FAMC: Face Authentication for Mobile Concurrence

It has been observed in the last decades that face recognition has acquired a large amount of attention and curiosity. Benefits of this have been seen in quite a few applications. An architecture which has been implemented earlier addresses the face analysis domain. As compared to other biometrics, face recognition is more advantageous but it is particularly subject to spoofing. The whole cost of the system increases since the accuracy of this technique involves the estimation of the three dimensionality of faces. An effective and efficient solution for face spoofing has been proposed in the paper. The growing use of mobile devices has been a growing concern due to their ability to store and exchange sensitive data. Thus this has given encouragement to the interest of people, to exploit their abilities, from one side, and to protect users from malicious data, on the other side. It is important to develop and deliver secure access in this scenario and identification protocols on mobile platforms are another upcoming aspect that also requires attention to deal on the commercial and social use of identity management system. After all these conclusions, the earlier architecture proposes biometrics as the choice for technology which has been also implemented and described in the earlier architecture. The earlier architecture is designed for mobile devices. This architecture thus acts as an embedded application that provides both verification and identification functionality. It includes identity management to support social activities. Examples of identity management system are finding doubles in a social network. Privacy has been provided by these functionalities which help to overcome the security concern. The architecture of FAMC: Face Authentication for Mobile Concurrence is modular. Functionalities like image acquisition, anti-spoofing, face detection, face segmentation; feature extraction and face matching have been provided by its implementation. The behavior of FAMC allows for recognition and best biometrics sample selection. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.150310

COMPARATIVE IN-VITRO ANTIBACTERIAL AND ANTIFUNGAL ATTRIBUTES OF DIFFERENT SOLVENT EXTRACTS FROM LEAF, BARK, ROOT AND INFLORESCENCE OF MEMECYLON UMBELLATUM BURM.

This paper describes the antibacterial and antifungal activities and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of different solvent (pet. ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, acetone, methanol and water) extracts of leaves, bark, root and inflorescence of Memecylon umbellatum burm. The percent yields from leaves, bark, root and inflorescence was found to be 0.2062 to 2.836, 0.0601 to 0.5142, 0.050 to 1.425, 0.0210 to 0.717 respectively. Overall, acetone extract produced from the leaves exhibited significantly (P < 0.05) higher antibacterial activity along with superior antifungal activity. MIC for acetone and ethyl acetate extract of leaf was found to be 0.5 mg for the entire organisms compared to 3-15 mg for other extracts. Such study will explore pharmacological activity of the tested parts of Memecylon umbellatum burm especially, the leaves which might be valuable for therapeutic applications

Dissociating Slow Responses From Slow Responding

Increased Intra-Subject Variability (ISV) is a candidate endophenotype of ADHD. ISV's relationship with response speed is highly relevant for ADHD as patients are highly variable but typically no slower than controls. This brief report addresses the relationship between variability and speed by employing dimensional analyses for differentiated performance measures, with a particular focus on the ex-Gaussian measures, across relevant ADHD studies and in young healthy adults (N = 70). For both patients with ADHD and healthy adults, we found that reaction time standard deviation and mean reaction time were strongly correlated, thus failing to dissociate, but ex-Gaussian tau (tau) shared only little variance with Gaussian mu (mu), thus dissociating slow responses (tau) from response speed or-if given-slow responding (mu). Our results highlight the utility of employing the ex-Gaussian measures to disentangle ISV and speed, particularly for ADHD data as patients make more slow responses but are not overall slower than typical controls

Examining the Overlap Between ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Using Candidate Endophenotypes of ADHD

Objective: Recent discussions of aetiological overlap between ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) require comparative studying of these disorders. Method: We examined performance of ASD patients with (ASD+) and without (ASD-) comorbid ADHD, ADHD patients, and controls for selected putative endophenotypes of ADHD: Intrasubject Variability (ISV) of reaction times, working memory (WM), inhibition, and temporal processing. Results: We found that patients with ADHD or ASD+, but not ASD-, had elevated ISV across the entire task battery and temporal processing deficits, and that none of the groups were impaired in WM or inhibition. High levels of ISV and generally poor performance in ASD+ patients were only partially due to additive effects of the pure disorders. Conclusion: Overall, we conclude that, within our limited but heterogeneous task battery, ISV and temporal processing deficits are most sensitive to ADHD symptomatology and that controlling for ADHD comorbidity is mandatory when assessing ISV in autism

Phytochemical screening and In Vitro Antioxidant potential of Memecylon umbellatum Burm leaf extracts

Objective: Different dry extracts of Memecylon umbellatum Burm leaf obtained by various solvents such as petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, acetone, methanol and chloroform water (IP) was screened to reap the benefits of its antioxidant and free radical scavenging properties using ascorbic acid as standard antioxidants. Methods: The in vitro free radical scavenging activity was evaluated using diphenyl picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) radical method using various concentrations of dry extract in distilled water (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 20 μg/ml) against blank with ascorbic acid as a standard in same concentrations. Results: Among the all extracts, Methanol leaf extract has showed higher Antioxidant activity (84.65 ± 0.064 %) having IC50 Value 11.81 ± 0.033 μg/ml at 20 μg/ml. While, IC50 value for ascorbic acid was found to be 8.91 ± 0.084 μg/ml. Conclusion: The results clearly indicate that Methanol leaf extract of Memecylon umbellatum is effective in free radical scavenging. So in future, this may emerge as promising natural herbal source of powerful antioxidant. Keywords: Memecylon umbellatum, DPPH reagent, Antioxidant activity, Ascorbic acid, IC50

Fitness of Isogenic Colony Morphology Variants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Murine Airway Infection

Chronic lung infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa are associated with the diversification of the persisting clone into niche specialists and morphotypes, a phenomenon called ‘dissociative behaviour’. To explore the potential of P. aeruginosa to change its morphotype by single step loss-of–function mutagenesis, a signature-tagged mini-Tn5 plasposon library of the cystic fibrosis airway isolate TBCF10839 was screened for colony morphology variants under nine different conditions in vitro. Transposon insertion into 1% of the genome changed colony morphology into eight discernable morphotypes. Half of the 55 targets encode features of primary or secondary metabolism whereby quinolone production was frequently affected. In the other half the transposon had inserted into genes of the functional categories transport, regulation or motility/chemotaxis. To mimic dissociative behaviour of isogenic strains in lungs, pools of 25 colony morphology variants were tested for competitive fitness in an acute murine airway infection model. Six of the 55 mutants either grew better or worse in vivo than in vitro, respectively. Metabolic proficiency of the colony morphology variant was a key determinant for survival in murine airways. The most common morphotype of self-destructive autolysis did unexpectedly not impair fitness. Transposon insertions into homologous genes of strain PAO1 did not reproduce the TBCF10839 mutant morphotypes for 16 of 19 examined loci pointing to an important role of the genetic background on colony morphology. Depending on the chosen P. aeruginosa strain, functional genome scans will explore other areas of the evolutionary landscape. Based on our discordant findings of mutant phenotypes in P. aeruginosa strains PAO1, PA14 and TBCF10839, we conclude that the current focus on few reference strains may miss modes of niche adaptation and dissociative behaviour that are relevant for the microevolution of complex traits in the wild

Drosophila melanogaster as an Animal Model for the Study of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm Infections In Vivo

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen capable of causing both acute and chronic infections in susceptible hosts. Chronic P. aeruginosa infections are thought to be caused by bacterial biofilms. Biofilms are highly structured, multicellular, microbial communities encased in an extracellular matrix that enable long-term survival in the host. The aim of this research was to develop an animal model that would allow an in vivo study of P. aeruginosa biofilm infections in a Drosophila melanogaster host. At 24 h post oral infection of Drosophila, P. aeruginosa biofilms localized to and were visualized in dissected Drosophila crops. These biofilms had a characteristic aggregate structure and an extracellular matrix composed of DNA and exopolysaccharide. P. aeruginosa cells recovered from in vivo grown biofilms had increased antibiotic resistance relative to planktonically grown cells. In vivo, biofilm formation was dependent on expression of the pel exopolysaccharide genes, as a pelB::lux mutant failed to form biofilms. The pelB::lux mutant was significantly more virulent than PAO1, while a hyperbiofilm strain (PAZHI3) demonstrated significantly less virulence than PAO1, as indicated by survival of infected flies at day 14 postinfection. Biofilm formation, by strains PAO1 and PAZHI3, in the crop was associated with induction of diptericin, cecropin A1 and drosomycin antimicrobial peptide gene expression 24 h postinfection. In contrast, infection with the non-biofilm forming strain pelB::lux resulted in decreased AMP gene expression in the fly. In summary, these results provide novel insights into host-pathogen interactions during P. aeruginosa oral infection of Drosophila and highlight the use of Drosophila as an infection model that permits the study of P. aeruginosa biofilms in vivo

Epistatic Roles for Pseudomonas aeruginosa MutS and DinB (DNA Pol IV) in Coping with Reactive Oxygen Species-Induced DNA Damage

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is especially adept at colonizing the airways of individuals afflicted with the autosomal recessive disease cystic fibrosis (CF). CF patients suffer from chronic airway inflammation, which contributes to lung deterioration. Once established in the airways, P. aeruginosa continuously adapts to the changing environment, in part through acquisition of beneficial mutations via a process termed pathoadaptation. MutS and DinB are proposed to play opposing roles in P. aeruginosa pathoadaptation: MutS acts in replication-coupled mismatch repair, which acts to limit spontaneous mutations; in contrast, DinB (DNA polymerase IV) catalyzes error-prone bypass of DNA lesions, contributing to mutations. As part of an ongoing effort to understand mechanisms underlying P. aeruginosa pathoadaptation, we characterized hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-induced phenotypes of isogenic P. aeruginosa strains bearing different combinations of mutS and dinB alleles. Our results demonstrate an unexpected epistatic relationship between mutS and dinB with respect to H2O2-induced cell killing involving error-prone repair and/or tolerance of oxidized DNA lesions. In striking contrast to these error-prone roles, both MutS and DinB played largely accurate roles in coping with DNA lesions induced by ultraviolet light, mitomycin C, or 4-nitroquinilone 1-oxide. Models discussing roles for MutS and DinB functionality in DNA damage-induced mutagenesis, particularly during CF airway colonization and subsequent P. aeruginosa pathoadaptation are discussed

Nutrient Availability as a Mechanism for Selection of Antibiotic Tolerant Pseudomonas aeruginosa within the CF Airway

Microbes are subjected to selective pressures during chronic infections of host tissues. Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates with inactivating mutations in the transcriptional regulator LasR are frequently selected within the airways of people with cystic fibrosis (CF), and infection with these isolates has been associated with poorer lung function outcomes. The mechanisms underlying selection for lasR mutation are unknown but have been postulated to involve the abundance of specific nutrients within CF airway secretions. We characterized lasR mutant P. aeruginosa strains and isolates to identify conditions found in CF airways that select for growth of lasR mutants. Relative to wild-type P. aeruginosa, lasR mutants exhibited a dramatic metabolic shift, including decreased oxygen consumption and increased nitrate utilization, that is predicted to confer increased fitness within the nutrient conditions known to occur in CF airways. This metabolic shift exhibited by lasR mutants conferred resistance to two antibiotics used frequently in CF care, tobramycin and ciprofloxacin, even under oxygen-dependent growth conditions, yet selection for these mutants in vitro did not require preceding antibiotic exposure. The selection for loss of LasR function in vivo, and the associated adverse clinical impact, could be due to increased bacterial growth in the oxygen-poor and nitrate-rich CF airway, and from the resulting resistance to therapeutic antibiotics. The metabolic similarities among diverse chronic infection-adapted bacteria suggest a common mode of adaptation and antibiotic resistance during chronic infection that is primarily driven by bacterial metabolic shifts in response to nutrient availability within host tissues

Research achievements in plant resistance to insect pests of cool season food legumes

Plant resistance to at least 17 field and storage insect pests of cool season food legumes has been identified. For the most part, this resistance was located in the primary gene pools of grain legumes via conventional laboratory, greenhouse, and field screening methods. The use of analytical techniques (i.e., capillary gas chromatography) to characterize plant chemicals that mediate the host selection behavior of pest insects offers promise as a new, more rapid way to differentiate between insect-resistant and susceptible plant material. Examples of research achievements in mechanisms of resistance and host-plant resistance within the context of integrated control programs are discussed. Accelerating the development and subsequent releases of insect-resistant cultivars to pulse farmers requires more involvement from interdisciplinary teams of plant breeders, entomologists, plant pathologists, plant chemists, molecular biologists, and other scientist