aGAL ANTIGEN AND RUTINOSE GLYCOSIDES AS MODEL COMPOUNDS FOR THE DESIGN OF CLASSICAL AND CONFORMATIONAL GLYCOMIMETICS

αGal or Galili epitope (αGal(1→3)βGal(1→4)GlcNAc) is a natural trisaccharide associated with cell-surface glycoproteins of certain mammalian and non-mammalian cells. The saccharide is not expressed by humans and anti-αGal antibodies account for ~1% of the total circulating antibodies in sera as a result of our constant exposition to the antigen from food and intestinal flora. Our interest in αGal relies on its involvement in a variety of pathologies including red meat allergy, hyperacute xenotransplant rejection, and parasitic and bacterial infections. In particular, we have an interest in developing structurally simple glycomimetics for engaging in high-affinity binding αGal-recognizing receptors such as the human anti-αGal IgG antibody and the Clostridium difficile toxins TcdA and TcdB in order to develop αGal based vaccine adjuvants and novel anti-infective therapies respectively. This communication presents our progress towards the synthesis of fluorinated αGal analogues as glycomimetics for their further applications to these goals. Apart from the role of carbohydrates in immune response, energy storage and as structural building blocks they are also involved in various other biological activities and many processes including cell-cell communication, immune response, fertilization, protein recycling, infection, among many others. The success of protein-carbohydrate interactions is conditioned to the fulfillment of conformational requirements imposed by the recognition site in the protein over the, inherently flexible, carbohydrate ligand. Hence, the study of the conformational preferences of saccharides is fundamental for the understanding of protein-carbohydrate interactions. In the second half of this thesis, we describe the results of the conformational study of rutinose (αRha(1→6)βGlcOR) glycosides. In particular, we centered our study on how the nature of the aglycone substituent can modulate the conformational equilibria around the interglycosidic linkage. Given the inherent flexibility of the (1→6) linkage, the hydrophobic nature of the rhamnose moiety, and the simplicity of the NMR spectra, rutinose constitutes a convenient model saccharide for performing these studies. The spectroscopic evidence gathered suggest the existence of an effect that could be used in the rational design of conformational mimetics of bioactive carbohydrates

Drug utilization study-pattern of use of anti-microbial drugs among post operative patients in department of general surgery at a tertiary care hospital

Background: The objective of this study was to assess the current trends of prescribing antibiotics amongst the patients of General surgery postoperative unit of C. U. Shah Medical College and Hospital, Surendranagar, Gujarat.Methods: An observational study was done amongst 200 patients admitted in the General surgery postoperative ward of a C. U. Shah Medical College and Hospital, Surendranagar over a period of 6 months in accordance with the ethical principles of the ethics committee guidelines. Data were analyzed using Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and values were presented descriptively in percentiles.Results: The average number of antimicrobials per encounter was 1.78. The most common surgeries in the postsurgical unit were urological procedures 61 (30.35%) followed by incision and drainage 40 (20%). Most of the patients were in the age group of 35-60 yrs. Higher utilization of cephalosporins (62.91%) and fluoroquinolones (20.27%). The most preferred route of administration of antibiotics in post operative period was oral (55.58%).Conclusions: The present study provides valuable insight about the overall pattern of anti-microbials used in postoperative patients in a tertiary care hospital. It is intended to be a step in broader evaluation of safety and efficacy of drug as well as for improving prescribing habits among the fraternity and minimizing incidence of resistance to antimicrobials in surgical wards of a teaching hospital

Analytical evaluation of drug package inserts in India

Background: A drug package insert or prescribing information is a document provided along with a prescription medication to provide additional information about that drug. Drug package inserts are approved by the administrative licensing authority. A package insert is intended to provide information for the safe and effective use of the respective drug. Product information provided by pharmaceutical companies has been determined to be far from adequate and not conforming with requirement of Indian regulatory. Hence, it was decided to conduct a study to assess the presentation and completeness of clinically important information provided in the currently available package inserts in India.Methods: Package inserts were provided by five pharmacies on request. The package inserts were collected in 10 weeks’ period and then they were analyzed for presentation and completeness of clinical information according to heading mentioned in Section 6.2 and 6.3 of schedule D of Drug and Cosmetic Rule, 1945. If the information was present under relevant heading, it was scored as one. Otherwise as score of zero was assigned. Total score for each heading was calculated by adding the score from the individual package inserts.Results: 70 package inserts were included in the study. None of the reviewed package inserts contained all the sections as required by the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. Total 15 headings were evaluated under both Section 6.2 and 6.3, highest value for the presence of heading were 12 out of 15 heading evaluated. That shows the best value of compliance was 80%.Conclusion: Accurate drug product information is important for the safe and effective use of medicines. Hence, pharmaceutical companies and regulators should ensure that accurate and up to date product information is provided in the package inserts

Utility of first trimester ultrasound before 12 weeks of gestation at tertiary care centre in western India

Background: The first trimester begins on the first day of the last menstrual period (LMP) and lasts until the end of 12 weeks of gestation. Transvaginal ultrasound is modality of choice for establishing the presence of an intrauterine pregnancy in the first trimester. The focus of our study is routine early pregnancy ultrasound. The purpose of this study was to diagnose various conditions of pregnancy at an early stage by using ultrasound.Methods: We conducted retrospective data analysis of random 250 pregnant patients who had undergone first-trimester ultrasonography USG) (transvaginal/abdominal) in their first antenatal visit at S.V.P. Hospital, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India from March 2021 to February 2022. The patient was selected by a simple randomized method. Maternal age, parity, gestational age, and special features regarding maternal gestational history were compared with USG findings. Patients were divided into 13 groups on the basis of ultrasonographic diagnosis.Results: We noted 76.8% of patients had single, viable, intrauterine pregnancies, while 23.2% had complicated pregnancies with uterine anomalies, ovarian cysts, leiomyoma, caesarean scar pregnancy or subchorionic hematomas.Conclusions: Ultrasound measurement of fetus in first trimester is most accurate method to confirm gestational age. It is less expensive and easily available modality. First-trimester ultrasound is useful to define embryonic landmarks in developmental stages with reference to gestational age, early diagnosis of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, multifetal pregnancy, major fetal malformation. And also, to diagnose pregnancy with leiomyoma, caesarean scar pregnancy, uterine anomaly and pre-eclampsia with the help of uterine artery PI

FICS-PCB: A Multi-Modal Image Dataset for Automated Printed Circuit Board Visual Inspection

Over the years, computer vision and machine learn- ing disciplines have considerably advanced the field of automated visual inspection for Printed Circuit Board (PCB-AVI) assurance. However, in practice, the capabilities and limitations of these advancements remain unknown because there are few publicly accessible datasets for PCB visual inspection and even fewer that contain images that simulate realistic application scenarios. To address this need, we propose a publicly available dataset, “FICS-PCB”, to facilitate the development of robust methods for PCB-AVI. The proposed dataset includes challenging cases from three variable aspects: illumination, image scale, and image sensor. This dataset consists of 9,912 images of 31 PCB samples and contains 77,347 annotated components. This paper reviews the existing datasets and methodologies used for PCB- AVI, discusses challenges, describes the proposed dataset, and presents baseline performances using feature engineering and deep learning methods for PCB component classification

FICS PCB X-ray: A dataset for automated printed circuit board inter-layers inspection

Advancements in computer vision and machine learning breakthroughs over the years have paved the way for automated X-ray inspection (AXI) of printed circuit boards (PCBs). However, there is no standard dataset to verify the capabilities and limitations of such advancements in practice due to the lack of publicly available datasets for PCB X-ray inspection. Furthermore, there is a lack of diverse PCB X-ray datasets that encompass images from X-ray Computed Tomography (CT). To address the lack of data, we developed the first comprehensive publicly available dataset, FICS PCB X-ray, to aid in the development of robust PCB-AXI methodologies. The dataset consists of diverse images from the tomographic image domain, along with challenging cases of unaligned, raw X-ray data of PCBs. Further, the dataset contains projection data and the reconstructed volume which is converted into a Tiff stack. Annotated X-ray layer images are also available for image processing and machine learning tasks. This paper summarizes the existing databases and their limitations, and proposes a new dataset, FICS PCB X-ray\u27\u27

PQC-SEP: Power Side-channel Evaluation Platform for Post-Quantum Cryptography Algorithms

Research in post-quantum cryptography (PQC) aims to develop cryptographic algorithms that can withstand classical and quantum attacks. The recent advance in the PQC field has gradually switched from the theory to the implementation of cryptographic algorithms on hardware platforms. In addition, the PQC standardization process of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is currently in its third round. It specifies ease of protection against side-channel analysis (SCA) as an essential selection criterion. Following this trend, in this paper, we evaluate side-channel leakages of existing PQC implementations using PQC-SEP, a completely automated side-channel evaluation platform at both pre-and post-silicon levels. It automatically estimates the amount of side-channel leakage in the power profile of a PQC design at early design stages, i.e., RTL, gate level, and physical layout level. It also efficiently validates side-channel leakages at the post-silicon level against artificial intelligence (AI) based SCA models and traditional SCA models. Further, we delineate challenges and approaches for future research directions

Secure Physical Design

An integrated circuit is subject to a number of attacks including information leakage, side-channel attacks, fault-injection, malicious change, reverse engineering, and piracy. Majority of these attacks take advantage of physical placement and routing of cells and interconnects. Several measures have already been proposed to deal with security issues of the high level functional design and logic synthesis. However, to ensure end-to-end trustworthy IC design flow, it is necessary to have security sign-off during physical design flow. This paper presents a secure physical design roadmap to enable end-to-end trustworthy IC design flow. The paper also discusses utilization of AI/ML to establish security at the layout level. Major research challenges in obtaining a secure physical design are also discussed

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century