107 research outputs found
Enhancement of Heat Removal Rate in Film Boiling Regime by Spray Cooling with Sea Water
Water spray cooling is an important technology which is used in steel industries. The final mechanical properties of the steel are directly proportional to the quenching rate. Spray cooling is an important technique to achieve very high cooling rate. However, the achieved cooling rate is not sufficient for the metal which are used in some specific applications such as production of low weight and high strength steel which is used for the fabrication of light weight vehicle. Hence, the current process needs to be further enhanced. In the current case, experiments were conducted by using spray of different coolants such as pure water, salt added water surfactant added water, salt plus surfactant added water and sea water. For the above mentioned experiments an experimental set up was fabricated and for the calculation INTEMP software has been used. Initially, for the coolants, the optimum height (40 mm) and the flow rate (16.67 × 10-5 m3/s) were determined. The experimental result of salt added spray cooling reveals that the quenching rate increases with increase in salt concentration up to 0.4 M due to salt deposition effect which alter the heat transfer mechanism from convection mode to conductive mode. However, further increment shows decline trend and this is due to the decrement of resultant thermal conductivity of the substrate. In addition to the above, cooling experiments also done by using sea water. The results show that the cooling rate increases with the increase in dilution and this happens because of the combined effect of salt deposition and contact angle decrement. In addition to the above, for the comparative study, among all the coolants, a cooling experiment was conducted with surfactant (Tween 20). Finally, the comparison among all the coolants has been made and from the comparison it is concluded that 100 % sea water produce maximum cooling rate
Apalutamide: a better option for the treatment of non-metastatic castration resistant prostatic carcinoma
Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, some grow relatively quickly. The cancer cells may spread from the prostate to other area of the body, particularly the bones and lymph nodes. Factors that increase the risk of prostate cancer include older age, a family history of the disease, and race. About 99% of cases occur in males over the age of 50. Clinical features include hematuria, dysuria (painful urination),nocturia(urination at night). Lower blood levels of vitami D may increase the risk of developing prostate cancer. Infection with the sexually transmitted diseases, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and prostatitis seem to increase risk of prostate cancer. Diagnosis can be confirmed by digital rectal examination (DRE) with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, cystoscopy, transrectal ultrasonography and biopsy (The removal of small pieces of the prostate for microscopic examination). Medicines like 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors (finasteride and dutasteride) reduce the overall risk of prostate cancer. Apalutamide, sold under the brand name Erleada, is a nonsteroidal antiandrogen (NSAA) medication which is used in the treatment of prostate cancer. It is specifically indicated for use in conjunction with castration in the treatment of non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (NM-CRPC). It is taken by mouth. Apalutamide was first described in 2007 and was approved for the treatment of prostate cancer in February 2018. Apalutamide is used in conjunction with castration, either via bilateral orchiectomy or gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue (GnRH analogue) therapy, as a method of androgen deprivation therapy in the treatment of non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (NM-CRPC)
GntR family of regulators in Mycobacterium smegmatis: a sequence and structure based characterization
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Mycobacterium smegmatis </it>is fast growing non-pathogenic mycobacteria. This organism has been widely used as a model organism to study the biology of other virulent and extremely slow growing species like <it>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</it>. Based on the homology of the N-terminal DNA binding domain, the recently sequenced genome of <it>M. smegmatis </it>has been shown to possess several putative GntR regulators. A striking characteristic feature of this family of regulators is that they possess a conserved N-terminal DNA binding domain and a diverse C-terminal domain involved in the effector binding and/or oligomerization. Since the physiological role of these regulators is critically dependent upon effector binding and operator sites, we have analysed and classified these regulators into their specific subfamilies and identified their potential binding sites.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The sequence analysis of <it>M. smegmatis </it>putative GntRs has revealed that FadR, HutC, MocR and the YtrA-like regulators are encoded by 45, 8, 8 and 1 genes respectively. Further out of 45 FadR-like regulators, 19 were classified into the FadR group and 26 into the VanR group. All these proteins showed similar secondary structural elements specific to their respective subfamilies except MSMEG_3959, which showed additional secondary structural elements. Using the reciprocal BLAST searches, we further identified the orthologs of these regulators in <it>Bacillus subtilis </it>and other mycobacteria. Since the expression of many regulators is auto-regulatory, we have identified potential operator sites for a number of these GntR regulators by analyzing the upstream sequences.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study helps in extending the annotation of <it>M. smegmatis </it>GntR proteins. It identifies the GntR regulators of <it>M. smegmatis </it>that could serve as a model for studying orthologous regulators from virulent as well as other saprophytic mycobacteria. This study also sheds some light on the nucleotide preferences in the target-motifs of GntRs thus providing important leads for initiating the experimental characterization of these proteins, construction of the gene regulatory network for these regulators and an understanding of the influence of these proteins on the physiology of the mycobacteria.</p
The comparative effects of Itopride and Levosulpiride orally used in patients suffering from Non-ulcer dyspepsia
Background: Itopride and Levosulpiride both comes under the group of Prokinetic drugs. These drugs are used for the treatment of non-ulcer dyspepsia, heart burn, nausea and vomiting. Both drugs act on dopaminergic D2 receptor as antagonist and increases the concentration of acetylcholine so that gastric peristalsis will be increase and that time pressure at lower oesophageal sphincter will be increase thus gastric motility increases and there will be good gastro-duodenal co-ordination.Method: This study has to conduct on patients with complains of non-ulcer dyspepsia attended Medical outdoor and department of pharmacology of SKMCH Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India. The total 60 patients have to include in the study, which have to randomly divide in two groups. Group A (itopride) comprising of 30 patients and Group B (Levosulpiride) comprising of 30 patients. Patients have to randomly allocate to receive one tablet of itopride hydrochloride, 50 mg three times daily before meal and one tablet Levosulpiride of 75 mg three times daily before meal. Authors have to enroll the patients at the interval of two weeks and continue it upto 3 months.Results: Study did not found any remarkable change in biochemistry profile. Only QT prolongation changes were found in two patients, but no serious cardiac toxicity was observed with patient receiving Levosulpiride. Neither QT prolongation nor serious cardiac toxicity was observed with itopride hydrochloride therapy.Conclusions: In present study, efficacy of Itopride was comparable to Levosulpiride in relieving the symptoms of non-ulcer dyspepsia. Both the drugs were clinically and biochemically well tolerated. QT prolongation changes were found in two patients, but no serious cardiac toxicity was observed with patient receiving Levosulpiride. Itopride does not show cardiac toxicity and any changes in ECG
iCR: a web tool to identify conserved targets of a regulatory protein across the multiple related prokaryotic species
Gene regulatory circuits are often commonly shared between two closely related organisms. Our web tool iCR (identify Conserved target of a Regulon) makes use of this fact and identify conserved targets of a regulatory protein. iCR is a special refined extension of our previous tool PredictRegulon- that predicts genome wide, the potential binding sites and target operons of a regulatory protein in a single user selected genome. Like PredictRegulon, the iCR accepts known binding sites of a regulatory protein as ungapped multiple sequence alignment and provides the potential binding sites. However important differences are that the user can select more than one genome at a time and the output reports the genes that are common in two or more species. In order to achieve this, iCR makes use of Cluster of Orthologous Group (COG) indices for the genes. This tool analyses the upstream region of all user-selected prokaryote genome and gives the output based on conservation target orthologs. iCR also reports the Functional class codes based on COG classification for the encoded proteins of downstream genes which helps user understand the nature of the co-regulated genes at the result page itself. iCR is freely accessible at
Prediction of DtxR regulon: Identification of binding sites and operons controlled by Diphtheria toxin repressor in Corynebacterium diphtheriae
BACKGROUND: The diphtheria toxin repressor, DtxR, of Corynebacterium diphtheriae has been shown to be an iron-activated transcription regulator that controls not only the expression of diphtheria toxin but also of iron uptake genes. This study aims to identify putative binding sites and operons controlled by DtxR to understand the role of DtxR in patho-physiology of Corynebacterium diphtheriae. RESULT: Positional Shannon relative entropy method was used to build the DtxR-binding site recognition profile and the later was used to identify putative regulatory sites of DtxR within C. diphtheriae genome. In addition, DtxR-regulated operons were also identified taking into account the predicted DtxR regulatory sites and genome annotation. Few of the predicted motifs were experimentally validated by electrophoretic mobility shift assay. The analysis identifies motifs upstream to the novel iron-regulated genes that code for Formamidopyrimidine-DNA glycosylase (FpG), an enzyme involved in DNA-repair and starvation inducible DNA-binding protein (Dps) which is involved in iron storage and oxidative stress defense. In addition, we have found the DtxR motifs upstream to the genes that code for sortase which catalyzes anchoring of host-interacting proteins to the cell wall of pathogenic bacteria and the proteins of secretory system which could be involved in translocation of various iron-regulated virulence factors including diphtheria toxin. CONCLUSIONS: We have used an in silico approach to identify the putative binding sites and genes controlled by DtxR in Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Our analysis shows that DtxR could provide a molecular link between Fe(+2)-induced Fenton's reaction and protection of DNA from oxidative damage. DtxR-regulated Dps prevents lethal combination of Fe(+2 )and H(2)O(2 )and also protects DNA by nonspecific DNA-binding. In addition DtxR could play an important role in host interaction and virulence by regulating the levels of sortase, a potential vaccine candidate and proteins of secretory system
Neutrinos from the Sun can discover dark matter-electron scattering
We probe dark matter-electron scattering using high-energy neutrino
observations from the Sun. Dark matter (DM) interacting with electrons can get
captured inside the Sun. These captured DM may annihilate to produce different
Standard Model (SM) particles. Neutrinos produced from these SM states can be
observed in IceCube and DeepCore. Although there is no excess of neutrinos from
the Solar direction, we find that the current data-sets of IceCube and DeepCore
set the strongest constraint on DM-electron scattering cross section in the DM
mass range GeV to GeV. Our work implies that future observations
of the Sun by neutrino telescopes have the potential to discover DM-electron
interaction.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Comments are welcom
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