Strategic Contours: India and Myanmar

India and Myanmar have deep historical, cultural, ethnic, and commercial links. Common geopolitical, economic, and security interestsexist that are spread across vast land and maritime frontiers. Apart from this, there is a sizeable Indian diaspora residing in Myanmarfor generations. India’s land border with Myanmar of over 1600 km, involving Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoramadjoin Kachin, Sagaing, and Chin states across. Myanmar also serves as the land bridge to South East Asia and coupled with the maritime connection in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, makes it a very important neighbor in the region’s security calculus

Strategic Contours: India and Myanmar

India and Myanmar have deep historical, cultural, ethnic, and commercial links. Common geopolitical, economic, and security interestsexist that are spread across vast land and maritime frontiers. Apart from this, there is a sizeable Indian diaspora residing in Myanmarfor generations. India’s land border with Myanmar of over 1600 km, involving Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoramadjoin Kachin, Sagaing, and Chin states across. Myanmar also serves as the land bridge to South East Asia and coupled with the maritime connection in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, makes it a very important neighbor in the region’s security calculus

Stochastic Assessment of Bone Fragility in Human Lumbar Spine

Osteoporotic fractures are a vital public health concern and create a great economic burden for our society. It is estimated that more than 2 million fractures occur in the United States at a cost of $17 billion each year. Deterioration of microarchitecture of trabecular bone is considered as a major contributor to bone fragility. Current clinical imaging modalities such as Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) are not able to describe bone microarchitecture due to their low resolution. The main objective of this study was to obtain the relationship between stochastic parameters calculated from bone mineral density (BMD) maps of DXA scans and the microarchitecture parameters measured from three dimensional (3D) images of human lumbar vertebrae acquired using a Micro-Computed Tomography (Micro-CT) scanner. Eighteen human lumbar vertebrae with intact posterior elements were scanned in the posterior-anterior projection using a DXA scanner. Stochastic parameters such as correlation length (L), sill variance (C) and nugget variance ( ) were calculated by fitting a theoretical model onto the experimental variogram of the BMD map of the human vertebrae. In addition, microarchitecture parameters such as bone volume fraction (BV/TV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th), trabecular separation (Tb.Sp), trabecular number (Tb.N), connectivity density (Conn.Dn), and bone surface-to-volume ratio (BS/BV) were measured from 3D images of the same human lumbar vertebrae. Significant correlations were observed between stochastic predictors and microarchitecture parameters of trabecular bone. Specifically, the sill variance was positively correlated with the bone volume fraction, trabecular thickness, trabecular number, connectivity density and negatively correlated with the bone surface to volume ratio and trabecular separation. This study demonstrates that stochastic assessment of the inhomogeneity of bone mineral density from routine clinical DXA scans of human lumbar vertebrae may have the potential to serve as a valuable clinical tool in enhancing the prediction of risks for osteoporotic fractures in the spine. The main advantage of using DXA scans is that it would be cost effective, since most hospitals already have DXA machines and there would be no need for purchasing new equipment

Diagnosis of Childhood Leprosy – Changing Trends

Leprosy, a chronic infectious disease caused by mycobacterium leprae, mainly involves the skin, respiratory mucosa and the peripheral nervous system. Leprosy continues to remain a public health problem. In 2011, the global new case detection was 219075 and in India it was 127295. Thus, India accounts for > 58% of total cases of leprosy worldwide. Pediatric leprosy accounts for around 10% of the total disease burden.The main source of transmission of leprosy is from the untreated lepromatous patients and the most common route is through the nasal secretions. From the nasal mucosa, the bacteria spreads by hematogenous route to skin and the peripheral nerves. The disease has a long incubation period of 3-5 yrs (can be upto 20 yrs).After infection, the child first develops indeterminate leprosy which can either get cured spontaneously or on treatment or it can progress to one of the several clinical forms (tuberculoid, borderline or lepromatous). The clinical spectrum varies from tuberculoid, where there are a few, large, anesthetic skin patches with thickened peripheral nerves and no detectable bacilli to lepromatous type where there are multiple, small skin lesions with intact sensation and high bacillary load. In our study spanning over 20 years, we have observed no significant change in the clinical profile.Early diagnosis of leprosy requires a high index of suspicion on the part of the clinician. It is based on detection of 2 of the following features, namely, characteristic skin lesion, loss of sensation and thickened peripheral nerves or the detection of AFB in skin or nasal smear.We conducted a number of studies, evaluating various newer techniques for early detection of the disease. In one study, we found the FLA-ABS and Lepromin tests, to be of immense value for identification of "at risk" population in the community and for detecting subclinical infection. We also studied antibody response against 35k Da antigen by SACT and found that nearly 50% smear negative, 42% lepromin +ve and 70% lepromin -ve cases showed positive antibody response with no false positive response. Gene probes developed at our institute were tried on 100 patients. AII smear +ve cases, lepromin +ve cases and majority of smear- ve cases were detected by this method. 9 cases (4 indeterminate & 5 nonspecific) with inconclusive histopathology were also detected. In another study on 22 children, in-situ hybridization technique helped in diagnosing the children with negative skin smear and non specific histopathology. It also permitted the concomitant study of tissue pathology.Again, in our pioneer study, evaluation of the in-situ PCR technique revealed that histopathology detected 45% of total cases, in-situ PCR detected as much as 60% of the total cases. Thus, In-situ PCR offered excellent structural correlation permitting concomitant study of tissue pathology. As contamination by foreign DNA/RNA does not exist, it is a valuable tool for diagnosis of childhood leprosy.RLEP based PCR is yet another useful tool to detect cases where skin smears are -ve and skin biopsy is not feasible. In our study involving 73 patients, Z-N staining for AFB was positive in 17/73 (23.28%) cases and RLEP PCR in 56/73 (76.71%) cases. All 30 controls showed negative results. RLEP PCR technique had a significantly greater positivity (especially in early stages of leprosy) than ZN staining (p< 0.001).Suggested algorithm for diagnosis, whenever there is clinical suspicion, we can either go for smear for AFB or histology to confirm the diagnosis. Apositive smear for AFB is confirmatory. If it is negative then, we can subject the specimen for gene probes or PCR/In-Situ PCR/RLEP PCR. If the result is positive, it is diagnostic of leprosy. On the other hand, if histology shows characteristic features then it is confirmatory; if it is not characteristic, we can go for in-situ hybridization. Apositive in-situ hybridization is diagnostic of leprosy; if it is negative then we can opt for in-situ PCR.To conclude, leprosy often poses a diagnostic dilemma. It is important that after a good clinical assessment, new diagnostic tests be used to diagnose the condition at an early stage & prevent complications/ deformities.Â

A Study on Tools And Techniques Used For Network Forensic In A Cloud Environment: An Investigation Perspective

The modern computer environment has moved past the local data center with a single entry and exit point to a global network comprising many data centers and hundreds of entry and exit points, commonly referred as Cloud Computing, used by all possible devices with numerous entry and exit point for transactions, online processing, request and responses traveling across the network, making the ever complex networks even more complex, making traversing, monitoring and detecting threats over such an environment a big challenge for Network forensic and investigation for cybercrimes. It has demanded in depth analysis using network tools and techniques to determine how best information can be extracted pertinent to an investigation. Data mining technique providing great aid in finding relevant clusters for predicting unusual activities, pattern matching and fraud detection in an environment, capable to deal with huge amount of data. The concept of network forensics in cloud computing requires a new mindset where some data will not be available, some data will be suspect, and some data will be court ready and can fit into the traditional network forensics model. From a network security viewpoint, all data traversing the cloud network backplane is visible and accessible by the cloud service provider. It is not possible to think now that one physical device will only have one operating system that needs to be taken down for investigation. Without the network forensics investigator, understanding the architecture of the cloud environment systems and possible compromises will be overlooked or missed. In this paper, we focus on the role of Network Forensic in a cloud environment, its mapping few of the available tools and contribution of Data Mining in making analysis, and also to bring out the challenges in this field

A Comprehensive Review of Cloud Computing Simulators

Cloud Computing is an innovation idea that has enabled the organizations to access high performance computing and storage infrastructure at reduced cost through internet. Cloud computing is model in which customer can access IT resources which are priced and provided on demand. Cloud Service providers charge user depending upon space or whatever service availed. It is not always possible for researchers and academicians to have the actual cloud infrastructure for performing experiments, executing or implementing their algorithms. To fulfill their need for the purpose of testing and actual providing them a feel of cloud services simulators are required. Nowadays cloud simulators are widely available in the market for researcher scholars. The objective of this research paper is to do comprehensive review of cloud computing simulators and to research out to get the best cloud computing simulation tool for security based research in area of Cloud

Understanding human rhinovirus infections in terms of QSAR

AbstractThe human rhinoviruses (HRVs) are the single most important cause of common colds. The widespread nature of this affliction, the economic consequences, and the well-known impracticality of vaccine development due to the large number of HRV serotypes (>100) have justified the search for chemotherapeutic agents. The interest in the application of quantitative structure–activity relationships has steadily increased in recent decades and we hope it may be useful in the search for anti-HRV agents. In the present paper, we have discussed the inhibition of various six compound series against HRV-1A, -1B, -2, -9, -14, -21, -22, -25, -64, and -89 by the formulation of a total number of 14 QSAR. Hydrophobicity is found to be one of the most important determinants of activity. Parabolic correlation with the hydrophobic parameter (Eq. (7)) is an encouraging example, where the optimal hydrophobicity is well defined. We believe that this may be the predictive model to narrow the synthetic challenges in order to yield very specific HRV-2 inhibitors. On the basis of this model, we have predicted eleven compounds (I-1 to I-11) that may be the next synthetic target. The proposed molecules (I-1 to I-11) also fulfill the conditions of Lipinski's “rule of five”

CONSTRUCTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A NOVEL FUSION PROTEIN FROM THE EXTRACELLULAR DOMAIN OF MULT1 AND TRANSMEMBRANE AND INTRACELLULAR DOMAINS OF FAS AND ITS THERAPEUTIC EVALUATION FOR CANCER TREATMENT USING AN ADENOVIRAL DELIVERY SYSTEM

One of the strategies that tumor cells adopt to evade immunosurveillance mounted by elements of the innate immune system, such as NK cells, is to down-regulate certain cell surface molecules through a process also called shedding. Mouse UL16-binding protein-like transcript 1 (MULT1), which can activate NK cells through NK cell receptor NKG2D, is one of such molecules. Tumor cells can also avoid Fas mediated apoptosis by down-regulating its expression, secreting antagonistic `decoy\u27 receptors, or expressing anti-apoptotic molecules. In this study, we report the design and evaluation of the antitumor activity of a novel fusion protein MULT1E/FasTI, consisting of the extracellular domain of MULT1 and transmembrane and intracellular domains of Fas. We hypothesized that this protein, when expressed on a cell, would not only activate NK cells and other NKG2D expressing killer cells through its MULT1E region but also send death signals to induce apoptosis of the cell through the FasTI region. We cloned cDNA encoding the extracellular domain of MULT1 gene from thymus of new born mice and ligated it to the transmembrane and intracellular domains of mouse fas cDNA. The resulting fusion cDNA was inserted into a mammalian cell expressing vector under the control of CMV promoter. The vector was then transfected into mouse TC-1 lung epithelial cancer cells; and stable cell lines expressing the fusion protein were established. In vitro cell culture studies demonstrated that the binding of NKG2D/Fc, a recombinant protein of mouse NK cell receptor, to MULT1E/FasTI expressed on tumor cells was able to elicit apoptosis as assayed by Annexin V-FITC staining and caspase-3 ELISA and also activated NK cells as indicated by enhanced interferon-gamma; expression. In vivo subcutaneous tumor studies demonstrated that tumor cells expressing MULT1E/FasTI grew significantly slower than tumors without the protein. Pulmonary metastasis studies showed that most of the mice completely rejected tumor cells expressing MULT1E/FasTI. We also examined the use of a replication-defective adenovirus as a gene therapy vector to deliver the fusion protein into tumor cells. In vitro and in vivo studies not only demonstrated that the novel fusion protein can be successfully delivered by adenoviral vectors but also confirmed antitumor activity of the fusion protein. Therefore, the reported fusion protein strategy represents a novel and hopeful new anticancer agent for cancer patients