The Case for Blockchain in the Beauty Industry

Part II of this paper addresses the legal issues presented by counterfeit cosmetics and false claims, and also compares the regulatory landscape in the United States versus that of the European Union. Part III analyzes how blockchain can be used to fill in the gaps left by the lack of strong regulations in the United States and provide consumers reliable methods of authenticating the ingredients in their personal care products. Part III also explains how Cult Beauty is implementing blockchain in its business. Part IV discusses the potential hurdles and negatives of using blockchain in the beauty industry. Part V concludes this paper

Paraoxonase 1 gene polymorphisms (Q192R and L55M) are associated with coronary artery disease susceptibility in Asian Indians

Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a complex metabolic disorder in which lifestyle and genetic factors are known to play key roles in pathogenesis. The paraoxonase 1 (PON1) enzyme has a defensive effect against CAD progression, as it safeguards low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) from oxidative modifications. The most extensively studied genetic variants in the PON1 gene are Q192R and L55M, which have been related with LDL antioxidative activity and risk of CAD. Objective: The present case-control study intended to examine the Q192R and L55M polymorphisms and their association with the risk of CAD patients in north Indians. Methods: A total of 872 subjects (412 CAD patients and 460 controls) were recruited from north India. The PON1 gene was amplified and genotypes were studies using PCR-RFLP. χ2 analysis was performed to compare genotype/allele frequencies in patients and controls. Results: The present study indicated abdominal obesity, elevated body mass index, and dyslipidemia with increased levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides as well as reduced high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in CAD subjects compared to healthy controls (p < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis of the data revealed an association of the RR genotype of the Q192R polymorphism with an about 2-fold elevated risk of CAD (OR = 2.23, 95% CI = 1.47–3.37, p = 0.0001). Contrariwise, the L55M polymorphism did not show significant association with CAD (OR = 1.81, 95% CI = 0.66–4.95, p = 0.326). Conclusions: The Q192R polymorphism in the PON1 gene may be a susceptibility gene associated with increased risk of CAD in an Asian Indian population

ENPP1 K121Q functional variant enhances susceptibility to insulin resistance and dyslipidemia with metabolic syndrome in Asian Indians

Background: Ectonucleotide pyrophosphatase/phosphodiesterase1 (ENPP1/PC-1) is a key modulator of the insulin signaling pathway, and its common variant, K121Q, increases the susceptibility to diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Objectives: The main objective of the present study was to investigate the association of ENPP1 K121Q polymorphism with the pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in a north Indian population. Methods: A total of 567 participants (303 MetS subjects and 264 healthy controls) were examined for ENPP1 genotypes and various clinical parameters, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), systolic and diastolic blood pressures (SBP/DBP), fasting blood glucose (FBG), cholesterol, triglycerides (TG), highdensity lipoprotein, and insulin. Genotyping was performed using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Statistical analysis of the data was done using SPSS. Results: Significant increases in BMI, WC, SBP, DBP, FBG, TG, low-density lipoprotein, insulin, and Homeostasis Model Assessment of insulin resistance (HOMAIR) and of beta-cell function (HOMA-BF) were observed in MetS patients compared to healthy controls. Logistic regression analysis of data demonstrated a nonsignificant association of QQ and KQ+QQ genotypes with increased risk of MetS (OR [95% CI], 1.583 [0.455–5.507], p = 0.470 for QQ genotypes and 1.097 [0.784–1.540], p = 0.587 for KQ+QQ genotypes). Moreover, MetS subjects carrying Q alleles had significantly higher levels of TG, insulin, body fat percentage, and insulin resistance as evident by higher values of HOMAIR. Conclusions: We conclude that ENPP1 K121Q functional variant enhances susceptibility to insulin resistance and dyslipidemia in MetS subjects of an Asian Indian population

The Case for Blockchain in the Beauty Industry

Part II of this paper addresses the legal issues presented by counterfeit cosmetics and false claims, and also compares the regulatory landscape in the United States versus that of the European Union. Part III analyzes how blockchain can be used to fill in the gaps left by the lack of strong regulations in the United States and provide consumers reliable methods of authenticating the ingredients in their personal care products. Part III also explains how Cult Beauty is implementing blockchain in its business. Part IV discusses the potential hurdles and negatives of using blockchain in the beauty industry. Part V concludes this paper

Microfluidic system to detect select DNA fragments using agglutination process

This thesis investigates the design, fabrication, and testing of an easy-to-use, disposable and portable microfluidic system for DNA amplification detection; this is suitable for point-of-care testing (POCT) applications. The microfluidic system utilizes biotin-labelled DNA to agglutinate streptavidin-coated microspheres. The microfluidic system is designed to retain aggregates of cross-linked microspheres as opposed to single microspheres, indicating the detection of biotin-labelled DNA. The microfluidic platform is composed of a filter design and inlet/outlet reservoirs, which was fabricated using microfabrication techniques. This research demonstrates that the microfluidic system is an improvement on the current DNA detection technique utilizing particle agglutination. Such a system may in turn form the basis of future hand-held, compact, point-of-care biosensors for disease screening and identification

Proteinaceous Secretory Metabolites of Probiotic Human Commensal Enterococcus hirae 20c, E. faecium 12a and L12b as Antiproliferative Agents Against Cancer Cell Lines

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide and its incidence is expected to grow by almost 70% in the coming 2 decades. Recent microbiome studies in cancer mice models have shown that certain commensal bacteria play protective roles against cancer. Thus, the use of commensal microflora having anticancer activities for the treatment of cancer appears to be an attractive alternative therapeutic strategy. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) form an integral component of commensal microflora in healthy individuals. As the vaginal ecosystem is enriched in LAB genera, we screened the vaginal LAB microflora of healthy women for their anti-proliferative abilities against various human cancer cell lines. The secreted metabolites of three enterococcal strains, Enterococcus hirae 20c, Enterococcus faecium 12a and L12b, out of 92 LAB isolates selectively inhibited the in vitro proliferation of various human cancer cell lines in a dose-dependent manner but had no activity against normal human peripheral blood monocytes. Further, proteinase K-treatment of the cell-free supernatant (CS) of all the three enterococci abrogated their anti-proliferative abilities, thereby showing the proteinaceous nature of the secreted metabolites in the CS. The microscopic examination of the cell lines showed that CS-treatment induced apoptosis-like morphological changes in the cancer cells. Further, the probiotic characters of the strains were studied, which showed that all the three strains had broad spectrum antimicrobial activities against various Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens, including Mycobacterium smegmatis. All the strains tolerated the gastric acidity and bile juice treatments, and had strong adhesive abilities to the colonic epithelial cell line HCT-15. Furthermore, none of the strains had any known secreted virulence factors or harbored virulence genes. This preliminary study highlights an important functional role of the commensal probiotic enterococcal strains E. hirae and E. faecium for the first time by demonstrating their anticancer properties that should be further tested in the in vivo mammalian models

Energy Efficient Clustering Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network: A Survey

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of number of nodes which are randomly deployed in the network with some energy. All the nodes connect with each other to send and receive data. But this phenomenon can depleted their energy soon which results in decrease of network lifespan. To improve energy consumption clustering technique is used which can enhance stability, performance, lifespan and efficiency of the network. All the nodes in the network are well organized into clusters which consume less energy. In this article, survey on various routing protocols. From the survey, it does not conclude that any protocol perform well in all facet. But this end up with the future scope to overcome the issue of energy consumption

Computational study of ACE and AGT gene of RAAS pathway

Renin angiotensin aldosterone system (RAAS) is a hormone regulatory hormone system that regulate blood pressure. The two major genes ACE and AGT are the players of RAAS pathway. These genes codes for angiotensin convertase enzyme and angiotensinogen protein respectively. The angiotensin convertase enzyme convert inactive angiotensinogen into active angiotensin which further helps in the regulation of blood pressure. Due to imbalance in this pathway may cause hypertension. So in the present study we decided to perform the computational study of ACE and AGT gene. We evaluated the deleterious/damaging effect of SNPs of ACE and AGT gene by SIFT and I-Mutant2.0. The total number of SNPs predicted to be deleterious by both tools were 5 (1.83%) and 22 (6.07%) for AGT and ACE genes respectively. We also studied subcellular location of ACE and AGT genes and drugs targeting these genes from database GeneCards. Further the result output of both the softwares were also compared