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Equity and Equality are an integral part of any humane society. As a country with norms formulated and bills passed around gender disparity and equal education rights, India has come a long way to be genderinclusive when it comes to educating the youth. However, beyond the admittance of students in schools, the quality of education imparted to them acts as a measure of the child's development. Despite the tremendous strides in technological and institutional aspects, the Indian curricula still fare poorly in the discourse of gender sensitization. Gender inequality and societal stereotypes are an integral part of the kind of stories included in the Indian syllabi. The present study looks at the magnitude of gender inclusivity within the Indian curriculum by exploring the English textbooks for grades IX and X prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). The paper alludes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the country's efforts in maintaining gender equality in the classroom; and draws a parallel to the content taught in a child's formative years. By analyzing the manner in which gender roles, stereotypes, heteronormativity, and gender- based binaries are expressed within the highschool textbooks, the study opens up an academic probe into the impact of rigid gender boundaries on a student's mental health.

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Shakespeare’s most haunting tragedy, Macbeth, has been regarded as one of his best tragic trios. One of the most significant characters of the play – Lady Macbeth – often realized as the ‘antagonist’ of the play, is portrayed as the impetus and motivational factor behind Macbeth’s brief victory and, apparently, even his ultimum ruinam. With her actions within the course of the play, it becomes a daunting task to justify them without referring to the history of Lady Macbeth. Most of the past studies have focused on her earlier marriage and multiple miscarriages in order to condone her behaviour. The present research essay, however, reviews the play in a deconstructive approach and delves into a deep exploration of the representation of Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s renowned tragedy. The study focuses on the influence of normalizing power and gender distinction upon the actions of the characters. It studies the theory of Normalizing Power (as given by Michel Foucault) and views it in the context of how femininity is depicted within Macbeth. It further reinvestigates the patriarchal dominance and looks at the existing power structures that subconsciously affect Lady Macbeth’s motivation, leading to the tragic fall of the characters. By visiting the play from the lens of power and femininity inherent in the subconscious mind of the readers, the research aims to portray Lady Macbeth in a different light, one that is not dominated by supporting ideologies of male dominance or the notion of power in the hands of the phallus.

Originally intended to be a leisurely comic strip with paintings and pictorial representations, manga has emerged as a ‘soft power’ of modern-day Japan. As the world’s largest manga exporter today, the country is considered to be a manga superpower. Its influence on a fanbase spread across the globe has proved to be a noteworthy component in developing cross-cultural empathy within the readers. Despite its traction, the genre entered the literati only recently. Many researchers have analysed the influence of Japanese traditions, history as well as culture upon modern-day manga and their adaptations. Several researchers have also attempted to study the intercultural translation of manga and the influence of manga across countries. The growing emergence of cultural studies as a field of enquiry and manga as a cultural and literary product provides the base for the current article. With the country’s hybrid culture filled with urban and modern legends, myths, traditions and folklore, most of the stories created in manga are steeped in indigenous culture and are combined with modern lifestyle to create a unique reading experience. This renders these graphic novels as cultural products of manga, which are commodified and read throughout the world. The present article acts as a review of contemporary research in the field of manga as a cultural product and identifies its relevance in spreading Japanese cultural identity, thereby contributing to a global cultural identity. The study opens up new lenses to look at manga as cultural products of the 21st century and broadens the scope of recognizing individual and collective manga series for further research as expounders of Japanese cultural identity.

Abstract: Breast cancer has remained a global challenge and the second leading cause of cancer mortality in women and family history. Hereditary factors are some of the major risk factors associated with breast cancer. Out of total breast cancer cases, 5-10% account only for familial breast cancer, and nearly 50% of all hereditary breast cancer are due to BRCA1/BRCA2 germline mutations. BRCA1/2 mutations play an important role not only in determining the clinical prognosis of breast cancer but also in the survival curves. Since this risk factor is known, a significant amount of the healthcare burden can be reduced by taking preventive measures among people with a known history of familial breast cancer. There is increasing evidence that phytochemicals of nutrients and supplements help in the prevention and cure of BRCA-related cancers by different mechanisms such as limiting DNA damage, altering estrogen metabolism, or upregulating expression of the normal BRCA allele, and ultimately enhancing DNA repair. This manuscript reviews different approaches used to identify potential phytochemicals to mitigate the risk of familial breast cancer with BRCA mutations. The findings of this review can be extended for the prevention and cure of any BRCA-mutated cancer after proper experimental and clinical validation of the data.

This study aims to model the prediction of two clinically relevant properties of drug delivery systems specifically for niosomes, i.e., particle size and drug entrapment efficiency (EE%) using a combined approach of data mining, artificial neural networks (ANN), and design of experiments (DoE). Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) system was adopted to screen published literature on niosomes that resulted in 17 articles with 114 formulations. Eleven properties (input parameters) related to drugs and niosomes affecting particle size and drug entrapment (EE%) (output variables) were precisely identified and used for the network training. The network architecture consists of 5 fully connected hidden layers with eleven hidden nodes in each layer, input layer has eleven nodes where each of these nodes maintains omnidirectional injective relation with the corresponding hidden node. The hyperbolic tangent sigmoid transfer function (HTSTF) with Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation (LMB) was used to train the model. The network showed the highest prediction accuracy of 93.76% and 91.79% for EE% and particle size prediction. Sensitivity analysis identified drug/lipid ratio and Cholesterol/Surfactant ratio as the most significant factors affecting EE% and particle size of niosomes. Accordingly, nine Donepezil hydrochloride (DNPZ) noisome batches were prepared using a 3x3 factorial design with drug/lipid ratio and cholesterol/surfactant ratio as factors to validate the developed model for a new drug. The model was able to reach a prediction accuracy of more than 97% for experimental batches. Finally, the superiority of global ANN was demonstrated compared to the local RSM model for DNPZ niosome formulations. In conclusion, this study has demonstrated the use of the data mining approach to group published scattered information and formulate a data set to train the ANN that can help to design an optimum formulation and processing parameters for a clinically viable medicine with minimum time, cost, and efforts. However, the key challenge in forming an efficient ANN lies in having a suitable large data set and using the correct algorithm for the network.

Colorectal cancer is considered the third most frequent malignant neoplasm occurring in both men and women worldwide. Most approaches that have been used to fight and treat this type of malignancy are either invasive or nonselective. Noninvasive therapy using oral route can increase patient compliance and reduce treatment costs. Innovative measures such as use of nanotechnology and theranostic systems have been initiated in the oral therapy, which has been proven to be greatly advantageous in decreasing side effects, improving detection and diagnoses. This manuscript investigates recent innovative and novel therapeutic approaches through oral route and potential targets in the treatment of colorectal cancer.

Background: Cancer is one of the major causes of the death and affects people of all ages throughout the world. The drugs that are currently available to treat cancer have many side effects. Hence, there is considerable scientific interest in the continuing discovery of new anticancer agents from natural sources. The aim of this study was to prepare and characterize nanoparticles combining Indigofera intricata crude alcoholic extract and chitosan and to evaluate the anticancer cell proliferative activity for both extract and nanoparticles. Methods: Dried alcoholic extract was prepared and characterized for its phenolic and flavonoid contents. Chitosan extract nanoparticles was prepared by ionic gelation method and characterized by thin layer chromatography (TLC), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), particle size and zeta-potential analysis. The anticancer cell proliferative activities of both plant extract and nanoparticles at different concentrations were evaluated using breast cancer cell line (MCF 7). Results: The alcoholic extract showed high contents from both phenolic and flavonoid constituents (15 % and 22 % respectively). The interaction of polyphenolic compounds of the extract with chitosan was confirmed by the TLC and FTIR results. The particle size and zeta-potential of nanoparticles found to be 400.6nm ± 101.8 nm and +42.1 mV ± 9.27 mV respectively. The plant extract showed the lowest cell viability of 45.21% ± 4.8% at the highest dose (250 mg) tested in this investigation. Almost 500-fold reduction (from 250 mg to 0.5 mg) in the extract concentration required to achieve same anticancer cell proliferative activity when formulated as nanoparticles. Also 2.5 mg extract containing nanoparticles showed similar anticancer cell proliferative activity as 5 mg 5-FU. Conclusion: Our results revealed that traditional medicinal plants could be an excellent source of natural anticancer agents and the chitosan-extract nanoparticles is a promising formulation strategy to enhance their clinical effectiveness.