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Aim: To synthesize and screen phenanthridine and 1,2,3-triazole derivatives for antileishmanial activity. Methodology: Synthesized analogs were tested for antileishmanial activity against transgenic strain of Leishmania infantum promastigotes and ex vivo infections. Results: Compounds T01, T08 and T11 revealed significant activity with EC50 50 3.07 μm is fourfold more potent than the drug miltefosine (EC50 12.6 μM) against L. infantum promastigotes. In silico studies indicate that the analogs are nontoxic. A molecular docking analysis was also carried out on the T01 and T08 to investigate the binding pattern at the active site of the chosen target trypanothione reductase. Conclusion: The results of this study reveal that phenanthridine triazoles exhibit antileishmanial activity.

nformation system (IS) is the current trend in the organizations they are gaining competitive edge due to its successful implementation, which is a major factor to improve performance of the organization. The aim of this paper is to report the method for evaluating the failure factors of Information system implementation based on research conducted at two organisation of telecommunication industry using information systems. A quantitative survey-based method was used to collect the data from the two organizations Reliance Communication Limited, Chandigarh and Punjab Communication Ltd. (Puncom) Mohali. The signicance of the ensuing factors for implementation success/failure factors are diagnosed from the opinion of the respondents of these organizations. Reliance Communication Limited is the global adopter of IS and is doing well in the market and the other one having domestic IS, not doing well in the current market. 21 variables were chosen for the study relating to failure and success factors of Information System. Quantitative analysis was performed by using various testing models, Factor Analysis, Neural Network to check importance and to identify CFF & CSF between Puncom & Reliance. This paper suggests that starting from the implementation phase of IS, the organizations must be able to recognize that IS is a Socio-Technical challenge and not only a technical or a managerial work. Therefore, there is the need of modifying the prevailing processes or remodelling them in the second organization (Puncom, not doing well in the market) so that it may compete globally. The results are discussed along with the implications of the research for the future work and provide suggestions for both the academicians and practitioners on how to achieve holistic improvement under IS.

Two Co-based fluorescent MOFs are reported to detect biogenic amines in protein rich foods like fish and cheese.

A Zr-based metal organic framework with naphthalene diimide teracarboxylate linkers is reported for its dual electrochromic and photochromic behavior. MOF crystals display reversible yellow to green photochromism upon exposure to visible light and colourless to dark-brown reversible electrochromism on applying a potential of 0 to -2.5 V. The MOF thin film shows good colouration efficiency at 550 nm, which is the highest sensitivity of the human eye.

Cloud computing is the extensively used technology these days. Due to the usage of smart devices, a huge amount of data is produced. The processing of this data in real time is a big challenge for cloud servers. Fog computing is the solution for this, but fog has its own limitation in form of storage. To overcome, this cloud-fog architecture is preferred. In cloud-fog architecture, workflow scheduling is an open research area but finding an optimal algorithm is a major challenge. Some researchers proposed meta-heuristic algorithms to solve workflow scheduling issues but they are trapped locally and fails to give the global optimal solution. To solve workflow scheduling problems, we propose the PWOA algorithm, a hybrid of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA). The goal of this algorithm is to minimize the Total Execution Time (TET) and Total Execution Cost (TEC) of dependent tasks in a cloud-fog-mobile computing environment. Because it uses the features of both the standard PSO and WOA algorithms, the proposed algorithm overcomes the trapping problem also. In this article, the simulation results were compared to standard PSO and WOA algorithms using several benchmarks of four different scientific workflows (Cybershake, Epigenomics, Inspiral, Montage, and Sipht) with different numbers of tasks assigned in the proposed algorithm performed better.

Playing video games in a neuroimaging environment is both scientifically promising and technically challenging. Primary among these challenges is the need to use scanner-compatible devices to register player inputs, which limits the type of games that can be comfortably played in a scanner and often reduces the ecological validity of video game tasks. In this paper, we introduce an MRI- and MEG-compatible video game controller that is made exclusively of 3D-printed and commercially available parts, and we release the design files and documentations in the goal of making its production accessible to any research team with minimal engineering resources. In line with the open science philosophy, we made this work accessible under an Open Source Hardware license that aims to promote accessibility and reproducibility. Additionally, we validated the responsiveness and scanner-compatibility of our controller by comparing it to a reference, non-MRI compatible controller, and by assessing the quality of the data recorded with and without the use of the said controller. The analysis of response latencies showed reliable button press accuracies. A higher latency was detected on button releases, both for long and short button presses although this effect was small enough as not to affect gameplay in most situations. Analysis of subject motion during fMRI recordings of various tasks showed that the use of our controller didn’t increase the amount of motion produced. We hope that this tool will stimulate further neuroimaging studies of video games tasks by improving both their accessibility and their validity.

The rare availability of suitable single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) structural data allows for the direct interpretation of the response of a framework to gas sorption and may lead to the development of improved functional porous materials. We report an in situ SCXRD structural investigation of a flexible MOF subjected to methane, ethane, propane, and butane gas pressures. Supporting theoretical investigations indicate weak host-guest interactions for the crystallographically modelled gaseous guests and, in addition, reveal that a turnstile mechanism facilitates the transport of alkanes through the seemingly nonporous system. Inflections present in the adsorption isotherms are furthermore rationalized as due to gate-opening, but without the expected creation of new accessible space.

Nitroaromatics are some of the most hazardous compounds that contaminate water and are also used in explosives. The selective detection of nitroaromatics is highly warranted but at the same time very challenging. This is due to the similarities in their size, shape and functionality. However, if a system is cleverly designed to enforce selective host–guest interactions, the detection of one particular class of nitro compounds can be successfully achieved. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as promising porous materials for these applications. Herein, a fluorescent Zr-NDI based MOF has been reported for the selective detection of trinitrophenol (TNP) in water. Interestingly, the high fluorescence behaviour of the MOF can be quenched only by nitrophenol derivatives, particularly TNP, whereas the other classes of nitroaromatic and nitroaliphatic compounds have no impact on the fluorescence properties of the MOF. The limit of detection of TNP is as low as 8.1 ppm and the quenching efficiency is 95%. DFT studies have been carried out in conjunction with experiments that reveal favourable host–guest interactions for the selective binding of the hydroxyl group present in TNP.

Social Big Data is generated by interactions of connected users on social network. Sharing of opinions and contents amongst users, reviews of users for products, result in social Big Data. If any user intends to select products such as movies, books, etc., from e-commerce sites or view any topic or opinion on social networking sites, there are a lot of options and these options result in information overload. Social recommendation systems assist users to make better selection as per their likings. Recent research works have improved recommendation systems by using matrix factorization, social regularization or social trust inference. Furthermore, these improved systems are able to alleviate cold start and sparsity, but not efficient for scalability. The main focus of this article is to improve scalability in terms of locality and throughput and provides better recommendations to users with large-scale data in less response time. In this article, the social big graph is partitioned and distributed on different nodes based on Pregel and Giraph. In the proposed approach ScaleRec, partitioning is based on direct as well as indirect trust between users and comparison with state-of-the-art approaches proves that statistically better partitioning quality is achieved using proposed approach. In ScaleRec, hyperedge and transitive closure are used to enhance social trust amongst users. Experiment analysis on standard datasets such as Epinions and LiveJournal proves that better locality and recommendation accuracy is achieved by using ScaleRec.

Conventional search engines provide a lot of irrelevant results to the user’s search query, which consumes a lot of time and effort, as the context and semantics of the request made by the user are not analyzed to the optimum extent. This highlights for the need of a methodology embedded in the search machinery, enabling semantic web search. Ontologies have proven to be an effective technology for such semantic knowledge representation and information retrieval. In this research paper, the researcher has constructed a string ontology in a new domain (the music domain) from scratch using Protege 5.0 for semantic information retrieval for a query in the search engine. This ontology is further used in the proposed ontology based semantic information retrieval method (OBSIRM), which has been built to refine the web search in the music domain. The researcher has proposed a novel approach to refine the web search in which the query is first replaced with abbreviations along with the use of the multilingual concept to search a query. The results of the proposed method have been compared with Google. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method has been measured in terms of precision and recall. The average precision and recall of OBSIRM is 1.43 and 0.7 as compared to generic Google search engine i.e. 1.04 and 0.51. Hence it can safely be concluded that in the domain of research the OBSIRM performs better in terms of users’ expectations than Google (for string instrument domain considered by the researcher) as far as relevant information retrieval is concerned.

Deep learning is the most active research topic amongst data scientists and analysts these days. It is because deep learning has provided very high accuracy in various domains such as speech recognition, image processing and natural language processing. Researchers are actively working to deploy deep learning on information retrieval. Due to large-scale data generated by social media and sensor networks, it is quite difficult to train unstructured and highly complex data. Recommender system is intelligent information filtering technique which assists the user to find topic of interest within complex overloaded information. In this paper, our motive is to improve recommendation accuracy for large-scale heterogeneous complex data by integrating deep learning architecture. In our proposed approach ratings, direct and indirect trust values are fed in neural network using shared layer in autoencoder. Comprehensive experiment analysis on three public datasets proves that RMSE and MAE are improved significantly by using our proposed approach.

A well-planned information architecture (IA) of a website can enhance the end users' efficiency, learnability, controllability and intention to revisit the site. Its significance is even more in the context of academic websites where the generation, management, and distribution of information are among the major activities. However, it remains a neglected issue as designers of academic websites have overlooked the important aspect of ‘intuitive user navigation' and focused primarily on its ‘look and feel.' Thus, the current study aims to analyze and compare the effectiveness of information architectural designs of some randomly selected university websites of Punjab (India) through a usability testing technique. For this purpose, the performance metric measured was the information seeking time. The usability session of each subject was captured through Camtasia Studio software. The findings of this study highlight the shortcomings of presently designed academic websites which adversely affect the usability of a website.

Usability evaluation of a website is a key element in identifying the areas where the end-users might experience problems while interacting with it. The usability parameter has a great impact on the performance of a website, an organization's image, user satisfaction, and their intention to revisit the site. In the recent past, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of websites for seeking requisite information about admission to various courses offered by higher education institutions. There has been a lack of an effective and efficient set of heuristics that can be used to evaluate the usability of these education institution websites. The present study differs from earlier studies by providing a new set of 43 usability heuristics and categorizing them into eight distinct factors on the basis of their empirical validation. These eight identified factors exhibit strong psychometric properties and are ease of navigation, design quality, information architecture, credibility, functionality quality, content quality, simplicity, and learnability. The findings of this study are highly useful for the website designers and evaluators of higher education institutions' websites, who are concerned with evaluating and improving the usability of these websites. The findings of this study have theoretical as well as practical implications.

Pyrazinamide is an important first-line drug used in shortening TB therapy. In our current work, a series of novel substituted-N-(6-(4-(pyrazine-2-carbonyl)piperazine/homopiperazine-1-yl)pyridin-3-yl)benzamide derivatives were designed, synthesized, and evaluated for their anti-tubercular activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra. Among the tested compounds, five compounds (6a, 6e, 6h, 6j and 6k) from Series-I and one compound (7e) from Series-II exhibited significant activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra with 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50) ranging from 1.35 to 2.18 μM. To evaluate the efficacy of these compounds, we examined their IC90 values. Five of the most active compounds were found to be more active with IC90s ranging from 3.73 to 4.00 μM and one compound (6e) showed an IC90 of 40.32 μM. Moreover, single crystals were developed for 6d, 6f and 6n. In addition, most active compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxicity on HEK-293 (human embryonic kidney) cells. Our results indicate that the compounds are nontoxic to human cells. The molecular interactions of the derivatised conjugates in docking studies reveal their suitability for further development.

In this paper, hydrogen adsorption in metal-organic framework MIL-101(Cr) is investigated through a combination of sorption experiments, modeling of experimental isotherms, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), neutron scattering, in situ synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction, and molecular simulations. The molecular simulations at 77 K for H2 adsorption in the material show excellent correspondence with excess uptakes determined from experimental isotherms. The simulations also indicate that H2 adsorption at a low pressure is mainly located in the 0.7 nm supertetrahedron and that, with increasing pressure, H2 starts to accumulate in the small (2.9 nm) and large (3.4 nm) cages. The inelastic neutron scattering results show that, in contrast to reports for hydrogen adsorption under the same conditions for microporous carbons, there is no solid-like H2 or any higher density H2 phases adsorbed in the pores of MIL-101(Cr). This indicates that, with increasing pressures, the adsorbed density of the MIL-101(Cr) remains constant but the volume of adsorbate increases and that higher densities for adsorbed hydrogen require pore sizes smaller than 0.7 nm, which is the size of the smallest pore in MIL-101(Cr). The enthalpies of adsorption are also investigated for this material using simulations, the Clapeyron equation applied to the isosteres and DSC, with the direct calorimetric method showing good agreement at zero coverage with the other two methods. The simulations and the Clapeyron equation are also in good agreement up to 6 wt % coverage.

Metabolic conditions like diabetes, is a major risk factor for the development of dementia of vascular origin. This study investigates the efficacy of atomoxetine (ATX) and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in streptozotocin (STZ) diabetes induced vascular endothelium dysfunction and related dementia. Single dose STZ (50 mg/kg i.p) was administered to Albino Wistar rats (male, 200-250 g) by dissolving in citrate buffer. Morris water maze (MWM) and attentional set shifting tests (ASST) were used to assess the spatial learning, memory, reversal learning, and executive functioning in animals. Body weight, serum glucose, serum nitrite/nitrate, vascular endothelial function, aortic superoxide anion, brains' oxidative markers (thiobarbituric acid reactive species-TBARS, reduced glutathione-GSH, superoxide dismutase-SOD, and catalase-CAT), inflammatory markers (IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, and myeloperoxidase-MPO), acetylcholinesterase activity-AChE and histopathological changes were also assessed. Atomoxetine - ATX (2 mg kg