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

A remark on "Study of a Leslie-Gower-type tritrophic population model" [Chaos, Solitons and Fractals 14 (2002) 1275-1293]

In [Aziz-Alaoui, 2002] a three species ODE model, based on a modified Leslie-Gower scheme is investigated. It is shown that under certain restrictions on the parameter space, the model has bounded solutions for all positive initial conditions, which eventually enter an invariant attracting set. We show that this is not true. To the contrary, solutions to the model can blow up in finite time, even under the restrictions derived in [Aziz-Alaoui, 2002], if the initial data is large enough. We also prove similar results for the spatially extended system. We validate all of our results via numerical simulations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

What is India speaking: The "Hinglish" invasion

While language competition models of diachronic language shift are increasingly sophisticated, drawing on sociolinguistic components like variable language prestige, distance from language centers and intermediate bilingual transitionary populations, in one significant way they fall short. They fail to consider contact-based outcomes resulting in mixed language practices, e.g. outcome scenarios such as creoles or unmarked code switching as an emergent communicative norm. On these lines something very interesting is uncovered in India, where traditionally there have been monolingual Hindi speakers and Hindi/English bilinguals, but virtually no monolingual English speakers. While the Indian census data reports a sharp increase in the proportion of Hindi/English bilinguals, we argue that the number of Hindi/English bilinguals in India is inaccurate, given a new class of urban individuals speaking a mixed lect of Hindi and English, popularly known as "Hinglish". Based on predator-prey, sociolinguistic theories, salient local ecological factors and the rural-urban divide in India, we propose a new mathematical model of interacting monolingual Hindi speakers, Hindi/English bilinguals and Hinglish speakers. The model yields globally asymptotic stable states of coexistence, as well as bilingual extinction. To validate our model, sociolinguistic data from different Indian classes are contrasted with census reports: We see that purported urban Hindi/English bilinguals are unable to maintain fluent Hindi speech and instead produce Hinglish, whereas rural speakers evidence monolingual Hindi. Thus we present evidence for the first time where an unrecognized mixed lect involving English but not "English", has possibly taken over a sizeable faction of a large global population.Comment: This paper has been withdrawan as the model has now been modified and the existing model has some error

Evaluation of Local Bacillus thuringiensis from the Soils of Westernghats, Karnataka and their Biocontrol Potential against White Grub, Holotrichia serrata (F.) (coleoptera) and House Fly, Musca domestica L. (Diptera)

he Western Ghats of India is one of the world's "biodiversity hotspots" that runs along the western part of South India through four states including Karnataka. As a result, Western Ghats are expected to yield high diversity of any taxon. With a view to understand this aspect study on the diversity of Bacillus spp. in the soils of Western Ghats was conducted. A total of 292 Bacillus isolates were identified as Bacillus thuringiensis which were recovered from 35 soil samples collected from different habitats of Western Ghats of Karnataka. Soils of different habitats varied tremendously in the natural load of Bacillus CFUs. Lowest CFU load was observed in soil W15 (2.6 x 106 ) whereas the soils W13, W20, W24, W29 (8.1 x 106) yielded the highest number of Bacillus CFUs/g of soil, with an overall mean of 6.07 x 106 CFUs per g of soil. On an average, 8.34 ( 1.95) colonies were picked from each soil sample. These colonies were subjected to standard biochemical tests to identify the B. thuringiensis colonies. On an average, 5.6 (67.12 %) of the picked colonies per soil sample were observed to be B. thuringiensis colonies. Tests of activity of these isolates against a species of white grub, Holotrichia serrata (F.) and a fly pest, Musca domestica revealed 14 isolates to be active against H. serrata and 10 against M. domestica, with three of these against both the species. The study thus demonstrated that there is potential for the use of these isolates in pest management

Genome-Wide Computational Prediction and Analysis of Core Promoter Elements across Plant Monocots and Dicots

Transcription initiation, essential to gene expression regulation, involves recruitment of basal transcription factors to the core promoter elements (CPEs). The distribution of currently known CPEs across plant genomes is largely unknown. This is the first large scale genome-wide report on the computational prediction of CPEs across eight plant genomes to help better understand the transcription initiation complex assembly. The distribution of thirteen known CPEs across four monocots (Brachypodium distachyon, Oryza sativa ssp. japonica, Sorghum bicolor, Zea mays) and four dicots (Arabidopsis thaliana, Populus trichocarpa, Vitis vinifera, Glycine max) reveals the structural organization of the core promoter in relation to the TATA-box as well as with respect to other CPEs. The distribution of known CPE motifs with respect to transcription start site (TSS) exhibited positional conservation within monocots and dicots with slight differences across all eight genomes. Further, a more refined subset of annotated genes based on orthologs of the model monocot (O. sativa ssp. japonica) and dicot (A. thaliana) genomes supported the positional distribution of these thirteen known CPEs. DNA free energy profiles provided evidence that the structural properties of promoter regions are distinctly different from that of the non-regulatory genome sequence. It also showed that monocot core promoters have lower DNA free energy than dicot core promoters. The comparison of monocot and dicot promoter sequences highlights both the similarities and differences in the core promoter architecture irrespective of the species-specific nucleotide bias. This study will be useful for future work related to genome annotation projects and can inspire research efforts aimed to better understand regulatory mechanisms of transcription

Stress Analysis of a Stepped-Lap Bonded Repair Joint in Composite Laminate under Compressive Loading

With increasing the usage of advanced composite materials in aircraft structures, it is required to have a suitable repair technology for composite airframe. One of the primary requisites of the repair in such structures is that the repaired surface should not affect the aerodynamic contour. Adhesively bonded repair joints are generally preferred over mechanically fastened repair joints to avoid the stress concentration and achieve smooth aerodynamic surface. Significant numbers of research works have been carried on interface stress distributions for lap, butt and scarf adhesive repaired joints under the static tensile loading. However, the behavior of stepped-lap adhesive joints under compressive loading has not been fully understood and there are not many literatures available on this subject. The present work focuses on stress analysis of a laminate that is repaired through a stepped-lap joint repair scheme. The stress analysis has been carried out and stress distributions in the laminate, patch and adhesive were studied. In order to establish and validate the FE approach for analysis of stepped-lap repair joint subjected to compression, an experimental study also has been carried out. The strains from the analysis have been compared with the strains obtained from the test at important locations. Both the results have shown good agreement