Manipal University

About: Manipal University is a education organization based out in Manipal, Karnataka, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 9525 authors who have published 11207 publications receiving 110687 citations.

Naringin and rutin alleviates episodic memory deficits in two differentially challenged object recognition tasks

Abstract: Background: Cognitive decline or dementia is a debilitating problem of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, including special conditions like chemobrain. Dietary flavonoids proved to be efficacious in delaying the incidence of neurodegenerative diseases. Two such flavonoids, naringin (NAR) and rutin (RUT) were reported to have neuroprotective potential with beneficial effects on spatial and emotional memories in particular. However, the efficacy of these flavonoids is poorly understood on episodic memory, which comprises an important form of autobiographical memory.Objective: This study objective is to evaluate NAR and RUT to reverse time-delay-induced long-term and scopolamine-induced short-term episodic memory deficits in Wistar rats. Materials and Methods: We have evaluated both short-term and long-term episodic memory forms using novel object recognition task. Open field paradigm was used to assess locomotor activity for any confounding influence on memory assessment. Donepezil was used as positive control and was effective in both models at 1 mg/kg, i.p. Results: Animals treated with NAR and RUT at 50 and 100 mg/kg, p.o. spent significantly more time exploring novel object compared to familiar one, whereas control animals spent almost equal time with both objects in choice trial. NAR and RUT dose-dependently increased recognition and discriminative indices in time-induced long-term as well as scopolamine-induced short-term episodic memory deficit models without interfering with the locomotor activity. Conclusion:We conclude that, NAR and RUT averted both short- and long-term episodic memory deficits in Wistar rats, which may be potential interventions for neurodegenerative diseases as well as chemobrain condition.

Vestibular evoked myogenic potential in noise-induced hearing loss

Abstract: Noise affects one's hearing as well as balance mechanism. The hearing mechanism of the noise-exposed individuals has been extensively studied. However, in view of the poor research focus on the sacculo-collic reflexes, especially in this study area, the present study was undertaken to examine the vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (VEMP) in subjects with noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). A total of 30 subjects (55 ears) with NIHL participated in the present study within the age range of 30-40 years. VEMP recordings were done at 99 dBnHL using IHS instrument. The results indicated that as the average pure tone hearing threshold increased, the VEMP latencies were prolonged and peak to peak amplitude was reduced in NIHL subjects. Out of the 55 ears, VEMP was absent in 16 (29.0%) ears. The latency was prolonged and the peak to peak amplitude was reduced in 19 (34.6%) ears. VEMP results were normal in 20 (36.4%) ears. Therefore, VEMP was abnormal or absent in 67% of NIHL subjects in the present study. Hence it can be concluded that the possibility of vestibular dysfunction, specially the saccular pathway, is high in individuals with NIHL. VEMP, a non-invasive and user friendly procedure, can be employed in these individuals to assess sacculo-collic reflex.

Controlled inversion and surface disorder in zinc ferrite nanocrystallites and their effects on magnetic properties

Abstract: A new strategy to control the inversion of zinc ferrite nanocrystallites is demonstrated, while the correlation of process–structure–property is understood with the help of thorough structural and magnetic characterization. It is found that a very high degree of inversion (>0.5) could be induced by rapid microwave-assisted synthesis carried out below 100 °C. Rietveld refinement of high resolution X-ray diffraction patterns of various annealed samples has been employed to investigate the influence of the nature of post-synthesis annealing and the temperature of annealing on the degree of inversion. It is found that magnetization follows the degree of inversion more closely than it does the size of the nanocrystals. Furthermore, slow and prolonged (2 h) annealing results in very different magnetic characteristic than short pulse (2 min) thermal treatment does. Temperature-dependent magnetization (M–T plots) studies confirmed the superparamagnetic nature of all annealed samples which displayed relatively high blocking temperatures (25 K to 56 K) compared to bulk zinc ferrite (10 K). Coercivity follows the trend of blocking temperature closely. Samples subjected to rapid annealing are found to be associated with a degree of surface disorder that influences the coercivity profoundly. Magnetic measurements suggest that rapid annealing can effectively control the surface disorder in zinc ferrite nanocrystallites, which can screen the interparticle dipolar interaction and thus coercivity. Therefore, a combination of microwave-assisted synthesis to induce a high degree of inversion, followed by different annealing protocols to tune the inversion, can deliver magnetic ferrites of desired characteristics to meet futuristic applications.

Cooperative catalysis at the metal-MOF interface: hydrodeoxygenation of vanillin over Pd nanoparticles covered with a UiO-66(Hf) MOF.

Abstract: Cooperative catalysis has been demonstrated over metal-MOF hybrids for the conversion of vanillin (biomass based platform molecules) into value-added 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol. Over a Pd@UiO-66(Hf) core-shell catalyst, cooperativity between Bronsted acidic μ3-OH groups and Pd active sites present at the interface has rendered a catalytic performance of >99% vanillin conversion and >99% 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol selectivity at 90 °C under 3 bar H2 in water. An enhanced cooperative effect has been observed over a core-shell catalyst compared to a support catalyst.

SS-CAM: Smoothed Score-CAM for Sharper Visual Feature Localization.

Abstract: Interpretation of the underlying mechanisms of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks has become an important aspect of research in the field of deep learning due to their applications in high-risk environments To explain these black-box architectures there have been many methods applied so the internal decisions can be analyzed and understood In this paper, built on the top of Score-CAM, we introduce an enhanced visual explanation in terms of visual sharpness called SS-CAM, which produces centralized localization of object features within an image through a smooth operation We evaluate our method on the ILSVRC 2012 Validation dataset, which outperforms Score-CAM on both faithfulness and localization tasks