A prospective study to assess the prevalence of hepatitis B infection in health care workers, voluntary blood donors, and patients with liver disorders at a tertiary care centre

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is highly infectious when compared with human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV), even minute quantity of infected blood as little as 0.0001 ml can transmit infection. A number of the routine therapeutic, diagnostic, prophylactic invasive procedures can spread HBV infection. The study was planned to assess the prevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen in health care workers, voluntary blood donors, and patients with liver disorders.Methods: The study was a cross sectional study carried out among 90 subjects during a period of one year in Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, Shimla. These 90 subjects consisted of 30 patients with liver disorder, 30 health care workers and 30 voluntary blood donors. The blood samples were collected and sent for detection of HBsAg by ELISA.Results: Majority of the subjects 47 (52.2%) belonged to the age group of 21-30 years. Among voluntary blood donors, 90% were males. 64.4% of the subjects belonged to urban areas. 50% of the rural subjects were having liver disorders. Liver disorder was more common (71.5%) among heterosexual high risk behaviour subjects compared to only 25.7% with no high risk behaviour. Seropositivity was found highest among patients with liver disorder (66.7%) followed by health care workers (20%). Overall, the seropositivity was 28.9%.Conclusions: Patients with liver disorders especially chronic hepatitis were mostly seropositive. Among health care workers, being a doctor was a significant risk factor for acquiring hepatitis B infection. Thus, it is advised that all health care workers should be immunized for hepatitis B.

Perception of students towards cadaveric dissection in a tertiary care teaching institution

Background: Anatomy is widely acknowledged as being among the most significant element of medical education and the study of anatomy through the dissected cadaver is observed as the essential feature of medical courses. Anatomy teaching has certainly the longest history of any component of formalised medical education. While the history of dissection has been well studied, less attention has been paid to the use of the living body involved in anatomy teaching. Dissection has thus been imbibed into medical education such that it has become almost indispensable part of medical courses.Methods: A total of hundred newly admitted first year medical students’ reaction to the first day entry into the dissection hall and towards cadaveric dissection was assessed by using a set of questions. The questionnaire was given to the students just a few weeks after they began attending their dissection class.Results: Most of the students reported of bad odor of the cadaver (84%) and watering of eyes (79%) on their first day entry into the dissection hall. 94% of the students were determined, interested, and ready to study anatomy with cadaveric dissection. Majority of the students considered dissection as the best tool to study anatomy.100% of the students have showed a sense of gratitude to the people and/or the relatives who had donated their bodies.Conclusions: Cadaveric dissection is an indispensable teaching tool to study gross anatomy, and undergraduate curriculum should incorporate dissection as majority of the students are interested and determined to study anatomy with cadaveric dissection.

Investigation of Mechanical and Thermo-Mechanical properties of Cement-by-Pass Dust Filled Short Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyester Composites

The present work is carried out for the investigation of mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of cement-by-pass (CBPD) dust as a filler material in the short fiber reinforced polyester resin composites in various engineering applications. It is observed that with the addition of CBPD drastic changes has been observed in mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of the present composites. The hardness, tensile Modulus, flexural modulus and impact strength of the composites increases with increase in the CBPD as a filler contents. On the other side with addition of filler contents there is decrease in tensile and flexural strength. At the end, there is improved in the visco-elastice and damping property of present composites with the addition of cement-by pass dust filler contents

Assessing the Effectiveness of the National Human Rights Commission, India, vis-à-vis the Paris Principles Relating to the Status of National Human Rights Institutions

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) play an important role in monitoring and promoting international human rights norms in a country. However, in order to function as an effective NHRI, they must adhere to the “Paris Principles” of 1993. In 2023 the Indian NHRI prepares to renew its ’A’ grade accreditation. This offers an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the institution in light of the aforementioned Principles. In doing so the authors address both the limitations that hinder the NHRI’s performance and the remedies. Notably, the role of “District Human Rights Courts”, in supporting the NHRI in enhancing its effectiveness

HuCoPIA: An Atlas of Human vs. SARS-CoV-2 Interactome and the Comparative Analysis with Other Coronaviridae Family Viruses

SARS-CoV-2, a novel betacoronavirus strain, has caused a pandemic that has claimed the lives of nearly 6.7M people worldwide. Vaccines and medicines are being developed around the world to reduce the disease spread, fatality rates, and control the new variants. Understanding the protein-protein interaction mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 in humans, and their comparison with the previous SARS-CoV and MERS strains, is crucial for these efforts. These interactions might be used to assess vaccination effectiveness, diagnose exposure, and produce effective biotherapeutics. Here, we present the HuCoPIA database, which contains approximately 100,000 protein-protein interactions between humans and three strains (SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS) of betacoronavirus. The interactions in the database are divided into common interactions between all three strains and those unique to each strain. It also contains relevant functional annotation information of human proteins. The HuCoPIA database contains SARS-CoV-2 (41,173), SARS-CoV (31,997), and MERS (26,862) interactions, with functional annotation of human proteins like subcellular localization, tissue-expression, KEGG pathways, and Gene ontology information. We believe HuCoPIA will serve as an invaluable resource to diverse experimental biologists, and will help to advance the research in better understanding the mechanism of betacoronaviruses

alfaNET: A Database of Alfalfa-Bacterial Stem Blight Protein–Protein Interactions Revealing the Molecular Features of the Disease-Causing Bacteria

Alfalfa has emerged as one of the most important forage crops, owing to its wide adaptation and high biomass production worldwide. In the last decade, the emergence of bacterial stem blight (caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae ALF3) in alfalfa has caused around 50% yield losses in the United States. Studies are being conducted to decipher the roles of the key genes and pathways regulating the disease, but due to the sparse knowledge about the infection mechanisms of Pseudomonas, the development of resistant cultivars is hampered. The database alfaNET is an attempt to assist researchers by providing comprehensive Pseudomonas proteome annotations, as well as a host–pathogen interactome tool, which predicts the interactions between host and pathogen based on orthology. alfaNET is a user-friendly and efficient tool and includes other features such as subcellular localization annotations of pathogen proteins, gene ontology (GO) annotations, network visualization, and effector protein prediction. Users can also browse and search the database using particular keywords or proteins with a specific length. Additionally, the BLAST search tool enables the user to perform a homology sequence search against the alfalfa and Pseudomonas proteomes. With the successful implementation of these attributes, alfaNET will be a beneficial resource to the research community engaged in implementing molecular strategies to mitigate the disease. alfaNET is freely available for public use at http://bioinfo.usu.edu/alfanet/

\u3ci\u3eranchSATdb\u3c/i\u3e: A Genome-Wide Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) Markers Database of Livestock Species for Mutant Germplasm Characterization and Improving Farm Animal Health

Microsatellites, also known as simple sequence repeats (SSRs), are polymorphic loci that play an important role in genome research, animal breeding, and disease control. Ranch animals are important components of agricultural landscape. The ranch animal SSR database, ranchSATdb, is a web resource which contains 15,520,263 putative SSR markers. This database provides a comprehensive tool for performing end-to-end marker selection, from SSRs prediction to generating marker primers and their cross-species feasibility, visualization of the resulting markers, and finding similarities between the genomic repeat sequences all in one place without the need to switch between other resources. The user-friendly online interface allows users to browse SSRs by genomic coordinates, repeat motif sequence, chromosome, motif type, motif frequency, and functional annotation. Users may enter their preferred flanking area around the repeat to retrieve the nucleotide sequence, they can investigate SSRs present in the genic or the genes between SSRs, they can generate custom primers, and they can also execute in silico validation of primers using electronic PCR. For customized sequences, an SSR prediction pipeline called miSATminer is also built. New species will be added to this website’s database on a regular basis throughout time. To improve animal health via genomic selection, we hope that ranchSATdb will be a useful tool for mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and marker-assisted selection. The web-resource is freely accessible at https://bioinfo.usu.edu/ranchSATdb/

Wireless Sensor Node Localization based on LNSM and Hybrid TLBO- Unilateral technique for Outdoor Location

The paper aims at localization of the anchor node(fixed node) by pursuit nodes (movable node) in outdoor location.Two methods are studied for node localization. The first methodis based on LNSM (Log Normal Shadowing Model) technique tolocalize the anchor node and the second method is based on Hy-brid TLBO (Teacher Learning Based Optimization Algorithm)-Unilateral technique. In the first approach the ZigBee protocolhas been used to localize the node, which uses RSSI (ReceivedSignal Strength Indicator) values in dBm. LNSM technique isimplemented in the self-designed hardware node and localizationis studied for Outdoor location. The statistical analysis usingRMSE (root mean square error) for outdoor location is done anddistance error found to be 35 mtrs. The same outdoor locationhas been used and statistical analysis is done for localizationof nodes using Hybrid TLBO-Unilateral technique. The Hybrid-TLBO Unilateral technique significantly localizes anchor nodewith distance error of 0.7 mtrs. The RSSI values obtained arenormally distributed and standard deviation in RSSI value isobserved as 1.01 for outdoor location. The node becomes 100%discoverable after using hybrid TLBO- Unilateral technique

RSLpred: an integrative system for predicting subcellular localization of rice proteins combining compositional and evolutionary information

The attainment of complete map-based sequence for rice (Oryza sativa) is clearly a major milestone for the research community. Identifying the localization of encoded proteins is the key to understanding their functional characteristics and facilitating their purification. Our proposed method, RSLpred, is an effort in this direction for genome-scale subcellular prediction of encoded rice proteins. First, the support vector machine (SVM)-based modules have been developed using traditional amino acid-, dipeptide- (i+1) and four parts-amino acid composition and achieved an overall accuracy of 81.43, 80.88 and 81.10%, respectively. Secondly, a similarity search-based module has been developed using position-specific iterated-basic local alignment search tool and achieved 68.35% accuracy. Another module developed using evolutionary information of a protein sequence extracted from position-specific scoring matrix achieved an accuracy of 87.10%. In this study, a large number of modules have been developed using various encoding schemes like higher-order dipeptide composition, N- and C-terminal, splitted amino acid composition and the hybrid information. In order to benchmark RSLpred, it was tested on an independent set of rice proteins where it outperformed widely used prediction methods such as TargetP, Wolf-PSORT, PA-SUB, Plant-Ploc and ESLpred. To assist the plant research community, an online web tool 'RSLpred' has been developed for subcellular prediction of query rice proteins, which is freely accessible at http://www.imtech.res.in/raghava/rslpred

Role of pregnancy associated plasma protein-A and doppler velocimetry in the assessment of fetomaternal outcome in high risk pregnancy

Background: The study aimed at defining the role of Pregnancy associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and uterine artery doppler (Ut.A.PI) in the development of adverse pregnancy outcome (APO) in high risk pregnancies.Methods: This was an observational study where 100 singleton pregnancies at high risk of development of APO, between 11 to 13 + 6 weeks POG were enrolled. PAPP-A levels were measured at 11 to 13 + 6 weeks POG and uterine artery doppler PI was measured at 20 weeks. Women were followed till delivery. Pregnancy outcome were seen and a cut off at which APO developed was derived.Results: In this study women with lower mean PAPP-A (0.75±0.19 MOM versus 1.23±0.31MOM) (p<0.001) values and higher Ut.A.PI (1.43±0.35MOM versus 0.99±0.25MOM) (p<0.001) developed APO. Cut off value for PAPP-A and Ut.A.PI was determined and was found to be ≤11.65 µg/ml (≤0.79MoM) and   >1.42 (>1.19MoM) respectively which was higher than what is determined in other studies done on low risks populations thereby suggesting for an intervention or more meticulous observations at a higher cut offs.Conclusions: PAPP-A and uterine artery doppler are already being used for the screening of preeclampsia in most of the countries but not for other adverse pregnancy outcomes. PAPP-A levels along with the uterine artery PI in predicting APO in high risk women has high negative predictive value. Hence can be uses as a screening method in high risk population whether they should be used for low risk population also needs further evaluation