Search results for: protein interaction network

Authors: Shankaran Sitarama

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New Product Development involves team members coming together and working in teams to come up with innovative solutions to problems, resulting in new products. Thus, a core attribute of a successful NPD team is their creativity and innovation. They need to be creative as a group, generating a breadth of ideas and innovative solutions that solve or address the problem they are targeting and meet the user’s needs. They also need to be very efficient in their teamwork as they work through the various stages of the development of these ideas, resulting in a POC (proof-of-concept) implementation or a prototype of the product. There are two distinctive traits that the teams need to have, one is ideational creativity, and the other is effective and efficient teamworking. There are multiple types of tensions that each of these traits cause in the teams, and these tensions reflect in the team dynamics. Ideational conflicts arising out of debates and deliberations increase the collective knowledge and affect the team creativity positively. However, the same trait of challenging each other’s viewpoints might lead the team members to be disruptive, resulting in interpersonal tensions, which in turn lead to less than efficient teamwork. Teams that foster and effectively manage these creative tensions are successful, and teams that are not able to manage these tensions show poor team performance. In this paper, it explore these tensions as they result in the team communication social network and propose a Creative Tension Balance index along the lines of Degree of Balance in social networks that has the potential to highlight the successful (and unsuccessful) NPD teams. Team communication reflects the team dynamics among team members and is the data set for analysis. The emails between the members of the NPD teams are processed through a semantic analysis algorithm (LSA) to analyze the content of communication and a semantic similarity analysis to arrive at a social network graph that depicts the communication amongst team members based on the content of communication. This social network is subjected to traditional social network analysis methods to arrive at some established metrics and structural balance analysis metrics. Traditional structural balance is extended to include team interaction pattern metrics to arrive at a creative tension balance metric that effectively captures the creative tensions and tension balance in teams. This CTB (Creative Tension Balance) metric truly captures the signatures of successful and unsuccessful (dissonant) NPD teams. The dataset for this research study includes 23 NPD teams spread out over multiple semesters and computes this CTB metric and uses it to identify the most successful and unsuccessful teams by classifying these teams into low, high and medium performing teams. The results are correlated to the team reflections (for team dynamics and interaction patterns), the team self-evaluation feedback surveys (for teamwork metrics) and team performance through a comprehensive team grade (for high and low performing team signatures).

Keywords: team dynamics, social network analysis, new product development teamwork, structural balance, NPD teams

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Authors: Ganfeng Yu, Yuefeng Ma, Shanliang Yang

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The word discovery is a key problem in text information retrieval technology. Methods in new word discovery tend to be closely related to words because they generally obtain new word results by analyzing words. With the popularity of social networks, individual netizens and online self-media have generated various network texts for the convenience of online life, including network words that are far from standard Chinese expression. How detect network words is one of the important goals in the field of text information retrieval today. In this paper, we integrate the word embedding model and clustering methods to propose a network word discovery framework based on sentence semantic similarity (S³-NWD) to detect network words effectively from the corpus. This framework constructs sentence semantic vectors through a distributed representation model, uses the similarity of sentence semantic vectors to determine the semantic relationship between sentences, and finally realizes network word discovery by the meaning of semantic replacement between sentences. The experiment verifies that the framework not only completes the rapid discovery of network words but also realizes the standard word meaning of the discovery of network words, which reflects the effectiveness of our work.

Keywords: text information retrieval, natural language processing, new word discovery, information extraction

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Authors: Sopheak Sorn, Kwok Yip Szeto

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Reliability is one of the important measures of how well the system meets its design objective, and mathematically is the probability that a complex system will perform satisfactorily. When the system is described by a network of N components (nodes) and their L connection (links), the reliability of the system becomes a network design problem that is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, we address the network design problem for a random point set’s pattern in two dimensions. We make use of a Voronoi construction with each cell containing exactly one point in the point pattern and compute the reliability of the Voronoi’s dual, i.e. the Delaunay graph. We further investigate the communicability of the Delaunay network. We find that there is a positive correlation and a negative correlation between the homogeneity of a Delaunay's degree distribution with its reliability and its communicability respectively. Based on the correlations, we alter the communicability and the reliability by performing random edge flips, which preserve the number of links and nodes in the network but can increase the communicability in a Delaunay network at the cost of its reliability. This transformation is later used to optimize a Delaunay network with the optimum geometric mean between communicability and reliability. We also discuss the importance of the edge flips in the evolution of real soap froth in two dimensions.

Keywords: Communicability, Delaunay triangulation, Edge Flip, Reliability, Two dimensional network, Voronio

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Authors: Gui Yang Wu, Bo Wang, Xin Wang

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Nowadays, 5G service-based interface architecture uses text-based payload like JSON to transfer business data between network functions, which has obvious advantages as internet services but causes unnecessarily larger traffic. In this paper, a new 5G application payload size reduction method is presented to provides the mechanism to negotiate about new capability between network functions when network communication starts up and how 5G application data are reduced according to negotiated information with peer network function. Without losing the advantages of 5G text-based payload, this method demonstrates an excellent result on application payload size reduction and does not increase the usage quota of computing resource. Implementation of this method does not impact any standards or specifications and not change any encoding or decoding functionality too. In a real 5G network, this method will contribute to network efficiency and eventually save considerable computing resources.

Keywords: 5G, JSON, payload size, service-based interface

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Authors: Sarita Puri, Tapan K. Chaudhuri

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Chaperonin GroEL is a tetradecameric Escherichia coli protein having identical subunits of 57 kDa. The elucidation of thermodynamic parameters related to stability for the native GroEL is not feasible as it undergoes irreversible unfolding because of its large size (800kDa) and multimeric nature. Nevertheless, it is important to determine the thermodynamic stability parameters for the highly stable GroEL protein as it helps in folding and holding of many substrate proteins during many cellular stresses. Properly folded monomers work as building-block for the formation of native tetradecameric GroEL. Spontaneous refolding behavior of monomeric GroEL makes it suitable for protein-denaturant interactions and thermodynamic stability based studies. The urea mediated unfolding is a three state process which means there is the formation of one intermediate state along with native and unfolded states. The heat mediated denaturation is a two-state process. The unfolding process is reversible as observed by the spontaneous refolding of denatured protein in both urea and head mediated refolding processes. Analysis of folding/unfolding data provides a measure of various thermodynamic stability parameters for the monomeric GroEL. The proposed mechanism of unfolding of monomeric GroEL is a three state process which involves formation of one stable intermediate having folded apical domain and unfolded equatorial, intermediate domains. Research in progress is to demonstrate the importance of specific residues in stability and oligomerization of GroEL protein. Several mutant versions of GroEL are under investigation to resolve the above mentioned issue.

Keywords: equilibrium unfolding, monomeric GroEl, spontaneous refolding, thermodynamic stability

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Authors: Sushil Kumar, M. Dakshina Murty

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Thermal network modelling has proven to be important tool for thermal analysis of electrical machine. This article investigates numerical thermal network model and experimental performance of a large-scale AC motor. Experimental temperatures were measured using RTD in the stator which have been compared with the numerical data. Thermal network modelling fairly predicts the temperature of various components inside the large-scale AC motor. Results of stator winding temperature is compared with experimental results which are in close agreement with accuracy of 6-10%. This method of predicting hot spots within AC motors can be readily used by the motor designers for estimating the thermal hot spots of the machine.

Keywords: AC motor, thermal network, heat transfer, modelling

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Authors: Ahmad Alwosheel, Ahmed Alqaraawi

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This work proposes a new speaker segmentation approach for two speakers. It is an online approach that does not require a prior information about speaker models. It has two phases, a conventional approach such as unsupervised BIC-based is utilized in the first phase to detect speaker changes and train a Neural Network, while in the second phase, the output trained parameters from the Neural Network are used to predict next incoming audio stream. Using this approach, a comparable accuracy to similar BIC-based approaches is achieved with a significant improvement in terms of computation time.

Keywords: artificial neural network, diarization, speaker indexing, speaker segmentation

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Authors: Saba Belgheisi

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Food packaging, is an important discipline in the area of food technology, concerns preservation and protection of foods. The objective of this research was to determine of the effect of whey protein based edible coating on the moisture loss and sensory attributes of fresh mutton after 0, 1, 3 and 5 days at 5° C. The moisture content, moisture loss and sensory attributes (juiciness, color and odor) of the coated and uncoated samples were analyzed. The results showed that, moisture content, moisture loss, juiciness and color of the coated and uncoated samples have significant differences (p < 0.05) at the intervals of 0 to 1 and 1 to 3 days of storage. But no significant difference was observed at interval time 3 to 5 days of storage (p > 0.05). Also, there was no significant differences in the odor values of the coated and uncoated samples (p > 0.05). Therefore, the coated samples had consistently more moisture, juiciness and colored values than uncoated samples after 3 days at 5° C. So, whey protein edible coating could enhance product presentation and eliminate the need for placing absorbent pads at the bottom of the trays.

Keywords: coating, whey protein, mutton, moisture, sensory

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Authors: Soumaya Sallem, Marc Olivas

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This contribution presents a method for detecting, locating, and characterizing soft faults in a complex wired network. The proposed method is based on multi-carrier reflectometry MCTDR (Multi-Carrier Time Domain Reflectometry) combined with a multi-objective genetic algorithm. In order to ensure complete network coverage and eliminate diagnosis ambiguities, the MCTDR test signal is injected at several points on the network, and the data is merged between different reflectometers (sensors) distributed on the network. An adapted multi-objective genetic algorithm is used to merge data in order to obtain more accurate faults location and characterization. The proposed method performances are evaluated from numerical and experimental results.

Keywords: wired network, reflectometry, network distributed diagnosis, multi-objective genetic algorithm

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Authors: Sodamade A., Bolaji K. A.

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Problems associated with protein malnutrition are still prevalent in third-world countries, leading to the constant search for plants that could serve as nutrients and medicinal purposes. Huckleberry is one of the plants that has been proven useful locally in the treatment of numerous ailments and diseases. A fresh sample of the plant (Vaccinium pavifolium) was collected from a vegetable garden situated near the Erelu dam of the Emmanuel Alayande College of Education Campus, Oyo. The sample was authenticated at the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN) Ibadan. The leaves of the plant were plucked and processed for leaf protein concentrates before proximate composition, mineral analysis phytochemical and antimicrobial properties were determined using a standard method of analysis. The results of proximate constituents showed; moisture content; 9.89±0.051g/100g, Ash; 3.23±0.12g/100g, crude fat; 3.96±0.11g/100g and 61.27±0.56g/100g of Nitrogen free extractive. The mineral analysis of the sample showed; Mg; 0.081±0.00mg/100g, Ca; 42.30±0.05mg/100g, Na; 27.57±0.09mg/100g, K; 6.81±0.01mg/100g, P; 8.90±0.03mg/100g, Fe; 0.51±0.00mg/100g, Zn; 0.021±0.00mg/100g, Cd; 0.04±0.04mg/100g, Pb; 0.002±0.00mg/100g, Cr; 0.041±0.00mg/100g Cadmium and Mercury were not detected in the sample. The result of phytochemical analysis of leaf protein concentrates of the Huckleberry showed the presence of Alkaloid, Saponin, Flavonoid, Tanin, Coumarin, Steroids, Terpenoids, Cardiac glycosides, Glycosides, Quinones, Anthocyanin, phytosterols, and phenols. Ethanolic extracts of the Vaccinium parvifolium L. leaf protein concentrates showed that it contains bioactive compounds that are capable of combating the following microorganisms; Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebisialae pneumonia and Proteus mirabilis. The results of the analysis of Vaccinium parvifolium L. leaf protein concentrates showed that the sample contains valuable nutrient and mineral constituents, and phytochemical compounds that could make the sample useful for medicinal activities.

Keywords: leaf protein concentrates, vaccinium parvifolium, nutritional characteristics, mineral composition, antimicrobial activity

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Authors: Hemalatha Ganapathyswamy, Thirukkumar Subramani

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Celiac disease is an autoimmune response to dietary wheat gluten. Gluten is the main structure forming protein in bread and hence developing gluten-free bread is a technological challenge. The study aims at using nonwheat flours like barnyard millet and lentil flour to replace wheat in bread formulations. Other characteristics of these grains, such as high protein, soluble fiber, mineral content and bioactive components make them attractive alternatives to traditional gluten-free ingredients in the production of high protein, gluten-free bread. The composite flour formulations for the development of gluten-free bread were optimized using lentil flour (50 to 70 g), barnyard millet flour (0 to 30 g) and corn flour (0 to 30 g) by means of response surface methodology with various independent variables for physical, sensorial and nutritional characteristics. The optimized composite flour which had a desirability value of 0.517, included lentil flour –62.94 g, barnyard millet flour– 24.34 g and corn flour– 12.72 g with overall acceptability score 8.00/9.00. The optimized gluten-free bread formulation had high protein (14.99g/100g) and fiber (1.95g/100g) content. The glycemic index of the gluten-free bread was 54.58 rendering it as low glycemic which enhances the functional benefit of the gluten-free bread. Since the standardised gluten-free bread from barnyard millet and lentil flour are high protein, and gluten-free with low glycemic index, the product would serve as an ideal therapeutic food in the management of both celiac disease and diabetes mellitus with better nutritional value.

Keywords: gluten free bread, lentil, low glycemic index, response surface methodology

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Authors: Lei Guo, Xu Zhang, Weigang Hou

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Since the traditional network is closed and it has no architecture to create applications, it has been unable to evolve with changing demands under the rapid innovation in services. Additionally, due to the lack of the whole network profile, the quality of service cannot be well guaranteed in the traditional network. The Software Defined Network (SDN) utilizes global resources to support on-demand applications/services via open, standardized and programmable interfaces. In this paper, we implement the traffic grooming application under a real SDN environment, and the corresponding analysis is made. In our SDN: 1) we use OpenFlow protocol to control the entire network by using software applications running on the network operating system; 2) several virtual switches are combined into the data forwarding plane through Open vSwitch; 3) An OpenFlow controller, NOX, is involved as a logically centralized control plane that dynamically configures the data forwarding plane; 4) The traffic grooming based on SDN is demonstrated through dynamically modifying the idle time of flow entries. The experimental results demonstrate that the SDN-based traffic grooming effectively reduces the end-to-end delay, and the improvement ratio arrives to 99%.

Keywords: NOX, OpenFlow, Software Defined Network (SDN), traffic grooming

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Authors: Kevin Fernagut, Olivier Flauzac, Erick M. G. Robledo, Florent Nolot

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The adoption of modern lightweight virtualization often comes with new threats and network vulnerabilities. This paper seeks to assess this with a different approach studying the behavior of a testbed built with tools such as Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM), Linux Containers (LXC) and Docker, by performing stress tests within a platform where students experiment simultaneously with cyber-attacks, and thus observe the impact on the campus network and also find the best solution for cyber-security learning. Interesting outcomes can be found in the literature comparing these technologies. It is, however, difficult to find results of the effects on the global network where experiments are carried out. Our work shows that other physical hosts and the faculty network were impacted while performing these trials. The problems found are discussed, as well as security solutions and the adoption of new network policies.

Keywords: containerization, containers, cybersecurity, cyberattacks, isolation, performance, virtualization, virtual machines

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Authors: Muazzam Ali Khan Khattak

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Next Generation Network is combination of different networks having different technologies. Due to mobile nature of nodes the movement of nodes occurs from one network to another network. Multicasting in such networks is still a hot issue of research because the user in today's world wants reliable communication wherever it lies. Due to heterogeneity of NGN it is very difficult to handle reliable multicast communication. In this paper we proposed an improved scheme for reliable multicast communication in next generation networks. Because multicast communication is very important to deliver same data packets to multiple receivers and minimize the network traffic. This new scheme will make the multicast communication in NGN more reliable and efficient.

Keywords: next generation networks, route request, IPT, NACK, ARQ, DTN

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Authors: Harish Rajak, Preeti Patel

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The application of histone deacetylase inhibitors is a well-known strategy in prevention of cancer which shows acceptable preclinical antitumor activity due to its ability of growth inhibition and apoptosis induction of cancer cell. Molecular docking were performed using Histone Deacetylase protein (PDB ID:1t69) and prepared series of hydroxamic acid based HDACIs. On the basis of docking study, it was predicted that compound 1 has significant binding interaction with HDAC protein and three hydrogen bond interactions takes place, which are essential for antitumor activity. On docking, most of the compounds exhibited better glide score values between -8 to -10 which is close to the glide score value of suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid. The pharmacophore hypotheses were developed using e-pharmacophore script and phase module. The 3D-QSAR models provided a good correlation between predicted and actual anticancer activity. Best QSAR model showed Q2 (0.7974), R2 (0.9200) and standard deviation (0.2308). QSAR visualization maps suggest that hydrogen bond acceptor groups at carbonyl group of cap region and hydrophobic groups at ortho, meta, para position of R9 were favorable for HDAC inhibitory activity. We established structure activity correlation using docking, pharmacophore modeling and atom based 3D QSAR model for hydroxamic acid based HDACIs.

Keywords: HDACIs, QSAR, e-pharmacophore, docking, suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid

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Authors: Sweta Pandey, Samridhi Dhyani, Susmita Chaudhuri

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Klebsiella pneumoniae causes a wide range of infections, including urinary tract infections, sepsis, bacteremia, pneumonia, and liver abscesses. The emergence of multi-drug resistance in this bacterium led to a major setback for clinical management. WHO also endorsed a need for finding alternative therapy to antibiotics for the treatment of these infections. Development of vaccines and passive antibody therapy has been proven as a potent alternative to antibiotics in the case of MDR, XDR, and PDR Klebsiella infections. Siderophore receptors have been demonstrated to be overexpressed for the internalization of iron siderophore complexes during infections in most Gram-negative bacteria. For the present study, immune response to siderophore receptors to establish this protein as a potential immunogen for the development of therapeutic leads was explored. Clinical strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae were grown in iron-deficient conditions, and the iron-regulated outer membrane proteins were extracted and characterized through mass spectrometry for specific identification. The gene for identified protein was cloned in pET- 28a vector and expressed in E. coli. The native protein and the recombinant protein were isolated and purified and used as antigens for the generation of immune response in BALB/c mice. The native protein of Klebsiella pneumoniae grown in iron-deficient conditions was identified as FepA (Ferrienterobactin receptor) and other siderophore receptors. This 80 kDa protein generated an immune response in BALB/c mice. The antiserum from mice after subsequent booster doses was collected and showed binding with FepA protein in western blot and phagocytic uptake of the K. pneumoniae in the presence antiserum from immunized mice also observed from the animal studies after bacterial challenge post immunisation in mice have shown bacterial clearance. The antiserum from mice showed binding and clearance of the Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria in vitro and in vivo. These antigens used for generating an active immune response in mice can further be used for therapeutic monoclonal antibody development against Klebsiella pneumoniae infections.

Keywords: antiserum, FepA, Klebsiella pneumoniae, multi drug resistance, siderophore receptor

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Authors: Wanqing You, Kai Qian, Xi He, Ying Qian

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In this paper, the potential security issues brought by the virtualization of a Software Defined Networks (SDN) would be analyzed. The virtualization of SDN is achieved by FlowVisor (FV). With FV, a physical network is divided into multiple isolated logical networks while the underlying resources are still shared by different slices (isolated logical networks). However, along with the benefits brought by network virtualization, it also presents some issues regarding security. By examining security issues existing in an OpenFlow network, which uses FlowVisor to slice it into multiple virtual networks, we hope we can get some significant results and also can get further discussions among the security of SDN virtualization.

Keywords: SDN, network, virtualization, security

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Authors: Y. Ruchi, A. Prerna, S. Deepshikha

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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”. It is a neurodegenerative disease associated with degeneration of motor neurons in the cerebral cortex, brain stem, and spinal cord characterized by distal muscle weakness, atrophy, normal sensation, pyramidal signs and progressive muscular paralysis reflecting. ALS2 is a juvenile autosomal recessive disorder, slowly progressive, that maps to chromosome 2q33 and is associated with mutations in the alsin gene, a putative GTPase regulator. In this paper we have done homology modeling of alsin2 protein using multiple templates (3KCI_A, 4LIM_A, 402W_A, 4D9S_A, and 4DNV_A) designed using the Prime program in Schrödinger software. Further modeled structure is used to identify effective binding sites on the basis of structural and physical properties using sitemap program in Schrödinger software, structural and function analysis is done by using Prosite and ExPASy server that gives insight into conserved domains and motifs that can be used for protein classification. This paper summarizes the structural, functional and binding site property of alsin2 protein. These binding sites can be potential drug target sites and can be used for docking studies.

Keywords: ALS, binding site, homology modeling, neuronal degeneration

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Authors: Hamzeh Alipour, Masoumeh Bagheri, Abbasali Raz, Javad Dadgar Pakdel, Kourosh Azizi, Aboozar Soltani, Mohammad Djaefar Moemenbellah-Fard

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Background: Maggot debridement therapy is an appropriate, effective, and controlled method using sterilized larvae of Luciliasericata (L.sericata) to treat wounds. Netrin-A is an enzyme in the Laminins family which secreted from salivary gland of L.sericata with a central role in neural regeneration and angiogenesis. This study aimed to production of new recombinant Netrin-A protein of Luciliasericata larvae by baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) in SF9. Material and methods: In the first step, gene structure was subjected to the in silico studies, which were include determination of Antibacterial activity, Prion formation risk, homology modeling, Molecular docking analysis, and Optimization of recombinant protein. In the second step, the Netrin-A gene was cloned and amplified in pTG19 vector. After digestion with BamH1 and EcoR1 restriction enzymes, it was cloned in pFastBac HTA vector. It was then transformed into DH10Bac competent cells, and the recombinant Bacmid was subsequently transfected into insect Sf9 cells. The expressed recombinant Netrin-A was thus purified in the Ni-NTA agarose. This protein evaluation was done using SDS-PAGE and western blot, respectively. Finally, its concentration was calculated with the Bradford assay method. Results: The Bacmid vector structure with Netrin-A was successfully constructed and then expressed as Netrin-A protein in the Sf9 cell lane. The molecular weight of this protein was 52 kDa with 404 amino acids. In the in silico studies, fortunately, we predicted that recombinant LSNetrin-A have Antibacterial activity and without any prion formation risk.This molecule hasa high binding affinity to the Neogenin and a lower affinity to the DCC-specific receptors. Signal peptide located between amino acids 24 and 25. The concentration of Netrin-A recombinant protein was calculated to be 48.8 μg/ml. it was confirmed that the characterized gene in our previous study codes L. sericata Netrin-A enzyme. Conclusions: Successful generation of the recombinant Netrin-A, a secreted protein in L.sericata salivary glands, and because Luciliasericata larvae are used in larval therapy. Therefore, the findings of the present study could be useful to researchers in future studies on wound healing.

Keywords: blowfly, BEVS, gene, immature insect, recombinant protein, Sf9

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Authors: Akwesi Assensoh-Kodua

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Online Social Networks (OSN) has come and gone, yet the explosion of business activities on such platforms continuous to surge high, giving advantage to the bold entrepreneurs. It is therefore a practical requirement that practitioners and researchers understand the key determinants of costumers’ online social network business activities and continuance intention. An exploratory literature research to examine OSN continuous intention of business participants on OSN revealed that the practice of doing business on social network has come to stay and the following factors are the likely drivers for this new business model: perceived trust, perceived ease of use, confirmation, habit, social norm, perceived behavioural control, expected benefit, and satisfaction are the most probable factors that can lead to online social network (OSN) continuance intention.

Keywords: online social network, continuance intention, business continuance

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Authors: Jose A. Aznar-Moreno, Xi Jiang, Stefan Burén, Luis M. Rubio

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Integration of prokaryotic nitrogen fixation (nif) genes into the plastid genome for expression of functional nitrogenase components could render plants capable of assimilating atmospheric N2 making their crops less dependent of nitrogen fertilizers. The nitrogenase Fe protein component (NifH) has been used as proxy for expression and targeting of Nif proteins within plant and yeast cells. Here we use tobacco plants with the Azotobacter vinelandii nifH and nifM genes integrated into the plastid genome. NifH and its maturase NifM were constitutively produced in leaves, but not roots, during light and dark periods. Nif protein expression in transplastomic plants was stable throughout development. Chloroplast NifH was soluble, but it only showed in vitro activity when isolated from leaves collected at the end of the dark period. Exposing the plant extracts to elevated temperatures precipitated NifM and apo-NifH protein devoid of [Fe4S4] clusters, dramatically increasing the specific activity of remaining NifH protein. Our data indicate that the chloroplast endogenous [Fe-S] cluster biosynthesis was insufficient for complete NifH maturation, albeit a negative effect on NifH maturation due to excess NifM in the chloroplast cannot be excluded. NifH and NifM constitutive expression in transplastomic plants did not affect any of the following traits: seed size, germination time, germination ratio, seedling growth, emergence of the cotyledon and first leaves, chlorophyll content and plant height throughout development.

Keywords: NifH, chloroplast, nitrogen fixation, crop improvement, transplastomic plants, fertilizer, biotechnology

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Authors: Chaitanya Kanakamedala, Hansa Pradhan, Carter Gilbert

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Social media platforms, such as Twitter, are excellent datasets for understanding human interactions and sentiments. This report explores social dynamics among US Congressional members through a network analysis applied to a dataset of tweets spanning 2008 to 2017 from the ’US Congressional Tweets Dataset’. In this report, we preform network analysis where connections between users (edges) are established based on a similarity threshold: two tweets are connected if the tweets they post are similar. By utilizing the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and NetworkX, we quantified tweet similarity and constructed a graph comprising various interconnected components. Each component represents a cluster of users with closely aligned content. We then preform sentiment analysis on each cluster to explore the prevalent emotions and opinions within these groups. Our findings reveal that despite the initial expectation of distinct ideological divisions typically aligning with party lines, the analysis exposed a high degree of topical convergence across tweets from different political affiliations. The analysis preformed in this report not only highlights the potential of social media as a tool for political communication but also suggests a complex layer of interaction that transcends traditional partisan boundaries, reflecting a complicated landscape of politics in the digital age.

Keywords: natural language processing, sentiment analysis, centrality analysis, topic modeling

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Authors: Qing Lyu, Hang Zhu

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Various flows in the network require to go through different types of middlebox. The improper placement of network middlebox and path assignment for flows could greatly increase the network latency and also decrease the performance of network. Minimizing the total end to end latency of all the ows requires to assign path for the incoming flows. In this paper, the flow path assignment problem in regard to the placement of various kinds of middlebox is studied. The flow path assignment problem is formulated to a linear programming problem, which is very time consuming. On the other hand, a naive greedy algorithm is studied. Which is very fast but causes much more latency than the linear programming algorithm. At last, the paper presents a heuristic algorithm named FPA, which takes bottleneck link information and estimated bandwidth occupancy into consideration, and achieves near optimal latency in much less time. Evaluation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: flow path, latency, middlebox, network

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Authors: Rahul Madathiparambil Visalakshan, Alex Cavallaro, John Hayball, Krasimir Vasilev

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The role of biomaterial surface nanotopograhy on fibrinogen adsorption and unfolding, and the subsequent immune response were studied. Inconsistent topography and varying chemical functionalities along with a lack of reproducibility pose a challenge in determining the specific effects of nanotopography or chemistry on proteins and cells. It is important to have a well-defined nanotopography with a homogeneous chemistry to study the real effect of nanotopography on biological systems. Therefore, we developed a technique that can produce well-defined and highly reproducible topography to identify the role of specific roughness, size, height and density with the presence of homogeneous chemical functionality. Using plasma polymerisation of oxazoline monomers and immobilized gold nanoparticles we created surfaces with an equal number density of nanoparticles of different sizes. This surface was used to study the role of surface nanotopography and the interplay of surface chemistry on proteins and immune cells. The effect of nanotopography on fibrinogen adsorption was investigated using Quartz Cristal Microbalance with Dissipation and micro BCA. The mass of fibrinogen adsorbed on the surface increased with increasing size of nano-topography. Protein structural changes up on adsorption to the nano rough surface was studied using circular dichroism spectroscopy. Fibrinogen unfolding varied depending on the specific nanotopography of the surfaces. It was revealed that the in vitro immune response to the nanotopography surfaces changed due to this protein unfolding.

Keywords: biomaterial inflammation, protein and cell responses, protein unfolding, surface nanotopography

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Authors: Jong-Bae Lee, Seongsoo Lee

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Local interconnect network (LIN) is a communication protocol that combines sensors, actuators, and processors to a functional module in automotive applications. In this paper, a LIN ver. 2.2A controller was designed in Verilog hardware description language (Verilog HDL) and implemented in field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Its operation was verified by making full-scale LIN network with the presented FPGA-implemented LIN controller, commercial LIN transceivers, and commercial processors. When described in Verilog HDL and synthesized in 0.18 μm technology, its gate size was about 2,300 gates.

Keywords: local interconnect network, controller, transceiver, processor

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Authors: Gulay Oncu Ince, Sibel Karakaya

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Food is a worldwide concern. Among the factors that have influences on human health, food, nutrition and life style have been regarded as the most important factors since they can be intervened. While some parts of the world has been faced with food shortages and hence, chronic metabolic diseases, the other part of the world have been emerged from over consumption of food. Both situations can result in shorter life expectancy and represent a major global health problem. Hunger, satiety and appetite sensation form a balance ensures the operation of feeding behavior between food intake and energy consumption. Satiety is one of the approaches that is effective in ensuring weight control and avoid eating more in the postprandial period. By manipulating the microstructure of food macro and micronutrient bioavailability may be increased or reduced. For the food industry appearance, texture, taste structural properties as well as the gastrointestinal tract behavior of the food after the consumption is becoming increasingly important. Also, this behavior has been the subject of several researches in recent years by the scientific community. Numerous studies have been published about changing the food matrix in order to increase expected impacts. In this study, yogurts were enriched with caseinomacropeptide (CMP), whey protein (WP), CMP and sodium alginate (SA), and WP + SA in order to produce goat yogurts having different food matrices. SDS Page profiles of the samples after in vitro digestion and viscosities of the stomach digesta at different share rates were determined. Energy values were 62.11kcal/100 g, 70.27 kcal/100 g, 70.61 kcal/100 g, 71.20 kcal/100 g and 71.67 kcal/100 g for control, CMP added WP added, WP + SA added, and CMP + SA added yogurts respectively. The results of viscosity analysis showed that control yogurt had the lowest viscosity value and this was followed by CMP added, WP added, CMP + SA added and WP + SA added yogurts, respectively. Protein contents of the stomach and duedonal digests of the samples after subjected to two different in vitro digestion methods were changed between 5.34-5.91 mg protein / g sample and 16.93-19.75 mg protein /g of sample, respectively. Viscosity measurements of the stomach digests showed that CMP + SA added yogurt displayed the highest viscosity value in both in vitro digestion methods. There were differences between the protein profiles of the stomach and duedonal digests obtained by two different in vitro digestion methods (p<0.05).

Keywords: caseinomacropeptide, protein profile, whey protein, yogurt

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Authors: Rashid Mahmood, Muhammad Sufyan, Nasir Ahmed

Abstract:

The MANETs have lessened transportation and decentralized network. There are numerous basis of routing protocols. We derived the MANETs protocol into three major categories like Reactive, Proactive and hybrid. In these protocols, we discussed only some protocols like Distance Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Ad hoc on Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR). The AODV and DSR are both reactive type of protocols. On the other hand, DSDV is proactive type protocol here. We compare these routing protocols for network security estimated by network simulator (NS-2). In this dissertation some parameters discussed such as simulation time, packet size, number of node, packet delivery fraction, push time and speed etc. We will construct all these parameters on routing protocols under suitable conditions for network security measures.

Keywords: DSDV, AODV, DSR NS-2, PDF, push time

Procedia PDF Downloads 433

Authors: Namfon Samsalee, Rungsinee Sothornvit

Abstract:

Turmeric is a natural plant herb and generally extracted as essential oil and widely used in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical products including insect repellent. However, turmeric oil is a volatile essential oil which is easy to be lost during storage or exposure to light. Therefore, biopolymers such as protein and polysaccharide can be used as wall materials to encapsulate the essential oil which will solve this drawback. Approximately 60% plasma from porcine blood contains 6-7% of protein content mainly albumin and globulin which can be a good source of animal protein at the low-cost biopolymer from by-product. Microencapsulation is a useful technique to entrap volatile compounds in the biopolymer matrix and protect them to degrade. The objective of this research was to investigate the different ratios of two biopolymers (PPP and maltodextrin; MD) as wall materials at 100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75 and 0:100 at a fixed ratio of wall material: core material (turmeric oil) at 3:1 (oil in water) on the qualities of microencapsulated powder using freeze drying. It was found that the combination of PPP and MD showed higher solubility of microencapsules compared to the use of PPP alone (P < 0.05). Moreover, the different ratios of wall materials also affected on color (L*, a* and b*) of microencapsulated powder. Morphology of microencapsulated powder using a scanning electron microscope showed holes on the surface reflecting on free oil content and encapsulation efficiency of microencapsules. At least 50% of MD was needed to increase encapsulation efficiency of microencapsulates rather than using only PPP as the wall material (P < 0.05). Microencapsulated turmeric oil powder can be useful as food additives to improve food texture, as a biopolymer material for edible film and coating to maintain quality of food products.

Keywords: microencapsulation, turmeric oil, porcine plasma protein, maltodextrin

Procedia PDF Downloads 185

Authors: S. Kongtun-Janphuk, S. Niwitpong Jr., J. Saengsai

Abstract:

Low-sugar snack bars were formulated with 3 main formulas depending on the main ingredient, which were peanut-green bean-sesame, apple, and prune. The most acceptable formula of each group was obtained by sensory evaluation using a nine-point hedonic scale. The moisture content, total ash, protein, fat and fiber were analyzed by the standard methods of AOAC. The peanut-mung bean-sesame snack bar showed the highest protein content (88.32%) and total fat (0.48%) with the lowest of fiber content (0.01%) while the prune formula showed the lowest protein content (71.91%) and total fat (0.21%) with the highest of fiber content (0.03%). This result indicated that the prune formula could be used as diet food to assist in weight loss program.

Keywords: low-sugar snack bar, diet food, nutrition analysis, food formulation

Procedia PDF Downloads 397

Authors: Ava Faridi, Pouya Faridi, Aleksandr Kakinen, Ibrahim Javed, Thomas P. Davis, Pu Chun Ke

Abstract:

Human islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) is a hormone associated with glycemic control and type 2 diabetes. Biophysically, the chirality of IAPP fibrils has been little explored with respect to the aggregation and toxicity of the peptide. Biochemically, it remains unclear as for how protein expression in pancreatic beta cells may be altered by cell exposure to the peptide, and how such changes may be mitigated by nanoparticle inhibitors for IAPP aggregation. In this study, we first demonstrated the elimination of the IAPP nucleation phase and shortening of its elongation phase by silica nanoribbons. This accelerated IAPP fibrillization translated to reduced toxicity, especially for the right-handed silica nanoribbons, as revealed by cell viability, helium ion microscopy, as well as zebrafish embryo survival, developmental and behavioral assays. We then examined the proteomes of βTC6 pancreatic beta cells exposed to the three main aggregation states of monomeric, oligomeric and amyloid fibrillar IAPP, and compared that with cellular protein expression modulated by graphene quantum dots (GQDs). A total of 29 proteins were significantly regulated by different forms of IAPP, and the majority of these proteins were nucleotide-binding proteins. A regulatory capacity of GQDs against aberrant protein expression was confirmed. These studies have demonstrated the great potential of employing nanomaterials targeting the mesoscopic enantioselectivity and protein expression dysregulation in pancreatic beta cells.

Keywords: graphene quantum dots, IAPP, silica nanoribbons, protein expression, toxicity

Procedia PDF Downloads 142