Identification of MHC Class II Binders/ Non-binders using Negative Selection Algorithm

The identification of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class-II restricted peptides is an important goal in human immunological research leading to peptide based vaccine design. These MHC class–II peptides are predominantly recognized by CD4+ T-helper cells, which when turned on, have profound immune regulatory effects. Thus, prediction of such MHC class-II binding peptides is very helpful towards epitope-based vaccine design. HLA-DR proteins were found to be associated with autoimmune diseases e.g. HLA-DRB1*0401 with rheumatoid arthritis. It is important for the treatment of autoimmune diseases to determine which peptides bind to MHC class II molecules. The experimental methods for identification of these peptides are both time consuming and cost intensive. Therefore, computational methods have been found helpful in classifying these peptides as binders or non-binders. We have applied negative selection algorithm, an artificial immune system approach to predict MHC class–II binders and non-binders. For the evaluation of the NSA algorithm, five fold cross validation has been used and six MHC class–II alleles have been taken. The average area under ROC curve for HLA-DRB1*0301, DRB1*0401, DRB1*0701, DRB1*1101, DRB1*1501, DRB1*1301 have been found to be 0.75, 0.77, 0.71, 0.72, and 0.69, and 0.84 respectively indicating good predictive performance for the small training set

Suitability of sodium lactate as cryoprotectant and its effect on gel forming ability and protein denaturation of croaker fish surimi during frozen storage

The effect of sodium lactate is compared with sucrose + sorbitol + sodium tri-poly phosphate as cryoprotectant on gel forming ability & protein denaturation of croaker surimi during frozen storage at -20±2°C for 90 days was evaluated. The quality of Croaker surimi with 6% (w/v) sodium lactate was examined in terms of biochemical parameters of muscle protein, thaw drip, gel strength and calcium ATPase activity :.omparing with those of surimi added with sucrose/sorbitol & without additive as control. Both the cryoprotectants minimized the negative effects of frozen storage on physico-chemical traits of myofibrillar proteins which was evident from the biochemical and sensory parameters. The residual Ca2+ ATPase activity and gel strength of surimi with sodium lactate were higher than those of control throughout 90 days of storage. Ca2+ A TPase activity and gel strength found a high positive correlation. From the results, it was found that sodium lactate was equally effective in preservation of croaker muscle protein native structure during frozen storage as the sucrose/ sorbitol and also less sweet without any risk of maillard browning

Synthesis, Electrical Conductivity, and Dielectric Behaviour of Polyaniline Doped with H2SO4; HCl and (HCl + NaNO2) Mixture

Acid doped Polyaniline (PANI) due to their increased electrical conductivity, are considered to be the most promising conducting filler materials. Hence, the present study, reports the synthesis of the PANI followed by acid doping, electrical conductivity and dielectric properties measurements of H2SO4; HCl and (Conc. HCl + NaNO2mixture) doped PANI. In order to know the effect of acetone washing on the electrical properties of acid doped PANI samples, the electrical properties of the non-acetone washed acid doped PANI samples are compared with that of their acetone washed counterparts. The PANI salt was prepared by conventional route using aniline hydrochloride and ammonium persulphate as an oxidant. PANI salt was subjected to 0.5M NaOH to form PANI base, which was further doped separately with H2SO4; HCl and (Conc. HCl + NaNO2mixture) respectively followed by acetone washing. A comparative electrical conductivity study between the acetone washed and unwashed PANI salt and H2SO4, HCl and Conc. HCl + NaNO2 mixture doped PANI were characterized by dielectric and impedance study

Development of a microwave-assisted UV sterilization system for milk

A microwave-assisted ultraviolet sterilization system was developed to study the synergistic effect in the sterilization of milk. Electrodeless lamps emitting ultraviolet radiation inside the microwave chamber gave a synergistic effect without challenging food safet standards. This study compared the results of both microwave and microwave assisted ultraviolet sterilizations of milk in terms of various microbial tests and physicochemical properties. The microwave-assisted ultraviolet system was found to be more effective compared to microwave alone. A significant difference (P<0.05) was observed for total plate count and methylene blue reduction test between microwave and microwave assisted ultraviolet treatment from 5 to 15 secs. Microwave-assisted ultraviolet treatment decreased the microbial count exponentially and showed <1 log (CFU ml–1) after ten seconds of treatment. During the treatment period, no significant difference was observed in the physicochemical properties of milk

The Effects of Extended Depletion Region on Noise Modeling of HEMT ’s

In this paper we present a high frequency noise model for short channel HEMTs.This model takes into account the effect of depletion region that extends into gate to drain spacing.The effect of this high field extension region on the noise performance of three HEMT structures is analytically calculated and compared with measured data

Evaluating the Usability of Automatically Generated Captions for People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

The accuracy of Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) technology has improved, but it is still imperfect in many settings. Researchers who evaluate ASR performance often focus on improving the Word Error Rate (WER) metric, but WER has been found to have little correlation with human-subject performance on many applications. We propose a new captioning-focused evaluation metric that better predicts the impact of ASR recognition errors on the usability of automatically generated captions for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH). Through a user study with 30 DHH users, we compared our new metric with the traditional WER metric on a caption usability evaluation task. In a side-by-side comparison of pairs of ASR text output (with identical WER), the texts preferred by our new metric were preferred by DHH participants. Further, our metric had significantly higher correlation with DHH participants' subjective scores on the usability of a caption, as compared to the correlation between WER metric and participant subjective scores. This new metric could be used to select ASR systems for captioning applications, and it may be a better metric for ASR researchers to consider when optimizing ASR systems.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, published in ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17

multiaxial fatigue damage assessment of welded connections in railway steel bridge using critical plane approach

Abstract As the number of heavy railway traffic load increased, concern over the accurate and actual fatigue damage of the bridge is intensified. Especially for bridges which were designed for light traffic load. The fatigue damage assessment of steel bridge connections is usually based on notion of uniaxial S-N curves given in the codes of practice. Until now, there is no consensus on a method which can precisely consider non-proportional multiaxial loading. The objective of this paper is to examine the applicability and appropriateness of the critical plane approach-based C-S criterion to perform the fatigue damage assessment in welded connections in railway steel bridge. A regular U trough railway steel bridge is analyzed using finite element software ANSYS 17.2 for standard railway traffic. The averaged principal stress directions determined through appropriate weight functions are used to orient the critical plane. Prediction of fatigue damage is performed through an equivalent stress represented by a quadratic combination of the normal and the shear stress components acting on the critical plane. Applicability of the C-S criterion is studied by assessing the fatigue damage of critical welded connections and comparing with the λ - coefficient and cumulative damage method calculated according to Eurocode EN1993-1-9

Range extension of a mantis Shrimp <em>Harpiosquilla harpax</em> (Family: Squillidae) in the Chilika Lagoon

18-24The present study describes the first live occurrence of a species of mantis shrimp i.e. Harpiosquilla harpax from the Chilika lagoon. It was a new record to Chilika after the opening of natural inlet due to super cyclone Phailin during October 2013 and range extension from Visakhapatnam coast.  However, concrete information regarding its population and spatio-temporal distribution is certainly not known. since it was caught as by catch. Food and feeding behaviour and morphological structure of the compound eye and ommatidia was also studied

Description of a domain by a squeezed state in a scalar field theory

The author attempted to describe a domain by using a squeezed state in quantum field theory. An extended squeeze operator was used to construct the state. In a scalar field theory, the author described a domain that the distributions of the condensate and of the fluctuation are Gaussian. The momentum distribution, chaoticity and correlation length were calculated. It was found that the typical value of the momentum is about the inverse of the domain size, and that the chaoticity reflects the ratio of the size of the squeeze region to that of the coherent region. The results indicate that the quantum state of a domain is surmised by these quantities under the assumption that the distributions are Gaussian. As an example, this method was applied to a pion field, and the momentum distribution and the chaoticity were shown.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, a typographical error in the reference is correcte