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Main conclusion : The plant LIMs comprise two sub-families with one (DA1/DAR) and two (2LIM) LIM domains. This review comprehensively discussed the structure and potential role of this protein family in diverse area of plant biology. The description of first eukaryote lineage-specific plant LIM domain ( LIN11, ISL1, and MEC3) proteins was observed in Helianthus long back. The successive study of LIM proteins in diverse plants has shown its vital relation to development, metabolism and defence. This nascent gene family has been worked out for their role in actin dynamics, organ size determination and transcription regulation. On grounds of protein architecture, two sub-families have been delineated as DA1/DAR (one LIM domain) and 2LIMs (two LIM domains). The genomic and expression study guides to the identification of diverse sub-categories. The significance of 2LIMs in regulation of actin dynamics leading to pollen growth and development has prospects to understand the plant reproductive behaviour. Interestingly, new facet of these LIMs as a transcriptional regulator in biological pathway/biosynthesis was also reported. Recently, the cumulative contribution of these features was also recognized for obtaining good quality fibre, thus giving translational outlook to this family. The DA1/DAR proteins are orchestrated with additional domains and provide a key role in regulation of organ size and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress. This review will focus the journey of plant LIMs till date and will cover details of its structure, type, classification and functional relevance. This will provide insight to identify the potential of this gene family in the improvement of desired crop features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) is stated as mild thyroid failure, is more common as compared to overt hypothyroidism, is associated with different biochemical abnormalities such as dyslipidemia, and is also having high conversion rate into overt hypothyroidism in patients having thyroid peroxidase (TPO) antibody positive. Lipid abnormalities are controversial in SCH and there is lack of Indian studies showing correlation between lipid abnormalities and TPO positivity in SCH. Hence, we did this study to find the TPO positivity and associated dyslipidemia in SCH patients. Materials and Methods: It was a prospective observational study from January 2015 to December 2015 including fifty adult diagnosed SCH patients presented in outpatient department of Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute, Paschim Vihar, New Delhi. TPO positivity and different lipid abnormalities were studied in those fifty diagnosed SCH patients, and finally, association between TPO antibody and dyslipidemia was calculated. Results: Females were predominant (86%). TPO was positive in 56% SCH patients. Dyslipidemia was found in 100% of SCH patients with positive TPO antibody. In overall, TPO positive patients as well as TPO positive females, total cholesterol, triglyceride, and low-density lipoprotein were significantly high while high-density lipoprotein was insignificant. In males, no significant association was found. Conclusion: In SCH patients, dyslipidemia is significantly associated with TPO positivity, especially in females. Hence, early screening, diagnosis, and treatment of SCH patients are recommended to prevent further risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plants, being sessile, have developed intricate signaling network to specifically respond to the diverse environmental stress. The plant-specific WRKY TFs form one of the largest TF family and are involved in diverse plant processes, involving growth, development and stress signaling through auto and cross regulation with different genes and TFs. Here, we report the functional characterization of a salicylic acid -inducible JcWRKY TF. The JcWRKY overexpression confers salinity tolerance in transgenic tobacco, as was evident by increased chlorophyll content and seed germination potential. The transgenic plants showed increased soluble sugar, membrane stability, reduced electrolyte leakage and generation of reactive oxygen species (H2O2 and O2·-) as compared to the wild type. Furthermore, the low SA treatment along with salinity improved the tolerance potential of the transgenics by maintaining ROS homeostasis and high K+/Na+ ratio. The transcript expression of SA biosynthetic gene ICS1 and antioxidative enzymes (CAT and SOD) showed upregulation during stress. Thus, the present study reflects that JcWRKY is working in co-ordination with SA signaling to orchestrate the different biochemical and molecular pathways to maneuvre salt stress tolerance of the transgenic plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The WRKY genes have been identified as important transcriptional modulators predominantly during the environmental stresses, but they also play critical role at various stages of plant life cycle. We report the identification of WRKY domain (WD)-encoding genes from galegoid clade legumes chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and barrel medic (Medicago truncatula). In total, 78 and 98 WD-encoding genes were found in chickpea and barrel medic, respectively. Comparative analysis suggests the presence of both conserved and unique WRKYs, and expansion of WRKY family in M. truncatula primarily by tandem duplication. Exclusively found in galegoid legumes, CaWRKY16 and its orthologues encode for a novel protein having a transmembrane and partial Exo70 domains flanking a group-III WD. Genomic region of galegoids, having CaWRKY16, is more dynamic when compared with millettioids. In onion cells, fused CaWRKY16-EYFP showed punctate fluorescent signals in cytoplasm. The chickpea WRKY group-III genes were further characterized for their transcript level modulation during pathogenic stress and treatments of abscisic acid, jasmonic acid, and salicylic acid (SA) by real-time PCR. Differential regulation of genes was observed during Ascochyta rabiei infection and SA treatment. Characterization of A. rabiei and SA inducible gene CaWRKY50 showed that it localizes to plant nucleus, binds to W-box, and have a C-terminal transactivation domain. Overexpression of CaWRKY50 in tobacco plants resulted in early flowering and senescence. The in-depth comparative account presented here for two legume WRKY genes will be of great utility in hastening functional characterization of crop legume WRKYs and will also help in characterization of Exo70Js. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large amount of coal is locked up in coal seams worldwide, every year, due to uncontrolled coal seam fires (CSF). China and India are most affected due to these fires. Mapping an quantification of these fires requires the spectral characterisation of land use and land cover (LULC) from the satellite imagery. Remote sensing (RS) and Geographic information system (GIS) are useful tools for the assessment of the underground CSF. This paper reports the experiences obtained from the experiments on spectral band of satellite imageries in delineating the thermal regimes of CSF in a coalfield in India. The steps involved in the coal fire data analysis are preprocessing, processing and post processing. The data analyses have been carried out on the satellite data. The changes in LULC have been detected by visual interpretation, image differencing, band rationing and level slicing. The field observations were incorporated in analysis to identify the scope for further improvement in LULC simulations for the reliable modelling, delineation, mapping and monitoring of the CSF. The results obtained from the study depict that shallow depth workings, contiguous panel multi seam workings and the thick seam mining had created directly or indirectly very complex situations in thermal regimes of CSF. The province ratification of the CSF surveillance by LULC depicts that the propagation of the fire is higher in the lateral direction i:e in perpendicular direction of the fire heading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate quantitative characterization of crack length, location, and orientation are critical for the safety assessment of load bearing structures to avoid catastrophic structural failures. Ultrasound non-destructive evaluation is one of the key methods to detect and evaluate embedded flaws inside a material during fabrication or operation. Although significant progress has been made in developing advanced ultrasound sensors and signal data processing methods, current practices rely on human expertise to evaluate the ultrasound measurements, which leads to high uncertainty and errors in the predictions. Here we demonstrate that an embedded crack reflected ultrasound time signal contains complete information about the key characteristics of the crack, which can be accurately quantified using an optimally trained machine learning model. A lack of sufficiently large, well distributed, and suitably labeled datasets to train machine learning models continues to be a significant obstacle for evaluating non-visible cracks. To overcome this limitation, we demonstrate that our finite element simulation trained convolutional neural network (CNN) is able to accurately predict all three crack characteristics from experimentally measured ultrasound non-destructive test signals. We created a moderate size A-scan time signal simulation dataset (1200 scans) for three-dimensional (3D) elliptical penny-shaped cracks inside rectangular cuboid steel to train our CNN. Independent validation experiments were performed by conducting 21 ultrasound tests on 3D printed steel specimens containing a variety of embedded crack geometries. We show that our purely finite element simulation trained CNN accurately predicts crack length, crack location, and crack orientation from experimentally measured signals with an average error of 5.7%, 5.6%, and 8.4% for length, location, and orientation, respectively. This approach of utilizing simulation-based training of a neural network can be used in other applications where experimental data are not readily available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contact tracing has emerged as a powerful and effective measure to curb the spread of contagious diseases. It is a robust tool, but on the downside, it possesses a risk of privacy violations as contact tracing requires gathering a lot of personal information. So there is a need for a cryptographic primitive that obfuscate the personal data of the user. Taking everything into account, private set intersection seems to be the natural choice to address the problem. Nearly all of the existing PSI protocols are relying on the number theoretic assumption based hard problems. However, these problems are not secure in quantum domain. As a consequence, it becomes essential to designing PSI that can resist quantum attack and provide long-term security. One may apply quantum cryptography to develop such PSI protocol. This paper deals with the design of PSI using quantum cryptography (QC), where the security depends on the principles of basic quantum mechanics. Our scheme achieves long-term security and remains secure against quantum attacks due to the use of QC. As opposed to the existing quantum PSI protocols, the communication and computation costs of our scheme are independent of the size of universal set. Particularly, our proposed protocol attains optimal communication cost in the context of quantum PSI. In addition, our designed protocol needs smaller amount of measurements. Moreover, we require only single photon quantum resources and simple single-particle projective measurements, unlike most of the existing quantum PSI protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enhance the production of terpenoid indole alkaloids in Rauwolfia serpentina, Catharanthus tryptophan decarboxylase ( Crtdc) gene was over-expressed in transgenic hairy root cultures using Agrobacterium rhizogenes-mediated transformation. Among six transgenic hairy root lines, line RT4 accumulated the highest alkaloid content, with 0.1202 % dry weight (DW) reserpine and 0.0064 % DW ajmalicine, after 10 weeks of culture. Whereas, wild-type roots accumulated 0.0596 ± 0.003 % DW reserpine and 0.0011 ± 0.001 % DW ajmalicine. Transgenic hairy root line RT7 produced the lowest alkaloid content (reserpine: 0.0896 ± 0.002 % DW; ajmalicine: 0.002 ± 0.0 % DW). On the basis of alkaloid content the six hairy root lines were grouped as RT4/RT2 > RT3/RT5 > RT7/RT8. Analysis of gene expression profile indicated that Crtdc was expressed at a higher level in transgenic lines, which could be correlated with enhanced metabolite accumulation in roots. This study confirms that over-expression of Crtdc is a superlative method to improve the biosynthetic potential of Rauwolfia hairy root cultures. Enhanced reserpine and ajmalicine production can serve as an alternative choice to provide resources for relative pharmaceutical industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work, the effect of aging treatment and the role of precipitates in improving the strength-ductility combination of intercritically annealed Fe–8Mn–4Al-3.5Ni-0.6Si-0.2C (wt.%) medium Mn steel has been studied. The steel has been intercritically annealed at 750 °C for 1 h and subjected to two different aging treatments, one-stage aging treatment at 500 °C for 3 h, and two-stage aging comprising first stage at 650 °C for 3 h followed by water quenching and second stage at 500 °C for 3 h. The microstructure, precipitates characteristics, mechanical properties and deformation behavior of the aged samples have been investigated. It was observed that after one-stage and two-stage aging treatment, the strength-ductility product of the steel improved significantly. The one-stage aging led to the formation of nano-sized NiAl precipitates in both ferrite and austenite, which resulted in an increment of yield strength (YS) by 300 MPa, with no notable decrease in ductility, as compared to the intercritically annealed sample. The two-stage aging led to phase-selective precipitation of NiAl of varying sizes in ferrite and austenite during the first and second stages of aging respectively. A combination of TRIP-TWIP effect and precipitation strengthening by the NiAl in austenite phase was observed in the two-stage aged sample, which led to sustained three-stage work-hardening during deformation resulting in improved elongation and strength-ductility combination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of Diosmin and Hesperidin can be used as capillary stabilizing and antihemorrhoidal agent. A rapid, simple, precise and cost effective and reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method has been developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of Diosmin and Hesperidin in pharmaceutical formulations. Separation of both Diosmin and Hesperidin was achieved within 8 min with required resolution. Chromatographic separation was achieved on a waters symmetry C18 (100mm x 4.6mm) 2.6μm using a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% ortho phosphoric acid and methanol in the ratio of 60:40 at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. The detection was made 280 nm at nm and the retention time of Diosmin and Hesperidin were 6.049 and 8.560 minutes respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gastrointestinal inflammation is mediated by the pro-inflammatory mediators interleukin-8 ( IL-8) and prostaglandin E2 ( PGE2). PGE2 binding and coupling through EP2/4 receptor subtypes on colonic epithelial cells stimulates cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and IL-8 production. Here we determined the mechanisms whereby PGE2 regu-lates IL-8 in Caco2 colonic epithelial cells and in cells over-expressing the EP2/4 receptors (EP2S/EP4S). PGE2 coupling through EP2 activated the transcription factor inducible cAMP early repressor ( ICER), whereas coupling through EP4 receptors activated the cyclic AMP-responsive element-binding protein ( CREB). Activation of CREB in Caco2/ EP2 S was protein kinase A ( PKA) dependent, whereas in EP4 S cells, activation of CREB occurred through the PKA and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase pathways. Since ICER lacks the transactivation domain, it functions as a transcription repressor as opposed to CREB. PGE2 coupling through EP2/4 receptors can therefore acts in an opposing manner to either decrease (EP2) or promote IL-8 expression by recruiting CREB-binding protein (CBP) (EP4), which formed a multiprotein IL-8 enhanceosome. A novel half CRE (167 CRE) and a composite NFAT1- AP1-like site in the IL-8 promoter participated in binding and complex formation as confirmed by mutagenesis and expression studies. These data unravel the mechanisms by which expression of IL-8 is controlled by different signalling pathways that are activated by PGE2 but acting through different EP receptors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure contributes to economic development both by increasing productivity and by providing amenities which enhance the quality of life. The Planning Commission has estimated that investment in infrastructure- defined broadly to include road, rail, air and water transport, electric power, telecommunications, water supply and irrigation-will need to be of the order of about 14,50,000 cr or US$320 bn during the 11th Five Year Plan period. This is a requirement of immense magnitude. Not all of this investment can come from public resources. Reports about the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asking banks to take on more exposure in financing infrastructure projects should prima facie be welcomed. The RBI's move is to garner the surplus in the banking sector and utilize it for building infrastructure assets. Banks' participation in infrastructure finance needs is to be preceded by a strong understanding of the risk return characteristics of the project per se, as well as of the risk mitigating and risk sharing techniques built into the financing structure. Most of this new investment is structured as project financing which deviates from traditional corporate finance. It is imperative, therefore that banks and financial institutions should have the requisite expertise for appraising the viability and bankability of projects. In this regard, the study explains the salient issues of project appraisal involved in infrastructure financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slender structures, in which width and thickness are much smaller than the length, are common in the natural world, such as wheat straws, bean sprouts, and biofilaments. Due to biological growth, these structures exhibit diverse morphological profiles with curling hairs, curling leaves, and twining plants as some examples. Accurate prediction of growth induced instabilities and corresponding shear deformation require a higher-order morphoelastic beam theory for growing tubes and filaments, for which we present a theory here. In the theory, the deformation gradient is decomposed into elastic deformation and growth using multiplicative decomposition. Appropriate assumptions for slender structures with circular cross-section are introduced and the displacement field and constitutive relations are derived from three-dimensional morphoelasticity. Corresponding variational principle is established and equilibrium equations are obtained. Our higher-order beam with growth theory can model growth-induced instability and shear deformation of growing tubes and filaments with circular cross-sections. Importantly, it can predict shear stress distribution and locations of maximum transverse shear stress in the circular cross-section. The shear stress, critical growth and post-buckling predictions of our proposed model and analytical solutions were validated by comparing its predictions against results from three-dimensional finite element simulations. Growth-induced instability and corresponding shear stress distributions were analyzed and the results are discussed. Our model can provide improved prediction for critical growth induced instabilities which are overestimated if the shear deformation is not considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the status of the human rights in Tibet, China. Accordingly, it discusses various violations and abuses of human rights in Tibet and the possible impact to the country's human rights if the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. It also provides some suggestions that would improve the human rights in Tibet.