Generalized Zero-Shot Learning (GZSL) has emerged as a pivotal research domain in computer vision, owing to its capability to recognize objects that have not been seen during training. Despite the significant progress achieved by generative techniques in converting traditional GZSL to fully supervised learning, they tend to generate a large number of synthetic features that are often redundant, thereby increasing training time and decreasing accuracy. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel approach for synthetic feature selection using reinforcement learning. In particular, we propose a transformer-based selector that is trained through proximal policy optimization (PPO) to select synthetic features based on the validation classification accuracy of the seen classes, which serves as a reward. The proposed method is model-agnostic and data-agnostic, making it applicable to both images and videos and versatile for diverse applications. Our experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach over existing feature-generating methods, yielding improved overall performance on multiple benchmarks.

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Girish et al.: Antibacterial Activity of Curcumin-cobalt(II) Complex To improve the bioavailability of curcumin numerous approaches were attempted, which included complexation with metal ions. In the present study, a metal ion complex of cobalt(II) with curcumin was synthesized and screened for in vitro antibacterial activity in comparison with curcumin on seven bacterial strains, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Salmonella typhi, Shigella flexneri, Proteus vulgaris and Staphylococcus aureus. The cobalt-curcumin complex was effective against all strains tested and the activity was greater than that exhibited by curcumin. Comparison of the inhibitory activity with the macrolide antibiotic azithromycin revealed that cobalt-curcumin complex was as active as the antibiotic. The cobalt-curcumin complex could be a suitable candidate for further in vivo investigations. This is the first report of antibacterial activity of cobalt-curcumin complex against all the bacterial strains tested except Escherichia coli.

INTRODUCTIONChalcones (1) and pyrazoles (2) are the most important classes of flavonoids and alkaloids respectively present across the whole plant kingdom [1,2]. Both have interesting bioactive features associated with several biological activities. Chalcones and their derivatives demonstrate wide range of biological activities such as antidiabetic, antineoplastic, antihypertensive, antiretroviral, anti-inflammatory [3], antiparasitic [4], antihistaminic [5], antimalarial [6], antioxidant [7], antifungal [8], antiobesity [9], antiplatelet [10], antitubercular [11], immunosuppressant [12] etc. Also, pyrazole nucleus has found considerable attention due to its potent medicinal scaffolds and exhibits full spectrum of biological activities. Many pyrazole derivatives have already found their application as antimicrobial [13-16], antifungal [17], anticancer [18-20], anti-inflammatory [13,21-26], antiviral [14], antioxidant [27], etc.Chalcone is an acyclic compound with substituted aromatic ring at both side of the double bond which allows the molecule to adopt many conformations due to weak π-π interactions A series of 16 chalcone compounds were synthesized by Claisen-Schmidt condensation of various aldehydes with acetophenone using KOH as a base in ethanol. The reaction affords the desired products in good yields. Then all the 16 compounds were converted into pyrazoles by treating with hydrazine hydrate in ethanol under reflux condition. Both chalcones and pyrazoles were screened for their in vitro antibacterial (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and antifungal (Aspergillus flavus, Chrysosporium keratinophilum and Candida albicans) activity. Biological activities of these compounds were compared with those of commercially available antibiotic ampicillin and antifungal agent miconazole. Pyrazoles were found to be most active and effective than corresponding chalcones for antimicrobial activity. Out of the 7 pyrazole compounds tested for antibacterial and antifungal activity, 5 compounds, 4h, 4j, 4l, 4m and 4n are turned out to be potent antimicrobial agents. Therefore these derivatives could serve as a highly promising molecules for further development.