Assessment of molecular events during in vitro re-epithelialization under honey-alginate matrix ambience

Re-epithelialization is one of the most important stages of cutaneous regeneration and its success requires supportive micro-ambience which may be provided with suitable bio-matrix. Biocompatibility and efficacy of such bio-matrix in re-epithelialization could be explored by multimodal analysis of structural and functional attributes of in vitro wound healing model including evaluation of prime molecular expressions of the epithelial cells during repair. Present study examines the influence of honey-alginate and alginate matrices on re-epithelialization in keratinocyte (HaCaT) population in a 2-D wound model. Cellular viability, proliferation and cell–cell adhesion status were assessed during wound closure using live/dead cell assay and by evaluating expressions of Ki67, p63 and E-cadherin along-with % change in cellular electrical impedance. Efficacy of honey-alginate matrix in comparison to only alginate one was demonstrated by a quicker reduction in wound gap, improved cellular viability, enhanced expressions of Ki67, p63 and its isoforms (TAp63, ΔNp63) as well as E-cadherin. Faster restoration of electrical attribute (% of impedance change) after wounding also indicated better impact of honey-alginate matrix in re-epithelialization.     

A one‐step approach for esterification of zein with methanol

Zein (corn protein) was reacted with methanol in the presence of para‐toluenesulphonic acid under mild conditions to give a material formed by esterification of predominantly the amide groups of the protein. The formation of methyl zeinate was confirmed by proton NMR. The new signal appeared at 3.67 ppm in zein methylation product, which is absent for pure zein can be assigned to the protons of the CH₃ group of an ester. The strong C?O stretching vibration due to the presence of ester group in the region of 1739 cm^?1 in case of methylated zein was also noticed from FTIR studies. The increase in the C : N atom ratio in the zein methylation product obtained from elemental analysis results further indicates the conversion of a significant proportion of the ? CONH₂ groups in zein to ? COOCH₃ groups in the esterified product. The methylated product had glass transition temperature about 20°C lower than that of the unmodified zein. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Rental housing management as surveillance of Chinese rural migrants: the case of hillside compound in Dongguan

Governance of numerous rural migrants has always been crucial to China’s social stability. Through a Foucauldian lens, this paper discusses surveillance of rural migrants and studies a new local approach called rental housing management (RHM). During recent years, local authorities in Dongguan have been developing RHM into an operation of incremental Panopticism that consists of gradually reinforced surveillance techniques—partitioning, monitoring, digital entrance guarding, and local registration—in retrofitted rental residences. The RHM enforces local authorities’ inspection and control of migrants, and induces migrants’ self-reporting, self-inspection, and self-protection. This creates difficulties with migrants’ social interaction and community building. This paper reveals that local authorities have been transforming surveillance approaches from management based on hukou (household registration) into RHM that furthers localized spatial governance of rural migrants in the hukou reform.     

A theoretical and empirical analysis of support vector machine methods for multiple-instance classification

The standard support vector machine (SVM) formulation, widely used for supervised learning, possesses several intuitive and desirable properties. In particular, it is convex and assigns zero loss to solutions if, and only if, they correspond to consistent classifying hyperplanes with some nonzero margin. The traditional SVM formulation has been heuristically extended to multiple-instance (MI) classification in various ways. In this work, we analyze several such algorithms and observe that all MI techniques lack at least one of the desirable properties above. Further, we show that this tradeoff is fundamental, stems from the topological properties of consistent classifying hyperplanes for MI data, and is related to the computational complexity of learning MI hyperplanes. We then study the empirical consequences of this three-way tradeoff in MI classification using a large group of algorithms and datasets. We find that the experimental observations generally support our theoretical results, and properties such as the labeling task (instance versus bag labeling) influence the effects of different tradeoffs.     

Deriving cropping system performance indices using remote sensing data and GIS

The cropping system approach is a holistic management of variant and invariant resources to optimize the food production. Various indices are used to assess and evaluate the efficiency and sustainability of the systems. These indices are generally computed from the data collected by traditional survey methods that are time consuming and non‐spatial. An attempt has been made to derive such indices using satellite remote sensing data for the state of West Bengal, India. Three indices—Multiple Cropping Index (MCI), Area Diversity Index (ADI) and Cultivated Land Utilization Index (CLUI)—were attempted. Multi‐date, multisensor data from Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) and Radarsat Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) were used to derive cropping pattern, crop rotation, and crop calendar. Crop type, acreage, rotation and crop duration were used as inputs to compute the indices at district and state level. The indices were categorized as high, medium and low to evaluate the performance of each of the 16 districts. The average MCI of the state derived was 140. At district level it varied from 104 to 177. The average ADI of state was 2.5 and varied from 1.5 to 5.0.     

Adaptive policy framework: A systematic review

This paper presents a systematic literature review to gain an understanding of adaptive policies. This review looks at papers published between 1970 and 2011 and examines the background and trends in this area. Based on the results, we establish a 4-step framework for managing and handling adaptive policies. We also demonstrate gaps in existing literature, the implications to theory and practice as well as avenues for potential future research.     

Stabilizing decentralized robust controllers of interconnected uncertain power systems based on the Hessenberg form: Simulated results

This paper addresses stability analysis and design issues in load-frequency control (LFC) for interconnected power systems with a structure uncertainty satisfying the matching conditions. A simple robust decentralized control law for each subsystem has been developed on the basis of the Hessenberg model and utilizing the basic concepts of both linear-quadratic regulator theory and Lyapunov stability theory. A detailed design procedure together with simulation results have been presented for the case of the LFC problem of interconnected power systems. The performance robustness and stability bounds are studied and subsequently condition numbers corresponding to the stabilizing solution of the algebraic Riccati equation are also presented.     

Real time stochastic scheduling in broadcast systems with decentralized data storage

Data broadcasting is an efficient method to disseminate information to a large group of requesters with common interests. Performing such broadcasts typically involve the determination of a broadcast schedule intended to maximize the quality of service provided by the broadcast system. Earlier studies have proposed solutions to this problem in the form of heuristics and local search techniques designed to achieve minimal deadline misses or maximal utility. An often ignored factor in these studies is the possibility of the data items being not available locally, but rather have to be fetched from data servers distributed over a network, thereby inducing a certain level of stochasticity in the actual time required to serve a data item. This stochasticity is introduced on behalf of the data servers which themselves undergo a dynamic management of serving data requests. In this paper we revisit the problem of real time data broadcasting under such a scenario. We investigate the efficiency of heuristics that embed the stochastic nature of the problem in their design and compare their performance with those proposed for non-stochastic broadcast scheduling. Further, we extend our analysis to understand the various factors in the problem structure that influence these heuristics, and are often exploited by a better performing one.     

Modeling of dissolution, growth, and coarsening of aluminum nitride in low-carbon steels

A the oretically based model was developed by using numerical integration methods on a multiparticle system to predict the dissolution and growth kinetics of nitrides and carbides in steels undergoing heat treatment. This model takes fully into account the equilibrium thermodynamic properties of the systems, the local equilibrium at the interface, curvature effects, and diffusion along the grain boundary. Dissolution and coarsening are being treated as one continuous, simultaneous process. In the present work, the model is applied to study the dissolution and coarsening behavior of aluminum nitride (A1N) in Al-killed low-carbon steels. The oretically predicted particle-size distributions are in good agreement with the experimental measurements.