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The work was investigated for the removal of Rhodamine B dye from an aqueous solution by the application of Chloroxylon Swietenia Activated Carbon (CSAC), which is obtained from Chloroxylon Swietenia tree barks because it’s harder and widely used for agricultural tools, timber, construction, and boat building. For the experimental methods, batch mode adsorption was used. The following operational parameters were followed: initial dye concentration, pH, and temperature for the adsorption of Rhodamine B dye. The adsorption equilibrium was attained after 75 minutes. The removal percentage of Rhodamine B dye was mainly dependent on the initial concentration of the dye solution. Three different adsorption isotherm models were used to calculate the equilibrium adsorption data. The diffusion of Rh-B dye inside the new formation of active sites occurred at maximum temperature, which predicted that the adsorption would be an endothermic reaction. The characteristics of CSAC were evaluated by SEM and FTIR spectroscopy.

This article inspects the problem of robust synchronization for uncertain Markovian jumping complex interconnected neural networks with randomly occurring uncertainties and time delays. The uncertainties considered here occur randomly and are assumed to follow certain mutually uncorrelated Bernoulli distributed white noise sequences. The presence of sensor faults may cause degradation or even instability of the entire network. Therefore, control laws are designed with sensor faults to ensure the controlled synchronization of the complex interconnected neural networks. Three types of fault-tolerant controls are designed based on the Lyapunov stability theory and adaptive schemes which include passive and adaptive fault-tolerant control laws. By constructing a new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF) and by using Jensen’s inequality with a free-weighting matrix approach, some new delay-dependent synchronization criteria are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). By using the Lyapunov stability theory, the existence condition for the adaptive controller that guarantees the robust mean-square synchronization of complex interconnected neural networks in terms of LMIs are derived. Finally, a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the performance of the developed approach.

With the help of eco-friendly waste materials like Manila tamarind tree bark and shells (Pithecellobium Dulce), the malachite green dye has been removed from wastewater in this investigation. The maximum adsorption of dye was achieved at pH 6.7 in the research work. The removal percentage of Malachite green dye was found to be dependent on the initial concentration of dye solution, and the maximum removal percentage was found to be 85% at 25 mg/L of Malachite green dye. The experimental methods were carried out using the batch adsorption technique. The pH parameter, temperature, adsorption dose, and contact time for the removal of Malachite green dye were studied. The Freundlich, Langmuir, and Temkin methods were used to calculate equilibrium adsorption data. The thermodynamic parameters such as a change in free energy (G0 ), enthalpy (H0 ), and entropy (S0 ) were determined. The negative values of G0 indicated that the process of dye removal was spontaneous at all values of temperature. Further, the values of H0 indicated the endothermic nature of the process of dye removal from the wastewater.

Recent Technological advances have affectedmany areas of our lives including the way we communicate, Collaborate, learn and of course, teach. Those advances necessitate an expansion of our vocabulary, producing definitions such as digitals natives, digital immigrants, and the topic I teach-technocrat, etc… the teachers have to face the challenges in the classroom and instructional strategies to make their class more interesting and informative. i-Teach Classroom includes all the other teaching and learning tools which are needed for a complete and effective online teaching experience. i-teach creates an alternative teaching certification program that allows to complete the coursework on own schedule at an affordable price. Online education allows teachers to innovate methods of teaching by using creative online tools. The present article focuses on the concept of i-teach and technocrat. An innovative step in the field of education.

Poultry production generates a huge volume of wastes from hatchery, poultry farm, processing plant, etc., which carry potential health hazards as they lead to air, water and land pollution. Disposa...

The present study was aimed to document the ethnomedicinal knowledge among the Malayali tribal of Chitteri hills Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India. Field visits were made to the Chitteri hills every month covering all seasons. Interviews with traditional healers and other knowledgeable inhabitants and farmers were conducted. The Malayali tribal people of Chitteri hills use 320 plant species for their day-to-day life, this ethnobotanical exploration revealed they were the habit of using around 216 species of medicinal plants belonging to 200 genera under 45families. Malayali tribes use morphological characters such as bark surface, leaf colour, leaf taste and exudates, underground plant parts and ecology of species as criteria for identification of 135 species belongs to 105 genera under 46 families. The documentation of the knowledge of Malayali tribal identification of plants of Chitteri hills is to be accorded top priority in the preservation of our ancient traditional knowledge.

Mathematics plays an important role in engineering education. In the last twenty, engineering students have led to a big change in the scope of mathematics education. Latest advances in technology and computers have made a difference in the teaching of mathematics. The key part of engineering education for 21st century engineers should be inquiry into curriculum, teaching and measurement-assessment methods. This paper aims to shed light on the issues involved in teaching and learning mathematics education and also recommend improvisation the quality of engineering mathematics in multi-dimensional level.

Summary We have developed a database, Ab-CoV, which contains manually curated experimental interaction profiles of 1780 coronavirus-related neutralizing antibodies. It contains more than 3200 datapoints on half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50), half maximal effective concentration (EC50) and binding affinity (KD). Each data with experimentally known three-dimensional structures are complemented with predicted change in stability and affinity of all possible point mutations of interface residues. Ab-CoV also includes information on epitopes and paratopes, structural features of viral proteins, sequentially similar therapeutic antibodies and Collier de Perles plots. It has the feasibility for structure visualization and options to search, display and download the data. Availability and implementation Ab-CoV database is freely available at https://web.iitm.ac.in/bioinfo2/ab-cov/home. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of stress of transportation and holding periods before marketing on meat quality of broilers brought into urban areas from far off production points for marketing. The meat quality parameters like breast and thigh muscle pH, shear force value for tenderness and water holding capacity (WHC) were studied among broilers transported over long (>300 km) and short (100-200 km) distances and also during holding period. Distance of transport of broilers was found to influence shear force value significantly (P  0.01) and muscle pH (breast and thigh muscle) and WHC were not affected by the same. Comparatively, long distance transport of > 300 km resulted in less tender meat than short distance transport for 100-200 km. The live shrink loss (%) increased upto day-2 of holding and the birds were found to recoup body weight and reverse the trend after that. The breast muscle pH also rose upto day-2 and came down afterwards. The broiler meat was found to be the most tender on day-2 of holding, while WHC was the highest on day-4. Microbial quality of drinking water and litter at the holding pens were very poor. Long distance travel and holding periods before marketing influenced the meat qualities of the broilers.

The study was aimed at assessing the extent of live shrink loss (%) experienced by the broilers during transportation from the points of production to marketing centres. A total of 2.42 million broilers weighing 4717 MT brought by 1248 truck loads into Chennai city, Tamil Nadu, India for marketing were involved. The study period covered three different seasons namely rainy, winter and summer, the distance of transportation was classified as less than 100 km, 101-200 km, 201-300 km and above 300 km and the duration of transportation was classified as less than three hours, 3-6, 6-9 and above nine hours. The season of transport did not influence live shrink loss (%), while a linear increase in such a loss was witnessed with increase in both the distance or duration of transport. Consequent economic loss due to live shrink loss suffered by the Indian poultry meat industry was estimated to be around INR. 2,905 crores annually. Administration of B complex vitamins and ascorbic acid at the suggested levels were found to be useful in significantly (P  0.01) reducing live shrink loss during transportation of broilers.

Aggregation of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) can negatively affect their chemistry, manufacturing and control attributes and lead to undesirable immune responses in patients. Therefore, optimization of lead Monoclonal antibody (mAb) drug candidates during discovery stages to mitigate aggregation is increasingly becoming an integral part of their developability assessments. The disruption of short sequence motifs called Aggregation prone regions (APRs) found in amino acid sequences of mAb candidates can potentially mitigate their aggregation. In this work, we have performed Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations to study the aggregation of an APR (VLVIY) found in λ light chains of human antibodies and its single point mutant KLVIY. Eighteen different multi-copy peptide simulation systems of 'VLVIY' and 'KLVIY' were constructed by varying their concentrations, temperatures, termini capping, and flanking gate-keeper regions. Within 20 ns of the simulation, peptide 'VLVIY' formed an aggregate of 100 peptides at ~0.1 M concentration with a 60% reduction in solvent accessible surface area (SASA). Further, analysis of the SASA change, peptide cluster distribution, and water residence time demonstrated how Val➔Lys mutation resists aggregation and improves solubility. Presence of Lys slows down aggregation kinetics via charge-charge repulsions and by raising the kinetic barrier to formation of large oligomers. However, the effect of the Val ➔ Lys mutation is dependent on sequence and structural contexts around the APR. This mutation also alters the solvation shell around the peptide by favoring solute-solvent interactions, thereby increasing its solubility. This work has provided a detailed mechanistic explanation of how APR disruption can mitigate aggregation in biotherapeutics and improve their developability. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

l-Alanine doped with cadmium chloride crystal was grown by slow evaporation technique in an optimum condition using de-ionized water as solvent. Single crystal x-ray diffraction analysis was carried out to confirm the unit cell parameters and cell volume. The presence of amine vibrations and carboxylic acid vibrations affirm the presence of l-alanine in grown material by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) analysis. The ultraviolet visible near-infrared region (UV–Vis-NIR) spectrum revealed that the grown crystal has a lower cut-off wavelength at 246 nm and has high transmission in the entire visible region. Further, energy gap and the refractive index of the crystal were also calculated. Thermo-gravimetric (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA) were carried out, and it is estimated that the material is thermally stable up to 233°C and the melting point of the crystal was found to be 298°C. The mechanical strength of the material is estimated for various loads using Vicker’s microhardness and it reveals that material belongs to a soft material category. The electrical polarizability was calculated using known values such as valence electron, molecular weight, energy gap and density of the material. Z-scan technique for nonlinear studies was carried out on a LACC crystal to determine the third order nonlinear absorption (β), nonlinear refractive index (n2) and third order nonlinear susceptibility (χ(3)) using continuous wave Nd: YAG laser of 532 nm. Grown crystal shows that the material is very much suitable for second harmonic generation for frequency conversion applications.

Background: The variety of indigenous duck germplasm contribute maximum to the poultry industry in India, besides chicken population. In southern part of India, the available duck genetic resource, particularly Arni ducks (comprises of Sanyasi and Keeri ducks) of Tamil Nadu, has its own characteristics with innate potentiality of higher productivity without any input system of management. Genetic characterization and diversity of indigenous duck genetic resources has not been properly studied. In the present study, the genetic diversity of Arni ducks with other indigenous and exotic duck germplasm were analysed with microsatellite markers. Method: Genomic DNA was isolated from the blood samples of six duck populations. Molecular characterization was carried out with duck specific FAO recommended microsatellite markers. The genotyping of ducks was done based on the size of 4324 PCR amplicons of 23 microsatellite loci, which were subjected to capillary electrophoresis using automatic sequencer.Result: A total of 222 alleles in six duck populations across 23 microsatellite loci with a mean of 9.65 ± 0.95 alleles were found. Kuttanad duck variety had the highest number of alleles (139) followed by Sanyasi (136), Keeri (129), Muscovy (118), Assam (91) and White Pekin (78) ducks. The mean observed number of alleles was 6.04 ± 0.59, 5.91 ± 0.76, 5.61 ± 3.17, 5.13 ± 0.44, 3.96 ± 0.76 and 3.39 ± 0.40 in Kuttanad, Sanyasi, Keeri, Muscovy, Assam and White Pekin ducks respectively. The overall mean polymorphism information content (PIC) values among the six duck populations was 0.6269. In most of the duck populations, the mean PIC value was more than 0.5 except in Assam (0.4815) and White Pekin (0.3725) ducks. The observed heterozygosity was the highest in Keeri ducks (0.5217) and lowest in White Pekin ducks (0.2766), while, the mean expected heterozygosity was the highest in Sanyasi (0.5628) and lowest in White Pekin (0.4038) ducks. The variations in the observed and expected number of alleles, differences in PIC of various microsatellite loci might be attributed to the genetic variability of the duck populations, number and type of microsatellite primers utilised for analysis and the genetic diversity of the duck breeds under study. Higher FST value indicates the substantial degree of breed differentiation among the studied duck populations.

Protein aggregation is a topic of immense interest to the scientific community due to its role in several neurodegenerative diseases/disorders and industrial importance. Several in silico techniques, tools, and algorithms have been developed to predict aggregation in proteins and understand the aggregation mechanisms. This review attempts to provide an essence of the vast developments in in silico approaches, resources available, and future perspectives. It reviews aggregation-related databases, mechanistic models (aggregation-prone region and aggregation propensity prediction), kinetic models (aggregation rate prediction), and molecular dynamics studies related to aggregation. With a multitude of prediction models related to aggregation already available to the scientific community, the field of protein aggregation is rapidly maturing to tackle new applications.

Short aggregation prone sequence motifs can trigger aggregation in peptide and protein sequences. Most algorithms developed so far to identify potential aggregation prone regions (APRs) use amino acid residue composition and/or sequence pattern features. In this work, we have investigated the importance of atomic-level characteristics rather than residue level to understand the initiation of aggregation in proteins and peptides. Using atomic-level features an ensemble-classifier, ANuPP has been developed to predict the aggregation-nucleating regions in peptides and proteins. In a dataset of 1279 hexapeptides, ANuPP achieved an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.831 with 77% accuracy on 10-fold cross-validation and an AUC of 0.883 with 83% accuracy in a blind test dataset of 142 hexapeptides. Further, it showed an average SOV of 48.7% on identifying APR regions in 37 proteins. The performance of ANuPP is better than other methods reported in the literature on both amyloidogenic hexapeptide prediction and APR identification. We have developed a web server for ANuPP and it is available at https://web.iitm.ac.in/bioinfo2/ANuPP/. Insights gained from this work demonstrate the importance of atomic and functional group characteristics towards diversity of atomic level origins as well as mechanisms of protein aggregation.

The Curated Protein Aggregation Database (CPAD) is a manually curated and open-access database dedicated to providing comprehensive information related to mechanistic, kinetic and structural aspects of protein and peptide aggregation. The database has been updated to CPAD 2.0 by significantly expanding datasets and improving the user-interface. Key features of CPAD 2.0 are (i) 83,098 data points on aggregation kinetics experiments, (ii) 565 structures related to aggregation, which are classified into proteins, fibrils, and protein-ligand complexes, (iii) 2031 aggregating/non-aggregating peptides with pre-calculated aggregation properties, and (iv) 912 aggregation-prone regions in amyloidogenic proteins. This database will help the scientific community (a) by facilitating research leading to improved understanding of protein aggregation, (b) by helping develop, validate and benchmark mechanistic and kinetic models of protein aggregation, and (c) by assisting experimentalists with design of their investigations and dissemination of data generated by their studies. CPAD 2.0 can be accessed at https://web.iitm.ac.in/bioinfo2/cpad2/index.html.

In modern fields of science, the urge for analysing the characterization of fluid flow as well as fabricating micro level devices to facilitate fluid flow is increasing noticeably. The technology that provides detailed information about the aforesaid concepts is referred to as microfluidics. Microfluidics, in substance, considers the flow in the microchannels. It proved its mettle exclusively in the field of medical diagnostics. In this paper, the prerequisites such as molecular analysis, biodefence, molecular biology and microelectronics which emphasized the need for microfluidic technology are reported, and the microfluidics technology is reviewed in view of materials used fabrication methodologies and applications. This review article finally intends to look out for the alternative material such as biocompatible metal rather than plastics, to have a better production rate. In recent times, the research works on microfluidics are increasing significantly, and this article will be useful for future research work on microfluidics area.

Strobilanthes kunthiana (Neelakurinji) is an endemic and underexploited plant belongs to the Family Acanthaceae. The aim of our study was to evaluate phytochemical analysis, GC-MS analysis and antioxidant activity of in vitro callus extract of Strobilanthes kunthiana. In this present study the phytochemical analysis of various extract of S. kunthiana in vitro callus were studied. Phytochemical analysis confirmed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides, saponins, tannins, steroids, terpenoids and phenols in the methanolic extract comparing to the other extracts. In this study GC-MS analysis revealed the presence of 10 bioactive phytochemical compounds were identified in the methanolic extract. The prevailing compounds were 9,12-octadecadienoic acid (Z,Z) (50.32%), hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester (20.69%), 9-octadecenoic acid (Z)-,methyl ester (10.45%), heptadecanoic acid, 16-methyl-, methyl ester (5.78%), 2,6-bis(1,1-dimethylethyl)-4-methyl phenol (4.70%). 3-methyl-2-ketobutyric acid tbdms (2.79%), 2,2,3,4-tetramethyl-5-hexen-3-ol (2.41%), N-(tert-butoxycarbonyl)-2-(4-methoxyphenyl) allylamine (1.06%), cyclotrisiloxane, hexamethyl (0.94%), benzenesulfonamide (0.87%). The antioxidant property was evaluated for methanol and ethanolic extract by DPPH method. The higher percentage of inhibition (79.23 +/- 0.37) was observed in 250 μg/mL of ethanol extract followed by (90.35 +/- 0.54) methanolic extract against the standard ascorbic acid (91.25 +/- 0.33). The results show that the methanolic extract possesses more antioxidant activity than ethanol. The plant S. kunthiana may be exploited as a source of natural antioxidant and as herbal alternatives for various disorders.

Protein aggregation has two aspects, namely, mechanistic and kinetics. Understanding protein aggregation kinetics is critical for prediction of progression of diseases caused by amyloidosis, accumulation of aggregates in biotherapeutics during storage and engineering commercial nano-biomaterials. In this work, we have collected experimentally determined absolute protein aggregation rates and developed an SVM based regression model to predict absolute rates of protein and peptide aggregation near-physiological conditions. The regression model achieved a correlation coefficient of 0.72 with MAE of 0.91 (natural log of kapp, where kapp is in hour-1) using leave-one-out cross-validation on a dataset of 82 non-redundant proteins/peptides. The model accounts for the experimental conditions (such as temperature, pH, ionic and protein concentration) and sequence-based properties. The amino acid sequence features revealed by this model as being important for aggregation kinetics, are also associated with the aggregation mechanism. In particular, inherent aggregation propensity of the protein/peptide sequence and number of aggregation prone regions (APRs) unpunctuated by the gatekeeping residues, were found to play important roles in the prediction of the absolute aggregation rates. This analysis shows that mechanism and kinetics of protein aggregation are coupled via common sequence attributes. The aggregation kinetic prediction method developed in this work is available at https://web.iitm.ac.in/bioinfo2/absolurate-pred/index.html.

Wireless Sensor Network is becoming a very important area of research in today’s world and contributes a lot in the field of technology. Reducing energy consumption and improving the network lifetime is the key factor to be considered. Clustering provides an effective way for prolonging the lifetime of a wireless sensor network. Current clustering algorithms usually utilize two techniques, selecting cluster heads with more residual energy and rotating cluster heads periodically, to distribute the energy consumption among nodes in each cluster and extend the network lifetime. Also, it comprises various sensor nodes to detect different parameters. Among those non-replaceable batteries plays a greater part. Hence the system with such networks is essential that the sensor nodes consume as little energy as possible. To address the problem, we propose anovel model namely enhanced energy distributed unequal clustering which is mainly utilized for tackling energy consumption issues in multi-hop remote sensor systems. In the proposed method with an area of base station and energy are given significance as clustering parameters. Because of these parameters, diverse nodes are assigned. Here, another methodology has been proposed to enhance the working of EDUC, by electing cluster heads considering several nodes in the neighborhood. The incorporation of the area data for calculation of the opposition radii gives better adjusting of energy in correlation with the current methodology. The technique utilized is of holding similar bunches for a couple of rounds and is successful in decreasing the clustering overhead. The execution of the proposed convention has been assessed under three distinct scenarios and contrasted and existing conventions through reenactments. The outcomes demonstrate that the proposed plan beats the current conventions regarding system lifetime and performances in all the scenarios in terms of delay, energy consumption, packet loss ratio, and packet received ratio.

In this paper, the time triggered hybrid scheduler (TTH) is implemented in the distributed real time embedded systems along with the operation of dynamic frequency scaling (DFS) since it overcomes the problem of time triggered cooperative scheduler (TTC) for distributed systems and also the decreases the power consumption. This scheduler is implemented along with the token ring network protocol for the communication scheduling. In hard real time systems, ideally, no deadline may ever be missed and hence the co-operative and pre-emptive are combined in this paper to achieve optimum efficiency. DFS is used to provide robustness to the network and also reduces the power utilization. This TTH scheduler is more advantageous than TTC scheduler in distributed system, since long task problem can be overcome by means of this algorithm. The model is simulated using the TORSCHE toolbox of the MATLAB. Some of the applications of this scheduling are data acquisition and sampling in wireless sensor networks, control system engineering, patient monitoring using wireless sensor networking and so on.

Protein aggregation leads to several burdensome human maladies, but a molecular level understanding of how human proteome has tackled the threat of aggregation is currently lacking. In this work, we survey the human proteome for incidence of aggregation prone regions (APRs), by using sequences of experimentally validated amyloid-fibril forming peptides and via computational predictions. While approximately 30 human proteins are currently known to be amyloidogenic, we found that 260 proteins (∼1% of human proteome) contain at least one experimentally validated amyloid-fibril forming segment. Computer predictions suggest that more than 80% of the human proteins contain at least one potential APR and approximately two-thirds (65%) contain two or more APRs; spanning 3-5% of their sequences. Sequence randomizations show that this apparently high incidence of APRs has been actually significantly reduced by unique amino acid composition and sequence patterning of human proteins. The human proteome has utilized a wide repertoire of sequence-structural optimization strategies, most of them already known, to minimize deleterious consequences due to the presence of APRs while simultaneously taking advantage of their order promoting properties. This survey also found that APRs tend to be located near the active and ligand binding sites in human proteins, but not near the post translational modification sites. The APRs in human proteins are also preferentially found at heterotypic interfaces rather than homotypic ones. Interestingly, this survey reveals that APRs play multiple, often opposing, roles in the human protein sequence-structure-function relationships. Insights gained from this work have several interesting implications towards novel drug discovery and development. Proteins 2017; 85:1099-1118. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Ethanolic and methanolic salt stress callus extracts of Solanum melongena L. were tested for in vitro antimicrobial and free radical scavenging assayssuch as DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) and ABTS+(2,2'Azinobis (3-ethyl benzo-thizoline-6-sulfonic acid) . In both the extracts the zone of inhibition is higher in Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Staphylococcus aureusand Streptococcus pyogenesat 90 µl concentration against the control. The antifungal activity of these extracts also the zone of inhibition is higher at 90 µl concentration against the control. The DPPH activity of different concentration of solvent extracts (1 mg/ml to 5 mg/ml) along with standard ascorbic acid among the five different concentration (50 µg/ml to 250 µg/ml) of extracts tested, the higher percentage of inhibition was observed in 250 µg/ml of methanol extract followed by ethanolic extract against the standard ascorbic acid. In ABTS+ activity the absorbance was increased with the increasing concentrations of both methanolic and ethanolic callus extracts.