Archives-March 2011

The fiber reinforced laminate composite plates, because of its outstanding mechanical properties such as high strength, high stiffness with less weight, durability, corrosion resistance, finds many engineering applications. In this work, local failure of plate alone in-between the stiffeners is taken for study. This work compares the buckling behavior of thin fiber reinforced laminate composite plates subjected to axial compression under different types of boundary conditions with different types and different angle of layups. For this purpose graphite / epoxy composite rectangular plate is used for the analysis. Further, by varying the dimension of plate, effect of the aspect ratio of the plate on the buckling strength of plate is also studied. Eigen buckling analysis of ANSYS is used for analysis.

Trichomonas vaginalis causes the Trichomoniasis, in women and urethritis and prostate cancer in men. Presently Metronidazole, nitroimidazoles and tinidazole are used as the drugs of choice. But the emergence of drug resistant and cross resistance varieties of T. vaginalis has led to a search for novel drug targets. We have performed an insilico comparative analysis of metabolic pathways of the host Homo sapiens and the pathogen T. vaginalis. Enzymes from the biochemical pathways of T. vaginalis from the KEGG metabolic pathway database were compared with proteins from the host H. sapiens, by performing a BLASTp search against the non-redundant database restricted to the H. sapiens subset. The e-value threshold cutoff was set to 0.005. Enzymes, which do not show similarity to any of the host proteins, below this threshold, were filtered out as potential drug targets. Out of total 55 metabolic pathway in humans 26 metabolic pathways were identified when compared to the host H. sapiens. These 26 identified metabolic pathways contain 30 unique enzymes which are only present in T. vaginalis and absent in humans. The T. vaginalis genes for the identified enzymes were also retrieved for BLASTP search to identify any homologous protein in humans. Cysteine synthase and methionine gamma-lyase are two novel drug targets which were also reported well in literature and thus can be used to designing of inhibitors for the remedy of trichomoniasis.

Social Intelligence, an emerging new science with startling implications for our interpersonal world. If the purpose of education is to teach students skills they need to be well-prepared for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness...and most likely the pursuit of gainful employment, then teaching social skills must be a crucial part of education. There are new requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s social leaders and members, and they all demand social intelligence.

Recession means a slowdown or slump or temporary collapse of a business activity. Now global meltdown led to job lay-offs across the world. Although India has been directly impacted by the global financial crisis. During recession Major projects and expansion plans are being reviewed by the banking sector and them focusing on reducing costs and borrowings. The biggest problem is ‘Information asymmetry’ in recession. The challenge faced by Indian banks during recession is to ensure a balance between inflation and growth. If our economy experiences high growth rates, it will lead to major exports from our nation which will affect our domestic market and if economy experiences a decline in the inflation rate, it will lead to major imports to our country which will affect the budget. Though the impact of global financial crisis on India is stronger than expected, it will be the first to recover if the Government takes correct decisions and changes the established fiscal and monetary policies. The wholesale price index and the consumer price index need to be watched. The banks should ensure continuous credit flow at a low rate of interest to the private sector and especially to small and medium enterprises for their expansion and the growth projects. Crisis has caused panic in financial markets and encouraged investors to take their money out of risky mortgage bonds and equities and put it into commodities as “stores of values”.

The independent dominating set problem is a classical optimization problem and has been shown to be NP-Complete. This study finds a molecular computing model to solve the independent dominating set problem, based on Adleman-Lipton model. It proves how to apply stickers in the sticker based model to construct the DNA solution space of the independent dominating set problem and how to apply DNA operations in the Adleman-Lipton model to solve that problem from the solution space of stickers. The time complexity of the proposed computational model is O(n + 2m) and to verify this model, a small independent dominating set problem was solved. This proves the capacity of molecular computing for solving the complex independent dominating set problem.

An analytical solution to the problem of an MHD oscillatory boundary layer flow past a porous horizontal plate with periodic suction is presented. The fluid in the boundary layer rotates about an axis normal to the plate with a uniform angular velocity. A magnetic field of uniform strength is assumed to be applied normal to the plate. The equations governing the flow and heat transfer are solved by regular perturbation technique assuming the solution to be consist of a mean part and a perturbed part. The expressions for the temperature fields, skin friction at the plate due to primary and secondary velocity fields and the rate of heat transfer from the plate to the fluid in terms of Nusselt number are obtained in non dimensional form. The dimensionless expressions for the amplitude and phases of the fluctuating parts of the skin friction, Nusselt number at the plate are also derived. The skin friction due to primary velocity and skin friction due to secondary velocity at the plate, the amplitude and phase of the fluctuating part of , the rate of heat transfer from the plate to the fluid in terms of Nusselt number and amplitudes and phases of the fluctuating parts of it are demonstrated graphically and the effects of the parameters M (Hartmann number), (rotation parameter)and A (suction parameter)on these fields are discussed.It is seen that M, ,A have significant effect on the flow and heat transfer characteristics.2000 Mathematics subject classification: 76W05

Hyperlipidemia is commonly ascribed to obesity. In the current study, the association of anthropometric profile with hyperlipidemia after adjustment for important confounding variables such as smoking, alcohol intake, and diabetes in volunteers with elevated lipoproteins was analyzed. Anthropometric assessment included measurement of weight, height, waist and hip circumferences. Serum levels of total cholesterol (TC), High- density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglyceride (TG) were measured. Low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) was calculated by the Friedewald formula. Statistical analysis was done to examine the associations between anthropometric variables and lipids. The mean age of the study population was 63.31±9.56 years (30-80 yrs). Majority of individuals (51.5%) were in the age group of 61-70 years. Nearly 75.7% and 64.7% of the male and female population of the study respectively had BMI >30 kg/m2. Overall analysis of data revealed that HDL-C and BMI were correlated negatively (r= -0.25, p<0.05), whereas other lipid sub fractions did not have any significant association with the markers of obesity.

Piroxicam, an anti-inflammatory drug, exhibits poor water solubility, dissolution and flow properties. Thus, the aim of the present study was to improve the solubility and dissolution rate of Piroxicam by preparing microspheres by spray drying technique. Piroxicam microspheres containing different ratio of F127 were produced by spray drying using dichloromethane as solvent to enhance solubility and dissolution rate. The prepared formulations containing different ratio of drug and polymer were evaluated for in vitro dissolution and solubility. The prepared formulations were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimeter, X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Dissolution profile of the spray dried microspheres was compared with its physical mixture and pure sample. Spray dried microspheres exhibited decreased crystallinity and the solubility and dissolution of the microspheres containing different ratio of drug and pluronic F127 were significant improved compared with its physical mixture and pure sample of piroxicam. Dissolution of microspheres containing 1:3 w/w (SD 3) showed higher % release i.e. 94 % in 60 min compare to other formulation. Consequently, Hence, From the above result it can be conclude that spray dried microspheres of Piroxicam is a useful technique to improve the solubility and dissolution of poorly water soluble drug like Piroxicam.

Defective apoptosis (programmed cell death) represents a major causative factor in the development and progression of cancer. Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3 (GSK-3) has the perplexing capacity to either increase or decrease the apoptotic threshold. These apparently paradoxical effects now are known to be due to GSK-3 which oppositely regulating the two major apoptotic signaling pathways. GSK-3 promotes cell death caused by the mitochondrial intrinsic apoptotic pathway, but inhibits the death receptor-mediated extrinsic apoptotic signaling pathway. Consequently, inhibitors of GSK-3 provide protection from intrinsic apoptosis signaling but potentiate extrinsic apoptosis signaling. So, ability of GSK-3 to oppositely influence two types of apoptotic signaling have thrown a light on important regulatory mechanisms in apoptosis and henceforth designing the rational use of GSK-3 inhibitors for therapeutic interventions in cancer.

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a radio technique that has the capability of replacing several receivers with a single universal receiver. It includes a Digital Front-End (DFE) with the ultimate goal to implement all processing in digital domain. As the receiver has to adapt to various communication standards with different characteristics, the objective is to develop an optimum detection algorithm to combat Multiple Access Interference (MAI). Subtractive Interference Cancellation (IC) detectors like SIC and PIC are proposed and are employed in both uplink and downlink transmissions. Suitability of linear detectors like MRC and MMSE based MUD is being analyzed in multistage receiver.