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Still the world witnessed an upturn in environmental degradation in spite of commitment to climate change across the nations. However, this study attempts to examine linkages among environmental degradation, technological innovation, and electricity consumption in India from 1981 to 2018 using time series data. To examine the long-run equilibrium relationship among the studied variables, we used robust econometric methods such as the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), and dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) methods. Furthermore, Granger causality also investigates through the vector error correction model (VECM) model, to assess inter-connotation among the underlying variables. From our empirical findings, urbanization, financial development, and technological innovation have a negative impact on carbon emissions, indicating long-term improvements in environmental quality. While economic development and electricity consumption are deteriorating environmental quality in India. The study's findings suggest that policymakers should prioritize renewable energy, which decreases environmental damage without impeding economic growth., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In the last two decades, the extensive literature that has measured agricultural productivity and growth rate remains controversial and provides few strategies about its main determinants. The present study aims to find out the key determinants of food grain yield (FGY) and examine the role of climate change and agricultural subsidy (SUB) in the context of India using annually data spanning from 1991 to 2018. The current study applied the ARDL modelling to investigate the impacts of climatic factors (average rainfall (RF), mean temperature (AT), and carbon emission (CO 2 ) and agricultural subsidy (SUB) on food grain yield (FGY) in the short-and long-term in India. The estimated outcomes indicate that climatic factors such as RF have a positive impact while AT and CO 2 have a negative effect on FGY. Similarly, non-climate variables such as gross capital formation (GCF) and fertilizer usage (FERT) positively contributed to FGY, while the area under crop (LUC), SUB, and employment (AL) negatively affected FGY in India. The results from Granger causality divulge that climatic and non-climatic elements are the main determinants of food grain yield, which have been playing play a significant role in enhancing food grain production and ensuring food security in India. Based on empirical outcomes and findings, some key policy implications emerged. Precisely, government and policy developers should focus on technological innovation and precision agriculture to increase agriculture production and productivity. Government should create funds to curb the climate change problem and promote eco-friendly renewable energy., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In recent years, environmental change has arisen as a ubiquitous problem and gained environmentalist's attention across the globe due to its long-term harmful effects on agricultural production, food supply, water supply, and livelihoods of rural households. The present study aims to explore the asymmetrical dynamic relationship between climate change and rice production with other explanatory variables. Based on the time series data of India, covering the period 1991-2018, the current study applied the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model and Granger causality approach. The results of the NARDL reveal that mean temperature negatively affects rice production in the long run while positively affecting it in the short run. Furthermore, positive shocks in rainfall and carbon emission have negative and significant impacts on rice production in the long and short run. In comparison, negative rainfall shocks significantly affect rice production in the long and short run. Wald test confirms the asymmetrical relationship between climate change and rice production. The Granger causality test shows feedback effect among mean temperature, decreasing rainfall, increasing carbon emission, and rice production. While no causal relationship between increasing temperature and decreasing carbon emission. Based on the empirical investigations, some critical policy implications emerged. Toward sustainable rice production in India, there is a need to improve irrigation infrastructure through increasing public investment and to develop climate-resilient seeds varieties to cope with climate change. Along with, at the district level government should provide proper training to farmers regarding the usage of pesticides, the proper amount of fertilizers, and irrigation systems., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Climate change, conventional agricultural management practices, and increasing water scarcity pose a major threat to agricultural production and biodiversity as well as environmental sustainability. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is recognized as an efficient, sustainable, and feasible agricultural system that plays a vital role in addressing the potential impacts of climate change in Pakistan. First-hand information was collected from 450 farm households in 24 villages from Okara, Sahiwal, and Khanewal irrigation divisions, having various wheat-based cropping systems of Pakistan. This includes rice-wheat (RW), maize-wheat (MW), and cotton-wheat (CW) cropping systems in the Lower Bari Doab Canal (LBDC) irrigation system. This study estimated and compared the sustainability and efficiency analysis of CSA and conventional agricultural practices. This study also estimated the impact of water-smart practices of the CSA, technical training, and groundwater quality on agricultural production by using production function and bootstrap truncated regression. The findings of this study revealed that adopters of CSA of the wheat-based cropping systems have higher economic benefits and improved resource use efficiencies compared to the conventional farmers. The findings of the study also revealed the increased efficiency of CSA adopters over other two systems in CW cropping system. The water-smart practices of CSA, access to credit, technical training, use of groundwater of varying quality, and other inputs also showed variations in the agricultural production and resource use efficiency. It has been concluded that farmers can earn more profit, save inputs (such as water), and increase their production by adopting water-smart practices of CSA. Hence, the government and other relevant institutions should devise and implement policies that adequately addressed the importance and enhance the use of water-smart practices of CSA in Punjab and beyond., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Social correspondence is one of the most significant columns that the public dependent on. Notably, language is the best way to communicate and associate with one another both verbally and nonverbally. There is a persistent communication gap among deaf and non-deaf communities because non-deaf people have less understanding of sign languages. Every region/country has its sign language. In Pakistan, the sign language of Urdu is a visual gesture language that is being used for communication among deaf peoples. However, the dataset of Pakistan Sign Language (PSL) is not available publicly. The dataset of PSL has been generated by acquiring images of different hand configurations through a webcam. In this work, 40 images of each hand configuration with multiple orientations have been captured. In addition, we developed, an interactive android mobile application based on machine learning that minimized the communication barrier between the deaf and non-deaf communities by using the PSL dataset. The android application recognizes the Urdu alphabet from input hand configuration., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare, (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Objective: Adolescent pregnancies are known to be associated with adverse outcomes. Our objective was to compare pregnancy outcomes amongst adolescents (young adolescents YA: 15-17 years; older adolescents OA: 18- 19 years) and young adults (20 to 25 years)., Methods: Study was conducted at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. Ten-year retrospective record review was done through convenience sampling. Data was collected on predesigned proforma. Participants were 396 primiparous adolescents (15-19 years) with singleton low-risk pregnancy. Reference-group included 410 primiparous, low-risk, young adults. Pregnancies complicated with preexisting diabetes mellitus, chronic hypertension, renal disorders or cardiac diseases were excluded. Maternal /neonatal outcomes were compared amongst groups., Results: Out of 806 charts reviewed, 75 (9.3%) were YA, 321 (39.8%) were OA and 410 (50.9%) were 20-25 years old young adults. Most of the un-booked cases were in young adolescents; 17 (22.7% YA), 41 (12.8% OA) and 33 (8.0% reference -group) (p-value 0.001). This group also booked at a later gestational age; YA (19.6±10.4 weeks), OA (17.2±9.3 weeks) and controls (15.5n±8.8 weeks) (p-value 0.002). Gestational age at delivery was not significantly different among the groups. Adolescents had a decreased likelihood of Caesarian section with youngest group having 29% less chance of Caesarian delivery (OR 95% CI 0.41, 0.2) compared to women of 20-25 years of age. Difference in maternal/neonatal outcomes remained insignificant between groups at univariate and multivariate analysis., Conclusions: Maternal/neonatal outcomes in adolescents were comparable to young adults. Good antenatal care, evidence-based protocols and strong family backing may reduce risks to mothers/babies in adolescent pregnancies.

Acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a promising potential drug target for an emerging class of new anti-tuberculosis agents. In this study, we identify short (30-mer) single-stranded DNA aptamers as a novel class of potent inhibitors of Mtb-AHAS through an in vitro DNA-SELEX method. Among all tested aptamers, two candidate aptamers (Mtb-Apt1 and Mtb-Apt6) demonstrated the greatest inhibitory potential against Mtb-AHAS activity with IC50 values in the low nanomolar range (28.94±0.002 and 22.35±0.001 nM respectively). Interestingly, inhibition kinetics analysis of these aptamers showed different modes of enzyme inhibition (competitive and mixed type of inhibition respectively). Secondary structure-guided mutational modification analysis of Mtb-Apt1 and Mtb-Apt6 identified the minimal region responsible for their inhibitory action and consequently led to 17-mer and 20-mer shortened aptamers that retained equivalent or greater inhibitory potential. Notably, a modeling and docking exercise investigated the binding site of these two potent inhibitory aptamers on the target protein and showed possible involvement of some key catalytic dimer interface residues of AHAS in the DNA-protein interactions that lead to its potent inhibition. Importantly, these two short candidate aptamers, Mtb-Apt1 (17-mer) and Mtb-Apt6 (20-mer), also demonstrated significant growth inhibition against multidrug-resistant (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR-TB) strains of tuberculosis with very low MIC of 5.36 μg/ml and 6.24 μg/ml, respectively and no significant cytotoxicity against mammalian cell line. This is the first report of functional inhibitory aptamers against Mtb-AHAS and provides the basis for development of these aptamers as novel and strong anti-tuberculosis agents., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS) catalyzes the first essential biosynthetic step of branched-chain amino acids and is a biologically safe target against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). In our previous research, we used virtual screening to identify some novel AHAS inhibitors as potent antituberculosis agents. In this study, we synthesized twenty-four additional quinazolinone benzoates and explored their antitubercular activity. Five of these compounds displayed significant MTB-AHAS inhibition and their IC50 values were determined to be in the range of 6.50 μM-12.08 μM. Importantly, these compounds also exhibited strong in vitro activity (MICs in the range of 2.5-10 mg/L) and intracellular activity against clinically isolated extensively drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis. Taken together, these results indicated that the quinazolinone benzoate compounds should be regarded as promising lead compounds for the development of potent antituberculosis drugs with a novel mode of action., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Catabolic acetolactate synthase (cALS) from Enterococcus faecalis is a FAD-independent enzyme, which catalyzes the condensation of two molecules of pyruvate to produce acetolactate. Mutational and kinetic analyses of variants suggested the importance of H111, Q112, and Q411 residues for catalysis in cALS. The wild-type and variants were expressed as equally soluble proteins and co-migrated to a size of 60 kDa on SDS-PAGE. Importantly, H111 in cALS, which is widely present as phenylalanine in many other ThDP-dependent enzymes, plays a crucial role in substrate binding. Interestingly, the H111 variants, H111R and H111F, demonstrated altered specific activity of H111 variants with 17- and 26-fold increases in Km, respectively, compared to wild-type cALS. Furthermore, Q112 variants, Q112E, Q112N, and Q112V, exhibited significantly lower specific activity with 70-, 15-, and 10-fold higher Ks for ThDP, respectively. In the case of Q411, the variant Q411E showed a 10-fold rise in Km and a 20-fold increase in Ks for ThDP. Further, the molecular docking results indicated that the binding mode of ThDP was slightly affected in the variants of cALS. Based on these results, we suggest that H111 plays a role in substrate binding, and further suggest that Q112 and Q411 might be involved in ThDP binding of cALS., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In current study herbal formulation was prepared for Diabetes mellitus (type 2). It consists of the extracts of Salacia reticulate, Cinnamomum zeylanicum,Lagerstroemia speciosa, Camellia sinensis and Gymnema sylvester. Toxicitystudies were carried out on heart, liver, kidney and blood of both male and female rabbits. Drug was administered in a dose of 15mg/kg body weight daily for 90 days. On 91th day, blood was drawn from animals and investigated for changes in biochemical and hematological levels. After that animals were sacrificed and their organs (liver, heart and kidney) were analyzed for histo-pathological changes. In biochemical tests for lipid profile, significant decreased (male-70.64 ± 0.321; female-69.80 ± 0.365) in triglycerides level were observed, no significant change was recorded in Cholesterol HDL ratio, LDL, VLDL level. A significant increase (male-16.00 ± 1.418; female-10.00 ± 0.709) was observed in HDL level. In liver function test significant decrease was observed in Gamma GT (male-10.08 ± 0.862; female-7.00 ± 0.709). Alkaline phosphatase (male-79 ± 0.838; female-51.1 ± 1.810), SGPT (male-54 ± 0.709; female-43.04 ± 2.060), direct bilirubin (male-0.024 ± 0.005; female-0.014 ± 0.002) and total bilirubin (male-0.109 ± 0.003; 0.106 ± 0.049) were observed. Non-significant changes were observed in serum total protein, globulins, albumin and A/G ratio. No significant changes were noticed in urea level and serum electrolytes. In cardiac enzymes significant decrease was observed in LDH (male-443 ± 5.61; female-360 ± 1.848) and SGOT (male-27 ± 0.709; female-28 ± 1.418) level and highly significant rise in CPK (male- 3128 ± 8.478; female-1598 ± 7.483) and CK-MB (male-446 ± 2.308; female-438 ± 2.819). In hematological profile, significant decrease was observed in Hb (male-12.3 ± 0.392; female-12.4 ± 0.1), RBC count (male-6.60 ± 0.167; female-5.74 ± 0.25) and Hematocrit (HCT/PCV) % in both male and female rabbits (male-45.70 ± 0.255; female-43.50 ± 0.448) and significant (p<0.5) increased in WBC count (male-8.40 ± 0.401; female-9.10 ± 0.054). Significant (p<0.5) decrease in blood glucose level and HbA1c (male-3.36 ± 0.113; female-3.16 ± 0.076) was observed. In histopathological studies mild edema was observed in heart and there was no change in histo-architecture of liver and kidneys. It is concluded that formulation does not showed any chronic toxicity in adult dose.

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica ser. enteritidis and Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica ser. typhimurium are the most common and severe food-borne pathogens responsible for causing salmonellosis in humans and animals. The development of an early and ultra-sensitive detection system is the first critical step in controlling this disease. To accomplish this, we used the cell systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (Cell-SELEX) technique to identify single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) aptamers to be used as detection probes that can specifically bind to S. enteritidis and S. typhimurium. A total of 12 target-specific ssDNA aptamers were obtained through ten rounds of Cell-SELEX under stringent selection conditions, and negative selection further enhanced the selectivity among these aptamers. Aptamer specificity was investigated using the gram-negative bacteria E. coli and P. aeruginosa and was found to be much higher towards S. enteritidis and S. typhimurium. Importantly, three candidate aptamers demonstrated higher binding affinities and the dissociation constants (Kd) were found to be in the range of nanomolar to submicromolar levels. Furthermore, individual aptamers were conjugated onto polyvalent directed aptamer polymer, which led to 100-fold increase in binding affinity compared to the individual aptamers alone. Taken together, this study reports the identification of higher affinity and specificity ssDNA aptamers (30mer), which may be useful as capture and detection probes in biosensor-based detection systems for salmonellosis.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis AHAS is a potential target for the development of novel anti-tuberculosis agents. Silico analysis showed that conserved His84 and Gln86 residues lie in the catalytic dimer interface of M. tuberculosis AHAS. Mutational analyses of these invariants led to significant reduction in their activity with reduced affinity toward the substrate. Importantly, mutation of Gln86 to Trp abolished complete activity. Further, molecular dynamics simulation studies suggested that these residues are likely to play a key role in maintaining the Glu85 side chain in the required geometry with N1' atom of ThDP during catalysis. In addition, substitution of essential Glu85 by Ala, Asp, and Gln led to severe drop in catalytic activity with reduced affinity toward ThDP confirming its catalytic role in M. tuberculosis AHAS., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a promising target for the development of anti-tuberculosis agents. With the absence of an available bacterial AHAS crystal structure, that of M. tuberculosis, site-directed mutagenesis has been a useful tool for determining its structural and functional features. In this study, a highly conserved proline residue (P126 of M. tuberculosis AHAS) was selected, and the possible role was evaluated by site-directed mutagenesis. P126 was replaced by valine, threonine, alanine, and glutamate to yield P126V, P126T, P126A, and P126E, respectively. All variants were expressed in their soluble forms in Escherichia coli and purified to near homogeneity. The molecular mass (SDS-PAGE) of the purified variants was ∼68 kDa, which is similar to that of wild-type AHAS. The P126V, P126T, and P126A variants exhibited significantly lower activity than wild-type AHAS, whereas P126E was inactive under the tested assay conditions. Furthermore, the P126V and P126T variants showed a significantly decreased preference toward pyruvate and ThDP as substrate and cofactor respectively, whereas the P126A showed similar kinetics to that of wild-type AHAS. Like in AHAS from yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (PDB ID: 1N0H), residue P126 is located in the ThDP binding pocket of M. tuberculosis AHAS homology model. Collectively, these results suggest that the conserved P126 plays a significant role in the ThDP binding of M. tuberculosis AHAS., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Microbes and plants synthesize essential branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) such as valine, leucine, and isoleucine via a common biosynthetic pathway in which the first reaction is catalyzed by acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS, EC 4.1.3.18). Recently, AHAS was identified as a potential anti bacterial target. To help find an effective inhibitor that could act as an antibacterial compound, we cloned and characterized the catalytic subunit (CSU) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa AHAS, and found four potent inhibitors through chemical library screening. The ilvI gene of P. aeruginosa encodes a 65-kDa AHAS protein, consistent with the size of the purified enzyme on SDS-PAGE. Enzyme kinetics showed that the enzyme has a Km of 14.2 mM and a specific activity of 0.12 U/mg. Enzyme activity was optimum at a temperature of 37 °C and a pH of 7.5. The Kd for thiamine diphosphate (ThDP) was 89.92 ± 17.9 μM, as determined by fluorescence quenching. The cofactor activation constants (Ks) for ThDP and (Kc) for Mg(2+) were 0.6 ± 0.1 and 560.8 ± 7.4 μM, respectively. Further, we determined that AVS2087, AVS2093, AVS2236, and AVS2387 compounds are potent inhibitors of the catalytic subunit of P. aeruginosa AHAS. These compounds inhibit nearly 100% of AHAS activity, with IC50 values of 1.19 μM, 5.0 nM, 25 nM, and 13 nM, respectively. Compound AVS2093 showed growth inhibition with a minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 742.9 μg/ml against P. aeruginosa strain ATCC 9027. Furthermore, these findings were supported by molecular docking studies with the AVS compounds against P. aeruginosa AHAS in which AVS2093 showed minimum binding energy (-7.8 kJ/mol) by interacting with the receptor through a single hydrogen bond of 2.873 Å. Correlation of AVS2093 activity with P. aeruginosa AHAS cell growth inhibition suggested that AHAS might serve as a target protein for the development of novel antibacterial therapeutics. Results of the current study provide an impetus to further evaluate the potency of these inhibitors against pathogenic P. aeruginosa strains in vivo and to design more potent antibacterial agents based on these AVS inhibitors., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

An attempt was made to define psycrophily on the basis of the temperature characteristic mu.