Chronic exposure of glucose rich environment creates several physiological and pathophysiological changes. There are several pathways by which hyperglycemia exacerbate its toxic effect on cells, ...tissues and organ systems. Hyperglycemia can induce oxidative stress, upsurge polyol pathway, activate protein kinase C (PKC), enhance hexosamine biosynthetic pathway (HBP), promote the formation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) and finally alters gene expressions. Prolonged hyperglycemic condition leads to severe diabetic condition by damaging the pancreatic β-cell and inducing insulin resistance. Numerous complications have been associated with diabetes, thus it has become a major health issue in the 21st century and has received serious attention. Dysregulation in the cardiovascular and reproductive systems along with nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy, diabetic foot ulcer may arise in the advanced stages of diabetes. High glucose level also encourages proliferation of cancer cells, development of osteoarthritis and potentiates a suitable environment for infections. This review culminates how elevated glucose level carries out its toxicity in cells, metabolic distortion along with organ dysfunction and elucidates the complications associated with chronic hyperglycemia.
The growing need of antimicrobial agent for novel therapies against multi-drug resistant bacteria has drawn researchers to green nanotechnology. Especially, eco-friendly biosynthesis of silver ...nanoparticles (Ag NPs) has shown its interesting impact against bacterial infection in laboratory research. In this study, a simple method was developed to form Ag NPs at room temperature, bio-reduction of silver ions from silver nitrate salt by leaf extract from Ocimum gratissimum. The Ag NPs appear to be capped with plant proteins, but are otherwise highly crystalline and pure. The Ag NPs have a zeta potential of −15mV, a hydrodynamic diameter of 31nm with polydispersity index of 0.65, and dry sizes of 18±3nm and 16±2nm, based on scanning and transmission electron microscopy respectively. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the Ag NPs against a multi-drug resistant Escherichia coli was 4μg/mL and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) was 8μg/mL, while the MIC and MBC against a resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus were slightly higher at 8μg/mL and 16μg/mL respectively. Further, the Ag NPs inhibited biofilm formation by both Escherichia coli and S. aureus at concentrations similar to the MIC for each strain. Treatment of E. coli and S. aureus with Ag NPs resulted in damage to the surface of the cells and the production of reactive oxygen species. Both mechanisms likely contribute to bacterial cell death. In summary, this new method appears promising for green biosynthesis of pure Ag NPs with potent antimicrobial activity.
The Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, India, located at the height of 150 meters above the surrounding sandy plains, is one of the city's most prominent monuments built over the Jodhpur ...group-Malani-Igneous Suite. The old city, which boasts numerous blue-painted houses, lies adjacent to the Mehrangarh Fort. The residents of the old city play a significant role in keeping the geoheritage and cultural heritage intact. The study investigates the moderating role of residents’ Perception towards support for Geoheritage Tourism and Conservation in and around Mehrangarh Fort. A combination of Weber’s theory of substantive and formal rationality (WTSFR) and Social Exchange Theory (SET) is used to investigate and infer the interposing and moderating role of residents’ perception on the relationship between influencing factors and support for geo-heritage conservation. A PLS evaluation of the SEM reveals a substantial capacity of the residents’ perception to predict support for conservation and tourism development.
The number of casualties and fatalities brought on by road accidents is one of the most significant concerns in the modern world. Instead of dispatching ambulances only at the time of demand, ...pre-positioning them can reduce the response time and provide prompt medical attention. Deep learning techniques hold great potential and have proven to be essential for problem-solving and decision-making in the field of healthcare services. This study introduces a deep-embedded clustering-based approach to predict optimal locations for ambulance positing. Various factors and patterns in a geographical region greatly influence the occurrence of road crashes, hence understanding such relationships while model building is crucial. The present study also emphasizes the need of preserving such patterns during model building to ensure real-time results and implements them with the help of another deep-learning-based model, Cat2Vec. The proposed framework is also compared with traditional clustering algorithms like K-means, GMM, and Agglomerative clustering. Moreover, to calculate response time and distance in real time, a novel scoring function has also been introduced for the performance evaluation of various algorithms. The proposed ambulance-positing system exhibits remarkable performance, achieving an accuracy of 95% with k-fold cross-validation and a novel distance score of 7.581 proving the use of the proposed approach is better than all the other traditional algorithms used.
The main purpose of this study is to investigate the best predictor of firm performance among different proxies. A sample of 287 Czech firms was taken from automobile, construction, and manufacturing ...sectors. Panel data of the firms was acquired from the Albertina database for the time period from 2016 to 2020. Three different proxies of firm performance, return of assets (RoA), return of equity (RoE), and return of capital employed (RoCE) were used as dependent variables. Including three proxies of firm’s performance, 16 financial ratios were measured based on the previous literature. A machine learning-based decision tree algorithm, Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID), was deployed to gauge each proxy’s efficacy and examine the best proxy of the firm performance. A partitioning rule of 70:30 was maintained, which implied that 70% of the dataset was used for training and the remaining 30% for testing. The results revealed that return on assets (RoA) was detected to be a robust proxy to predict financial performance among the targeted indicators. The results and the methodology will be useful for policy-makers, stakeholders, academics and managers to take strategic business decisions and forecast financial performance.
Indian cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis L.; C genome) is highly susceptible to black rot caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Pam.) Dowson. Till now no durable resistance ...genes have been identified in C genome of Brassica. Two B. carinata genotypes, NPC-9 and HCA-6 were found highly resistant to Xcc race 1 and 4, most prevalent throughout the world. Inter-specific hybridization was attempted for introgression of resistance genes from B. carinata into Indian cauliflower using three different embryo rescue approaches. Reciprocal crosses were made between two B. carinata and 7 lines of Indian cauliflower. Very low rate of success was observed when B. oleracea lines were used as female parents. Among the three different approaches, direct embryo culture was the most successful for development of F₁ and BC₁ population. Through ovule culture and direct embryo culture 58 F₁ hybrids were developed. Success rates for hybrid plant development through ovule culture and direct embryo culture were 1.04 and 11.33 %, respectively. All the F₁ hybrids were found to be highly resistant to Xcc race 1 and 4. Eleven NPC-9 based F₁ hybrids were used for development of BC₁ population through direct embryo culture with a success rate of 30.76 %. Direct embryo culture can be used as an effective tool for introgression of desirable genes across Brassica species. Among 29 BC₁ plants, 26 and 25 plants were highly resistant to Xcc race 4 and race 1, respectively. The population developed through inter-specific hybridization would open several avenues to develop durable black rot resistant lines in B. oleracea.
The dinitrophenyl functionalized tris-(amide) receptor behaves as a selective chemosensor for fluoride by encapsulation within the tripodal pseudocavity in polar aprotic solvents exhibiting ...solvatochromism and solvatomorphism.
Depression is a debilitating psychiatric disorder with a high rate of relapse and a low rate of response to antidepressant treatment. There is a dearth of new antidepressants due to an incomplete ...understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in its etiopathology. Chronic stress appears to be one of the foremost underlying causes of depression. Studies in animal models in the past decade have implicated epigenetic mechanisms in mediating the negative effects of chronic stressful events on the progression/manifestation of depression and other co-morbid neuropsychiatric disorders. However, non-coding RNAs, another layer of epigenetic regulation is relatively less studied in depression. Here, using the chronic social defeat stress (CSDS)-induced depression model, we hypothesized dysregulation in miRNA-mRNA networks in the neurogenic dentate gyrus (DG) region of male C57BL/6 mice. Among several dysregulated miRNAs identified
miRNA arrays, the most striking finding was the downregulation of miRNAs of the miR-30 family in stressed/defeated mice. To investigate miRNAs in the DG-resident neural stem/progenitor cells (NSCs/NPCs), we used the
neurosphere culture, where proliferating NSCs/NPCs were subjected to differentiation. Among several differentially expressed miRNAs, we observed an upregulation of miR-30 family miRNAs upon differentiation. To search for the gene targets of these miRNAs, we performed gene arrays followed by bioinformatics analysis, miRNA manipulations and luciferase assays. Our results suggest that miR-30 family miRNAs mediate chronic stress-induced depression-like phenotype by altering hippocampal neurogenesis and neuroplasticity
controlling the epigenetic and transcription regulators such as
and
; and cell signaling regulators like
, and
.
This review aims to deliver a detailed and comparative account of the reported examples of anion (halide and oxyanions) coordinated capsules and pseudocapsules of tripodal receptors that employ ...hydrogen bonds and/or electrostatic hydrogen bonds offered by specific binding sites from amide, urea and thiourea functionalities. The review discusses both the structural aspects of anion binding and solution-state anion binding affinities of
N
-bridged and aryl-bridged tripodal receptors. Discussions relating to selective anion recognition and separation, carbondioxide uptake, and transmembrane anion transport, as demonstrated by some of these tripodal receptors have also been included in this review.
This review provides a detailed and comparative account of the solid- and solution-states anion (halides and oxyanions) binding affinities of hydrogen bonding tripodal scaffolds.
The Psyra Walker, 1860, is a typical Sino-Himalayan genus of the subfamily Ennominae, currently known by 18 species/4 subspecies globally and 9 species from India. This study aims to revise the ...taxonomy and ecology of Indian Psyra by providing a morphology-based diagnostic key, highlighting their altitudinal, habitat and seasonal preferences, and modelling their distribution based on current and future climatic scenarios. Here, we describe a new species, P. variabilis sp. nov. and document 4 species and 1 subspecies as new to India, viz. P. gracilis, P. szetschwana, P. dsagara, P. falcipennis and P. debilis debilis, thus updating the global species count to 19 with 14 species/1 subspecies from India. We also submitted partial mitochondrial COI sequences of P. crypta, P. similaria, P. spurcataria and P. gracilis as novel to the global genetic database and calculated the overall genetic divergence was 5.17% within the genus, suggesting strong monophyly. Being a typical montane genus, most of the species of Psyra were active within 2000-2280 m altitude, 10.55-15.7°C annual mean temperature, 1200-2300 mm annual precipitation and 168-179 NDVI. Psyra species were predominant in wet temperate, mixed coniferous and moist temperate deciduous forests, their abundance and richness being at peak during post-monsoon months of October-November. The major bioclimatic variables influencing the overall distribution of the genus were mean temperature of warmest quarter, temperature seasonality and precipitation of coldest/driest quarter. While two of the modelled species were predicted to lose area occupancy under future climatic scenarios, the narrow-specialist, Trans-Himalayan species P. debilis debilis was projected to gain up to 75% additional area in the years 2041-60. The results of this study will be helpful to identify sites with maximum area loss projection in ecologically fragile Indian Himalaya and initiating conservation management for such climatically vulnerable insect species groups.
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