Terpentecin and clerocidin, microbial terpenoides, have been known to be potent antitumor antibiotics. However, the critical biochemical target of these terpenoides has not been identified. Our present studies, using purified mammalian topoisomerase II, have shown that terpentecin and clerocidin induce topoisomerase II-mediated DNA cleavage in vitro with comparable potency to that of demethylep...

Extreme precipitation events over India have resulted in loss of human lives and damaged infrastructures, food crops, and lifelines. The inability of climate models to credibly project precipitation extremes in India has not been helpful to longer-term hazards resilience policy. However, there have been claims that finer-resolution and regional climate models may improve projections. The claims...

The genus Astragalus is a rich source of a variety of biologically active compounds including phenols, saponins, polysaccharides and essential oils. The present study was conducted to determine ontogenetic variation of the volatile organic compounds as well as total phenolic contents and antioxidant activity in leaves of A. compactus. The leaves of plant were harvested at vegetative, flowering ...

The soluble carrier proteins, OBPs carry odor components through sensilium lymph to specific receptors within the antennal sensilla to trigger behavioral responses. Herein, McinOBP4 was characterized from the Macrocentrus cingulum, which is the specialist parasitic insect of Ostrinia furnacalis for better understanding of olfactory recognition mechanism of this wasp. The classical odorant bindi...

Ecological niche models are widely used for mapping the distribution of species during the last glacial maximum (LGM). Although the selection of the variables and General Circulation Models (GCMs) used for constructing those maps determine the model predictions, we still lack a discussion about which variables and which GCM should be included in the analysis and why. Here, we analyzed the clima...

BACKGROUND Overcrowding and prolonged length of stay in emergency departments (ED) are increasing problems in hospitals. Rapid availability of all laboratory results has an impact on clinical decision-making, admissions or discharge decisions and resource utilisation. Increasing number of our urinary drugs of abuse (DOA) screens had a turnaround time (TAT) of up to 33 days after the discharge o...

Three-dimensional (3-D) cloud characterization permits the derivation of important cloud geometry properties such as fractional cloudiness, mean cloud and clear length, aspect ratio, and the morphology of cloud cover. These properties are needed as input to the hierarchical diagnosis (HD) and instantaneous radiative transfer (IRF) models, to validate sub-models for cloud occurrence and formatio...

The nonlinearity and arousal hypothesis predicts that highly aroused mammals will produce nonlinear, noisy vocalizations. We tested this prediction by measuring faecal glucocorticoid metabolites (GCMs) in adult yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris), and asking if variation in GCMs was positively correlated with Wiener entropy-a measure of noise. Contrary to our prediction, we found a si...