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Background: Ultrasound guided sampling techniques are frequently used in the tissue diagnosis of various tumours. Female patients commonly present with adnexal masses and require tissue diagnosis by trucut biopsy for initiation of the treatment. This study was done to determine the outcome of ultrasound guided trucut biopsy in patients presenting with suspected adnexal malignancy. Methodology: This cross sectional study was done at the Department of Radiology, MCH Centre, PIMS hospital, Islamabad from October 2018 to September 2020. In this study, all female patients aged 18 years and above with suspected adnexal malignancy were included. Trucut biopsy was performed under ultrasound guidance, sample sent for histopathology and various histopathological outcomes were assessed. Patients were kept under observation for 2 hours following biopsy. The data was entered and assessed by using SPSS version 24.0. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for nominal data and mean and standard deviation for numerical data. Results: Mean age of the subjects was 50.24±10.52 years and mean duration of symptoms was 2.97±1.23 months. Definitive diagnosis made in 59 (95.1%) out of 62 cases and only 3 (0.04%) cases were inconclusive; among which two showed inadequate sample and one showed normal tubo-ovarian tissue. 90% histopathological findings were conclusive and no complication was reported. Conclusion: Trucut biopsy has high diagnostic yield with no complications and most common malignancy detected was serous cystadenocarcinoma followed by mucinous carcinoma. Key words: Biopsy, Malignancy, Ultrasound

The purpose of the research was to investigate the health-related physical fitness of youth athletes from Bangladesh and India. The forty athletes from each country, Bangladesh (n=40) and India (n=40) were chosen using a simple random sampling method. The researchers selected Bangladeshi athletes from the Jashore district in Bangladesh and Indian athletes from the Murshidabad and Birbhum districts of West Bengal, India. Those who competed in at least one district-level competition were included in the study. For the study, the researchers chose male athletes between the ages of 17 and 21 years. The study included lower body explosive strength in the standing broad jump test, upper body muscular strength in the pull-up test and cardio-respiratory endurance in the cooper test as variables. The data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics (independent t-test), with the significance level set at 0.05. An independent sample t-test shows that Bangladeshi and Indian youth athletes standing broad jump t(78) = 2.10, sig. = 0.039; pull-ups t(78) = 1.68, sig. = 0.099; cooper test t(78) = 2.34, sig. = 0.022 respectively. The findings revealed a substantial difference in leg explosive strength and cardio-respiratory endurance, but no substantial difference in upper body muscular strength between Bangladeshi and Indian youth athletes.

Different anthropogenic activities along with some natural processes have severely contaminated the atmosphere that is an ongoing threat for life of the organisms. Contamination of soils with toxic metals is one such threat among different abiotic factors. It not only affected the soil chemistry and plant growth but also affected the other elements of ecosystem along with the pollution in underground water. To overcome the problem of toxic metals in soil, different strategies are being employed for better production along with the remediation of soils, but all these have some drawbacks and not cost effective. However, the new methods are being employed for toxic metal remediation that is considered environmental friendly and cost effective. In this regard the application of biochar seems to be effective means. Application of biochar due to its unique properties found helpful in the remediation of soil toxic metals. It changes soil properties such as buffering system by effecting pH, water holding capacity, and mobility of the metals in soil due to its strong binding capacity and increases the metal leaching to deeper soils; as a result, it provides a better environment for plant root growth and working. Under such conditions the plant physiology changes, and plants work under favorable conditions. Biochar application has a great impact on plant health in terms of growth and final yield due to improvement in plant physiology. This chapter is focused on the effectiveness of the use of biochar from different sources for the remediation of soil from toxic metals in parallel with its effect on plant physiology for better growth and production. The information given in the chapter will be beneficial for plant growers to decide how to obtain better growth and production along with remediation of toxic metals in the biochar-amended soil.

Nature always remains an inexhaustible source of treasures for mankind. It remains a mystery for every challenge until the completion of the challenge. While we talk about the complicated health issues, nature offers us a great variety of chemical scaffolds and their various moieties packed in the form of natural products e.g., plants, microorganisms (fungi, algae, protozoa), and terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates. This review article is an update about jaceosidin, a bioactive flavone, from genus Artemisia. This potentially active compound exhibits a variety of pharmacological activities including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-bacterial, antiallergic and anti-cancer activities. The bioactivities and the therapeutic action of jaceosidin, especially the modulation of different cell signaling pathways (ERK1/2, NF-κB, PI3K/Akt and ATM-Chk1/2) which become deregulated in various pathological disorders, have been focused here. The reported data suggest that the bioavailability of this anti-cancer compound should be enhanced by utilizing various chemical, biological and computational techniques. Moreover, it is recommended that researchers and scientists should work on exploring the mode of action of this particular flavone to precede it further as a potent anti-cancer compound.

Plants face a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses throughout their life cycle that adversely affect their growth and production. These stresses decrease the annual crop yield up to 70% globally and had created a problem of food shortage as well as the malnutrition for ever-increasing world population. Different strategies are being practiced to overcome these problems and found successful up to some extent. Exogenous use of plant growth promoters through different modes is one such among them that found helpful to improve the plant growth and production under stressful conditions and is being employed at commercial level to obtain better production. However, most of them are the inorganic chemicals and are found toxic for organism and are not environmental friendly. Trend is increasing toward the use of organic and environmental-friendly biostimulants with the ability to improve production and stress tolerance induction. Studies have revealed that exogenous use of these biochemicals through different modes (seed soaking, foliar spray, or as soil application) is found helpful in improving the plant growth and production under stressful conditions. These biostimulants include the chelation of macro- or micro-nutrients with different organic compounds, plant growth regulators of microbial origin, and plant-based biostimulants that are found helpful in improving the plant growth and production under stressful conditions. These include humic acids (humic and fulvic acid), chitosan, phosphites, bio-char, and plant-based extracts, including algal extracts and of different plant parts. These biostimulants along with the improvement of plant growth and production also found helpful to improve the yield and yield nutritional quality when applied exogenously through different modes. Improvements in the attribute due to the exogenous use of biostimulants under stressful condition are associated with their role in different physio-biochemical attributes, including plant antioxidative defense mechanism, plant photosynthetic efficiency, and plant water relation through the accumulation of different osmotica (osmolytes and osmoprotectants) that help to maintain cellular osmotic potential and better nutrient uptake and mobility. Plant-based biostimulants improve the plant growth due to the presence of different phytohormones and other secondary metabolites, vitamins, antioxidants, and the inorganic nutrients in the extract that directly affect the plant growth and production through improving the plant tolerance against abiotic stresses. Exogenous use of biostimulants through different modes also improves the plant growth, yield as well as the yield nutritional quality under stressful conditions. However, studies revealed that the effective dose for the induction of stress tolerance of these biostimulants is plant species, growth stage, and stress type specific. Moreover, the use of biostimulants for the effective improvement is also dependent on the mode of application. Although large work has been done to study the role of biostimulants in improving plant growth and production, still more is required for final recommendations. More attention is required in this regard and in future due to their non-toxic and environmental-friendly nature.

Due to sessile nature of plants, they face a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses during their life cycle. These stresses are responsible for disturbed cellular processes that adversely affect their growth and yield. To cope with these stresses, plants have developed various physiological mechanisms at cellular level that result in a change in morphology and help them to tolerate these environmental changes and respond to these changes with an optimal response. These responses of plants toward environmental stresses are both dynamic and complex that help them complete their life cycle rapidly under these stressful environmental conditions. The defense response of the plants to these stresses starts through variations in different molecular events with the involvement of different signaling molecules including the phytohormones. Phytohormones are small low-molecular-weight endogenous molecules that play important roles in different defense responses of plants against biotic as well as abiotic stresses. Along with their role in defense signaling, they also regulate various physiological, growth, and developmental processes in plants. These phytohormones include the auxins, cytokinins (CKs), gibberellins (GAs), ethylene (ET), jasmonic acid (JA), abscisic acid (ABA), salicylic acid (SA), and brassinosteroids (BRs) tocotrienols, triacontanols, and polyamines which are important ones that have ability to help plants to respond to different environmental stresses through their specific signaling properties. These signaling defense responses are the results of the interaction of various genes, helping the phytohormones to be involved in almost all cellular metabolic processes due to their specific modulations in the activities of these genes. All these phytohormones have their specific roles, e.g., auxin is involved in the regulation of differentiation and plant growth, cytokinin is responsible for cell division, gibberellin is responsible for stem elongation, seed germination, dormancy, senescence, and flower development, ethylene is involved in fruit ripening, and ABA has stress tolerance ability. The stress tolerance mechanism of plant is much complex that also has the involvement of other phytohormones, including the brassinosteroids (BRs), jasmonic acid (JA), salicylic acid (SA), polyamines (spermine, spermidine, putrescine, and thermospermine), tocotrienols, triacontanols (TRAI) as newly discovered ones. All the phytohormones help plants to survive under adverse environmental conditions with their specific roles in various growth, developmental, and physiological processes either through their endogenous accumulation or by exogenous application (foliar spray or seed priming) where the optimal concentration for the stress response is not sufficient. The exogenous use of these phytohormones has been increasing in crop plants with their economic value for obtaining the desired characters along with better production. The information given in the chapter will be helpful for plant growers and researchers to understand the mechanism of action of these phytohormones for better growth and production under changing environmental conditions.

Phytochemical investigation of Nepeta distans Raul resulted in the isolation of a new phenolic compound, nepatanol (1), and eight known compounds, markhamioside F, netidiol, nepedinol, thymoquinone, eugenol, oleanolic acid, ursolic acid, and β-sitosterol, which have been isolated for the first time from this source. Structures of all the isolates were established on the basis of MS, and 1D and 2D NMR spectral data and by comparison with reported data.