Range Of Drawbacks Research Articles

Synthesis of promising copper nanoparticles utilizing biocontrol agents, <i>Trichoderma virens</i> and <i>Chaetomium globosum</i>

The pursuit of creating safe and efficient pesticides remains an ongoing aspiration. Recently, the potential efficacy of metal nanoparticles against diverse phytopathogens has come to light. Commonly used methods, viz. chemical and physical means of nanoparticle synthesis are associated with a range of drawbacks. Fortunately, the biological synthesis method ensures safe and non-toxic nanoparticles. The present study was carried out during 2022–23 at ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, which documented the successful synthesis of copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) utilizing the supernatant of potent fungal biocontrol agents, viz. Trichoderma virens and Chaetomium globosum. The reduction in the size of copper was determined by UV-Vis spectroscopy. The change in colour of the reaction mixture confirmed the reduction in the size of particles. Characterization using TEM measured spherical CuNPs of the size range 8 to 100 nm depending on the CuSO4 concentration used. Furthermore, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) unveiled the presence of several functional groups that plays pivotal role in reducing and stabilizing particle size. The in vitro assay conclusively demonstrated the effectiveness of biosynthesized CuNPs, with significant inhibition at a concentration of 10 µg/ml in the case of Xanthomonas euvesicatoria and at 50 µg/ml in the case of Enterobacter cloacae. Our study marks the first instance of synthesizing CuNPs through the utilization of two aforesaid fungal species holding significant promise for antibacterial applications.

The Role of Competition Commission of India In Navigating The Turbulent Waters of Indian Market Dynamics

Competition law encompasses a set of rules and regulations designed to protect and promote competition, with the ultimate goal of maximizing consumer welfare. Competition law has gone through several stages of development, and it is only in recent times that its significant alteration has aligned more appropriately with the contemporary economic and political landscape on a global scale. During the early stages of competition law, it was primarily formulated by developed economies. Consequently, this exerted influence on developing economies such as China and India, prompting them to adopt competition laws within their own jurisdictions. This adoption has subsequently facilitated a more favorable business environment, even in developing countries, as competition operates on an international scale and possesses a global reach. In the absence of competition rules, a nation may have a range of drawbacks, including negative impacts on consumer welfare, reduced product quality, and limited market options, among others. The Competition Commission of India serves as the regulatory body responsible for overseeing competition within the Indian market and is endowed with the authority to implement competition laws. Competition law refers to the legal framework that addresses various obstacles and distortions in the market. The entity responsible for monitoring and regulating market operations is known as the competition regulator. The commission is legally obligated by the Competition Act, 2002, to proactively mitigate anti-competitive acts, foster and maintain competition in markets, safeguard consumers' interests, and uphold the unrestricted freedom of trade exercised by other participants in the market. This research article seeks to examine and analyze the Competition Commission of India, including its powers, functions, enforcement mechanisms, the regulatory contributions made by CCI in the field of competition regulation, and the significant judgments delivered by CCI.

Current status of Cancer Nanotheranostics: Emerging strategies for cancer management.

Cancer diagnosis and management have been a slow-evolving area in medical science. Conventional therapies have by far proved to have various limitations. Also, the concept of immunotherapy which was thought to revolutionize the management of cancer has presented its range of drawbacks. To overcome these limitations nanoparticulate-derived diagnostic and therapeutic strategies are emerging. These nanomaterials are to be explored as they serve as a prospect for cancer theranostics. Nanoparticles have a significant yet unclear role in screening as well as therapy of cancer. However, nanogels and Photodynamic therapy is one such approach to be developed in cancer theranostics. Photoactive cancer theranostics is a vivid area that might prove to help manage cancer. Also, the utilization of the quantum dots as a diagnostic tool and to selectively kill cancer cells, especially in CNS tumors. Additionally, the redox-sensitive micelles targeting the tumor microenvironment of the cancer are also an important theranostic tool. This review focuses on exploring various agents that are currently being studied or can further be studied as cancer theranostics.

Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Components for Light Induced Molecular Machines

Molecular machines are systems of molecules that convert chemical energy into mechanical forces. They have a range of potential applications such as transportation of chemicals or use as an arity signal for computation. In literature, most molecular machines are activated through some form of chemical signal. This has a range of drawbacks from limiting the range of environments the machine can function in to the buildup of byproducts of the chemical reaction. The solution to these limitations was found in the synthesis and characterization of various light induced molecular machines. Like the name implies, this subset of molecular machines uses light as the signal that activates the mechanism. The model of molecular machine being worked on in this research is a porphyrin-based molecular shuttle shown in scheme 1.Upon photoexcitation of the porphyrin acceptor, represented by the symbol A, an electron transfer from naphthyl group to the porphyrin occurs. Following this photoinduced electron transfer, a radical pair is formed between the porphyrin and naphthyl group. The newly generated naphthyl cation is expected to drive the macrocycle situated around the naphthalene towards the aryl group due to the more favourable interactions. Upon relaxation of the radical pair through back electron transfer, the macrocycle is expected to return to the naphthalene group due to the regeneration of the electron density on the naphthyl group. In this context, novel molecular machine components have been synthesized and characterized using various spectroscopic and electrochemical techniques. The goal of which, is to fine tune the chemical, physical and synthetical properties such that they are suitable for future use in a complete molecular machine as described in scheme 1. Figure 1

The need for Pan-European automatic pollen and fungal spore monitoring: A stakeholder workshop position paper.

BackgroundInformation about airborne pollen concentrations is required by a range of end users, particularly from the health sector who use both observations and forecasts to diagnose and treat allergic patients. Manual methods are the standard for such measurements but, despite the range of pollen taxa that can be identified, these techniques suffer from a range of drawbacks. This includes being available at low temporal resolution (usually daily averages) and with a delay (usually 3–9 days from the measurement). Recent technological developments have made possible automatic pollen measurements, which are available at high temporal resolution and in real time, although currently only scattered in a few locations across Europe.Materials & MethodsTo promote the development of an extensive network across Europe and to ensure that this network will respond to end user needs, a stakeholder workshop was organised under the auspices of the EUMETNET AutoPollen Programme. Participants discussed requirements for the groups they represented, ranging from the need for information at various spatial scales, at high temporal resolution, and for targeted services to be developed.ResultsThe provision of real‐time information is likely to lead to a notable decrease in the direct and indirect health costs associated with allergy in Europe, currently estimated between €50–150 billion/year.1 Discussion & ConclusionA European measurement network to meet end user requirements would thus more than pay for itself in terms of potential annual savings and provide significant impetus to research across a range of disciplines from climate science and public health to agriculture and environmental management.

A novel approach for the evaluation of ice release performance of coatings using static friction measurements

Atmospheric icing on structures and equipment represents a challenge for operation and safety. Passive ice removal by ice-phobic coatings has received much attention over the last decades. The current state-of-the-art methods for quantifying the ice-release properties of such coatings suffer from a range of drawbacks, including poor reproducibility and high complexity test setups. Here, a facile rotational tribometer approach for measuring the static friction between polymeric coatings and ice is presented. The torque necessary to initiate motion at the coating-ice interphase was used as a measure of ice release. For a polydimethylsiloxane-based coating (Sylgard 184), the effects of ice-temperature, normal force, coating thickness, and dwell time (contact time between coating and ice at rest with fully applied normal force prior to applying torque) were established along with the conditions resulting in least data variation. With these conditions, tribology-based friction measurements were carried out on two additional coatings; a two-component polyurethane, and a commercial foul release coating. The outcome of the method, i.e., grading of the coatings in terms of antiicing effect, matched those obtained with a widely used ice adhesion test method based on ice shear adhesion testing. The same trends are revealed by the two methods. However, the findings from the proposed tribology-based method result in consistently lower variation in outcomes and offer more detail on the ice adhesion and friction mechanisms.

Human Papillomavirus Selected Properties and Related Cervical Cancer Prevention Issues.

High-risk human papillomavirus strains are widely known to be the causative agents responsible for cervical cancer development. Aggregated damage caused by papillomaviruses solely is estimated in at least 5% of all malignancies of the human body and 16% in cancers that affect the female genital area. Enhanced understanding of the complex issue on how the high extent of carcinogenicity is eventually formed due to the infection by the Papoviridae family would contribute to enhancing current prevention strategies not only towards cervical cancer, but also other HPV associated cancers. This review article is aimed at presenting the key points in two directions: the current cervical cancer prevention and related aspects of HPV behavior. Virtually all applied technologies related to HPV diagnostics and screening programs, such as HPV tests, colposcopy-based tests (VIA/VILI), conventional and liquid-based cytology, currently available are presented. Issues of availability, advantages, and drawbacks of the screening programs, as well as vaccination strategies, are also reviewed in the article based on the analyzed sources. The current point of view regarding HPV is discussed with emphasis on the most problematic aspect of the HPV family concerning the observed increasing number of highly carcinogenic types. Present trends in HPV infection diagnostics throughout the human fluids and tissues are also reported, including the latest novelties in this field, such as HPV assay/self-sample device combinations. Besides, a brief outline of the related prevention issues in Kazakhstan, the leading country of Central Asia, is presented. Kazakhstan, as one of the post-soviet middle-income countries, may serve as an example of the current situation in those terrains, concerning the implementation of globally accepted cervical cancer prevention strategies. Along with positive achievements, such as the development of a nationwide screening program, a range of drawbacks is also analyzed and discussed.

A Novel Evidence-Based Bayesian Similarity Measure for Recommender Systems

User-based collaborative filtering , a widely used nearest neighbour-based recommendation technique, predicts an item’s rating by aggregating its ratings from similar users. User similarity is traditionally calculated by cosine similarity or the Pearson correlation coefficient . However, both of these measures consider only the direction of rating vectors, and suffer from a range of drawbacks. To overcome these issues, we propose a novel Bayesian similarity measure based on the Dirichlet distribution, taking into consideration both the direction and length of rating vectors. We posit that not all the rating pairs should be equally counted in order to accurately model user correlation. Three different evidence factors are designed to compute the weights of rating pairs. Further, our principled method reduces correlation due to chance and potential system bias. Experimental results on six real-world datasets show that our method achieves superior accuracy in comparison with counterparts.

Bone Grafting and Bone Graft Substitutes

Restoring skeletal integrity and bone tissue regeneration is still a significant challenging issue. In this regard, bone grafting have been used to augment orthopedic repairs in human and veterinary surgery for several decades and still being under many investigation to hunt for new approaches to improve bone healing following incidences of bone complications. Bone graft is bone transplant and is categorized into autogenous and allogenic grafts as well as synthetic bone graft which are bone graft substitutes. Each of these classified grafts have some advantageous as well as a range of drawbacks, which researchers are still looking to remove those disadvantageous. Finding new instruments and new sites for graft harvests are the major concerns of researchers to diminish the morbidities of donor site in autografts. Looking for agents boosting inductivity of the allografts is the main worries of these kinds of grafting materials and finally new fabrication techniques by new pore sizes are the significant bothering for synthetic bone graft substitutes. This review would consider all grafting methods and materials that would open new windows to the bone grafting techniques.

Uptake of systemically administered magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) in areas of experimental spinal cord injury (SCI)

The regenerative potential of the adult central nervous system (CNS) is limited, contributing to poor recovery from neurological insult. Many genes have been identified that promote neural regeneration, but the current viral methods used to mediate neural gene transfer have a range of drawbacks, notably safety. Non-viral magnetic nanoparticle (MNP)-based vector systems offer significant advantages over viral systems, including: (a) safety; (b) flexibility of functionalization with genetic material; (c) potential for non-invasive magnetic targeting; and (d) imaging potential. The applications of such a system to promote intrinsic neural regeneration have not been assessed. We examined uptake of intravenously administered MNPs (diameter, 320 nm) into areas of experimental rodent spinal cord injury (SCI), using a transection model. We found focal uptake of MNPs in areas of SCI associated with breakdown of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) within 6 h of injury; a spatial association was observed between MNPs and nuclei in lesions, suggesting that particle uptake was occurring in cells within injury sites. Our data suggest that there may be a 'therapeutic window of opportunity' during post-injury BBB compromise within which MNPs can be used to mediate gene transfer to sites of spinal cord trauma. Taking into account the relatively superficial anatomical location of the spinal cord, these findings also raise the possibility that the spinal cord could be an attractive target for MNP-based delivery of biomolecules, particularly when combined with magnetic targeting strategies. We discuss factors that will need to be addressed in order to optimize such an approach.