Public peer review – An alternative to impact factors

The scientific community, like all cliques, has developed its own ways of maintaining structural and functional heirarchy. Surface effects (such as the volume of publication, citation indices, incorporation of new jargon) play a significant role, sometimes to the neglect of core issues (such as scientific merit or objectivity). Not surprisingly, this biases the news network such that only certain kinds of information keep appearing at periodic intervals. There are, of course, several outstanding research studies which do not fall into this category, but they are relatively small in number and frequency

Hardware-Software Hybrid Packet Processing for Intrusion Detection Systems

Security is a major issue in today's communication networks. Designing Network Intrusion Detection systems (NIDS) calls for high performance circuits in order to keep up with the rising data rates. Offloading software processing to hardware realizations is not an economically viable solution and hence hardware- software based hybrid solutions for the NIDS scenario are discussed in literature. By deploying processing on both hardware and software cores simultaneously by using a novel Intelligent Rule Parsing algorithm, we aim to minimize the number of packets whose waiting time is greater than a predefined threshold. This fairness criterion implicitly ensures in obtaining a higher throughput as depicted by our results

Contribution of cation-π interactions to protein stability

Calculations predict that cation-π interactions make an important contribution to protein stability. While there have been some attempts to experimentally measure strengths of cation-p interactions using peptide model systems, much less experimental data are available for globular proteins. We have attempted to determine the magnitude of cation-π interactions of Lys with aromatic amino acids in four different proteins (LIVBP, MBP, RBP, and Trx). In each case, Lys was replaced with Gln and Met. In a separate series of experiments, the aromatic amino acid in each cation-p pair was replaced by Leu. Stabilities of wild-type (WT) and mutant proteins were characterized by both thermal and chemical denaturation. Gln and aromatic → Leu mutants were consistently less stable than corresponding Met mutants, reflecting the nonisosteric nature of these substitutions. The strength of the cation-π interaction was assessed by the value of the change in the free energy of unfolding [ΔΔ G° = Δ G°(Met) - Δ G°(WT)]. This ranged from +1.1 to −1.9 kcal/mol (average value −0.4 kcal/mol) at 298 K and +0.7 to −2.6 kcal/mol (average value -1.1 kcal/mol) at the Tm of each WT. It therefore appears that the strength of cation-π interactions increases with temperature. In addition, the experimentally measured values are appreciably smaller in magnitude than calculated values with an average difference |Δ G°expt - Δ G°calc|av of 2.9 kcal/mol. At room temperature, the data indicate that cation-π interactions are at best weakly stabilizing and in some cases are clearly destabilizing. However, at elevated temperatures, close to typical Tm's, cation-π interactions are generally stabilizing

Contribution of Cation-\pi Interactions to Protein Stability

Calculations predict that cation-\pi interactions make an important contribution to protein stability. While there have been some attempts to experimentally measure strengths of cation-\pi interactions using peptide model systems, much less experimental data are available for globular proteins. We have attempted to determine the magnitude of cation-\pi interactions of Lys with aromatic amino acids in four different proteins (LIVBP, MBP, RBP, and Trx). In each case, Lys was replaced with Gln and Met. In a separate series of experiments, the aromatic amino acid in each cation-\pi pair was replaced by Leu.Stabilities of wild-type (WT) and mutant proteins were characterized by both thermal and chemical denaturation. Gln and aromatic \rightarrow Leu mutants were consistently less stable than corresponding Met mutants, reflecting the nonisosteric nature of these substitutions. The strength of the cation-\pi interaction was assessed by the value of the change in the free energy of unfolding [\Delta \Delta G°=\Delta G°(Met)-\Delta G°- (WT)]. This ranged from +1.1 to -1.9 kcal/mol (average value -0.4 kcal/mol) at 298 K and +0.7 to -2.6 kcal/mol (average value -1.1 kcal/mol) at the $T_m$ of each WT. It therefore appears that the strength of cation-\pi interactions increases with temperature. In addition, the experimentally measured values are appreciably smaller in magnitude than calculated values with an average difference $\vert \Delta G^o_{expt}- \Delta G^o_{calc \vert av}$ of 2.9 kcal/mol. At room temperature, the data indicate that cation-\pi interactions are at best weakly stabilizing and in some cases are clearly destabilizing. However, at elevated temperatures, close to typical T_{m}\hspace{2mm}'s, cation-\pi interactions are generally stabilizing

Role of CD14+ CD16+ Monocytes in the Pathogenesis of Periodontitis Associated Systemic Diseases

Monocytes are immune cells that form an important bridge between the innate and adaptive immune response. These cells exist in various phenotypes based on cell surface marker expression and participate in the pathobiology of many systemic diseases. Periodontitis is an inflammatory condition of the tooth attachment apparatus caused by microbial assault from the dental plaque biofilm. It is noteworthy that monocytes play a key role in mediating tissue destruction in periodontitis. The CD14+ CD16+ monocytes that bear both the surface markers are especially involved and upregulated in periodontitis and produce increased amounts of proinflammatory cytokines following microbial challenge. In this context and exploring the available literature, the present chapter aims to unravel the role of CD14+ CD16+ monocytes in periodontitis and systemic disease and also aims to elucidate the possible pathways by which periodontitis could be a key risk factor for systemic disease based on monocyte selection and participation