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Biodegradation of Navy N5RL1, a widely used acidic azo dye in carpet industry, was studied by bacterial strain isolated from the dye-contaminated soil collected from a carpet industry premises located in Bhadohi, Sant Ravidas Nagar and Uttar Pradesh, India. The isolated strain was identified as Staphylococcus saprophyticus BHUSS X3 on the basis of morphological, biochemical and 16S rRNA gene sequencing analysis. The strain BHUSS X3 decolorized 95.7 % of dye (100 mg/l) within 6 h at optimum pH 8, temperature 35 °C, inoculum 4.0 % under static condition during 24 h incubation. The isolated bacterial strain BHUSS X3 can toralate dye concentration upto 1,000 mg/l. The dye degradation metabolites were confirmed by analysis of degraded products using UV-Vis spectrophotometric, HPLC and FTIR technique. The phytotoxicity analysis was also conducted on Phaseolus aureus and enhanced seed germination was recorded.

Multivariate statistical techniques were employed for monitoring of ground-surface water interactions in rivers. The river Varuna is situated in the Indo-Gangetic plain and is a small tributary of river Ganga. The study area was monitored at seven sampling sites for 3 years (2010-12), and eight physio-chemical parameters were taken into account for this study. The data obtained were analysed by multivariate statistical techniques so as to reveal the underlying implicit information regarding proposed interactions for the relevant area. The principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA), and the results of correlations were also studied for all parameters monitored at every site. Methods used in this study are essentially multivariate statistical in nature and facilitate the interpretation of data so as to extract meaningful information from the datasets. The PCA technique was able to compress the data from eight to three parameters and captured about 78.5% of the total variance by performing varimax rotation over the principal components. The varifactors, as yielded from PCA, were treated by CA which grouped them convincingly into three groups having similar characteristics and source of contamination. Moreover, the loading of variables on significant PCs showed correlations between various ground water and surface water (GW-SW) parameters. The correlation coefficients calculated for various physiochemical parameters for ground and surface water established the correlations between them. Thus, this study presents the utility of multivariate statistical techniques for evaluation of the proposed interactions and effective future monitoring of potential sites.

Purpose: Carcinoma of the gallbladder (CaGB) is a common health problem in Northern India. Exact causative factors are still obscure. Dietary habits are also known to be a major factor in the gallbladder carcinogenesis. Mustard oil is mostly used as cooking media, which is adulterated by sanguinarine, diethylnitrosamine and repeated frying. We tried to find out the association of mustard oil as cooking media with CaGB., Methods: Twenty patients each of CaGB (group I) and cholelithiasis (group II) were included in the study. Sanguinarine and diethylnitrosamine (DEN) were extracted from the tissue and blood samples from both groups. Mean and standard error of mean of the concentration of the sanguinarine and DEN were calculated. Mann-Whitney U test was applied to test the level of significance between the two groups., Results: The mean concentration of tissue sanguinarine in both groups (I and II) was 195.18 ng/mg and 24.05 ng/mg, respectively, and the difference was statistically highly significant (p < 0.001). The estimated concentration of blood sanguinarine was 230.96 ng/mL and 14.0 ng/mL in group I and II, respectively, and the difference was statistically highly significant (p < 0.001). The concentration of DEN in the tissue sample was 38.08 ng/mg in CaGB and 2.51 ng/mg in cholelithiasis patient, and these values were statistically highly significant (p < 0.001). Similarly, blood DEN concentration was 119.05 ng/mL and 4.22 ng/mL in group I and II, respectively, and the difference was statistically highly significant (p < 0.001)., Conclusion: There is an increase in concentration of sanguinarine and diethylnitrosamine in CaGB blood and tissue in comparison to the cholelithiasis group suggesting an association with carcinoma of the gallbladder.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly, wherein, the accumulation of amyloid beta (Abeta) peptide as cytotoxic oligomers leads to neuropathologic changes. Transgenic mice with brain Abeta plaques immunized with aggregated Abeta have reduced amyloid burden and improved cognitive functions. However, such active immunization in humans led to a small but significant occurrence of meningoencephalitis in 6% AD volunteers due to Abeta induced toxicity. In an attempt to develop safer alternative vaccines, the design of a highly soluble peptide homologous to Abeta (Abeta-EK), that has a reduced amyloidogenic potential while maintaining the major immunogenic epitopes of Abeta is reported. More importantly, this homologue has been shown to be non-toxic, as this peptide failed to exert any observable effect on erythrocytes. The results of the present study suggests that immunization with non-toxic Abeta derivative may offer a safer therapeutic approach to AD, instead of using toxic Abeta fibrils.