National Academy Science Letters最新文献

Efavirenz (EFV) is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor that binds to reverse transcriptase enzyme resulting in its allosteric inhibition. It is a constituent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) used for preventing maternal-to-child transmission of the HIV virus. Efavirenz has been classified as a class D drug which means that there have been reports of reproductive toxicity induced by it and should be used only when potential benefits outweigh the risk. Pregnant Swiss albino mice were divided into the following groups: control group (C): mice treated with distilled water (6 mice) and treated group (T): mice treated with EFV (50 mg/kg) (6 mice). All the mice were given the drug and distilled water from gestation days 6–15 by oral route. On the 18th day of gestation, each group’s mice blood was collected from retro-orbital sinus for biochemical assay, and then, they were killed by cervical dislocation. Laparotomy was done to resect out the fetuses which were weighed, and then fixed in 10% formalin. Their liver was processed for histological study under H&E and PAS stain. The microscopic study of the liver showed the reduced density of hepatoblasts and progenitor cells, deficient sinusoid formation and destruction of the central vein in the treated group as compared to the control. A significant reduction in the weight of the fetal liver was observed. The values of SGOT, SGPT and serum bilirubin were found to increase in the treated group, whereas the values of serum albumin and total protein were found to decrease. Efavirenz is a hepatotoxic drug that should be judiciously used in pregnancy.

A signed graph (Sigma) is an ordered pair (G,(sigma)) that consists of a underlying graph (G=(V,E)) and a sign mapping called signature (sigma) from E to the sign set (lbrace +, - rbrace). In this article, we provide another way of looking at the Cartesian product of a path graph and an arbitrary signed graph (Sigma). We then present the adjacency spectrum and Laplacian spectrum of the Cartesian product in terms of the spectrum and Laplacian spectrum of (Sigma), respectively. We further provide an upper bound and lower bound for the respective energies. As applications, the results in this article are used (1) to construct a family of infinitely many cospectral and Laplacian cospectral graphs and (2) to compute the adjacency (respectively, Laplacian) spectrum of some known classes of graphs.

Nowadays, the demand for the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is likely to be driven by the need for real-time health monitoring to handle chronic diseases. Designing a distributed and reliable access control and user authentication scheme for IoMT involves multiple layers of security measures to ensure the integrity, confidentiality, as well as availability of sensitive patient data. However, the major problem with smart healthcare systems is data security and privacy. Blockchain can resolve these issues due to its immutability and transparency features. Most of the existing research enhances security and data privacy but they do not consider the overhead, delay, and scalability. The clustering-based proposed approach adopted the real-world issues of blockchain, i.e., delay, and scalability. It is an efficient access control approach that enables users to establish their desired access control policy to protect their private medical data. It uses a dual chain mechanism in which the access policies are stored in one chain, while the data transactions are stored in another chain. This approach addresses the challenge of access control resolution by enabling data owners to decide their desirable access policies. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed scheme in terms of processing time, computational time and its resilience against various security threats.

Two specimens of Rhinoceros Leatherjacket, P. nasicornis were observed and collected from Vizhinjam fishing harbor, Arabian sea caught by the commercial fishing trawler. The presence of bigger blotch over the caudal fin region; presence of two brown stripes on lateral sides of body and long slender horn like dorsal-fin spine located in front of the eyes identified these specimens as Pseudalutarius nasicornis. Our present finding can be used as an extended distributional record of P. nasicornis in Arabian coastal region.

Soft corals are sessile marine benthic organisms that belong to the subclass Octocorallia of the class Anthozoa and play a significant role in the coral reef ecosystem. A recent marine faunal survey revealed the distribution of Lobophytum varium Tixier-Durivault, 1970 is reported here as a new record for India. The species is distinguished from congeneric species by the skeletal component structures of the colony’s surface layer, which have clubs and rod-shaped sclerites, and the interior regions contain cylindrical, spindle, oblong-shaped, irregular-shaped, and slender capstan-shaped sclerites. This paper provides a detailed descriptions of colony morphology and sclerite and their illustrations.

Mustard aphid, vernacularly known as turnip aphid, Lipaphis erysimi, is a serious pest of vegetable Brassicas in India. Design of new pest management strategies depends on the life-table parameters. However, life table of L. erysimi was poorly studied under field conditions. The present study aims at constructing life tables of L. erysimi on cabbage and cauliflower under field conditions. The field population had the shortest nymphal duration, viz. 4.31 ± 0.48 and 4.33 ± 0.62 days on cauliflower and cabbage, respectively. The biotic potential of aphid on cauliflower and cabbage in the field was 2.71 × 10⁵³ and 3.49 × 10⁴⁹, which was much better than the corresponding values in the laboratory (2.86 × 10³⁸ and 2.27 × 10³⁸). The population parameters varied between two rearing conditions, viz. r and λ, was significantly superior under field conditions; however, the R₀, GRR and T were superior under laboratory conditions. On cauliflower and cabbage, the population of L. erysimi doubles in 1.75 and 1.74 days, respectively, whereas in a laboratory conditions, it took 2.24 and 2.47 days. S_xj of L. erysimi varied across developmental stages. The expected longevity of L. erysimi on cauliflower at age zero (e₀) was 12.84 and 7.90 days under laboratory and field conditions, respectively.

Of late, hard turning is widely accepted as an innovative and cost-effective machining solution for the hard-to-cut materials in a single machining set-up using Dry machining and other cooling medium such as liquid and solid lubricants. The hard turning provides better part quality than grinding, but hard turning surfaces are affected by the distressed surface pattern termed as white layer (WL). This WL is detrimental to the part produced by decreasing the fatigue life. Also, the surface integrity is deteriorated due to dynamic phase transformations. So, an attempt was made with super hardened AISI D4 steel turned with cubic boron nitride insert under Dry Machining, also gas mixture cooling. Noticeably, the results revealed that the dry machining didn’t eliminate WL and produced more roughness. But WL elimination and better surface finish were accomplished under Gas mixture cooling.

Graphical abstract

The population of the Indian Skimmer (Rynchops albicollis) has declined sharply due to the habitat distraction by different anthropogenic disturbances, and consequently, this species has recently been categorised as endangered. The article presents the first photographic record about the presence of two individuals of the Indian Skimmer in the Ganga valley in district Haridwar, Uttarakhand, Himalayan foothills during March 2023.Continuous monitoring of the breeding and wintering populations of this endangered species is, therefore, needed in different parts of the Indian subcontinent.

While there is a renewed interest in the use of infrared imaging in the medical field owing to improvements in image acquisition and processing technologies, its utility in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus on a large scale has not been adequately evaluated in previous studies. This was a multicenter, double-blind case–control trial across three centers in India which enrolled a total of 1095 adults in two groups—590 participants with diabetes and 505 healthy controls. The primary outcome was the difference in thermography readings between the two groups. The secondary outcomes included the correlation of thermography readings with HbA1C, considered the gold standard. The thermography readings at all seven sites were lower in people with diabetes as compared to the control group. However, this attained statistical significance across four sites—forehead (Δmean difference = 0·34, 95% CI [0·14–0·53], medial canthus of both eyes (Δmean difference = 0·48, 95% CI [0·31–0·66], pinna of both ears (Δmean difference = 0·53, 95% CI [0·28–0·73]) and palmar surface of both hands (Δmean difference = 0·28, 95% CI [0·02–0·53]). In addition, thermography readings showed a significant negative correlation with HbA1C values across these four sites, although the strength of the correlation was weak. This study sheds light on the utility of thermography for large-scale noninvasive diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. Future research should focus on large-scale community screening of early asymptomatic disease as well as micro- and macrovascular complications to define its exact role in the overall disease management pathway.

In the last few decades, there has been sharp increase in consumption of energy around the globe. Due to finite sources of fossil fuels and rise in exhaust emissions resulting into global warming, the researchers have shifted to the petroleum fuel alternatives. The present work considers the different engine input factors (i.e., blending ratio and load) while evaluating the different performance parameters (brake thermal efficiency), combustion (brake-specific fuel consumption), and emission parameters (nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbon) while using waste cooking oil biodiesel in a four-stroke single-cylinder diesel engine. A hybrid RSM coupled with NSGA-II technique has been considered for optimizing the performance, combustion, and emission characteristics. The novelty of this work is the application of NSGA II, which has been successfully applied in the simultaneous optimization of brake-specific fuel consumption, brake thermal efficiency, and different emission parameters, viz. carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbon. Five optimum combinations have been evaluated from the 39 Pareto solutions set, and their confirmation tests have also been conducted. From the analysis, the brake thermal efficiency of 31.29% and brake-specific fuel consumption of 0.261 kg/kW-hr along with values of the emissions such as nitrogen oxide: 63.470 ppm, carbon monoxide: 0.085% and hydrocarbons: 20.724 ppm have been achieved. The results are very much within the acceptable limits which confirms the feasibility for the use of waste cooking oil biodiesel in the four-stroke diesel engine.