54 research outputs found

    ANALYSE THE EFFECT OF MASS FLOW RATE ON THE EFFICIENCY OF PICO TURBINE & VALIDATE WITH EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

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    Pico hydro is a green energy that consumes small streams to generate electricity without depends on any sources of non-renewable energy. This green scheme offers a cheap, efficient, reliable and cost effective of alternative energy and hence, there is no need to worries about the fuel source, capital cost, pollution and life expectancy. Even though the power generated is less than 5kW, but the benefit gain from this energy is the ability to raise the standard living of residents in remote areas. In this paper, model of a propeller turbine is made based on data of thesis “Design of a Low Head Pico Hydro Turbine for Rural Electrification in Cameroon ” (Patrick Ho-Yan, 2012) and experimental work for pico turbine done by (Patrick Ho-Yan, 2012), is taken for the reference for simulation work. This CFD result will be compared with experimental results for validation. After doing simulation work an experimental results and CFD results are seems to be same. Their nature of curve from the results are approximately matching. This variation is about 31.21 % with respect to experimental results. Keywords: Pico turbine, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), Flow analysi

    Biallelic interferon regulatory factor 8 mutation: A complex immunodeficiency syndrome with dendritic cell deficiency, monocytopenia, and immune dysregulation

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    Background: The homozygous K108E mutation of interferon regulatory factor 8 (IRF8) is reported to cause dendritic cell (DC) and monocyte deficiency. However, more widespread immune dysfunction is predicted from the multiple roles ascribed to IRF8 in immune cell development and function. Objective: We sought to describe the effect on hematopoiesis and immunity of the compound heterozygous R83C/R291Q mutation of IRF8, which is present in a patient with recurrent viral infection, granuloproliferation, and intracerebral calcification. Methods: Variant IRF8 alleles were identified by means of exome sequencing, and their function was tested by using reporter assays. The cellular phenotype was studied in detail by using flow cytometry, functional immunologic assay transcriptional profiling, and antigen receptor profiling. Results: Both mutations affected conserved residues, and R291Q is orthologous to R294, which is mutated in the BXH2 IRF8-deficient mouse. R83C showed reduced nuclear translocation, and neither mutant was able to regulate the Ets/IRF composite element or interferon-stimulated response element, whereas R291Q retained BATF/JUN interactions. DC deficiency and monocytopenia were observed in blood, dermis, and lung lavage fluid. Granulocytes were consistently increased, dysplastic, and hypofunctional. Natural killer cell development and maturation were arrested. TH1, TH17, and CD8+ memory T-cell differentiation was significantly reduced, and T cells did not express CXCR3. B-cell development was impaired, with fewer memory cells, reduced class-switching, and lower frequency and complexity of somatic hypermutation. Cell-specific gene expression was widely disturbed in interferon- and IRF8-regulated transcripts. Conclusions: This analysis defines the clinical features of human biallelic IRF8 deficiency, revealing a complex immunodeficiency syndrome caused by DC and monocyte deficiency combined with widespread immune dysregulation

    Ethos of Ambiguity: Artist Teachers and the Transparency Exclusion Paradox

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    Addressing changes in conditions for practitioners that can be related to education policy in England and Wales since 2010, this article presents issues faced by teachers of art and design and theorises responses in practice. The current insistence on transparency in education emerges through policy that audits performativity, in a limiting skills bank. Practitioners in Art and Design are particularly affected by what I term ‘the transparency-exclusion paradox’, as they battle to maintain the subject area and are ‘othered’ by the EBacc and Progress 8. I will discuss an emergent ‘ethos of ambiguity’ among artist-teachers and contemporary artists, with a theoretical basis informed by Beauvoir and Foucault. Empirical data from research participants will be evidenced, to explore strategies of response in inclusive social practice. This article adds to literature that considers the effects of policy in implementation and it contributes to research on creative expressions of ambiguity in the arts

    Biallelic mutations in IRF8 impair human NK cell maturation and function

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    Human NK cell deficiencies are rare yet result in severe and often fatal disease, particularly as a result of viral susceptibility. NK cells develop from hematopoietic stem cells, and few monogenic errors that specifically interrupt NK cell development have been reported. Here we have described biallelic mutations in IRF8, which encodes an interferon regulatory factor, as a cause of familial NK cell deficiency that results in fatal and severe viral disease. Compound heterozygous or homozygous mutations in IRF8 in 3 unrelated families resulted in a paucity of mature CD56dim NK cells and an increase in the frequency of the immature CD56bright NK cells, and this impairment in terminal maturation was also observed in Irf8–/–, but not Irf8+/–, mice. We then determined that impaired maturation was NK cell intrinsic, and gene expression analysis of human NK cell developmental subsets showed that multiple genes were dysregulated by IRF8 mutation. The phenotype was accompanied by deficient NK cell function and was stable over time. Together, these data indicate that human NK cells require IRF8 for development and functional maturation and that dysregulation of this function results in severe human disease, thereby emphasizing a critical role for NK cells in human antiviral defense

    The Powerful Student Consumer and the Commodified Academic: A Depiction of the Marketised UK Higher Education System through a Textual Analysis of the ITV Drama Cheat

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    Through a textual analysis of four episodes comprising the 2019 ITV 1 psychological thriller Cheat, this article explores a fictional representation of the United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education (HE) setting in a television drama. We discuss our analysis in the context of growing marketisation of UK HE, where academics are increasingly viewing students as powerful consumers. We focus on one of the central characters, final-year undergraduate student Rose Vaughan, and the staff with whom she interacts in a fictional HE institution – St. Helen’s College. This article engages with the following themes: ‘The powerful student consumer’ and ‘The commodified academic’. Insight gleaned through the textual analysis of this dramatised depiction of UK HE allows us to attempt to understand how both students and academics might be navigating the neoliberal university and negotiating place and status as (paying) students and (commercial) academics. Although heralded as powerful student-consumers in much literature, our analysis of this television drama shows how students can potentially disrupt the united front often attempted by HE institutions, but ultimately are faced with a ‘the house always wins’1 scenario. Our article offers an important contribution to the psycho-sociological literature into how the television drama depicts that the student experience has been transformed and impacted by HE’s marketisation. This includes a reconsideration of how the television drama portrays what it means to be a student, by exploring how one student is conceptualised, understood, and represented in the psychological thriller

    Production of trimeric SARS‐CoV‐2 spike protein by CHO cells for serological COVID‐19 testing

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    We describe scalable and cost‐efficient production of full length, His‐tagged severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) spike glycoprotein trimer by Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells that can be used to detect SARS‐CoV‐2 antibodies in patient sera at high specificity and sensitivity. Transient production of spike in both human embryonic kidney (HEK) and CHO cells mediated by polyethyleneimine was increased significantly (up to 10.9‐fold) by a reduction in culture temperature to 32°C to permit extended duration cultures. Based on these data GS‐CHO pools stably producing spike trimer under the control of a strong synthetic promoter were cultured in hypothermic conditions with combinations of bioactive small molecules to increase yield of purified spike product 4.9‐fold to 53 mg/L. Purification of recombinant spike by Ni‐chelate affinity chromatography initially yielded a variety of co‐eluting protein impurities identified as host cell derived by mass spectrometry, which were separated from spike trimer using a modified imidazole gradient elution. Purified CHO spike trimer antigen was used in enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay format to detect immunoglobulin G antibodies against SARS‐CoV‐2 in sera from patient cohorts previously tested for viral infection by polymerase chain reaction, including those who had displayed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) symptoms. The antibody assay, validated to ISO 15189 Medical Laboratories standards, exhibited a specificity of 100% and sensitivity of 92.3%. Our data show that CHO cells are a suitable host for the production of larger quantities of recombinant SARS‐CoV‐2 trimer which can be used as antigen for mass serological testing

    Comparative performances of machine learning methods for classifying Crohn Disease patients using genome-wide genotyping data

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    Abstract: Crohn Disease (CD) is a complex genetic disorder for which more than 140 genes have been identified using genome wide association studies (GWAS). However, the genetic architecture of the trait remains largely unknown. The recent development of machine learning (ML) approaches incited us to apply them to classify healthy and diseased people according to their genomic information. The Immunochip dataset containing 18,227 CD patients and 34,050 healthy controls enrolled and genotyped by the international Inflammatory Bowel Disease genetic consortium (IIBDGC) has been re-analyzed using a set of ML methods: penalized logistic regression (LR), gradient boosted trees (GBT) and artificial neural networks (NN). The main score used to compare the methods was the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) statistics. The impact of quality control (QC), imputing and coding methods on LR results showed that QC methods and imputation of missing genotypes may artificially increase the scores. At the opposite, neither the patient/control ratio nor marker preselection or coding strategies significantly affected the results. LR methods, including Lasso, Ridge and ElasticNet provided similar results with a maximum AUC of 0.80. GBT methods like XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost, together with dense NN with one or more hidden layers, provided similar AUC values, suggesting limited epistatic effects in the genetic architecture of the trait. ML methods detected near all the genetic variants previously identified by GWAS among the best predictors plus additional predictors with lower effects. The robustness and complementarity of the different methods are also studied. Compared to LR, non-linear models such as GBT or NN may provide robust complementary approaches to identify and classify genetic markers

    Management of Soil-Borne Diseases of Grain Legumes Through Broad-Spectrum Actinomycetes Having Plant Growth-Promoting and Biocontrol Traits

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    Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L.) are the two important grain legumes grown extensively in the semiarid tropics (SAT) of the world, where soils are poor in nutrients and receive inadequate/erratic rainfall. SAT regions are commonly found in Africa, Australia, and South Asia. Chickpea and pigeonpea suffer from about 38 pathogens that cause soil-borne diseases including wilt, collar rot, dry root rot, damping off, stem canker, and Ascochyta/Phytophthora blight, and of which three of them, wilt, collar rot, and dry root rot, are important in SAT regions. Management of these soil-borne diseases are hard, as no one control measure is completely effective. Advanced/delayed sowing date, solarization of soil, and use of fungicides are some of the control measures usually employed for these diseases but with little success. The use of disease-resistant cultivar is the best efficient and economical control measure, but it is not available for most of the soil-borne diseases. Biocontrol of soil-borne plant pathogens has been managed using antagonistic actinobacteria, bacteria, and fungi. Actinobacterial strains of Streptomyces, Amycolatopsis, Micromonospora, Frankia, and Nocardia were reported to exert effective control on soil-borne pathogens and help the host plants to mobilize and acquire macro- and micronutrients. Such novel actinomycetes with wide range of plant growth-promoting (PGP) and antagonistic traits need to be exploited for sustainable agriculture. This chapter gives a comprehensive analysis of important soil-borne diseases of chickpea and pigeonpea and how broad-spectrum actinomycetes, particularly Streptomyces spp., could be exploited for managing them

    Where has youth radicalism gone? Political participation and democratic pedagogy. An e-dialogue.

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    The idea for this e-dialogue came after a stimulating seminar we attended in 2004. This was supposed to be an academically rigorous paper about political participation and critical pedagogy. However, this is not how it has turned out. This final version appears to be more in the style of an alcoholically induced rant. We make no apologies for this

    Characterization of AHL-acylase of <i>Delftia</i> sp. VM4.

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    <p>(A) Silver stained 12% SDS-PAGE during purification of AHL acylase from <i>Delftia</i> sp. VM4. Lane: M, PMWH- protein marker; 1, ammonium sulphate precipitates; 2, eluate from DEAE-sepharose column; 3, eluate from Sephadex column. (B) Microtitre plate assay for the AHL degrading activity with 0.05 mM HHL of the renatured gel slices (bands i-vi) from the SDS-PAGE was assayed using <i>C</i>. <i>violaceum</i> CV026 biosensor based bioassay. HHL (0.05 mM) was loaded as the control (well-c). HPLC profile of (C) HHL without purified AHL acylase, (D) HHL degradation by purified AHL acylase, (E) EI-MS analysis of degraded product (HSL) from HHL.</p
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