Assessment of glycemic potential of<Emphasis Type="Italic">Musa paradisiaca</Emphasis> stem juice

The present study reveals the effect of Musa paradisiaca stem juice on blood glucose level (BGL) of normal & diabetic rats. The dose of 500 mg/kg bodyweight produces a significant rise of 28.3% in blood glucose level after 6h of oral administration in normal rats. Whereas, in sub diabetic rats the same dose produces a rise of 16.4% in blood glucose levels within 1h during glucose tolerance test (GTT) and a rise of 16% after 4 h in fasting blood glucose levels of severe diabetic cases. These results were unexpected and important to report as other species of Musa like Musa sapientum has been reported for its hypoglycemic effect.     

An analytical solution to applied mathematics-related Love’s equation using the Boubaker polynomials expansion scheme

In this paper, we present a method for the numerical solution of Love's equation in a particular physical system. The resolution protocol is based on the Boubaker Polynomials Expansion Scheme (BPES), followed by array analyses. The obtained results are compared with some recently published ones. The accuracy and the asymptotic behaviors of the solutions are discussed.     

Production of recombinant enveloped structural proteins from the Chinese WSSV isolate

The white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is one of the deadly pathogens of penaeid shrimps and other crustaceans. The WSSV virion consists of an enveloped rod-shaped nucleocapsid enclosing a large circular double stranded DNA genome of 305 Kb with 181 open reading frames. The two major structural genes, VP19 and VP28 were amplified from the genomic DNA of Chinese isolate of WSSV and cloned in pUCm-T vector and sub cloned in pET-30a (+) vector. The expressions of genes inE. coli (BL21) were confirmed by SDS-PAGE analysis. The clones were sequenced, submitted to the gene bank and the Xiang Shan strain of WSSV were compared with the previous reported sequence of WSSV of various regions which revealed that VP19 and VP28 gene sequences had certain differences from the sequences of similar genes of the isolate already reported. The recombinant proteins expressed, purified and characterized.     

Metabolic Bone Profile of Healthy Adult North Indian Population from Chandigarh Urban Bone Epidemiological Study (CUBES)

We aimed to estimate metabolic bone profile in a large cohort of healthy, adult Indian population to generate reference standards of serum calcium, phosphate and alkaline phosphatase (ALP), 25 (OH) Vitamin D and iPTH, and also to find out the prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency in healthy population. Apparently healthy people in the age group of 20–80 years, residing in the union territory of Chandigarh were chosen. Fasting samples for serum calcium, phosphate, albumin, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), 25 (OH) D and iPTH were collected and were processed on the same day. We recruited 930 healthy subjects from different subsectors of Chandigarh. Final analysis was done for 915 subjects. Out of this, 530 (58%) were women and 385 (42%) were men. The study participants were divided into two groups, less than and more than 50 years for the men and pre and post-menopausal for the women. The serum calcium, phosphate, ALP and iPTH were significantly higher in the post-menopausal women compared to the pre-menopausal women. The median plasma 25 (OH) D in men and women was 12.5 ng/mL and 14.3 ng/mL, respectively. 25 (OH) D deficiency was seen in 65.4% of individuals. 25 (OH) D levels co-related negatively with iPTH levels (r = − 0.4, p < 0.0001), and showed an increasing trend with age. We have thus presented metabolic bone profile of healthy, adult north Indian population. These reference values can be used for diagnosis and monitoring of various MBDs. Vitamin D deficiency is still rampant in our population in spite of increasing awareness.     

Search result diversification on attributed networks via nonnegative matrix factorization

Search result diversification is an effective way to tackle query ambiguity and enhance result novelty. In the context of large information networks, diversifying search result is also critical for further design of applications such as link prediction and citation recommendation. In previous work, this problem has mainly been tackled in a way of implicit query intent. To further enhance the performance on attributed networks, we propose a novel search result diversification approach via nonnegative matrix factorization. Our approach encodes latent query intents as well as nodes as representation vectors by a novel nonnegative matrix factorization model, and the diversity of the results accounts for the query relevance and the novelty w.r.t. these vectors. To learn the representation vectors of nodes, we derive the multiplicative updating rules to train the nonnegative matrix factorization model. We perform a comprehensive evaluation on our approach with various baselines. The results show the effectiveness of our proposed solution, and verify that attributes do help improve diversification performance.     

Computer Applications in Balancing Chemical Equations

Computer-based approaches to balancing chemical equations are discussed. Out of 13 methods surveyed, 6 are based on matrix, 2 are interactive programs, 1 is a stand alone system, 1 is developed in algorithm in Basic, 1 is based on design engineering, 1 is written in HyperCard, and 1 prepared for the World Wide Web. Features in addition to balancing chemical equations include the following: solve possible reactions from a list of molecules and ions, determine the number of independent chemical reactions, calculate yields, predict mass relationships, and balance rare reactions. Research and development issues are addressed.     

Autoimmune thyroid disorders—An update

Background: Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD), a common organ specific autoimmune disorder is seen mostly in women between 30–50 yrs of age. Thyroid autoimmunity can cause several forms of thyroiditis ranging from hypothyroidism (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis) to hyperthyroidism (Graves’Disease). Prevalence rate of autoimmune mediated hypothyroidism is about 0.8 per 100 and 95% among them are women. Graves’ disease is about one tenth as common as hypothyroidism and tends to occur more in younger individuals. Both these disorders share many immunologic features and the disease may progress from one state to other as the autoimmune process changes. Genetic, environmental and endogenous factors are responsible for initiation of thyroid autoimmunity. At present the only confirmed genetic factor lies in HLA complex (HLA DR-3) and the T cell regulatory gene (CTLA 4). A number of environmental factors like viral infection, smoking, stress & iodine intake are associated with the disease progression. The development of antibodies to thyroid peroxidase (TPO) thyroglobulin (TG) and Thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSH R) is the main hallmark of AITD. Circulating T Lymphocytes are increased in AITD and thyroid gland is infiltrated with CD4+ and CD8+ T Cells. Wide varieties of cytokines are produced by infiltrated immune cells, which mediate cytotoxicity leading to thyroid cell destruction. Circulating antibodies to TPO and TG are measured by immunofluorescense, hemagglutination, ELISA & RIA. TSHR antibodies of Graves’ disease can be measured in bioassays or indirectly in assays that detect antibody binding to the receptor.     

Investigation of structures similarity of organic substances

According to similarity property principle, structurally similar molecules tend to have similar properties. Similar molecules exhibit similar biological activities. However, there is no hard and fast rule that the compounds with similar chemical structure will have similar functions. There are several compounds of similar chemical structure with significantly different biological actions and activities. Structure similarity of natural products can be investigated using Tanimoto coefficient and Euclidean distance measurements. To do this, the molecules are decomposed into smaller fragments, and a dictionary, of the fragments are prepared. Using the dictionary, 2D fingerprints are formed. With the fingerprints Tanimoto coefficient and Euclidean distance are quantitated.