Blood Transfusions: Are They Life Saving or Transfusing Infections?

Introduction: There is a risk of 1 - 2 per 1000 recipients receiving contaminated blood with viral, bacterial and parasitic agents.TTI’S are the most commonly encountered complications in transfusion medicine. The objective of the study was to determine the seroprevalence of TTI’s among blood donors, who represent healthy population at large. Materials & methods: A total of 33,658 blood units were received from voluntary and replacement donors over a period of 5 years. Surface antigen of HBV and antibodies to HIV and HCV were determined using ELISA. Syphilis was detected using TPHA test. Results: 947 (2.81%) blood units tested positive for HBV, HCV, HIV and / or syphilis. Overall prevalence was HBV – 1.77%, HCV – 0.13%, HIV – 0.63% and Syphilis – 0.28%. Nine (0.03%) donors had coinfections. Conclusion: The screening of blood donors is the corner stone in assuring the safety of blood transfusion

Universality of the collapse transition of sticky polymers

The universality of the swelling of the radius of gyration of a homopolymer relative to its value in the $\theta$ state, independent of polymer-solvent chemistry, in the crossover regime between $\theta$ and athermal solvent conditions, is well known. Here we study, by Brownian dynamics, a polymer model where a subset of monomers is labelled as "stickers". The mutual interaction of the stickers is more attractive than those of the other ("backbone") monomers, and has the additional important characteristic of "functionality" $\varphi$, i.e., the maximum number of stickers that can locally bind to a given sticker. A saturated bond formed in this manner remains bound until it breaks due to thermal fluctuations, a requirement which can be viewed as an additional Boolean degree of freedom that describes the bonding. This, in turn, makes the question of the order of the collapse transition a non-trivial one. Nevertheless, for the parameters that we have studied (in particular, $\varphi=1$), we find a standard second-order $\theta$ collapse, using a renormalised solvent quality parameter that takes into account the increased average attraction due to the presence of stickers. We examine the swelling of the radius of gyration of such a sticky polymer relative to its value in the altered $\theta$ state, using a novel potential to model the various excluded volume interactions that occur between the monomers on the chain. We find that the swelling of such sticky polymers is identical to the universal swelling of homopolymers in the thermal crossover regime. Additionally, for our model, the Kuhn segment length under $\theta$ conditions is found to be the same for chains with and without stickers.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, supplementary material (see ancillary directory), to appear in Soft Matte

The role of information literacy competence and higher order thinking skills to develop academic writing in Science and Engineering learners

The English syllabus for learners pursuing engineering courses includes teaching writing as one of the objectives. Learners who enroll for these courses are not equipped with the general writing skills that they should have mastered at the entry level. In this context, a study was organized to develop academic writing skills of the undergraduate learners who are pursuing engineering courses. The study focused on raising awareness in the learners of the nature and characteristics of academic texts in order to develop academic writing skills. The study also emphasizes that involving the learners in the cognitive processes of writing that include defining the rhetorical problem, identifying the rhetorical situation, the audience and setting goals for writing, planning for the text by generating and organizing ideas is necessary. The study further suggests that discussions between learners and teachers regarding the construction of a text and the way language works in various text types facilitates better writing

3D Face Recognition using Significant Point based SULD Descriptor

In this work, we present a new 3D face recognition method based on Speeded-Up Local Descriptor (SULD) of significant points extracted from the range images of faces. The proposed model consists of a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from range images of faces that can be used to perform reliable matching between different poses of range images of faces. For a given 3D face scan, range images are computed and the potential interest points are identified by searching at all scales. Based on the stability of the interest point, significant points are extracted. For each significant point we compute the SULD descriptor which consists of vector made of values from the convolved Haar wavelet responses located on concentric circles centred on the significant point, and where the amount of Gaussian smoothing is proportional to the radii of the circles. Experimental results show that the newly proposed method provides higher recognition rate compared to other existing contemporary models developed for 3D face recognition

Seminal role of clouds on solar dimming over the Indian monsoon region

In contrast to most of the world where solar dimming has changed over to solar brightening since late eighties, dimming continues unabated over the Indian region. This study investigates new insight into the origin of dimming over India. As the insolation at the surface is controlled by aerosols and clouds, we tried to separate out the two controlling factors by examining clear and cloudy sky days. From 1981-2006, the rate of dimming is found to be twice as large during cloudy conditions (~12 W/m2/decade) compared to that during clear sky conditions (~6 W/m2/decade). The clear sky dimming is attributed to increasing aerosols. While the rate of dimming by clouds is similar during summer and winter monsoon seasons, the increased contribution to dimming by clouds during summer seems to come from increasingly deeper clouds covering increasingly larger area. During winter, dimming in cloudy conditions appears to be due to indirect effect of aerosols

Recent Advances in the Biological Importance of Rhodanine Derivatives

Heterocyclic compounds are an important part of the synthetic medicinal chemistry. They offer a high degree of structural variety and have proven to be widely useful as therapeutic agents. Heterocyclic compounds play an important role in the biological processes. They are widespread as natural products. Heterocyclic compounds are widely found in nature categorically in plant alkaloids, nucleic acids, anthocyanins, and flavones. They are also present as in chlorophyll and hemoglobin. Additionally, some proteins, hormones, and vitamins also contain aromatic heterocyclic system. Heterocycles have huge potential as the most promising molecules as lead structures for the design of new drugs. About one half of over 6 million compounds recorded so far in chemical abstracts are heterocyclic. The proposed book chapter entitled, Recent Advances in the Biological Importance of Rhodanine Derivatives gives an outline of importance and applications of the various rhodanine derivatives in medicinal chemistry from 2004 to 2014

Storage Life of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal (AMF) Inoculum in Vermiculite Based Culture

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is ubiquitous soil borne fungi which provide an intimate link between soil and nutrient absorbing organs of plants. AMF fungi optimize the uptake of phosphorus in plant which results in increase in yield. Production of AMF inoculum and the storage in a viable condition for a longer period of time is still a serious constraint. This study describes the survival capability and infectivity of AMF spores under different storage conditions. The vermiculite based AMF inoculum contained spores of AMF namely Glomus sp., Gigaspora sp., Scutellospora sp., Entrophospora sp., and Acaulospora sp., identified from the rhizosphere soil collected from the maize crop cultivated at Mellur block of Madurai District in Tamil Nadu, India and the mixed AMF colonized host root bits as propagules. The AMF inoculum spore count was 5-6 / 100g inoculum and the infectivity was 100% in the roots of maize plant at the time of packing of the inoculum for storage. During storage, at the end of 180 days the AMF spore count was reduced to 2-5 / 100g inoculum and the infectivity was reduced to 90-95%. But the AMF inoculum stored with 10% moisture content at 20ºC - 30ºC and under the light intensity of 1500 lux maintained the same initial spore count of 5-6 / 100g inoculum and infectivity of 99% for the storage period of 150 days (5 months). The results of the present study suggest that AMF propagules, spores and hyphae colonized root bits in the form of vermiculite based culture maintained with 10% moisture content at temperature range of 20ºC - 30ºC and under light condition of 1500 lux for 5 months can be expected to be viable for infectivity in crop plants