A study of cephalic index and facial index in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India

Background: The description of the human body has been a major concern since ancient times. The use of medical terminology enhances reliability of comparison made between studies from different areas thereby contributing higher level of scientific evidence. Cephalic index is an important parameter in forensic medicine, anthropology and genetics to know the sex and racial differences between individuals. Facial index is useful index for forensic scientists, plastic surgeons and anatomist. The parameters are useful for plastic surgeons during treatment of congenital and traumatic deformities, identification of individuals in medicolegal cases by forensic scientists and identifying craniofacial deformities of genetic syndromes by geneticist.Methods: 170 males and 110 female adults from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India region are included in this study. Anthropometric points for cephalic index were measured by using spreading calipers. Facial index measurements were taken by measuring tape. All measurements were taken in subjects sitting in relaxed condition and subjects head is in anatomical position. Cranial index and facial index were calculated as per the formula.Results: Maximum number of males with mean cephalic index values of 80.21 were observed as mesocephalic and female with mean value of 79.25 observed as brachycephalic. Regarding facial index males were leptoprosopic and females were mesoprosopic.Conclusion: Cephalic index and facial index were terms used by anthropologists, anatomists, plastic surgeons and forensic scientists to identify individual’s race and sex for treatment of craniofacial deformities.

IMPACT OF OZONE CONCENTRATION ON OCEAN COLOUR RETRIEVALS FOR OCM-2

Ozone being an absorbing gas have a significant impact on OCM-2 bands 510 nm, 555 nm and 620 nm which are using for retrieval of major geophysical parameters like Chlorophyll and suspended sediment concentrations. A study has been carried out to analyse the impact of Ozone concentration by ingesting near real time from OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) on Aura instead of Climatology V2013 (2004–13) with a resolution of 1 × 1 deg for ocean colour retrievals from OCM-2 sensor using SeaWiFS Data Analysis System (SeaDAS). The spectral behaviour of Ozone transmittance has been studied for various bands of OCM-2 by using both Climatology and near real time inputs. We could observe maximum relative error percentage about 12 % from Climatology to NRT in Ozone concentration and 0.28 %, 0.66 % and 0.72 % of maximum mean relative error in ozone transmittance at 512 nm, 557 nm and 620 nm. We calculated error budgets induced by ozone in remote sensing reflectance(/sr) where in we could observe mean relative error percentage of 0.52 % in 491 nm, 1.12 % in 512 nm and 4.28 % 557 nm a bands respectively

Understanding the yeast host cell response to recombinant membrane protein production

Membrane proteins are drug targets for a wide range of diseases. Having access to appropriate samples for further research underpins the pharmaceutical industry's strategy for developing new drugs. This is typically achieved by synthesizing a protein of interest in host cells that can be cultured on a large scale, allowing the isolation of the pure protein in quantities much higher than those found in the protein's native source. Yeast is a popular host as it is a eukaryote with similar synthetic machinery to that of the native human source cells of many proteins of interest, while also being quick, easy and cheap to grow and process. Even in these cells, the production of human membrane proteins can be plagued by low functional yields; we wish to understand why. We have identified molecular mechanisms and culture parameters underpinning high yields and have consolidated our findings to engineer improved yeast host strains. By relieving the bottlenecks to recombinant membrane protein production in yeast, we aim to contribute to the drug discovery pipeline, while providing insight into translational processes

Relative Burden of Large CNVs on a Range of Neurodevelopmental Phenotypes

While numerous studies have implicated copy number variants (CNVs) in a range of neurological phenotypes, the impact relative to disease severity has been difficult to ascertain due to small sample sizes, lack of phenotypic details, and heterogeneity in platforms used for discovery. Using a customized microarray enriched for genomic hotspots, we assayed for large CNVs among 1,227 individuals with various neurological deficits including dyslexia (376), sporadic autism (350), and intellectual disability (ID) (501), as well as 337 controls. We show that the frequency of large CNVs (>1 Mbp) is significantly greater for ID–associated phenotypes compared to autism (p = 9.58×10−11, odds ratio = 4.59), dyslexia (p = 3.81×10−18, odds ratio = 14.45), or controls (p = 2.75×10−17, odds ratio = 13.71). There is a striking difference in the frequency of rare CNVs (>50 kbp) in autism (10%, p = 2.4×10−6, odds ratio = 6) or ID (16%, p = 3.55×10−12, odds ratio = 10) compared to dyslexia (2%) with essentially no difference in large CNV burden among dyslexia patients compared to controls. Rare CNVs were more likely to arise de novo (64%) in ID when compared to autism (40%) or dyslexia (0%). We observed a significantly increased large CNV burden in individuals with ID and multiple congenital anomalies (MCA) compared to ID alone (p = 0.001, odds ratio = 2.54). Our data suggest that large CNV burden positively correlates with the severity of childhood disability: ID with MCA being most severely affected and dyslexics being indistinguishable from controls. When autism without ID was considered separately, the increase in CNV burden was modest compared to controls (p = 0.07, odds ratio = 2.33)

Artificial neural networks (ANN) based algorithms for chlorophyll estimation in the Arabian Sea

In-situ bio-optical measurements were collected during six ship campaigns in the north eastern Arabian Sea using SeaWiFS Multi-channel Profiling Radiometer (SPMR). An artificial neural network (ANN) based algorithms were constructed to estimate oceanic chlorophyll concentration using in-situ data. The different ANNs were obtained by systematic variations of architecture of input and hidden layer nodes for the Arabian Sea training data set. The performance of individual ANN-based pigment estimation algorithm was evaluated by applying it to the remote sensing reflectance data contained in validation data set. The performance of the most successful ANN was compared with commonly used empirical pigment algorithms. Compared to e.g. the SeaWiFS algorithms Ocean Chlorophyll-2 (OC2) and Ocean Chlorophyll-4 (OC4), the square of the correlation coefficient r2 is increased from 0.69 for OC4, respectively 0.70 for OC2 to 0.96 for ANN algorithm. The RMS error of the estimated log-transformed pigment concentration dropped from 0.47 for OC2, respectively 0.41 for OC4 to 0.11 for ANN-based pigment algorithm

Comparitive In-Vitro Evaluation of Commercially Available Generic and Branded Pro-pranolol Hydrochloride Immediate Release Tablets

The present work describes about the comparative in-vitro study of commercially available generic and branded Propranolol Hydrochloride tablets. The generic and branded Propranolol hydrochloride tablets were taken and evaluated for different parameters like weight variation, hardness, friability, disintegration, percentage purity and dissolution studies. According to  USFDA, generic drugs are identical and are within the acceptable bioequivalent range to the brand-name counterpart with respect to pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. Generics are almost identical to that of branded drugs which are 80% cheaper on average. The generic drugs of various pharmaceutical companies are sold at low cost and are checked for their therapeutic efficacy by comparing with that of branded ones. The in-vitro results of both generic and branded were compared and found to be within the limits and claimed that generics are almost equal to branded drugs in all aspects except cost