CKMI: Comprehensive Key Management Infrastructure Design for Industrial Automation and Control Systems

Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) are broadly utilized in critical infrastructures for monitoring and controlling the industrial processes remotely. The real-time transmissions in such systems provoke security breaches. Many security breaches have been reported impacting society severely. Hence, it is essential to achieve secure communication between the devices for creating a secure environment. For this to be effective, the keys used for secure communication must be protected against unauthorized disclosure, misuse, alteration or loss, which can be taken care of by a Key Management Infrastructure. In this paper, by considering the generic industrial automation network, a comprehensive key management infrastructure (CKMI) is designed for IACS. To design such an infrastructure, the proposed scheme employs ECDH, matrix method, and polynomial crypto mechanisms. The proposed design handles all the standard key management operations, viz. key generation, device registration, key establishment, key storage, device addition, key revocation, key update, key recovery, key archival, and key de-registration and destruction. The design supports secure communication between the same and different levels of IACS devices. The proposed design can be applied for major industrial automation networks to handle the key management operations. The performance analysis and implementation results highlight the benefits of the proposed design

Food Choice Motives among the Students of a Dental Institution in Mysore City, India

Background: In pursuit of a more gholistich dentistry and an increasing focus on promoting oral health, dental students are increasingly being trained to take a more active part in health promotion and education. In particular, this incorporates an emphasis on diet and educating people to eat in more healthy ways.Aim: This paper works from the premise that if dental students are toengage in oral health promotion, they will do so more effectively if they have first explored their own food choice motivations. Subjects and Methods: A descriptive, cross.sectional questionnaire study. The food choice questionnaire (FCQ) was distributed to a comparative  group of 1st and 5th year dental students in timetabled lecture slots. The FCQ is a previously validated measure designed to assess ten main factors relevant to peoplesh food choices. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 18.0 (Chicago, IL, USA) using descriptive statistics and  independent sample t-test.Results: Nearly 77% (122/159) students responded. Findings were  analyzed using independent sample t-test. Results indicated statistically significant differences in terms of food choice motivations between male and female students of 1st and 5th year.Conclusion: Awareness and an understanding of the differences in  motivational factors affecting food choice between dental students is important as they are increasingly taught to play an active role in oral health promotion. Keywords: Africa, Food, Oral healt

Lipin-1 contributes to IL-4 mediated macrophage polarization

Macrophage responses contribute to a diverse array of pathologies ranging from infectious disease to sterile inflammation. Polarization of macrophages determines their cellular function within biological processes. Lipin-1 is a phosphatidic acid phosphatase in which its enzymatic activity contributes to macrophage pro-inflammatory responses. Lipin-1 also possesses transcriptional co-regulator activity and whether this activity is required for macrophage polarization is unknown. Using mice that lack only lipin-1 enzymatic activity or both enzymatic and transcriptional coregulator activities from myeloid cells, we investigated the contribution of lipin-1 transcriptional co-regulator function toward macrophage wound healing polarization. Macrophages lacking both lipin-1 activities did not elicit IL-4 mediated gene expression to levels seen in either wild-type or lipin-1 enzymatically deficient macrophages. Furthermore, mice lacking myeloid-associated lipin-1 have impaired full thickness excisional wound healing compared to wild-type mice or mice only lacking lipin-1 enzymatic activity from myeloid cell. Our study provides evidence that lipin-1 transcriptional co-regulatory activity contributes to macrophage polarization and influences wound healin

CHARGE TRANSFER COMPLEX METHOD FOR THE ESTIMATION OF ETORICOXIB IN TABLETS

A simple and sensitive spectrophotometric method employing acid-dye technique was developed for the estimation of etoricoxib in pharmaceutical dosage form. The proposed method is based on the formation of ion-pair complex of etoricoxib with an acid dye, which is extracted into chloroform and the absorbance measured at the λmax of the complex. The λmax of the ion-pair complex was found to be 414nm. Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range of 10-80 µg/ml .The proposed method is statistically validated and found to be useful for the routine determination of etoricoxib in tablets. Keywords: Etoricoxib, Spectrophotometry, Charge transfer complex, Tablets, Validation

FTIR SPECTROSCOPIC METHOD FOR QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF GLICLAZIDE IN TABLETS

A rapid FTIR spectroscopic method has been proposed for the estimation of Gliclazide in bulk drug and pharmaceutical dosage form. The method involves the measurement of the area of the infrared band corresponding to the amide stretching centered at 3317cm-1. The excipients in the commercial tablet preparation did not interfere with the assay. The linearity range was found to be 4-24µg/ml. The technique is reliable and useful for quality control for monitoring the adulteration of pure drug. The proposed method is statistically validated and found to be useful for the routine determination of gliclazide in tablets. Keywords:Gliclazide, FTIR, Tablets, Validation

COLORIMETRIC METHODS FOR THE ESTIMATION OF TOPIRAMATE IN TABLETS

Two simple sensitive and precise colorimetric methods A and B were developed for the estimation of topiramate in bulk drug as well as in pharmaceutical dosage form. Methods A is based on the formation of yellow coloured chromogen by condensation reaction of topiramate with Ehrlich’s reagent ( p - dimethyl amino benzaldehyde ) which has absorption maximum at 547nm. Method B is based on the formation of an orange coloured complex by oxidation reaction of topiramate with 2,2’- bipyridyl in the presence of ferric chloride which has absorption maximum at 519nm. The proposed methods are statistically validated and found to be useful for the routine determination of topiramate in tablets. Keywords: Topiramate, Colorimetry, Tablets, Validatio

Ethanol production from xylose by pichia stipitis NRRL Y-7124 in a stirred tank bioreactor

The ethanol production by Pichia stipitis was evaluated in a stirred tank bioreactor using semidefined medium containing xylose (90.0 g/l) as the main carbon source. Experimental assays were performed according to a 22 full factorial design to evaluate the influence of aeration (0.25 to 0.75 vvm) and agitation (150 to 250 rpm) conditions on ethanol production. In the studied range of values, the agitation increase and aeration decrease favored ethanol production, which was maximum (26.7 g/l) using 250 rpm and 0.25 vvm, conditions that gave a volumetric oxygen transfer coefficient (kLa value) of 4.9 h-1. Under these conditions, the ethanol yield factor, ethanol productivity, and the process efficiency were 0.32 g/g, 0.32 g/l.h, and 63%, respectively. These results are promising and contribute to the development of a suitable process for ethanol production from xylose by Pichia stipitis.The authors gratefully acknowledge Santander, Fapesp, Capes, and CNPq (Brazil)

A comparative evaluation of various invasion assays testing colon carcinoma cell lines

Various colon carcinoma cell lines were tested in different invasion assays, i.e. invasion into Matrigel, into confluent fibroblast layers and into chicken heart tissue. Furthermore, invasive capacity and metastatic potential were determined in nude mice. The colon carcinoma cells used were the human cell lines Caco-2, SW-480, SW-620 and HT-29, and the murine lines Colon-26 and -38. None of the human colon carcinoma cells migrated through porous membranes coated with Matrigel; of the murine lines, only Colon-26 did. When incubated in a mixture of Matrigel and culture medium non-invading cells formed spheroid cultures, whereas invading cells showed a stellate outgrowth. Only the heterogeneously shaped (epithelioid and stellate) cells of SW-480 and SW-620 and the spindle-shaped cells of Colon-26 invaded clearly confluent skin and colon fibroblasts as well as chicken heart tissue. However, when transplanted into the caecum of nude and syngeneic mice, all the lines tested were invasive with the exception of Caco-2 cells. We conclude that the outcome of in vitro tests measuring the invasive capacity of neoplastic cells is largely dependent on the test system used. Invasive capacity in vitro is strongly correlated with cells having a spindle cell shape, vimentin expression and E-cadherin down regulation. In contrast, HT-29 and Colon-38 cells having an epithelioid phenotype were clearly invasive and metastatic in vivo, but not in vitro. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Curation of viral genomes: challenges, applications and the way forward

BACKGROUND: Whole genome sequence data is a step towards generating the 'parts list' of life to understand the underlying principles of Biocomplexity. Genome sequencing initiatives of human and model organisms are targeted efforts towards understanding principles of evolution with an application envisaged to improve human health. These efforts culminated in the development of dedicated resources. Whereas a large number of viral genomes have been sequenced by groups or individuals with an interest to study antigenic variation amongst strains and species. These independent efforts enabled viruses to attain the status of 'best-represented taxa' with the highest number of genomes. However, due to lack of concerted efforts, viral genomic sequences merely remained as entries in the public repositories until recently. RESULTS: VirGen is a curated resource of viral genomes and their analyses. Since its first release, it has grown both in terms of coverage of viral families and development of new modules for annotation and analysis. The current release (2.0) includes data for twenty-five families with broad host range as against eight in the first release. The taxonomic description of viruses in VirGen is in accordance with the ICTV nomenclature. A well-characterised strain is identified as a 'representative entry' for every viral species. This non-redundant dataset is used for subsequent annotation and analyses using sequenced-based Bioinformatics approaches. VirGen archives precomputed data on genome and proteome comparisons. A new data module that provides structures of viral proteins available in PDB has been incorporated recently. One of the unique features of VirGen is predicted conformational and sequential epitopes of known antigenic proteins using in-house developed algorithms, a step towards reverse vaccinology. CONCLUSION: Structured organization of genomic data facilitates use of data mining tools, which provides opportunities for knowledge discovery. One of the approaches to achieve this goal is to carry out functional annotations using comparative genomics. VirGen, a comprehensive viral genome resource that serves as an annotation and analysis pipeline has been developed for the curation of public domain viral genome data . Various steps in the curation and annotation of the genomic data and applications of the value-added derived data are substantiated with case studies