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This study investigates in detail the laser-mediated upconversion emission and temperature-sensing capability of (Ca0.99−aYb0.01Era)TiO3.

In the present investigation, Nickle and Cobalt (Transition metals) doped ZnS Nanocrystals were synthesized by wet chemical route using methanol water binary mixture as a solvent. 1-20% doped percent of dopant were used. The synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy for structural and optical investigations. Phase and structural analysis confirmed the formation of cubic ZnS having nearly spherical shaped nanoparticles having size ~3 nm. PL spectra showed broad and asymmetric band centered nearly at 435 nm. The intensity of PL peaks showed gradual quenching with increasing dope percentage which makes it unsuitable for biological imaging applications.

Baicalein-loaded cinnamon essential oil nanoemulsion (BaiCN) was formulated to enhance the solubility and oral bioavailability of the drug, and its potential combined anticancer efficacy with cinnamon oil was evaluated against the MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line. The formulation was optimized using full factorial design, and the optimized formulation was characterized for its size distribution, morphology, FTIR analysis, release, and storage stability at 4 °C. The cytotoxicity of developed formulation was assessed via MTT assay on MDA-MB-231 cell line. The average droplet size was found to be 139.05 ± 0.05 nm with a polydispersity index (PDI) value of 0.154 ± 0.029. The zeta potential of BaiCN was −14.35 ± 0.21 mV. Upon storage up to 6 months at 4 °C, there was no change in physical appearance or phase separation. However, a little increase in droplet size and PDI was observed. BaiCN exhibited good in vitro anticancer results against MDA-MB-231. There was about 19-fold and 23-fold enhancements in anticancer activity of BaiCN compared to that of free baicalein after 12 h and 24 h of treatment, respectively. Moreover, the cinnamon oil nanoemulsion without baicalein also showed good cytotoxicity against MDA-MB-231 cells and provided a collaborative effect to baicalein. In conclusion, cinnamon oil nanoemulsion is a promising drug carrier for encapsulating baicalein and enhancing their anticancer effect.

We present the morphological evolution and fractal characterization of CaF2 thin film surfaces modified by bombardment with 100 MeV Au+8 ions at various fluences. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) combined with line profile and two-dimensional power spectral density (2D-PSD) analysis was utilized to investigate the evolution of surface morphology as a function of fluence. The AFM images were utilized to investigate the relationship between fractal dimension, roughness exponent, lateral correlation length, and ion fluence. The surface erosion owing to sputtering was depicted using Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS). The structural characteristics’ dependency on fluence was explored with the help of glancing angle X-ray diffraction (GAXRD) measurements on virgin and irradiated samples. Tensile stress calculated using peak shift in the glancing angle X-ray diffractogram showed an increase in tensile stress with fluence that caused the surface to crack after the fracture strength of the surface was crossed. 2D-PSD analysis signified the role of sputtering over surface diffusion for the observed surface modifications. Fractal dimensions first increased and then decreased with ion fluence. Lateral correlation length decreased while roughness exponent increased with fluence after the threshold value.

News is a medium that notifies people about the events that had happened worldwide. The menace of fake news on online platforms is on the rise which may lead to unwanted events. The majority of fake news is spread through social media platforms, since these platforms have a great reach. To identify the credibility of the news, various spam detection methods are generally used. In this work, a new stance detection method has been proposed for identifying the stance of fake news. The proposed stance detection method is based on the capabilities of an improved whale optimization algorithm and a multilayer perceptron. In the proposed model, weights and biases of the multilayer perceptron are updated using an improved whale optimization algorithm. The efficacy of the proposed optimized neural network has been tested on five benchmark stance detection datasets. The proposed model shows better results over all the considered datasets. The proposed approach has theoretical implications for further studies to examine the textual data. Besides, the proposed method also has practical implications for developing systems that can result conclusive reviews on any social problems.

Image segmentation is an essential phase of computer vision in which useful information is extracted from an image that can range from finding objects while moving across a room to detect abnormalities in a medical image. As image pixels are generally unlabelled, the commonly used approach for the same is clustering. This paper reviews various existing clustering based image segmentation methods. Two main clustering methods have been surveyed, namely hierarchical and partitional based clustering methods. As partitional clustering is computationally better, further study is done in the perspective of methods belonging to this class. Further, literature bifurcates the partitional based clustering methods into three categories, namely K-means based methods, histogram-based methods, and meta-heuristic based methods. The survey of various performance parameters for the quantitative evaluation of segmentation results is also included. Further, the publicly available benchmark datasets for image-segmentation are briefed.

In last few decades, pharmaceutical waste management emerged as one of major environmental concern. These contaminants have shown their severe impact on living being. Several methods for their treatment such as UV degradation, nano-filtration, reverse osmosis and Photocatalysis are being used. Photocatalysis is a favourable and environmentally safe method for remediation of organic pollutants. Photocatalytic oxidation process involves destruction of the organic pollutants in presence of an oxidizing agent like oxygen, light source and the semiconductor photocatalyst. Metal oxides have shown greater capability towards treatment of Pharamaceutically Active Compounds (PhACs). In present review, authors have discussed about diverse metal oxides (TiO2, ZnO, CuO, Fe2O3, Ag2O, WO3, Bi2O3 and Pt), their physical and chemical properties and unique ability to recycle waste water, mechanism of action, applications and their efficiencies along with possible solutions to make them more efficient. Metal oxides do have limitations like faster recombination rate, lower ability for the full usage of light and lesser migration of photo-generated electrons. Therefore, different doping materials, those are metals, non-metals and metalloids can be applied for improving their performances is suggested. In nutshell, it can be concluded that doped metal oxides can be used as potential tools for the treatment of organic pollutants.

With the spread of COVID-19, there is an urgent need for a fast and reliable diagnostic aid. For the same, literature has witnessed that medical imaging plays a vital role, and tools using supervised methods have promising results. However, the limited size of medical images for diagnosis of CoVID19 may impact the generalization of such supervised methods. To alleviate this, a new clustering method is presented. In this method, a novel variant of a gravitational search algorithm is employed for obtaining optimal clusters. To validate the performance of the proposed variant, a comparative analysis among recent metaheuristic algorithms is conducted. The experimental study includes two sets of benchmark functions, namely standard functions and CEC2013 functions, belonging to different categories such as unimodal, multimodal, and unconstrained optimization functions. The performance comparison is evaluated and statistically validated in terms of mean fitness value, Friedman test, and box-plot. Further, the presented clustering method tested against three different types of publicly available CoVID19 medical images, namely X-ray, CT scan, and Ultrasound images. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is comparatively outperforming in terms of accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, and F1-score.

This study performed to determine the correlation, their comparison and path coefficients of yield and yield contributing characters by using F2 (BPT-5204 /IR-64Drt1) their two parents separately and the joint parental populations. In this study, the computations for testing the significance of the difference between the 15 traits of different populations of rice determined from 324 F2, 9 IR-64Drt1 (P1), 9 BPT-5204 (P2) and 18 joint parental population. Results showed that the correlation of F2 indicated that the number of total tillers per plant, number of panicles per plant, plant height, panicle length, biomass, harvest index and yield per panicle were positive and significant association with yield per plant. Correlation of IR-64Drt1 stated that the plant height, panicle length, biomass and harvest index were positive and significant association with yield per plant. Correlation of BPT-5204 shown that the secondary branches per panicle and hundred-grain weight exhibited positive and significant association with yield per panicle. Correlation of the joint parent indicated that the plant height, panicle length, grain length, grain width, hundred-grain weight, biomass, harvest index and yield per panicle had exhibited positive and significant association with yield per plant. Path coefficient analysis indicated that harvest index had the highest direct positive effect (0.582) on yield per plant in the F2 population. However, the panicles per plant had the highest direct positive effect (1.481) on yield per plant IR-64Drt1 population. The total tillers per plant had the highest direct positive effect (1.821) on yield per plant in BPT-5204 population. In the joint population of BPT-5204 and IR-64Drt1, path analysis of yield components revealed that the biomass had the highest direct positive effect (0.658) on yield per plant. Information obtained in this study revealed that traits, the harvest index, biomass and panicles per plant are suggested as selection indices for grain yield improvement at segregating populations of rice.

The present investigation was carried out with F2 plants from a cross between two parents i.e., BPT-5204 and IR-64Drt1. The selection of parents for crosses was made based on genotypes that were tolerant and susceptible to drought condition. BPT-5204 was drought susceptible and IR-64Drt1 was also tolerant to drought. In this experiment adequate amount of variability was detected for grain yield per plant and its components among 324 segregants evaluated under augmented randomized block design II in normal field condition. The analysis of variance for grain yield and its attributing characters among blocks, treatments, entries, checks and checks vs entries revealed presence of significant variation in the segregants studied. However, with respect to checks, non-significant differences were recorded for only L/B ratio. The results indicated that among 324 rice genotypes including checks, only 9 rice genotypes expressed higher yield compared to seven checks varieties under normal field condition. The segregants S-51, S-122, S-135, S-195, S-199, S-210, S-219, S-222, S-251 were top ranking genotypes with respect to all checks.

In the present article SiO2/Si layers of thickness 200 nm were implanted with 150 keV Ge ions with different fluences varying from 2.5 × 1016 to 7.5 × 1016 ions/cm2. The implantation-induced disorder was removed via high temperature annealing method in Ar ambience. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) measurement confirmed the presence of embedded Ge nanocrystals of 5–10 nm size in annealed samples. Topographical studies of implanted as well as annealed samples were captured by the atomic force microscopy (AFM) and parameters such as average roughness and interface width were extracted. Two dimensional multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (2D-MFDFA) based on the partition function approach was used to study the surfaces of ion implanted and annealed samples. The partition function is used to calculate generalized Hurst exponent with the segment size. A nonlinear variation with moment is observed for generalized Hurst exponents, leading to the multifractal nature. The multifractality of surface is pronounced after annealing for the surface implanted with fluence of 7.5 × 1016 ions/cm2.

Gravitational search algorithm is a nature-inspired algorithm based on the mathematical modelling of the Newton’s law of gravity and motion. In a decade, researchers have presented many variants of gravitational search algorithm by modifying its parameters to efficiently solve complex optimization problems. This paper conducts a comparative analysis among ten variants of gravitational search algorithm which modify three parameters, namely Kbest, velocity, and position. Experiments are conducted on two sets of benchmark categories, namely standard functions and CEC2015 functions, including problems belonging to different categories such as unimodal, multimodal, and unconstrained optimization functions. The performance comparison is evaluated and statistically validated in terms of mean fitness value and convergence graph. In experiments, IGSA has achieved better precision with balanced trade-off between exploration and exploitation. Moreover, triple negative breast cancer dataset has been considered to analysis the performance of GSA variants for the nuclei segmentation. The variants performance has been analysed in terms of both qualitative and quantitive with aggregated Jaccard index as performance measure. Experiments affirm that IGSA-based method has outperformed other methods.

Vigna vexillata (L.) A. Rich. is a tropical tuberous legume which is fascinating for multiple uses in India. It is a climate-resilient legume and reported as a source of bruchid resistance, abiotic stresses tolerance and proteinaceous tubers. Meagre information is available for storage roots (tubers) of V. vexillata in general in the Indian scenario. In the present study, the evaluation of morphological and nutritional traits of storage roots are presented along with the genetic resources study. Herbarium study verified its wide distribution and occurrence in India since ancient time. Significant variability was observed for tuber morphological traits and nutritional parameters. Among accessions studied, IC259504 was identified promising agronomically and nutritionally both. Protein content in tubers of V. vexillata was recorded up to eightfold higher than that in sweet potato and tapioca. Results indicated that this species has the potential to meet the future needs of food and nutritional security and further utilization in Vigna improvement programme.

On 18 July 2009, the Asian Nuclear Physics Association (ANPhA) [1] was officially launched in Beijing by representatives from China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.The main objectives of ANPhA are clear...

Background: Smoking predisposes to cancer. Prevalence and pattern of smoking among rural Indian cancer patients is unknown. Aim: The aim of the study was to estimate the prevalence of smoking in cancer patients. Objective: The objective of the study was to estimate the type of smoking and pattern in cancer patients and correlate with clinical and demographic variables through a prospective survey. Materials and Methods: All consecutive individual adult (age >18 years) patients diagnosed with any cancer and registered in the medical oncology outpatient department were enrolled for questionnaire-based survey on smoking between July 2017 and October 2017. Demographic variables were also recorded including income, education, and occupation. Frequency distribution and cross tabulation were used for the statistical analysis using SPSS version 17. Results: Of 517 cancer patients enrolled, 456 (88%) were rural. The prevalence of smoking was 125/517 (0.24, 95% confidence interval – 0.20–0.27). Among them, 67 (54%) were bidi smokers, while 58 (46%) smoked cigarette. Majority had smoking history of more than 20 years (40%), while 20% were recent smokers

Poly(adenosine diphosphate ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPis), when used in patients harboring tumor with homologous recombination deficiency, with or without BRCA mutation, have shown favorable outcomes in relapsed, advanced metastatic breast and ovarian cancers. Olaparib, niraparib, and rucaparib have been approved as maintenance therapy in platinum-sensitive, relapsed, high-grade epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) responsive to platinum doublet. Olaparib and rucaparib as monotherapy are also indicated in patients who have progressed on three or more lines of chemotherapy, irrespective of platinum sensitivity, in germline or somatic BRCA 1/2-mutated, PARPi-naive patients. Recently, four large multicentric, international Phase III randomized clinical trials have reported outcomes of PARPi in first-line advanced EOC as maintenance therapy either alone or in combination with bevacizumab. Previously bevacizumab, pazopanib, nindetanib, or maintenance chemotherapy in first-line setting has resulted in modest improvements in progression free survival, albeit with significant toxicities and poor cost-effectiveness. We offer in this review to dissect the data pertaining to randomized clinical trials of PARPi use as maintenance therapy in upfront EOCs and ruminate about its role in the contemporary management of ovarian cancers.

We present the morphological evolution and fractal characterizations of CaF2 thin-film surfaces modified by bombardment with 100 MeV Au+8 ions at various fluences. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) combined with line profile and two-dimensional power spectral density (2D-PSD) analysis was utilized to investigate the evolution of surface morphology as a function of fluence. The AFM images were utilized to investigate the relationship between fractal dimension, roughness exponent, lateral correlation length, and ion fluence. The surface erosion owing to sputtering was depicted using Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. The structural characteristics' dependency on fluence was explored with the help of glancing angle x-ray diffraction measurements on virgin and irradiated samples. Tensile stress calculated using a peak shift in the glancing angle x-ray diffractogram showed an increase in tensile stress with fluence that caused the surface to crack after the fracture strength of the surface was crossed. 2D-PSD analysis signified the role of sputtering over surface diffusion for the observed surface modifications. Fractal dimensions first increased and then decreased with ion fluence. The lateral correlation length decreased, while the roughness exponent increased with fluence after the threshold value.

The present study is aimed to formulate baicalein loaded mixed micelles to enhance the solubility and oral bioavailability. Baicalein encapsulated D-α-tocopherol polyethylene glycol 1000 succinate (TPGS) and pluronic F127 (F127) combined micelles were prepared and investigated for anticancer effect. The optimized formulation contains 25.04 ± 0.24 nm mean particle size micelles with zeta potential value of -4.01 ± 0.5 mV. The calculated entrapment efficiency percentage of baicalein within the micellar structure was 83.43 ± 0.13% and the in vitro release of baicalein from micelles displayed a sustained release profile at pH 7.4. The incorporation of baicalein within micelles core was also confirmed by FTIR analysis of formulation, which hardly represents the characteristic peak of baicalein, indicates successful entrapment of the drug. In vitro cell culture experiments revealed baicalein loaded micelles significantly enhanced cellular uptake and cytotoxicity against MDA-MB231 cell lines in comparison to free baicalein. Additionally, as compared to free baicalein, baicalein micelles demonstrated greater apoptosis-inducing potential while the results of the cell cycle study exhibited arrest of cells at the G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle. Results of ROS (reactive oxygen species) and MMP (mitochondrial membrane potential) assay revealed the ROS dependent mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis pathway utilized by developed formulation to inhibit cell proliferation. Thus, the developed nano micelles can serve as a potent carrier system for baicalein against breast cancer.

Jack (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is a multi-purpose out-breeding tree species of the family Moraceae. We generated 42,928,887 high-quality expressed sequence reads, assembled them into 89,356 unigenes, and discovered 16,853 unigene-based perfect SSRs in A. heterophyllus. Thirty-eight polymorphic SSRs were used to analyze the genetic diversity and population structure of 224 germplasm accessions of A. heterophyllus constituting three populations from three agro-climatic zones, namely Eastern Plateau and Hills, Middle Gangetic Plain Region, and Eastern Himalayan Region, encompassing five Eastern and North-Eastern states of India. At the 38 SSR loci, we detected 142 alleles with a mean of 3.74 alleles per locus. The PIC values for the loci ranged from 0.25 to 0.69. The maximum genetic diversity was recorded in Eastern Plateau and Hills (I = 0.98, He = 0.52). The ANOVA analysis indicated significantly higher within-population variation (90%) than between populations (10%). The indirect estimation of gene flow (Nm) from PhiPT indicated significant gene flow among all three populations. The population structure analysis showed at least four distinct groups among the three populations with different introgression degrees. The NJ-based clustering grouped the 224 germplasm accessions into three main clusters, each with three sub-clusters. However, we did not observe distinct geographical structure among populations except some clustering among the germplasm accessions of the populations of geographically close locations. The transcriptome dataset and the SSR markers developed in the study would boost the species' molecular characterization, conservation, and specific need-based improvement.

Background: Standard 3 + 7 induction (anthracycline + cytarabine) and consolidation high-dose cytarabine are toxic, expensive, and resource intensive. Objectives: The objective was to evaluate response rates and survival with PRednisolone, Etoposide and 6-Mercaptopurine (PREM) metronomic chemotherapy in treatment-naive, and partially treated acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Materials and Methods: All patients with AML, registered between June 01, 2017, and May 31, 2019, not willing for standard 3 + 7 induction (Group A) due to financial constraints and those who refused to complete at least two cycles of cytarabine consolidation (Group B) and received oral PREM therapy were analyzed. Bone marrow aspiration/biopsy was used for response evaluation in the 3rd month in Group A. Descriptive statistics and survival according to the Kaplan-Meier method were used to evaluate outcomes with SPSS v. 17. The follow-up was calculated using reverse Kaplan–Meier method. Results: Fifteen patients were included in the study, 11 in Group A and 4 in Group B. The median follow-up was 13 months in Group A (range, 10–14 months). 5/11 (46%) and 2/11 (18%) achieved complete response (CR) and partial response (PR), respectively. The 1-year survival of patients in Group A (n = 11) was 45% with a median overall survival of 9 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.4–11.6 months). Among the 7 out of 11 patients (64%) who responded (CR + PR), the 1-year survival was 70% with a median survival of 12 months, versus 3 months for patients who failed to attain a response, P = 0.005 with hazard ratio of 0.05 (95% CI, 0.01–65.65). In the patients in Group B (n = 4), all patients sustained/achieved CR and were alive without relapse at a median follow-up of 24.5 months (range, 22–26 months). The ratio of total inpatient admissions in Group A patients (n = 11) was 1.7 in the first 3 months with median duration of 7 days (range, 4–14 days). Conclusion: Oral PREM metronomic chemotherapy led to favorable responses in treatment naive AML patients. The regimen also led to sustained remissions in patients with partially treated AML.

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) is an important solanaceous vegetable crop grown worldwide over tropics and subtropics. Bacterial wilt (caused by Ralstonia solanacearum) is one of the most serious ...

We report evolution of the surface and wetting behavior of Barium fluoride (BaF2) thin films under the effect of swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiation at different fluences. The analogy of this study may be used may be used for the development of dust resistant fabric technology for rural area. The ion irradiation has been performed at normal incidence on the films with Au ions having 100 MeV energy. Further, the wettability of irradiated surfaces is studied through contact angle of water droplet. The value of contact angle of droplet changes with irradiation, it increases from 111° to 123° with the increase in fluence from 5×1011 to 1×1013 ions/cm2. The mechanism of wettability of BaF2 is explained on the basis of increase in contact area of water droplet with surface. SHI irradiation deposits a huge amount of energy in materials due to extreme electronic excitation and it causes a large increase in the temperature of material around the ion track. Ion beam irradiation leads to the large ejection of atoms from the surface which is one of the major factors in increasing the roughness of the surface and thus for the change in contact angle.

Feature selection is one of the key components of data mining and machine learning domain that selects the best subset of features with respect to target data by removing irrelevant data. However, it is a complex task to select optimal set of features from a dataset using traditional feature selection methods, as for n number of features, $$2^n$$ feature subsets are possible. Therefore, this paper introduces a novel metaheuristics-based feature selection method based binomial cuckoo search. Generally, metaheuristics-based feature selection methods suffer with stability issue since they select different set of features in different runs. Hence, to deal with stability issue, a hybrid data transformation method based on principal component analysis and fast independent component analysis has also been introduced. The proposed hybrid data transformation method first transforms the original data thereafter proposed binary binomial cuckoo search method is used to elect the best subset of features. The proposed feature selection method maximizes the classification accuracy and minimizes the number of selected features. The performance of the proposed method has been tested on the fourteen feature selection benchmark datasets taken from UCI repository and compared with other latest state-of- the art approaches including binary cuckoo search, binary bat algorithm, binary gravitational search algorithm, binary whale optimization with simulated annealing, and binary grey wolf optimization. Further, statistical analysis has also been carried out to validate the efficacy of the proposed method.

Lung cancer has been the most common cancer in the world for several decades. The non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) constitutes approximately about 80% of the total cases of lung cancer. Therapeutic interventions in NSCLC have shifted to the target-based approach from histology-based approach, and this has completely changed the face of the management of NSCLC. Developing countries, such as India, have very limited data compiled about the prevalence and treatment practices of lung cancer, despite a large burden of the disease. However, in recent times, there has been a lot of data generated in this regard. This article is an attempt to collate and shine light on the available data for the first-line treatment of NSCLC in India keeping in mind the current standards of care in this area.

Targeted delivery of therapeutics possesses the potential to localize therapeutic agents to a specific tissue as a mechanism to enhance treatment efficacy and mitigate side effects. Moeities that combine imaging and therapeutic modalities in a single macromolecular construct may confer advantages in the development and applications of nanomedicine. Here is an insight into the synthesis of luminomagnetic (luminescent and magnetic, simultaneously) nanocarriers of ZnO:Fe, synthesized by a simple co-precipitation method and surface modified by the ligand folate. This functionalized luminomagnetic nanocarrier system is a bioconjugation approach which combines the specificity of folate receptors on cancer cells with the excellent optical and magnetic properties of the nanoparticles so as to develop biocompatible molecular imaging agents, drug delivery systems, and hyperthermia agents. The vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) studies showed clear hysteresis loops having coercivity 5.1 mT with corresponding magnetization of remanence 7.6 × 10−3 emu/g, indicating strong magnetic character of the samples. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) measurements show that these nanoparticles are spherical with 6–9 nm size and hence are quite appropriate for in vivo applications as well. The immobilization of folic acid was confirmed by fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis. All these properties make these luminomagnetic nanocarriers one of the most feasible candidates for folate receptor-mediated biomedical applications.

Nanobiotechnology is currently operating in various science domains and is based on nanomaterials and devices at the nanometer scale (1–100 nm). Nanomaterials have been a common material for developing new cutting-edge applications in communications, biosensing, energy storage, data storage, optics, transmission, environmental protection, cosmetics, biology, and medicine due to their extraordinary optical, mechanical, electrical, and magnetic properties. Moreover, owing to its unique properties and utility, which arises from various attributes, namely the size of nanoparticles and biomolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids with a wide range of metals and semiconductor materials (fluorescence and magnetic behavior). Thus, there is an urgent need for knowledge pertaining to the relationship between size, shape, and structure of nanomaterials and how one can tune their capability for electronic and chemical interactions with biological molecules and their implications in biosensors. Nanomaterials are gaining important applications in the fields of biomedical, agricultural, and environmental domains. However, designing new applicable and affordable scaling-up manufacturing techniques will create a new field of study and meet various human requirements. Hence, this chapter briefly introduces nanomaterials and their prospects and broad-spectrum applications, majorly in biomedical, environmental, and agricultural domains.

The automated methods for the categorization of the histopathological images is very useful in disease diagnosis and prognosis. However, due to complex image background and morphological variations these images generate very large feature vectors which make the automated classification task difficult. Therefore, in this paper, a new feature selection method based on improved biogeography-based optimization algorithm is proposed to select the prominent features. These feature are further used for the classification process. The elimination rate of the proposed method is 74.25% and 71.28% on BreaKHis and BACH histopathological image datasets respectively. A comparative analysis has been performed using different classifiers on the the selected features and simulation analysis depict that the IBBO-based feature selection and classification method outperforms.

Agriculture is the main source of human habitation and its redemption from disease is a primary concern for any economy. For the same, computer vision techniques have been proven to be quite useful. However, the diseased plant identification is still a challenging task due to the disparity in the leaf images. To alleviate the same, this chapter proposes a new bag-of-features-based diseased plant identification method. In the proposed method, the efficient visual words are generated using gray relational analysis-based clustering method, and for image encoding, two-dimensional vector quantization method is used. The proposed method is evaluated on a publicly available leaf images dataset, i.e., PlantVillage. Moreover, the performance is compared against the state-of-the-art classification methods in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, sensitivity, and specificity. Experiments validate that the proposed method is efficient than the compared methods image classification.

A novel approach for the preparation of a well-ordered nanosieve structure of silver nanoparticles using a Ag-1,2-benzenedicarboxylate (Ag-1,2-BDC) complex and sodium stearate under a hydrothermal process was performed. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern suggests the formation and crystallinity of silver nanoparticles. The average particle size of silver nanoparticles was 35 nm and shows a hexagonal shape with a nanosieve structure as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The selective area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern of the nanosieve suggests a mono-crystalline nature of the silver nanoparticles. The SEM image reveals that the particles are of spherical and granular nature. The UV-Vis absorption spectrum shows a characteristic absorption peak of silver nanoparticles at 410 nm. The findings suggest that hydrothermal induced assembly should be a convenient and effective route for the preparation of new silver nanostructures. In addition, the Ag nanosieve modified electrode (AgNS/GC) exhibited an excellent electrocatalytic activity toward the reduction of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). This silver nanosieve may also be a promising candidate for electronics and photonics application.

A novel saccharides detection assay based on covalent immobilization of amino phenyl boronic acid (APBA) in thin films of carboxyl functionalized chitosan (HOOC-chitosan) containing5 nm Gd2O3 : Eu3+ nanoparticles at a platinum disc electrode was developed. The resulting HOOC-chitosan/Gd2O3 : Eu3+ nanocomposite film exhibited excellent electrochemical response to changes in the pKa values of boronate esters yielded from different vicinal diols of sugars. The covalent interaction of APBA onto the HOOC-chitosan/Gd2O3 : Eu3+ Pt-disc electrode was characterized with FT-IR, SEM, contact angle and cyclic voltammetry, whereas Gd2O3 : Eu3+ nanoparticles and HOOC-chitosan/Gd2O3 : Eu3+ nanocomposite was identified using XRD, EDX and TEM. A wide linear response was measured to boronate esters ranging from 25 nM to 13.5 μM (r2 = 0.963) with good reproducibility. The excellent electrochemical activity of the assay might be attributed to the synergistic effects of the balanced de-/protonated HOOC-chitosan, APBA and Gd2O3 : Eu3+ nanoparticles. With APBA as a model, the HOOC-chitosan/Gd2O3 : Eu3+ nanocomposite-modified Pt-electrode was constructed through a simple drop coating method. The resulting assay exhibited a good potentiometric response to different saccharides including glucose, and could be a promising application for the precise electrochemical detection of vicinal diols of specific sugars for clinical diagnostics, medicine validation, bioscience research and food analysis.

Background: There is lack of information on impact of Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic on routine cancer care delivery. Aims and Objectives : To evaluate the change in Day Care Chemotherapy (DCC) and Out Patient Department (OPD) patient numbers before and after COVID-19 national lockdown. Material and Methods: Demographic data, diagnosis, type and frequency of chemotherapy delivered in Day Care between 1st February 2020 to 31st July 2020 were retrieved. Out Patient Department daily patient numbers were collected. Descriptive statistics, Odds ratio, Chi-square and Student T test were used to measure change in pattern of DDC and OPD patient numbers before and after 24th March 2020 (day of Lockdown). Pearson correlation coefficient was used to measure the strength of correlation between rise in COVID-19 cases and patient numbers. Results: 3192 DCC and 8209 OPD visits were recorded in 126 working days. Median age was 47 years( SD + 19.06). Breast (17%) and Gall bladder( 15%) were the most common cancers receiving chemotherapy. There was a significant decrease in number of DCC delivered in post COVID lockdown [ mean 21.97 ( + 9.7)] compared to pre COVID lockdown [mean 33.30 (+11.4)], t=4.11, p = 0.001.There was a significant decrease in number of OPD visits in post COVID lockdown [ mean 47.13 ( + 18.8)] compared to pre COVID lockdown [mean 89.91 (+30.0)], t=7.09, p = 0.001. The odds of receiving weekly chemotherapy over non weekly regimes significantly decreased post COVID lockdown with Odds ratio of 0.52 (95% CI, 0.36-0.75) with Chi square of 12.57, p =0.001. Daily COVID cases in State and OPD patient number were found to be moderately positively correlated on Pearson correlation coefficient, r = 0.35,p =0.001. Conclusion: There was a significant fall in patient visit and chemotherapy cycles immediately after lockdown. The numbers increased later despite rise in COVID-19 cases.

BackgroundIn treatment naive Indian cancer patients, prevalence of iron, B12 deficiency and inflammatory anaemia in poorly known.Aims and ObjectivesTo evaluate prevalence of anaemia and iron, B12 deficiency along with inflammation in treatment naive individual consecutive cancer patients.Material and MethodsAll patients registered from 1st July 2019 till 31st December 2019 in Medical Oncology Outpatient Department were offered to undergo Iron profile, Serum B12 levels and Serum ferritin along with routine haematological investigations. Anaemia was defined as Haemoglobin < 11gm/dL. Transferrin saturation 300 microgram/litre and Vitamin B12 level Results311/441 (70.5%) were found eligible. Median age was 52 ± 15.9 (Range 18-84) years with 144/331(46%) females. The prevalence of anaemia was 61% ± 2.7 (95% CI 55-66%). Mean Haemoglobin was 9.86 ± 2.08 (range 3-16) gram/decilitre. 21/311(7%) had severe anaemia (Haemoglobin < 6.9 gm/dl). 135/311 (71%), 61/189 (32%) and 89/189 (47%) anaemic patients had iron deficiency, inflammation and B12 deficiency respectively. More than 70% of Gastrointestinal (50/69), Gynaecological(17/24) and Lung Cancer(18/22) patients had underling Iron deficiency.ConclusionTwo-third of cancer patients are iron deficient. B12 deficiency and inflammation are present in half and one-third patients respectively.

Nowadays, online reviews play an important role in customer’s decision. Starting from buying a shirt from an e-commerce site to dining in a restaurant, online reviews has become a basis of selection. However, peoples are always in a hustle and bustle since they don’t have time to pay attention to the intrinsic details of products and services, thus the dependency on online reviews have been hiked. Due to reliance on online reviews, some people and organizations pompously generate spam reviews in order to promote or demote the reputation of a person/product/organization. Thus, it is impossible to identify whether a review is a spam or a ham by the naked eye and it is also impractical to classify all the reviews manually. Therefore, a spiral cuckoo search based clustering method has been introduced to discover spam reviews. The proposed method uses the strength of cuckoo search and Fermat spiral to resolve the convergence issue of cuckoo search method. The efficiency of the proposed method has been tested on four spam datasets and one Twitter spammer dataset. To validate the efficacy of proposed clustering method it is compared with six metaheuristics clustering methods namely; particle swarm optimization, differential evolution, genetic algorithm, cuckoo search, K-means, and improved cuckoo search. The experimental results and statistical analysis validate that the proposed method outruns the existing methods.

Fractal concepts are used to explore how different substrates affect the morphology of deposited barium fluoride (BaF2) thin films. BaF2 thin films of thickness 20 nm are prepared by electron beam evaporation technique at room temperature on glass, silicon and aluminum substrates. The structural properties and surface morphologies are investigated using glancing angle X-ray diffraction (GAXRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), respectively. Crystallite size, calculated from the XRD peaks, using the Debye Scherrer’s formula, is found to be significantly less for the case of Si substrate than for Al and glass substrates. Higuchi’s algorithm is applied to extract the fractal dimension of the horizontal and vertical sections of AFM images of the films. From the fractal dimension, the values of Hurst exponent ( H ) are inferred. For Al and glass substrates we find that H > 0.5 , which shows that the height fluctuations at neighboring pixels are positively correlated. However, for Si substrate, it is found that H 0.5 indicating that the height fluctuations at neighboring pixels are negatively correlated.

Water soluble, uniform-sized ZnS:Mn

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Digital signatures are suitable technology for public key encryption. Acceptance (non-repudiation) of digital messages and data origin authentication are one of the main usage of digital signature. Digital signature's security mainly depends on the keys (public and private). These keys are used to generate and validate digital signatures. In digital signature signing process is performed using signer's secret key. However, any attacker can present a blinded version of message encrypted with signer's public key and can get the original message. Therefore, this paper proposed a novel method to identify blinded version of digital signature. The proposed method has been tested mathematically and found to be more efficient to detect blind signatures.

Introduction: Anemia is a common, underestimated problem in cancer patients receiving myelosuppressive chemotherapy and has significant adverse effect on the quality of life and outcome. Darbepoetin has been shown to be effective in this setting, but controversy surrounds it actual use. Methods: We analyzed prospectively collected clinical practice data of patients receiving darbepoetin in a real-world setting for this retrospective audit. Patients with baseline hemoglobin (Hb) of

Bacground: Oral tobacco consumption predisposes to cancer. The pattern of its use in rural Indian cancer patients is unknown. Aim: The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence of oral tobacco consumption in cancer patients. Objectives: To identify oral tobacco consumption pattern with respect to demographic variables and clinical profiles in adult Indian rural cancer patients. Materials and Methods: All consecutive individual adult (age >18 years) patients diagnosed with any cancer and registered in the Medical Oncology Outpatient department were enrolled for questionnaire-based survey on oral tobacco consumption between July 2017 and October 2017. Demographic variables were also recorded, including income, education, and occupation. Frequency distribution and cross-tabulation were used for statistical analysis using SPSS version 17. Results: Of 517 cancer patients enrolled, 456 (88%) were rural. 230/517 (44%) consumed several forms of oral tobacco. Out of 230, 179 (78%) of them had dried tobacco leaves, whereas 23 (10%) and 26 (11%) had Gutkha and pan (betel leaves) alone, respectively. 63 (27%) consumed tobacco leaves and gutkha both. 163 (91%) of tobacco chewers were male, whereas 65% of pan chewers were male and 35% of females. About 48% of tobacco chewers were addicted since >20 years, whereas 13% started in the past 5 years. 47/179 (26%) of tobacco chewers were illiterate, whereas 13/179 (7.2%) were graduates. 106 (59%) had monthly income of between Rs. 5000–10,000. 57 (32%) and 40 (22%) were farmers and laborers, respectively. 25/215 (12%) housewives were addicted. 41/58 (70%) of the head-and-neck cancer patients consumed tobacco products, where 29/41 (70%) used dried tobacco leaves to chew. Conclusion: More than 40% of adult Indian rural cancer patients consume oral smokeless tobacco products. Dried tobacco leaves are the most common form of smokeless tobacco consumed.

Background: There is lack of information regarding pattern of distribution of pediatric cancers in Bihar. Aim: The aim of this study is to identify the pattern of distribution of pediatric cancers. Objectives: To analyze demographic data, type, and pattern of pediatric cancers in Bihar by retrospective clinical audit. Materials and Methods: All individual consecutive patients between ages 0 and 18 years registered in the Department of Medical and Pediatric Oncology from January 1, 2018 till December 31, 2018, were enrolled in this study. Data pertaining to age, sex, and type of cancer were retrieved from clinical database by retrospective audit and stratified into hematolymphoid and solid pediatric cancer cohorts. Frequency distribution and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data using SPSS version 17.0. Results: A total of 247 pediatric cancers were registered, of which 142/247 (57%) and 15/247 (43%) were pediatric hematolymphoid and solid cancers, respectively. The median age was 9 years, while male-to-female ratio was 2.26. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), 76/247 (31%) was the most common pediatric cancer overall. Hodgkin's lymphoma, 27/142 (19%) was the second most common hematolymphoid malignancy, after ALL was 76/142 (54%). Among solid tumors, Wilms' tumor was the most common, 28/105 (27%) followed by Ewing's sarcoma, 16/105 (15%), and germ cell tumor, 15/105 (14%). Central nervous system malignancies were among the least common solid tumor cancers, 3/105 (3%). Conclusion: ALL and Hodgkin's lymphoma are the most common pediatric cancers. Among solid malignancies, Wilms tumor, Ewing's sarcoma, and Germ cell tumor are predominant.