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Dementia is a brain condition in which cognitive abilities decline more quickly than expected from the usual consequences of biological aging. It impacts memory and a person's physical and mental health. Early stages of dementia are challenging to anticipate, and there is presently no treatment for this condition. Therefore, a precise and prompt diagnosis of dementia is strongly advised in order to give the patient the best possible treatment. This study provides a hybrid model for the automatic diagnosis of dementia from T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs). The proposed model consists of two stages: the first step implements gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) to extract texture features from imaging data, and the second step applies an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for the prediction of dementia from these extracted texture features. The proposed framework has been evaluated on the benchmark Dementia dataset comprising 5154 2D T1w MRI scans. In order to assess the model's performance, the proposed model is also compared with a neural network, fuzzy logic, and other machine learning (ML) techniques using the same dataset. The accuracy of the proposed model is recorded as 82.5%, which is greater than that attained by existing ML methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new area of biotechnology is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is an emerging field that aims to develope various substances with nano-dimensions that have utilization in the various sectors of pharmaceuticals, bio prospecting, human activities and biomedical applications. An essential stage in the development of nanotechnology is the creation of nanoparticles. To increase their biological uses, eco-friendly material synthesis processes are becoming increasingly important. Recent years have shown a lot of interest in nanostructured materials due to their beneficial and unique characteristics compared to their polycrystalline counterparts. The fascinating performance of nanomaterials in electronics, optics, and photonics has generated a lot of interest. An eco-friendly approach of creating nanoparticles has emerged in order to get around the drawbacks of conventional techniques. Today, a wide range of nanoparticles have been created by employing various microbes, and their potential in numerous cutting-edge technological fields have been investigated. These particles have well-defined chemical compositions, sizes, and morphologies. The green production of nanoparticles mostly uses plants and microbes. Hence, the use of microbial nanotechnology in agriculture and plant science is the main emphasis of this review. The present review highlights the methods of biological synthesis of nanoparticles available with a major focus on microbially synthesized nanoparticles, parameters and biochemistry involved. Further, it takes into account the genetic engineering and synthetic biology involved in microbial nanobiosynthesis to the construction of microbial nanofactories., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The field of nanotechnology has the mysterious capacity to reform every subject it touches. Nanotechnology advancements have already altered a variety of scientific and industrial fields. Nanoparticles (NPs) with sizes ranging from 1 to 100 nm (nm) are of great scientific and commercial interest. Their functions and characteristics differ significantly from those of bulk metal. Commercial quantities of NPs are synthesized using chemical or physical methods. The use of the physical and chemical approaches remained popular for many years; however, the recognition of their hazardous effects on human well-being and conditions influenced serious world perspectives for the researchers. There is a growing need in this field for simple, non-toxic, clean, and environmentally safe nanoparticle production methods to reduce environmental impact and waste and increase energy productivity. Microbial nanotechnology is relatively a new field. Using various microorganisms, a wide range of nanoparticles with well-defined chemical composition, morphology, and size have been synthesized, and their applications in a wide range of cutting-edge technological areas have been investigated. Green synthesis of the nanoparticles is cost-efficient and requires low maintenance. The present review highlights the synthesis of the nanoparticles by different microbes, their characterization, and their biotechnological potential. It further deals with the applications in biomedical, food, and textile industries as well as its role in biosensing, waste recycling, and biofuel production., (© 2024. Institute of Microbiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i.)

Crocetin is a promising phyto-based molecule to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD). The chemical structure of crocetin is incongruent with various standard structural features of CNS drugs. As poor pharmacokinetic behavior is the major hurdle for any candidate to become a drug, we elucidated its druggable characteristics by implementing in silico, in vitro, and in vivo approaches, as limited ADME/PK information is available. Results demonstrate several attributes of crocetin based on rules of drug-likeness, lipophilicity, p K a , P-gp inhibitory activity, plasma stability, RBC partitioning, metabolic stability, CYP inhibitory action, blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability, oral bioavailability, and pharmacokinetic interaction with marketed anti-Alzheimer's drugs (memantine, donepezil, galantamine, and rivastigmine). However, aqueous solubility, chemical stability, plasma protein binding, and P-gp induction are some concerns associated with this molecule that should be taken into consideration during its further development. Overall results indicate favorable ADME/PK behavior and potential druggable candidature of crocetin., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Diabetic retinopathy is a well-recognised microvascular complication of diabetes and is among the leading cause of blindness all over the world. Over the last decade, there have been advances in the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. At the same time, newer therapies for the management of diabetic retinopathy have evolved. As a result of these advances, a decline in severe vision loss due to diabetes has been witnessed in some developing countries. However, there is a steady increase in the number of people affected with diabetes, and is expected to rise further in the coming years. Therefore, it is prudent to identify diabetic retinopathy, and timely intervention is needed to decrease the burden of severe vision loss. An effort has been made to review all the existing knowledge regarding diabetic retinopathy in this article and summarize the present treatment options for diabetic retinopathy., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)

Workplace violence (WPV) against doctors is a growing epidemic in India, with at least two-thirds of doctors facing some form of abuse during their careers. Verbal abuse is common, but doctors are also subjected to brutal attacks that endanger their lives. This review lists abusive incidents reported by the media since 2021. Despite increased respect for healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors in India are under significant stress due to inadequate medical infrastructure, mismanagement of young doctors, increasing mistrust between doctors and patients, a shortage of doctors, and overworked healthcare workers, leading to delays in attention and treatment. Additional factors contributing to the situation include the lack of proper insurance coverage, weak primary healthcare with overburdened tertiary care, the lack of an effective grievance redressal system, and the poor state of medical education. To combat this epidemic, collaborative efforts are needed between doctors, hospitals, the government, and society. Improving communication skills and treating patients with empathy are essential for healthcare workers. Meanwhile, hospitals should implement an efficient security system, a transparent billing system, and an active complaint system to prevent incidents. Unbiased reporting and adequate documentation are required to further investigate this occupational health hazard. The government should focus on building better medical facilities and passing a strict law against violence against doctors to ensure the safety of medical professionals. This review presents some solutions, along with the current legal coverage provided to healthcare professionals regarding WPV., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright © 2023, Jain et al.)

The quest for increasing agricultural yield due to increasing population pressure and demands for healthy food has inevitably led to the indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers. On the contrary, the exposure of the crops to abiotic stress and biotic stress interferes with crop growth further hindering the productivity. Sustainable agricultural practices are of major importance to enhance production and feed the rising population. The use of plant growth promoting (PGP) rhizospheric microbes is emerging as an efficient approach to ameliorate global dependence on chemicals, improve stress tolerance of plants, boost up growth and ensure food security. Rhizosphere associated microbiomes promote the growth by enhancing the uptake of the nutrients, producing plant growth regulators, iron chelating complexes, shaping the root system under stress conditions and decreasing the levels of inhibitory ethylene concentrations and protecting plants from oxidative stress. Plant growth-promoting rhizospheric microbes belong to diverse range of genera including Acinetobacter, Achromobacter, Aspergillus, Bacillus, Burkholderia, Flavobacterium, Klebsiella, Micrococcus, Penicillium, Pseudomonas, Serratia and Trichoderma. Plant growth promoting microbes are an interesting aspect of research for scientific community and a number of formulations of beneficial microbes are also commercially available. Thus, recent progress in our understanding on rhizospheric microbiomes along with their major roles and mechanisms of action under natural and stressful conditions should facilitate their application as a reliable component in the management of sustainable agricultural system. This review highlights the diversity of plant growth promoting rhizospheric microbes, their mechanisms of plant growth promotion, their role under biotic and abiotic stress and status of biofertilizers. The article further focuses on the role of omics approaches in plant growth promoting rhizospheric microbes and draft genome of PGP microbes., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

A general electrophilic iodocyclization/nucleophile addition cascade transformation for 1,2-alkynediones for the synthesis of various oxygen heterocycles and access to regioselective alkyne hydroxylation is reported. Furan-tethered ynediones resulted in the construction of exo -enol ethers via carbonyl-alkyne cyclization-initiated heteroarene dearomatization, whereas other (hetero)arene-, alkenyl-, and alkyl-tethered ynediones resulted in the formation of highly functionalized 3(2 H )-furanones. Importantly, the developed domino protocols involve the construction of important heterocyclic scaffolds and installation of two functional groups in a single operation. Moreover, the use of water as a nucleophile resulted in regioselective alkyne hydroxylation via furanone ring opening. The developed protocols are characterized by a wide substrate scope, and their utility has been demonstrated by a number of postsynthetic transformations.

COVID-19 is a novel virus that presents challenges due to a lack of consistent and in-depth research. The news of the COVID-19 spreads across the globe, resulting in a flood of posts on social media sites. Apart from health, social, and economic disturbances brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, another important consequence involves public mental health crises which is of greater concern. Data related to COVID-19 is a valuable asset for researchers in understanding people's feelings related to the pandemic. It is thus important to extract the early information evolving public sentiments on social platforms during the outbreak of COVID-19. The objective of this study is to look at people's perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic who interact with each other and share tweets on the Twitter platform. COVIDSenti, a large-scale benchmark dataset comprising 90,000 COVID-19 tweets collected from February to March 2020, during the initial phases of the outbreak served as the foundation for our experiments. A pre-trained bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model is fine-tuned and embeddings generated are combined with two long short-term memory networks to propose the residual encoder transformation network model. The proposed model is used for multiclass text classification on a large dataset labeled as positive, negative, and neutral. The experimental outcomes validate that: (1) the proposed model is the best performing model, with 98% accuracy and 96% F1-score; (2) It also outperforms conventional machine learning algorithms and different variants of BERT, and (3) the approach achieves better results as compared to state-of-the-art on different benchmark datasets., Competing Interests: Conflict of InterestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.)

Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection started in Wuhan, China, and spread to the rest of the world to become a pandemic affecting over 385 million people throughout the world to date. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is primarily started as a respiratory tract infection. Recent studies indicate that it should be regarded as a systemic disease involving multiple systems including the hematopoietic system. Complete blood count and its parameters are important investigative tools in its prognosis. However, very few studies highlight the importance of peripheral blood cell morphology in this disease., Aim: To study the hematological parameters (complete blood count and peripheral blood film) of COVID-19-positive patients and to compare the hematological parameters of those admitted in intensive care units (ICUs) with those admitted in non-ICUs of the hospitals., Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was carried out at a COVID-19 dedicated tertiary care center over a period of 3 months from July 2020 to September 2020. In our study, all 79 patients had complete blood counts performed at the time of admission. Complete blood count was repeated during the hospital stay for all severe cases. The data which provided information on the age and gender of each patient were obtained from the Laboratory Information System (LIS) of the hospital., Results: The mean age of our study group was 46.05 years. Out of 79 cases, lymphopenia was seen in 16.5% with five patients presenting with severe lymphopenia (<0.5 × 109 /L). All the patients that required ICU care presented with moderate to severe lymphopenia. The patients in the ICU setting showed significant neutrophilia (mean 14.16 × 109 /L) on follow-up complete blood count. Thrombocytopenia was observed in 35.3% of cases. It was observed that the mean neutrophil- lymphocyte ratio was higher in ICU admitted patients as compared to the non-ICU admitted patients. Among the ICU patients, 80% showed a neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio above the baseline cutoff (3.1). A wide array of morphological changes were observed in the peripheral blood smear including toxic-like granules in neutrophils, fetus-like C-shaped nucleus, lymphoplasmacytoid cells, bizarre cells, and apoptotic cells., Conclusion: The study highlights that at the time of admission older age, decreased lymphocyte count, and raised neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio were closely associated with ICU admissions. Also, the morphological changes in peripheral blood film reveal atypical changes predominantly in the white blood cell (WBC) lineage., (© Journal of the Association of Physicians of India 2011.)

A catalytic oxidative addition of sulfoximines to naphthoquinones via C-H functionalization has been achieved using an iron catalytic system, which exhibits good reactivity and high regioselectivity in the presence of visible light. This is the first report offering an efficient protocol for obtaining (naphtho)quinone-sulfoximine hybrid analogs in moderate to good yields with wide scope for both the substrates. This protocol has also been applied on natural products for their modification, including vitamin K3, Juglone and some other modified natural scaffolds as well.

Drought stress is among the most destructive stresses for agricultural productivity. It interferes with normal metabolic activities of the plants resulting, a negative impact on physiology and morphology of the plants. The management of drought stress requires various adaptive and alleviation strategies in which stress adaptive microbiomes are exquisite bioresources for plant growth and alleviation of drought stress. Diverse drought adaptive microbes belonging to genera Achromobacter, Arthrobacter, Aspergillus, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Penicillium and Streptomyces have been reported worldwide. These bioresources exhibit a wide range of mechanisms such as helping plant in nutrient acquisition, producing growth regulators, lowering the levels of stress ethylene, increasing the concentration of osmolytes, and preventing oxidative damage under water deficit environmental conditions. Horticulture is one of the potential agricultural sectors to speed up the economy, poverty and generation of employment for livelihood. The applications of drought adaptive plant growth promoting (PGP) microbes as biofertilizers and biopesticides for horticulture is a potential strategy to improve the productivity and protection of horticultural crops from abiotic and biotic stresses for agricultural sustainability., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Depression has become one of the most widespread mental health disorders across the globe. Depression is a state of mind which affects how we think, feel, and act. The number of suicides caused by depression has been on the rise for the last several years. This issue needs to be addressed. Considering the rapid growth of various social media platforms and their effect on society and the psychological context of a being, it's becoming a platform for depressed people to convey feelings and emotions, and to study their behavior by mining their social activity through social media posts. The key objective of our study is to explore the possibility of predicting a user's mental condition by classifying the depressive from non-depressive ones using Twitter data. Using textual content of the user's tweet, semantic context in the textual narratives is analyzed by utilizing deep learning models. The proposed model, however, is a hybrid of two deep learning architectures, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (biLSTM) that after optimization obtains an accuracy of 94.28% on benchmark depression dataset containing tweets. CNN-biLSTM model is compared with Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and CNN model and also with the baseline approaches. Experimental results based on various performance metrics indicate that our model helps to improve predictive performance. To examine the problem more deeply, statistical techniques and visualization approaches were used to show the profound difference between the linguistic representation of depressive and non-depressive content., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestsThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022.)

Lignocellulosic biomass generated from different sectors (agriculture, forestry, industrial) act as biorefinery precursor for production of second-generation (2G) bioethanol and other biochemicals. The integration of various conversion techniques on a single platform under biorefinery approach for production of biofuel and industrially important chemicals from LCB is gaining interest worldwide. The waste generated on utilization of bio-resources is almost negligible or zero in a biorefinery along with reduced greenhouse gas emissions, which supports the circular bioeconomy concept. The economic viability of a lignocellulosic biorefinery depends upon the efficient utilization of three major components of LCB-cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The heterogeneous structure and recalcitrant nature of LCB is main obstacle in its valorization into bioethanol and other value-added products. The success of bioconversion process depends upon methods used during pre-treatment, hydrolysis and fermentation processes. The cost involved in each step of the bioconversion process affects the viability of cellulosic ethanol. The lignocellulose biorefinery has ample scope, but much-focused research is required to fully utilize major parts of lignocellulosic biomass with zero wastage. The present review entails lignocellulosic biomass valorization for ethanol production, along with different steps involved in its production. Various value-added products produced from LCB components were also discussed. Recent technological advances and significant challenges in bioethanol production are also highlighted in addition to future perspectives., Competing Interests: Competing InterestThe authors declare no competing interests., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022.)

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Bergenia ciliata (Haw.) Sternb. is a plant growing in the Himalayan region of India where locals use its rhizomes for a variety of disease conditions including wounds and fractures. Although some of its pharmacological benefits have been documented, scientific validation of its wound healing property has not been done so far., Aim of the Study: To ensure use of this natural remedy as an alternative therapy to the faster wound healing, this study evaluated the wound healing activity of the ethanolic extract of Bergenia ciliata rhizome using excision wound model in Wistar rats., Material and Methods: Four groups (n = 10) of rats were subjected to different topical wound regimens for 14 days. Simple paraffin-lanolin ointment was applied to the control group rats. One group was applied povidone-iodine 10% (w/w) ointment. The other two groups were treated with ointment of ethanolic extract of Bergenia ciliata at 5 or 10% (w/w) rhizome, respectively. Blood and wound tissue samples were collected on 7th and 14th day of treatment and were correspondingly subjected to histopathology, and the assays of L-hydroxyproline, D-glucosamine, antioxidants and pro-inflammatory cytokines., Results: Wound histology revealed increased collagenation, re-epithelialization and neovascularization while decreased bacterial colonies in the treatment groups. These histological changes and wound contraction were better in the 10% Bergenia ciliata group. Tissue L-hydroxyproline levels, blood enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants were increased in the treatment groups. On 7th day of treatment glucosamine levels increased in the treatment groups, while as a reverse trend was observed on day 14. Plasma levels of TNF-α and IL-6 decreased in the treatment groups., Conclusions: The results indicate that treatment with Bergenia ciliata extract ointment provides satisfactory wound healing which is comparable to that of the standard wound healing ointment, povidone-iodine and is surpassing simple lanolin-paraffin ointment. The improved wound healing, especially in the 10% Bergenia ciliata groups, can be attributed to satisfactory profile of the above studied parameters in these treatment groups which is also construed by the phytochemical analysis of its extract revealing the presence of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds gallic acid, catechin, quercetin and rutin as the major active components., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Radical vicinal carbohalofunctionalization of C-C multiple bonds via atom transfer processes constitutes an efficient method for the construction of halogenated building blocks with complete atom economy via radical cleavage of a pre-existing carbon-halogen σ-bond of an atom transfer reagent and their transposition over the π-bond of alkenes and alkynes. This review summarizes the recent advances in the photo-induced version of this class of transformations. A variety of transition-metal complexes, organic dyes, phosphines, amines, phenols and aldehydes were utilized as catalysts for the cleavage of the existing carbon-halogen bond of the corresponding atom transfer reagent in the presence of a light source. Alongside a variety of 1,2-haloalkylation and haloperfluoroalkylation reactions, atom transfer radical addition (ATRA) or cyclization (ATRC) reactions via the cleavage of the carbon-halogen bonds of aryl halides are also discussed.

Background: Preputioplasty as a part of hypospadias repair restores the normal appearance of phallus, which is especially important in distal and mid penile hypospadias. However possibility of its inherent complications such as iatrogenic phimosis or preputial breakdown are the cause of controversy and reluctance regarding this procedure.This study evaluates the results of preputial reconstruction with TIP urethroplasty in distal and mid penile hypospadias repair and analyses if preputioplasty may be offered to these patients., Materials & Methods: In this prospective observational study, 48 cases of distal and mid penile hypospadias underwent TIP urethroplasty and preputioplasty and results were assessed at 2 weeks, 3 months and 6 months. Major complications included preputial dehiscence, tight prepuce (iatrogenic phimosis) and minor complications included ventral tethering, persistent dorsal whorls and redundant prepuce. Data was analysed with Microsoft Excel spreadsheet where descriptive statistics were obtained., Results: Preputioplasty was performed in 48 children with a mean age of 5.1 years. Preputioplasty dehiscence was seen in three (6%) patients, which gave an appearance of irregular prepuce on 6 m follow up. Two patients (4%) were confirmed to have preputial tightness at 3 months but this resolved conservatively in one patient and only one patient (2%) required circumcision for a tight prepuce. Minor complications included ventral tethering, persistence of dorsal whorls and redundant prepuce. Ventral tethering was present in 3 patients (6.25%). Redundant prepuce was observed in 2 patients (4.16%). Additionally, unsightly dorsal whorls were found to be persistent in 2 children (4.16%). None of these patients opted for circumcision. The rest of the children had a cosmetically and functionally normal prepuce. Two patients (4%) developed urethrocutaneous fistula at 3 months' follow-up., Conclusion: Preputial reconstruction is feasible with a good cosmetic outcome and minimal complications in patients of distal and mid penile hypospadias undergoing TIP urethroplasty. Mild preputial tightness evolves over time and resolves with conservative measures. In patients with very prominent dorsal whorls and underlying bulky tissues the preputioplasty does not appear to be of satisfactory cosmesis. To help the patient and parents take a well informed decision, it would be useful to explain all possible major and minor foreskin complications, and their rectification., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest None., (Copyright © 2020 Journal of Pediatric Urology Company. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Plants have been used for thousands of years as medicine for treating variety of diseases and medical complaints by most of the civilizations. Juniperus communis L. is an evergreen aromatic shrub with high therapeutic potential for the treatment of diseases in human and animals. The plant is rich in aromatic oils, invert sugars, resins, catechin, organic acid, terpenic acids, leucoanthocyanidin, alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, gums, lignins, wax, etc. Juniper berries or extract of the plant has traditionally been used as diuretic, anti-arthritis, anti-diabetes, antiseptic as well as for the treatment of gastrointestinal and autoimmune disorders. The essential oil and extracts of juniper have been experimentally documented to have antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal activities. Recent studies have also found anti-inflammatory, cytotoxic, hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects of berries in experimental models. Further, the essential oil incorporation retarded lipid peroxidation in preserved meat due to its high antioxidant effect which not only improved meat product quality but also improved shelf life of the product. Thus natural antioxidant such as juniper can be used in place synthetic antioxidant for the preservation and improving self-life of meat products. New well designed clinical trials in human and animals using well-characterized J. communis extract or oil need to be conducted so that additional information is generated which can support the use of this natural product as a nutraceutical.