Nutraceutical Horticulture : An overview of biochemical and molecular considerations

The major components of our diet, namely, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals provide for the building blocks besides serving as metabolic fuel to fulfil the bioenergetic needs. Since they serve the basic cellular needs, they are considered as ‘primary metabolites’. The molecular and biochemical pathways modulated by the major food components of our diet are well-established. Many phytochemicals referred to as ‘secondary metabolites’ and not considered as an ‘essential part’ of our diet, also find their way into the digestive tract along with the major food components. Interest in the role played by the ‘non-essential’ or ‘minor’ components of our diet in preventing the initiation or progression of metabolic disorders has gained momentum. The metabolic disorders, by and large, are non-pathogenic in nature and originate as a consequence of derailed cellular metabolism

Lightweight PUF-Based Gate Replacement Technique to Reduce Leakage of Information through Power Profile Analysis

The major challenge faced by electronic device designers is to defend the system from attackers and malicious modules called Hardware Trojans and to deliver a secured design. Although there are many cryptographic preventive measures in place adversaries find different ways to attack the device. Differential Power Analysis (DPA) attack is a type of Side Channel Attacks, used by an attacker to analyze the power leakage in the circuit, through which the functionality of the circuit is extracted. To overcome this, a lightweight approach is proposed in this paper using, Wave Dynamic Differential Logic (WDDL) technique, without incurring any additional resource cost and power. The primary objective of WDDL is to make the power consumption constant of an entire circuit by restricting the leakage power. The alternate strategy used by an adversary is to leak the information through reverse engineering. The proposed work avoids this by using a bit sequencer and a modified butterfly PUF based randomizing architecture. A modified version of butterfly PUF is also proposed in this paper, and from various qualitative tests performed it is evident that this PUF can prevent information leakage. This work is validated on ISCAS 85, ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits and the results obtained indicate that the difference in leakage power is found to be very marginal

Effect of Bandwidth Scalability on System Performance in the Downlink LTE Systems

Long Term Evolution (LTE) system employs Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) in downlink in order to support network deployment using various system bandwidth configurations i.e., 1.4MHz, 3MHZ, 5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz and 20MHz. The bandwidth scalability enables operator to access multiple channels to achieve higher peak data rates. Also, the bandwidth scalability allows operators to deploy LTE network with the existing spectrum or newly licensed band. Therefore the study on performance of LTE system with different bandwidth configuration becomes vital. Hence in this paper, an attempt has been made to study and compare the performance of LTE system with different spectrum configuration i.e., 1.4MHz, 3MHz, 5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz and 20MHz for Constant Bit Rate (CBR) traffic scenario in the downlink. The performance metrics considered for simulation studies are aggregate bytes received, average throughput, average delay and average jitter

Analytical Model of Symmetric Halo Doped DG-Tunnel FET

Two-dimensional analytical model of symmetric halo doped double gate tunnel field effect transistor has been presented in this work. This model is developed based on the 2-D Poisson’s equation. Some important parameters such that surface potential, vertical and lateral electric field, electric field intensity and band energy have been modelled. The doping concentration and length of halo regions are varied and dependency of various parameters is studied. The halo doping is imparted to improve the ON current and to reduce the intrinsic ambipolarity of the device. Hence we can achieve improved ION/IOFF ratio. The scaling property of halo doped structure is analyzed with various dielectric constants

Energy-efficient and Secured Data Gathering in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

ABSTRACT: A Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN) is often partitioned into a set of spatial clusters to save energy for data collection. Each cluster includes sensor nodes with similar sensing data, and only a few sensor nodes (samplers) report their sensing data to a base node. Then the base node may predict the missed data of nonsamplers using the spatial correlation between sensor nodes. The problem is that the WMSN is vulnerable to internal security threat such as node compromise. If the samplers are compromised and report incorrect data intentionally, then the WMSN should be contaminated rapidly due to the process of missed data prediction at the base node. In this paper, we propose Energy-Efficient Secure Routing algorithm to detect compromised nodes for secure data collection in the WMSN. Experiment results indicate that the proposed algorithm can detect compromised nodes with a high accuracy and an energy-efficient manner

Parasitoid complex of legume pod borer, Maruca vitrata Fabricius (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) on different pulses

The spotted pod borer, Maruca vitrata Fabricius is an important herbivore of major pulses and vegetable legumes in India and the chemical pesticides are major contributors for its management. In order to have an idea on other alternative management tools, the present studies were carried out on the availability of parasitoids and its genetic variation. Totally, four larval parasitoids viz., Bassus sp., Trathala flavoorbitalis Cameron, Phanerotoma hendecasisella Cameron and an undetermined Braconid wasp were recorded on M. vitrata larva. The occurrence of P. hendecasisella was reported for the first time from Tamil Nadu, India. The Bassus sp. was found to be dominant with the parasitism of 3.0 to 12.7% in different pulses and total parasitism of four parasitoids was maximum in pigeonpea (16.1 %). Total parasitism had a positive relationship with number of webbings on cowpea. The larval parasitoids Bassus sp. and braconid wasp (undetermined) yielded specific fragments (~800 bp) with mitochondrial COI primer. Presence of Wolbachia was confirmed in all four larval parasitoids with the amplicons size between 600 and 650 bp. Present study clearly indicated the close proximity of Bassus sp. on M. vitrata than other parasitoids studied. Hence, it gives way for further insights on suitability, mass culturing and development for sustainable management of this insect pest

Chemokine CXCL13 is overexpressed in the tumour tissue and in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients

The abilities of chemokines in orchestrating cellular migration are utilised by different (patho-)biological networks including malignancies. However, except for CXCR4/CXCL12, little is known about the relation between tumour-related chemokine expression and the development and progression of solid tumours like breast cancer. In this study, microarray analyses revealed the overexpression of chemokine CXCL13 in breast cancer specimens. This finding was confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction in a larger set of samples (n=34) and cell lines, and was validated on the protein level performing Western blot, ELISA, and immunohistochemistry. Levels of CXCR5, the receptor for CXCL13, were low in malignant and healthy breast tissues, and surface expression was not detected in vitro. However, we observed a strong (P=0.0004) correlation between the expressions of CXCL13 and CXCR5 in breast cancer tissues, indicating a biologically relevant role of CXCR5 in vivo. Finally, we detected significantly elevated serum concentrations of CXCL13 in patients with metastatic disease (n=54) as compared with controls (n=44) and disease-free patients (n=48). In conclusion, CXCL13 is overexpressed within breast cancer tissues, and increased serum levels of this cytokine can be found in breast cancer patients with metastatic disease pointing to a role of CXCL13 in the progression of breast cancer, suggesting that CXCL13 might serve as a useful therapeutic target and/or diagnostic marker in this malignancy

Recovery of dialysis patients with COVID-19 : health outcomes 3 months after diagnosis in ERACODA

Background. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related short-term mortality is high in dialysis patients, but longer-term outcomes are largely unknown. We therefore assessed patient recovery in a large cohort of dialysis patients 3 months after their COVID-19 diagnosis. Methods. We analyzed data on dialysis patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from 1 February 2020 to 31 March 2021 from the European Renal Association COVID-19 Database (ERACODA). The outcomes studied were patient survival, residence and functional and mental health status (estimated by their treating physician) 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis. Complete follow-up data were available for 854 surviving patients. Patient characteristics associated with recovery were analyzed using logistic regression. Results. In 2449 hemodialysis patients (mean ± SD age 67.5 ± 14.4 years, 62% male), survival probabilities at 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis were 90% for nonhospitalized patients (n = 1087), 73% for patients admitted to the hospital but not to an intensive care unit (ICU) (n = 1165) and 40% for those admitted to an ICU (n = 197). Patient survival hardly decreased between 28 days and 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis. At 3 months, 87% functioned at their pre-existent functional and 94% at their pre-existent mental level. Only few of the surviving patients were still admitted to the hospital (0.8-6.3%) or a nursing home (∼5%). A higher age and frailty score at presentation and ICU admission were associated with worse functional outcome. Conclusions. Mortality between 28 days and 3 months after COVID-19 diagnosis was low and the majority of patients who survived COVID-19 recovered to their pre-existent functional and mental health level at 3 months after diagnosis