First level seismic microzonation map of Chennai city – a GIS approach

Chennai city is the fourth largest metropolis in India, is the focus of economic, social and cultural development and it is the capital of the State of Tamil Nadu. The city has a multi-dimensional growth in development of its infrastructures and population. The area of Chennai has experienced moderate earthquakes in the historical past. Also the Bureau of Indian Standard upgraded the seismic status of Chennai from Low Seismic Hazard (Zone II) to Moderate Seismic Hazard (Zone III)–(BIS: 1893 (2001)). In this connection, a first level seismic microzonation map of Chennai city has been produced with a GIS platform using the themes, viz, Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA), Shear wave velocity at 3 m, Geology, Ground water fluctuation and bed rock depth. The near potential seismic sources were identified from the remote-sensing study and seismo-tectonic details from published literatures. The peak ground acceleration for these seismic sources were estimated based on the attenuation relationship and the maximum PGA for Chennai is 0.176 g. The groundwater fluctuation of the city varies from 0–4 m below ground level. The depth to bedrock configuration shows trough and ridges in the bedrock topography all over the city. The seismic microzonation analysis involved grid datasets (the discrete datasets from different themes were converted to grids) to compute the final seismic hazard grid through integration and weightage analysis of the source themes. The Chennai city has been classified into three broad zones, viz, High, Moderate and Low Seismic Hazard. The High seismic Hazard concentrated in a few places in the western central part of the city. The moderate hazard areas are oriented in NW-SE direction in the Western part. The southern and eastern part will have low seismic hazard. The result of the study may be used as first-hand information in selecting the appropriate earthquake resistant features in designing the forthcoming new buildings against seismic ground motion of the city

ANTI BACTERIAL EFFECT OF SIDDHA PREPARATION NAAVAL KOTTAI MATHIRAI AGAINST COMMON URINARY PATHOGENS

Urinary tract infections are more common, more severe, and carry worse out comes in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. They are more often caused by resistant pathogens. The management of UTI in diabetes patients is very difficult. The patients are undergoing for antibiotic treatment for this issue in every occasion. In Siddha system, the diabetes has been successfully treated with traditional Siddha preparations which are poly herbal, herbo-mineral and metallic formulations. Most of the Siddha anti-diabetic preparations are possessing anti bacterial effect along with its anti-diabetic effect. So the management of urinary tract infections in diabetic patients is very easy. Naaval Kottai Mathirai is one among the anti-diabetic Siddha herbal preparation which is prepared from the seeds of Syzygium cumini (L.) skeels and Aristolochia bracteolata Lam. leaf juice. An attempt has been made to screen the antibacterial effect of NKM against the selected pathogens which are commonly responsible for UTI particularly in diabetes by disc diffusion method. The result of this study is really appreciable. The result of this study showed the marked anti bacterial effect against Escherichia coli 15mm, Staphylococcus aureus 17mm, Bacillus subtilis 14mm, Klebsiella pneumonia 12mm, Pseudomonas aeruginosa 12mm and Enterococcus faecalis 11mm. Finally this study concluded that, the drug NKM can be used for diabetes and UTI particularly in diabetic patients. Further studies are needed to explore the novel antibacterial bioactive molecules

Survey On Traumatic Dental Injuries Among Children

Traumatic dental injuries are the most common problems and have the highest prevalence rate among children. Dental trauma not only causes pain but also has the potential to adversely affect the development of the permanent teeth. Tooth fractures or dental injuries to the deciduous teeth can cause various problems in permanent teeth such as hypoplasia, discoloration, and delay in eruption time, and tooth malformation. A self administered questionnaire was designed based on the awareness of tooth fracture and dental trauma among the children and was distributed through an online survey planet link. The study population was 100 . The collected data were plotted in the form pie charts. The responses were plotted in the form of pie charts. In this study, the prevalence of traumatic dental injuries was found to be 77.2% and only 50.6% of the children had been taken to a dentist after the dental trauma. From this study it is evident that the majority of the children have experienced dental trauma due to which they have low self confidence and face other kinds of problems in their day to day life. Thus it is important for the parents to take them to a dentist immediately after the trauma to avoid furthermore complications and infections.Saveetha Dental colleg

Evaluating the use of lemon grass roots for the reinforcement of a landslideaffected soil from Nilgris district, Tamil Nadu, India

For many centuries, man has been concerned with stabilizing soils in order to either prevent them from being easily eroded or to make them better suited for construction such as for earth building and road construction purposes. Attempts have been made to utilize many natural, synthetic or waste materials for such soil stabilization. Plants have been used as soil cover to prevent erosion and protect slopes. However, there is need to evaluate the engineering characteristics of soils reinforced with plant roots. Consequently, this research work was aimed at investigating the effects of the reinforcement of a landslide-affected soil using the roots of a locally-available plant on the strength and permeability properties of the soil. The natural moisture content, specific gravity, particle size distribution, Atterberg limits, compaction characteristics, shear strength, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and permeability of the natural (landslide-affected) soil were determined. Results obtained for the natural landslide-affected soil were compared with those of the soil sample admixed with varying proportions (1%, 2%, 3% and 4%) of lemon grass roots. The result shows that the shear strength and UCS of the soil having 4% lemon grass roots is almost double that of the natural soil. Also, the permeability of the soil-root matrix was sufficiently reduced. Planting lemon grass on soils located along slopes is recommended to improve its strength and minimize the ease with which water infiltrates the soil, thereby reducing the incidence of landslide and other water-induced types of slope failure

IN VITRO CYTOTOXICITY AND GLUCOSE UPTAKE ACTIVITY OF SIDDHA FORMULATION NAAVAL KOTTAI MATHIRAI IN L-6 CELL LINES

The Siddha system of medicine is a traditional Indian system which evolved with the development of mankind and is more of an evolution rather than invention. Siddha system describes the health of an individual as an ideal perfect state of the physical, physiological, social, and spiritual components of a human being. Diabetes is a chronic disorder linked with the metabolism of carbohydrate, protein and fat due to absolute or relative deficiency of insulin secretion with or without varying degree of insulin resistance. There is sufficient number of drugs in different systems of medicine for the management of diabetes but the incidence of type-II diabetes is too high. In Siddha system many more traditional formulations are available. Most of these medicines are clinically used by Siddha physicians but have not been evaluated scientifically. Naaval kottai Mathira is a anti-diabetic Siddha herbal formulation which is prepared from the seeds of Syzygium cumini and leaves of Aristolochia bracteolata and it has been used for the management of Diabetes mellitus (Madhumegam). The aim of the present study is to evaluate the cytotoxicity and glucose uptake activity of herbal preparation NKM using L-6 cell lines. The results showed that the test drug did not confer any cytotoxicity and the drug NKM showed better glucose uptake potential. The result of glucose uptake percentage for standard drug Rosiglitazone is 113.26±7.72 and 32.67±4.25 for Naaval Kottai Mathirai. The findings of this investigation concluded that the study drug NKM has anti-diabetic activity in glucose uptake assay

Structure and function of ATA3, a new subtype of amino acid transport system A, primarily expressed in the liver and skeletal muscle

AbstractTo date, two different transporters that are capable of transporting α-(methylamino)isobutyric acid, the specific substrate for amino acid transport system A, have been cloned. These two transporters are known as ATA1 and ATA2. We have cloned a third transporter that is able to transport the system A-specific substrate. This new transporter, cloned from rat skeletal muscle and designated rATA3, consists of 547 amino acids and has a high degree of homology to rat ATA1 (47% identity) and rat ATA2 (57% identity). rATA3 mRNA is present only in the liver and skeletal muscle. When expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes, rATA3 mediates the transport of α-[14C](methylamino)isobutyric acid and [3H]alanine. With the two-microelectrode voltage clamp technique, we have shown that exposure of rATA3-expressing oocytes to neutral, short-chain aliphatic amino acids induces inward currents. The amino acid-induced current is Na+-dependent and pH-dependent. Analysis of the currents with alanine as the substrate has shown that the K0.5 for alanine (i.e., concentration of the amino acid yielding half-maximal current) is 4.2±0.1 mM and that the Na+:alanine stoichiometry is 1:1

Differential influence of cAMP on the expression of the three subtypes (ATA1, ATA2, and ATA3) of the amino acid transport system A

AbstractTreatment of HepG2 cells with forskolin led to 60–100% stimulation of system A activity, measured as the Na+-dependent uptake of α-(methylamino)isobutyric acid. The stimulation was reproducible with cholera toxin and dibutyryl cAMP, and inhibitable by H7, a non-specific protein kinase inhibitor. The stimulatory effect was eliminated by cycloheximide and actinomycin D. The forskolin effect was associated with an increase in the maximal velocity of the transport system, with no change in substrate affinity. These cells express three different subtypes of system A (ATA1, ATA2, and ATA3). Treatment with forskolin increased the steady-state levels of ATA1 and ATA2 mRNAs, but decreased that of ATA3 mRNA

Deduction with XOR Constraints in Security API Modelling

We introduce XOR constraints, and show how they enable a theorem prover to reason effectively about security critical subsystems which employ bitwise XOR. Our primary case study is the API of the IBM 4758 hardware security module. We also show how our technique can be applied to standard security protocols

Structure of poly(propyl ether imine) (PETIM) dendrimer from fully atomistic molecular Dynamics Simulation and by Small Angle X-ray scattering

We study the structure of carboxylic acid terminated neutral poly (propyl ether imine) (PETIM) dendrimer from generation 1 through 6 (G1-G6) in a good solvent (water) by fully atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We determine as a function of generation such structural properties as: radius of gyration, shape tensor, asphericity, fractal dimension, monomer density distribution, and end-group distribution functions. The sizes obtained from the MD simulations have been validated by Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) experiment on dendrimer of generation 2 to 4 (G2-G4). A good agreement between the experimental and theoretical value of radius of gyration has been observed. We find a linear increase in radius of gyration with the generation. In contrast, Rg scales as ~ N^x with the number of monomers. We find two distinct exponents depending on the generations: x = 0.47 for G1-G3 and x = 0.28 for G3-G6 which reveals their non-space filling nature. In comparison with the amine terminated PAMAM dendrimer, we find Rg of G-th generation PETIM dendrimer is nearly equal to that of (G+1)-th generation of PAMAM dendrimer as observed by Maiti et. al. [Macromolecules,38, 979 2005]. We find substantial back folding of the outer sub generations into the interior of the dendrimer. Due to their highly flexible nature of the repeating branch units, the shape of the PETIM dendrimer deviates significantly from the spherical shape and the molecules become more and more spherical as the generation increases. The interior of the dendrimer is quite open with internal cavities available for accommodating guest molecules suggesting using PETIM dendrimer for guest-host applications. We also give a quantitative measure of the number of water molecules present inside the dendrimer.Comment: 33 page

Detection of banana streak virus (BSV) Tamil Nadu isolate (India) and its serological relationship with other badna viruses

Banana streak virus (BSV) is of quarantine significance since Musa is a vegetatively propagated crop. Diagnosis by symptomatology is unreliable because the symptoms are variable or absent. Hence, reliable and sensitive diagnostic tests are of major significance. Such sensitive diagnostic tests are also required for virus indexing of germplasm collections. Hence, attempts were made for diagnosis of BSV and to study the serological relationship with other badna viruses. BSV particles were purified from BSV infected plants, collected from the locality of Tamil Nadu, India. Immunosorbent electron microscopy studies revealed bacilliform viral particles with a size of 120 x 30 nm. Polyclonal antiserum raised against BSV reacted with the rice tungro bacilliform virus and sugarcane bacilliform virus in TAS ELISA. In PCR assays, the primers designed to amplify DNA of BSV Onne isolate amplified DNA of BSV Tamil Nadu isolate producing amplicons of about 644 bp in size. The primers used in PCR to amplify the BSV did not amplify other badna viruses tested such as Rice tungro bacilliform virus and Sugarcane bacilliform virus. Our results suggest that the BSV isolate from Tamil Nadu is closely related to Nigerian BSV (Onne) isolate.Keywords: Triple Antibody sandwich Enzyme linked immunosorbent Assay (TAS ELISA), banana streak virus (BSV), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), polyclonal antiseru