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Nanocomposites with multifunctional application prospects have already dragged accelerating interests of materials scientists. Here we present CdS/ZnO nanocomposites with different ...morphology engineering the precursor molar ratio in a facile wet chemical synthesis route. The materials were structurally and morphologically characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The growth mechanism of the composite structure with varying molar ratio is delineated with oriented attachment self assemble techniques. Photocatalytic activity of CdS/ZnO nanocomposites with varying morphology were explored for the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) dye in presence of visible light irradiation and the results reveal that the best catalytic performance arises in CdS/ZnO composite with 1: 1 ratio. The antibacterial efficiency of all nanocomposites were investigated on Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumonia without light irradiation. Antibacterial activity of CdS/ZnO nanocomposites were studied using the bacteriological test-well diffusion agar method and results showed significant antibacterial activity in CdS/ZnO composite with 1:3 ratio. Overall, CdS/ZnO nanocomposites excel in different potential applications, such as visible light photocatalysis and antimicrobial activity with their tuneable structure.
Introduction
The therapeutic use of lithium in bipolar disorder is often restricted due to its narrow therapeutic window and adverse drug reactions. Lithium-induced early renal dysfunction is ...clinically important as it may lead to sodium depletion due to natriuresis leading to lithium retention and lithium toxicity. This is most often seen in the initial phases of therapy, and psychiatrists struggle titrating the dose of lithium and stabilizing the serum lithium level.
Objectives
The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of add-on sodium chloride on serum lithium levels in bipolar disorder.
Methods
The present randomized controlled trial (NCT04222816) was conducted in 60 patients with type I bipolar disorder who were randomized into the control group who received lithium carbonate with the advice not to take additional salt (at the table) and the test group who received sachets of sodium chloride (1 g/d) as an add-on to lithium carbonate and were advised to restrict their additional salt intake (at the table) to 1 g/d. After baseline assessments, all patients were followed up at 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks when serum lithium, sodium and potassium were estimated. Serum creatinine and aldosterone were repeated at 12 weeks.
Results
In the test group, the fluctuation rate in serum lithium (26.7%) was significantly (p=0.01) lower than in the control group (63.3%). There was a significant difference in serum lithium in the control group at different time points; however, the changes were not significant in the test group. There was a significant difference in serum lithium between the groups at 8 and 12 weeks of follow-up. There were no significant differences in the change in serum sodium, potassium, creatinine, aldosterone, creatinine clearance, and blood pressure within the group and between the groups. A significant positive correlation was found between serum lithium and aldosterone at baseline.
Conclusions
Intake of add-on sodium chloride (1 gm/day) may reduce the fluctuations in serum lithium during the maintenance phase of lithium therapy in type I bipolar disorder.
Disclosure of Interest
None Declared
The SuperPose web server rapidly and robustly calculates both pairwise and multiple protein structure superpositions using a modified quaternion eigenvalue approach. SuperPose generates sequence ...alignments, structure alignments, PDB (Protein Data Bank) coordinates and RMSD statistics, as well as difference distance plots and images (both static and interactive) of the superimposed molecules. SuperPose employs a simple interface that requires only PDB files or accession numbers as input. All other superposition decisions are made by the program. SuperPose is uniquely able to superimpose structures that differ substantially in sequence, size or shape. It is also capable of handling a much larger range of superposition queries and situations than many standalone programs and yields results that are intuitively more in agreement with known biological or structural data. The SuperPose web server is freely accessible at http://wishart.biology.ualberta.ca/SuperPose/.
In Indian traditional system of medicine, herbal remedies are prescribed for the treatment of diseases including diabetes mellitus. In recent years, plants are being effectively tried in a variety of ...pathophysiological states.
Tamarindus indica Linn. is one of them. In the present study, aqueous extract of seed of
Tamarindus indica Linn. was found to have potent antidiabetogenic activity that reduces blood sugar level in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic male rat. Supplementation of this aqueous extract by gavage at the dose of 80
mg/0.5
ml distilled water/100
g body weight per day in STZ-induced diabetic rat resulted a significant diminution of fasting blood sugar level after 7 days. Continuous supplementation of this extract for 14 days resulted no significant difference in this parameter from control level. Moreover, this supplementation produced a significant elevation in liver and skeletal muscle glycogen content, activity of liver glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase in respect to diabetic group. Activities of liver glucose-6-phosphatase, liver and kidney glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT) and glutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) activities were decreased significantly in the aqueous extract supplemented group in respect to diabetic group. All these parameters were not resettled to the controlled level after 7 days of this extract supplementation but after 14 days of this supplementation, all the above mentioned parameters were restored to the control level.
An analysis is carried out to predict inter-chamber leakage flows through the two transition active contacts, which separate the high pressure chambers from the adjacent low pressure chambers, in the ...cycloidal class toothed starring of ORBIT® motors. Among geometrically form closed contacts which separates chambers from each other, few active contacts support high reaction loads during the process of transmitting torque in such unique LSHT hydrostatic units. Contact deformations in those contacts generate gaps in the other contacts for a partial period of time. High inter-chamber leakages occur through such gaps at transition active contacts. In an attempt to visualize the characteristics of such leakages, which contribute towards the poorer leakage characteristics of such machines, detail mapping i.e., magnitudes, rotational position etc., of such gaps of a commercially available unit, are carried out. For estimating gaps FEM technique is used. The FEM results have very good agreement with the results predicted earlier using trial method. Such gaps are difficult to measure as the contact positions are inaccessible to equip any conventional measuring instrument. The characteristics of leakage flows through such gaps are then established by CFD analysis using Fluent® in Ansys environment.
With devastating increase in population there is a great necessity to increase crop productivity of staple crops but the productivity is greatly affected by various abiotic stress factors such as ...drought, salinity. An attempt has been made a brief account on abiotic stress resistance of major cereal crops viz. In spite of good successes obtained on physiological and use molecular biology, the benefits of this high cost technology are beyond the reach of developing countries. This review discusses several morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and molecular mechanisms of major cereal crops related to the adaptation of these crop to abiotic stress factors. It discusses the effect of abiotic stresses on physiological processes such as flowering, grain filling and maturation and plant metabolisms viz. photosynthesis, enzyme activity, mineral nutrition, and respiration. Though significant progress has been attained on the physiological, biochemical basis of resistance to abiotic stress factors, very little progress has been achieved to increase productivity under sustainable agriculture. Therefore, there is a great necessity of inter-disciplinary research to address this issue and to evolve efficient technology and its transfer to the farmers' fields.
Punzi-loss Abudinén, F.; Bertemes, M.; Bilokin, S. ...
The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
2022/2, Volume:
82, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We present the novel implementation of a non-differentiable metric approximation and a corresponding loss-scheduling aimed at the search for new particles of unknown mass in high energy physics ...experiments. We call the loss-scheduling, based on the minimisation of a figure-of-merit related function typical of particle physics, a Punzi-loss function, and the neural network that utilises this loss function a Punzi-net. We show that the Punzi-net outperforms standard multivariate analysis techniques and generalises well to mass hypotheses for which it was not trained. This is achieved by training a single classifier that provides a coherent and optimal classification of all signal hypotheses over the whole search space. Our result constitutes a complementary approach to fully differentiable analyses in particle physics. We implemented this work using PyTorch and provide users full access to a public repository containing all the codes and a training example.
Aluminium matrix composites reinforced with molybdenum aluminide nanoparticles were synthesized by ball milling and reactive sintering of the mixture of aluminium and 10
wt% hydrated molybdenum oxide ...powders. Sintering the as milled powder in air below 750
°C produced MoAl
12 intermetallic compound nanoparticles, at 750
°C produced a mixture of MoAl
5 and MoAl
4 nanoparticles and at 800
°C under Argon atmosphere produced predominantly MoAl
4 intermetallic nano-particles in the Al matrix. The powder compacts sintered in air below 750
°C produced MoAl
12 whereas at 750
°C or above formed the Al matrix composite reinforced with the MoAl
5 nanoparticles. These nanoparticles become agglomerated to take up some irregular shaped flakes in the metal matrix. The reaction between Al and hydrated Mo oxide powders was found to be a favorable way to produce predominantly a particular Mo–Al intermetallic compound at a particular temperature. The Al
2O
3 particles formed as another reaction product, in all the above reactions, remain distributed in these composites. The composites thus formed were characterized by SEM-EDS, DTA, XRD and TEM analysis.
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