Polymorphisms in Alcohol Dehydrogenase (ADH): A case study on the effects of ADH and ALDH on alcoholism among Native American population

Genetic variations in an individual affects the way alcohol is metabolized in the body. Alcohol Dehydrogenase (ADH) and Aldehyde Dehydrogenase (ALDH) are the two known enzymes that participate in alcohol metabolism. Polymorphisms of these enzymes are reported to make one more or less susceptible to alcoholism in some ethnic groups. The current study is a review of various articles highlighting the effects of ADH and ALDH on different populations. A study of 26 Native American, 21 Inuit, and 17 caucasian ethnic groups revealed the influence of ADH and ALDH on alcohol dependence. In one of the studies, different ADH allele populations were studied and found that the presence of ADH1B*1 allele led to increase in alcoholism whereas ADH1B*2 and ADH1B*3 alleles led to decrease in alcoholism. In another study, each participant was given alcohol intravenously until their blood alcohol was at approximately 125 mg.%. The rate of metabolism was calculated using body weight, concentration of alcohol, and the time it took for blood alcohol levels to reach a desired amount. The rate of decline of alcohol metabolism among Caucasian was 0.370 mg.% per minute, Native American 0.259 mg.% per minute, and the Inuit population 0.264 mg.% per minute. The study found that the Native American and Inuit rate of decline were similar, and the alcohol metabolism is much slower than the Caucasian counterparts. ADH polymorphism affects the ability to metabolize alcohol at different rates among different ethnicities

Improvising (sic) the Brand Image

Building a good brand image plays a vital role in any of the business. Brand image is a key factor which helps to enhance profitability and retain old customers. This report examined the various factors influencing customer perceptions of a Brand which are price, quality, packaging, advertising, reference by others and convenience. Quantitative research have been conducted to measure the current brand value of Hell pizza. Forty respondents were selected to know the current brand value of Hell Pizza and to give some feedbacks. The findings are highlighted in the form of charts and tables. Primary as well as secondary data have been chosen under consideration. Based on the observations and survey results various recommendations are given. With the help of this research the company can implement the recommendations to improve the brand image of Hell pizza and overall increase the customer base

Studies on survival of Pseudomonas aeruginosa 6750

The growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa 6750 as a biofilm was investigated using a novel system based on that of Gilbert et al (1989). The aim was to test the effect of controlled growth of the organism on antibiotic susceptibility and examine the survival of the organism as a biofilm. During the investigations it became clear that, because of the increasing growth of P.aeruginosa and production of exopolysaccharide, a growth rate controlled monolayer could not be achieved and so the method was not used further. The data, however, showed that there was an increase in the smooth colony type of the organism during growth. Investigations were focused on the survival of P.aeruginosa in batch and chemostat studies. Survival or percentage culturability, as measured by total and colony count ratio, was found to decrease both in extended batch culture and for chemostat cells with decreasing growth rate. Extended batch culture, however, did not exhibit further increases in resistance to ciprofloxacin and polymyxin B. Survival was also measured using other parameters namely the direct viable count, vital staining, effect of temperature downshift and measurement of lag. In batch culture, the most notable change was a decrease in cell size along the growth curve. This was accompanied by an increase in the cellular protein content. Protein per volume was calculated from the data which showed a marked increase in batch culture, which was not demonstrated for chemostat cells with decreasing growth rate. Outer membrane protein profiles were obtained for batch and chemostat cells. An LPS profile of batch culture cells was also demonstrated. In general, there was little difference in the outer membrane protein profiles of cells from early and late stationary phases.The result of the LPS profile showed that there appeared to be an increase in the B-band of the region of the LPS in the older stationary phase cultures

Análise de CNVs e indicação clínica em indivíduos com deficiência intelectual e outros distúrbios do desenvolvimento diagnosticados por CGH array

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Celular e do Desenvolvimento, Florianópolis, 2015.A deficiência intelectual (DI) é caracterizada por limitações significativas no funcionamento intelectual e no comportamento adaptativo, origina-se antes dos 18 anos de idade e afeta cerca de 1 a 3% da população do Mundo e 1,37% da população brasileira. As causas etiológicas da DI são variadas e de difícil identificação, devido a sua heterogeneidade. Entre as causas genéticas, a variação no número de cópias (CNVs) de trechos do DNA no genoma vem sendo amplamente estudada em distúrbios do desenvolvimento, através da técnica de hibridização comparativa por arrays (CGH array). CNVs são comumente classificadas como benignas (CNVs comum), de significado clínico incerto (raras), potencialmente patogênicas (raras) e patogênicas (raras). O presente estudo teve como objetivo avaliar as CNVs encontradas em indivíduos com DI e distúrbios do desenvolvimento e interpretar a sua contribuição para o aparecimento do fenótipo. Foram analisados 109 resultados de exames de CGH array, realizados pelo Laboratório de Genética Humana Neurogene, em Santa Catarina, com as informações clínicas e fenotípicas fornecidas através do preenchimento de questionários pelos médicos responsáveis pela solicitação dos exames. Houve uma prevalência de dois terços do sexo masculino na população estudada, sendo que os principais fenótipos que levaram a solicitação da investigação foram ADNPM, dismorfias de cabeça e face e DI. Oesclarecimento diagnóstico foi maior para DI severa, DI leve e hiperatividade associada a outros distúrbios. Os indivíduos testados apresentaram um total de 276 CNVs (187 microduplicações e 89 microdeleções); 81,2% benignas, 7,2% de significado incerto, 9,4% patogênicas e 2,2% potencialmente patogênicas. Os cromossomos 18, 19 e 21 apresentaram o menor número de CNVs. Não foi encontrada nenhuma CNV rara nos cromossomos 5, 10, 12, 19, 21 e Y. Seis casos potencialmente patogênicos foram descritos em mais detalhe, um desses casos representa uma deleção em 3 p13-p14.1 de 1.9MB, que confirma que a haploinsuficiência do gene MITF é suficiente para causar surdez congênita. Este estudo vem destacar a importância do CGH array para o diagnóstico de distúrbios do desenvolvimento inclusive para que seja inserido nos programas de saúde pública como um primeiro teste diagnóstico a ser ofertado pelo SUS.Abstract : Intellectual disability (ID) is characterized by significant limitations in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior. It originates before the age of 18, and affects about 1-3% of the world population and about 1.37% of the Brazilian population (CENSO 2010). ID has different levels of severity: mild, moderate, severe or profound, depending on the degree of intellectual impairment combined with adaptive behaviour. The etiological causes of ID are varied and difficult to identify due to clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Among the genetic causes, copy number variation (CNV) of DNA stretches in the genome has been widely studied in developmental disorders. CNVs are commonly classified as benign (common CNVs), of uncertain clinical significance (rare), potentially pathogenic (rare), and pathogenic (rare). This study aims to evaluate the CNVs found in patients with ID and developmental disorders and classify them according to their contribution to the appearance of the phenotype. We analyzed 109 results for CGH array investigation to obtain the phenotype of each individual. We observed: (1) a higher prevalence of males in the population studied, (2) that the major phenotypes observed were developmental delay, dysmorphic face and head and ID, and (3) the higher diagnostic rates were obtained for individuals with severe ID, mild ID, and hyperactivity. An overall of 276 CNVs (187 microduplications and 89 microdeletions) were observed. Ofthese changes 81.2% were benign, 7.2% of uncertain significance, 2.2% potentially pathogenic and 9.4% pathogenic. Chromosomes 18, 19 and 21 had the lowest number of CNVs. Rare CNVs were not observed in chromosomes 5, 10, 12, 19, 21 and Y. Six cases of potentially pathogenic CNVS were studied in more detail, and in one of these cases a deletion of 1.9MB in 3p13-p14.1 was observed, confirming that the haploinsufficiency of the MITF gene is sufficient to cause congenital deafness. This study highlights the importance of the investigation of CNVs in the diagnosis of developmental disorders, underscoring the importance to include array CGH as first investigation for ID in the public health system (SUS)

Real-Time WebRTC based Mobile Surveillance System

The rapid growth that has taken place in Computer Vision has been instrumental in driving the advancement of Image processing techniques and drawing inferences from them. Combined with the enormous capabilities that Deep Neural networks bring to the table, computers can be efficiently trained to automate the tasks and yield accurate and robust results quickly thus optimizing the process. Technological growth has enabled us to bring such computationally intensive tasks to lighter and lower-end mobile devices thus opening up a wide range of possibilities. WebRTC-the open-source web standard enables us to send multimedia-based data from peer to peer paving the way for Real-time Communication over the Web. With this project, we aim to build on one such opportunity that can enable us to perform custom object detection through an android based application installed on our mobile phones. Therefore, our problem statement is to be able to capture real-time feeds, perform custom object detection, generate inference results, and appropriately send intruder alerts when needed. To implement this, we propose a mobile-based over-the-cloud solution that can capitalize on the enormous and encouraging features of the YOLO algorithm and incorporate the functionalities of OpenCV’s DNN module for providing us with fast and correct inferences.  Coupled with a good and intuitive UI, we can ensure ease of use of our application

Extracting finite structure from infinite language

This paper presents a novel connectionist memory-rule based model capable of learning the finite-state properties of an input language from a set of positive examples. The model is based upon an unsupervised recurrent self-organizing map [T. McQueen, A. Hopgood, J. Tepper, T. Allen, A recurrent self-organizing map for temporal sequence processing, in: Proceedings of Fourth International Conference in Recent Advances in Soft Computing (RASC2002), Nottingham, 2002] with laterally interconnected neurons. A derivation of functionalequivalence theory [J. Hopcroft, J. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, vol. 1, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1979] is used that allows the model to exploit similarities between the future context of previously memorized sequences and the future context of the current input sequence. This bottom-up learning algorithm binds functionally related neurons together to form states. Results show that the model is able to learn the Reber grammar [A. Cleeremans, D. Schreiber, J. McClelland, Finite state automata and simple recurrent networks, Neural Computation, 1 (1989) 372–381] perfectly from a randomly generated training set and to generalize to sequences beyond the length of those found in the training set

Anti-agglomerant performance of surfactants evaluated in cyclopentane hydrate and CH4/C3H8 gas hydrate systems

The main objective of this work was to evaluate and compare the AA performance of surfactants of different affinity in cyclopentane (CP) hydrate and gas (methane – propane mixture) hydrate systems. The study was performed with two surfactants: Noramium® DA 50 and Inipol® AH 81, which are respectively water-soluble and dispersible in water. Their AA performance was evaluated and compared without or with 4 wt% NaCl. A comparative study of the effect of the surfactants on the water/CP interfacial activity was carried out by surface pressure measurements. The impact of the surfactants on hydrate formation and morphology was observed by microscopic observations at the water/CP interface. Lastly, the AA performance of DA 50 and AH 81, was evaluated at the macroscopic scale in a batch reactor under agitation. The experiments in reactor were performed in oil-dominated systems (70 vol%) with CP as the oil phase in the CP hydrate system, and n-octane in the gas hydrate one

Forbrukerfleksibilitet: Et alternativ til nettinvesteringer? : En analyse av potensialet for forbrukerfleksibilitet for Agder Energi Nett

Masteroppgave industriell økonomi og teknologiledelse IND590 - Universitetet i Agder 2018Strømnettet må dimensjoneres etter de største effekttoppene i året, som typisk er på juleaften, når alle lager middag samtidig, eller på årets kaldeste dag, da alle varmeovner står på. Dette betyr at strømnettet i alle andre perioder har ledig kapasitet. For å sikre en mer effektiv utnyttelse av det eksisterende strømnettet, må disse effekttoppene reduseres og jevnes ut. Et tiltak for å oppnå dette er forbrukerfleksibilitet. I begrepet forbrukerfleksibilitet inngår både endringer i kundeadferd som følge av prissignaler, og fjernstyrte utkoblinger av forbrukslaster. Å redusere eller unngå å forsterke strømnettet for å håndtere et behov som kun oppstår én eller få ganger i året, vil gi reduserte kostnader for nettselskapene, noe som til syvende og sist vil gi kundene lavere nettleie. I denne utredningen er det studert hvorvidt forbrukerfleksibilitet kan være et alternativ til nettinvesteringer. For å belyse temaet, er det utarbeidet følgende problemstillinger: 1. Etablere modell for å vurdere virkemidlene effekttariff og fleksibilitetsavtale i distribusjonsnettet. 2. Anvende modellen på case i distribusjonsnettet hos Agder Energi Nett: a) Hvor stort er problemet? b) Hva er den økonomiske verdien av utsatte investeringer tilknyttet transformatoroppgraderinger som følge av forbrukerfleksibilitet? 3. Kartlegge for hvilke andre utfordringer Agder Energi Nett opplever at forbrukerfleksibilitet kan være en problemløser. For å besvare problemstillingene er det gjennomført en casestudie på Agder Energi Nett, med både en kvalitativ og kvantitativ tilnærming. Den kvantitative empirien er forbruksdata fra 5314 nettstasjonstransformatorer i perioden 1. desember 2017 til og med 1. mars 2018. Den kvalitative empirien er innsamlet via intervjuer og mailkorrespondanser med sentrale personer i nettselskapet, for å innhente nødvendig informasjon for å besvare utredningens problemstillinger. Det er utarbeidet en modell for å gjennomføre en intensiv analyse av de økonomiske verdiene av utsatte investeringer i distribusjonsnettet. I modellen er det inkludert scenarier for økt energiforbruk som følge av en økning i elbiler, og topplastreduksjon som følge av effekttariffer og fjernstyrte utkoblinger av forbrukslaster. III En transformator kan operere på 120 prosent av sin merkeytelse med lave omgivelsestemperaturer. I den studerte perioden er det kun to prosent av de studerte nettstasjonstransformatorene til Agder Energi Nett hvor maksbelastningen overstiger dette. Utredningens funn viser at det totale økonomiske potensialet for utsatte investeringer til transformatoroppgraderinger i Agder Energi Netts distribusjonsnett, isolert sett, er begrenset. Det totale økonomiske potensialet er beregnet til i underkant av to millioner kroner i scenarioet hvor forbrukerfleksibilitet har størst potensial. I tilfellene hvor forbrukerfleksibilitet kan utsette investeringer synes det likevel at de økonomiske verdiene er tilstrekkelige til å kjøpe utkoblbare forbrukslaster fra kundene. Hovedgrunnen til at det totale potensialet vurderes til å være begrenset, er fordi det er svært få nettstasjonstransformatorer modellen i utgangspunktet vurderer at må oppgraderes som følge av overbelastning. Funnene fra kartleggingen av nettselskapets øvrige potensial for forbrukerfleksibilitet i strømnettet underbygger den eksiterende teorien på feltet. Karleggingen gir et grunnlag for videre studier innenfor temaet