Lipid Raft in Cardiac Health and Disease

Lipid rafts are sphingolipid and cholesterol rich micro-domains of the plasma membrane that coordinate and regulate varieties of signaling processes. Lipid rafts are also present in cardiac myocytes and are enriched in signaling molecules and ion channel regulatory proteins. Lipid rafts are receiving increasing attention as cellular organelles contributing to the pathogenesis of several structural and functional processes including cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. At present, very little is known about the role of lipid rafts in cardiac function and dysfunction. This review will discuss the possible role of lipid rafts in cardiac health and disease

Aluminide Coatings on Titanium-based Alloy IMI-834 for High Temperature Oxidation Protection

Microstructural aspects and cyclic oxidation behaviour of plain aluminide and Pt-aluminide coatings on the near-a Ti-alloy IMI-834 have been studied. Both the coatings provide good oxidation resistance to the above alloy at 650 °C, 750 °C, and 850 °C. However, significant cracking develops in the coatings during coating formation as well as during cyclic oxidation exposure. The extent of cracking during oxidation is found to increase with the exposure temperature. Presence of through-thickness cracks in the coatings leads to localised oxidation damage of the underlying substrate at all the three temperatures. At 850 °C, such localised oxidation generates enough TiO2 so that this oxide phase grows through the cracks and emerges at the sample surface forming a clearly identifiable mud-crack pattern. The extent of such oxidation damage is comparatively much lower at 750 °C and 650 °C.Defence Science Journal, 2011, 61(2), pp.180-190, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.61.47

Mjerenje naboja čestice (1 ≤ Z ≤ 3) proizvedenih u sudarima 60 A GeV/c 16O u emulziji i traženje čestica s razlomljenim nabojem

Measurement of charges (1 ≤ Z ≤ 3) of the projectile fragments in ultra–relativistic heavy–ion collisions (16O–emulsion at 60A GeV/c) was carried out by the measurement of lacunarity (L) of the track structure in nuclear emulsion track detector. No fractionally charged projectile fragment has been found in the present investigation.Proučavani su ultrarelativistički sudari teških iona (60 GeV/c 16O) u nuklearnoj emulziji. Naboji čestica (1 ≤ Z ≤ 3) određeni su prema lacunarnosti (L) tragova čestica u emulziji. Nisu nađene čestice s razlomljenim nabojem

Mjerenje naboja čestice (1 ≤ Z ≤ 3) proizvedenih u sudarima 60 A GeV/c 16O u emulziji i traženje čestica s razlomljenim nabojem

Measurement of charges (1 ≤ Z ≤ 3) of the projectile fragments in ultra–relativistic heavy–ion collisions (16O–emulsion at 60A GeV/c) was carried out by the measurement of lacunarity (L) of the track structure in nuclear emulsion track detector. No fractionally charged projectile fragment has been found in the present investigation.Proučavani su ultrarelativistički sudari teških iona (60 GeV/c 16O) u nuklearnoj emulziji. Naboji čestica (1 ≤ Z ≤ 3) određeni su prema lacunarnosti (L) tragova čestica u emulziji. Nisu nađene čestice s razlomljenim nabojem

Beyond Bird Feed: Proso Millet for Human Health and Environment

Domesticated in 8000–10,000 BP in northern China, proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) is the best adaptive rotational crop for semiarid central High Plains of the USA, where average annual precipitation is 356–407 mm. Proso millet has multiple benefits when consumed as human food. Proso millet is rich in minerals, dietary fiber, polyphenols, vitamins and proteins. It is gluten-free and therefore, ideal for the gluten intolerant people. Proso millet contains high lecithin which supports the neural health system. It is rich in vitamins (niacin, B-complex vitamins, folic acid), minerals (P, Ca, Zn, Fe) and essential amino acids (methionine and cysteine). It has a low glycemic index and reduces the risk of type-2 diabetes. Unfortunately, in the USA, it is mostly considered as bird feed, whereas it is mainly used as human food in many other countries. Besides human health benefits, proso millet has an impeccable environmental benefit. Proso millet possesses many unique characteristics (e.g., drought tolerance, short-growing season) which makes it a promising rotational crop for winter wheat-based dryland farming systems. Proso millet provides the most economical production system when used in a two years wheat/summer fallow cropping system in semiarid High Plains of the USA. It helps in controlling winter annual grass weeds, managing disease and insect pressure and preserving deep soil moisture for wheat. Proso millet can also be used as a rotational crop with corn or sorghum owing to its tolerance for atrazine, the primary herbicide used in corn and sorghum production systems. Proso millet certainly is a climate-smart, gluten-free, ancient, and small grain cereal, which is healthy to humans and the environment. The main challenge is to expand the proso millet market beyond bird feed into the human food industry. To overcome the challenge, unique proso millet varieties for human food and ready-to-use multiple food products must be developed. This requires successful collaboration among experts from diverse disciplines such as breeders, geneticists, food chemists and food industry partners

Motifs Enable Communication Efficiency and Fault-Tolerance in Transcriptional Networks

Analysis of the topology of transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) is an effective way to study the regulatory interactions between the transcription factors (TFs) and the target genes. TRNs are characterized by the abundance of motifs such as feed forward loops (FFLs), which contribute to their structural and functional properties. In this paper, we focus on the role of motifs (specifically, FFLs) in signal propagation in TRNs and the organization of the TRN topology with FFLs as building blocks. To this end, we classify nodes participating in FFLs (termed motif central nodes) into three distinct roles (namely, roles A, B and C), and contrast them with TRN nodes having high connectivity on the basis of their potential for information dissemination, using metrics such as network efficiency, path enumeration, epidemic models and standard graph centrality measures. We also present the notion of a three tier architecture and how it can help study the structural properties of TRN based on connectivity and clustering tendency of motif central nodes. Finally, we motivate the potential implication of the structural properties of motif centrality in design of efficient protocols of information routing in communication networks as well as their functional properties in global regulation and stress response to study specific disease conditions and identification of drug targets

Multicellular Models Bridging Intracellular Signaling and Gene Transcription to Population Dynamics

Cell signaling and gene transcription occur at faster time scales compared to cellular death, division, and evolution. Bridging these multiscale events in a model is computationally challenging. We introduce a framework for the systematic development of multiscale cell population models. Using message passing interface (MPI) parallelism, the framework creates a population model from a single-cell biochemical network model. It launches parallel simulations on a single-cell model and treats each stand-alone parallel process as a cell object. MPI mediates cell-to-cell and cell-to-environment communications in a server-client fashion. In the framework, model-specific higher level rules link the intracellular molecular events to cellular functions, such as death, division, or phenotype change. Cell death is implemented by terminating a parallel process, while cell division is carried out by creating a new process (daughter cell) from an existing one (mother cell). We first demonstrate these capabilities by creating two simple example models. In one model, we consider a relatively simple scenario where cells can evolve independently. In the other model, we consider interdependency among the cells, where cellular communication determines their collective behavior and evolution under a temporally evolving growth condition. We then demonstrate the framework\u27s capability by simulating a full-scale model of bacterial quorum sensing, where the dynamics of a population of bacterial cells is dictated by the intercellular communications in a time-evolving growth environment