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During the periods of globalization and deregulation, it has become very common for the equity market of a country to respond to the equity movements of its international trading partners from all over the world. The effort, trying to achieve in this study, relates to how Indian equity market responds to the equity price movements of other countries and vice versa. Also, the possible forces behind such interdependence among the markets are investigated. Daily closing prices of all the major equity indices from a sample of 23 countries, including India, for a period of 16 years starting from 1990 to 2005 have been used to assess the co-movement of prices among the markets. The results reveal the following : Apart from exhibiting significant annual contemporaneous measures or same day intermarket relationship among India and most of the other foreign countries, the contemporaneous feedback statistics also reveals an increasing tendency in the degree of integration among the markets over a period of time, leading to a greater co-movements and therefore higher market efficiency at the international scenario. Except for Sri Lanka and Sweden, there is a significant contemporaneous flow of information among India and 20 other foreign countries. The countries from the same region are found to be more integrated than those from the different regions. As far as the unidirectional feedback measures are concerned, though most of the measures for the whole study period are found to be significant, only few annual measures exhibit statistical significance. Interestingly, India has been found to play a stronger leading role for the countries in the Asian region except for Pakistan, Philippines, and Singapore, during the entire study period. At the same time, USA and other five out of ten European countries have been found to strongly lead the Indian market during the same period. But, unlike the contemporaneous measures, there is no fixed trend (either increasing or decreasing) in the movements of the annual unidirectional feedback measures. Thus it is very difficult to conclude that any specific market consistently leads or follows the other market. As far as the pooled regression results are concerned, out of various macroeconomic factors, only some of them including the time trend are found to be significant in assessing the contemporaneous inter-market relation. At the same time, none of the macroeconomic factors, except the volatility in bi-lateral exchange rate and volatility differential among the two markets, are found to be statistically significant in explaining the unidirectional lead-lag relationship among the markets.

Metronidazole, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug against trichomoniasis, is nonspermicidal and thus cannot offer pregnancy protection when used vaginally. Furthermore, increasing resistance of Trichomonas vaginalis to 5-nitro-imidazoles is a cause for serious concern. On the other hand, the vaginal spermicide nonoxynol-9 (N-9) does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases and HIV in clinical situations but may in fact increase their incidence due to its nonspecific, surfactant action. We therefore designed dually active, nonsurfactant molecules that were capable of killing Trichomonas vaginalis (both metronidazole-susceptible and -resistant strains) and irreversibly inactivating 100% human sperm at doses that were noncytotoxic to human cervical epithelial (HeLa) cells and vaginal microflora (lactobacilli) in vitro. Anaerobic energy metabolism, cell motility, and defense against reactive oxygen species, which are key to survival of both sperm and Trichomonas in the host after intravaginal inoculation, depend crucially on availability of free thiols. Consequently, molecules were designed with carbodithioic acid moiety as the major pharmacophore, and chemical variations were incorporated to provide high excess of reactive thiols for interacting with accessible thiols on sperm and Trichomonas. We report here the in vitro activities, structureactivity relationships, and safety profiles of these spermicidal antitrichomonas agents, the most promising of which was more effective than N-9 (the OTC spermicide) in inactivating human sperm and more efficacious than metronidazole in killing Trichomonas vaginalis (including metronidazole-resistant strain). It also significantly reduced the available free thiols on human sperm and inhibited the cytoadherence of Trichomonas on HeLa cells. Experimentally in vitro, the new compounds appeared to be safer than N-9 for vaginal use.

Berberine and (+/-)-bicuculline were isolated from roots and leaves, respectively, of Corydalis chaerophylla. Both were effective in vitro against spore germination of some plant pathogenic fungi (Alternaria brassicicola, A. brassicae, A. cheiranthi, A. melongenae, A. solani, Colletotrichum musae, C. falcatum, Curvularia penniseti, C. lunata, C. maculans, C. pallescens, Curvularia sp., Erysiphe pisi, E. cichoracearum, Erysiphe sp., Fusarium udum, Helminthosporium spiciferum, H. penniseti, H. frumentacei, Heterosporium sp., Oidium erysiphoides and Ustilago cynodontis). Berberine and (+/-)-bicuculline significantly inhibited spore germination of all the fungi at concentrations of 100-1000 ppm. Berberine was effective against all the fungi at all concentrations; most of the fungi did not germinate at 1000 ppm. H. penniseti conidia did not germinate at any concentration of (+/-)-bicuculline. U. cynodontis was the least sensitive fungus at lower concentrations but 800 ppm dose was highly effective.

This study employs structural equation modelling (SEM) for analysing data collected from a nationwide survey with 396 individual investors, for exploring the factors influencing individual investors’ decision-making in the Indian stock market. This study explored the factors that underpin individual investors’ investment decision-making behaviour to find whether the Indian financial market is efficient and investors make rational decisions. The result indicates that the investors are significantly influenced by herding, information cascades, anchoring, representativeness and overconfidence while contagion shows the insignificant result. Concurrently, the study has also provided strong evidence of investors’ irrationality as well as inefficiency of the financial market. The results can be used for the further exploration of trading behaviour of individual investors and foster new research in the context of behavioural finance.

The flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum (clove) have been used for the treatment of male sexual disorders in indigenous medicines of Indian subcontinent. Therefore to evaluate the efficacy of Syzygium aromaticum on the male reproductive health, chronic oral exposure of aqueous extract of flower buds of Syzygium in three doses (15 mg, 30 mg and 60 mg kg BW) were studied for a single spermatogenic cycle (35 days) in Parkes (P) strain mice. Lower dose (15 mg) of Syzygium aromaticum flower buds increased serum testosterone level and testicular hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (HSD) activities and improved sperm motility, sperm morphology, secretory activity of epididymis and seminal vesicle, and number of litters per female. On the other hand, higher doses (30 and 60 mg) of the treatment adversely affected above parameters. Further, higher doses of the extract also had adverse effects on daily sperm production, 1C cell population and on histology of testis. In conclusion, Syzygium aromaticum flower buds extract exhibits biphasic effect on reproductive physiology of male mice. Lower dose of Syzygium aromaticum flower bud extract is androgenic in nature and may have a viable future as an indigenous sexual rejuvenator, while higher doses adversely affected functional physiology of reproductive organs.

Infection born by Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has swept the world within a time of a few months. It has created a devastating effect on humanity with social and economic depressions. Europe and America were the hardest hit continents. India has also lost several lives, making the country fourth most deadly worldwide. However, the infection and death rate per million and the case fatality ratio in India were substantially lower than many of the developed nations. Several factors have been proposed including the genetics. One of the important facts is that a large chunk of Indian population is asymptomatic to the SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thus, the real infection in India is much higher than the reported number of cases. Therefore, the majority of people are already immune in the country. To understand the dynamics of real infection as well as level of immunity against SARS-CoV-2, we have performed antibody testing (serosurveillance) in the urban region of fourteen Indian districts encompassing six states. In our survey, the seroprevalence frequency varied between 0.01-0.48, suggesting high variability of viral transmission among states. We also found out that the cases reported by the Government were several fold lower than the real infection. This discrepancy is majorly driven by a higher number of asymptomatic cases. Overall, we suggest that with the high level of immunity developed against SARS-CoV-2 in the majority of the districts, it is less likely to have a second wave in India.