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The soil–plant-animal continuum is an emerging domain in biological research and hence, to ascertain this aspect, the present study was conducted in three agro-ecologically different areas in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India. The goal of this work was to explore the impact of feed type and geographical conditions on the growth dynamics of sheep feed with three different diets – sorghum stover (Vizag district), groundnut halums (Krishna district) and red gram chunni (Ranga Reddy district). Animals were fed these diets at night daily for 90 days after their routine daytime grazing. The study regions varied in altitude, annual rainfall and mean temperature. Soil analysis was performed in these regions to check for pH, mineral content, organic carbon and bacterial composition. Growth dynamics (average daily gain of 41.56–77.11 g per day) and feed conversion ratios (6.26–10.93) differed markedly (p

IP reuse is all about improving productivity and can result in significantly shrinking the design cycle time especially with configurable third party IP cores. Increasing amount of third party IPs find their way onto today's complex system-on-chip (SoC) designs. Hence it is paramount that designers build a large and expanding knowledge base incorporating lessonslearned out of accumulated experience from several of designs containing a broad range of IP blocks into tangible design, verification and test methodology components. These components include checklists, automated IC analysis programs, and processes both internal and collaborative. This knowledge base is usually combined with the experience of theindividual IP and EDA vendors to ensure the lowest possible risk to each design. Integrating third party IP core typically involves various challenges. These challenges involve compatibility with power, reset and clock (PRC) schemes, design methods used to achieve system low power goals, integration scalability, and design verification methods to achieve comprehensive entitled coverage. Resolving them requires additional design, integration and verification effort. Designverification (DV) in general could be more challenging, as most third party IPs are verified in isolation agnostic to the context of the system. Ensuring that the third party IP cores as used in the SoC will ultimately meet all requirements is a highly complex task that requires a dedicated, expert team with an explicit focus and responsibility towards this task. This paper outlines design and DV challenges and resolution in integrating third party IPs in today’s high-end ASICs/SoCs.

Recently, electron transfers and catalyses in a bevy of redox reactions mediated by hemeproteins were explained by murburn concept. The term “murburn” is abstracted from “ mur ed burn ing ” or “ m ild u n r estricted burn ing ” and connotes a novel “ m olecule- u nbound ion– r adical ” interaction paradigm. Quite unlike the genetic regulations and protein-level affinity-based controls that govern order and specificity/selectivity in conventional treatments, murburn concept is based on stochastic/thermodynamic regulatory principles. The novel insight necessitates a “reactivity outside the active-site” perspective, because select redox enzymatic activity is obligatorily mediated via diffusible radical/species. Herein, reactions employing key hemeproteins (as exemplified by CYP2E1) establish direct experimental connection between “additive-influenced redox catalysis” and “unusual dose responses” in reductionist and physiological milieu. Thus, direct and conclusive molecular-level experimental evidence is presented, supporting the mechanistic relevance of murburn concept in “maverick” concentration-based effects brought about by additives. Therefore, murburn concept could potentially explain several physiological hormetic and idiosyncratic dose responses.

This study is aimed to explore the toxicity of TiO2 nanoparticles at low concentrations (0.25, 0.50 & 1.00 μg/ml); on five bacterial isolates and their consortium in waste water medium both in dark and UVA conditions. To critically examine the toxic effects of nanoparticles and the response mechanism(s) offered by microbes, several aspects were monitored viz. cell viability, ROS generation, SOD activity, membrane permeability, EPS release and biofilm formation. A dose and time dependent loss in viability was observed for treated isolates and the consortium. At the highest dose, after 24h, oxidative stress was examined which conclusively showed more ROS generation & cell permeability and less SOD activity in single isolates as compared to the consortium. As a defense mechanism, EPS release was enhanced in case of the consortium against the single isolates, and was observed to be dose dependent. Similar results were noticed for biofilm formation, which substantially increased at highest dose of nanoparticle exposure. Concluding, the consortium showed more resistance against the toxic effects of the TiO2 nanoparticles compared to the individual isolates.

Cytochrome P450 (CYP) family of redox enzymes metabolize drugs and xenobiotics in liver microsomes. Isozyme CYP2C9 is reported to be inhibited by benzbromarone (BzBr) and this phenomenon was hitherto explained by classical active-site binding. Theoretically, it was impossible to envisage the experimentally derived sub-nM Ki for an inhibitor, when supra-nM enzyme and 10X KM substrate concentrations were employed. We set out to find a more plausible explanation for this highly intriguing "super-inhibition" phenomenon. In silico docking of various BzBr analogs with known crystal structure of CYP2C9 did not provide any evidence in support of active-site based inhibition hypothesis. Experiments tested the effects of BzBr and nine analogs on CYPs in reconstituted systems of lab-purified proteins, complex baculosomes & crude microsomal preparations. In certain setups, BzBr and its analogs could even enhance reactions, which cannot be explained by an active site hypothesis. Generally, it was seen that Ki became smaller by orders of magnitude, upon increasing the dilution order of BzBr analogs. Also, it was seen that BzBr could also inhibit other CYP isozymes like CYP3A4, CYP2D6 and CYP2E1. Further, amphipathic derivatives of vitamins C & E (scavengers of diffusible reactive oxygen species or DROS) effectively inhibited CYP2C9 reactions in different reaction setups. Therefore, the inhibition of CYP activity by BzBr analogs (which are also surface-active redox agents) is attributed to catalytic scavenging of DROS at phospholipid interface. The current work expands the scope of interpretations of inhibitions in redox enzymes and ushers in a new cellular biochemistry paradigm that small amounts of DROS may be obligatorily required in routine redox metabolism for constructive catalytic roles.