Land policies in Delhi: their contribution to unauthorised land development

Government intervention in land markets through public land policies increasingly sought for a more balanced development, better income and wealth distribution, and to satisfy the basic human needs such as housing and essential services in developing countries. Delhi's large-scale land acquisition, development and disposal policy has aimed at orderly growth of planned development, and universal access to housing land through public expropriation, banking, development and delivery. But the policy has been widely criticised for failing to promote planned development and consequently creating large-scale illegal land developments and sales. The present research investigates the impact of Delhi's public land policy on the creation of informal land developments and unauthorised housing in Delhi. The analysis of data gathered from office records and exhaustive structured interviews yield substantial evidence that the large-scale land policy governing the public authority's delivery of land for housing, has indeed been a major contributor to the creation of unauthorised land development and sales. Through interviews with 300 households living on illegally developed land, 106 living on illegally resold (legally developed land), 28 who had illegally resold their plots, and 69 property agents, this study found that the large-scale public land policy has not provided adequate land for housing. The policy's inability to deliver timely and adequate quantities of affordable land in varying parcel sizes, and with flexible lease conditions, was a prime factor in encouraging a large number of households to opt for illegally developed or sold land. The responses of households indicate a substantial number sought illegally to obtain housing land, because the large-scale public land policy failed to offer them legal alternatives that were affordable, adequate in quantity, in the desired time and flexible in their lease conditions. The opportunities to obtain varying sizes of unauthorised plots, at cheaper prices, in the desired time, with flexible payments, and acceptable terms of construction and use have attracted a large number of middle and high income households. Equally, the policy of regularisation of some unauthorised developments has also encouraged investment in additional illegal development. This research also found that the public land policy's failure to deliver the right land to the right person at reasonable prices prompted unauthorised resales of legally developed plots, in effect, downward filtration of high income groups. The higher resale prices that these subsidised plots obtained, and the ability of some households to obtain an allocation of more than one plot encouraged a large number of households to illegally resell plots

No evidence that FLT3 status should be considered as an indicator for transplantation in acute myeloid leukemia (AML): an analysis of 1135 patients, excluding acute promyelocytic leukemia, from the UK MRC AML 10 and 12 trials

Fetal liver tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3) internal tandem duplications (ITDs) are powerful adverse prognostic indicators for relapse in acute myelold leukemia (AML) but the most efficacious therapy for FLT3/ ITD+ patients is currently unknown. We evaluated outcome according to FLT3/ITD status in 1135 adult patients treated according to United Kingdom Medical Research Council (UK MRC) AML protocols: 141 received an autograft, and 170 received a matched sibling allograft in first complete remission (CR). An FLT3/ITD was detected in 25% of patients and was an independent predictor for relapse (P < .001). It remained prognostic for increased relapse in patients who received a transplant (odds ratio [OR] = 1.91; 95% confidence intervals [CIs] 1.13-3.21; P = .02), with no evidence of a difference in effect between patients who received an autograft (OR = 2.39; CIs = 1.24-4.62) and patients who received an allograft (OR = 1.31; CIs = 0.56-3.06) (test for interaction, P = .3) or between patients who did or did not receive a transplant (P = .4). These results were confirmed in an analysis of 186 patients randomized to receive or not receive an autograft in first CR and in a donor-versus-no donor analysis of 683 patients to assess the role of allograft (for latter, FLT3/ITD- OR = 0.70, CIs = 0.53-0.92; FLT3/ITD+ OR = 0.59, CIs = 0.40-0.87; test for interaction, P = .5). These results suggest that at present there is no strong evidence that FLT3 status should influence the decision to proceed to transplantation

Novel mutation in FOXC1 wing region causing Axenfeld-Rieger anomaly

Purpose: To determine the possible molecular genetic defect underlying Axenfeld-Rieger anomaly (ARA) and to identify the pathogenic mutation causing this anterior segment dysgenesis in an Indian pedigree. Methods: The FOXC1 gene was amplified from genomic DNA of members of an ARA-affected family and control subjects using four novel sets of primers. The amplicons were directly sequenced, and the sequences were analyzed to identify the disease-causing mutation. Results: A heterozygous novel missense mutation was identified in the coding region of the FOXC1 gene in all three patients in this family. Consistent with the autosomal dominant inheritance pattern, the mutation segregated with the disease phenotype and was fully penetrant. The mutation was found in the wing region of the highly conserved forkhead domain of the FOXC1 gene and resulted in a very severe phenotype leading to blindness. Conclusions: This is the first study to demonstrate that a mutation in the FOXC1 wing region can cause an anterior segment dysgenesis of the eye. This mutation resulted in blindness in the ARA-affected family, and the findings suggest that the FOXC1 wing region has a functional role in the normal development of the eye. Moreover, this is the first study from India to report the genetic etiology of Axenfeld-Rieger anomaly. Genotype-phenotype correlations of FOXC1 may help in establishing the disease prognosis and also in understanding the clinical and genetic heterogeneity associated with various anterior segment dysgenesis caused by this gene

Effects of pretreatments of Napier Grass with deionized water, sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide on pyrolysis oil characteristics

The depletion of fossil fuel reserves has led to increasing interest in liquid bio-fuel from renewable biomass. Biomass is a complex organic material consisting of different degrees of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, extractives and minerals. Some of the mineral elements tend to retard conversions, yield and selectivity during pyrolysis processing. This study is focused on the extraction of mineral retardants from Napier grass using deionized water, dilute sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid and subsequent pyrolysis in a fixed bed reactor. The raw biomass was characterized before and after each pretreatment following standard procedure. Pyrolysis study was conducted in a fixed bed reactor at 600 o�C, 30 �C/min and 30 mL/min N2 flow. Pyrolysis oil (bio-oil) collected was analyzed using standard analytic techniques. The bio-oil yield and characteristics from each pretreated sample were compared with oil from the non-pretreated sample. Bio-oil yield from the raw sample was 32.06 wt% compared to 38.71, 33.28 and 29.27 wt% oil yield recorded from the sample pretreated with sulfuric acid, deionized water and sodium hydroxide respectively. GC–MS analysis of the oil samples revealed that the oil from all the pretreated biomass had more value added chemicals and less ketones and aldehydes. Pretreatment with neutral solvent generated valuable leachate, showed significant impact on the ash extraction, pyrolysis oil yield, and its composition and therefore can be regarded as more appropriate for thermochemical conversion of Napier grass

Antibiotic Production by Membrane Operations

There is no abstract, this is an excerpt from the content: Antibiotics are medicines produced by fermentation that fight bacterial infections; they can either kill other microorganisms or inhibit their growth. The development of antibiotics started with the discovery of penicillin by Fleming in 1928 that gave rise to many other discoveries in the subsequent 40 years. The number of new antibiotics on the market had a steady increase until the 1980s, but the unrestrained use of antibiotics led to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and the number of approved antibiotics decreased constantly in the last 30 years (Coates et al. 2011). The research for therapeutics endowed with a broaden antimicrobial range brought to the development of semisynthetic antibiotics which are produced by chemical or enzymatic transformation of penicillin and cephalosporins (Srirangan et al. 2013). Penicillin is still one of the antibiotics with the largest annual bulk production; it is part of the β-lactam antibiotic ..

Developing an RNase-free bioprocess to produce pharmaceutical-grade plasmid DNA using selective precipitation and membrane chromatography

A novel, RNase-free, and potentially scalable bioprocess was developed for the production of pharmaceutical-grade plasmid DNA. High bioprocess recovery and product quality were primarily associated with the optimal integration of impurity removal by calcium chloride precipitation and anion-exchange membrane chromatography and the implementation of isopropanol precipitation as a coupling step between the two impurity-removing steps. Complete removal of total cellular RNA was demonstrated without the use of animal-derived RNase. High-molecular-weight (HMW) RNA and genomic DNA (gDNA) were removed by selective precipitation using calcium chloride. Complete removal of the remaining low-molecular-weight (LMW) RNA was achieved by membrane chromatography using a high-capacity hydrogel-based strong anion-exchange membrane. The simultaneous achievement of desalting, concentrating and buffer exchange by the coupling step of isopropanol precipitation and the high efficiency and resolution of DNA RNA separation by anion-exchange membrane chromatography significantly reduced the operating complexity of the overall bioprocess, increased the overall recovery of plasmid DNA, and enhanced product quality by removing trace amounts of major impurities of concern for biomedical applications, such as gDNA, proteins, and endotoxin. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Cell-free DNA is abundant in ascites and represents a liquid biopsy of ovarian cancer

Objective: Malignant ascites is a common clinical feature of ovarian cancer and represents a readily accessible sample of tumour cells and tumour DNA. This study aimed to characterise the cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in ascites in terms of its size profile, stability and cell-free tumour DNA (cftDNA) content. Methods: Cell spheroids, loose cells and cell-free fluid was collected from ascites from 18 patients with ovarian cancer. cfDNA was isolated and assessed for size by electrophoresis, concentration by fluorometry,cftDNA content by methylation specific qPCR of HOXA9 and IFFO1 promoter regions and by targeted sequencing. Stability was assessed after ascites fluid was stored at 4 °C for 24 and 72 h before fractionating. Results: The concentration of cfDNA in ascites ranged from 6.6 to 300 ng/mL. cfDNA size distribution resembled blood plasma-derived cfDNA, with major peaks corresponding to mono- and di-nucleosome DNA fragments. High molecular weight cfDNA was observed in 7 of 18 patients and appeared to be associated with extracellular vesicles. IFFO1 and HOXA9 methylation was proportionately higher in cfDNA than spheroid- and loose-cell fractions and was not observed in healthy primary cells. Variant allele frequency was highest in cfDNA compared to single cells and spheroids from ascites. Though cancer cell numbers in ascites declined to near zero in recurrent ascites from one patient undertaking chemotherapy, cftDNA could still be sampled. cfDNA size, concentration and tumour content was stable over 72 h. Conclusion: cfDNA in ovarian cancer ascites demonstrates inter-patient variability, yet is consistently a rich source of cftDNA, which is a stable substrate. This supports the wider clinical use of ascites in the molecular analysis of ovarian cancer