Government of Maharashtra

Dasatinib (DAS) exhibits therapeutic potential for the treatment of lung cancer. However, its clinical utility is marred owing to poor solubility, low oral bioavailability, and rapid systemic clearance. Therefore, the current investigation is aimed to develop and optimize a polymeric nanoparticulate delivery system for DAS to increase its physicochemical properties and anticancer potential. Herein, pullulan was used as a stabilizer and encapsulating agent because of its biocompatibility and structural flexibility, allowing for effective DAS entrapment and controlled release. DAS-loaded nanoparticles were optimized employing a Box-Behnken design. The formulation was characterized for particle size, entrapment efficiency (% EE), zeta potential, invitro drug release, and cytotoxicity against A549 lung cancer cells. The optimized formulation exhibited the particle size of 135.3 nm, EE of 92.8 %, and a zeta potential of-7.9 mV. FTIR and DSC analyses confirmed no significant drug-excipient incompatibility and corroborated successful drug encapsulation. The invitro release studies demonstrated sustained release of DAS over 48 h at pH7.4 (71.84±3.12 %) and 6.8 (84.65±4.10 %). DAS-loaded nanoparticles exhibited significantly higher cytotoxicity (65.49 %) compared to plain DAS (42.23 %). Overall, a pullulan-based nanoparticulate system offers a promising technique for improving DAS delivery and therapeutic efficacy in lung cancer treatment.

ABSTRACT Textural characteristics of fluvial sediments are excellent proxies for deciphering: tectonic, geomorphic and climatic conditions at source‐sink and the depositional settings, prevalent environment and energy conditions and modes and medium of transport. In this paper, we have documented the textural characteristics and heavy mineral distribution in channel bed sediments ( n = 51) of the Thamirabarani River from its source to confluence, in order to understand current environmental characteristics, and to establish a baseline data for the future studies. The results show that the majority of the samples were coarse‐ to medium‐grained, and moderately sorted. The occurrences of monazite, garnet (almandine, spessartine), magnetite, zircon, tourmaline, hypersthene, kyanite, rutile, and ilmenite indicate the provenance and general lithological control over the heavy mineral distribution. Angular heavy mineral grains all through the stream, including the lower reaches of the channel, together with high fluctuations of heavy mineral (0%–30%) in addition to a perceptible decrease at the confluence, suggested ongoing exhumation of the source areas, lower sorting effect and recycling of sediments by natural and anthropogenic influences. The spatial distribution of the textural and morphological characteristics of all the sediments and the heavy mineral grains, togther with the inferences from discriminant functions and diagrams, revealed prevailing spatial heterogeneity in unroofing of catchment/provenance, dilution effects of sediment characteristics by tributaries, as well as anthropogenic pressures/land use changes. Collectively, the study implies corroboration with inferences drawn on sedimentary textural characteristics of adjacently located river basins, signifying the documented phenomena as a regional character rather than endemic to this basin.

This study presents a robust and scalable method for automatic layout detection in digitized newspapers to facilitate efficient knowledge extraction and information retrieval. A custom dataset comprising annotated newspaper images in English, Hindi, and other languages was developed, with layout regions categorized into five primary classes. An enhanced YOLOv12 object detection model was trained on this dataset and evaluated using the mean Average Precision (mAP) metric across various Intersection over Union (IoU) thresholds. The model achieved a mAP@50 of 0.88, demonstrating strong detection performance and outperforming several stateof-the-art object detection models in the same task. The findings validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in handling multilingual, structurally diverse newspaper formats. This research provides a practical framework for integrating automated layout analysis into digital archiving systems, OCR pipelines, and media monitoring applications. It also supports broader efforts to digitize historical print media and improve accessibility to regional content, thereby enabling enhanced research, journalism, and public engagement.

The diurnal anisotropy of galactic cosmic ray intensity provides an important diagnostic of solar modulation processes operating in the heliosphere. In the present work, a comprehensive long-term investigation of the diurnal anisotropy has been carried out using pressure-corrected hourly neutron monitor data from two high-latitude stations, Moscow and Kiel, covering a period of 52 years (1965–2016) corresponding to solar cycles 20 to 24. Daily values of the first harmonic diurnal amplitude and phase were obtained through harmonic analysis, from which annual mean values were derived. The long-term relationship between the diurnal amplitude and phase has been examined on annual, solar-cycle, and solar magnetic polarity bases. While day-to-day variations of amplitude and phase are found to be statistically independent, their annual averages exhibit clear solar-cycle-dependent behavior. A weak positive correlation between the diurnal amplitude and phase is observed when all years are considered together. However, a pronounced odd–even solar cycle asymmetry emerges when the data are segregated into odd and even cycles. Strong and statistically significant positive correlations characterize the odd solar cycles, whereas even solar cycles display weak and insignificant correlations. Furthermore, a clear dependence on solar magnetic polarity is observed, with large positive correlations during positive polarity epochs (A > 0) and reduced or reversed correlations during negative polarity epochs (A < 0). These results provide strong observational evidence that long-term variations of cosmic ray diurnal anisotropy are governed not only by solar activity but also by heliospheric magnetic polarity and particle drift effects.

The National Education Policy – 2020 is a comprehensive and transformative reform initiative in India's higher education system, aiming to strengthen academic quality and relevance through flexibility, multidisciplinary education, and student-centric governance. However, the actual effectiveness of such policy reforms largely depends on their implementation at the institutional level and the academic realities experienced by students. In this context, the present study empirically evaluates the effectiveness of NEP–2020 implementation in higher education institutions of Uttarakhand state from a student perspective and examines its impact on student satisfaction. For the study, primary data were collected from 350 undergraduate, postgraduate, and research students enrolled in government, aided, and private higher education institutions located in the hilly and plain regions of the state through a structured questionnaire. The study is based on a quantitative and cross-sectional research design and utilizes the Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) methodology to test measurement properties and structural relationships. The results confirm a high level of measurement reliability and validity. The findings of the structural model indicate that effective institutional execution of NEP–2020 is associated with improved institutional performance quality, which, in turn, has a positive and statistically significant impact on student satisfaction. The mediation analysis further clarifies that institutional performance quality acts as a key transmission mechanism between policy implementation and student satisfaction. Although the cross-sectional design limits temporal causal generalizations, the findings provide strong evidence that strengthening institutional capacity, academic resources, and student support systems is crucial for achieving the desired outcomes of NEP–2020. This study offers significant policy implications for higher education administrators and policymakers, particularly in geographically diverse, regionally challenging, and resource-constrained contexts like Uttarakhand.