Archives-February 2011

Diabetes mellitus is the most common endocrine disorder that impairs glucose homeostasis. Hyperglycemia is the defining characteristic of diabetes mellitus. Chronic hyperglycemia is associated with damage to many of the body’s systems. Diabetes cases in the world are estimated to increase by 122% between 1995 and 2025. As diabetes prevalence increases so does the need for new and more effective therapies. Studies have indicated some herbal extracts have antidiabetic effects. However, rational prescription of effective medicinal plants for diabetes cure, requires precise information of action mechanism of these plants. Ziziphus jujuba, a member of the family Rhamnaceae has been used as a traditional medicinal herb and considered for thousands of years to affect various physiological functions in the body In present study, diabetes induced in rats, and then hypoglycemic effect of Ziziphus jujuba leaves hydroalcoholic extract was evaluated. Then results compared with glibenclamide effect.

The aim of the current study was to evaluate antimutagenic activity of ethanolic extract of Annona squamosa leaf which is belonging to the family Annonaceae. Its in vitro and in vivo antioxidant activity of the extracts has already been reported. On the basis of that we have decided to evaluate its antimutagenic activity in vivo in mice using bone marrow chromosomal aberration assay, micronucleus test and sperm abnormality assay. In chromosomal aberration assay, ethanolic extract of Annona squamosa (500mg/kg) had shown significant reduction in percentage of cells with aberration. In Micronucleus test, ethanolic extract of Annona squamosa (500mg/kg) showed significant reduction in total no. of micronucleus in polychromatic erythrocytes. In sperm abnormality assay, ethanolic extract of Annona squamosa (250 and 500mg/kg) had shown significant reduction in total no. of sperm shape abnormality. In conclusion, these results suggest that ethanolic extract of Annona squamosa leaves possessing significant antimutagenic property.

The Urban Cooperative Banking (UCB) system has come a long way since 1904 when the first UCB was started at Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu. UCBs remain not-for-profit, owned and controlled by the members who use their services. With the tightening of prudential norms, the banking sector has been consistently conforming to and adopting international prudential norms and accounting practices. Such strengthening of prudential norms have resulted in increased levels of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) for the Urban Cooperative Banking Sector. This study is an attempt to analyze the asset quality of UCBs in India. This paper also traces the return on assets of UCBs in India along with pattern of financing to different sectors.

Nanotechnology, involving the development of nanoscaled pharmaceutical delivery devices. The micelles, liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, vesicles, Nanogel, nanocrystals, dendrimers, nanotubes and have been used as strategies to deliver conventional pharmaceuticals or substances such as peptides, recombinant proteins, vaccines and nucleotides. Nanocarriers and other colloidal pharmaceutical delivery systems modify many physicochemical properties, thus resulting in changes in the body distribution and other pharmacological processes. These changes can lead to pharmaceutical delivery at specific sites and reduce side effects. Therefore, Nanocarriers can improve the therapeutic efficiency, being excellent carriers for biological molecules, including enzymes, recombinant proteins and nucleic acid. This review discusses different pharmaceutical carrier systems, and their potential and limitations in the field of pharmaceutical technology. Products with these technologies which have been approved by the FDA in different clinical phases and which are on the market will be also discussed.

The prevalence of Bombay blood group in Employees State Insurance Medical College and Post Graduate Institute of Medical Science and Research centre(ESICMC-PGIMSR), a tertiary health provider in Karnataka, South India.

The investigation was focused on the isolation of metal tolerant and antibiotic sensitive bacteria (A. ferrooxidans from bauxite and P. aeruginosa from magnesite mine) from the waste dump of mine by using selective medium. These two organisms showed maximum metal resistant potentiality for the selected heavy metals (Mn, Zn, Fe, Cr, Cu and Hg) in the range of 20 to 100 mg/ml^-1. The tolerance among the isolated bacteria on heavy metals were observed in order of Mn > Zn > Fe > Cr >Cu>. These organisms did not show effective tolerant to Hg. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of heavy metals (Mn, Zn, Fe, Cr, Cu and Hg) for the test bacteria were in the ranges of 50 to 200mg/ml^-1. The antibiotic susceptibility of these two metal tolerant bacteria were analyzed by standard antibiotics, the results showed that most (8 antibiotics) of the antibiotics are sensitive except amphicillin and co-trimoxahole. The overall results indicate that the isolated metal tolerant bacteria would be very useful for the reclamation of mine soil without any hazardous effects.

A Mobile Ad hoc Network is a collection of mobile wireless nodes that combine to form a network without any infrastructure. The main challenges in MANET are reliability, bandwidth and battery power. Broadcasting is important in MANET for routing information discovery. Broadcasting is the process in which a source node sends a message to all other nodes in MANET. The broadcast operation as a fundamental service in mobile ad hoc networks is prone to the broadcast storm problem if forwarding nodes are not carefully designated. This paper proposes a simple broadcast algorithm called double-covered broadcast which takes advantage of broadcast redundancy to improve the delivery ratio in an environment that has rather high transmission error rate. Only a set of selected nodes will forward the broadcast message. The selected nodes called forwarding nodes must satisfy the following two requirements: 1) the sender’s 2-hop neighbors are covered and 2) the sender’s 1-hop neighbors are either forwarding nodes or non forwarding nodes covered by at least two forwarding neighbors. The retransmissions of the forwarding nodes are received by the sender as the confirmation of their reception of the packet. The non forwarding neighbors do not acknowledge the reception of the broadcast. The proposed algorithm has many metrics such as balancing the average retransmission redundancy, avoid broadcast storm problem, recovering the transmission error locally and increasing the broadcast delivery ratio in a high transmission error rate environment.

Supply of power for an implantable medical device through a thermoelectric generator shows potential way for a biological system. The direct utilization of the temperature difference existing whole biological body is the unique feature. This paper attempts to review the energy generation of an implanted thermoelectric generator for various physiological or environmental thermal surroundings. Also several technical approaches included to enhance the energy generation from an implanted thermoelectric generator, to shows its long-term potential energy supplier for such medical practices.

Dipotassium sodium tetraborate octahydrate- K2Na[B4O5(OH)4]2 .8H2O (KNB) is an intriguing crystal for laser frequency conversion. It was grown by slow evaporation solution growth technique at ambient temperature. The investigated crystal is crystallized into noncentrosymmetric orthorhombic axial P212121 space group. Fundamental optical phonon modes were identified and the assignments were proposed.The dependence of second order optical susceptibilities with the applied d.c field strength for two principal geometries was studied. Piezooptical coefficients for the diagonal Pxxxx and off-diagonal Pxxzz tensor components under applied dc-field also were measured and discussed. Correlation between the anisotropy of the obtained spectra and of the observed nonlinear optical susceptibilities was established.

We are very happy to announce that from 21st February 2011, Dr.Chukwunonso ECC Ejike has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on the Biochemistry. Dr.Chukwunonso ECC Ejike is currently working Department of Biochemistry, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, PMB 7267 Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria. The appointment of Dr.Chukwunonso ECC Ejike as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links with Iran and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to chiefeditor@elixirjournal.org. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief