Local Invariants for a Class of Mixed States

We investigate the equivalence of quantum states under local unitary transformations. A complete set of invariants under local unitary transformations is presented for a class of mixed states. It is shown that two states in this class are locally equivalent if and only if all these invariants have equal values for them.Comment: 9 page

A case of complicated bullous systemic lupus erythematosus managed with Rituximab

Skin Involvement is seen nearly 76 per cent of Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients, but bullous lesion however accounting for less than one per cent of cutaneous manifestation of lupus erythematosus. A 21-year-old female presented with fever, polyarthalgia and vesicobullous skin lesion and acute renal failure. Clinico-pathological evaluation imparted she was having bullous systemic lupus erythematosus (BSLE) with lupus nephritis. She was put on rituximab after initial resuscitation. She had responded dramatically with resolution of skin lesion and recovery from acute renal failure. She was followed up for one year without complication with stable disease course

Helicobacter pylori-induced gastric cancer is orchestrated by MRCK beta-mediated Siah2 phosphorylation

Background Helicobacter pylori-mediated gastric carcinogenesis is initiated by a plethora of signaling events in the infected gastric epithelial cells (GECs). The E3 ubiquitin ligase seven in absentia homolog 2 (Siah2) is induced in GECs in response to H. pylori infection. Posttranslational modifications of Siah2 orchestrate its function as well as stability. The aim of this study was to evaluate Siah2 phosphorylation status under the influence of H. pylori infection and its impact in gastric cancer progression. Methods H. pylori-infected various GECs, gastric tissues from H. pylori-infected GC patients and H. felis-infected C57BL/6 mice were evaluated for Siah2 phosphorylation by western blotting or immunofluorescence microscopy. Coimmunoprecipitation assay followed by mass spectrometry were performed to identify the kinases interacting with Siah2. Phosphorylation sites of Siah2 were identified by using various plasmid constructs generated by site-directed mutagenesis. Proteasome inhibitor MG132 was used to investigate proteasome degradation events. The importance of Siah2 phosphorylation on tumorigenicity of infected cells were detected by using phosphorylation-null mutant and wild type Siah2 stably-transfected cells followed by clonogenicity assay, cell proliferation assay, anchorage-independent growth and transwell invasion assay. Results Siah2 was phosphorylated in H. pylori-infected GECs as well as in metastatic GC tissues at residues serine(6) (Ser(6)) and threonine(279) (Thr(279)). Phosphorylation of Siah2 was mediated by MRCK beta, a Ser/Thr protein kinase. MRCK beta was consistently expressed in uninfected GECs and noncancer gastric tissues but its level decreased in infected GECs as well as in metastatic tissues which had enhanced Siah2 expression. Infected murine gastric tissues showed similar results. MRCK beta could phosphorylate Siah2 but itself got ubiquitinated from this interaction leading to the proteasomal degradation of MRCK beta and use of proteasomal inhibitor MG132 could rescue MRCK beta from Siah2-mediated degradation. Ser(6) and Thr(279) phosphorylated-Siah2 was more stable and tumorigenic than its non-phosphorylated counterpart as revealed by the proliferation, invasion, migration abilities and anchorage-independent growth of stable-transfected cells. Conclusions Increased level of Ser(6) and Thr(279)-phosphorylated-Siah2 and downregulated MRCK beta were prominent histological characteristics of Helicobacter-infected gastric epithelium and metastatic human GC. MRCK beta-dependent Siah2 phosphorylation stabilized Siah2 which promoted anchorage-independent survival and proliferative potential of GECs. Phospho-null mutants of Siah2 (S6A and T279A) showed abated tumorigenicity.Peer reviewe

Marine Biocatalysts: Enzymatic Features and Applications

In several recent reports related to biocatalysis the enormous pool of biodiversity found in marine ecosystems is considered a profitable natural reservoir for acquiring an inventory of useful biocatalysts. These enzymes are characterized by well-known habitat-related features such as salt tolerance, hyperthermostability, barophilicity and cold adaptivity. In addition, their novel chemical and stereochemical characteristics increase the interest of biocatalysis practitioners both in academia and research industry. In this review, starting from the analysis of these featuring habitat-related properties, important examples of marine enzymes in biocatalysis will be reported. Completion of this report is devoted to the analysis of novel chemical and stereochemical biodiversity offered by marine biocatalysts with particular emphasis on current or potential applications of these enzymes in chemical and pharmaceutical fields. The analysis of literature cited here and the many published patent applications concerning the use of marine enzymes supports the view that these biocatalysts are just waiting to be discovered, reflecting the importance of the marine environment. The potential of this habitat should be thoroughly explored and possibly the way to access useful biocatalysts should avoid destructive large-scale collections of marine biomass for enzyme production. These two aspects are day by day increasing in interest and a future increase in the use of marine enzymes in biocatalysis should be expected

Gastric adenocarcinoma in a patient re-infected with H. pylori after regression of MALT lymphoma with successful anti-H. pylori therapy and gastric resection: a case report

BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) has been etiologically linked with primary gastric lymphoma (PGL) and gastric carcinoma (GC). There are a few reports of occurrence of both diseases in the same patient with H. pylori infection. CASE PRESENTATION: We report a patient with PGL in whom the tumor regressed after surgical resection combined with eradication of H. pylori infection. However, he developed GC on follow up; this was temporally associated with recrudescence / re-infection of H. pylori. This is perhaps first report of such occurrence. CONCLUSIONS: Possible cause and effect relationship between H. pylori infection and both PGL and GC is discussed. This case also documents a unique problem in management of PGL in tropical countries where re-infection with H. pylori is supposed to be high

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Chilldown Process in Cryogenic Transfer Line

In the present work, a numerical investigation on the Chilldown process under constant heat flux has been made. An attempt is made to study the variation of different hydrodynamic properties like, gauge pressure and multiphase flow pattern as well as temperature at the different cross section with time. The present work focuses exclusively on the transient dynamics of the chilldown process where the transfer line is nearly at the saturation temperature whereas the previous work were predominantly focused on the drop in temperature of the transfer line from ambient to cryogenic temperature. Initially, the transfer line is predominantly filled with liquid cryogen. The working fluid was chosen as nitrogen, and it was supplied as a saturated liquid into the transfer line. The variation of different parameters were noted at plotted against time and the drawn conclusion was that with time the vapour fraction of Nitrogen vapour increases and it accumulates at the top of the transfer line due to buoyancy effect

Automatic stability control of three-wheeler vehicles – recent developments and concerns towards a sustainable technology

Traffic congestion, pollution due to vehicular emissions and fuel energy crises are the major problems that have inspired research for the design of efficient and smaller vehicles as a regular mode of transport with a significantly lower carbon footprint. With an increased dependency on certain countries for fuel energy, electric mobility has been encouraged by policy makers so that national interests are not compromised. At the same time, enhanced standards of living have resulted in a demand for safer and comfortable transport. All of these factors have led to a need for a mode of transport that is efficient, compact, safe and comfortable. Electric three-wheelers are seen as one of the promising options that fits all of these requirements. Due to their high propensity to rollover during cornering, however, the use of three-wheeled vehicles (3Ws) is limited to low-speed applications for cheap transport. Recent developments in the field of rollover mitigation through active tilt control mechanisms indicate that the future mode of transport will be more exciting than the existing one. This paper is a review mainly focused on the recent technological developments in active-tilt-controlled three-wheeled vehicles. This paper gives a detailed review of the methodologies chosen, control strategies adopted, types of vehicle chosen for test/simulation, mathematical models applied, key findings and future work proposed to address the dynamics-related issues of tilting 3Ws.</jats:p

System Identification and Lateral Dynamics of the Active Tilt-Controlled Electric Three Wheeler

Abstract Active tilt control system (ATC) is considered to be a prominent technological advancement in the three wheelers (3Ws), which improves the drive and comfort capabilities of 3W, leading to additional benefits of excellent maneuverability and small track width. An experimental prototype along with its simulation model is developed, to study the impact of the tilt actuation control system (TAS) and active steer (AS) system on the overall drive experience and stability improvement. A steering direct tilt control (SDTC) strategy is implemented on the vehicle, which allows stable operation of the system during the entire drive range. A transfer function (TF) of the TAS is estimated from the measurements on the prototype using the system identification tool. The derived TF is then utilized to investigate the response of the complete vehicle in terms of vehicle trajectory, perceived acceleration and load transfer across the rear wheels during the double lane change (DLC) and constant turn maneuvers. The results of the analysis indicate that the perceived acceleration felt by the driver is up to 45% less than the lateral acceleration along with up to 36% reduction in load transfer across the rear wheels.</jats:p