Generating cadastral base for Kolathupalayam village in Tamil Nadu from high resolution LISS IV sensor data

In the present study an attempt was made to generate cadastral base from high resolution satellite image (LISS IV) and to integrate with land use land cover information. The digital cadastral map with survey number for Kolathupalayam village in Erode district of Tamil Nadu was scanned, digitized and parcels were extracted. Similarly parcels or field boundaries were digitized and extracted from satellite image and were statistically compared by area. The area obtained from both the source through digitization correlated well with a pearson correlation of 0.87 and it was significant at 5 per cent. Thus, the area comparisons from both methods are significant indicating boundaries of individual fields generated from satellite image matched well with the one generated from cadastral map. The cadastral base generated from satellite image was overlaid on the classified image (level III output) to identify and generate land cover information against each survey number. Thus, the LISS IV data can be used for the identification and extraction of cadastral boundaries with good accuracy

ANALYTICAL METHOD DEVELOPMENT FOR SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINATION OF UBIDECARENONE AND VITAMIN E ACETATE IN CAPSULE DOSAGE FORM BY HPLC

Objective: To develop and validate a new simple, accurate, precise and sensitive high performance liquid chromatographic method (HPLC) method for simultaneous estimation of ubidecarenone and vitamin E acetate in capsule dosage form as per international conference on harmonization (ICH) guidelines. Methods: The chromatographic separation of drugs were achieved using hypersil C8 column (250 mm x 4.6 mm, 5µ) in isocratic elution mode with a mobile phase of methanol: ethanol: n-hexane (80:10:10 v/v/v) at a flow rate of 1 ml/min with ultra-violet (UV) detection at 210 nm. Results: The optimized method produced sharp peaks with good resolution, minimum tailing factor and satisfactory retention time were found to be 5.745 min and 12.565 min for vitamin E acetate and ubidecarenone respectively. The method was linear in the range of 60-180 µg/ml for ubidecarenone and 20-60 µg/ml for vitamin E acetate with a correlation coefficient of 0.999 and 0.9993 respectively. Mean recoveries observed for ubidecarenone and vitamin E acetate were 99.85% and 99.73% respectively. The percentage relative standard deviation (% RSD) of peak area for system precision, method precision, and intermediate precision were found to be less than 0.37%. The lower degree of % RSD obtained has proved that the method was precise and robust. Conclusion: A new simple HPLC method was developed and validated as per ICH guidelines for the simultaneous estimation of ubidecarenone and vitamin E acetate and the method can be effectively applied for the routine analysis of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and formulations

INFLUENCE OF HYDRATED SODIUM CALCIUM ALUMINOSILICATE AND ACTIVATED CHARCOAL ON THE PHARMACOKINETICS OF SINGLE PULSE DOSING OF ENROFLOXACIN IN BROILER CHICKEN

ABSTRACTObjective: The present study was undertaken to evaluate the interaction kinetics of enrofloxacin, the commonly used antibacterial in poultry withmycotoxin binders namely hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate (HSCAS) and activated charcoal (AC), which have become inevitable componentsof poultry feed.Methods: Control group received normal feed free of toxin binder, whereas HSCAS and AC group were supplemented with HSCAS and AC at 0.5% infeed, respectively. Enrofloxacin was administered as single pulse dose (at 10 mg/kg) through drinking water to all the groups. Blood samples werecollected at predetermined time intervals after drug administration, and plasma was separated and analyzed for enrofloxacin concentrations usinghigh-performance liquid chromatography.Results: Significant decrease in area under the plasma concentration-time curve (AUC0-∞)was noticed in AC group when compared to control group(13.90±1.15 vs. 19.67±1.68 mg.h/ml), whereas HSCAS group (16.42±1.24 mg.h/ml) neither differed significantly from AC nor control group. Thevolume of distribution and clearance were significantly high in AC group when compared to control group (8.31±0.89 vs. 6.39±0.13 l/kg; 0.77±0.07 vs.0.53±0.05 l/h/kg). HSCAS group was intermediate and did not differ significantly from the other two groups (8.13±0.45 l/kg; 0.63±0.04 l/h/kg).However, volume of distribution at steady state was significantly high in both AC (10.42±1.09 l/kg) and HSCAS group (9.45±0.48 l/kg) when comparedto control group (7.21±0.20 l/kg). Maximum plasma concentration was significantly low (0.99±0.04, 0.97±0.06, 1.38±0.04 mg/ml) and time to reachmaximum plasma concentration was significantly delayed (7.33±0.42, 6.67±0.67, 4.33±0.67 h) in AC and HSCAS group when compared to controlgroup, respectively. The relative bioavailability was significantly low in both AC and HSCAS group (74.95±10.70, 88.88±15.03%) when comparedto control group. Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic integration revealed that the dose of enrofloxacin (10 mg/kg) was capable of treating onlymoderately sensitive organisms (minimum inhibitory concentration ≤0.125 mg/ml) both in the presence and absence of toxin binder and higherdosage is needed for the less sensitive organism.Conclusion: The study revealed that the administration of enrofloxacin to HSCAS and AC supplemented broilers would lead to decrease in clinicalefficacy and promote the development of antimicrobial resistance. AC was found to interact more with enrofloxacin than HSCAS as observed fromthe PK parameters. Hence, careful adjustment of dosage or withdrawal of the usage of toxin binder containing either HSCAS or AC in feed duringenrofloxacin treatment is recommended.Keywords: Enrofloxacin, Pulse dosing, Hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate, Activated charcoal, Interaction kinetics

Mapping and classification of crops using high resolution satellite image

In the present study an attempt was made to perform land use land cover classification at Level-III in order to discriminate and map individual crops. IRS Resources at 2 LISS IV sensor imagery (5.0 m spatial resolution) of September 2014 was utilized for the study. A hybrid classification approach of unsupervised classification followed by supervised classification was adopted to identify and map the crop area in Kodumudi block, Erode district of Tamil Nadu. Signature evaluation was carried out to study the class separability and through cross tabulation and the accuracy was assessed by error matrix. The signature separability analysis to classify various land cover classes indicated that the class viz., waterbody, settlement, sandy area and fallow land were better and for vegetation sub-classes viz., individual crops were poor, which means classification of individual crops was a challenge. The overall accuracy with three different algorithms varied from 56 to 65 per cent and this low accuracy was due to the problem in discriminating the tonal variation and spectral pattern of individual crops in the study area. Thus, classification of vegetation categories into individual crops using LISS IV data resulted in moderate classification accuracy in areas with multiple cropping

Analysis of Power Optimization Using SVL Techniques

Abstract--- Flip-flops are the major storage elements in all SOC's of digital design. They accommodate most of the power that has been applied to the chip. Flip-flop is one of the most power consumption components. It is important to reduce the power dissipation in both clock distribution networks and flip-flops. The power delay is mainly due to the clock delays. The delay of the flip-flops should be minimized for efficient implementation. The concept of this project is to reduce the power consumption and to increase the speed and functionality of the chip. This project moves around in replacing conventional master-slave based flip flop to a pulse triggered flip flop which acts as a tribute alternate for low power applications. Initially in the critical path the pulse generation controls logic along with SVL function. A simple transistor SVL design is used to reduce the circuit complexity. In this scheme transistor sizes and pulse generation circuit can be further reduce for power saving. Here UMC CMOS 180nm technology is use in SPICE tool to design the proposed structure. This would bring up the result in power saving approximately to 38.4%

Cloning, characterization and expression analysis of porcine microRNAs

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small ~22-nt regulatory RNAs that can silence target genes, by blocking their protein production or degrading the mRNAs. Pig is an important animal in the agriculture industry because of its utility in the meat production. Besides, pig has tremendous biomedical importance as a model organism because of its closer proximity to humans than the mouse model. Several hundreds of miRNAs have been identified from mammals, humans, mice and rats, but little is known about the miRNA component in the pig genome. Here, we adopted an experimental approach to identify conserved and unique miRNAs and characterize their expression patterns in diverse tissues of pig.Results: By sequencing a small RNA library generated using pooled RNA from the pig heart, liver and thymus; we identified a total of 120 conserved miRNA homologs in pig. Expression analysis of conserved miRNAs in 14 different tissue types revealed heart-specific expression of miR-499 and miR-208 and liver-specific expression of miR-122. Additionally, miR-1 and miR-133 in the heart, miR-181a and miR-142-3p in the thymus, miR-194 in the liver, and miR-143 in the stomach showed the highest levels of expression. miR-22, miR-26b, miR-29c and miR-30c showed ubiquitous expression in diverse tissues. The expression patterns of pig-specific miRNAs also varied among the tissues examined.Conclusion: Identification of 120 miRNAs and determination of the spatial expression patterns of a sub-set of these in the pig is a valuable resource for molecular biologists, breeders, and biomedical investigators interested in post-transcriptional gene regulation in pig and in related mammals, including humans.Peer reviewedBiochemistry and Molecular BiologyAnimal Scienc

Unique and conserved MicroRNAs in wheat chromosome 5D revealed by next-generation sequencing

MicroRNAs are a class of short, non-coding, single-stranded RNAs that act as post-transcriptional regulators in gene expression. miRNA analysis of Triticum aestivum chromosome 5D was performed on 454 GS FLX Titanium sequences of flow sorted chromosome 5D with a total of 3,208,630 good quality reads representing 1.34x and 1.61x coverage of the short (5DS) and long (5DL) arms of the chromosome respectively. In silico and structural analyses revealed a total of 55 miRNAs; 48 and 42 miRNAs were found to be present on 5DL and 5DS respectively, of which 35 were common to both chromosome arms, while 13 miRNAs were specific to 5DL and 7 miRNAs were specific to 5DS. In total, 14 of the predicted miRNAs were identified in wheat for the first time. Representation (the copy number of each miRNA) was also found to be higher in 5DL (1,949) compared to 5DS (1,191). Targets were predicted for each miRNA, while expression analysis gave evidence of expression for 6 out of 55 miRNAs. Occurrences of the same miRNAs were also found in Brachypodium distachyon and Oryza sativa genome sequences to identify syntenic miRNA coding sequences. Based on this analysis, two other miRNAs: miR1133 and miR167 were detected in B. distachyon syntenic region of wheat 5DS. Five of the predicted miRNA coding regions (miR6220, miR5070, miR169, miR5085, miR2118) were experimentally verified to be located to the 5D chromosome and three of them : miR2118, miR169 and miR5085, were shown to be 5D specific. Furthermore miR2118 was shown to be expressed in Chinese Spring adult leaves. miRNA genes identified in this study will expand our understanding of gene regulation in bread wheat

Downstream signalling and specific inhibition of c-MET/HGF pathway in small cell lung cancer: implications for tumour invasion

The c-MET receptor can be overexpressed, amplified, or mutated in solid tumours including small cell lung cancer (SCLC). In c-MET-overexpressing SCLC cell line NCI-H69, hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) dramatically induced c-MET phosphorylation at phosphoepitopes pY1230/1234/1235 (catalytic tyrosine kinase), pY1003 (juxtamembrane), and also of paxillin at pY31 (CRKL-binding site). We utilised a global proteomics phosphoantibody array approach to identify further c-MET/HGF signal transduction intermediates in SCLC. Strong HGF induction of specific phosphorylation sites in phosphoproteins involved in c-MET/HGF signal transduction was detected, namely adducin-α [S724], adducin-γ [S662], CREB [S133], ERK1 [T185/Y187], ERK1/2 [T202/Y204], ERK2 [T185/Y187], MAPKK (MEK) 1/2 [S221/S225], MAPKK (MEK) 3/6 [S189/S207], RB [S612], RB1 [S780], JNK [T183/Y185], STAT3 [S727], focal adhesion kinase (FAK) [Y576/S722/S910], p38α-MAPK [T180/Y182], and AKT1[S473] and [T308]. Conversely, inhibition of phosphorylation by HGF in protein kinase C (PKC), protein kinase R (PKR), and also CDK1 was identified. Phosphoantibody-based immunohistochemical analysis of SCLC tumour tissue and microarray established the role of c-MET in SCLC biology. This supports a role of c-MET activation in tumour invasive front in the tumour progression and invasion involving FAK and AKT downstream. The c-MET serves as an attractive therapeutic target in SCLC, as shown through small interfering RNA (siRNA) and selective prototype c-MET inhibitor SU11274, inhibiting the phosphorylation of c-MET itself and its downstream molecules such as AKT, S6 kinase, and ERK1/2. Investigation of mechanisms of invasion and, ultimately, metastasis in SCLC would be very useful with these signal transduction molecules

Perifosine as a Potential Novel Anti-Cancer Agent Inhibits EGFR/MET-AKT Axis in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

PI3K/AKT signalling pathway is aberrantly active and plays a critical role for cell cycle progression of human malignant pleural mesothelioma (MMe) cells. AKT is one of the important cellular targets of perifosine, a novel bio-available alkylphospholipid that has displayed significant anti-proliferative activity in vitro and in vivo in several human tumour model systems and is currently being tested in clinical trials.We tested Perifosine activity on human mesothelial cells and different mesothelioma cell lines, in order to provide evidence of its efficacy as single agent and combined therapy.We demonstrate here that perifosine, currently being evaluated as an anti-cancer agent in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, caused a dose-dependent reduction of AKT activation, at concentrations causing MMe cell growth arrest. In this study we firstly describe that MMe cells express aside from AKT1 also AKT3 and that either the myristoylated, constitutively active, forms of the two proteins, abrogated perifosine-mediated cell growth inhibition. Moreover, we describe here a novel mechanism of perifosine that interferes, upstream of AKT, affecting EGFR and MET phosphorylation. Finally, we demonstrate a significant increase in cell toxicity when MMe cells were treated with perifosine in combination with cisplatin.This study provides a novel mechanism of action of perifosine, directly inhibiting EGFR/MET-AKT1/3 axis, providing a rationale for a novel translational approach to the treatment of MMe

A Loss of Function Screen of Identified Genome-Wide Association Study Loci Reveals New Genes Controlling Hematopoiesis

The formation of mature cells by blood stem cells is very well understood at the cellular level and we know many of the key transcription factors that control fate decisions. However, many upstream signalling and downstream effector processes are only partially understood. Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have been particularly useful in providing new directions to dissect these pathways. A GWAS meta-analysis identified 68 genetic loci controlling platelet size and number. Only a quarter of those genes, however, are known regulators of hematopoiesis. To determine function of the remaining genes we performed a medium-throughput genetic screen in zebrafish using antisense morpholino oligonucleotides (MOs) to knock down protein expression, followed by histological analysis of selected genes using a wide panel of different hematopoietic markers. The information generated by the initial knockdown was used to profile phenotypes and to position candidate genes hierarchically in hematopoiesis. Further analysis of brd3a revealed its essential role in differentiation but not maintenance and survival of thrombocytes. Using the from-GWAS-to-function strategy we have not only identified a series of genes that represent novel regulators of thrombopoiesis and hematopoiesis, but this work also represents, to our knowledge, the first example of a functional genetic screening strategy that is a critical step toward obtaining biologically relevant functional data from GWA study for blood cell traits