Spatial And Temporal Variation Of Ambient Pm2.5: A Case Study Of Banepa Valley, Nepal

The study comprised of air quality monitoring during the day time at three municipalities of Banepa, Dhulikhel and Panauti in Kavre district of Nepal. In each of the municipalities three air monitoring stations were established representing industrial, commercial and residential areas. Particulate Matter (PM2.5) has been estimated from air sampling programme which spanned 7 months and a total of 126 days reflecting all the three seasons. The study found that during winter season the concentration of PM2.5 was more and among the areas commercial area noted highest level pollution. The seasonal trend in pollution levels show that winter > pre-monsoon > monsoon. The pollution concentration trend noted among the areas was commercial > industrial > residential on almost all the occasions except at pre-monsoon season between industrial and residential area in Banepa. This finding concludes that, commercial area of Banepa is more defined and is associated with higher particulate matter concentration compared to other areas

The non-compact elliptic genus: mock or modular

We analyze various perspectives on the elliptic genus of non-compact supersymmetric coset conformal field theories with central charge larger than three. We calculate the holomorphic part of the elliptic genus via a free field description of the model, and show that it agrees with algebraic expectations. The holomorphic part of the elliptic genus is directly related to an Appell-Lerch sum and behaves anomalously under modular transformation properties. We analyze the origin of the anomaly by calculating the elliptic genus through a path integral in a coset conformal field theory. The path integral codes both the holomorphic part of the elliptic genus, and a non-holomorphic remainder that finds its origin in the continuous spectrum of the non-compact model. The remainder term can be shown to agree with a function that mathematicians introduced to parameterize the difference between mock theta functions and Jacobi forms. The holomorphic part of the elliptic genus thus has a path integral completion which renders it non-holomorphic and modular.Comment: 13 page

Condition Monitoring of Rotating Elements Using Acoustic Emission: Indian Scenario

The first experimental study in the world on the phenomenon of generation of Acoustic Emission dates back to the 1950’s when Josef Kaiser heard these emissions during metal failure. But unfortunately, the work could not get impetus because of the limited means of sensing high frequency waves and the lack of knowledge dissemination. In the 1970’s, the electronic instrumentation improved resulting in the increased activity centers of AE. At that time, Rao initiated work in this area at the Indian Institute of Science, Banglore for the first time in India. With the pioneering efforts of his group at IISc, new vistas were opened in this field. As a consequence of it, the first paper from India on this phenomenon was published in 1977 by Eshwar, et al. [1], The paper dealt with the study of the form of AE observed on the cracking/breaking of plywood with prepared defects

Identification and characterization of antibacterial compound(s) of cockroaches (Periplaneta americana)

Infectious diseases remain a significant threat to human health, contributing to more than 17 million deaths, annually. With the worsening trends of drug resistance, there is a need for newer and more powerful antimicrobial agents. We hypothesized that animals living in polluted environments are potential source of antimicrobials. Under polluted milieus, organisms such as cockroaches encounter different types of microbes, including superbugs. Such creatures survive the onslaught of superbugs and are able to ward off disease by producing antimicrobial substances. Here, we characterized antibacterial properties in extracts of various body organs of cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) and showed potent antibacterial activity in crude brain extract against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and neuropathogenic E. coli K1. The size-exclusion spin columns revealed that the active compound(s) are less than 10 kDa in molecular mass. Using cytotoxicity assays, it was observed that pre-treatment of bacteria with lysates inhibited bacteria-mediated host cell cytotoxicity. Using spectra obtained with LC-MS on Agilent 1290 infinity liquid chromatograph, coupled with an Agilent 6460 triple quadruple mass spectrometer, tissues lysates were analyzed. Among hundreds of compounds, only a few homologous compounds were identified that contained isoquinoline group, chromene derivatives, thiazine groups, imidazoles, pyrrole containing analogs, sulfonamides, furanones, flavanones, and known to possess broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties, and possess anti-inflammatory, anti-tumour, and analgesic properties. Further identification, characterization and functional studies using individual compounds can act as a breakthrough in developing novel therapeutics against various pathogens including superbugs

Integrative analysis of omics summary data reveals putative mechanisms underlying complex traits

The identification of genes and regulatory elements underlying the associations discovered by GWAS is essential to understanding the aetiology of complex traits (including diseases). Here, we demonstrate an analytical paradigm of prioritizing genes and regulatory elements at GWAS loci for follow-up functional studies. We perform an integrative analysis that uses summary-level SNP data from multi-omics studies to detect DNA methylation (DNAm) sites associated with gene expression and phenotype through shared genetic effects (i.e., pleiotropy). We identify pleiotropic associations between 7858 DNAm sites and 2733 genes. These DNAm sites are enriched in enhancers and promoters, and >40% of them are mapped to distal genes. Further pleiotropic association analyses, which link both the methylome and transcriptome to 12 complex traits, identify 149 DNAm sites and 66 genes, indicating a plausible mechanism whereby the effect of a genetic variant on phenotype is mediated by genetic regulation of transcription through DNAm

Characteristics of Different Systems for the Solar Drying of Crops

Solar dryers are used to enable the preservation of agricultural crops, food processing industries for dehydration of fruits and vegetables, fish and meat drying, dairy industries for production of milk powder, seasoning of wood and timber, textile industries for drying of textile materials. The fundamental concepts and contexts of their use to dry crops is discussed in the chapter. It is shown that solar drying is the outcome of complex interactions particular between the intensity and duration of solar energy, the prevailing ambient relative humidity and temperature, the characteristics of the particular crop and its pre-preparation and the design and operation of the solar dryer

Estimates of global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and mortality of HIV, 1980-2015: the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015

Timely assessment of the burden of HIV/AIDS is essential for policy setting and programme evaluation. In this report from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (GBD 2015), we provide national estimates of levels and trends of HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence, coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART), and mortality for 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2015.For countries without high-quality vital registration data, we estimated prevalence and incidence with data from antenatal care clinics and population-based seroprevalence surveys, and with assumptions by age and sex on initial CD4 distribution at infection, CD4 progression rates (probability of progression from higher to lower CD4 cell-count category), on and off antiretroviral therapy (ART) mortality, and mortality from all other causes. Our estimation strategy links the GBD 2015 assessment of all-cause mortality and estimation of incidence and prevalence so that for each draw from the uncertainty distribution all assumptions used in each step are internally consistent. We estimated incidence, prevalence, and death with GBD versions of the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) and Spectrum software originally developed by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). We used an open-source version of EPP and recoded Spectrum for speed, and used updated assumptions from systematic reviews of the literature and GBD demographic data. For countries with high-quality vital registration data, we developed the cohort incidence bias adjustment model to estimate HIV incidence and prevalence largely from the number of deaths caused by HIV recorded in cause-of-death statistics. We corrected these statistics for garbage coding and HIV misclassification.Global HIV incidence reached its peak in 1997, at 3·3 million new infections (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 3·1-3·4 million). Annual incidence has stayed relatively constant at about 2·6 million per year (range 2·5-2·8 million) since 2005, after a period of fast decline between 1997 and 2005. The number of people living with HIV/AIDS has been steadily increasing and reached 38·8 million (95% UI 37·6-40·4 million) in 2015. At the same time, HIV/AIDS mortality has been declining at a steady pace, from a peak of 1·8 million deaths (95% UI 1·7-1·9 million) in 2005, to 1·2 million deaths (1·1-1·3 million) in 2015. We recorded substantial heterogeneity in the levels and trends of HIV/AIDS across countries. Although many countries have experienced decreases in HIV/AIDS mortality and in annual new infections, other countries have had slowdowns or increases in rates of change in annual new infections.Scale-up of ART and prevention of mother-to-child transmission has been one of the great successes of global health in the past two decades. However, in the past decade, progress in reducing new infections has been slow, development assistance for health devoted to HIV has stagnated, and resources for health in low-income countries have grown slowly. Achievement of the new ambitious goals for HIV enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal 3 and the 90-90-90 UNAIDS targets will be challenging, and will need continued efforts from governments and international agencies in the next 15 years to end AIDS by 2030.Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Institute of Mental Health and National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health