The aromatic amino acid hydroxylase genes AAH1 and AAH2 in Toxoplasma gondii contribute to transmission in the cat

The Toxoplasma gondii genome contains two aromatic amino acid hydroxylase genes, AAH1 and AAH2 encode proteins that produce L-DOPA, which can serve as a precursor of catecholamine neurotransmitters. It has been suggested that this pathway elevates host dopamine levels thus making infected rodents less fearful of their definitive Felidae hosts. However, L-DOPA is also a structural precursor of melanins, secondary quinones, and dityrosine protein crosslinks, which are produced by many species. For example, dityrosine crosslinks are abundant in the oocyst walls of Eimeria and T. gondii, although their structural role has not been demonstrated, Here, we investigated the biology of AAH knockout parasites in the sexual reproductive cycle within cats. We found that ablation of the AAH genes resulted in reduced infection in the cat, lower oocyst yields, and decreased rates of sporulation. Our findings suggest that the AAH genes play a predominant role during infection in the gut of the definitive feline host

Fabrication of micro separation column for miniaturized gas chromatography system

The emphasis of this work is on the fabrication of a micro separation column for applicaton in miniaturized gas chromatography system. The micro column was made by microchannels fabricated on the silicon wafer and sealed with a glass lid. The microchannels were fabricated by wet etching process and the channels were of length 2m , width 200 μm and depth 100 μm. The channels were closed by sealing with Pyrex glass. Silicide bonding was done for the bonding of silicon with Pyrex glass. Ti was used as an intermediate layer and bonded at a temperature of 377 ◦C and a force of 1kN. During bonding Ti forms an alloy with silicon and forms Titanium silicide and this helps to bond the glass wafer with silicom wafer with microchannels etched on it

Analysis of Impact of Transformer Coupled Input Matching on Concurrent Dual-Band Low Noise Amplifier

Emerging advancements in telecommunication system need robust radio devices which can capable of working multiple frequency bands seamlessly. In any Radio Frequency (RF) receiver architecture, Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) is the mandatory front-end part in which takes place in between antenna and mixer. To support multiple frequency bands with single hardware, concurrent LNA is the more preferred topologies among others. As LNA is the very front end level of receiver, Input matching, Noise Figure (NF) and gain are the major performance parameters to be concerned. In this work, the impact of transformer coupled input matching on concurrent dual-band LNA is analyzed and verified. A concurrent LNA with concurrent matching without transformer coupling is used for comparison. A transformer coupled input matching is proposed for tunable concurrent dual-band LNA. All the circuits are implemented in UMC 180nm CMOS technology, and simulated using Cadence SpectreRF simulation tool

Spatial price integration and price transmission among major fish markets in India

The domestic fish marketing system in India deserves to be developed into a strong network of efficiently functioning markets, as more than three-fourths of the country’s total fish production is channellised domestically. With the unleashing of a new global economic order, the efficiency of markets needs to be dealt with utmost importance. The degree of spatial market integration and price transmission between the major coastal markets in India have been reported using monthly retail price data on important marine fish species. It has been observed that degree of integration and rate of price transmission differ according to species. The highest integration has been observed in mackerel, probably because of its affordability to all income classes, resulting in a wide consumer base. Among various markets, a near full transmission of prices has been observed between Kerala and Tamil Nadu markets, except in the case of shrimp. Even though a major landing centre, the price movement in Maharashtra market has been found independent of other markets. The spatial market integration between major shrimp markets in the country has appeared to be the least, possibly because of its greater market share outside the country. The study has suggested to devise strategies to bring about greater integration between these markets so that both fishermen and the fish-consuming community in the country are benefitted.Marketing,

Improving Search Rank by Optimizing TTFB

Now a days, everyone is in a great hurry and no one waits for turtles. Studies have shown that the search ranking are affected by how fast the web page loads. The simple logic behind this is “ A website which takes too much time to load provide poor user experience, today's user would quickly shift to next search result and you will end up loosing one“. The big search engine giant, Google search uses large number of parameters for determining search rankings which are mostly related to the content on your website, URL , social metrics, quality, quantity, SSL certificates, etc. In 2010, Google added one more factor in search ranking which is websites speed. TTFB (Time To First Byte) provides a clear way to determine how fast/slow there web page loads. Hence, here I'm focusing on improving website search engine ranking by applying various techniques to optimize TTF

Removal of turbidity from washing machine discharge using Strychnos potatorum seeds: Parameter optimization and mechanism prediction

In this research an attempt has been made to utilize the Strychnos potatorum seed powder as an environmentally friendly coagulant for the removal of turbidity from washing machine discharge. The performance of this system was also compared with synthetic water. Experimental studies were conducted for the maximum removal of turbidity from washing machine discharge and synthetic turbid water which were varied from 50 to 145 NTU. The effect of operating parameters such as initial turbidity, S. potatorum dosage and pH of the solution was optimized for the maximum removal of turbidity. It was seen that the percentage removal of turbidity lay was between 68-89% and 65-84% for synthetic turbid water and washing machine discharge sample respectively, at an ideal pH of 6-7. The experimental values were compared with the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models to understand the extent of influence of the sorption of the particles onto the S. potatorum seed powder. Better results with respect to concordance of experimental data were observed with Langmuir isotherm model, indicating a monolayer sorption of particles onto the S. potatorum seed powder. It was observed from the isotherm study that the sorption may also be influenced in the removal of turbidity to some extent from the washing machine discharge and synthetic water. The prepared material can be effectively utilized for the removal of turbidity from the water

T2CI-GAN: Text to Compressed Image generation using Generative Adversarial Network

The problem of generating textual descriptions for the visual data has gained research attention in the recent years. In contrast to that the problem of generating visual data from textual descriptions is still very challenging, because it requires the combination of both Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision techniques. The existing methods utilize the Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and generate the uncompressed images from textual description. However, in practice, most of the visual data are processed and transmitted in the compressed representation. Hence, the proposed work attempts to generate the visual data directly in the compressed representation form using Deep Convolutional GANs (DCGANs) to achieve the storage and computational efficiency. We propose GAN models for compressed image generation from text. The first model is directly trained with JPEG compressed DCT images (compressed domain) to generate the compressed images from text descriptions. The second model is trained with RGB images (pixel domain) to generate JPEG compressed DCT representation from text descriptions. The proposed models are tested on an open source benchmark dataset Oxford-102 Flower images using both RGB and JPEG compressed versions, and accomplished the state-of-the-art performance in the JPEG compressed domain. The code will be publicly released at GitHub after acceptance of paper.Comment: Accepted for publication at IAPR's 6th CVIP 202