Structure‐Based Design of a Monosaccharide Ligand Targeting Galectin‐8

Galectin‐8 is a β‐galactoside‐recognising protein that has a role in the regulation of bone remodelling and is an emerging new target for tackling diseases with associated bone loss. We have designed and synthesised methyl 3‐O‐[1‐carboxyethyl]‐β‐d ‐galactopyranoside (compound 6 ) as a ligand to target the N‐terminal domain of galectin‐8 (galectin‐8N). Our design involved molecular dynamics (MD) simulations that predicted 6 to mimic the interactions made by the galactose ring as well as the carboxylic acid group of 3′‐O‐sialylated lactose (3′‐SiaLac), with galectin‐8N. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) determined that the binding affinity of galectin‐8N for 6 was 32.8 μm , whereas no significant affinity was detected for the C‐terminal domain of galectin‐8 (galectin‐8C). The crystal structure of the galectin‐8N– 6 complex validated the predicted binding conformation and revealed the exact protein–ligand interactions that involve evolutionarily conserved amino acids of galectin and also those unique to galectin‐8N for recognition. Overall, we have initiated and demonstrated a rational ligand design campaign to develop a monosaccharide‐based scaffold as a binder of galectin‐8.     

Effective Diffusivity and Evaporative Cooling in Convective Drying of Food Material

This article presents mathematical models to simulate coupled heat and mass transfer during convective drying of food materials using three different effective diffusivities: shrinkage dependent, temperature dependent, and the average of those two. Engineering simulation software COMSOL Multiphysics was utilized to simulate the model in 2D and 3D. The simulation results were compared with experimental data. It is found that the temperature-dependent effective diffusivity model predicts the moisture content more accurately at the initial stage of the drying, whereas the shrinkage-dependent effective diffusivity model is better for the final stage of the drying. The model with shrinkage-dependent effective diffusivity shows evaporative cooling phenomena at the initial stage of drying. This phenomenon was investigated and explained. Three-dimensional temperature and moisture profiles show that even when the surface is dry, the inside of the sample may still contain a large amount of moisture. Therefore, the drying process should be dealt with carefully; otherwise, microbial spoilage may start from the center of the dried food. A parametric investigation was conducted after validation of the model.     

Convergent behavioral and neuropsychological evidence for a distinction between identification and production forms of repetition priming.

Four experiments examined a distinction between kinds of repetition priming which involve either the identification of the form or meaning of a stimulus or the production of a response on the basis of a cue. Patients with Alzheimer's disease had intact priming on picture-naming and category-exemplar identification tasks and impaired priming on word-stem completion and category-exemplar production tasks. Division of study-phase attention in healthy participants reduced priming on word-stem completion and category-exemplar production tasks but not on picture-naming and category-exemplar identification tasks. The parallel dissociations in normal and abnormal memory cannot be explained by implicit-explicit or perceptual-conceptual distinctions but are explained by an identification-production distinction. There may be separable cognitive and neural bases for implicit modulation of identification and production forms of knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Robustness of electrocardiogram signal quality indices

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal quality indices (SQIs) are essential for improving diagnostic accuracy and reliability of ECG analysis systems. In various practical applications, the ECG signals are corrupted by different types of noise. These corrupted ECG signals often provide insufficient and incorrect information regarding a patient’s health. To solve this problem, signal quality measurements should be made before an ECG signal is used for decision-making. This paper investigates the robustness of existing popular statistical signal quality indices (SSQIs): relative power of QRS complex (SQI_p), skewness (SQI_skew), signal-to-noise ratio (SQI_snr), higher order statistics SQI (SQI_hos) and peakedness of kurtosis (SQI_kur). We analysed the robustness of these SSQIs against different window sizes across diverse datasets. Results showed that the performance of SSQIs considerably fluctuates against varying datasets, whereas the impact of varying window sizes was minimal. This fluctuation occurred due to the use of a static threshold value for classifying noise-free ECG signals from the raw ECG signals. Another drawback of these SSQIs is the bias towards noise-free ECG signals, that limits their usefulness in clinical settings. In summary, the fixed threshold-based SSQIs cannot be used as a robust noise detection system. In order to solve this fixed threshold problem, other techniques can be developed using adaptive thresholds and machine-learning mechanisms.     

Effect of Cell Wall Properties on Porosity and Shrinkage of Dried Apple

Water removal during drying depends on the pathway of water migration from food materials. Moreover, the water removal rate also depends on the characteristics of the cell wall of plant tissue. In this study, the influence of cell wall properties on porosity and shrinkage of dried product was investigated. Cell wall stiffness depends on a complex combination of plant cell microstructure, composition of food materials and the water-holding capacity of the cell. In this work, a preliminary investigation of the cell wall properties of apple was conducted in order to predict changes of porosity and shrinkage during drying. Cell wall characteristics of two types of apple (Granny Smith and Red Delicious) were investigated under convective drying to correlate with porosity and shrinkage. A scanning electron microscope (SEM), 2kN Intron, pycnometer and ImageJ software were used in order to measure and analyse cell characteristics, water holding capacity of cell walls, porosity and shrinkage. The cell firmness of the Red Delicious apple was found to be higher than for Granny Smith apples. A remarkable relationship was observed between cell wall characteristics when compare with heat and mass transfer characteristics. It was also found that the evolution of porosity and shrinkage are noticeably influenced by the nature of the cell wall during convective drying. This study has revealed a better understanding of porosity and the shrinkage of dried food at microscopy (cell) level, and will provide better insights to attain energy-effective drying processes and improved quality of dried foods.     

Solar thermal power generation in India: effect of potential incentives on unit cost of electricity

For large-scale dissemination of solar thermal power plants, in countries identified with huge potential, governments are offering various incentives. In an attempt towards studying the effectiveness of various incentives in reducing the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) delivered by solar thermal power plants in India, this paper presents simple mathematical frameworks that facilitate the determination of the required level of an incentive so as to ensure that the LCOE is within a pre-specified limit. For example, for a 50?MW solar thermal power plant at Barmer (Rajasthan), LCOE of Rs. 9.75 per kWh can be achieved by providing 6.3% viability gap funding or an interest subsidy of 3% or provision of 32% investment tax credits to the equity investor or provision of production tax credits to the equity investor at the rate of Rs. 0.81 per kWh for first 10 years of operation of a plant.     

Deep ensemble of classifier for intrusion detection in WSN and improved attack mitigation process

Attacks have a significant negative impact on the wireless sensor network's network operations. They target to weaken the network layer, if they are not completely eradicated, the networks' ability to execute their desired function becomes collapsed. While intended to monitor such unexpected attacks, anomaly-based intrusion detection systems (AIDS) have a high risk of false positives. This article intends to propose a Deep Ensemble Intrusion detection with a Self-adaptive Sewing Training-Based Optimization (DIED-SASTO) model that includes the following steps: (a) preprocessing, (b) feature extraction, (c) optimal feature selection, and (d) detection. Initially, an improved class imbalance processing will take place to solve the imbalance problem during the preprocessing step. Subsequently, the features are extracted including higher-order statistical features, improved entropy, and correlation-based features during the feature extraction step. From the extracted feature set, as the curse of dimensionality becomes a serious challenge, it is significant to choose the optimal features. In the optimal feature selection process, a new Self-adaptive Sewing Training-Based Optimization (SASTO) is used. In addition, the intrusion detection will be employed based on the selected optimal features and trained using deep ensemble models like Deep maxout, Deep Belief Network (DBN), and Bidirectional Long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM). Once the presence of an attack is detected, it is mandatory to mitigate the attacker node form the network. For Attack Mitigation, improved entropy will be progressed. The effectiveness of the DIED-SASTO is evaluated over conventional methods in terms of various metrics.     

Microstructural,Morphological and Electrochemical Effects of Graphene Oxide Incorporation in Tin-Cobalt Composite Coatings

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - Effect of incorporation of graphene oxide (GO) on the evolution of morphology, phase constitution, microstructure and corrosion properties of SnCo-GO...     

Mechanical and Metallurgical Characterization of Dissimilar P92/SS304 L Welded Joints Under Varying Heat Treatment Regimes

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - This work was performed to characterize the dissimilar austenitic grade SS304 L and martensitic grade creep strength of an enhanced P92 steel welded...