Optimal Inventory Policies for Weibull Deterioration under Trade Credit in Declining Market

The aim of this study is to develop mathematical model for Weibull deterioration of items in inventory in declining market when the supplier offers his retailers a credit period to settle the accounts against the dues. The computational steps are explored for a retailer to determine the optimal purchase units which minimize the total inventory cost per time unit. The numerical examples are given to demonstrate the retailer’s optimal decision. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to study the variations in the optimal solution.Weibull deterioration, trade credit, declining market

Single Residue Determinants in the Binding of Recombinant Human Brain Hexokinase to the Mitochondrion

The N-terminal segment (residues 1-15) of hexokinase I (HKI) is essential for the binding of HKI to the outer membrane of the mitochondrion. Whether the N-terminal segment is merely a hydrophobic anchor to the membrane or has specific residues that are key determinants in the mitochondrion-HKI interaction is unclear. Recombinant wild-type HKI binds to mitochondria, but the removal of residues 1-15 abolishes such binding. Mutations A4L, A8L and Q5P individually cause a 10-fold decreases (relative to wild-type enzyme) in HKI binding to mitochondria. In contrast, mutations Q5A, Y10L and T12I decrease binding by approximately twofold. The mutations did not affect the catalytic properties of the enzyme, and all HKI constructs remained monomeric to concentrations as high as 10 micromolar. Results here are consistent with a helical conformation for the N-terminus of HKI, with residues A4 and A8 defining a contiguous surface that does not tolerate large hydrophobic side chains

Effect of increased ratio of butyrate to physiological concentrations of acetate and propionate on intestinal integrity and IL-8 secretion in Caco-2 cells

Background: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are a growing global health problem. Current pharmacological therapies are not effective in all IBD patients, tend to cause side effects and in some cases lose effectiveness when used for a prolonged period of time. Hence, there is a need to develop dietary interventions that are safe and be applicable to all. Chronic inflammation of the gut could be combated by increasing the consumption of dietary fiber which would lead to an increased butyrate production in the colon. Butyrate has been shown to improve intestinal integrity and suppress the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokine, IL-8 – which is commonly found at high concentrations in IBD patients. Hypothesis: When inflamed human intestinal cells (Caco-2) are exposed to an increased ratio of butyrate to physiological concentrations of acetate and propionate, the intestinal integrity would be improved and the secretion of IL-8 would be suppressed. Experimental Design: Caco-2 cells were grown to 90-100% confluence on Transwell plate inserts for 4 days. Then, inflammation was induced for 24h. The inflamed and non-inflamed Caco-2 cells were then exposed to: (i) 60 mM acetate (Ac): 10mM propionate (Pr): 10mM butyrate(Bu) (lower butyrate ratio) or (ii) 60 mM Ac: 10mM Pr: 20mM Bu (higher butyrate ratio) for 0h, 12h or 24h. Intestinal integrity was measured by amount of Lucifer yellow transported from the apical to basolateral chamber of Transwell plates. IL-8 secretion was measured by ELISA and cell damage was measured by the lactate dehydrogenase cytotoxicity assay. Results: Cells that were inflamed significantly decreased the intestinal integrity (p=0.0094), increased the secretion of IL-8 (p\u3c0.0001) and induced higher cell damage (p\u3c0.0001) than non-inflamed Caco-2 cells, n=54. SCFA mix containing higher butyrate ratio (20mM) significantly reduced the intestinal integrity of inflamed cells (p=0.0238, n=27). Higher butyrate ratio did not affect the secretion of IL-8; but it led to greater cell-damage (p=0.0161, n=54). Prolonged exposure to SCFAs improved intestinal integrity (p\u3c0.0001), increased the secretion of IL-8 (p\u3c0.0001) and led to greater cell damage (p\u3c0.0001), n=36. Conclusion: Our hypothesis was disproved. But the important lesson to be learned is that the effect of butyrate in colonocyte models should be studied in the presence of other SCFAs, to assure physiological relevance

Electrochemical formation of one-dimensional metal nanostructures across microgaps electrodes for resistive switching and optical sensing applications.

This dissertation focuses on the electrochemical formation of one-dimensional (1D) Ag nanostructures (in particular nanowires and nanochains) directly on electrode surfaces or gap of two electrodes. Ag nanowires (NWs) and nanorods (NRs) grow directly on glass/indium tin oxide (ITO) surfaces from electrode-attached Au nanoparticle seeds in the presence of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) at appropriate potentials with a 5-15 % yield and the average length ranging from 100 nm to 3 µm for growth times of 30 to 120 min. This method failed when trying to grow Ag NRs/NWs across 5 µm Au electrode gaps. Interestingly, applying voltage in air leads to the formation of 1D Ag nanoparticle (Ag NP) chains across the electrode gap in the presence of CTAB and humidity. This is due to an electrochemical process of Ag oxidation at the positive electrode and reduction of Ag+ at the negative electrode of the gap. The 1D Ag NP chains have interesting resistive switching properties with ON/OFF ratio \u3e 100, endurance cycles of at least 1000 and ms switching speeds, which could find use for memory devices. A device formed by electrodeposition of polyphenol on one electrode and Ag NWs on a second electrode of a 5 µm electrode gap also exhibits resistive switching properties similar to 1D Ag NP chains. Interestingly, the Ag NWs convert into Ag NP chains during the first connection. 1D Ag NP chains formed electrochemically in the presence of CTAB show interesting surface-enhanced Raman and localized surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy that depends on their conductance state

Effect of eclampsia on pregnancy outcome at tertiary care center, Gujarat, India

Background: Eclampsia, a common medical emergency of pregnancy mainly seen in 5% to 10% of all pregnancies. The objective of the present study was to study the effect of eclampsia on maternal and perinatal outcome.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 50 clinically diagnosed women with eclampsia in their third trimester of pregnancy. Inclusion criteria for the study was; females with singleton pregnancy, all in the third trimester which were diagnosed to have PIH based on the development of hypertension for the first time, proteinuria with or without edema, with no history of previous urinary tract troubles and no evidence of UTI.Results: Almost 84.0% participants were belonged to age group of 20 to 30 years age, 54.0% were belonged to rural area and 92.0% were belonged to lower socio-economical class, 88.0%% participants were registered as emergency case, 34.0% participants were stayed more than 10 days at hospital and 36.0% were completed ANC visit. Almost 24.0% participants were anemic, 6.0% pre-eclampsic and 4.0% have tween pregnancy. Severe hypertension at the time of admission were noted in 50.0% participants followed by absent knee jerk (12.0%), proteinuria (78.0%) and edema (62.0%) respectively. Maternal mortality and still birth observed in 2.0% and 18.0% cases respectively.Conclusions: Early age, lower socio-economic class, anemia, less ANC clinic visit, higher hospital stay and primigravida observed more among study participants and these factors may play an important role in the pathogenesis of eclampsia

Serum magnesium level in eclampsia at tertiary care center, Gujarat, India

Background: Magnesium may be physiologically important in blood pressure regulation whereas changes in magnesium levels could contribute to the patho-etiology of hypertension. The objective of the present study was to study the level and effect of magnesium in eclamptic pregnant women.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 50 clinically diagnosed women with eclampsia in their third trimester of pregnancy. Inclusion criteria for the study was; females with singleton pregnancy, all in the third trimester which were diagnosed to have PIH based on the development of hypertension for the first time, proteinuria with or without edema, with no history of previous urinary tract troubles and no evidence of UTI. The concentration of total serum magnesium was measured by atomic absorption spectroscopy.Results: Mean age, mean gestational age, mean total hospital stays, mean BMI, mean systolic BP and diastolic BP was 24.3 years with 5.1 SD, 36.4 week with 3.3 SD, 7.8 days with 2.4 SD, 28.9 wt/ht2 with 4.8 SD, 146.5 mmHg with 14.7 SD and 95.9 mmHg with 11.2 SD respectively. Mean magnesium level was 1.9 mmol/L with 2.2 SD.Conclusions: Hypomagnesemia is present in eclamptic pregnant women. In developing countries like India, sufficient dietary supplementation should be given above the recommended dietary allowances in pregnancy at least in susceptible pregnant women

Predictive Modelling to Identify Risk Factors Leading to Opioid Addiction

Prescription Opioid Abuse continues to be a significant and growing problem in the United States. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, more than 115 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. Considering the graveness of the situation, this project aims at briefly studying the current trends and literature pertaining to the opioid epidemic and coming up with preventive measures. This was done by studying prevalent literature and data available on this subject to analyze patterns and trends of opioid addiction to help identify risk factors, using predictive modelling.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Can perineal tear be predicted by severity of striae gravidarum score?

Background: The objective of this study was to wether perineal tear predicted by scoring of severity of striae gravidarum. The objective of this study was to predict perineal tear by simple non-invasive method and help to prevent maternal morbidity.Methods: Three hundred ninety four patients delivered normally were included in this study. Striae gravidarum score was assessed using the Atwal numerical scoring system. The association was examined between striae and perineal tear as the outcome measure, defined by tears or laceration, and the total striae scores (TSS) was obtained.Results: In present study population mean age was 25.16 years ranging from 16-40 , mean gravidity was 2.16 ranging from 1 -8 ,average baby birth weight was 2.713 kg ranging from  1.62-4.58 The only predictors of perineal tears that were found to be statistically significant in our study were severity of striae gravidarum and episiotomy given or not. In patients with moderate to severe striae there was tear in 90 patients as compared to 29 patients with no or mild striae. 224 patients belonging to no or mild striae group delivered without any perineal tear whereas 51 patients in moderate to severe striae group delivered without tear. Out of these 51 patients 5 were given episiotomy. 2 patients who were given episiotomy had perineal tear as compared to 117 patients who were not given episiotomy. This shows that patients who had an episiotomy were less likely to have perineal tear in most cases.Conclusions: This study demonstrates a significant relation between severity of striae gravidarum and perineal tear. The findings suggest that striae gravidarum assessment may be used in the clinical setting even by paramedical staff as a simple and noninvasive tool to better define women at risk for perineal tear

Data-driven algorithms for characterizing microbial communities

Complex microbial communities play a crucial role in environmental and human health. Traditionally, microbes have been studied by isolating and culturing them, missing organisms that cannot grow in standard laboratory conditions, and losing information about microbe-microbe interactions. With affordable high- throughput sequencing, a new field called metagenomics has emerged, that studies the genomic content of the microbial community as a whole. Metagenomics enables researchers to characterize complex microbial communities, however, many computational challenges remain with downstream analyses of large sequencing datasets. Here, we explore some fundamental problems in metagenomics and present simple algorithms and open-source software tools that implement these solutions. In the first section, we focus on using a reference database of known organisms (and genomic segments within) to taxonomically classify sequences and estimate abundances of taxa in a metagenomic sample. We developed a “BLAST outlier detection” algorithm that identifies significant outliers within database search results. We extended this method and developed ATLAS, which uses significant database hits to group sequences in the database into partitions. These partitions capture the extent of ambiguity within the classification of a sample. Besides taxonomically classifying sequences, we also explored the problem of taxonomic abundance profiling, i.e., estimating the abundance of different species in the community. We describe TIPP2, a marker gene-based abundance profiling method, which combines phylogenetic placement with statistical techniques to control classification accuracy. TIPP2 includes an updated set of reference packages and several algorithmic improvements over the original TIPP method. Next, we explore how to reconstruct genomes from metagenomic samples. Despite advances in metagenome assembly algorithms, assembling reads into complete genomes is still a computationally challenging problem because of repeated sequences within and among genomes, uneven abundances of organisms, sequencing errors, and strain-level variation. To improve upon the fragmented assemblies, researchers use a strategy called binning, which involves clustering together genomic fragments that likely originate from an individual organism. We describe Binnacle, a tool that explicitly accounts for scaffold information in binning. We describe novel algorithms for estimating the scaffold-level depth of coverage information and show that variation-aware scaffolders help further improve the completeness and quality of the resulting metagenomic bins. Finally, we explore how to organize enormous sets of sequence data generated through the surge of metagenomic studies. There have been recent efforts to organize and document genes found in microbial communities in “microbial gene catalogs”. Although gene catalogs are commonly used, they have not been critically evaluated for their effectiveness as a basis for metagenomic analyses. We investigated one such catalog and focus on both the approach used to construct this catalog and its effectiveness when used as a reference for microbiome studies. Our results highlight important limitations of the approach used to construct the catalog and call into question the broad usefulness of gene catalogs. We also recommend best practices for the construction and use of gene catalogs in microbiome studies and highlight opportunities for future research. With the increasing data being generated in different metagenomic studies, we believe our ideas, algorithms, and software tools are well-timed with the need of the community

Effect of different doses of probiotics on growth performance of New Hampshire chicken

The feed additive is one of the important components in poultry production to enhance the performance of birds. An experiment was conducted atNational Animal Nutrition Research Center, Khumaltar, Lalitpur, Nepal in order to evaluate the feasibility of probiotics as feed additives in New Hampshire chicken performance. The experiment was laid out with four treatments viz. basal diet which is concentrate mixture without inclusion of probiotic (Lactobacillus acidophilus - 50*109 cfu/kg, Bacillus subtilis - 1*109 cfu/kg, Bacillus licheniformis - 1*109 cfu/kg, Saccharomyces boulardii - 10*109cfu/kg) as basal diet with 0.5 gram of probiotic per liter of water , basal diet with 1 gram of probiotics per liter of water and basal diet with 1.5 gram of probiotics per liter of water under completely randomized design replicated three times. A total of 180, 8th week New Hampshire chickens were allotted with 15 birds in each experimental unit. Experimental birds were fed ad-libitum amount of formulated concentrate feed and clean drinking water with proper management practices.The highest weight gain was observed in treatment group provided with 1g of probiotic in diet (1957.96 g) followed by treatment group provided with 0.5 g of probiotic in diet (1891.40 g), 1.5g probiotic in diet (1879 g) and lowest in treatment group without probiotic in diet (1793.62 g). However there was no significant difference in total feed intake between all the treatment groups. Similarly, better feed conversion ratio (FCR) was found inbirds fed with 1g probiotic (3.59) followed by 0.5g probiotic (3.67), 1.5 g probiotic (3.72) and without probiotic in diet (3.87). Dressing percentage was also found higher (85.03 %) in birds fed with 1g of probiotic included diet than other groups of birds