Initial Filling of Tehri Reservoir — Analysis of Seepage Data

Initial Filling of reservoirs in dams, particularly the embankment type, is a very important phase as unusual behaviour / accidents of many dams have been reported during this period. A regular observation / analysis of quantum of seepage vis-à-vis the reservoir level is a significant activity so that any serious development inside the body of dam and foundation / abutments rocks are revealed in advance and remedial measures are taken up timely to prevent catastrophic failures. At Tehri, a 260.5m high earth & rockfill dam has been constructed across river Bhagirathi, a tributary of mighty river Ganga in India. Seepage discharge data of first two years of Initial Filling of Tehri reservoir has been analysed, which has led to a few important conclusions. The Analysis of Seepage data for the Initial Filling of Tehri reservoir is presented in the paper

Initial Filling of Tehri Reservoir — Analysis of Seepage Data

Initial Filling of reservoirs in dams, particularly the embankment type, is a very important phase as unusual behaviour / accidents of many dams have been reported during this period. A regular observation / analysis of quantum of seepage vis-à-vis the reservoir level is a significant activity so that any serious development inside the body of dam and foundation / abutments rocks are revealed in advance and remedial measures are taken up timely to prevent catastrophic failures. At Tehri, a 260.5m high earth & rockfill dam has been constructed across river Bhagirathi, a tributary of mighty river Ganga in India. Seepage discharge data of first two years of Initial Filling of Tehri reservoir has been analysed, which has led to a few important conclusions. The Analysis of Seepage data for the Initial Filling of Tehri reservoir is presented in the paper

Integrated Approach for Stabilisation of Varunavat Parvat Landslide – A Case Study

Uttarkashi Township, located on the toe of the Varunavat Parvat, in the State of Uttarakhand in North India is known for having a history of a number of natural disasters. One of such disaster was a major landslide on the slopes of the Varunavat Parvat, in the year 2003. There had been huge loss of property of residential complexes, office buildings, hotels and many other business apartments. The risk of further such slides continuously hovered over the town which was the serious concern of District and State Authorities. An integrated approach of long term stabilization measures with flattening of slopes with suitable berms, effective drainage arrangement (surface & sub-surface), suitable erosion control measures , multistage protection measures by providing catch pits, wide platforms, retaining walls and construction of tunnel on the national highway for mitigating the rock fall hazards are being adopted, to minimize the impact of disaster in future so that people of Uttarkashi Town can live safely without fear. The paper highlights the description of the problem, probable causes of the Landslide, Geology of the area, stability analysis, measures adopted for averting future landslide and subsequent rock fall hazard

Effect of substrate on physical properties of pulse laser deposited ZnO thin films

ZnO is a II-VI group semiconductor material with a large direct band gap. Zinc oxide films are prepared by Pulse Laser Deposition (PLD) technique on to highly cleaned glass, ITO coated glass and Si (100) substrates. The as-prepared films are characterized by optical absorption and transmission spectra and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) patterns. The absorption spectra and transmission spectra of the deposited ZnO films are taken from UV-VIS-NIR Spectrophotometer at room temperature. The band gap of the ZnO film is determined from absorption measurements using Tauc relation for direct band gap materials while optical constants of the ZnO film are determined from transmission measurements by Manifacier's envelope method. The effect of lattice mismatching between the lattices of the substrate and of the deposited material on the structural properties and crystallite size of the deposited films are studied using XRD patterns of ZnO films

Prevalence of Need of Orthodontic Treatment in 7–16-Year-Old School Children in Udaipur City, India

Objective:The study aimed to estimate the need of orthodontic treatment in 7-16-year-old school children in Udaipur city, India.Methods:This cross sectional study enrolled 1029 subjects (661 males and 368 females) belonging to Udaipur city, Rajasthan, India. Subjects who had not undergone orthodontic treatment were randomly selected. The need for orthodontic treatment was assessed using the Dental Health Component of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN) by the same calibrated examiner. Collected data were quantitatively analyzed, and the difference pertaining to prevalence between males and females was measured using the chi-square test.Results:A Grade 1 IOTN score was observed in 48.4% of the population. Grade 2 was observed in 22.9% of the population. A significant difference was noted for the prevalence of Grades 1, 2, and 3 between male and female children, with male children showing greater prevalence of malocclusion grades. Grades 4 and 5, which were noted less frequently, did not show a significant difference with respect to sex.Conclusion:A higher percentage of the sample required moderate orthodontic treatment. This necessitates proper education and motivation to undergo orthodontic treatment

Synonymous Codon Ordering: A Subtle but Prevalent Strategy of Bacteria to Improve Translational Efficiency

Background: In yeast coding sequences, once a particular codon has been used, subsequent occurrence of the same amino acid tends to use codons sharing the same tRNA. Such a phenomenon of co-tRNA codons pairing bias (CTCPB) is also found in some other eukaryotes but it is not known whether it occurs in prokaryotes. Methodology/Principal Findings: In this study, we focused on a total of 773 bacterial genomes to investigate their synonymous codon pairing preferences. After calculating the actual frequencies of synonymous codon pairs and comparing them with their expected values, we detected an obvious pairing bias towards identical codon pairs. This seems consistent with the previously reported CTCPB phenomenon, since identical codons are certainly read by the same tRNA. However, among co-tRNA but non-identical codon pairs, only 22 were often found overrepresented, suggesting that many co-tRNA codons actually do not preferentially pair together in prokaryotes. Therefore, the previously reported co-tRNA codons pairing rule needs to be more rigorously defined. The affinity differences between a tRNA anticodon and its readable codons should be taken into account. Moreover, both within-gene-shuffling tests and phylogenetic analyses support the idea that translational selection played an important role in shaping the observed synonymous codon pairing pattern in prokaryotes. Conclusions: Overall, a high level of synonymous codon pairing bias was detected in 73 % investigated bacterial species

ProteinHistorian: Tools for the Comparative Analysis of Eukaryote Protein Origin

The evolutionary history of a protein reflects the functional history of its ancestors. Recent phylogenetic studies identified distinct evolutionary signatures that characterize proteins involved in cancer, Mendelian disease, and different ontogenic stages. Despite the potential to yield insight into the cellular functions and interactions of proteins, such comparative phylogenetic analyses are rarely performed, because they require custom algorithms. We developed ProteinHistorian to make tools for performing analyses of protein origins widely available. Given a list of proteins of interest, ProteinHistorian estimates the phylogenetic age of each protein, quantifies enrichment for proteins of specific ages, and compares variation in protein age with other protein attributes. ProteinHistorian allows flexibility in the definition of protein age by including several algorithms for estimating ages from different databases of evolutionary relationships. We illustrate the use of ProteinHistorian with three example analyses. First, we demonstrate that proteins with high expression in human, compared to chimpanzee and rhesus macaque, are significantly younger than those with human-specific low expression. Next, we show that human proteins with annotated regulatory functions are significantly younger than proteins with catalytic functions. Finally, we compare protein length and age in many eukaryotic species and, as expected from previous studies, find a positive, though often weak, correlation between protein age and length. ProteinHistorian is available through a web server with an intuitive interface and as a set of command line tools; this allows biologists and bioinformaticians alike to integrate these approaches into their analysis pipelines. ProteinHistorian's modular, extensible design facilitates the integration of new datasets and algorithms. The ProteinHistorian web server, source code, and pre-computed ages for 32 eukaryotic genomes are freely available under the GNU public license at http://lighthouse.ucsf.edu/ProteinHistorian/

MycoRRdb: A Database of Computationally Identified Regulatory Regions within Intergenic Sequences in Mycobacterial Genomes

The identification of regulatory regions for a gene is an important step towards deciphering the gene regulation. Regulatory regions tend to be conserved under evolution that facilitates the application of comparative genomics to identify such regions. The present study is an attempt to make use of this attribute to identify regulatory regions in the Mycobacterium species followed by the development of a database, MycoRRdb. It consist the regulatory regions identified within the intergenic distances of 25 mycobacterial species. MycoRRdb allows to retrieve the identified intergenic regulatory elements in the mycobacterial genomes. In addition to the predicted motifs, it also allows user to retrieve the Reciprocal Best BLAST Hits across the mycobacterial genomes. It is a useful resource to understand the transcriptional regulatory mechanism of mycobacterial species. This database is first of its kind which specifically addresses cis-regulatory regions and also comprehensive to the mycobacterial species. Database URL: http://mycorrdb.uohbif.in

Structure and Age Jointly Influence Rates of Protein Evolution

What factors determine a protein's rate of evolution are actively debated. Especially unclear is the relative role of intrinsic factors of present-day proteins versus historical factors such as protein age. Here we study the interplay of structural properties and evolutionary age, as determinants of protein evolutionary rate. We use a large set of one-to-one orthologs between human and mouse proteins, with mapped PDB structures. We report that previously observed structural correlations also hold within each age group – including relationships between solvent accessibility, designabililty, and evolutionary rates. However, age also plays a crucial role: age modulates the relationship between solvent accessibility and rate. Additionally, younger proteins, despite being less designable, tend to evolve faster than older proteins. We show that previously reported relationships between age and rate cannot be explained by structural biases among age groups. Finally, we introduce a knowledge-based potential function to study the stability of proteins through large-scale computation. We find that older proteins are more stable for their native structure, and more robust to mutations, than younger ones. Our results underscore that several determinants, both intrinsic and historical, can interact to determine rates of protein evolution