MANDIBULAR SWING APPROACH FOR A RECURRENT PARA PHARYNGEAL SPACE TUMOR – REPORT OF A CASE.

Para pharyngeal space tumors , most of them benign, account forsome 0.5% of tumors of head & neck. The importance of thesetumors lie mainly in two aspects- on the one hand, the difficultyof early diagnosis & on the other hand the extremecomplications of performing surgery in Para pharyngeal region.This article discusses a clinical case of recurrent parapharyngeal tumor. A 32 yr old man presented with a recurrentleft side neck swelling,4cm in diameter,which was subsequentlyconfirmed as schwannoma by FNAC. Para pharyngeal tumorwas successfully removed by mandibular swing approach &excision technique. His post operative course was uneventful &the pre operative clinical symptoms such as dysphagia &dysphnea completely resolved after surgery. 

Simultaneous conduction and valence band quantisation in ultra-shallow, high density doping profiles in semiconductors

We demonstrate simultaneous quantisation of conduction band (CB) and valence band (VB) states in silicon using ultra-shallow, high density, phosphorus doping profiles (so-called Si:P $\delta$-layers). We show that, in addition to the well known quantisation of CB states within the dopant plane, the confinement of VB-derived states between the sub-surface P dopant layer and the Si surface gives rise to a simultaneous quantisation of VB states in this narrow region. We also show that the VB quantisation can be explained using a simple particle-in-a-box model, and that the number and energy separation of the quantised VB states depend on the depth of the P dopant layer beneath the Si surface. Since the quantised CB states do not show a strong dependence on the dopant depth (but rather on the dopant density), it is straightforward to exhibit control over the properties of the quantised CB and VB states independently of each other by choosing the dopant density and depth accordingly, thus offering new possibilities for engineering quantum matter.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures and supplementary materia

IMPACT OF DELETERIOUS NON-SYNONYMOUS SINGLE NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISMS OF CYTOKINE GENES ON NON-CLASSICAL HYDROGEN BONDS PREDISPOSING TO CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE: AN IN SILICO APPROACH

  Objective: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death worldwide. Malfunctioning of genes that are responsible for several inflammatory processes is the major cause for its initiation. Cytokine genes are one such group of genes that are involved in the development of CVD. Hence, the prediction of potential point mutations in these genes is important for diagnostic purposes. Such mutations result in altered protein structure and function when compared to neutral ones.Methods: In this study, interleukin factor 6 (IL6), tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), interleukin factor 4 (IL4), and interferon gamma have been analyzed using sorting intolerant from tolerant and PolyPhen 2.0 tools.Results: Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in IL6, TNF-α, and IL4, are found to be potentially deleterious. In addition, bond analysis has also been performed on these SNPs. It has been predicted that L119P and R196H of IL6 as well as K87T and T181N of TNF-α are potential ns-SNP's that may cause structural and functional variations in the corresponding proteins. The hydrogen and Cation-Pi bond analysis performed in this study provides molecular-based evidence that support the predicted deleterious potential of such SNPs for these CVD candidate genes along with other conventional in silico tools.Conclusion: The study testifies the importance of adopting a computational approach to narrow down potential point mutants for disease predictions

The Inferred Cardiogenic Gene Regulatory Network in the Mammalian Heart

Cardiac development is a complex, multiscale process encompassing cell fate adoption, differentiation and morphogenesis. To elucidate pathways underlying this process, a recently developed algorithm to reverse engineer gene regulatory networks was applied to time-course microarray data obtained from the developing mouse heart. Approximately 200 genes of interest were input into the algorithm to generate putative network topologies that are capable of explaining the experimental data via model simulation. To cull specious network interactions, thousands of putative networks are merged and filtered to generate scale-free, hierarchical networks that are statistically significant and biologically relevant. The networks are validated with known gene interactions and used to predict regulatory pathways important for the developing mammalian heart. Area under the precision-recall curve and receiver operator characteristic curve are 9% and 58%, respectively. Of the top 10 ranked predicted interactions, 4 have already been validated. The algorithm is further tested using a network enriched with known interactions and another depleted of them. The inferred networks contained more interactions for the enriched network versus the depleted network. In all test cases, maximum performance of the algorithm was achieved when the purely data-driven method of network inference was combined with a data-independent, functional-based association method. Lastly, the network generated from the list of approximately 200 genes of interest was expanded using gene-profile uniqueness metrics to include approximately 900 additional known mouse genes and to form the most likely cardiogenic gene regulatory network. The resultant network supports known regulatory interactions and contains several novel cardiogenic regulatory interactions. The method outlined herein provides an informative approach to network inference and leads to clear testable hypotheses related to gene regulation

Capture of a live South African cape locust lobster at Vizhinjam

landing centre informed the capture of a new lobster hitherto unknown to them. Immediately it was brought to CMFRI Marine Aquarium and kept alive and was identified to be slipper lobster of Scyllarides and the species confirmed as Scyllarides elisabethae, the South African locust lobster

Bottle-nose dolphin stranded at Kovalam in Kerala

On 5th September 1998, an Indian bottle-nose dolphin {Tursiops truncatus aduncus Ehrenberg. 1833) was washed ashore at Ashoka beach in Kovalam

An integrated approach to assessing seismic simulation based on analysis of preseismic, coseismic, postseismic and interseismic creep, and creep damage evolution

In this paper, a comprehensive theoretical, numerical and computational investigation based on the analysis of the Parkfield earthquakes will be carried out with the main focus directed at the understanding on how physical and chemical transport phenomena, creep deformation with preseismic, coseismic, postseismic and interseismic periods including steady-state static creep, diffusional creep, cyclic creep and dynamic creep, large strains, tension/compression creep asymmetry, creep dilatancy, active creep damage state (degradation) and passive creep damage state (healing), cyclic variations of velocities in boundary conditions, and tectonic loading history affect fault sliding, seismic activity in the crust surrounding a fault including accelerated seismic release characterized by cumulative Benioff strain, spatiotemporal seismicity patterns, large earthquake cycle on the fault as well as future destructive events. Furthermore, focus is put on how the diffusion, preseismic, coseismic, postseismic and interseismic creep processes, large strains, creep damage evolution including degradation and healing, movement of the front of creep rupture, boundary conditions as well as tectonic loading history may be modeled inorder to understand the workings of the Parkfield earthquakes and to predict new destructive earthquakes within a much shorter time frame than currently possible.Теоретичні та чисельні дослідження даної роботи направлено на дослідження Parkfield землетрусів. Головні дослідження направлено на пояснення впливу фізичної та хімічної дифузії, деформацій повзучості в досейсмічному, сейсмічному, післясейсмічному та міжсейсмічному періодах,включаючи сталу стадію повзучості, дифузійної повзучості, циклічної та динамічної повзучості, великих деформацій, асиметрії повзучості при розтягу та стисканні, явища ділатансії, активного та пасивного розвитку пошкоджуваності, циклічних варіацій крайових умов, історії тектонічних навантажень, сейсмічної активності земної кори на формування розломів та розривів кори та відповідно на виникнення катастрофічних випадків. Основні дослідження сфокусовано на дослідженні того, як дифузія, досейсмічна, сейсмічна, післясейсмічна та міжсейсмічна повзучість, великі деформації, розвиток процесів пошкоджуваності та заліковування, рух фронту руйнування, крайові умови можуть бути змодельовані для розуміння Parkfield землетрусів та прогнозування нових руйнівних землетрусів

Finfish resources around Andaman and Nicobar islands

The average catch rate of finfishes obtained by FORV Sagar Sampada from the survey area in the Andaman Sea was 259 kg/hr and the yield ranged from 8.6 to 1260 kg/hr. Silver bellies was the most abundant component (37.5%) with a catch rate of 96.9 kg/hr. Carangids, elasmobranchs and perches accounted for 20.3%, 11.9% and 8.0% of the total catch and the corresponding catch rates were 52.5, 31.1 and 20.8 kg/hr respectively. The highest catch rate of 1260 kg/hr was recorded from 13°10'N - 92°37'E at a depth of 65m. The catch rate indicated that the depth zone 51-100 m is productive and yielded 84.7% of the total catch at a catch rate of 501.4 kg/hr. Although the pelagic trawl was operated at 38 stations, the catch realised was neghgible (0.83 kg/hr)

Mining users' significant driving routes with low-power sensors

While there is significant work on sensing and recognition of significant places for users, little attention has been given to users' significant routes. Recognizing these routine journeys, opens doors to the development of novel applications, like personalized travel alerts, and enhancement of user's travel experience. However, the high energy consumption of traditional location sensing technologies, such as GPS or WiFi based localization, is a barrier to passive and ubiquitous route sensing through smartphones. In this paper, we present a passive route sensing framework that continuously monitors a vehicle user solely through a phone's gyroscope and accelerometer. This approach can differentiate and recognize various routes taken by the user by time warping angular speeds experienced by the phone while in transit and is independent of phone orientation and location within the vehicle, small detours and traffic conditions. We compare the route learning and recognition capabilities of this approach with GPS trajectory analysis and show that it achieves similar performance. Moreover, with an embedded co-processor, common to most new generation phones, it achieves energy savings of an order of magnitude over the GPS sensor.This research has been funded by the EPSRC Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction project (EP/K000314).This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from ACM via http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2668332.266834

Computational identification of strain-, species- and genus-specific proteins

BACKGROUND: The identification of unique proteins at different taxonomic levels has both scientific and practical value. Strain-, species- and genus-specific proteins can provide insight into the criteria that define an organism and its relationship with close relatives. Such proteins can also serve as taxon-specific diagnostic targets. DESCRIPTION: A pipeline using a combination of computational and manual analyses of BLAST results was developed to identify strain-, species-, and genus-specific proteins and to catalog the closest sequenced relative for each protein in a proteome. Proteins encoded by a given strain are preliminarily considered to be unique if BLAST, using a comprehensive protein database, fails to retrieve (with an e-value better than 0.001) any protein not encoded by the query strain, species or genus (for strain-, species- and genus-specific proteins respectively), or if BLAST, using the best hit as the query (reverse BLAST), does not retrieve the initial query protein. Results are manually inspected for homology if the initial query is retrieved in the reverse BLAST but is not the best hit. Sequences unlikely to retrieve homologs using the default BLOSUM62 matrix (usually short sequences) are re-tested using the PAM30 matrix, thereby increasing the number of retrieved homologs and increasing the stringency of the search for unique proteins. The above protocol was used to examine several food- and water-borne pathogens. We find that the reverse BLAST step filters out about 22% of proteins with homologs that would otherwise be considered unique at the genus and species levels. Analysis of the annotations of unique proteins reveals that many are remnants of prophage proteins, or may be involved in virulence. The data generated from this study can be accessed and further evaluated from the CUPID (Core and Unique Protein Identification) system web site (updated semi-annually) at . CONCLUSION: CUPID provides a set of proteins specific to a genus, species or a strain, and identifies the most closely related organism