Science in the wilderness: the predicament of scientific research in India’s wildlife reserves

Ecology and allied scientific disciplines aim to understand patterns and processes pertaining to wild species, their ecosystems and their relationships with humans. India’s wildlife reserves are important ‘living laboratories’ for these disciplines. Today, there is a disturbing trend across India where scientists are increasingly denied access to wildlife reserves for scientific research or are seriously impeded, without scope for redress. Although official wildlife management rhetoric emphasizes the need for scientific research, in reality, it is viewed as undesirable and permitted, if at all, as a concession, subject to the discretion of individual forest officials. With no enabling legislative or policy framework to promote and apply science in our wildlife reserves, we are concerned that the future of many scientific disciplines in India is being jeopardized. Here, we provide an analysis of this issue and outline steps needed to promote scientific research in our natural areas

Identification of vaccine targets & design of vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus using computational and deep learning-based approaches

An unusual pneumonia infection, named COVID-19, was reported on December 2019 in China. It was reported to be caused by a novel coronavirus which has infected approximately 220 million people worldwide with a death toll of 4.5 million as of September 2021. This study is focused on finding potential vaccine candidates and designing an in-silico subunit multi-epitope vaccine candidates using a unique computational pipeline, integrating reverse vaccinology, molecular docking and simulation methods. A protein named spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 with the GenBank ID QHD43416.1 was shortlisted as a potential vaccine candidate and was examined for presence of B-cell and T-cell epitopes. We also investigated antigenicity and interaction with distinct polymorphic alleles of the epitopes. High ranking epitopes such as DLCFTNVY (B cell epitope), KIADYNKL (MHC Class-I) and VKNKCVNFN (MHC class-II) were shortlisted for subsequent analysis. Digestion analysis verified the safety and stability of the shortlisted peptides. Docking study reported a strong binding of proposed peptides with HLA-A*02 and HLA-B7 alleles. We used standard methods to construct vaccine model and this construct was evaluated further for its antigenicity, physicochemical properties, 2D and 3D structure prediction and validation. Further, molecular docking followed by molecular dynamics simulation was performed to evaluate the binding affinity and stability of TLR-4 and vaccine complex. Finally, the vaccine construct was reverse transcribed and adapted for E. coli strain K 12 prior to the insertion within the pET-28-a (+) vector for determining translational and microbial expression followed by conservancy analysis. Also, six multi-epitope subunit vaccines were constructed using different strategies containing immunogenic epitopes, appropriate adjuvants and linker sequences. We propose that our vaccine constructs can be used for downstream investigations using in-vitro and in-vivo studies to design effective and safe vaccine against different strains of COVID-19

Enhancement of Superconducting T\u3csub\u3ec\u3c/sub\u3e (33 K) by Entrapment of FeSe in Carbon Coated Au–Pd₁₇Se₁₅ Nanoparticles

FeSe has been an interesting member of the Fe-based superconductor family ever since the discovery of superconductivity in this simple binary chalcogenide. Simplicity of composition and ease of synthesis has made FeSe, in particular, very lucrative as a test system to understand the unconventional nature of superconductivity, especially in low-dimensional models. in this article we report the synthesis of composite nanoparticles containing FeSe nanoislands entrapped within an ent-FeSe-Pd16Se15–Au nanoparticle and sharing an interface with Pd17Se15. This assembly exhibits a significant enhancement in the superconducting Tc (onset at 33 K) accompanied by a noticeable lattice compression of FeSe along the \u3c001\u3e and \u3c101\u3e directions. the Tc in FeSe is very sensitive to application of pressure and it has been shown that with increasing external pressure Tc can be increased almost 4-fold. in these composite nanoparticles reported here, immobilization of FeSe on the Pd17Se15 surface contributes to increasing the effect of interfacial pressure, thereby enhancing the Tc. the effect of interfacial pressure is also manifested in the contraction of the FeSe lattice (up to 3.8% in \u3c001\u3e direction) as observed through extensive high-resolution TEM imaging. the confined FeSe in these nanoparticles occupied a region of approximately 15–25 nm, where lattice compression was uniform over the entire FeSe region, thereby maximizing its effect in enhancing the Tc. the nanoparticles have been synthesized by a simple catalyst-aided vapor transport reaction at 800 °C where iron acetylacetonate and Se were used as precursors. Morphology and composition of these nanoparticles have been studied in details through extensive electron microscopy

Spectrum of vaginal foreign body in children: A report of two cases

An extraordinary type of foreign body (FB) may be found in the female external genitalia, especially in children. Intravaginal FB, retained for long duration, can produce diagnostic dilemma. Vaginal bleeding as the result of a leech bite is extremely rare although reported. We report two cases of vaginal FB (intravaginal Scotch-Brite in a 5-year-old girl and leech in the vagina in a 7-year-old girl)

Development of an autonomous vision sensor-actuator-based circumferential seam path tracker welding machine/device for LPG cylinders

This paper presents an autonomous vision sensor-actuator-based circumferential seam path tracker welding machine/device for LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) cylinders. The machine or device is designed to avoid various hazardous health issues that are found in the workers due to unfavorable working conditions during the welding process because of high temperature, dangerous fumes, and a large amount of luminous flux in the workstation. This machine involves a pneumatic holder to hold the cylindrical workpiece inside a metallic body frame. When the cylindrical workpiece rotates in a pneumatic holder, some amount of deflection arises due to the improper arrangement of fixtures and cylinders. It is not easy to overcome this deflection in fixtures, and due to this, the welding process is not done correctly. The undercut and overcut errors can also be found due to the improper shape of fixtures and cylinders. Therefore, the box setup is designed to cope with this problem, and the box contains an RGB (Red Green Blue) camera, LED (Light Emitting Diode), and an ultrasonic sensor. The box is installed in front of the welding torch to capture the image of the seam path of the workpiece. Firstly, the image is created with the help of a LED fitted inside the box. The LED creates the shadow of the joggle joint of the cylindrical workpiece. The camera captures that shadow. After capturing the image of shadow, the centroid of the seam path (represented by shadow) of the cylindrical workpiece is traced. It is sent to the Raspberry Pi microcontroller, and the data of the image is stored in the memory of the microcontroller for further processing. According to the position of the centroid coordinate, the microcontroller sends the control commands to the microstep driver of the stepper motor to follow this centroid coordinate. By this, the torch is controlled, and the welding process is done autonomously. The experimental setup is made, and the autonomous welding process is performed in many cylinders. Moreover, after performing autonomous welding process in the cylinder, the high-pressure bursting test (which is basically done by cylinder manufacturer industries) is performed to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the welding joints. In the bursting test result, it is found that the cylinder is burst in a longitudinal direction, which verifies the effectiveness and efficiency of the obtained circumferential joggle joint

Electrical and optical properties of high mobility W-doped In2O3 thin films

Transparent conducting oxides (TCO) have been widely used for opto-electronic devices such as light emitting diodes, photo-detectors, touch panels, fiat panel displays, and solar cells. Low resistivity, high mobility, and good transparency are the prime requirements for these devices. There is an increasing interest in TCO with high mobility to decrease their electrical resistivity without a significant decrease in the optical transparency. Highly conducting and transparent tungsten doped indium oxide thin films were deposited on quartz substrate by ablating the sintered In2O3 target containing WO3 with a KrF excimer laser (λ = 248 nm and pulsed duration of 20 ns). The effect of growth temperature and oxygen pressure on structural, optical, and electrical properties has been studied. The transparency of the films largely depends on the growth temperature. The electrical properties are found to depend strongly on the growth temperature as well as on oxygen pressure. The temperature dependence resistivity measurement shows the transition from semiconductor to metallic behavior as the growth temperature increases from room temperature to 500°C. The high mobility (up to 358 cm2V-1s-1), low resistivity (1.1 × 10-4 Ω.cm), and relatively high transmittance of ∼90 % have been observed on the optimized film grown at 500°C and under oxygen pressure at 1 × 10-6 bar

Magnetotransport properties of compression molded CrO 2-Polyimide composite

The conduclivity and magnetotransport properties of compression molded halfmetallic CrO 2/Polyimide composites over a range of different metallic concentrations have been studied. The conductivity measurements on these composites show negative slope of resistance versus temperature. The magnetoresistance measurement indicates obvious enhancement at low temperatures. The maximum in magnetoresistance (MR) is found to be temperature and metal volume fraction dependent. Significant differences in high and low temperature magnetoresistive behavior in the composite have been observed. The high field, 15 T MR measurements show 23% and 19% MR enhancement at 5K and 75 K, respectively. Thus, it is found that the polymer barrier can contribute to enhancing magnetoresistive properties of the composite. © 2005 Materials Research Society