The analysis of material removal rate of WEDM miniature gears

Gear fabrication in wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) plays an important role in manufacturing industries. This paper describes the analysis and optimization of process parameters for the fabrication of spur gear on brass spur gear on brass workpiece (10cmx15cmx6mm) material by wire EDM process. The experiments were performed by using the design of experiment (DoE) approach and the material removal rate (MRR) was analyzed by response surface methodology technique. The effect of input parameters i.e. pulse on time, pulse off time and feed rate on MRR has been investigated. The surface geometry of the gears has been analysed by the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). This study found that 0.4 μs for pulse on time, 60 μs for pulse-off time and 6 mm/min for feed rate provides improved material removal rate. The analysis of variance shows that pulse on time and feed rate are the significant parameters for the wire EDM process. The SEM image exhibits the capability of WEDM to machined miniature gear with a uniform distribution of regular-shaped craters and defect-free flank surface

An evaluation of congenital talipes equinovarus patients treated by various methods

Background: Idiopathic congenital talipes equinovarus is one of the commonest congenital anomaly. Although treatment provides many options, near universal agreement exists that initial management should consist of gentle manipulation of the affected foot. In developing country like India presentation is extremely variable from soon after birth to very late childhood and irregular follow up makes treatment more difficult.Methods: 100 cases of congenital talipes equinovarus who attended the Orthopedics OPD of our hospital (March 2013  to 2016) were taken up. In neonates with delicate skin, the passive manipulation was demonstrated to the mother which they did 5-6 times daily. The application of plaster of Paris cast and passive manipulation was done every 15th day upto 3 months of age. After the 3-month age, passive manipulation was done every 3 weeks. If no normalization, surgery was advised and done to correct the resistant component accordingly. All the analyses were performed in R-programming language (R- 3.0.0).Results: 6 cases,10 feet were lost during follow-up. Results were assessed in 134 feet, 128 cases managed conservatively, 13 surgically. Results were assessed according to clinical, radiological criteria of Beatson and Pearson. 13 feet were operated of 144 feet,11 cases posteromedial soft tissue release (PMSTR) was done. In two Joshi’s external stabilizing system (JESS) fixator was applied.Conclusions: Majority of cases can be treated successfully by conservative means and only in 11 cases PMSTR was done, 2 cases of relapsed feet JESS was applied

CRISPR/Cas9-mediated interrogation of a sense-antisense pair involved in the DNA damage response

Previously, the Diederichs lab identified the long non-coding RNA NOP14-AS1 to be induced in A549 and HepG2 cells treated with the DNA-damaging drugs Etoposide, Cisplatin, and Bleomycin. Preliminary data indicated that NOP14-AS1 was inversely co-regulated with its antisense protein-coding gene NOP14. In this study, NOP14-AS1 regulation in DNA damage was further characterized. NOP14-AS1 was consistently induced in several cell lines upon treatment with various DNA damaging agents. NOP14-AS1 induction was a p53-dependent transcriptional response. The DNA damage-induced inverse co-regulation between NOP14 and NOP14-AS1 was further confirmed in multiple cell lines using time-course expression analysis upon treatment with multiple DNA-damaging agents. NOP14 repression upon DNA damage was p53-dependent and preliminary experiments performed indicated its involvement in the p53 pathway and a role in regulating cell proliferation. Antisense lncRNAs often regulate the expression of their overlapping sense protein-coding genes through transcript- as well as transcription-dependent mechanisms. Therefore, it was proposed that NOP14-AS1 induction could lead to NOP14 repression in cis. The transcript-dependent effects of NOP14-AS1 could be uncovered using an RNA interference-/ antisense oligo-based loss-of-function approach. However to uncover any transcription-dependent effects, a CRISPR/Cas9-based knockdown (CRISPRi) and overexpression (CRISPRa) system for NOP14-AS1 was established. While establishing this system, a major limitation of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for lncRNA knockdown was discovered and experimentally demonstrated for multiple examples. CRISPR/Cas9 targeting of a lncRNA arising from a complex locus can unintentionally affect the expression of its neighboring genes advocating for caution while using these systems for knockdown. However, these systems were determined to be safe to study the impact of NOP14-AS1 on NOP14 expression. NOP14 knockdown using siRNAs had no impact on NOP14-AS1 expression. On the other hand, NOP14 transcriptional repression using CRISPRi resulted in a NOP14-AS1 induction which could not be reversed by an ectopic rescue of NOP14 expression, indicating that this was due to a reduced transcriptional interference. However, the NOP14-AS1 induction observed upon CRISPRi knockdown of NOP14 could not account for the much stronger NOP14-AS1 induction observed upon DNA damage, indicating that an independent mechanism was responsible for the latter. NOP14-AS1 knockdown using antisense oligos / CRISPRi did not have any impact on the NOP14 expression. The DNA damage-induced NOP14 repression could not be reversed upon NOP14-AS1 knockdown. Also, a CRISPRa-mediated NOP14-AS1 induction did not affect NOP14 expression. Together these data indicated that neither the NOP14-AS1 transcript nor its transcription could regulate NOP14 expression. In summary, this study concludes that NOP14-AS1 and NOP14 are independently regulated upon DNA damage. However, the role of NOP14-AS1 in DNA damage remains to be established

A Mechanism for Participatory Budgeting With Funding Constraints and Project Interactions

Participatory budgeting (PB) has been widely adopted and has attracted significant research efforts; however, there is a lack of mechanisms for PB which elicit project interactions, such as substitution and complementarity, from voters. Also, the outcomes of PB in practice are subject to various minimum/maximum funding constraints on 'types' of projects. There is an insufficient understanding of how these funding constraints affect PB's strategic and computational complexities. We propose a novel preference elicitation scheme for PB which allows voters to express how their utilities from projects within 'groups' interact. We consider preference aggregation done under minimum and maximum funding constraints on 'types' of projects, where a project can have multiple type labels as long as this classification can be defined by a 1-laminar structure (henceforth called 1-laminar funding constraints). Overall, we extend the Knapsack voting model of Goel et al. in two ways - enriching the preference elicitation scheme to include project interactions and generalizing the preference aggregation scheme to include 1-laminar funding constraints. We show that the strategyproofness results of Goel et al. for Knapsack voting continue to hold under 1-laminar funding constraints. Although project interactions often break the strategyproofness, we study a special case of vote profiles where truthful voting is a Nash equilibrium under substitution project interactions. We then turn to the study of the computational complexity of preference aggregation. Social welfare maximization under project interactions is NP-hard. As a workaround for practical instances, we give a fixed parameter tractable (FPT) algorithm for social welfare maximization with respect to the maximum number of projects in a group

Investigation of cutting time and tool wear rate on EN-24 steel alloy by the drilling process

Modeling and optimization of cutting parameters are one of the most important factors in manufacturing process. The aim of present work is to establish the relation among input factors i.e. spindle speed, feed rate and depth of cut and response parameters i.e. cutting time and tool wear rate. The operation is performed on EN-24 alloy steel material. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been performed to find the significant and non-significant parameters. Mathematical model is developed for CT and TWR and optimized using composite desirability (CD) function technique. It was found that the best machining factor is depth of cut whereas spindle speed is the less significant machining parameter. The confirmation experiments have been also performed to validate the results. The given model could be utilized to select the level of drilling parameters

Animal Representation in Advertising – A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Indian and Global Trends

Advertising is a powerful tool that shapes consumer behavior, influences public perception, and reflects societal values. Animals have been a common motif in advertising campaigns for decades, playing various roles from mascots to symbols of different brands and products. However, the use of animals in advertising raises ethical questions and concerns about the treatment and portrayal of animals. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of the use of animals in advertising, focusing on Indian and global trends. It explores the historical context, ethical considerations, legal regulations, cultural influences, and recent shifts in the use of animals in advertising. The analysis offers insights into the evolving relationship between animals and advertising in India and its alignment with or deviation from global practices

Study of menstrual disorders and its correlation with BMI in adolescents

Background: Due to change in lifestyle, habits, diet, the prevalence of obesity has increased. Excess weight and obesity are associated with irregular menstrual cycles, which reduce fertility and increase hormone-sensitive cancers. Obesity is considered to cause abnormality of sex steroid hormone balance. Irregular menstruation is more frequently observed in women who became obese during puberty than in those who were obese during infancy. Obesity has a strong association with infertility and menstrual irregularities. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Durgapur (West Bengal), where total 600 adolescent girls aged 12-17 years from DAV Model School, Durgapur and GMPS High School, Durgapur were selected. Results: Out of total 600 girls, 119 girls (19.8%) had BMI<18.5 kg/m2, 357 girls (59.5%) had BMI between 18.5-24.99 kg/m2 and 124 girls (20.7%) had BMI>25 kg/m2. Only 68 girls (57.1%) with less BMI, 205 girls (57.4%) with normal BMI and 62 girls (50%) with BMI>25 kg/m2 had dysmenorrhoea. Only 19 girls (16%) with less BMI, 46 girls (12.9%) with normal BMI and only 15 girls (12.1%) with higher BMI had menorrhagia. Only 4 girls (3.4%) with less BMI, 14 girls (3.9%) with normal BMI and 12 girls (9.7%) with high BMI had hypomenorrhoea. Only 10 girls (8.4%) with less BMI, 37 girls (10.4%) with normal BMI and only 28 girls (22.5%) with high BMI had irregular cycles. Only 5 girls (4.2%) with less BMI, 12 girls (3.4%) with normal BMI and only 11 girls (8.9%) with high BMI had oligomenorrhoea. Only 2 girls (1.7%) with less BMI, 3 girls (0.8%) with normal BMI and only 4 girls (3.2%) with higher BMI had polymenorrhoea. Only 43 underweight girls (36.1%), 166 girls (46.5%) with normal BMI and 68 girls (54.8%) with higher BMI had premenstrual symptoms. Conclusions: Mean BMI was found 21.6±3.64 kg/m2. High BMI girls had more oligomenorrhoea, hypomenorrhoea, irregular menstrual cycles, polymenorrhoea, premenstrual symptoms and less dysmenorrhea and menorrhagia comparatively to normal BMI girls and underweight girls.

The role of infected cell proliferation in the clearance of acute HBV Infection in humans

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Around 90–95% of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infected adults do not progress to the chronic phase and, instead, recover naturally. The strengths of the cytolytic and non-cytolytic immune responses are key players that decide the fate of acute HBV infection. In addition, it has been hypothesized that proliferation of infected cells resulting in uninfected progeny and/or cytokine-mediated degradation of covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) leading to the cure of infected cells are two major mechanisms assisting the adaptive immune response in the clearance of acute HBV infection in humans. We employed fitting of mathematical models to human acute infection data together with physiological constraints to investigate the role of these hypothesized mechanisms in the clearance of infection. Results suggest that cellular proliferation of infected cells resulting in two uninfected cells is required to minimize the destruction of the liver during the clearance of acute HBV infection. In contrast, we find that a cytokine-mediated cure of infected cells alone is insufficient to clear acute HBV infection. In conclusion, our modeling indicates that HBV clearance without lethal loss of liver mass is associated with the production of two uninfected cells upon proliferation of an infected cell.This work was funded by National Institutes of Health grants R01-AI116868 (RMR), R01-AI028433 (ASP) and R01-OD011095 (ASP). Portions of this work were performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC52-06NA25396.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The role of forceps in current obstetrics: a retrospective study

Background: Forceps has been an integral part of the obstetrician’s armamentarium. Obstetric forceps was designed to assist extraction of the fetal head and thereby accomplish the delivery of the fetus. In this present day when there is universal concern regarding the alarming rise of cesarean section rates, a better understanding of this instrument will help the patient as well as the obstetrician. Methods: This was a retrospective observational study done over a two-year period. Cases were enrolled in the study after satisfying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All data compared in terms of age, parity, gestational age, indications, maternal and neonatal outcome. Results: A total of 1150 antenatal cases were delivered out of which 42 cases were delivered by outlet forceps. Incidence of outlet forceps was 3.75%. Mean baby birth weight was 3.07 kg. No maternal mortality and morbidity recorded. Conclusions: Obstetric forceps have a significant place in modern obstetrics as it is a lifesaving procedure for mother and fetus in many situations