MICROFLUIDIC PAPER-BASED ANALYTICAL DEVICES USING PLASMA PROCESSES

Using pentafluoroethane (PFE) and O2 as precursor gases, plasma (glow discharge) processes were developed to fabricate fully enclosed and semi-enclosed microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μ-PADs) as a platform to conduct colorimetric detection of biomarkers for low-cost disease diagnostics. Results indicate that fully enclosed devices can be easily packaged using non-porous adhesive tape to inhibit sample contamination and evaporation thus making the proposed μ-PADs more suitable for field use. A glucose sensor was developed to demonstrate the functionality of the μ-PAD. Furthermore, flow control functionality was incorporated in fully enclosed devices to automate multistep protocol assays such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. It was shown that by varying the O2 plasma etching time, the amount of residual hydrophobic fluorocarbon and thus the fluid flow speed can be varied inside the fully enclosed channels. As a proof-of-concept, a device that can sequentially deliver and react three reagents each with different pH to a detection zone deposited with a pH indicator was designed and fabricated. Additionally, a plasma process to fabricate semi-enclosed μ-PADs directly on commercially available RBC separation (from whole blood) membrane (Whatman LF1 membrane) was developed. Using cellulose nanocrystal modification of LF1 membrane and by bonding the μ-PAD with adhesive tape, a device that can detect disease biomarkers such as glucose and albumin in a whole blood sample without the need for external equipment was developed. Moreover, the compatibility of semi-enclosed μ-PADs with a cell-free expression system for zinc diagnostic in whole blood was tested.Ph.D

Comparision of functional outcome between traditional and lateral crossed pinning in supra condylar humerus fractures of children

AIM OF THE STUDY: To evaluate the functional outcome of a modified technique of crossed pinning comparing it with traditional techniques. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study groups A and B were compared with respect to fracture characteristics, post-reduction radiographs which shows satisfactory randomization. Included in this study are 20 patients who were operated for displaced type III supracondylar fracture of humerus. The average age group 10 years with male preponderance. All were of type III gartland’s with. In group A (lateral pinning group). Displacement posteromedial in 8 patients, 2 had posterolateral. No Iatrogenic ulnar nerve injury was seen. No patients had post-operative loss of reduction. Flynn criteria satisfactory in 8 unsatisfactory in 2 patients. Only 2 had minor limitation in daily activities. The group B (traditional pinning group) Displacement was posteromedial in 9 patients, 1 had posterolateral. 2 patients had iatrogenic ulnar nerve injury. No patients had post-operative loss of reduction. Flynn criteria satisfactory in 8 unsatisfactory in 2. 8 patients had full return to function. Only 2 had minor limitation in daily activities. Average follow-up was 6 months in this study. CONCLUSION: Lateral crossed pinning can be used especially in very unstable fractures where lateral only pinning cannot give enough stability and it gives good results when general principles of surgery are followed with a lower risk of iatrogenic ulnar nerve injuries

Design of Low Power MAX Operator for Multi-valued Logic System

AbstractA voltage-mode three transistor based MAX circuit for implementation of multi-valued logic (MVL) system is proposed in this paper. The proposed MAX operates at very low power consumption ranging in micro watts. To evaluate MAX performance, a NOR gate realization is done and compared to standard CMOS NOR gate. The HSpice simulation result confirms the MAX based NOR gate to operate with minimal delay at low power level. The simulations have been performed on 180nm technology

Low voltage high bandwidth self-biased high swing cascode current mirror

A low voltage self-biased high swing cascode current mirror (SHCCM) with improved bandwidth has been proposed. The recently reported SHCCM architecture use the bulk-driven quasi-floating gate (BDQFG) MOS transistors to enhance the effective transconductance which improves the current mirror input resistance and bandwidth range over the same architecture realized using bulk-driven MOS transistors. To further improve the bandwidth the proposed BDQFG based SHCCM uses two resistances which makes the current mirror frequency response free from input capacitors and also reduces the parasitic capacitance effect which results in increased bandwidth with an advantage of having no degradation in other performance parameters of current mirror. The proposed current mirror operates well for input current range from 0 to 200 μA with good linearity and shows the bandwidth of 298 MHz (i.e., 1.6 times over prior reported BDQFG based SHCCM). The observed input and output resistance is 306 Ω and 165 kΩ, respectively. Further, the THD analysis is carried to prove the robustness of proposed current mirror. The complete analysis is performed on UMC 0.18 μm technology using HSpice

Utilization Pattern of Statins in an Indian Population.

Objective: To evaluate the safety and efficacy of statins in an Indian population attending a cardiology clinic and thereby assess the utilization pattern of the drugs. Study design: It is a prospective study. Study setting: The study was conducted in Department of Cardiology, Kovai Medical Center and Hospital in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu Study period: The study was conducted over a period of 6 months from July 2011 to December 2011 Inclusion criteria: All patients diagnosed with dyslipidemia and cardiovascular risk factors, prescribed with statins for the first time in the Department of Cardiology, Kovai Medical Center Hospital Coimbatore. Exclusion criteria : Patients who were previously on Statin therapy will be excluded from the study and Patients without a lipid profile at their first review. CONCLUSION: The aim of the study was to assess the statin use in an Indian clinical setting in terms of class, dose, and type of prevention and monitoring of Adverse Drug Reactions. In the study population atorvastatin was prescribed in 78.12% of patients and rosuvastatin was prescribed in 28.87% of the patients only. Most of the patients are prescribed with atorvastatin 40mg (28.12%) and the least number of patients were prescribed with rosuvastatin 20mg (3.12%). The lipid reduction properties of statins were assessed by measuring the LDL-C level of the patients at baseline and at review. The study revealed that at review, atorvastatin showed a significant reduction in LDL-C level from the baseline at prescribed doses 10mg, 40mg, and 80mg. There was a substantial reduction in the LDL-C level from the baseline in the patients prescribed with atorvastatin 5mg and rosuvastatin 10mg at review, eventhough the reduction was found to be non significant. The study was also aimed to check the efficacy of statin to achieve the target LDL-C level of the patients and it was found that 93.75% of the patients achieved their target LDL-C level on treatment with statins. The Adverse Drug Reactions were monitored and related to different characteristics of the study population. The main ADR found in the study population was muscle pain and was predominant in the age group of 61-70 years. The baseline LDL-C of the patients prescribed with atorvastatin 10mg (145.25±21.96) was found to be higher than that of the patients with atorvastatin 40mg (101.77±12.24). The adherence of the patients to prescribed statin was checked by using Morisky‟s-8 questionnaire and it was found that 67.4 % of patients were highly adherent to their treatment plan. 22.58% of patients showed medium adherence and 9.67% of patients showed low adherence to their treatment plans

SHORT TERM HYDRO THERMAL SCHEDULING PROBLEM: A REVIEW

Operation of a system having both hydro and thermal plants is far more complex and is of much more importance in a modern interconnected power system. The objective of the STHS problem is to optimize the electricity production, considering a short-term planning horizon. This paper presents an extensive review of a short term hydro thermal scheduling problem. The paper demonstrates results of various evolutionary and analytical methods applied on a short term hydro thermal scheduling problem .All the assumptions made and a brief description of the solution methods is presented in the paper. The paper provides helpful information and resources for the future studies for researchers those interested in the problem or intending to do additional research in this area

Remnant vegetation in farmland - its significance in ethnobotany and local ecosystem

This paper evaluated the structure of remnant vegetation (RV) in and around the farmlands of Kancheepuram District, Tamil Nadu of Southern India, to understand its significance in the local ecosystem. Stratified quadrats along nine randomly selected transects were used for sampling vegetation. The study recorded 2495 specimens of 96 plant species under 43 families in 1848 quadrats (88 of 10 m × 10 m, 352 of 5 m × 5 m and 1408 of 1 m × 1 m dimensions) while there was a possibility of recording more species with better sampling efforts. To know the ethnobotanical uses of plants, interviews were conducted with local villagers and people belonging to the Irula tribe, and later the data were collated with published information. Sixty -six plant species were recorded with traditional uses in food, fodder, fuel, condiment and medicine. Prosopis juliflora, an alien invasive species, was a serious threat to the native flora since higher P. juliflora abundance was associated with declining diversity of other plants. The study found that the absence of monitoring and management protocols leading to uncontrolled propagation of invasive species could cause potential damage to the region’s dry evergreen forests, which were often located near the farmlands

Thermoresponsive zwitterionic poly(phosphobetaine) microgels: Effect of macro-RAFT chain length and cross-linker molecular weight on their antifouling properties

Adsorption of proteins on biological surfaces is a detrimental phenomenon that reduces the work-life of the implants in various biomedical applications. Here, we synthesized a new class of thermoresponsive zwitterionic poly(phosphobetaine) (PMPC) microgel with excellent surface antifouling property by macro-RAFT mediated thiol-epoxy click reaction. End-group modified zwitterionic PMPC homopolymers with well-defined molecular weight and narrow dispersity were grafted onto poly(N-vinylcaprolactam-co-glycidyl methacrylate) (PVG) copolymer backbone followed by addition of a cross-linker, leading to microgel formation. While no upper critical solution temperature (UCST) was found in poly(N-vinylcaprolactam-co-glycidyl methacrylate-g-2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine) (PVGP) graft copolymers, the corresponding microgels exhibited both UCST and lower critical solution temperature (LCST) transitions, related to the swelling and collapse of PMPC and poly (N-vinylcaprolactam) (PVCL) components respectively. An increase in the molecular chain length of the PMPC increased the shifting of UCST and LCST of the microgels to higher temperatures, due to the ability of zwitterionic groups to coordinate a large number of water molecules. The effect of the variation in the molecular weights of amphiphilic poly(ethylene glycol) diamine (PEG-NH2) cross-linker was also reflected in both temperature and salt responsiveness of the microgels. The efficacy of the microgels as potential antifouling materials was further studied by fluorescence microscopy and XPS analysis on microgel coatings treated with FITC-BSA solution and pure BSA solution respectively. Lower protein adsorption was observed for microgels grafted with higher molecular chain length of PMPC, whereas, the microgels synthesized using higher molecular weight PEG-NH2 diamine cross-linker displayed greater protein adsorption on their surfaces

Mining of Microbial Genomes for the Novel Sources of Nitrilases

Next-generation DNA sequencing (NGS) has made it feasible to sequence large number of microbial genomes and advancements in computational biology have opened enormous opportunities to mine genome sequence data for novel genes and enzymes or their sources. In the present communication in silico mining of microbial genomes has been carried out to find novel sources of nitrilases. The sequences selected were analyzed for homology and considered for designing motifs. The manually designed motifs based on amino acid sequences of nitrilases were used to screen 2000 microbial genomes (translated to proteomes). This resulted in identification of one hundred thirty-eight putative/hypothetical sequences which could potentially code for nitrilase activity. In vitro validation of nine predicted sources of nitrilases was done for nitrile/cyanide hydrolyzing activity. Out of nine predicted nitrilases, Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, Sphingopyxis alaskensis, Saccharomonospora viridis, and Shimwellia blattae were specific for aliphatic nitriles, whereas nitrilases from Geodermatophilus obscurus, Nocardiopsis dassonvillei, Runella slithyformis, and Streptomyces albus possessed activity for aromatic nitriles. Flavobacterium indicum was specific towards potassium cyanide (KCN) which revealed the presence of nitrilase homolog, that is, cyanide dihydratase with no activity for either aliphatic, aromatic, or aryl nitriles. The present study reports the novel sources of nitrilases and cyanide dihydratase which were not reported hitherto by in silico or in vitro studies