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AIMS Identifying significant miRNAs that are either under or overexpressed in hypoxia compared to normoxia in glioma cells. Further exploring the effect and role of hypoxia on miR-92a-3p and miR-149-5p in gliomas in apoptotic and cellular senescence pathways. METHOD A range of glioma cells were used for screening, including primary cell lines: GIN28 and GIN31; low-grade cell lines: LGG19 and LGG24; a paediatric cell line: SF188 and a commercially available glioblastoma cell line U87. These cells were cultured at both 1% (hypoxia) and 20% (normoxia) oxygen levels. Screening of miRNAs was achieved by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) using miRNA specific primers. Knockdowns/in were achieved by transfecting with miR-92a-3p and miR-149-5p mimics and inhibitors. Caspase-glo assay was used to assess the effect of hypoxia on apoptosis. RESULTS A range of miRNAs were differentially expressed in hypoxia in a range of glioma cell lines. miRNA 92a-3p and miR-149-5p were found to be downregulated and upregulated respectively in primary gliomablastoma cells in hypoxia compared to normoxia. These particular miRNAs are also found to have multiple targets in apoptosis and cellular senescence. CONCLUSION The screening of 90 miRNAs among the different categories of gliomas highlighted multiple miRNAs that were significant in hypoxia compared to normoxia. Using primary cell lines have identified hypoxia-affected miRNAs in glioblastomas. This discovery will increase our knowledge and understanding of the hypoxia effect on miRNAs which may aid and direct targeted therapy to conquer hypoxia in glioblastomas.

Background and objective Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). This study aimed to analyse the trends in rates of resection for IBD-related CRC in the USA. Methods We used the Nationwide Inpatient Sample from 1995 to 2012. Temporal trends in age-adjusted rates of resection for CRC in the setting of IBD were analysed using multivariate Joinpoint regression models. The primary outcome was surgical resection of CRC in the setting of IBD. Results We included 3 597 168 IBD discharges in the present study, of which 275 479 underwent CRC resection between 1995 and 2012. The annual CRC resection rates among IBD population decreased significantly from 1995 to 2012. This decrease was significant in all age groups with an annual decrease of 393 (P 75 years, respectively. The annual IBD-CRC resection rate per 100 000 IBD discharges for proximal CRC decreased by 149 (P 75 years, between 1995 and 2012. On multivariate Poisson regression analysis, after adjustment for age and sex, CRC resections decreased by 3.9% each year from 1995 to 2012. Conclusions CRC resection rates among IBD patients have continued to decrease annually from 1995 to 2012. There is a population-level decrease in resection of both proximal and distal CRC reflecting a decreasing incidence of IBD-related CRC incidence in the USA.

Utilization of natural waste for energy conversion offers the method for clean energy production with sustainable development. The pomegranate peels are the natural waste generated every day and we describe the conversion of this waste into electricity by a simple and cost-effective method. Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) offer simple and cost-effective method for the preparation of solar cells. The advantages include easy to fabrication, lower cost of the materials and electricity generation under low illumination indoor conditions. DSSCs involve two Transparent Conducting Oxide (TCO) photoelectrodes acting as photoanode and photocathode. In one photoelectrode, Semiconducting oxide (TiO2/ZnO) and dye (Natural/Organometallic) are coated that acts as photo-absorbing materials. The role of dyes and semiconducting material play an important role in determining the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of fabricated solar cells. In this work, hydrothermal method has been adopted for the preparation of pure and silver doped ZnO nanoparticles using polyethylene glycol (PEG) as capping agent via wet chemical route. The structural and optical properties of the prepared samples were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDAX) and UV-Visible absorption spectra. A Natural dye from the peels of pomegranate was extracted and dye sensitized solar cells were fabricated with pure and Ag-doped nanoparticles. Both the materials showed the photovoltaic conversion capabilities and showed photoconversion efficiencies. The solar cell fabricated with Ag-doped ZnO semiconducting nanoparticle showed higher short circuit current density as compared to the pure ZnO-nanoparticle synthesized in this study. The photoconversion efficiency of the DSSC based on Ag-doped ZnO showed 30% more conversion efficiency than the cell without silver doping.

While specific microRNA (miRNA) signatures have been identified in glioblastoma (GBM), the intratumour heterogeneity in miRNA expression has not yet been characterised. In this study, we reveal significant alterations in miRNA expression across three GBM tumour regions: the core, rim, and invasive margin. Our miRNA profiling analysis showed that miR-330-5p and miR-215-5p were upregulated in the invasive margin relative to the core and the rim regions, while miR-619-5p, miR-4440 and miR-4793-3p were downregulated. Functional analysis of newly identified miRNAs suggests their involvement in regulating lipid metabolic pathways. Subsequent liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) and tandem mass spectroscopy (LC–MS/MS) profiling of the intracellular metabolome and the lipidome of GBM cells with dysregulated miRNA expression confirmed the alteration in the metabolite levels associated with lipid metabolism. The identification of regional miRNA expression signatures may underlie the metabolic heterogeneity within the GBM tumour and understanding this relationship may open new avenues for the GBM treatment.

Intestinal stenosis of Garré can occur as a result of prolonged ischemia after all types of hernia surgery.

Background and aimsThe burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in India is extremely high with the prevalent twin epidemic of diabetes and hypertension. Fast declining phenotype of renal function has yet not been reported in Indian context. Here, we report the prevalence of rapid decliners phenotype in Indian population. Methods Between the period 2014–2019, electronic records of 104636 subjects were reviewed. Subjects with serum creatinine values of at least one year apart were selected for further analysis. The study population was categorized based on eGFR, non-decliners 5 mL/min/1.73 m2/year. Data on diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and cerebrovascular disease were analyzed. Results During the mean follow up of 4 years, the prevalence of non-decliners, progressive and rapid decliners were 61%, 20% and 19% respectively. Diabetes was higher at 44% in rapid decliners when compared to non-decliners (35.1%); progressive decliners (39.2%). The progression of CKD to end stage renal disease (ESRD) was higher in rapid decliners (32%) in comparison to progressive decliners (19%) Conclusions There is a high prevalence of rapid decliner phenotype in India and progression to ESRD is greater and probably is a risk factor for early progression to ESRD.

Purpose: In the globally competitive 21st century, one has to be technically literate, able to use technology with much ease. Technology has revolutionized the field of education while automating manual tasks. With the implementation of computers, the task of the teachers is made easier not only in the process of imparting knowledge, but also in the grading and assessment process. As education is a process of social development, there is always a platform to bring about change through educational reforms like curriculum pedagogy, online or digital education, compulsory and high-quality education along with organizing learning programme for teachers that are considered essential and are prioritized with the support of the government. And without doubts its implementation leads to greater effectiveness and efficiency. Technology is an elixir that connects parents and guardians with educational institutions. In this process, innovative pedagogy is implemented with the redesigning of the classrooms. This paper aims to explore the discrepancies causing hurdles in the effective imparting of knowledge through online instruction. The implication of the research conducted focuses on identifying and labelling positive and negative factors, that is not a prominent part of the mainstream mechanism of education but have a draconian impact on it. Design/Methodology/Approach: The researcher conducted a survey with a designed questionnaire seeking feedback from teachers about their online mode experience during the COVID 19 pandemic. Findings/Result: Teachers lack the necessary training and tools to effectively deliver lectures. Social backgrounds, home environment, mental wellbeing, inaccessibility with regard to materials and methodologies also poses a problem. Originality/Value: Based on the survey conducted it is argued that there is a need of a hand-holding mentor facilitating self-motivation in students. Students lack time management skills, ability to use their potentials, think on their own, develop personal and interpersonal skills to solve difficult, challenging problems and collude effectively. Paper Type: It’s empirical research.

Mental disorders are highly comorbid and occur together with physical diseases, which are often considered to arise from separate pathogenic pathways. We observed in alcohol-dependent patients increased serum activity of neutral sphingomyelinase. A genetic association analysis in 456,693 volunteers found associations of haplotypes of SMPD3 coding for NSM-2 (NSM) with alcohol consumption, but also with affective state, and bone mineralisation. Functional analysis in mice showed that NSM controls alcohol consumption, affective behaviour, and their interaction by regulating hippocampal volume, cortical connectivity, and monoaminergic responses. Furthermore, NSM controlled bone–brain communication by enhancing osteocalcin signalling, which can independently supress alcohol consumption and reduce depressive behaviour. Altogether, we identified a single gene source for multiple pathways originating in the brain and bone, which interlink disorders of a mental–physical co-morbidity trias of alcohol abuse—depression/anxiety—bone disorder. Targeting NSM and osteocalcin signalling may, thus, provide a new systems approach in the treatment of a mental–physical co-morbidity trias. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659

AIMS Report the real-world experience of the efficacy and safety of sofosbuvir/velpatasvir/voxilaprevir (SOF/VEL/VOX) in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infected patients who have previously experienced a direct-acting antiviral (DAA) containing regimen. METHODS Consecutive patients who have previously failed or did not tolerate a DAA containing regimen for chronic HCV who was treated with SOF/VEL/VOX were studied. Baseline clinical and laboratory data including NS5A RAS mutation testing were collected. RESULTS SOF/VEL/VOX resulted in an end of treatment undetectable HCV viral load in all patients and a sustained virologic response 12 rate of 100% despite the presence of NS5A RAS mutation, HIV infection, and cirrhosis. Treatment with SOF/VEL/VOX was well tolerated and there were no adverse events. CONCLUSIONS SOF/VEL/VOX is well tolerated and effective in treating patients who have been exposed to prior DAA therapy outside of clinical trials. SOF/VEL/VOX should be considered as the first-line regimen in HCV infected patients who have experienced prior DAA failure.

Ontology and Semantic is considered to the next generation of web that benefits many different fields like bio-informatics, Data transformation & integrations. Considering this, the E-learning plays a vital role in Learning Management System (LMS), which includes the modules like content development, assessment, feedback, course management and etc. The web application is developed with various LMS features integrated with Semantic Web. Typically, the application runs on Google Cloud Platform which is being served to all users anytime to access. This application is incorporated with semantic web to provide the LMS to the users that works mainly on the principle of extracting the knowledge from the user interaction via the assessments and analyze their behavior / actions on the level of the particular course content and translate them in to semantics which are represented as Ontologies. An intelligent workflow and learning plan for the user is derived and recommended to the user/ learner based upon the learner’s performance on the previous assessments.

Ontology helps semantic web to process and understand large amount of data available in Internet. Ontology uses concepts and their relationship with each other to represent knowledge within a domain. The represented knowledge can be analysed, inferred and reused to make decisions and to derive new knowledge. The developed ontology has to be assessed for quality before using or reusing it. Evaluation becomes a key factor to determine the quality of ontology. Different approaches and methods are used to ensure the quality desired by the user. This article identifies various aspects of ontology, provides a framework for metric based ontology evaluation, elucidates components in the framework and develops a tool based on the framework. The framework checks the syntax, structural and semantic measures of ontology. While a reasoner takes care of the syntax and parser errors, the structural metrics analyses the taxonomy of ontology. Semantic measures deal with the distance of concepts in ontology. Further, competency questions are used to do custom based quality checking of a particular domain. This article provides a systematic way to identify and measure the quality of ontology based on metrics.

Given a distribution of pebbles on the vertices of a connected graph G, a pebbling move on G consists of removing two pebbles from one vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. The pebbling number of G, f (G), is the least n such that any distribution of n pebbles on G allows one pebble to be reached to any specified, but an arbitrary vertex. Similarly, the t−pebbling number of G, ft(G), is the least m such that from any distribution of m pebbles, we can move t pebbles to any specified, but an arbitrary vertex. In this paper, we determine the pebbling number, and the t−pebbling number of the zigzag chain graph of n copies of odd cycles.

Crops are a very special type of human artifact, living organisms literally rooted in their environments. Crops suggest ways to embed rootedness in mobility studies, fleshing out the linkages between flows and matrices and thus developing effective frameworks for reconnecting local and global history. Our focus here is on the movements, or failures to move, of “cropscapes”: the ever-mutating ecologies, or matrices, comprising assemblages of nonhumans and humans, within which a particular crop in a particular place and time flourishes or fails. As with the landscape, the cropscape as concept and analytical tool implies a deliberate choice of frame. In playing with how to frame our selected cropscapes spatially and chronologically, we develop productive alternatives to latent Eurocentric and modernist assumptions about periodization, geographical hierarchies, and scale that still prevail within history of technology, global and comparative history, and indeed within broader public understanding of mobility and history.

Ontologies are used to acquire, represent, and process information in various domains. Ontology developed has to be validated and verified for its quality. Measuring the quality of ontology helps to make decisions when sharing, using or reusing ontology. One of the ways of measuring the ontology is to evaluate using metrics. The classes, instances and relationships of ontology can be represented in graph with nodes and leafs. Analysing the graph of ontology decisions can be made regarding the quality of ontology. Cohesion measures the relatedness, connectivity and interdependence of ontology. Cohesion shows the degree of relatedness between different entities. When the entities of ontology are highly related there is a strong cohesion value. The design quality of ontology can be evaluated using cohesion. The results of cohesion when used with measures of other attributes can be used for the modularisation of ontology. This paper proposes a metric suite to calculate the strength of ontology. The metric suite proposed can be used to evaluate the quality of ontology. The derived metric suite is theoretically validated. The results indicate that the metric suite works well and gives the strength of modularised ontology.

We present here a novel surface mass spectrometry strategy to perform untargeted metabolite profiling of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded pediatric ependymoma archives. Sequential Orbitrap secondary ion mass spectrometry (3D OrbiSIMS) and liquid extraction surface analysis-tandem mass spectrometry (LESA-MS/MS) permitted the detection of 887 metabolites (163 chemical classes) from pediatric ependymoma tumor tissue microarrays (diameter

Background Therapeutic intervention in metastatic medulloblastoma is dependent on elucidating the underlying metastatic mechanism. We investigated whether an epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT)-like pathway could drive medulloblastoma metastasis. Methods A 3D Basement Membrane Extract (3D-BME) model was used to investigate medulloblastoma cell migration. Cell line growth was quantified with AlamarBlue metabolic assays and the morphology assessed by time-lapse imaging. Gene expression was analyzed by qRT-PCR and protein expression by immunohistochemistry of patient tissue microarrays and mouse orthotopic xenografts. Chromatin immunoprecipitation was used to determine whether the EMT transcription factor TWIST1 bound to the promoter of the multidrug pump ABCB1. TWIST1 was overexpressed in MED6 cells by lentiviral transduction (MED6-TWIST1). Inhibition of ABCB1 was mediated by vardenafil, and TWIST1 expression was reduced by either Harmine or shRNA. Results Metastatic cells migrated to form large metabolically active aggregates, whereas non-tumorigenic/non-metastatic cells formed small aggregates with decreasing metabolic activity. TWIST1 expression was upregulated in the 3D-BME model. TWIST1 and ABCB1 were significantly associated with metastasis in patients (P = .041 and P = .04, respectively). High nuclear TWIST1 expression was observed in the invasive edge of the MED1 orthotopic model, and TWIST1 knockdown in cell lines was associated with reduced cell migration (P < .05). TWIST1 bound to the ABCB1 promoter (P = .03) and induced cell aggregation in metastatic and TWIST1-overexpressing, non-metastatic (MED6-TWIST1) cells, which was significantly attenuated by vardenafil (P < .05). Conclusions In this study, we identified a TWIST1–ABCB1 signaling axis during medulloblastoma migration, which can be therapeutically targeted with the clinically approved ABCB1 inhibitor, vardenafil.

We developed silver-doped Cd1–xAgxO thin films (where x = 0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03 and 0.04) on amorphous glass substrate by an automated nebulizer spray pyrolysis set-up. The XRD patterns show rock salt cubic crystal structures, and the crystallite sizes vary with respect to Ag doping concentrations. SEM images exhibited a uniform distribution of grains with the addition of Ag, this feature could support the enhancement of electron mobility. The transmittance spectra reveal that all films show high transmittance in the visible region with the observed bandgap of about 2.40 eV. The room temperature photoluminescence (PL) studies show the increase of near-band-edge (NBE) emission of the films prepared by different Ag doping levels, resulting in respective decreases in the bandgaps. The photodiode performance was analyzed for the fabricated p-Si/n-Cd1–xAgxO devices. The responsivity, external quantum efficiency and detectivity of the prepared p-Si/n-Cd1–xAgxO device were investigated. The repeatability of the optimum (3 at.% Ag) photodiode was also studied. The present investigation suggests that Cd1–xAgxO thin films are the potential candidates for various industrial and photodetector applications.

Technologies used in cognitive web architecture such as the Resource Description Framework Knowledge Graph, and other Semantic technologies could well be used to curate the knowledgebase of a knowledge-based system. The paper proposes a framework to automatically abstract unstructured knowledge from the web and curate the knowledge of the system with it.