Antifouling activity of alkaline protease from halotolerant Bacillus sp. isolated from marine source

1274-1279In this study, an attempt has been made to explore the antifouling activity of the marine halotolerant bacterium, namely, Bacillus sp. About 10 different bacteria were isolated using the Zobell marine agar medium from the marine sediment samples that were collected from the Marina beach, Bay of Bengal, India. The growth pattern tests of the 10 bacteria were documented. Among the 10 different isolates, two exhibited the protease activity in skim milk agar. The antifouling activity was further tested against five different fouling bacteria. The antifouling activity of alkaline protease isolated from Bacillus sp. inferred that it exhibited pronounced inhibitory zones against fouling bacterial strains with least minimal inhibitory concentration range between 25 and 100 units/mg protein. Anticrustacean assay was performed using Artemia salina of alkaline protease, which showed good activity. The results suggest that Bacillus sp. produced an extracellular alkaline protease, which was responsible for the antifouling and algicidal activity of marine fouling organisms. This study tends to indicate that Bacillus sp. could be further explored for the development of new antifouling agents

Design and implementation of DA FIR filter for bio-inspired computing architecture

This paper elucidates the system construct of DA-FIR filter optimized for design of distributed arithmetic (DA) finite impulse response (FIR) filter and is based on architecture with tightly coupled co-processor based data processing units. With a series of look-up-table (LUT) accesses in order to emulate multiply and accumulate operations the constructed DA based FIR filter is implemented on FPGA. The very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL) is used implement the proposed filter and the design is verified using simulation. This paper discusses two optimization algorithms and resulting optimizations are incorporated into LUT layer and architecture extractions. The proposed method offers an optimized design in the form of offers average miminimizations of the number of LUT, reduction in populated slices and gate minimization for DA-finite impulse response filter. This research paves a direction towards development of bio inspired computing architectures developed without logically intensive operations, obtaining the desired specifications with respect to performance, timing, and reliability

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation Induces a Spatial Bias in Whole-body Position Estimates

Letter to the Edito

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation Induces a Spatial Bias in Whole-body Position Estimates

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Elsevier in Brain Stimulation on 23/07/2015, available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2015.07.030 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Peripheral galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) has been shown to temporarily ameliorate left spatial neglect [ 1 ]. Specifically, anodal (facilitatory) stimulation over the left mastoid bone coupled with cathodal (inhibitory) over the right mastoid reduces visuospatial-neglect scores in line cancellation [ 2 ] and line bisection tasks [ 3 , 4 ]. This montage increases activity in the left vestibular nerve and suppresses activity in the right [ 5 ], which has been shown to focally activate vestibular networks that occupy visuospatial attention mechanisms, primarily in the non-dominant hemisphere [ 5 ]. Thus, it appears that electrical stimulation of the peripheral vestibular system can shift visuospatial attention to the left side of space [ 4 ]. However, whether such a shift of spatial attention in normal subjects can influence perception of spatial position during whole-body spatial translations is unknown. We hypothesized that shifting attention to the left would result in participants underestimating spatial position estimates during rightward whole-body translations and overestimating spatial position estimates during leftward whole-body translations

Locomotor adaptation is modulated by observing the actions of others

Observing the motor actions of another person could facilitate compensatory motor behaviour in 29 the passive observer. Here, we explored whether action observation alone can induce automatic 30 locomotor adaptation in humans. To explore this possibility we used the “broken‐escalator” 31 paradigm. Conventionally this involves stepping upon a stationary sled after having previously 32 experienced it actually moving (MOVING trials). This history of motion produces a locomotor 33 aftereffect when subsequently stepping on to a stationary sled. We found that viewing an actor 34 perform the MOVING trials was sufficient to generate a locomotor aftereffect in the observer, the 35 size of which was significantly correlated with the size of the movement (postural sway) observed. 36 Crucially, the effect is specific to watching the task being performed, as no motor adaptation 37 occurs after simply viewing the sled move in isolation. These findings demonstrate that locomotor 38 adaptation in humans can be driven purely by action observation, with the brain adapting motor 39 plans in response to the size of the observed individual’s motion. This mechanism may be 40 mediated by a mirror neuron system that automatically adapts behaviour to minimise movement 41 errors and improve motor skills through social cues, though further neurophysiological studies are 42 required to support this theory. This non‐verbal adaptive mechanism may have evolved to 43 facilitate motor conformity within social groups with respect to environmental hazards or risks