ashutosh singh

ABSTRACT The present climatic deterioration including the much debated anthropogenic acceleration to the global warming phenomenon has drawn the attention of scientific community, policy makers as well as the general public to the problem of climate change. Chemostratigraphic techniques have proven to be very useful to understand the past climate of the earth that has been changing naturally on timescales ranging from decades to millions of years. Therefore, it is important to filter out the natural signal to correctly gauge the effects induced by humans. This is where the science of paleoclimatology becomes very important. It helps us to understand the pattern of evolution of the earth's climate system, its rhythm, and pulse using various natural archives such as marine and lacustrine sediments, speleothems, ice cores, corals, trees, etc., that hold the clue to the past climate variability. Several proxies are studied from such natural archives to reconstruct the past climatic changes. Out of these, the stable isotopes are one of the most useful and widely employed. In this present study, we explain the methodology behind the application of the stable isotopes as a proxy to reconstruct past climatic changes. We present here a few examples of the stable isotopes of the most widely used elements viz oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen from the marine realm and their systematics. The use of chemostratigraphic techniques like application of oxygen isotopes in stratigraphy, temperature, salinity, and ice-volume reconstruction; Cenozoic oxygen and carbon isotope curves; the limitations in the form of vital effect and diagenesis in the case of foraminifera; use of nitrogen and carbon isotopes as productivity and provenance indicator, respectively, are presented in this paper.

In developing countries, Malaria has been found to be one of the most common cause of fever and morbidity, particularly among infants and young children. Therefore, its drug utilization studies should be carried out to know the rationality of treatment. To evaluate the use of antimalarial agents in children with a diagnosis of Malaria and visited to OPD & IPD Paediatric department of a tertiary care teaching hospital. This was a prospective six months study based on a Medication Utilization Form, which has been designed in consultation with the paediatrician. One hundred eighty three children <12 y of age were selected on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Out of 183 patients, 110 were infected with Plasmodium falciparum (60.10%) and 73 with Plasmodium vivax (39.89%). Most of the patients were male, 56.83% and 43.16% were female patients. Most of the complicated cases were found from Plasmodium falciparum (n = 110) than Plasmodium vivax (n=15). In prescriptions with m...

Prolonged usage of antifungal azoles which target enzymes involved in lipid biosynthesis invariably leads to the development of multi-drug resistance (MDR) in Candida albicans. We had earlier shown that membrane lipids and their fluidity are closely linked to the MDR phenomenon. In one of our recent studies involving comparative lipidomics between azole susceptible (AS) and azole resistant (AR) matched pair clinical isolates of C. albicans, we could not see consistent differences in the lipid profiles of AS and AR strains because they came from different patients and so in this study, we have used genetically related variant recovered from the same patient collected over a period of 2-years. During this time, the levels of fluconazole (FLC) resistance of the strain increased by over 200-fold. By comparing the lipid profiles of select isolates, we were able to observe gradual and statistically significant changes in several lipid classes, particularly in plasma membrane microdomain s...

The purpose of this study was to compare the resistance of intramedullary single screw device (Gamma nail) and double screw device proximal femoral nail (PFN) in unstable trochanteric fractures in terms of the number of cycles sustained, subsidence and implant failure in an axial loading test in cadaveric femora. The study was conducted on 18 dry cadaveric femoral specimens, 9 of these were implanted with a Gamma nail and 9 with PFN. There was no significant difference found in average dual energy X-ray absorptiometry value between both groups. The construct was made unstable (AO type 31A3.3) by removing a standard sized posteromedial wedge. These were tested on a cyclic physiological loading machine at 1 cycle/s with a load of 200 kg. The test was observed for 50,000 loading cycles or until implant failure, whichever occurred earlier. Peak displacements were measured and analysis was done to determine construct stiffness and gap micromotion in axial loading. It was observed that th...

Cryptococcus neoformans is a facultative intracellular pathogen, which can replicate in the acidic environment inside phagolysosomes. Deletion of the enzyme inositol-phosphosphingolipid-phospholipase-C (Isc1) makes C. neoformans hypersensitive to acidic pH likely by inhibiting the function of the proton pump, plasma membrane ATPase (Pma1). In this work, we examined the role of Isc1 on Pma1 transport and oligomerization. Our studies showed that Isc1 deletion did not affect Pma1 synthesis or transport, but significantly inhibited Pma1 oligomerization. Interestingly, Pma1 oligomerization could be restored by supplementing the medium with phytoceramide. These results offer insight into the mechanism of intracellular survival of C. neoformans.

The aim of this prospective comparative study was to compare outcomes and complications of humeral diaphyseal fracture non-unions managed with humerus interlocking nail (HIL) and locking compression plate (LCP). 40 patients with non-union of humeral diaphyseal fractures were included in this study and were randomly allocated in two groups; group A had 20 cases treated with HIL and group B had 20 cases treated with LCP. Clinico-radiological assessments were done for each case up to 2-year follow-up period. Primary outcome measures (time to fracture union, union rate) and secondary outcome measures (functional outcome and complication such as infection, malunion, delayed union, implant failure, joint stiffness and iatrogenic radial nerve palsy) were compared between both the groups. Disabilities of the arm, shoulder and hand (DASH) scoring and Steward and Hundley's scoring system were used to assess functional outcome of the fracture fixation. There was no significant difference (p = 0.12) in terms of mean fracture union time between group A (15.8 ± 4.2 weeks) and group B (17.2 ± 3.8 weeks). Group A had 95 % union rate and group B had 100 % union rate (p = 0.14). At the 2-year follow-up visit, there was no significant difference found between both the groups regarding range of motion of shoulder and elbow joint. There was no significant difference found in final functional outcomes between both the groups on comparing DASH score (p = 0.14) and Steward and Hundley's score (p = 0.08). In terms of complications, there was insignificant difference found between both the groups. This study concludes that both the implants can be used in non-union of humeral shaft fractures with good functional outcomes and acceptable rate of complications.

A critical question among the researchers working on fungal lipid biology is whether the use of an enriched growth medium can affect the lipid composition of a cell and, therefore, contribute to the observed phenotypes. One presumption is that enriched medias, such as YPD (yeast extract, peptone and dextrose), are likely to contain lipids, which may homogenize with the yeast lipids and play a role in masking the actual differences in the observed phenotypes or lead to an altered phenotype altogether. To address this issue, we compared the lipids of Candida albicans, our fungus of interest, grown in YPD or in a defined media such as YNB (yeast nitrogen base). Mass spectrometry-based lipid analyses showed differences in the levels of phospholipids, including phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylglycerol, lyso-phospholipids; sphingolipids, such as mannosyldiinositolphosphorylceramide; and sterols, such as ergostatetraenol. Significant differences were observed in 70 lipid species between the cells grown in the two media, but the two growth conditions did not affect the morphological characteristics of C. albicans. The lipid profiles of the YNB- and YPD-grown C. albicans cells did vary, but these differences did not influence their response to the majority of the tested agents. Rather, the observed differences could be attributed to the slow growth rate of the Candida cells in YNB compared to YPD. Notably, the altered lipid changes between the two media did impact the susceptibility to some drugs. This data provided evidence that changes in media can lead to certain lipid alterations, which may affect specific pathways but, in general, do not affect the majority of the phenotypic properties of C. albicans. It was determined that either YNB or YPD may be suitable for the growth and lipid analysis of C. albicans, depending upon the experimental requirements, but additional precautions are necessary when correlating the phenotypes with the lipids.

Communication networks are all about providing means to communicate that is for (exchanging the user information). The user information can be viewed as user traffic akin to the traffic on the road that moves across the road network. The fastest growth of data communication Networks over the past decades has resulted in the development of sophisticated tools to diagnose, debug

In communication world, the power distribution networks may be employed, for Power Line Communication (PLC) system, in order to transfer data during communication process. For achieving even higher data rate for high user environments, researchers have proposed various multiple access schemes for power line communication systems including CDMA and OFDM mechanisms with their variants. This paper includes the performance analysis

Page 1. Performance Comparison of AMBA Bus-Based System-On-Chip Communication Protocol Anurag Shrivastava Dept. of Electronics & Comm., Priyatam institute of Technology & Management, Indore, India shrivastavaanurag@rediffmail.com ...

Page 1. Minimization of Energy Consumption of Wireless Sensor Networks using Fuzzy Logic Ashutosh Kumar Singh , Abhijeet Alkesh , N.Purohit Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, India ashutosh_singh@iiita.ac.in , abhijeet.alkesh@gmail.com, np@iiita.ac.in ...

ABSTRACT ncreased interest in nutraceutical science in the late 1990s steered development of novel extraction techniques, including microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), supercritical fluid, pulsed electric field, and accelerated solvent extraction. Introduction of these techniques shortened extraction time, increased yield, and reduced organic solvent consumption and contamination. This chapter considers the theoretical and technical advancements of some of these processing techniques, and also provides a comprehensive analysis of operational and regulatory challenges faced in their application in food and pharmaceutical industries. Over the years, the list of nutraceutical compounds identified and analyzed for potential health benefits has been growing steadily. Scientific evidences have been provided to support the concept of “food as medicine.” The design of suitable processing and delivery systems for nutraceuticals and functional food components of interest is still a growing field; extensive research will continue to be required to develop effective delivery systems and new functional foods and nutraceutical products.

A new spectral method that eliminates the need of inner product evaluations in determination of signature of a combinational circuit realizing given Boolean function is described. The signature is obtained using probability coefficients of the function instead of conventional spectral ...

ABSTRACT Wetlands are important ecosystem internationally recognized, as exemplified by Ramsar Convention (1971). The Ramsar Convention defines wetlands as: ‘Wetlands are area of marsh, fen, peat land or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water, the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six meters’ (Ramsar Convention Secretariat, 2010). This definition has been broadly followed as it specifies various attributes of wetlands. Wetlands are also defined as ‘lands transitional between terrestrial and aquatic eco-systems where the water table is usually at or near the surface or the land is covered by shallow water’ (Mitsch & Gosselink, 1986). Over exploitation due to urbanization and industrialization are infusing their existence. In recent years, anthropogenic activities such as urban development and agricultural management have caused a significant change in the land use-land cover and subsequent loss of wetland (Syphard & Garcia, 2001). Different adjacent land uses can also cause fragmentation effects by separating patches of a particular land cover type (Wulder et al. 2008). Most of the studies of land-cover change and fragmentation rely on land-cover classification of remotely sensed images, quantified through landscape metrics and comparision between two temporal remotely sensed images (Garcia et al. 2004, Naithani et al. 2004, Rainis, 2003, Li et al. 2009,).

Wind power is now-a-days considered as one of the potential competitors amongst the sources of renewable energy. As the time passed by, the wind turbine technology has matured enough to replace the conventional forms of generation. Hence the amount of wind power in conventional form of power has increased significantly. But a distinct behavior of wind generators particularly the induction generators, restrict the smooth integration of wind generators into the grid. In view of this complete knowledge about the behavior of grid connected wind turbines is required. In this paper a simulation based study has been conducted to analyze the transient behavior of a FSIG based wind generators. The improvement of transient stability of FSIG wind farm with a STATCOM connected in the system has also been conducted.

Abstract—The contribution of wind power in conventional generation is increasing rapidly now-a-days. Hence a better understanding of wind power plants is required. But the wind power plants generally containing induction generators exhibit a rather different behavior ...

Orlistat is an oral inhibitor of gastrointestinal lipase used for weight reduction in obese patients. Although most adverse drug effects manifest in the gastrointestinal tract, this is the first reported case of orlistat-induced acute kidney injury secondary to acute oxalate nephropathy in a white woman with underlying chronic kidney disease. Acute kidney injury was associated temporally with an increased dose of orlistat and the development of increased fat malabsorption (more frequent loose oily stools). Urine sediment showed abundant calcium oxalate crystals and increased 24-hour urine oxalate concentration. Kidney biopsy showed deposition of calcium oxalate crystals within tubular lumens, consistent with acute oxalate nephropathy. Orlistat therapy was discontinued, and oral fluid intake was increased. A second kidney biopsy performed 1 month later to evaluate the slow resolution of kidney failure did not show calcium oxalate crystals within tubules. A steady improvement in renal...

This paper presents dual wideband microstrip antenna which is designed using stacking configuration to give a better bandwidth as compared to single layer substrate design. The designed slotted stacked patch antenna can operate in the Wimax, (2.2-3.4 GHz) WLAN (2.40--2.48GHz), and UMTS II (2.50--2.69GHz) frequency band giving a maximum bandwidth of 37.95%. The air is used as a dielectric between

Mercuric chloride can readily enter into the biological cycle where it gets converted into other forms of mercury and causes severe neurotoxic, genotoxic and immunotoxic effects; a number of tripodal ligands have been synthesized that selectively bind mercuric chloride and in the presence of AgPF6, mercury can be removed and supramolecular complexes of the PF6- anion are formed.

A series of neutral C(3)-symmetric acyclic artificial receptors incorporating amide functionality has been designed, synthesized, and fully characterized. Upon protonation, these conformationally flexible N-bridged tripodal podands 1-5 form in situ cone shape conformation through hydrogen bonding and C-H···π interactions. The protonation-induced interior preorganized cavity is capable of entrapping nitrate anions through the amide N-H bonds to form discrete nitrate complexes (1a-5a), which were fully characterized by NMR, HRESI mass spectra, and single crystal structures. By incorporating suitable fluorophores at each branch of the tripod receptor, the resulting fluorescent receptor 5 selectively recognized nitrate anions by fluorescent quenching in a DMSO solution and displayed one of the highest binding affinities for nitrate anions reported so far in polar media. Receptor 5 represents a unique example of a neutral receptor for the recognition of nitrate anions in polar solvent me...

... Bahar under intercrop-ping was 108–115, 342–367 and 450–482g\plant ... also found pigeonpea to be the dominant component in maize–pigeonpea intercropping systems, and ... habit is suggested to maximize the economic advantages from palmarosa–pigeonpea intercropping. ...