Development Of Novel Redox Sensors And Processes Towards Biological Applications

Research on the cure and early detection of diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer\u27s, and Parkinson\u27s is becoming of great interest due to the increasing number of people affected by them every year. An accurate and quick detection of various damaging species is highly critical in treatments of such diseases not only for exploring possible cures but also for early detection. If these diseases are detected during the initial stages than the possibility of curing them is much higher. Motivated by this, many researchers today have developed numerous types of sensing devices that can detect various physiological and biological compounds. However, most of these sensors are enzyme based. They have several setbacks such as the lack of sensitivity, restricted selectivity, short shelf life, and biological fouling. To overcome these obstacles, we examine the use of nanoceria modified Pt and Au electrodes for the detection of glucose and reactive oxygen species such as hydrogen peroxide. Amperometric detection of glucose and hydrogen peroxide is critical for biological applications for diabetes and possible Alzheimer\u27s and Parkinson\u27s patients. This dissertation focuses on the exploration of non-enzymatic detection of glucose and reactive oxygen species which has the prospective to be used for biological applications, in addition to an investigation of an odor control technology that uses these reactive oxygen species for the treatment of wastewater plants. The combination of bi-metallic composites with nanoceria showed increased oxidation ability towards glucose and hydrogen peroxide. The following dissertation expands on the relationship between bi-metallic nanoceria composite materials and its electro-oxidation of glucose and hydrogen peroxide towards biological sensing along with an investigation of an odor control technology that utilizes generates hydroxyl radical fine particle mist for the degradation of hydrogen sulfide odor in wastewater treatment plants

PHARMACEUTICALLY ENGINEERED NANOPARTICLES FOR ENHANCING IMMUNE RESPONSES TO HIV-1 TAT AND GAG p24 PROTEINS

These studies were aimed at investigating the potential application of nanoparticles engineered from oil-in-water microemulsion precursors for enhancing immune responses to HIV-1 Tat and Gag p24 proteins. Both of the HIV-1 proteins have been reported to be critical in the virus life cycle and are being evaluated in clinical trials as vaccine candidates. Anionic nanoparticles were prepared using emulsifying wax as the oil phase and Brij 78 and sodium dodecyl sulfate as the surfactants. The resulting nanoparticles were coated with Tat and were demonstrated to produce superior immune responses after administration to BALB/c mice compared to Tat adjuvanted with Alum. Similarly, cationic nanoparticles were prepared using emulsifying wax and Brij 78 and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide as the surfactants. The cationic nanoparticles were investigated for delivery of immunostimulatory adjuvants, namely three Toll-like receptor ligands, for obtaining synergistic enhancements in immune responses to a model antigen, Ovalbumin (OVA). In vitro and in vivo studies were carried out to elucidate possible mechanisms by which nanoparticles may result in enhancements in immune responses. In vitro studies were carried out to evaluate the uptake of nanoparticles into dendritic cells and to assess the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines from dendritic cells in the presence of nanoparicles. In vivo studies were carried out using a MHC class I restricted transgenic mouse model to investigate the potential for nanoparticles coated with OVA to enhance presentation of the protein to CD8+ T cells compared to OVA alone. Finally, the preparation of nanoparticles with a low amount of surface chelated nickel for high affinity binding to histidine-tagged (his-tag) proteins was investigated. It was hypothesized that this strengthened interaction of his-tag protein to the nickel chelated nanoparticles (Ni-NPs) would result in a greater uptake of antigen in vivo; therefore, enhanced immune responses compared to protein bound to anionic nanoparticles. In vivo evaluation of his-tag HIV-1 Gag p24 bound to Ni-NPs resulted in enhanced immune responses compared to protein either adjuvanted with Alum or coated on the surface of nanoparticles

Importance of Dimensionality Reduction in Image Processing

This paper presents a survey on various techniques of compression methods. Linear Discriminant analysis (LDA) is a method used in statistics, pattern recognition and machine learning to find a linear combination of features that classifies an object into two or more classes. This results in a dimensionality reduction before later classification.Principal component analysis (PCA) uses an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of correlated variables into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables called principal components. The purpose of the review is to explore the possibility of image compression for multiple images

Review of Digital Image Forgery Detection

Forgery in digital images can be done by manipulating the digital image to conceal some meaningful or useful information of the image. It can be much difficult to identify the edited region from the original image in various cases. In order to maintain the integrity and authenticity of the image, the detection of forgery in the image is necessary. Adaption of modern lifestyle and advanced photography equipment has made tempering of digital image easy with the help of image editing soft wares. It is thus important to detect such image tempering operations. Different methods exist in literature that divide the suspicious image into overlapped blocks and extract some features from the images to detect the type of forgery that exist in the image. The image forgery detection can be done based on object removal, object addition, unusual color modifications in the image. Many existing techniques are available to overcome this problem but most of these techniques have many limitations. Images are one of the powerful media for communication. In this paper a survey of different types of forgery and digital image forgery detection has been focused

Big Data Harmonization – Challenges and Applications

As data grow, need for big data solution gets increased day by day. Concept of data harmonization exist since two decades. As data is to be collected from various heterogeneous sources and techniques of data harmonization allow them to be in a single format at same place it is also called data warehouse. Lot of advancement occurred to analyses historical data by using data warehousing. Innovations uncover the challenges and problems faced by data warehousing every now and then. When the volume and variety of data gets increased exponentially, existing tools might not support the OLAP operations by traditional warehouse approach. In this paper we tried to focus on the research being done in the field of big data warehouse category wise. Research issues and proposed approaches on various kind of dataset is shown. Challenges and advantages of using data warehouse before data mining task are also explained in detail

Characteristic and trends of malaria in Surat district of Gujarat: a hospital based study

Background: Malaria is a major health problem and infects many individuals despite of various efforts to control it. The present study was aimed to observe characteristics of malaria, seasonal variation and prevalence of malaria in our region.Methods: This retrospective study was conducted in our institute from period of January 2012 to December 2012.  All the fever cases undergone investigations for malarial parasites were included in present study for defined time period.  All the laboratory data of the patients having fever were retrieved from the Pathology Laboratory of our institute.Results: out of total 32674 reports studied 4907(15.01%) were positive for malaria with overall Slide positivity rate and slide falciparum rate were 15.01% and 38.29% respectively. Incidence of malaria occurs throughout year with increased incidence of P. falciparum in monsoon.Conclusion: In the present study incidence of malaria was higher in monsoon in comparison to other seasons. But throughout the year no declining trends in incidence of malaria was observed. P. vivax malaria was more commonly observed in our study but incidence of P. falciparum increased in monsoon

Spectrum of clinical and biochemical profile and its importance in diabetic ketoacidosis: a tertiary care hospital experience in Gujarat

Background: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a disorder of multiple etiologies, and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is one of the life-threatening complications of DM. This study was aimed to study the clinical and biochemical profile of DKA patients. Methods: We conducted this retrospective study at a tertiary care hospital in Gujarat. We included total 100 patients above the age of 18 years having DM, presented with DKA. A detailed history, clinical examination and biochemical tests were carried out: random blood sugar, urinalysis, arterial blood gas analysis, serum ketone, HbA1c, serum creatinine, serum electrolytes- potassium and sodium and serum osmolality. The results were analysed using Microsoft excel. Results: Out of total 100 patients, 76 (76%) patients had type 1 DM and 24 (24%) had type 2 DM, 42 (42%) were in the age group of 18-30 years. The mean age was 39.75±12.14 years. There were 56 (56%) males and 44 (44%) females with male: female ratio of 1.3:1. Most common clinical features of DKA were nausea/vomiting (88%), breathlessness (43%) and fever (35%). The main biochemical parameters altered were blood sugar (>400 mg/dl in 41%) and serum ketones (≥5 in 84%) as well as majority of patients (64%) had their HbA1c level between 11-15% with the mean HbA1c value of 12.25±2.43%. Conclusions: DKA is a frequently observed emergency with high mortality rate. Education regarding symptoms of ketoacidosis, not missing insulin doses especially during illness, strict adherence to treatment and lifestyle modifications can greatly reduce DKA occurrence

Aurora B-dependent polarization of the cortical actomyosin network during mitotic exit.

The isotropic metaphase actin cortex progressively polarizes as the anaphase spindle elongates during mitotic exit. This involves the loss of actomyosin cortex from opposing cell poles and the accumulation of an actomyosin belt at the cell centre. Although these spatially distinct cortical remodelling events are coordinated in time, here we show that they are independent of each other. Thus, actomyosin is lost from opposing poles in anaphase cells that lack an actomyosin ring owing to centralspindlin depletion. In examining potential regulators of this process, we identify a role for Aurora B kinase in actin clearance at cell poles. Upon combining Aurora B inhibition with centralspindlin depletion, cells exiting mitosis fail to change shape and remain completely spherical. Additionally, we demonstrate a requirement for Aurora B in the clearance of cortical actin close to anaphase chromatin in cells exiting mitosis with a bipolar spindle and in monopolar cells forced to divide while flat. Altogether, these data suggest a novel role for Aurora B activity in facilitating DNA-mediated polar relaxation at anaphase, polarization of the actomyosin cortex, and cell division

Measurement of H₂O₂ within living drosophila during aging using a ratiometric mass spectrometry probe targeted to the mitochondrial matrix

Hydrogen peroxide (H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>) is central to mitochondrial oxidative damage and redox signaling, but its roles are poorly understood due to the difficulty of measuring mitochondrial H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> in vivo. Here we report a ratiometric mass spectrometry probe approach to assess mitochondrial matrix H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> levels in vivo. The probe, MitoB, comprises a triphenylphosphonium (TPP) cation driving its accumulation within mitochondria, conjugated to an arylboronic acid that reacts with H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> to form a phenol, MitoP. Quantifying the MitoP/MitoB ratio by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry enabled measurement of a weighted average of mitochondrial H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> that predominantly reports on thoracic muscle mitochondria within living flies. There was an increase in mitochondrial H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> with age in flies, which was not coordinately altered by interventions that modulated life span. Our findings provide approaches to investigate mitochondrial ROS in vivo and suggest that while an increase in overall mitochondrial H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> correlates with aging, it may not be causative