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We synthesized gold (Au) nanoparticles via a rapid chemical route by reducing chloroauric acid by trisodium citrate. TEM micrographs revealed that particles were spherical with well-defined lattice structures and most of them were within the size range of 8–12 nm. A single surface plasmon resonance peak observed at 525 nm indicated the uniformness of the spherical morphology of the particles. XRD analysis showed that the particles were well crystalline. An impedance-based humidity sensor device was fabricated for depositing these gold nanoparticles in their non-functionalized state and the sensor revealed fast response time of 54 s, high stability and repeatability, and an impressive average sensitivity of 7.57 MΩ/% RH within the humidity range of 10–95%. SEM micrographs revealed the presence of cracks on the film surface and our analysis of the sensing mechanism correlated the sensitivity and the surface cracks along with smaller particle sizes. Our results show that gold nanoparticles without further functionalization are able to perform as a well-performing humidity sensor.

We investigate the spatial stability of compressible, viscous pipe flows with radius-dependent mean density profiles, subjected to solid body rotations. For a fixed Rossby number $\\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}$ (inverse of the rotational speed), as the Reynolds number $Re$ is increased, the flow transitions from being stable to convectively unstable, usually leading to absolute instability. If flow compressibility is unimportant and $Re$ is held constant, there appears to be a maximum $Re$ below which the flow remains stable irrespective of any rotational speed, or a minimum azimuthal Reynolds number $Re_{\\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$   $(=Re/\\unicode[STIX]{x1D716})$ is required for any occurrence of absolute instabilities. Once compressible forces are significant, the effect of pressure–density coupling is found to be more severe below a critical $Re$ , where as rotational speeds are raised, a stable flow almost directly transitions to an absolutely unstable state. This happens at a critical $Re_{\\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$ which reduces with increased flow Mach number, pointing to compressibility aiding in the instability at these lower Reynolds numbers. However, at higher $Re$ , above the critical value, the traditional stabilizing role of compressibility is recovered if mean density stratification exists, where the gradients of density play an equally important role, more so at the higher azimuthal modes. A total disturbance energy-based formulation is used to obtain mechanistic understanding at these stability states, where we find the entropic energy perturbations to dominate as the primary instability mechanism, in sharp contrast to the energy due to axial shear, known to play a leading role in incompressible swirling flows.

Agriculture has the most significant contribution in fulfilling the basic human need, sustaining life, and strengthening the economy of any country. To feed the exploding population of the world, there has been a quantum jump in the production of agricultural commodities, which has led to the production of a substantial considerable quantity of agricultural and agro-industrial wastes. The bulks of these wastes are lignocellulosic in nature and consist of three main polymeric constituents, i.e., cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, which are recalcitrant. The primary significant portions of these remain unutilized and are burnt in the field, leading to severe environmental aggression and wastage of resource. Farmers across the globe, including India, burn these agricultural wastes in their thousands of acre land, which contribute to spoiling the air quality index (AQI). This is very harmful, especially to children, pregnant women, old adults, and for patients suffering from respiratory diseases. The current manuscript sets up an agro-waste management platform by using paddy straw as a substrate for the production of nutritionally and medically rich oyster mushroom, Pleurotus florida (Pf) and which is further used in the green synthesis of bimetallic (gold-platinum) Au-Pt nanoparticle. Yield performance and biological efficiency of Pf were calculated from the degraded paddy straw. The green synthesized Au-Pt NPs were structurally characterized by ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and zeta potential analysis. The prepared NPs showed a face-centered cubic crystal structure, icosahedral shape with a mean particle size of 16 nm. Furthermore, we examined the cytotoxic activity of Au-Pt NPs using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay, intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, and apoptosis by propidium iodide assay. We found that Au-Pt NPs exerted apoptotic activity on the human colon cancer cell line (HCT 116) in a dose-dependent manner from 12.5 to 200 μg/mL. Overall, our findings create a prototype and open a new door to synthesizing functional nanoparticle by using oyster mushroom as the substrate for paddy straw agro-waste management and the applicability of Pf in the synthesis of eco-friendly Au-Pt NPs. This is the first kind of approach that kills two birds with one stone.

Herbal medicines are widely used worldwide and much appreciated because of their fewer side effects and the ability to fight diseases at the root cause. Active ‘phyto’ ingredients require a scientific approach and a mechanism to distribute components at the target site for better therapeutic results. Nanotechnology, on the other hand, has created new hope for cancer treatment but is still far from being proven in clinical settings. This article combines a unique approach to synthesis with the use of Pleurotus sajor-caju, followed by microwave irritation of silver and gold nanoparticles that ensures the capping of the active phyto ingredient and further enhances the effects of nanomedicine to fight colon cancer, thus opening a new era of what we call herbonanoceutics. The article also compares the characteristics and properties of silver (Au) and gold (Ag) nanoparticles synthesized by an in house developed novel microwave-assisted rapid green synthesis method. The as-prepared Ag NPs and Au NPs were compared using ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). Our comparative study revealed that both assemblies display face-centred cubic structures (FCCs) and are nanocrystalline in nature. The advantage of the approach was that the sizes of gold and silver were identical in range with a similar distribution pattern. This has helped us to study the activity against colon cancer cell line (HCT-116) without incoherence since size plays a key role in the application. More specifically, morphological changes, cell viability, the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the fragmentation of DNA have been further reported to assess better the results obtained with the two metals. Our results suggest that the newly adopted synthesis method may ensure the dual benefits from phyto ingredients which further enhances the effectiveness of advanced nanomedicine.

Major challenges for current therapeutic strategies against breast cancer are associated with drug-induced toxicities. Considering the immense potential of bioactive phytochemicals to deliver non-toxic, efficient anti-cancer therapeutics, we performed bio-guided fractionation of Eclipta alba extract and discovered that particularly the chloroform fraction of Eclipta alba (CFEA) is selectively inducing cytotoxicity to breast cancer cells over non-tumorigenic breast epithelial cells. Our unbiased mechanistic hunt revealed that CFEA specifically activates the intrinsic apoptotic pathway by disrupting the mitochondrial membrane potential, upregulating Hsp60 and downregulating the expression of anti-apoptotic protein XIAP. By utilizing Hsp60 specific siRNA, we identified a novel pro-apoptotic role of Hsp60 and uncovered that following CFEA treatment, upregulated Hsp60 is localized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of ER specific localization of Hsp60 during cancer cell apoptosis. Further, our LC-MS approach identified that luteolin is mainly attributed for its anti-cancer activities. Moreover, oral administration of CFEA not only offers potential anti-breast cancer effects in-vivo but also mitigates tumor induced hepato-renal toxicity. Together, our studies offer novel mechanistic insight into the CFEA mediated inhibition of breast cancer and may potentially open up new avenues for further translational research.

Hematological malignancies is a broad term that includes blood cell cancers including chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Myelodysplastic syndrome, acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), multiple myelomas (MM) and lymphomas. miRNAs are ~22-nt long non-coding RNAs that play a very important role in gene regulation by binding to mRNA at their complementary sequence. These miRNAs are conceptually connected with various signal and pathway networks that make them capable of regulating various diseases including hematological malignancies. These miRNAs are not only playing regulatory roles in hematological malignancies, but are also providing new potent markers for efficient diagnosis and prognosis for hematological malignancies patients. Since the discovery of very first miRNA, the importance and role of miRNAs have been established in various fields, and there is a need to search for new potent miRNAs and their targets. A large amount of sequence data have been generated in last few years, which has further generated the need to develop efficient and reliable computational tools to analyze and extract out relevant information promptly from raw data. Here, we review various possible roles played by miRNA in hematological malignancies, principles involved in miRNA gene identification, target prediction and their preceding role in hematological malignancies research.

The world has now entered into a new era of genomics because of the continued advancements in the next generation high throughput sequencing technologies, which includes sequencing by synthesis-fluorescent in situ sequencing (FISSEQ), pyrosequencing, sequencing by ligation using polony amplification, supported oligonucleotide detection (SOLiD), sequencing by hybridization along with sequencing by ligation, and nanopore technology. Great impacts of these methods can be seen for solving the genome related problems of plant and animal kingdom that will open the door of a new era of genomics. This may ultimately overcome the Sanger sequencing that ruled for 30 years. NGS is expected to advance and make the drug discovery process more rapid.

Here, we report the frequency dependent ultrasonic attenuation of monometallic gold and bimetallic gold/platinum based aqueous nanofluids (NFs). The as-synthesised bimetallic NFs (BMNFs) revealed less resistance to ultrasonic waves compared to the monometallic NFs. Thermal conductivity of both NFs taken at different concentrations revealed substantial conductivity improvement when compared to the base fluid, although gold/platinum showed lesser improvement compared to gold. Characterisation of the as-synthesised nanoparticles (NPs) and fluids was carried out with X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The distinct two-phase bimetallic nature of gold/platinum, its two plasmonic band optical absorption features and the spherical morphology of the particles were shown. The findings were correlated with the observed thermal and ultrasonic behaviour and proper rationalisation is provided. It was revealed that the comparatively lesser thermal conductivity of gold/platinum had direct implication on its attenuation property. The findings could have important repercussions in both industrial applications and in the mechanistic approach towards the field of ultrasonic attenuation in NFs.

Chromium (Cr) stress is a common abiotic stress that affects a variety of physiological, growth, and metabolic characteristics in plants. The toxicity of chromium at values up to 100 µM was examined in two common Indian Vigna radiata L. landraces: Digaphandi and Berhampur. Roots accumulated more chromium than leaves in both landraces, with Berhampur local absorbing more chromium than Digaphandi. Higher sub-stomatal carbon dioxide concentration and vapor pressure deficit did not affect stomatal conductance or transpiration rate efficiency in Digaphandi local, but both parameters decreased in Berhampur local treated plants. Berhampur local leaves treated with 100 µM dichromate showed decreased guard cell aperture area due to higher levels of abscisic acid, jasmonic acid, and jasmonic acid conjugate content. A decrease in three phytohormone levels resulted in no detectable change in the stomatal guard cell aperture area in treated Digaphandi local leaves. Non-glandular trichome density and length decreased significantly and non-significantly in the leaves of Digaphandi and Berhampur local treated plants respectively. Black substances accumulated in the trichomes of dichromate-treated plants in both landraces, possibly due to chromium deposition. The findings indicated that both landraces evolved distinct morphological and physiological adaptation mechanisms to survive chromium toxicity, with Berhampur local likely more vulnerable to chromium toxicity than Digaphandi local at higher doses of chromium.

In this work, we have reported the rare coexistence of a Griffiths phase (GP) in a complex perovskite oxide with geometrically frustrated antiferromagnetism. We have achieved this by substituting Manganese (Mn) in the titanium site of CaCu3Ti (4− x ) MnxO 12 (CCTMO, x  = 1, 2 and 3). The occurrence of a Griffiths phase is observed when a strong contest between antiferromagnetic transition (TN) and paramagnetic (PM) occurs in the magnetic domain. As we increased the molar concentration of Manganese while substituting at titanium site in CaCu 3 Ti 4 O 12 , we observed the appearance of a step-like Griffiths phase. Manganese (Mn)-substituted materials exhibit paramagnetic (PM) to ferromagnetic (FM) phase transitions below CaCu 3 Ti 3 Mn 1 O 12 (CCTM 1 O), CaCu 3 Ti 2 Mn 2 O 12 (CCTM 2 O), and CaCu 3 Ti 1 Mn 3 O 12 (CCTM 3 O), marked by a rapid step-like change in the magnetic moment due to spin ordering. The deviation of inverse magnetic susceptibility (χ −1 ) from Curie–Weiss behavior occurs in the temperature ranges of 75 to 190 K, 80 to 200 K, and 150 to 280 K, respectively. The emergence of the Griffiths phase before the actual PM–FM transition indicates that the inhomogeneous phase above the Curie temperature ( T C ), which can be defined as a Griffiths phase, is dominated by ferromagnetic interactions rather than antiferromagnetic ones. The presence of a Griffiths-like phase beyond its Curie temperature ( T C ) is indicated by low-field DC magnetization of the nanostructures, showing abnormal magnetic behavior. The presence of short-range magnetic correlations and ferromagnetic clusters in the system due to the size decrease is linked to this unexpected behaviour.