An enzymatic method for the detection of human serum albumin

Albumin is the most abundant protein in human serum. A dye-binding method is commonly used in clinical laboratories for its estimation using different types of dyes. However, all these dye methods were interfered by a variety of compounds. Here we present a method for the detection of albumin in human serum and other biological fluids. The principle is based on the fact that lactate dehydrogenase isoenzyme-5 (LDH-5) binds specifically to Dextran-Blue (DB). Albumin inhibits the binding of LDH-5 with DB. Absence of LDH activity in DB fraction after gel filtration indicates the presence of albumin in sample and vice versa

Testing Conditional Asset Pricing Models: An Emerging Market Perspective

The CAPM as the benchmark asset pricing model generally performs poorly in both developed and emerging markets. We investigate whether allowing the model parameters to vary improves the performance of the CAPM and the Fama-French model. Conditional asset pricing models scaled by conditional variables such as Trading Volume and Dividend Yield generally result in small pricing errors. However, a graphical analysis shows that the predictions of conditional models are generally upward biased. We demonstrate that the bias in prediction may be caused by not accommodating frequent large variation in asset pricing models. In emerging markets, volatile institutional, political and macroeconomic conditions results in thick tails in the return distribution. This is characterized by excess kurtosis. It is found that the unconditional Fama-French model augmented with a cubic market factor performs the best among the competing models. This model is also more parsimonious compared to the conditional Fama-French model in terms of number of parameters

A Fuzzy-based approach to Enhance Cyber Defence Security for Next-generation IoT

In the modern era, the Cognitive Internet of Things (CIoT) in conjunction with IoT evolves which provides the intelligence power of sensing and computation for next-generation IoT (Nx-IoT) networks. The data scientists have discovered a large amount of techniques for knowledge discovery from processed data in CIoT. This task is accomplished successfully and data proceeds for further processing. The major cause for the failure of IoT devices is due to the attacks, in which Web spam is more prominent. There seems a requirement of a technique which can detect the Web spam before it enters into a device. Motivated from these issues, in this article, a cognitive spammer framework (CSF) for Web spam detection is proposed. CSF detects the Web spam by fuzzy rule-based classifiers along with machine learning classifiers. Each classifier produces the quality score of the webpage. These quality scores are then ensembled to generate a single score, which predicts the spamicity of the webpage. For ensembling, the fuzzy voting approach is used in CSF. The experiments were performed using a standard data set WEBSPAM-UK 2007 with respect to accuracy and overhead generated. From the results obtained, it has been demonstrated that CSF improves the accuracy by 97.3%, which is comparatively high in comparison to the other existing approaches in the literature

Diagnosis of pulmonary embolism with helical CT scan

Objective: To determine the role of helical C.T. scan in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.SETTING: Radiology department, Aga Khan University Hospital. One year prospective study May 2001 to May 2002.Methods: Sixty patients suspected of having pulmonary embolism were included in this study. Helical C.T. scan chest was performed from aortic arch to lung bases with intravenous contrast medium. Images were acquired in mediastinal and lung windows. Image interpretation was performed on the console and hard copies for main branch and segmental thrombus.Results: Fifteen patients were diagnosed of having pulmonary embolism on C.T. scan. Clinical correlation and follow up with pulmonary angiography and Doppler ultrasound of leg was carried out. Pulmonary angiography was performed in one patient with embolectomy done after confirmation of diagnosis. 8 patients had associated DVT confirmed on Doppler sonography. Sensitivity of helical C.T. is 93.75%, specificity 100% and positive predictive value 95.65%.CONCLUSION: Helical CT scan is a quick, easy and accurate imaging modality for diagnosing pulmonary embolism

RENAL CLEARANCE AND URINARY EXCRETION OF CIPROFLOXACIN IN GOATS

The renal clearance and urinary excretion of ciprofloxacin were investigated in eight healthy female goats. In each animal, ciprofloxacin was administered intramuscularly at the rate of 5 mg/kg body weight. Following drug administration, blood and urine samples were collected at different time intervals and analyzed for ciprofloxacin and creatinine. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to determine the drug concentration in the plasma and urine. The value of diuresis after single administration of ciprofloxacin was 0.073 ± 0.014 ml/min/kg. Mean (± SE) values for renal clearance of creatinine and ciprofloxacin were 1.870 ± 0.385 and 0.982 ± 0.166 ml/min/kg, respectively. The ratio between the renal clearance of ciprofloxacin and that of creatinine remained less than one, which was indicative of back diffusion. The mean (± SE) value for the cumulative percent of ciprofloxacin dose excreted at 10 hours following its intramuscular administration was 13.03 ± 2.07. Based on these results, it was evident that besides glomerular filtration, renal handling of drug involved back diffusion also. It was concluded that in local goats glomerular filtration rate (GFR) was lower than that reported for their foreign counterparts