Application of desktop manufacturing system (SLA) for the manufacturing of a centrifugal pump impeller using CAD (I-DEAS)

Desktop Manufacturing (DTM) systems which combine personal computer, laser and other technologies are being used to sculpt objects from computer generated models created on computer aided design (CAD) workstations. As a member of DTM systems, StereoLithography Apparatus (SLA) transforms 3-dimensional designs into a 3-D output. This can substantially reduce the time required to produce a prototype through the process of photopolymerization. The process involves the transfer of a liquid plastic monomer into a solid polymer by exposing it to ultraviolet light. Although the process looks productive, inefficiencies can occur, if incorrect parameters are selected before its application for a particular prototype fabrication. In understanding the correct requirements of the prototype being built, efficiency can be maximized by the use of desktop manufacturing systems

BRanching Artificial Neural Ensemble (BRANE) Algorithm for Supervised Learning

Various models exist to predict a numerical value in supervised learning problems. One of the challenges in predicting an outcome with high degree of precision involves dealing with numerical data points which can be represented using differently. To solve for such challenge and in order to predict the logerror value in Zillow’s competition on Kaggle, we have developed a new model, BRanching Artificial Neural Ensemble (BRANE). This ensemble network uses a number of multilayer perceptrons (MLP) to predict the outcome and combines the results using an additional MLP. This approach not only allowed us to use different datatypes as inputs, but also predicted better and converged faster than traditional MLP models

Key Solution to Vehicle Purchase Process Using Blockchain Technology

Much of everyday shopping such as groceries, clothes, household or vehicle involve human presence in the relevant department. Vehicle sale and purchase depends on dealer's reliability in terms of how precise or accurate the car fax report is. The emission report and vehicle’s history of repair helps client in making the right decision regarding the purchase. The process of vehicle purchase, payment, getting it insured and registered at DMV is a long and tedious work. We present a Blockchain technology based Smart Contractor solution, that will provide all this tedious work on behalf of a person. We present two step approach to the vehicle purchase process, converting the existing business flow of purchase process into Blockchain ledger and design a Smart Contractor

Testing parasite 'intimacy': the whipworm Trichuris muris in the European house mouse hybrid zone.

Host-parasite interaction studies across hybrid zones often focus on host genetic variation, treating parasites as homogeneous. 'Intimately' associated hosts and parasites might be expected to show similar patterns of genetic structure. In the literature, factors such as no intermediate host and no free-living stage have been proposed as 'intimacy' factors likely constraining parasites to closely follow the evolutionary history of their hosts. To test whether the whipworm, Trichuris muris, is intimately associated with its house mouse host, we studied its population genetics across the European house mouse hybrid zone (HMHZ) which has a strong central barrier to gene flow between mouse taxa. T. muris has a direct life cycle and nonmobile free stage: if these traits constrain the parasite to an intimate association with its host we expect a geographic break in the parasite genetic structure across the HMHZ. We genotyped 205 worms from 56 localities across the HMHZ and additionally T. muris collected from sympatric woodmice (Apodemus spp.) and allopatric murine species, using mt-COX1, ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 rDNA and 10 microsatellites. We show four haplogroups of mt-COX1 and three clear ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 clades in the HMHZ suggesting a complex demographic/phylogeographic history. Microsatellites show strong structure between groups of localities. However, no marker type shows a break across the HMHZ. Whipworms from Apodemus in the HMHZ cluster, and share mitochondrial haplotypes, with those from house mice. We conclude Trichuris should not be regarded as an 'intimate' parasite of the house mouse: while its life history might suggest intimacy, passage through alternate hosts is sufficiently common to erase signal of genetic structure associated with any particular host taxon

A framework for testing the impact of co-infections on host gut microbiomes.

Parasitic infections disturb gut microbial communities beyond their natural range of variation, possibly leading to dysbiosis. Yet it remains underappreciated that most infections are accompanied by one or more co-infections and their collective impact is largely unexplored. Here we developed a framework illustrating changes to the host gut microbiome following single infections, and build on it by describing the neutral, synergistic or antagonistic impacts on microbial α- and ß-diversity expected from co-infections. We tested the framework on microbiome data from a non-human primate population co-infected with helminths and Adenovirus, and matched patterns reported in published studies to the introduced framework. In this case study, α-diversity of co-infected Malagasy mouse lemurs (Microcebus griseorufus) did not differ in comparison with that of singly infected or uninfected individuals, even though community composition captured with ß-diversity metrices changed significantly. Explicitly, we record stochastic changes in dispersion, a sign of dysbiosis, following the Anna-Karenina principle rather than deterministic shifts in the microbial gut community. From the literature review and our case study, neutral and synergistic impacts emerged as common outcomes from co-infections, wherein both shifts and dispersion of microbial communities following co-infections were often more severe than after a single infection alone, but microbial α-diversity was not universally altered. Important functions of the microbiome may also suffer from such heavily altered, though no less species-rich microbial community. Lastly, we pose the hypothesis that the reshuffling of host-associated microbial communities due to the impact of various, often coinciding parasitic infections may become a source of novel or zoonotic diseases

Multiclass ECG Signal Analysis Using Global Average-Based 2-D Convolutional Neural Network Modeling

Cardiovascular diseases accounted for approximately 836,546 deaths in the United States in 2018. Nearly 2,300 Americans die of cardiovascular disease each day, an average of one death every 38 seconds. To this end, research has been reported in the literature on Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal analysis to determine arrhythmia and other cardiac conditions. This work introduces a classifier that will detect abnormalities of the ECG signal with its analysis as a 2-D image fed to a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier.The proposed method classifies the ECG signal as normal or ST-change, V-change by transforming the single-lead ECG signal into images and then applying CNN classification. Images are taken from the European ST-T dataset on PhysioNet databank. Our method yields an accuracy of 99.26%

A cross-sectional study on the nasopharyngeal microbiota of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection across three COVID-19 waves in India

BackgroundMultiple variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have plagued the world through successive waves of infection over the past three years. Independent research groups across geographies have shown that the microbiome composition in COVID-19 positive patients (CP) differs from that of COVID-19 negative individuals (CN). However, these observations were based on limited-sized sample-sets collected primarily from the early days of the pandemic. Here, we study the nasopharyngeal microbiota in COVID-19 patients, wherein the samples have been collected across the three COVID-19 waves witnessed in India, which were driven by different variants of concern.MethodsThe nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 589 subjects providing samples for diagnostics purposes at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB), Hyderabad, India and subjected to 16s rRNA gene amplicon - based sequencing.FindingsWe found variations in the microbiota of symptomatic vs. asymptomatic COVID-19 patients. CP showed a marked shift in the microbial diversity and composition compared to CN, in a wave-dependent manner. Rickettsiaceae was the only family that was noted to be consistently depleted in CP samples across the waves. The genera Staphylococcus, Anhydrobacter, Thermus, and Aerococcus were observed to be highly abundant in the symptomatic CP patients when compared to the asymptomatic group. In general, we observed a decrease in the burden of opportunistic pathogens in the host microbiota during the later waves of infection.InterpretationTo our knowledge, this is the first analytical cross-sectional study of this scale, which was designed to understand the relation between the evolving nature of the virus and the changes in the human nasopharyngeal microbiota. Although no clear signatures were observed, this study shall pave the way for a better understanding of the disease pathophysiology and help gather preliminary evidence on whether interventions to the host microbiota can help in better protection or faster recovery

Whipworms of south-east Asian rodents are distinct from Trichuris muris

The whipworm Trichuris muris is known to be associated with various rodent species in the northern hemisphere, but the species identity of whipworm infecting rodents in the Oriental region remains largely unknown. We collected Trichuris of Muridae rodents in mainland and insular Southeast Asia between 2008 and 2015 and used molecular and morphological approaches to identify the systematic position of new specimens. We discovered two new species that were clearly distinct from T. muris, both in terms of molecular phylogenetic clustering and morphological features, with one species found in Thailand and another one in Borneo. We named the new species from Thailand as Trichuris cossoni and the species from Borneo as Trichuris arrizabalagai. Molecular phylogeny using internal transcribed spacer region (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2) showed a divergence between T. arrizabalagai n. sp., T. cossoni n. sp. and T. muris. Our findings of phylogeographically distinct Trichuris species despite some globally distributed host species requires further research into the distribution of different species, previously assumed to belong to T. muris, which has particular relevance for using these species as laboratory model organisms

Evaluation of primer pairs for microbiome profiling from soils to humans within the One Health framework

The 'One Health' framework emphasizes the ecological relationships between soil, plant, animal and human health. Microbiomes play important roles in these relationships, as they modify the health and performance of the different compartments and influence the transfer of energy, matter and chemicals between them. Standardized methods to characterize microbiomes along food chains are, however, currently lacking. To address this methodological gap, we evaluated the performance of DNA extraction kits and commonly recommended primer pairs targeting different hypervariable regions (V3-V4, V4, V5-V6, V5-V6-V7) of the 16S rRNA gene, on microbiome samples along a model food chain, including soils, maize roots, cattle rumen, and cattle and human faeces. We also included faeces from gnotobiotic mice colonized with defined bacterial taxa and mock communities to confirm the robustness of our molecular and bioinformatic approaches on these defined low microbial diversity samples. Based on Amplicon Sequence Variants, the primer pair 515F-806R led to the highest estimates of species richness and diversity in all sample types and offered maximum diversity coverage of reference databases in in silico primer analysis. The influence of the DNA extraction kits was negligible compared to the influence of the choice of primer pairs. Comparing microbiomes using 515F-806R revealed that soil and root samples have the highest estimates of species richness, while lowest richness was observed in human faeces. Primer pair choice directly influenced the estimation of community changes within and across compartments and may give rise to preferential detection of specific taxa. This work demonstrates why a standardized approach is necessary to analyse microbiomes within and between source compartments along food chains in the context of the One Health framework

Evaluation of primer pairs for microbiome profiling across a food chain from soils to humans within the One Health framework

The “One Health” framework emphasizes the ecological relationships between soil, plant, animal and human health. Microbiomes play important roles in these relationships, as they modify the health and performance of the different compartments and influence the transfer of energy, matter and chemicals between them. Standardized methods to characterize microbiomes along food chains are, however, currently lacking. To address this methodological gap, we evaluated the performance of DNA extractions kits and commonly recommended primer pairs targeting different hypervariable regions (V3-V4, V4, V5-V6, V5-V6-V7) of the 16S rRNA gene, on microbiome samples along a model food chain, including soils, maize roots, cattle rumen, and cattle and human faeces. We also included faeces from gnotobiotic mice colonized with defined bacterial taxa and mock communities to confirm the robustness of our molecular and bioinformatic approaches on these defined low microbial diversity samples. Based on Amplicon Sequence Variants, the primer pair 515F-806R led to the highest estimates of species richness and diversity in all sample types and offered maximum diversity coverage of reference databases in in silico primer analysis. The influence of the DNA extraction kits was negligible compared to the influence of the choice of primer pairs. Comparing microbiomes using 515F-806R revealed that soil and root samples have the highest estimates of species richness and inter-sample variation. Species richness decreased gradually along the food chain, with the lowest richness observed in human faeces. Primer pair choice directly influenced the estimation of community changes (beta diversity) within and across compartments and may give rise to preferential detection of specific taxa. This work demonstrates why a standardized approach is necessary to analyse microbiomes within and between source compartments along food chains in the context of the One Health framework