IMPLEMENTATION AND VALIDATION OF FAULT TOLERANT CONTROL OF A SELF-BEARING MOTOR CONSIDERING OPEN COIL FAULTS

Self-bearing motor is a magnetic actuator with both bearing and motoring functionality. This work implements and validates a decoupled and fault tolerant control algorithm for the Lorentz self bearing motor containing open phase faults. The goal of the algorithm is to achieve a stable bearing force and motoring torque even with coil faults. This work simulates many non-real-time fault tolerant control models based on the algorithm using simulink. Test cases are designed in simulink and tested on these models to arrive at the best model that could be implemented in dspace for real-time control. The responses of these simulations are compared with the desired output. Simulations showed that the decoupled and fault tolerant control model does not have any cross coupling and was fault tolerant for many combinations of open phase faults. Simulink model was modified so that it was auto-complied into the dspace controller and dynamically linked with the hardware. A graphical user interface was provided for fault tolerant control in controldesk software and the motor was controlled in real-time. Many experiments are designed to test the fault tolerant control model. Experimental results validate fault tolerance in the motor with respect to open coil faults. The self-bearing motor was found to be more stable in decoupled and fault tolerant control than non-fault tolerant control

Khazana An infrastructure for building distributed services

technical reportEssentially all distributed systems?? applications?? and services at some level boil down to the problem of man aging distributed shared state Unfortunately?? while the problem of managing distributed shared state is shared by many applications?? there is no common means of managing the data every application devises its own solution We have developed Khazana?? a distributed service exporting the abstraction of a distributed per sistent globally shared store that applications can use to store their shared state Khazana is responsible for performing many of the common operations needed by distributed applications?? including replication?? consis tency management?? fault recovery?? access control?? and location management Using Khazana as a form of middleware?? distributed applications can be quickly de veloped from corresponding uniprocessor applications through the insertion of Khazana data access and syn chronization operation

Supporting persistent C++ objects in a distributed storage system

technical reportWe have designed and implemented a C++ object layer for Khazana, a distributed persistent storage system that exports a flat shared address space as its basic abstraction. The C++ layer described herein lets programmers use familiar C++ idioms to allocate, manipulate, and deallocate persistent shared data structures. It handles the tedious details involved in accessing this shared data, replicating it, maintaining consistency, converting data representations between persistent and in-memory representations, associating type information including methods with objects, etc. To support the C++ object layer on top of Khazana's flat storage abstraction, we have developed a language-specific preprocessor that generates support code to manage the user-specified persistent C++ structures. We describe the design of the C++ object layer and the compiler and runtime mechanisms needed to support it

Khazana an infrastructure for building distributed services

technical reportEssentially all distributed systems, applications and service at some level boil down to the problem of managing distributed shared state. Unfortunately, while the problem of managing distributed shared state is shared by man applications, there is no common means of managing the data - every application devises its own solution. We have developed Khazana, a distributed service exporting the abstraction of a distributed persistent globally hared store that applications can use to store their shared state. Khazana is responsible for performing many of the common operations needed by distributed applications, including replication, consistency management, fault recovery, access control, and location management. Using Khazana as a form of middleware, distributed applications can be quickly developed from corresponding uniprocessor applications through the insertion of Khazana data access and synchronization operations

Internationalization of entertainment industry services - Bollywood

Bollywood is the name given to the Hindi movie industry in India. It is one of the big-gest film clusters in the country contributing to the maximum number of films pro-duced in India. Recently, Bollywood surpassed the number of featured films made by Hollywood in a year and hence becoming a huge phenomenon worldwide. The aim of the current study was to build a framework to determine the kind of factors and the relevant industrial drivers that contribute to Bollywood industry success worldwide. And then retrospectively prove the effectiveness of the framework through empirical research. Of the many existing models from literature, Dunning’s Eclectic model and Uppsala model were used to build the framework. The industry-specific factors and location-specific factors, name industry structure, size and its social networks were shown to be the front-runners in promoting Bollywood to become international. These factors drive Bollywood to take advantage of the market characteristics, namely the subsidy struc-ture and become truly global. One of the very important outcomes is that this research study was able to corroborate Eclectic theory model and Uppsala model using an in-ductive approach with Bollywood as the case industry. Keywords: internationalization, services, entertainment, Bollywoo

Application of the codon-shuffling method : Synthesis and selection of de novo proteins as antibacterials

Library-based methods of non-rational and part-rational designed de novo peptides are worthy beacons in the search for bioactive peptides and proteins of medicinal importance. In this report, we have used a recently developed directed evolution method called "codon shuffling" for the synthesis and selection of bioactive proteins. The selection of such proteins was based on the creation of an inducible library of "codon-shuffled" genes that are constructed from the ligation-based assembly of judiciously designed hexamer DNA duplexes called dicodons. Upon induction with isopropyl 1-thio-beta-D-galactopyranoside, some library members were found to express dicodon-incorporated proteins. Because of this, the host cells, in our case Escherichia coli, were unable to grow any further. The bactereostatic/lytic nature of the dicodon proteins was monitored by growth curves as well as by zone clearance studies. Transmission electron microscopy of the affected cells illustrated the extent of cell damage. The proteins themselves were overexpressed as fusion partners and subsequently purified to homogeneity. One such purified protein was found to strongly bind heparin, an indication that the interaction of the de novo proteins may be with the nucleic acids of the host cell, much like many of the naturally occurring antibacterial peptides, e.g. Buforin. Therefore, our approach may help in generating a multitude of finely tuned antibacterial proteins that can potentially be regarded as lead compounds once the method is extended to pathogenic hosts, such as Mycobacteria, for example

Concentration Dependence of Elastic and Viscoelastic Properties of Aqueous Solutions of Ficoll and Bovine Serum Albumin by Brillouin Light Scattering Spectroscopy

The cellular environment is crowded with macromolecules of different shapes and sizes. The effect of this macromolecular crowding has been studied in a variety of synthetic crowding environments: two popular examples are the compact colloid-like Ficoll macromolecule, and the globular protein bovine serum albumin (BSA). Recent studies have indicated a significant component of bound or surface-associated water in these crowders reduces the available free volume. In this work, Brillouin light scattering experiments were performed on aqueous solutions of Ficoll 70 and Ficoll 400 with concentrations ranging from 1 wt% to 35 wt% and BSA with concentrations of 1 wt% to 27 wt%. From the dependence of spectral peak parameters on polymer concentration, we determined fundamental solution properties: hypersound velocity, adiabatic bulk modulus and compressibility, apparent viscosity, and hypersound attenuation. Existing theory that ignores intermolecular interactions can only capture the observed linear trends in the frequency shift up to a threshold concentration, beyond which a quadratic term accounting for intermolecular interactions is necessary. This likely indicates a transition from the dilute to semi-dilute regime. In the Ficoll solutions (but not BSA) we see evidence for a central mode, with a characteristic relaxation time of 20 ps, that we attribute to exchange of the bound water.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 4 table

A Three-Hybrid System to Probe In Vivo Protein-Protein Interactions: Application to the Essential Proteins of the RD1 Complex of M. tuberculosis

BACKGROUND: Protein-protein interactions play a crucial role in enabling a pathogen to survive within a host. In many cases the interactions involve a complex of proteins rather than just two given proteins. This is especially true for pathogens like M. tuberculosis that are able to successfully survive the inhospitable environment of the macrophage. Studying such interactions in detail may help in developing small molecules that either disrupt or augment the interactions. Here, we describe the development of an E. coli based bacterial three-hybrid system that can be used effectively to study ternary protein complexes. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The protein-protein interactions involved in M. tuberculosis pathogenesis have been used as a model for the validation of the three-hybrid system. Using the M. tuberculosis RD1 encoded proteins CFP10, ESAT6 and Rv3871 for our proof-of-concept studies, we show that the interaction between the proteins CFP10 and Rv3871 is strengthened and stabilized in the presence of ESAT6, the known heterodimeric partner of CFP10. Isolating peptide candidates that can disrupt crucial protein-protein interactions is another application that the system offers. We demonstrate this by using CFP10 protein as a disruptor of a previously established interaction between ESAT6 and a small peptide HCL1; at the same time we also show that CFP10 is not able to disrupt the strong interaction between ESAT6 and another peptide SL3. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The validation of the three-hybrid system paves the way for finding new peptides that are stronger binders of ESAT6 compared even to its natural partner CFP10. Additionally, we believe that the system offers an opportunity to study tri-protein complexes and also perform a screening of protein/peptide binders to known interacting proteins so as to elucidate novel tri-protein complexes

Expression of the ARPC4 subunit of human Arp2/3 severely affects mycobacterium tuberculosis growth and suppresses immunogenic response in murine macrophages

Background: The search for molecules against Mycobacterium tuberculosis is urgent. The mechanisms facilitating the intra-macrophage survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are as yet not entirely understood. However, there is evidence showing the involvement of host cell cytoskeleton in every step of establishment and persistence of mycobacterial infection. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we show that expression of ARPC4, a subunit of the Actin related protein 2/3 (Arp2/3) protein complex, severely affects the pathogen’s growth. TEM studies display shedding of the mycobacterial outer-coat. Furthermore, in infected macrophages, mycobacteria expressing ARPC4 were cleared off at a much faster rate, and were unable to mount a pro-inflammatory cytokine response. The translocation of ARPC4-expressing mycobacteria to the lysosome of the infected macrophage was also impaired. Additionally, the ARPC4 subunit was shown to interact with Rv1626, an essential secretory mycobacterial protein. Real-time PCR analysis showed that upon expression of ARPC4 in mycobacteria, Rv1626 expression is downregulated as much as six-fold. Rv1626 was found to also interact with mammalian cytoskeleton protein, Arp2/3, and enhance the rate of actin polymerization. Conclusions/Significance: With crystal structures for Rv1626 and ARPC4 subunit already known, our finding lays out the effect of a novel molecule on mycobacteria, and represents a viable starting point for developing potent peptidomimetics