Optimization and Characterization of Thermostable Endo and Exocellulases by Humicola sp. SKESMBKU03

Humicola sp. SKESMBKU03, a cellulase producer was isolated from horse dung manure collected from Hyderabad, Telangana. In the present study, endo and exoglucanase production from Humicola sp. SKESMBKU03 was studied and optimization of the cultural conditions to enhance production of enzymes has been reported. Among the twenty fungal cellulase producers isolated from different thermogenic habitats, the fungal strain ‘HD3’ identified as Humicola sp. SKESMBKU03 exhibited highest cellulase activity by plate screening assay. To enhance the production level of the enzyme, different cultural conditions were optimized and observed that optimum pH and temperature for endo and exoglucanase production was 5.0 and 45oC respectively. Maximum growth as well as enzyme production was recorded on 3rd day of incubation period in shake flask (100RPM) containing Mandel’s Weber medium. Urea and malt extract among the organic nitrogen sources while ammonium chloride as inorganic nitrogen source were found to be the best nitrogen source (0.2%) for endo and exoglucanase production. The endo and exoglucanase activities are higher in media containing glucose as their carbon source (1%) followed by xylose and lactose. The organism showed maximum dry weight in pH of 9.0-10.0, temperature of 45oC, cellulose as carbon sources, yeast extract and malt extract of nitrogen source. The endo and exocellulases produced by the Humicola sp. SKESMBKU03 are highly stable at pH 8.0 and temperature of 750C. The results indicate that the endo and exocellulases produced by Humicola sp. SKESMBKU03 are more stable at high temperature and alkaline pH

EVALUATION OF MAXIMUM ENTROPY METHOD OF SPECTRUM ESTIMATION

The parametric models autoregressive (AR)/AR-moving average (MA)/MA are sometimes not capable of finding out the power spectral densities of random sequences. Under such circumstances, the non-parametric methods outperform the parametric ones because of the sensitivity of the latter to model specifications. The maximum entropy method (MEM) is regarded as the non-parametric method of spectrum estimation; it suggests one possible way of extrapolating the autocorrelation sequence so that a more accurate estimate of the spectrum can be obtained with better resolution. This paper investigates the work of realizing MEM method and evaluating its performance with minimum variance method

A NOVEL APPROACH TO STATE SPACE TIME DOMAIN AUTOREGRESSIVE SIGNAL PROCESSING USING OPTIMAL RECURSIVE ESTIMATOR

This work describes the concept of filtering of signals using discrete Kalman filter. The true state of constant, random constant having process noise and autoregressive (p) process when corrupted by measurement noise are estimated using discrete Kalman filter and results are presented using MATLAB

Tetralogy of Fallot with rheumatic mitral stenosis: A case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Rheumatic and congenital heart diseases account for the majority of hospital admissions for cardiac patients in India. Tetralogy of Fallot is the most common congenital heart disease with survival to adulthood. Infective endocarditis accounts for 4% of admissions to a specialized unit for adult patients with a congenital heart lesion. This report is unique in that a severe stenotic lesion of the mitral valve, probably of rheumatic aetiology, was noted in an adult male with Tetralogy of Fallot.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>An unusual association of rheumatic mitral stenosis in an adult Indian male patient aged 35 years with Tetralogy of Fallot and subacute bacterial endocarditis of the aortic valve is presented.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this case report the diagnostic implications, hemodynamic and therapeutic consequences of mitral stenosis in Tetralogy of Fallot are discussed. In addition, the morbidity and mortality of infective endocarditis in adult patients with congenital heart disease are summarized. The risk of a coincident rheumatic process in patients with congenital heart disease is highlighted and the need for careful attention to this possibility during primary and follow-up evaluation of such patients emphasized.</p

An optimized TOPS+ comparison method for enhanced TOPS models

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Background Although methods based on highly abstract descriptions of protein structures, such as VAST and TOPS, can perform very fast protein structure comparison, the results can lack a high degree of biological significance. Previously we have discussed the basic mechanisms of our novel method for structure comparison based on our TOPS+ model (Topological descriptions of Protein Structures Enhanced with Ligand Information). In this paper we show how these results can be significantly improved using parameter optimization, and we call the resulting optimised TOPS+ method as advanced TOPS+ comparison method i.e. advTOPS+. Results We have developed a TOPS+ string model as an improvement to the TOPS [1-3] graph model by considering loops as secondary structure elements (SSEs) in addition to helices and strands, representing ligands as first class objects, and describing interactions between SSEs, and SSEs and ligands, by incoming and outgoing arcs, annotating SSEs with the interaction direction and type. Benchmarking results of an all-against-all pairwise comparison using a large dataset of 2,620 non-redundant structures from the PDB40 dataset [4] demonstrate the biological significance, in terms of SCOP classification at the superfamily level, of our TOPS+ comparison method. Conclusions Our advanced TOPS+ comparison shows better performance on the PDB40 dataset [4] compared to our basic TOPS+ method, giving 90 percent accuracy for SCOP alpha+beta; a 6 percent increase in accuracy compared to the TOPS and basic TOPS+ methods. It also outperforms the TOPS, basic TOPS+ and SSAP comparison methods on the Chew-Kedem dataset [5], achieving 98 percent accuracy. Software Availability: The TOPS+ comparison server is available at http://balabio.dcs.gla.ac.uk/mallika/WebTOPS/.This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fun

Chiral drag force

We provide a holographic evaluation of novel contributions to the drag force acting on a heavy quark moving through strongly interacting plasma. The new contributions are chiral in that they act in opposite directions in plasmas containing an excess of left- or right-handed quarks and in that they are proportional to the coefficient of the axial anomaly. These new contributions to the drag force act either parallel to or antiparallel to an external magnetic field or to the vorticity of the fluid plasma. In all these respects, these contributions to the drag force felt by a heavy quark are analogous to the chiral magnetic effect on light quarks. However, the new contribution to the drag force is independent of the electric charge of the heavy quark and is the same for heavy quarks and antiquarks. We show that although the chiral drag force can be non-vanishing for heavy quarks that are at rest in the local fluid rest frame, it does vanish for heavy quarks that are at rest in a suitably chosen frame. In this frame, the heavy quark at rest sees counterpropagating momentum and charge currents, both proportional to the axial anomaly coefficient, but feels no drag force. This provides strong concrete evidence for the absence of dissipation in chiral transport, something that has been predicted previously via consideration of symmetries. Along the way to our principal results, we provide a general calculation of the corrections to the drag force due to the presence of gradients in the flowing fluid in the presence of a nonzero chemical potential. We close with a consequence of our result that is at least in principle observable in heavy ion collisions, namely an anticorrelation between the direction of the CME current for light quarks in a given event and the direction of the kick given to the momentum of all the heavy quarks and antiquarks in that event.Comment: 28 pages, small improvement to the discussion of gravitational anomaly, references adde

Nurses attitudes and beliefs to attempted suicide in Southern India

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Mental Health on 20-5-15, available online: https://doi.org/10.3109/09638237.2015.1019051Background: There is growing global interest into the attitudes and clinical management of persons who have attempted suicide. Aims: The principal purpose was to determine senior nursing staff attitudes towards patients who had attempted suicide from a professional and cultural perspective, which might influence care following hospital admission. The focus concerned nursing staff interactions at a psychological level that compete with physical tasks on general hospital wards. Methods: A qualitative methodology was employed with audio-taped interviews utilising four level data coding. This article reports on a group of 15 nursing staff from a large general hospital in Mysore, Southern India. Results: Findings suggested that patient care and treatment is directly influenced by the nurse’s religious beliefs within a general hospital setting with physical duties prioritised over psychological support, which was underdeveloped throughout the participant group. Conclusion: The results allow a series of recommendations for educational and skills initiatives before progressing to patient assessment and treatment projects and cross-cultural comparison studies. In addition, interventions must focus on current resources and context to move the evidence-based suicide prevention forward

Babies of South Asian and European Ancestry Show Similar Associations With Genetic Risk Score for Birth Weight Despite the Smaller Size of South Asian Newborns.

Size at birth is known to be influenced by various fetal and maternal factors, including genetic effects. South Asians have a high burden of low birth weight and cardiometabolic diseases, yet studies of common genetic variations underpinning these phenotypes are lacking. We generated independent, weighted fetal genetic scores (fGSs) and maternal genetic scores (mGSs) from 196 birth weight-associated variants identified in Europeans and conducted an association analysis with various fetal birth parameters and anthropometric and cardiometabolic traits measured at different follow-up stages (5-6-year intervals) from seven Indian and Bangladeshi cohorts of South Asian ancestry. The results from these cohorts were compared with South Asians in UK Biobank and the Exeter Family Study of Childhood Health, a European ancestry cohort. Birth weight increased by 50.7 g and 33.6 g per SD of fGS (P = 9.1 × 10-11) and mGS (P = 0.003), respectively, in South Asians. A relatively weaker mGS effect compared with Europeans indicates possible different intrauterine exposures between Europeans and South Asians. Birth weight was strongly associated with body size in both childhood and adolescence (P = 3 × 10-5 to 1.9 × 10-51); however, fGS was associated with body size in childhood only (P < 0.01) and with head circumference, fasting glucose, and triglycerides in adults (P < 0.01). The substantially smaller newborn size in South Asians with comparable fetal genetic effect to Europeans on birth weight suggests a significant role of factors related to fetal growth that were not captured by the present genetic scores. These factors may include different environmental exposures, maternal body size, health and nutritional status, etc. Persistent influence of genetic loci on size at birth and adult metabolic syndrome in our study supports a common genetic mechanism that partly explains associations between early development and later cardiometabolic health in various populations, despite marked differences in phenotypic and environmental factors in South Asians

Emergence of vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) from a tertiary care hospital from northern part of India

BACKGROUND: Glycopeptides such as vancomycin are frequently the antibiotics of choice for the treatment of infections caused by methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). For the last 7 years incidence of vancomycin intermediate S. aureus and vancomycin resistant S. aureus (VISA and VRSA respectively) has been increasing in various parts of the world. The present study was carried out to find out the presence of VISA and VRSA in the northern part of India. METHODS: A total 1681 staphylococcal isolates consisting of 783 S. aureus and 898 coagulase negative staphylococci (CoNS) were isolated from different clinical specimens from various outpatient departments and wards. All S. aureus and 93 CoNS were subjected to MIC testing (against vancomycin, teicolplanin and oxacillin); Brain Heart Infusion (BHI) vancomycin screen agar test; disc diffusion testing, and PCR for mecA, vanA and vanB genes detection. RESULTS: Out of 783 S. aureus two S. aureus strains were found to be vancomycin and teicoplanin resistant (one strain with MIC 32 μg/ml and the other strain with MIC 64 μg/ml); six strains of S. aureus have shown to be vancomycin intermediate (two strains with MIC 16 μg/ml and four strains with MIC 8 μg/ml); and two strains with teicoplanin intermediate (MIC 16 μg/ml). One CoNS strain was resistant to vancomycin and teicoplanin (MIC 32 μg/ml), and two CoNS strains were intermediate to vancomycin and teicoplanin (MIC 16 μg/ml). All VRSA, VISA and vancomycin resistant CoNS had shown growth on BHI vancomycin screen agar (vancomycin 6 μg/ml) and were mecA PCR positive. None of these isolates have demonstrated vanA/vanB gene by PCR. CONCLUSION: The present study reveals for the first time emergence of VISA/VRSA from this part of world and indicates the magnitude of antibiotic resistance in and around the study area. The major cause of this may be unawareness and indiscriminate use of broad-spectrum antibiotics

Demand-side financing for maternal and newborn health: what do we know about factors that affect implementation of cash transfers and voucher programmes?

BackgroundDemand-side financing (DSF) interventions, including cash transfers and vouchers, have been introduced to promote maternal and newborn health in a range of low- and middle-income countries. These interventions vary in design but have typically been used to increase health service utilisation by offsetting some financial costs for users, or increasing household income and incentivising 'healthy behaviours'. This article documents experiences and implementation factors associated with use of DSF in maternal and newborn health.MethodsA secondary analysis (using an adapted Supporting the Use of Research Evidence framework - SURE) was performed on studies that had previously been identified in a systematic review of evidence on DSF interventions in maternal and newborn health.ResultsThe article draws on findings from 49 quantitative and 49 qualitative studies. The studies give insights on difficulties with exclusion of migrants, young and multiparous women, with demands for informal fees at facilities, and with challenges maintaining quality of care under increasing demand. Schemes experienced difficulties if communities faced long distances to reach participating facilities and poor access to transport, and where there was inadequate health infrastructure and human resources, shortages of medicines and problems with corruption. Studies that documented improved care-seeking indicated the importance of adequate programme scope (in terms of programme eligibility, size and timing of payments and voucher entitlements) to address the issue of concern, concurrent investments in supply-side capacity to sustain and/or improve quality of care, and awareness generation using community-based workers, leaders and women's groups. ConclusionsEvaluations spanning more than 15 years of implementation of DSF programmes reveal a complex picture of experiences that reflect the importance of financial and other social, geographical and health systems factors as barriers to accessing care. Careful design of DSF programmes as part of broader maternal and newborn health initiatives would need to take into account these barriers, the behaviours of staff and the quality of care in health facilities. Research is still needed on the policy context for DSF schemes in order to understand how they become sustainable and where they fit, or do not fit, with plans to achieve equitable universal health coverage