Birla Institute of Technology and Science

About: Birla Institute of Technology and Science is a education organization based out in Pilāni, Rajasthan, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computer science & Population. The organization has 8897 authors who have published 13947 publications receiving 170008 citations.

Pure and multi metal oxide nanoparticles: synthesis, antibacterial and cytotoxic properties

Abstract: Th antibacterial activity of metal oxide nanoparticles has received marked global attention as they can be specifically synthesized to exhibit significant toxicity to bacteria. The importance of their application as antibacterial agents is evident keeping in mind the limited range and effectiveness of antibiotics, on one hand, and the plethora of metal oxides, on the other, along with the propensity of nanoparticles to induce resistance being much lower than that of antibiotics. Effective inhibition against a wide range of bacteria is well known for several nano oxides consisting of one metal (Fe3O4, TiO2, CuO, ZnO), whereas, research in the field of multi-metal oxides still demands extensive exploration. This is understandable given that the relationship between physicochemical properties and biological activity seems to be complex and difficult to generalize even for metal oxide nanoparticles consisting of only one metal component. Also, despite the broad scope that metal oxide nanoparticles have as antibacterial agents, there arise problems in practical applications taking into account the cytotoxic effects. In this respect, the consideration of polymetallic oxides for biological applications becomes even greater since these can provide synergetic effects and unify the best physicochemical properties of their components. For instance, strong antibacterial efficiency specific of one metal oxide can be complemented by non-cytotoxicity of another. This review presents the main methods and technological advances in fabrication of nanostructured metal oxides with a particular emphasis to multi-metal oxide nanoparticles, their antibacterial effects and cytotoxicity.

Extracellular biosynthesis and characterization of silver nanoparticles using Aspergillus flavus NJP08: a mechanism perspective.

Abstract: The present study demonstrates an eco-friendly and low cost protocol for synthesis of silver nanoparticles using the cell-free filtrate of Aspergillus flavusNJP08 when supplied with aqueous silver (Ag+) ions. Identification of the fungal isolate was based on nuclear ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) identities. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) revealed the formation of spherical metallic silver nanoparticles. The average particle size calculated using Dynamic Light Scattering measurements (DLS) was found to be 17 ± 5.9 nm. UV-Visible and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy confirmed the presence of extracellular proteins. SDS-PAGE profiles of the extracellular proteins showed the presence of two intense bands of 32 and 35 kDa, responsible for the synthesis and stability of silver nanoparticles, respectively. A probable mechanism behind the biosynthesis is discussed, which leads to the possibility of using the present protocol in future “nano-factories”.

Hypothesis Only Baselines in Natural Language Inference

Abstract: We propose a hypothesis only baseline for diagnosing Natural Language Inference (NLI). Especially when an NLI dataset assumes inference is occurring based purely on the relationship between a context and a hypothesis, it follows that assessing entailment relations while ignoring the provided context is a degenerate solution. Yet, through experiments on 10 distinct NLI datasets, we find that this approach, which we refer to as a hypothesis-only model, is able to significantly outperform a majority-class baseline across a number of NLI datasets. Our analysis suggests that statistical irregularities may allow a model to perform NLI in some datasets beyond what should be achievable without access to the context.