Proteomic profiling of cancer of the gingivo-buccal complex: Identification of new differentially expressed markers

Tobacco-related oral cancer is the most common cancer among Indian males, gingivo-buccal complex (GBC) being the most affected subsite due to the habit of chewing tobacco. Proteins from the lysates of microdissected normal and transformed epithelium from clinically well-characterized tissue samples of the GBC were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis to identify differentially expressed proteins. Eleven protein spots showed differential expression, which could withstand the stringency of statistical evaluation. The observations were confirmed with additional tissues. Nine of these differentiators were identified by MS as lactate dehydrogenase B, α-enolase, prohibitin, cathepsin D, apolipoprotein A-I, tumor protein translationally controlled-1, an SFN family protein, 14-3-3σ and tropomyosin. Cluster analysis indicated that these proteins, as a coexpressed set, could distinguish normal and transformed epithelium. Functionally, these differentiator molecules are relevant to the pathways and processes that have been previously implicated in oral carcinogenesis and could therefore be investigated further as a panel of markers for management of cancer of the GBC.     

An electrokinetic mixer driven by oscillatory cross flow

An electrokinetic mixer driven by oscillatory cross flow has been studied numerically as a means for generating chaotic mixing in microfluidic devices for both confined and throughput mixing configurations. The flow is analyzed using numerical simulation of the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations combined with the tracking of single and multi-species passive tracer particles. First, the case of confined flow mixing is studied in which flow in the perpendicular channels of the oscillatory mixing element is driven sinusoidally, and 90° out of phase. The flow is shown to be chaotic by means of positive effective (finite time) Lyapunov exponents, and the stretching and folding of material lines leading to Lagrangian tracer particle dispersion. The transition to chaotic flow in this case depends strongly on the Strouhal number (St), and weakly on the ratio of the cross flow channel length to width (L/W). For L/W = 2, the flow becomes appreciably chaotic as evidenced by visual particle dispersion at approximately St = 0.32, and the transitional value of St increases slightly with increasing aspect ratio. A peak degree of mixing on the order of 85% is obtained for the range of parameter values explored here. In the second phase of the analysis, the effect of combining a fixed throughput flow with the oscillatory cross channel motion for use in a continuous mixing operation is examined in a star cell geometry. Chaotic mixing is again observed, and the characteristics of the downstream dispersion patterns depend mainly on the Strouhal number and the (dimensionless) throughput rate. In the star cell, the flow becomes appreciably chaotic as evidenced by visual particle dispersion at approximately St = 1, slightly higher than for the case of cross cell. The star cell mixing behavior is marked by the convergence of the degree of mixing to a plateau level as the Strouhal number is increased at fixed flow rate. Degree of mixing values from 70 to 80% are obtained indicating that the continuous flow is bounded by the maximum degree of mixing obtained from the confined flow configuration.

Growth of exclusively breastfed infants

The weights and lengths of 120 boys and 81 girls were followed from birth to 12 months at Shree Maharani Shantadevi Hospital (SMSH), Baroda. The sample was selected by the following criteria: (i) birth weight 2.5 kg or more, (ii) no serious defect or serious/chronic illness, (iii) upper and middle socio-economic level, (iv) normal motor-mental development, (v) regular follow-up every month (by appointment within two days of birth date) for at least nine months, (vi) exclusive breastfeeding for at least four months. Mean and SDs and percentile values of weight, length and weight for length were computed separately for boys and girls. These were compared with those of National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS) and of the Davis Area Research on Lactation, Infant Nutrition and Growth (DAR-LING) study in the USA. The breastfed babies were observed to be leaner by the currently accepted "standards" which have been established mostly on formula-fed babies. The growth pattern of the breastfed babies cannot be interpreted as 'faltering' since their motor-mental development was normal and they were thriving well. The study focuses attention on the need to have new growth charts on the basis of exclusively breastfed children.     

Copolymerization of alkyl α-chloroacrylates with methyl methacrylate

Hexyl α-chloroacrylate (HCA) and cyclohexyl α-chloroacrylate (CCA) have been copolymerized with methyl methacrylate (MMA) in toluene at 55°C using azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as initiator. Copolymer compositions have been determined both by ¹H NMR and elemental analyses. For copolymerization of MMA (M1) with HCA (M2), the reactivity ratios (RR) are r₁ = 0.47 ± 0.19 and r₂ = 0.81 ± 0.51 and with CCA the values are r₁ = 0.76 ± 0.31 and r₂ = 2.30 ± 1.73. Thermal properties of these copolymers have also been investigated.     

Asymmetric quantum dialogue in noisy environment

A notion of asymmetric quantum dialogue (AQD) is introduced. Conventional protocols of quantum dialogue are essentially symmetric as the users (Alice and Bob) can encode the same amount of classical information. In contrast, the proposed scheme for AQD provides different amount of communication powers to Alice and Bob. The proposed scheme offers an architecture, where the entangled state to be used and the encoding scheme to be shared between Alice and Bob depend on the amount of classical information they want to exchange with each other. The general structure for the AQD scheme has been obtained using a group theoretic structure of the operators introduced in Shukla et al. (Phys Lett A 377:518, 2013). The effect of different types of noises (e.g., amplitude damping and phase damping noise) on the proposed scheme is investigated, and it is shown that the proposed scheme for AQD is robust and it uses an optimized amount of quantum resources.     

Mesenchymal Stem Cell Capping on ECM‐Anchored Caspase Inhibitor–Loaded PLGA Microspheres for Intraperitoneal Injection in DSS‐Induced Murine Colitis

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered as a promising alternative for the treatment of various inflammatory disorders. However, poor viability and engraftment of MSCs after transplantation are major hurdles in mesenchymal stem cell therapy. Extracellular matrix (ECM)‐coated scaffolds provide better cell attachment and mechanical support for MSCs after transplantation. A single‐step method for ECM functionalization on poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic acid) (PLGA) microspheres using a novel compound, dopamine‐conjugated poly(ethylene‐alt‐maleic acid), as a stabilizer during the preparation of microspheres is reported. The dopamine molecules on the surface of microspheres provide active sites for the conjugation of ECM in an aqueous solution. The results reveal that the viability of MSCs improves when they are coated over the ECM‐functionalized PLGA microspheres (eMs). In addition, the incorporation of a broad‐spectrum caspase inhibitor (IDN6556) into the eMs synergistically increases the viability of MSCs under in vitro conditions. Intraperitoneal injection of the MSC–microsphere hybrid alleviates experimental colitis in a murine model via inhibiting Th1 and Th17 differentiation of CD4⁺ T cells in colon‐draining mesenteric lymph nodes. Therefore, drug‐loaded ECM‐coated surfaces may be considered as attractive tools for improving viability, proliferation, and functionality of MSCs following transplantation.     

Telomeric DNA: marker for human prostate cancer development?

OBJECTIVES: To establish consensus case definitions for several common work related upper limb pain syndromes for use in surveillance or studies of the aetiology of these conditions. METHODS: A group of healthcare professionals from the disciplines interested in the prevention and management of upper limb disorders were recruited for a Delphi exercise. A questionnaire was used to establish case definitions from the participants, followed by a consensus conference involving the core group of 29 people. The draft conclusions were recirculated for review. RESULTS: Consensus case definitions were agreed for carpal tunnel syndrome, tenosynovitis of the wrist, de Quervain's disease of the wrist, epicondylitis, shoulder capsulitis (frozen shoulder), and shoulder tendonitis. The consensus group also identified a condition defined as "non-specific diffuse forearm pain" although this is essentially a diagnosis made by exclusion. The group did not have enough experience of the thoracic outlet syndrome to make recommendations. CONCLUSIONS: There was enough consensus between several health professionals from different disciplines to establish case definitions suitable for use in the studies of several work related upper limb pain syndromes. The use of these criteria should allow comparability between studies and centres and facilitate research in this field. The criteria may also be useful in surveillance programmes and as aids to case management.     

Wideband circularly polarized concentric cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna excited by helix

In this paper, a wideband circularly polarized two-layer concentric cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) is proposed for C-band applications. To generate the circular polarization in the CDRA, the proposed antenna is excited with four turn helical wire. The helix excites the two orthogonal modes (HE_11δ) in quadrature phase, which result in the circular polarization. The four different design cases are investigated and the best one is fabricated and measured. The impedance bandwidth is improved when two-layer concentric CDRA is used. The simulated and measured bandwidth of the proposed antenna varies from 3.60 to 6.03 GHz with impedance bandwidth of 50.46% and 3.65 to 6 GHz (48.70% impedance bandwidth) respectively, while axial ratio impedance bandwidth are 43.13% (4.20–6.51 GHz) and 38.82% (4.40–6.52 GHz) respectively. The proposed antenna attains 10.9 dBi measured peak gain at 4.5 GHz. The fabricated prototype is experimentally measured and its results are found to be in good agreement with the simulation results.     

ECG signal classification and arrhythmia detection using ELM-RNN

Arrhythmia is a unique type of heart disease which produces inefficient and irregular heartbeat. This is a cardiac disease which is diagnosed through electrocardiogram (ECG) procedure. Several studies have been focused on the speed and accuracy on the learning algorithm by applying pattern recognition, artificial intelligence in the classification algorithm. In this work a novel classification algorithm is planned based on ELM (Extreme Learning Machine) with Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) by using morphological filtering. The popular publicly available ECG arrhythmia database (MIT-BIH arrhythmia DB) is used to express the performance of the proposed algorithm where the level of accuracy is compared with the existing similar types of work. The comparative study shows that performance of our proposed model is much faster than the models working with RBFN (radial basis function network), BPBB(back propagation neural network) and Support Vector Machine. The experimental result with the MIT BIH database with hidden neurons of ELM with RNN, the accuracy is 96.41%, sensitivity 93.62% and specificity 92.66%. The classification methodology follows main four steps the heart beat detection, the ECG feature extraction, feature selection and the construction of the proposed classifier.

     

A Novel Adaptive Optimized Fast Blind Channel Estimation for Cyclic Prefix Assisted Space–Time Block Coded MIMO-OFDM Systems

In this paper an adaptive optimized fast blind channel estimation using cyclic prefix supported with Space Time Block Coded Multiple Input Multiple Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (STBC-MIMO-OFDM) system is presented. The main aspire of our technique is to support multiple users at the same time over same frequency band based on the Multi-Carrier Code-Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) approach. High complexity and low convergence is the main obstacle in earlier blind channel estimation techniques. Modified flower pollination algorithm is implemented to overcome this problem. The MC-CDMA approach is utilized to implement the blind channel estimation. The proposed MC-CDMA is used to reduce the error rate included in the Blind Channel Estimation. As a part of wireless communications, time block coding technique is utilized to transmit several copies of information across the number of antennas. To develop the consistency of data transfer different received data is used and then MFPA results in lower fuel cost compared to FPA. MFPA produces better results compared with previous methods.