Competition policy in the age of ‘Big Tech’: Assessing the EU’s approach

This perspective article analyses the EU’s approach to digital competition policy, focusing on its investigations into ‘Big Tech’ i.e., Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, or GAFA. It assesses the changing nature of competition policy and looks at the legal and institutional context of the EU’s investigations. Analysing the impact on stakeholders and the broader policy implications, it concludes that digital regulation should not be regional and that the inclusion of technology companies coupled with the establishment of a global framework is necessary for the process of adapting competition policies for the digital age

Bioactivity of surface modified porous titanium

Solid metals have previously been widely used for implant fabrication in the replacement of human hard tissues. For the implant-bone interface bonding newer materials are now-a-days being introduced with porosity. With tissue ingrowth into the porous structure of the implant this bonding has subsequently been enhanced. Pore interconnectivity facilitates extensive body fluid transport through the metallic implants. In this present study, porous titanium samples with interconnected 3D pores were taken for various surface chemical treatments that will enhance the surface chemistry and topology. Ti-samples were subjected to alkali, dual acid, citric acid and fluoride treatment to study the role of surface modified titanium in in-vitro bioactivity and protein adhesion. Porosity measurement being a vital parameter was also calculated with the surface porosity (optical microscope) being 41.36% and the bulk porosity (Archimedes’ Principle) as 50.347%. XRD analysis shows the diffraction pattern of the samples corresponding to titanium with the absence of any new phase owing to a chemical treatment. Both the sets of samples were characterized before and after immersing in SBF for 4 weeks. The sample treated with fluoride seemed to nucleate more as compared to others. Protein adsorption study was carried out with Bradford reagent using Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA). The sample with alkali treatment showed maximum adsorption due to hydrolyzed surface enhancing protein adsorption. The results with improved properties of Ti make it a preferable potential use in tissue engineering

Comparative study between intrauterine insemination following preovulatory pertubation versus intrauterine insemination alone in induced ovulation cycles in infertility patients

Background: To compare the efficacy of pertubation with low dose lignocaine before ovulation followed by intrauterine insemination versus intrauterine insemination alone in induced ovulation cycles in infertility patients.Methods: Total 60 ovulation induction cycles were studied, were randomly divided in Group A and Group B of 30 cycles each. Ovulation induction was done with clomiphene citrate / gonadotrophins. Post ovulation IUI was done in both the groups. Additionally, preovulatory pertubation with low dose lignocaine diluted in balanced salt solution was done 10-12 hrs after ovulation trigger in group A. The primary outcome conception (positive urine pregnancy test) in patients were compared between two groups. The secondary outcomes, full term pregnancy, abortion, ectopic pregnancy, procedural pain, infection, haemorrhage, and long term complications were also studied and compared.Results: Pregnancy rate was found to be slightly more in the preovulatory perturbation with low dose lignocaine and IUI group (20.6% in Group A) as compared to IUI alone group (14.7% in Group B). But the difference was not found to be statistically significant (p>0.05). The spontaneous pregnancy rates in patients with endometriosis is <5%. In the intervention group it was 37.5% in cases with endometriosis, which was encouraging. The pertubation treatment used in this study proved to be a safe treatment option without complications. Procedure was associated with mild to moderate pain in 76% patients and severe in 8.8% patients and one patient (2.9%) had syncope. Post procedure PID was noted in one patient (2.9%).Conclusions: Preovulatory perturbation followed by IUI was associated with increased clinical pregnancy rate as compared with IUI alone in induced ovulation cycles. The efficacy was more pronounced in the patients with endometriosis. It is safe and well tolerated

Experimental and numerical investigation of pilot scale microwave assisted transesterification process for biodiesel production

The goal of this study was to design and test a pilot scale process for biodiesel production using advanced microwave technology and develop a numerical model for investigating various parameters affecting this process. Dielectric properties of materials play a major role in microwave design of a process. The dielectric properties (dielectric constant ε’ and dielectric loss ε”) of biodiesel precursors: soybean oil, alcohols and catalyst and their different mixtures were measured at four different temperatures (30°C, 45°C, 60°C and 75°C) and in the frequency range of 154 MHz to 4.5 GHz. Results indicate that the microwave dielectric properties of almost all components depend on both temperature and frequency. Addition of catalyst changed the properties of solvent due to the strong ionic nature. A scaled up version of a continuous microwave transesterification process was designed, built and tested. Experimental parameters were set based on previous laboratory scale results. Experiments were performed in a well controlled continuous pilot scale microwave reactor at temperatures of 60°C and 75°C and processing times of 5 to 15 minutes. Microwave power required to achieve the temperature of 60°C was 4000W and for 75°C was 4700W. Ethanol was used as a solvent with NaOH as a catalyst (\u3c 0.2% by weight of oil). The conversion obtained was \u3e99% for all experimental conditions. The final objective was to develop a basic numerical model of continuous electromagnetic heating of biodiesel precursors. A finite element model was built using COMSOL Multiphysics 4.2 software. High frequency electromagnetic problem was coupled with the non-isothermal flow problem. The model was tested for the two different power levels. The electric field, electromagnetic power flow and temperature profiles were studied. Resulting temperature profiles were verified by comparing to the experimental data. The presented study assists in understanding microwave heating application for biodiesel production. The dielectric property analysis gives a clear picture of interaction of biodiesel components with microwave irradiation, numerical model aids in understanding temperature distribution while experiments validate the results. This study can be applied to optimize the microwave assisted continuous biodiesel production process

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationSELEX technology has been a powerful tool to evolve aptamers that can bind tightly and specifically to a target. Aptamers are nucleic acids with the propensity to assume three-dimensional structures facilitating specific binding interactions with high affinity to the target. Principally, aptamers are selected from a large pool of random sequences by an iterative in vitro method. The main advantages of this technology are that aptamers can be produced in a large scale by a controlled combinatorial chemistry method, easily derivatized regioselectively for detection using dyes, and they are stable for long periods at room temperature when dry. Therefore, single-stranded DNA aptamers are robust binding agents with good shelf-life and easy production and do not require a biological host. One of the most difficult challenges of this technology is that there is no standardized SELEX protocol applicable for all types of target, which in this dissertation includes damaged bases and nucleosides. The first work presented here focuses on identification of products that formed from the reaction of Ni(II)-mediated sulfate radical oxidation of the guanine base. It was observed that a Ni(II)-macrocyclic square-planar complex, NiCR, in the presence of KHSO5 can generate a specific hydantoin lesion called 2-iminohydantoin (2-Ih) in both nucleoside and single-stranded DNA, along with the other well-known guanine oxidation products. The initial goal was to optimize the 2-Ih formation followed by isolation of this iv lesion. Fine tuning the oxidation conditions with respect to the concentration of KHSO5 added in certain time intervals made it possible to generate 2-Ih exclusively. Secondly, SELEX technology was used to select aptamers for the oxidized damaged bases and nucleosides as an approach toward detection of these targets. The structure-switching or capture SELEX technique was used as a successful method to generate DNA aptamers for these targets that are difficult to immobilize or derivatize and purify in the large quantities needed to perform typical SELEX procedures. The targets include the most common oxidation products that are generated as a part of the most important cellular repair pathways, base excision and nuclear excision repair. These products are the damaged nucleobases and 2'-deoxynucleosides of 8-oxo-7,8- dihydroguanine (8-oxo-G) and spiroiminodihydantoin (Sp). This is the first time that aptamers are reported for the damaged diastereomeric lesions, dSp. Lastly, sensors have been developed by truncating these aptamers as a part of post- SELEX modification and the binding affinities for these sensors toward the damaged lesions were determined. The future direction aims toward testing these aptamers by using split aptamer technology and testing these in cellular samples

Hate Speech Detection in Hindi

Social media is a great place to share one’s thoughts and to express oneself. Very often the same social media platforms become a means for spewing hatred.The large amount of data being shared on these platforms make it difficult to moderate the content shared by users. In a diverse country like India hate is present on social media in all regional languages, making it even more difficult to detect hate because of a lack of enough data to train deep/ machine learning models to make them understand regional languages.This work is our attempt at tackling hate speech in Hindi. We experiment with embeddings like fastText and GloVe combined with machine learning classifiers like logistic regression and decision tree classifier. We also experiment with transformer based embeddings like distilBERT and MuRIL.The transformer based models perform better in our task and we achieve an F1 score of 0.73 with the help of MuRIL embeddings

Elucidating a novel apocarotenoid signal controlling root development in plants

Carotenoids are organic pigments that are essential for animal and human health. They provide a precursor for Vitamin A synthesis and are required for the prevention of eye diseases and certain types of cancer. In plants, they facilitate photosynthesis and photoprotection. Carotenoids can undergo specific enzymatic cleavage by carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases (CCD’s) to produce phytohormones (e.g. strigolactone and abscisic acid) and apocarotenoids (e.g. β-ionone), of which some are generated by non-enzymatic oxidative cleavage (e.g. β-cyclocitral). Apocarotenoids such as β-cyclocitral act as signalling molecules to not only maintain cellular homeostasis in response to photo-oxidative stress, but also promote cell divisions in root meristems, stimulating root branching and growth. In addition to β-carotene, cis-carotenes have also been proposed to act as substrates for the generation of apocarotenoid metabolites that control shoot development and plastid biogenesis. The carotenoid-derived substrates and apocarotenoid signalling pathways that control root development remain to be elucidated. Interestingly, it was noted that the loss-in-function of the CAROTENOID ISOMERASE (CRTISO) gene causes a reduction in the primary root length and number of lateral roots in Arabidopsis mutants as compared to wild-type. The mutants (ccr2) lack CRTISO activity and show an early anchor root formation. Root tissues of the mutant grown on artificial media under fluorescent light were observed to accumulate high levels of β-carotene, an altered xanthophyll composition and trace amounts of cis-carotenes. I hypothesized that an apocarotenoid signal generated from either β-carotene or an upstream cis-carotene can control root architecture in Arabidopsis. A forward genetics approach using chemical mutagenesis successfully generated six to twelve independent revertant ccr2 (rccr2) mutant lines that reproducibly (rccr2#3, 6, 7, 11, 14, 18, 25, 26, 32, 33, 35, 37) displayed a longer primary root, varied lateral and anchor root formation compared to ccr2. Quantification of carotenoid content in leaves and roots of ccr2 and rccr2 mutant lines using HPLC verified reduced lutein, altered xanthophyll compositions and the accumulation of cis-carotenes compared to WT. The first objective of the study was to determine why the ccr2 primary roots were shorter. The next question that I addressed was if the carotenoid substrate required enzymatic cleavage to generate an apocarotenoid signal. In conclusion, with this study, I have ruled out the likelihood of a cis-carotene produced in ccr2 roots as a substrate for the production of a cleavable signal. Rather, I provide evidence that a β-carotene derived cleavage product generated in ccr2 roots may be regulating root cell expansion in the elongation zone and the timing of anchor root formation

Thermo-Catalytic Upgrading of Pyrolysis Vapors Using Electromagnetic Heating

Electromagnetic heating offers several advantages such as rapid heating rates, accurate temperature control and energy efficiency over conventional reactors. The goal of this study was to design an effective and energy efficient catalytic reactor for pyrolysis vapor upgrading. An induction based catalytic reactor was designed for upgrading of pyrolysis vapors. The effect of catalyst bed temperatures (290°, 330° and 370°C) and biomass to catalyst ratios of 1, 1.5 and 2 was studied. The results were compared to conventional heating reactor. Induction heating reactor performance exceeded that of conventional heater. The biomass to catalyst ratio of 2 in combination with the temperature of 370°C gave the highest aromatics yield. A microwave based catalytic reactor was designed for pyrolysis vapor upgrading. Microwave heating had higher product selectivity and energy efficiency compared to conventional and induction heating reactors. Rate of deterioration of catalyst mainly due to coking was lower for microwave heated catalyst. Higher aromatic hydrocarbon yield, lower oxygen content and high heating value value of bio-oil was obtained by microwave heating of catalyst. A numerical model studying the microwave heating of porous catalyst bed was developed using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.1. The model was validated against the experimental data. The temperature profiles obtained from microwave heating were compared to those obtained from conventional heating. The model was in good agreement with the experimental results. The sample shape, size and position was found to have significant effect on microwave heating of porous catalyst bed

ANTICANCER DRUGS AS PROSPECTIVE EFFLUX PUMP INHIBITORS FOR SALMONELLA TYPHI PRODUCE CONFLICTING RESULTS IN IN SILICO AND IN VITRO STUDIES

Objective: Anticancer drugs paclitaxel and vinblastine were tested for their potential as efflux pump inhibitors for Salmonella Typhi-based on in silico and in vitro studies.Methods: Three-dimensional protein models of AcrAB-TolC of Salmonella Typhi were generated by online server PHYRE-2. The quality of 3D structures was assessed by PROCHECK, SWISS MODEL. Docking analysis of anticancer drugs with AcrA, AcrB and TolC subunits were performed after refining the homology models with Modrefiner. Salmonella Typhi (S. Typhi) efflux pump activity was measured by ethidium bromide (EtBr) cartwheel and semi-automated fluorometry methods respectively. Fluorescence intensity in bacterial colonies was measured under different treatment conditions (with or without drugs) on Muller Hinton agar (MHA) plates containing EtBr in cartwheel assay. EtBr efflux assay was determined following the loading of bacteria with EtBr and fluorescence was recorded over fixed time period with the help of fluorescent spectrophotometer. The results obtained were compared with the control.Results: Efflux pump inhibitor (EPIs) activity of paclitaxel and vinblastine determined by EtBr cartwheel assay registered no activity whereas semi-automated fluorescent assay revealed marginal activity when compared to control.Conclusion: We report the conflicting result of in silico and in vitro studies in predicting the antimicrobial effect of mainstream anticancer drugs as efflux pump inhibitors for Salmonella Typhi

Preliminary in-vitro evaluation of marketed formulations for antacid activity

Background: Hydrochloric acid (pH 1.5-3.5) being the major component of gastric acid is produced by parietal cells of stomach. Its secretion is a complex and relatively energetically expensive process. The preservation of acidity of stomach is evidently important because of its implications in peptic and duodenal ulceration.Methods: In the present study, we attempted to compare the activity of 13 (F1-F13) antacid formulations (5-liquid, 4- quick releases and 4- tablets) by using acid-base neutralization studies. Preliminary antacid test (PAT) was performed to define whether the given formulation falls under the category of antacid wherein the pH of the antacid-acid (HCl) solution should be higher than pH of 3.5. The chosen antacids were further subjected to acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) (reaction between the sample of antacid and amount of acid neutralized by the formulation) and acid neutralizing potential (ANP) which explains the time duration during which a given sample of antacid can maintain pH above 3.5).Results: Out of the 13 samples tested, two formulations of pastels (F6, F12) were rejected as per the standard protocol of classifying formulations as antacids after screening for PAT. Sample F5 was found to have the highest ANC. F7 also showed highest ANC among the tablets tested. Also, F13 showed better ANC and ANP as in comparison to other quick releases.Conclusions: Digene products (F5, F7, and F13) showed better antacid properties. This data would provide insights into development of drug, comparison between antacids depending on their chemical formulation and determination of dosage to avoid plausible side effects