EFFECTS OF GREEN IRON NANOPARTICLES ON BIOFILM-FORMING BACTERIA

Objective: The objective of this study was to observe the effects of iron nanoparticles (FeNPs) synthesized from plant source of biofilm-forming bacteria. Methods: FeNPs were synthesized from Pongamia pinnata leaf extracts and it was characterized using ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometer, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX). The synthesized FeNPs were evaluated against biofilm-forming Gram-negative Pseudomonas, sewage organisms, and Gram-positive hay Bacillus, Bacillus subtilis. These biofilm-forming microorganisms were evaluated for antibiotic sensitivity. The extracellular and intracellular proteins of biofilm-forming bacteria were estimated in the presence of FeNPs. Results: All these biofilm-forming microorganisms were found to be antibiotic resistant. The green FeNPs showed potential antimicrobial effectiveness against hay Bacillus followed by Pseudomonas and sewage bacteria. These nanoparticles inhibited the intracellular protein formation more than extracellular proteins of biofilm-forming microorganisms. Conclusions: It can be concluded that the FeNPs synthesized from plant sources were effectively inhibited the biofilm-forming microorganisms by obstructing the intracellular protein synthesis. These nanoparticles can be used as an eco-friendly, cost-effective, and alternative molecule to treat the antibiotic-resistant biofilm-forming microorganisms

Engineering development and safety back-up for nuclear power programme

This article reviews the engineering development and safety aspects that are relevant to the nuclear power programme being pursued in the country. Some of the important aspects have been discussed in detail bringing out the current status and also the directions for further work

Technique for optimal placement of transducers for fault detection in rotating machines

Online fault detection and diagnosis of rotating machinery requires a number of transducers that can be significantly expensive for industrial processes. The sensitivity of various transducers and their appropriate positioning are dependent on different types of fault conditions. It is critical to formulate a method to systematically determine the effectiveness of transducer locations for monitoring the condition of a machine. In this article, number of independent sources analysis is used as an effective tool for reducing the number of vibration sources within the system, which is then followed by prin- cipal component analysis to identify the incoherent transducers to be employed for fault detection. This experiment is conducted on a machine fault simulator for unbalanced rotor, misaligned shaft, and cracked shaft. The validation of the proposed selection process is illustrated using spectral analysis for each defect.Peer reviewe

Involvement of Plasmodium falciparum protein kinase CK2 in the chromatin assembly pathway

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Protein kinase CK2 is a pleiotropic serine/threonine protein kinase with hundreds of reported substrates, and plays an important role in a number of cellular processes. The cellular functions of <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>CK2 (PfCK2) are unknown. The parasite's genome encodes one catalytic subunit, PfCK2α, which we have previously shown to be essential for completion of the asexual erythrocytic cycle, and two putative regulatory subunits, PfCK2β1 and PfCK2β2.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We now show that the genes encoding both regulatory PfCK2 subunits (PfCK2β1 and PfCK2β2) cannot be disrupted. Using immunofluorescence and electron microscopy, we examined the intra-erythrocytic stages of transgenic parasite lines expressing hemagglutinin (HA)-tagged catalytic and regulatory subunits (HA-CK2α, HA-PfCK2β1 or HA-PfCK2β2), and localized all three subunits to both cytoplasmic and nuclear compartments of the parasite. The same transgenic parasite lines were used to purify PfCK2β1- and PfCK2β2-containing complexes, which were analyzed by mass spectrometry. The recovered proteins were unevenly distributed between various pathways, with a large proportion of components of the chromatin assembly pathway being present in both PfCK2β1 and PfCK2β2 precipitates, implicating PfCK2 in chromatin dynamics. We also found that chromatin-related substrates such as nucleosome assembly proteins (Naps), histones, and two members of the Alba family are phosphorylated by PfCK2α <it>in vitro</it>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our reverse-genetics data show that each of the two regulatory PfCK2 subunits is required for completion of the asexual erythrocytic cycle. Our interactome study points to an implication of PfCK2 in many cellular pathways, with chromatin dynamics being identified as a major process regulated by PfCK2. This study paves the way for a kinome-wide interactomics-based approach to elucidate protein kinase function in malaria parasites.</p

Open-ended evolution to discover analogue circuits for beyond conventional applications

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10710-012-9163-8. Copyright @ Springer 2012.Analogue circuits synthesised by means of open-ended evolutionary algorithms often have unconventional designs. However, these circuits are typically highly compact, and the general nature of the evolutionary search methodology allows such designs to be used in many applications. Previous work on the evolutionary design of analogue circuits has focused on circuits that lie well within analogue application domain. In contrast, our paper considers the evolution of analogue circuits that are usually synthesised in digital logic. We have developed four computational circuits, two voltage distributor circuits and a time interval metre circuit. The approach, despite its simplicity, succeeds over the design tasks owing to the employment of substructure reuse and incremental evolution. Our findings expand the range of applications that are considered suitable for evolutionary electronics

Improved parental dietary quality is associated with children’s dietary intake through the home environment

Background Improving access to supermarkets has been shown to improve some dietary outcomes, yet there is little evidence for such effects on children. Relatedly, there is a dearth of research assessing the impact of a structural change (i.e. supermarket in a former food desert) on the home environment and its relationship with children’s diet. Objective Assess the relative impact of the home environment on children’s diet after the introduction of a new supermarket in a food desert. Methods Among a randomly selected cohort of households living in a food desert, parental diet was assessed before and after the opening of a full-service supermarket. The home environment and children’s intake of fruits and vegetables was measured at one point – after the store’s opening. Structural equation models were used to estimate the pathways between changes in parental dietary quality at follow-up and children’s dietary intake through the home environment. ResultsParental dietary improvement after the supermarket opened was associated with having a better home environment (β = 0.45, p = 0.001) and with healthier children’s dietary intake (β = 0.46, p Conclusions Policy solutions designed to improve diet among low-resource communities should take into account the importance of the home environment

Socio-Demographic and Oral Health Related Risk Factors for Periodontal Disease in Inner North East London (INEL) Adults: A Secondary Analysis of the INEL Data.

Introduction: Periodontal disease is a serious collection of diseases which can lead to chronic inflammation, the destruction of tooth supporting structures and ultimately; tooth loss. It is also one of the most common diseases of the oral cavity and the major cause of tooth loss in adults and may have a major impact on the quality of life off those who suffer with the condition. Objectives: To determine the socio-demographic and oral-health-related risk factors for periodontal disease in a sample of adults living in Inner North East London (INEL), UK. Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted on data from the 2008 survey on ‘The Oral Health of Adults in INEL.’ Data were entered into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v19, IBM UK Ltd, Portsmouth, UK) and analysed using descriptive analysis, chi-squared tests (P ≤ 0.05), together with multivariate regression analysis. The original survey employed a multi-stage sampling procedure and the final sample size was 361. All of the participants were selected from the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, City and Hackney and Newham. Periodontal disease indicators, such as the loss of clinical attachment and periodontal pocket depths were cross-matched with socio-demographic and oral health-related behaviours. Associations between the two were ascertained using chi-squared statistics and multivariate regression analysis. The case-definition adopted to indicate the presence of periodontal disease was “a clinical loss of attachment and periodontal pocketing of four millimetres or more, in at-least one tooth respectively”. Results: The prevalence of periodontal disease in the original INEL sample was 39.3%. Age and gender were the variables most commonly associated with periodontal disease. The prevalence of disease demonstrated an increase with age, and in terms of gender, 48.7% of males were observed to have periodontal disease compared to 32.2% of females. Ethnicity (p=0.005) and area of residence (p=0.005) were more directly associated with periodontal pocket depth ≥ 4 mm. Dental attendance (p=0.04) and education (p=0.02) were more directly associated with clinical loss of attachment. When assessing the combined outcomes, multivariate regression analysis showed that after controlling for age and gender, subjects without a work-related qualification were more likely to have periodontal disease (OR=1.780, 95% C.I. 1.066-2.973). Dental attendance was identified as another significant predictor of periodontal disease for example subjects who never visited a dentist were at more risk than the regular attenders (OR=3.700, 95% C.I. 1.448-9.458). Conclusion: The overall prevalence of periodontal disease in an Inner North East London sample was observed to be slightly higher but generally comparable with respect to the national average, as determined by the UK Adult Dental Health Survey (1998). Of the various socio-demographic and oral-health-related risk factors analysed in the present study, age, gender, work-related qualification and dental attendance were observed to increase the likelihood of periodontal disease. Furthermore, epidemiological studies should be implemented in order to develop prevention strategies which should focus on improving access to dental services in the local community in order to reduce periodontal disease rates

2-[2-Benzoyl-3,3-bis­(methyl­sulfan­yl)prop-2-enyl­idene]malononitrile

The title compound, C15H12N2OS2, is an example of a push–pull butadiene in which the electron-releasing methyl­sulfanyl groups and electron-withdrawing nitrile groups on either end of the butadiene chain enhance the conjugation in the system. Short intra­molecular C—H⋯S inter­actions are observed. In the crystal structure, an O⋯C short contact of 2.917 (3) Å is observed

Automatic identification of epileptic and background EEG signals using frequency domain parameters

The analysis of electroencephalograms continues to be a problem due to our limited understanding of the signal origin. This limited understanding leads to ill-defined models, which in turn make it hard to design effective evaluation methods. Despite these shortcomings, electroencephalogram analysis is a valuable tool in the evaluation of neurological disorders and the evaluation of overall cerebral activity. We compared different model based power spectral density estimation methods and different classification methods. Specifically, we used the autoregressive moving average as well as from Yule-Walker and Burg's methods, to extract the power density spectrum from representative signal samples. Local maxima and minima were detected from these spectra. In this paper, the locations of these extrema are used as input to different classifiers. The three classifiers we used were: Gaussian mixture model, artificial neural network, and support vector machine. The classification results are documented with confusion matrices and compared with receiver operating characteristic curves. We found that Burg's method for spectrum estimation together with a support vector machine classifier yields the best classification results. This combination reaches a classification rate of 93.33%, the sensitivity is 98.33% and the specificy is 96.67%