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A healthy gut flora contains a diverse and stable commensal group of microorganisms, whereas, in disease conditions, there is a shift toward pathogenic microbes, termed microbial dysbiosis. Many studies associate microbial dysbiosis with neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Multiple sclerosis (MS), and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although, an overall comparative analysis of microbes and their metabolic involvement in these diseases is still lacking. In this study, we have performed a comparative analysis of microbial composition changes occurring in these four diseases. Our research showed a high resemblance of microbial dysbiosis signatures between AD, PD, and MS. However, ALS appeared dissimilar. The most common population of microbes to show an increase belonged to the phyla, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria , and Firmicutes . Although, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were the only phyla that showed a decrease in their population. The functional analysis of these dysbiotic microbes showed several potential metabolic links which can be involved in the altered microbiome-gut-brain axis in neurodegenerative diseases. For instance, the microbes with elevated populations lack pathways for synthesizing SCFA acetate and butyrate. Also, these microbes have a high capacity for producing L-glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter and precursor of GABA. Contrastingly, Tryptophan and histamine have a lower representation in the annotated genome of elevated microbes. Finally, the neuroprotective compound spermidine was less represented in elevated microbes' genomes. Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of potential dysbiotic microbes and their metabolic involvement in neurodegenerative disorders, including AD, PD, MS, and ALS.

Antibiotics are commonly used to treat infectious diseases; however, persistence is often expressed by the pathogenic bacteria and their long-term relative effect on the host have been neglected. The present study investigated the impact of antibiotics in gut microbiota (GM) and metabolism of host. The effect of ampicillin antibiotics on GM of Drosophila melanogaster was analyzed through deep sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicon gene. The dominant phyla consisted of Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Planctomycetes, Chloroflexi, Euryarchaeota, Acedobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Cyanobacteria. It was found that the composition of GM was significantly altered on administration of antibiotics. On antibiotic treatments, there were decline in relative abundance of Proteobacteria and Firmicutes, while there were increase in relative abundance of Chlorophyta and Bacteroidota. High abundance of 14 genera, viz., Wolbachia, Lactobacillus, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Thiolamprovum, Pseudoalteromonas, Vibrio, Romboutsia, Staphylococcus, Alteromonas, Clostridium, Lysinibacillus, Litoricola, and Cellulophaga were significant (p ≤ 0.05) upon antibiotic treatment. Particularly, the abundance of Acetobacter was significantly (p ≤ 0.05) declined but increased for Wolbachia. Further, a significant (p ≤ 0.05) increase in Wolbachia endosymbiont of D. melanogaster, Wolbachia endosymbiont of Curculio okumai, and Wolbachia pipientis and a decrease in the Acinetobacter sp. were observed. We observed an increase in functional capacity for biosynthesis of certain nucleotides and the enzyme activities. Further, the decrease in antimicrobial peptide production in the treated group and potential effects on the host’s defense mechanisms were observed. This study helps shed light on an often-overlooked dimension, namely the persistence of antibiotics’ effects on the host.

Radio pulsars show remarkable clock-like stability, which make them useful astronomy tools in experiments to test equation of state of neutron stars and detecting gravitational waves using pulsar timing techniques. A brief review of relevant astrophysical experiments is provided in this paper highlighting the current state-of-the-art of these experiments. A program to monitor frequently glitching pulsars with Indian radio telescopes using high cadence observations is presented, with illustrations of glitches detected in this program, including the largest ever glitch in PSR B0531+21. An Indian initiative to discover sub-\\[\\mu \\]Hz gravitational waves, called Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA), is also described briefly, where time-of-arrival uncertainties and post-fit residuals of the order of \\[\\mu \\]s are already achievable, comparable to other international pulsar timing array experiments. While timing the glitches and their recoveries are likely to provide constraints on the structure of neutron stars, InPTA will provide upper limits on sub-\\[\\mu \\]Hz gravitational waves apart from auxiliary pulsar science. Future directions for these experiments are outlined.

The spin-down limit of the continuous gravitational wave strain from pulsars assumed to be triaxial stars rotating about a principal moment of inertia axis depends upon the value of the intrinsic spin frequency derivative of the pulsar, among other parameters. In order to get more accurate intrinsic spin frequency derivative values, dynamical effects contributing to the measured spin frequency derivative values must be estimated via more realistic approaches. In this work, we calculated improved values for the spin-down limit of the continuous gravitational wave strain (assuming that pulsars are triaxial stars rotating about a principal moment of inertia axis) for a set of 237 pulsars for which a targeted search for continuous gravitational waves was recently carried out by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration. We used `GalDynPsr', a Python-based public package, to calculate more realistic values for the intrinsic spin frequency derivatives and, consequently, we get more realistic values of the spin-down limit. The realistic values that we obtain for the intrinsic spin frequency derivatives can also provide a valuable contribution to improving the sensitivity of searches for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars.

The observed values of the time-derivatives of the spin or orbital frequency of pulsars are affected by their dynamical properties. We derive thorough analytical expressions for such dynamical contributions in terms of the Galactic coordinates, the proper motion, the pulsar distance, and the radial velocity. We find that the effects of the dynamical terms in the second-derivative of frequencies or parameters based on such second derivatives, e.g., braking index, are usually negligible. However, unique pulsars for which the effects of the dynamical terms are significant can exist. In particular, dynamical effects can make the magnitude of the observed value of the braking index to be in the order of thousand while the true value of it is close to the theoretically expected value three, especially if the pulsars lie close to the Galactic centre. Dynamics can also affect the value of the second derivative of the orbital frequency of a binary pulsar at the first decimal place. We also emphasize the fact that our expressions provide more accurate results than pre-existing approximate ones that exclude some of the terms. Comparison with a set of pulsars showed that the median value of the difference between the results obtained by our method and a pre-existing method is about 50 percent.

With precision pulsar timing, measured values of a large set of pulsar parameters are obtainable. For some of those parameters, such as the time-derivatives of spin or orbital periods (in the case of binary pulsars), the measured values are not the intrinsic values of the parameters as they contain contributions from the dynamical effects. In the case of orbital period derivatives, the intrinsic values are essentially the general relativistic results. Pulsar timing solution also provides measurement of higher time-derivatives of orbital frequency for some pulsars. We specifically focus on the second time-derivative of the orbital frequency to explore its application in testing general relativity. In this work, we have provided a formalism to estimate the general relativistic contribution to the second derivative of the orbital frequency. We have calculated the dynamical effect contributions as well as the general relativistic contributions to the second time-derivative of the orbital period for real as well as synthetic pulsars. We find that the general relativistic contribution to the second time-derivative of the orbital period is negligibly small compared to the observed values of the real pulsars.

R-mode oscillations of rotating neutron stars are promising candidates for continuous gravitational wave (GW) observations. The r-mode frequencies for slowly rotating Newtonian stars are well-known and independent of the equation of state (EOS) but for neutron stars, several mechanisms can alter the r-mode frequency of which the relativistic correction is dominant and relevant for most of the neutron stars. The most sensitive searches for continuous GWs are those for known pulsars for which GW frequencies are in targeted narrow frequency bands of few Hz. In this study, we investigate the effect of several state-of-the-art multi-messenger constraints on the r-mode frequency for relativistic, slowly rotating, barotropic stars. Imposing these recent constraints on the EOS, we find that the r-mode frequency range is slightly higher from the previous study and the narrow band frequency range can increase upto 8-25% for the most promising candidate PSR J0537-6910 depending on the range of compactness. We also derive universal relations between r-mode frequency and dimensionless tidal deformability which can be used to estimate the dynamical tide of the r-mode resonant excitation during the inspiral signal. These results can be used to construct the parameter space for r-mode searches in gravitational wave data and also constrain the nuclear equation of state following a successful r-mode detection.

The observed values of the rate of change of the orbital and the spin periods of pulsars are affected by different dynamical effects, for example, the line-of-sight acceleration and the proper motion of the pulsar relative to the sun. We explore these dynamical effects thoroughly and point out the drawbacks of popular methods. We introduce a package, `GalDynPsr', that evaluates different dynamical effects following traditional as well as improved methods based on the model of the Galactic potential provided in a publicly available package called `galpy'. We argue that the improved methods introduced in this paper should be used for pulsars located 1 kpc or farther away from the solar system, especially when precise values of the rate of change of the periods are required, e.g., while placing limits on alternative theories of gravity, calculating the spin-down limit of the continuous gravitational waves emitted from a rotationally deformed neutron star, understanding pulsar `death-line', etc. GalDynPsr is available online and open for contributions.

Gravitational Wave (GW) observations from Neutron Stars (NS) in a binary system provide an excellent scenario to constrain the nuclear parameters. The investigation of Pratten et al. (2022) has shown that the ignorance of f-mode dynamical tidal correction in the GW waveform model of the binary neutron star (BNS) system can lead to substantial bias in the measurement of NS properties and NS equations of state (EOS). In this work, we investigate the bias in the nuclear parameters resulting from the ignorance of dynamical tidal correction. In addition, this work demonstrates the sensitivity of the nuclear parameters and the estimated constraints on them from future GW observations. We infer the nuclear parameters from GW observations by describing the NS matter within the relativistic mean field model. For a population of GW events, we notice that the ignorance of dynamical tide predicts a lower median for nucleon effective mass (\\(m^*\\)) by \\(\\sim6\\%\\) compared to the scenario when dynamical tidal correction is considered. Whereas at a 90\\% credible interval(CI), \\(m^*\\) gets constrained up to \\(\\sim 5\\%\\) and \\(\\sim 3\\%\\) in A+ (the LIGO-Virgo detectors with a sensitivity of 5th observing run) and Cosmic Explorer (CE) respectively. We also discuss the resulting constraints on all other nuclear parameters, including compressibility, symmetry energy, and slope of symmetry energy, considering an ensemble of GW events. We do not notice any significant impact in analyzing nuclear parameters other than \\(m^*\\) due to the ignorance of f-mode dynamical tides.

Gravitational waves (GW) emanating from unstable quasi-normal modes in Neutron Stars (NS) could be accessible with the improved sensitivity of the current GW detectors or with the next-generation GW detectors and, therefore, can be employed to study the NS interior. Assuming f-mode excitation in isolated pulsars with typical energy of pulsar glitches and considering potential f-mode GW candidates for A+ (upgraded LIGO detectors operating at 5th observation run design sensitivity) and Einstein Telescope (ET), we demonstrate the inverse problem of NS asteroseismology within a Bayesian formalism to constrain the nuclear parameters and NS Equation of State (EOS). We describe the NS interior within relativistic mean field formalism. Taking the example of glitching pulsars, we find that for a single event in A+ and ET, among the nuclear parameters, the nucleon effective mass (\\(m^*\\)) within 90\\% credible interval (CI) can be restricted within \\(10\\%\\) and \\(5\\%\\), respectively. At the same time, the incompressibility (\\(K\\)) and the slope of the symmetry energy (\\(L\\)) are only loosely constrained. Considering multiple (10) events in A+ and ET, all the nuclear parameters are well constrained, especially \\(m^*\\), which can be constrained to 3\\% and 2\\% in A+ and ET, respectively. Uncertainty in the observables of a \\(1.4M_{\\odot}\\) NS such as radius (\\(R_{1.4M_{\\odot}}\\)), f-mode frequency (\\(f_{1.4M_{\\odot}}\\)), damping time (\\(\\tau_{1.4M_{\\odot}}\\)) and a few EOS properties including squared speed of sound (\\(c_s^2\\)) are also estimated.