' motivation for choosing rural postings in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let L be a bounded linear operator on a complex Hilbert space H. If... then L is called M-class-c-wA∗k (a,b) for some positive integers c,k,M and a,b ∈ (0,1]. This study aims to derive the structural relationship of the operators using some of the well-known inequalities. Then the study focuses on M-class-c-wA∗k(a,b) operator's spectral and algebraic properties in L²(λ) space. Furthermore, the Kronecker product results are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New agronomic opportunities for more informed agricultural decisions and enhanced crop management have been made possible by drone-based near-ground remote sensing. Obtaining precise non-destructive information regarding crop biophysical characteristics at spatial and temporal scales is now possible. Drone-mounted multispectral and thermal sensors were used to assess crop phenology, condition, and stress by profiling spectral vegetation indices in crop fields. In this study, vegetation indices, viz., Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index (ARVI), Modified Chlorophyll Absorption Ratio Index (MCARI), Wide Dynamic Range Vegetation Index (WDRVI), Normalized Red–Green Difference Index (NGRDI), Excess Green Index (ExG), Red–Green Blue Vegetation Index (RGBVI), and Visible Atmospherically Resistant Index (VARI) were generated. Furthermore, Pearson correlation analysis showed a better correlation between WDRVI and VARI with LAI (R = 0.955 and R = 0.982) ground truth data. In contrast, a strong correlation (R = 0.931 and R = 0.844) was recorded with MCARI and NGRDI with SPAD chlorophyll ground truth data. Then, the best-performing indices, WDRVI and MCARI in cotton, and VARI and NGRDI in rice, were further used to generate the yield model. This study for determining LAI and chlorophyll shows that high spatial resolution drone imageries are accurate and fast. As a result, finding out the LAI and chlorophyll and how they affect crop yield at a regional scale is helpful. The widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and yield prediction were technical components of large-scale precision agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Multiple myeloma is an incurable plasma cell malignancy that is mostly restricted to the bone marrow. Cancer-induced dysfunction of cytotoxic T cells at the tumor site may be responsible for immune evasion and therapeutical failure of immunotherapies. Therefore, enhanced knowledge about the actual status of T cells in myeloma bone marrow is urgently needed. Here, we assessed the expression of inhibitory molecules PD-1, CTLA-4, 2B4, CD160, senescence marker CD57, and CD28 on T cells of naive and treated myeloma patients in the bone marrow and peripheral blood and collected data on T cell subset distribution in both compartments. In addition, T cell function concerning proliferation and expression of T-bet, IL-2, IFNγ, and CD107a was investigated after in vitro stimulation by CD3/CD28. Finally, data was compared to healthy, age-matched donor T cells from both compartments. Methods Multicolor flow cytometry was utilized for the analyses of surface molecules, intracellular staining of cytokines was also performed by flow cytometry, and proliferation was assessed by 3H-thymidine incorporation. Statistical analyses were performed utilizing unpaired T test and Mann-Whitney U test. Results We observed enhanced T cell exhaustion and senescence especially at the tumor site. CD8+ T cells expressed several molecules associated with T cell exhaustion (PD-1, CTLA-4, 2B4, CD160) and T cell senescence (CD57, lack of CD28). This phenotype was associated with lower proliferative capacity and impaired function. Despite a high expression of the transcription factor T-bet, CD8+ T cells from the tumor site failed to produce IFNγ after CD3/CD28 in vitro restimulation and displayed a reduced ability to degranulate in response to T cell stimuli. Notably, the percentage of senescent CD57+CD28− CD8+ T cells was significantly lower in treated myeloma patients when compared to untreated patients. Conclusions T cells from the bone marrow of myeloma patients were more severely impaired than peripheral T cells. While our data suggest that terminally differentiated cells are preferentially deleted by therapy, immune-checkpoint molecules were still present on T cells supporting the potential of checkpoint inhibitors to reactivate T cells in myeloma patients in combination therapies. However, additional avenues to restore anti-myeloma T cell responses are urgently needed.

Macrolide antibiotic binding to the ribosome inhibits catalysis of peptide bond formation between specific donor and acceptor substrates. Why particular reactions are problematic for the macrolide-bound ribosome remains unclear. Using comprehensive mutational analysis and biochemical experiments with synthetic substrate analogs, we find that the positive charge of these specific residues and the length of their side chains underlie inefficient peptide bond formation in the macrolide-bound ribosome. Even in the absence of antibiotic, peptide bond formation between these particular donors and acceptors is rather inefficient, suggesting that macrolides magnify a problem present for intrinsically difficult substrates. Our findings emphasize the existence of functional interactions between the nascent protein and the catalytic site of the ribosomal peptidyl transferase center.

Identifying, diagnosing and treatment of cancer involves a thorough investigation that involves data collection called big data from multi and different sources that are helpful for making effective and quick decision making. Similarly data analytics is used to find remedial actions for newly arriving diseases spread across multiple warehouses. Analytics can be performed on collected or available data from various data clusters that contains pieces of data. We provide an effective framework that provides a way for effective decision making using Amazon EMR. Through various experiments done on different biological datasets, we reveal the advantages of the proposed model and present numerical results. These results indicate that the proposed framework can efficiently perform analytics over any biological datasets and obtain results in optimal time thereby maintaining the quality of the result.

Development of resistant in vectors especially vector mosquitoes are becoming a challenge for the scientific community for management and control mosquito population. Vector mosquitoes are likely to withstand toxicity and develop resistant mechanism to single active compound hence, combining medicinal plants with rich active compounds stops resistant development and proliferation of mosquitoes. In this study we put effort to evaluate the effect of methanol extract of Tagetes patula, Clerodentron phillomedis, and Catharanthus roseus in individual and in combination against the dengue vector, Stegomyia agyptii. Lethal concentrations (LC50 and LC90) were calculated to find out the effect of the test plants in individual and in combination. T. patula extract showed vaguely higher mortality rate when compared to C. phillomedis, and C. roseus but there was no significant variation among the three test plants. The median LC of combined treatment showed a significant difference between the combined (2.25 µg/mL/3rd instar) and individual treatment (6.41 µg/mL/3rd instar for T. patula, 6.85 µg/mL/3rd instar for C. phillomedis and 6.59 µg/mL/3rd instar for C. roseus). The combined efficacy of three test plants was also effective in controlling vector mosquitoes at fields with different agro-climatic conditions. The study proves that the combination of T. patula, C. phillomedis, and C. roseus is effective in different field conditions at lower concentrations.

Hearing aid users are exposed to diversified vocal scenarios. The necessity for sound classification algorithms becomes a vital factor to yield good listening experience. In this work, an approach is proposed to improve the speech quality in the hearing aids based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) algorithm with modified speech signal classification methods. The proposed algorithm has better results on speech intelligibility than other existing algorithm and this result has been proved by the intelligibility experiments. The ICA algorithm and modified Bayesian with Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Interference System (ANFIS) is to effectiveness of the strategies of speech quality, thus this classification increases noise resistance of the new speech processing algorithm that proposed in this present work. This proposed work indicates that the new Modified classifier can be feasible in hearing aid applications.

Introduction: One of the primary goals of any biomedical researcher should be practical applicability or the translation of scientific discoveries to clinical care. Research that lacks potential for translation contributes to ineffective use of resources, time and manpower. Hence, it is important for researchers to be aware that the clinical significance should not be forgotten in the quest for a significant p-value. Aim: To assess the knowledge of researchers in ascertaining the practical applicability of his/her own research, to ascertain their motives in planning research and to evaluate the attitude of researchers towards the ethics of doing research that is less likely to translate into clinical benefit. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary care medical college hospital in South India. Teaching faculty from clinical, pre and para-clinical departments were administered a questionnaire which included 14 questions. The questionnaire consisted of five knowledge and nine attitude questions. The responses were analysed qualitatively and expressed as frequency distributions. Results: A total of 60 researchers were included and given the questionnaire. The respondent rate was 32 (53.3%). Only 3 (9.4%) were completely aware of “translational research” while about 11 (34.4%) knew that research done by pre and para-clinical sciences could be both basic and translational. Also, 17 (53.1%) of participants were willing to do research that did not result in either immediate or direct clinical benefit. A small minority of 4 (12.5%) admitted that the focus of their research was to achieve statistical significance. About 10 (31.3%) of researchers surveyed and felt that research offered an opportunity for free treatment to patients and 5 (15.6%) felt that therapeutic misconception was acceptable. Conclusion: This study identified the gap between knowledge and understanding of the practical applicability of research and its ethical perspectives amongst researchers and hence, indicates the need for increasing awareness on the importance of assessing the translatability of one’s research.

A compact and simple design of a CPW-fed planar antenna for wireless sensor network antenna application with a better size reduction is presented. The proposed antenna consists of an inverted ? shaped metal patch on a printed circuit board fed by a 50-O coplanar waveguide (CPW). The parametric analysis of length and width are made. The designed antenna’s physical dimensions are 32 mm (length) x 26 mm (width) x 1.6 mm (height). The antenna structure has been modeled and fabricated and its performance has been evaluated using a method of moment based electromagnetic simulator, IE3D .The return loss of -22.5 dB and VSWR of 1.34 dB are noted. The radiation pattern of the antenna proves that it radiates in all direction. The antenna is fabricated and tested and the measured results go in good agreement with simulated one.

Background: Air Pollution, one of the major avoidable causes of diseases and death globally, has been an increasing issue worldwide. Though anyone can be exposed, people who live near road intersections or who direct traffic are particularly at risk. Proper awareness about the health hazards and the protective measures plays a crucial role in protecting oneself to great extent. Objectives: To assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice about health hazards of outdoor air pollution and the prevention of the same among roadside shopkeepers in selected areas in Bangalore. Methodology: Community based Cross sectional study was conducted among 150 roadside shopkeepers near Victoria hospital area in Bangalore using an interview based semi - structured questionnaire. Results: Of the 150 respondents, 65.3% were aware that chronic exposure to air pollution can cause some health hazards and 50% believed it can cause respiratory ailments. However, almost none were aware about other health hazards. Very poor practice regarding personal protection was observed. Attitude towards preventive measures was poor. Conclusion: A major lacunae has been found in both knowledge and attitude towards the health hazards caused by the ambient air pollution necessitating the need for awareness generation and drastic change in practice.