Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the standard of care for axillary staging in clinically node-negati... more Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the standard of care for axillary staging in clinically node-negative breast cancer. SLNB is predictive of axillary node status. Major concern is the occurrence of a false negative SLN. The objective of this study is to determine the rate of axillary recurrence in our series of patients in Indian cohort. The present study was conducted at Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Manipal Hospital, Bengaluru, a tertiary referral cancer centre in India, from Jan 2008 through December 2018. A total of 496 patients diagnosed with early breast cancer with clinically negative axilla underwent the SLNB procedure using both ICG and dual dye. Four hundred ninety-six patients with negative SLNB did not receive ALND. After a median follow-up of 48.8 months, 18 patients had distant metastases, one had axillary relapse, and 13 had an in-breast recurrence. The patients with axillary recurrence received axillary dissection and systemic adjuvant therapy. Data from this series, thus, showed that isolated axillary node recurrence after negative SLNB is rare (< 1%) and comparable with referral cancer institutions. We confirm that SLNB for the treatment of early breast cancer patients of a tertiary referral hospital is safe and reliable.
The demand for electricity has been rising at an exponential rate since Independence. Though the ... more The demand for electricity has been rising at an exponential rate since Independence. Though the power generation has increased manifold over these years, but it has not been able to keep pace with the increasing demand. Keeping in mind the per capita income in the nation, the policymakers need to arrive at a sustainable energy model to integrate self-sufficiency with affordability. The Coal Linkage agreements between the power stations, the Indian Railways and the coal blocks which were established a long time back continue to exist till today. Even though the rail connectivity and the number of mines have improved over these years, no major changes have been made in the coal allocation model pan India. The study seeks to optimize coal transportation cost for 19 NTPC owned power plants using Linear Optimization techniques and seeks to evaluate the annual profitability of these power stations. The study does not suggest the adoption of this optimized model but aims to draw an insigh...
With growing demands on improved product quality and shorter time to market, there is need for ri... more With growing demands on improved product quality and shorter time to market, there is need for rigorous but practical tools to support the fixture design and analysis process. Computer-aided fixture design (CAFD), with predictable fixture stiffness, becomes a means to provide an appropriate solution in fixture design. The effectiveness of previous CAFD systems is not fully satisfactory partially because analysis of fixture stiffness has not kept pace with the development of CAFD. The dissertation research provides a model of fixture unit stiffness analysis and an experimental method of identifying contact stiffness parameters. The model and the method offer the potential for a more realistic analysis of fixture stiffness properties of a fixture-workpiece system, based on a fixture unit description.
Thrombin generation in platelet-rich plasma (PRP) involves complex interactions between platelets... more Thrombin generation in platelet-rich plasma (PRP) involves complex interactions between platelets and coagulation proteins. We previously reported that the addition of fibrin to PRP enhances tissue-factor initiated thrombin generation by ≈ 40%, and the current studies were designed to assess the mechanism(s) underlying thrombin generation in the absence and presence of fibrin. Blocking platelet GPIIb/IIIa + vβ3 receptors with a monoclonal antibody (MoAb) inhibited basal thrombin generation, but did not affect the enhancement produced by fibrin. In contrast, blocking GPIb with any of three different MoAbs had no effect on basal thrombin generation, but essentially eliminated fibrin enhancement of thrombin generation. When thrombin generation was tested in PRP deficient in von Willebrand factor (vWF), both basal and fibrin-enhanced thrombin generation were markedly reduced, and the addition of factor VIII did not normalize thrombin generation. Botrocetin, which induces the binding of...
The differential quadrature method has been widely used in scientific and engineering computation... more The differential quadrature method has been widely used in scientific and engineering computation. However, for the basic characteristics of time domain differential quadrature method, such as numerical stability and calculation accuracy or order, it is still lack of systematic analysis conclusions. In this paper, according to the principle of differential quadrature method, it has been derived and proved that the weighting coefficients matrix of differential quadrature method meets the importantV-transformation feature. Through the equivalence of the differential quadrature method and the implicit Runge-Kutta method, it has been proved that the differential quadrature method is A-stable ands-stages-order method. On this basis, in order to further improve the accuracy of the time domain differential quadrature method, a class of improved differential quadrature method ofs-stage 2s-order have been proposed by using undetermined coefficients method and Padé approximations. The numeric...
Berberis aristata (Berberidaceae) is an important medicinal plant used in traditional system of m... more Berberis aristata (Berberidaceae) is an important medicinal plant used in traditional system of medicine for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory disorders. The aim of the present study is to scientifically validate the traditional use of BA in the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Anti-inflammatory and anti-granuloma activity of BA hydroalcoholic extract (BAHE) were evaluated in experimental models, viz., carrageenan-induced paw edema, cotton pellet-induced granuloma formation, and complete Freund's adjuvant-induced stimulation of peritoneal macrophages in rats. Expression of inflammatory mediators, viz., tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-6, IL-10, TNF-R1, and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) was carried out in serum and peritoneal macrophages to derive the plausible mechanism of BAHE in activated peritoneal macrophages. Pretreatment with BAHE produced a dose-dependent reduction (P < 0.01) in carrageenan-induced paw edema and ...
We study topologically massive (B \wedge F) Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories in four dimens... more We study topologically massive (B \wedge F) Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories in four dimensions, and reduce them to three dimensions by assuming that the fields do not propagate in one of the spatial directions. For certain gauge choices the reduced theories are the Jackiw-Pi models of massive gauge fields.
2004 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37512)
We extend the method of lifting from M-channel paraunitary filter banks (PUFB) to M-channel unimo... more We extend the method of lifting from M-channel paraunitary filter banks (PUFB) to M-channel unimodular filter banks. In particular, the lifting factorizations of Type-I and Type-II building blocks for the first-order unimodular matrices are presented, where the McMillan minimality is preserved. The proposed factorizations continue to have unity diagonal scaling, and perfect reconstruction (PR) is thus guaranteed under finite precision. Using degreeone unimodular building blocks, we present the design of firstorder unimodular transforms (a.k.a. lapped unimodular transform, or LUT) and their lifting factorizations. Multiplierless (while reversible) implementations of the resulting LUT are obtained by dyadic approximation of the lifting coefficients.
2014 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2014
Psychological health disorders pose a growing threat to society. Disorders such as Depression, Po... more Psychological health disorders pose a growing threat to society. Disorders such as Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI), are often under-diagnosed and under-treated. Crisis hotlines are often the last resort for people who, from the lack of proper treatment, are considering suicide or intend to harm themselves or others. This paper describes a system that automatically analyzes online crisis hotline chats to (1) extract fine-grained distress indicators that map to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV codes, and to (2) perform triage classification based on the severity of distress. For distress detection, we present several approaches which leverage annotator rationales and dialogue structure to improve classification performance, demonstrating significant gains over a stateof-the-art approach from literature. For triage classification, we demonstrate early detection capability for the most severe triage code. We evaluate our work on a large corpus of chats from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' online Crisis Hotline.
Taking the simple examples of an Abelian 1-form gauge theory in two (1+1)-dimensions, a 2-form ga... more Taking the simple examples of an Abelian 1-form gauge theory in two (1+1)-dimensions, a 2-form gauge theory in four (3+1)-dimensions and a 3-form gauge theory in six (5+1)-dimensions of space–time, we establish that such gauge theories respect, in addition to the gauge symmetry transformations that are generated by the first-class constraints of the theory, additional continuous symmetry transformations. We christen the latter symmetry transformations as the dual-gauge transformations. We generalize the above gauge and dual-gauge transformations to obtain the proper (anti-)BRST and (anti-)dual-BRST transformations for the Abelian 3-form gauge theory within the framework of BRST formalism. We concisely mention such symmetries for the 2D free Abelian 1-form and 4D free Abelian 2-form gauge theories and briefly discuss their topological aspects in our present endeavor. We conjecture that any arbitrary Abelian p-form gauge theory would respect the above cited additional symmetry in D = ...
We present a framework for processing formulas in automatic theorem provers, with generation of d... more We present a framework for processing formulas in automatic theorem provers, with generation of detailed proofs. The main components are a generic contextual recursion algorithm and an extensible set of inference rules. Clausification, skolemization, theory-specific simplifications, and expansion of 'let' expressions are instances of this framework. With suitable data structures, proof generation adds only a linear-time overhead, and proofs can be checked in linear time. We implemented the approach in the SMT solver veriT. This allowed us to dramatically simplify the code base while increasing the number of problems for which detailed proofs can be produced, which is important for independent checking and reconstruction in proof assistants.
Previous research has shown that self-explanation can be supported effectively in an intelligent ... more Previous research has shown that self-explanation can be supported effectively in an intelligent tutoring system by simple means such as menus. We now focus on the hypothesis that natural language dialogue is an even more effective way to support self-explanation. We have developed the Geometry Explanation Tutor, which helps students to state explanations of their problem-solving steps in their own words. In a classroom study involving 71 advanced students, we found that students who explained problem-solving steps in a dialogue with the tutor did not learn better overall than students who explained by means of a menu, but did learn better to state explanations. Second, examining a subset of 700 student explanations, students who received higher-quality feedback from the system made greater progress in their dialogues and learned more, providing some measure of confidence that progress is a useful intermediate variable to guide further system development. Finally, students who tended to reference specific problem elements in their explanations, rather than state a general problemsolving principle, had lower learning gains than other students. Such explanations may be indicative of an earlier developmental level.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 9, 2014
Protein ubiquitination is a core regulatory determinant of neural development. Previous studies h... more Protein ubiquitination is a core regulatory determinant of neural development. Previous studies have indicated that the Nedd4-family E3 ubiquitin ligases Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2 may ubiquitinate phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) and thereby regulate axonal growth in neurons. Using conditional knockout mice, we show here that Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2 are indeed required for axonal growth in murine central nervous system neurons. However, in contrast to previously published data, we demonstrate that PTEN is not a substrate of Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2, and that aberrant PTEN ubiquitination is not involved in the impaired axon growth upon deletion of Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2. Rather, PTEN limits Nedd4-1 protein levels by modulating the activity of mTORC1, a protein complex that controls protein synthesis and cell growth. Our data demonstrate that Nedd4-family E3 ligases promote axonal growth and branching in the developing mammalian brain, where PTEN is not a relevant substrate. Instead, PTEN controls...
Clinical and applied thrombosis/hemostasis : official journal of the International Academy of Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis, Jan 7, 2014
Rectus sheath hematoma (RSH) develops due to rupture of epigastric arteries or the rectus muscle.... more Rectus sheath hematoma (RSH) develops due to rupture of epigastric arteries or the rectus muscle. Although RSH incidence rate is low, it poses a significant diagnostic dilemma. We evaluated the risk factors for RSH, its presentation, management, and outcomes for 115 patients hospitalized with confirmed RSH by computed tomography scan between January 2005 and June 2009. More than three-fourth (77.4%) of the patients were on anticoagulation therapy, 58.3% patients had chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage ≥3, 51.3% had abdominal injections, 41.7% were on steroids/immunosuppressant therapy, 37.4% had abdominal surgery/trauma, 33.9% had cough, femoral puncture was performed in 31.3% of patients, and 29.5% were on antiplatelet therapy. Rectus sheath hematoma was not an attributable cause in any of the 17 deaths. Mortality was significantly higher in patients with CKD stage ≥3 (P = .03) or who required transfusion (P = .007). Better understanding of RSH risk factors will facilitate early dia...
Introduction: The healthcare sector is one of the most rapidly expanding and dynamic industries i... more Introduction: The healthcare sector is one of the most rapidly expanding and dynamic industries in the world. Pharmaceutical expenditure is now growing faster than other components of healthcare overheads. Globally, pressures to manage pharmaceutical spending have led to increased prescribing of generic drugs. Use of generic drugs in private medical centres in Malaysia, however, remains low, despite intervention from the Ministry of Health. Methods: Specialists serving in privately owned medical centres were interviewed to evaluate their perceptions and knowledge about generic medications. Results: Eighteen medical specialists from diff erent medical fi elds were interviewed. The majority of specialists were positive about generics substitution but cynical about their quality in terms of effi cacy and safety for some drug categories. Physicians preferred to see the results of bioequivalence conducted by generics manufacturers and also preferred them to supplement it with some smallscale community-based pharmacodynamic studies. Conclusion: The success of generics in private hospitals in Malaysia depends on changing the perception of these physicians about generic drugs. In addition to implementing generic drug usage policy for private hospitals in Malaysia, this can also be achieved through improved marketing and promotion of generic drug products. High-quality educational programmes are needed to inform and educate physicians about the role of the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau in regulating generic drugs.
Biometric based identification is an emerging technology that can solve many security problems. A... more Biometric based identification is an emerging technology that can solve many security problems. Although systems based on fingerprint and eye features have so far achieved the best matching performance, human hand also contains a wide variety of features, e.g. shape, texture and principal palm lines etc. This feature of the human hand is quite stable and hand images can be extracted very easily. Palm-print is a new and emerging biometric feature for personal recognition. This paper describes an automated approach to palm-print recognition. In contrast to existing palm-print based biometric systems, a new system which is resistant to motion variance of the palm has been proposed. A Palm-print image is taken as an input and then a low pass Gaussian filter is applied to remove the noise from image. Further, since the centre of mass always remains constant, so this property has been taken into account to extract the ROI (Region of Interest) from palm-print image. SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transformation) features have been used further for extracting stable texture features from the ROI and are stored. These stable features extracted from the ROI are further used for comparison with stable texture features extracted from ROI of other palmprint images to provide biometric based identification and security.
Various post-translational modifications (PTMs) fine-tune the functions of almost all eukaryotic ... more Various post-translational modifications (PTMs) fine-tune the functions of almost all eukaryotic proteins, and co-regulation of different types of PTMs has been shown within and between a number of proteins. Aiming at a more global view of the interplay between PTM types, we collected modifications for 13 frequent PTM types in 8 eukaryotes, compared their speed of evolution and developed a method for measuring PTM co-evolution within proteins based on the co-occurrence of sites across eukaryotes. As many sites are still to be discovered, this is a considerable underestimate, yet, assuming that most co-evolving PTMs are functionally associated, we found that PTM types are vastly interconnected, forming a global network that comprise in human alone 450 000 residues in about 6000 proteins. We predict substantial PTM type interplay in secreted and membraneassociated proteins and in the context of particular protein domains and short-linear motifs. The global network of co-evolving PTM types implies a complex and intertwined post-translational regulation landscape that is likely to regulate multiple functional states of many if not all eukaryotic proteins.
The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 2010
The present study was undertaken to explore the potential of erythropoietin in memory deficits of... more The present study was undertaken to explore the potential of erythropoietin in memory deficits of mice. Memory impairment was produced by scopolamine (0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) and intracerebroventricular streptozotocin (i.c.v STZ, 3 mg/kg, 10 μl, 1 st and 3 rd day) in separate groups of animals. Morris watermaze test was employed to assess learning and memory. The levels of brain thio-barbituric acid reactive species (TBARS) and reduced glutathione (GSH) were estimated to assess degree of oxidative stress. Brain acetylcholinesterase enzyme (AChE) activity was also measured. Scopolamine/streptozotocin administration induced significant impairment of learning and memory in mice as indicated by marked decrease in Morris water-maze performance. Scopolamine/streptozotocin administration also produced a significant enhancement of brain AChE activity and brain oxidative stress (an increase in TBARS and a decrease in GSH) levels. Treatment of erythropoietin (500 and 1,000 IU/Kg i.p.) significantly reversed scopolamine-as well as streptozotocin-induced learning and memory deficits along with attenuation of those-induced rise in brain AChE activity and brain oxidative stress levels. It may be concluded that erythropoietin exerts a beneficial effect in memory deficits of mice possibly through its multiple actions including potential anti-oxidative effect.
Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the standard of care for axillary staging in clinically node-negati... more Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the standard of care for axillary staging in clinically node-negative breast cancer. SLNB is predictive of axillary node status. Major concern is the occurrence of a false negative SLN. The objective of this study is to determine the rate of axillary recurrence in our series of patients in Indian cohort. The present study was conducted at Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Manipal Hospital, Bengaluru, a tertiary referral cancer centre in India, from Jan 2008 through December 2018. A total of 496 patients diagnosed with early breast cancer with clinically negative axilla underwent the SLNB procedure using both ICG and dual dye. Four hundred ninety-six patients with negative SLNB did not receive ALND. After a median follow-up of 48.8 months, 18 patients had distant metastases, one had axillary relapse, and 13 had an in-breast recurrence. The patients with axillary recurrence received axillary dissection and systemic adjuvant therapy. Data from this series, thus, showed that isolated axillary node recurrence after negative SLNB is rare (< 1%) and comparable with referral cancer institutions. We confirm that SLNB for the treatment of early breast cancer patients of a tertiary referral hospital is safe and reliable.
The demand for electricity has been rising at an exponential rate since Independence. Though the ... more The demand for electricity has been rising at an exponential rate since Independence. Though the power generation has increased manifold over these years, but it has not been able to keep pace with the increasing demand. Keeping in mind the per capita income in the nation, the policymakers need to arrive at a sustainable energy model to integrate self-sufficiency with affordability. The Coal Linkage agreements between the power stations, the Indian Railways and the coal blocks which were established a long time back continue to exist till today. Even though the rail connectivity and the number of mines have improved over these years, no major changes have been made in the coal allocation model pan India. The study seeks to optimize coal transportation cost for 19 NTPC owned power plants using Linear Optimization techniques and seeks to evaluate the annual profitability of these power stations. The study does not suggest the adoption of this optimized model but aims to draw an insigh...
With growing demands on improved product quality and shorter time to market, there is need for ri... more With growing demands on improved product quality and shorter time to market, there is need for rigorous but practical tools to support the fixture design and analysis process. Computer-aided fixture design (CAFD), with predictable fixture stiffness, becomes a means to provide an appropriate solution in fixture design. The effectiveness of previous CAFD systems is not fully satisfactory partially because analysis of fixture stiffness has not kept pace with the development of CAFD. The dissertation research provides a model of fixture unit stiffness analysis and an experimental method of identifying contact stiffness parameters. The model and the method offer the potential for a more realistic analysis of fixture stiffness properties of a fixture-workpiece system, based on a fixture unit description.
Thrombin generation in platelet-rich plasma (PRP) involves complex interactions between platelets... more Thrombin generation in platelet-rich plasma (PRP) involves complex interactions between platelets and coagulation proteins. We previously reported that the addition of fibrin to PRP enhances tissue-factor initiated thrombin generation by ≈ 40%, and the current studies were designed to assess the mechanism(s) underlying thrombin generation in the absence and presence of fibrin. Blocking platelet GPIIb/IIIa + vβ3 receptors with a monoclonal antibody (MoAb) inhibited basal thrombin generation, but did not affect the enhancement produced by fibrin. In contrast, blocking GPIb with any of three different MoAbs had no effect on basal thrombin generation, but essentially eliminated fibrin enhancement of thrombin generation. When thrombin generation was tested in PRP deficient in von Willebrand factor (vWF), both basal and fibrin-enhanced thrombin generation were markedly reduced, and the addition of factor VIII did not normalize thrombin generation. Botrocetin, which induces the binding of...
The differential quadrature method has been widely used in scientific and engineering computation... more The differential quadrature method has been widely used in scientific and engineering computation. However, for the basic characteristics of time domain differential quadrature method, such as numerical stability and calculation accuracy or order, it is still lack of systematic analysis conclusions. In this paper, according to the principle of differential quadrature method, it has been derived and proved that the weighting coefficients matrix of differential quadrature method meets the importantV-transformation feature. Through the equivalence of the differential quadrature method and the implicit Runge-Kutta method, it has been proved that the differential quadrature method is A-stable ands-stages-order method. On this basis, in order to further improve the accuracy of the time domain differential quadrature method, a class of improved differential quadrature method ofs-stage 2s-order have been proposed by using undetermined coefficients method and Padé approximations. The numeric...
Berberis aristata (Berberidaceae) is an important medicinal plant used in traditional system of m... more Berberis aristata (Berberidaceae) is an important medicinal plant used in traditional system of medicine for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory disorders. The aim of the present study is to scientifically validate the traditional use of BA in the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Anti-inflammatory and anti-granuloma activity of BA hydroalcoholic extract (BAHE) were evaluated in experimental models, viz., carrageenan-induced paw edema, cotton pellet-induced granuloma formation, and complete Freund's adjuvant-induced stimulation of peritoneal macrophages in rats. Expression of inflammatory mediators, viz., tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), IL-6, IL-10, TNF-R1, and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) was carried out in serum and peritoneal macrophages to derive the plausible mechanism of BAHE in activated peritoneal macrophages. Pretreatment with BAHE produced a dose-dependent reduction (P < 0.01) in carrageenan-induced paw edema and ...
We study topologically massive (B \wedge F) Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories in four dimens... more We study topologically massive (B \wedge F) Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories in four dimensions, and reduce them to three dimensions by assuming that the fields do not propagate in one of the spatial directions. For certain gauge choices the reduced theories are the Jackiw-Pi models of massive gauge fields.
2004 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37512)
We extend the method of lifting from M-channel paraunitary filter banks (PUFB) to M-channel unimo... more We extend the method of lifting from M-channel paraunitary filter banks (PUFB) to M-channel unimodular filter banks. In particular, the lifting factorizations of Type-I and Type-II building blocks for the first-order unimodular matrices are presented, where the McMillan minimality is preserved. The proposed factorizations continue to have unity diagonal scaling, and perfect reconstruction (PR) is thus guaranteed under finite precision. Using degreeone unimodular building blocks, we present the design of firstorder unimodular transforms (a.k.a. lapped unimodular transform, or LUT) and their lifting factorizations. Multiplierless (while reversible) implementations of the resulting LUT are obtained by dyadic approximation of the lifting coefficients.
2014 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2014
Psychological health disorders pose a growing threat to society. Disorders such as Depression, Po... more Psychological health disorders pose a growing threat to society. Disorders such as Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI), are often under-diagnosed and under-treated. Crisis hotlines are often the last resort for people who, from the lack of proper treatment, are considering suicide or intend to harm themselves or others. This paper describes a system that automatically analyzes online crisis hotline chats to (1) extract fine-grained distress indicators that map to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV codes, and to (2) perform triage classification based on the severity of distress. For distress detection, we present several approaches which leverage annotator rationales and dialogue structure to improve classification performance, demonstrating significant gains over a stateof-the-art approach from literature. For triage classification, we demonstrate early detection capability for the most severe triage code. We evaluate our work on a large corpus of chats from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' online Crisis Hotline.
Taking the simple examples of an Abelian 1-form gauge theory in two (1+1)-dimensions, a 2-form ga... more Taking the simple examples of an Abelian 1-form gauge theory in two (1+1)-dimensions, a 2-form gauge theory in four (3+1)-dimensions and a 3-form gauge theory in six (5+1)-dimensions of space–time, we establish that such gauge theories respect, in addition to the gauge symmetry transformations that are generated by the first-class constraints of the theory, additional continuous symmetry transformations. We christen the latter symmetry transformations as the dual-gauge transformations. We generalize the above gauge and dual-gauge transformations to obtain the proper (anti-)BRST and (anti-)dual-BRST transformations for the Abelian 3-form gauge theory within the framework of BRST formalism. We concisely mention such symmetries for the 2D free Abelian 1-form and 4D free Abelian 2-form gauge theories and briefly discuss their topological aspects in our present endeavor. We conjecture that any arbitrary Abelian p-form gauge theory would respect the above cited additional symmetry in D = ...
We present a framework for processing formulas in automatic theorem provers, with generation of d... more We present a framework for processing formulas in automatic theorem provers, with generation of detailed proofs. The main components are a generic contextual recursion algorithm and an extensible set of inference rules. Clausification, skolemization, theory-specific simplifications, and expansion of 'let' expressions are instances of this framework. With suitable data structures, proof generation adds only a linear-time overhead, and proofs can be checked in linear time. We implemented the approach in the SMT solver veriT. This allowed us to dramatically simplify the code base while increasing the number of problems for which detailed proofs can be produced, which is important for independent checking and reconstruction in proof assistants.
Previous research has shown that self-explanation can be supported effectively in an intelligent ... more Previous research has shown that self-explanation can be supported effectively in an intelligent tutoring system by simple means such as menus. We now focus on the hypothesis that natural language dialogue is an even more effective way to support self-explanation. We have developed the Geometry Explanation Tutor, which helps students to state explanations of their problem-solving steps in their own words. In a classroom study involving 71 advanced students, we found that students who explained problem-solving steps in a dialogue with the tutor did not learn better overall than students who explained by means of a menu, but did learn better to state explanations. Second, examining a subset of 700 student explanations, students who received higher-quality feedback from the system made greater progress in their dialogues and learned more, providing some measure of confidence that progress is a useful intermediate variable to guide further system development. Finally, students who tended to reference specific problem elements in their explanations, rather than state a general problemsolving principle, had lower learning gains than other students. Such explanations may be indicative of an earlier developmental level.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 9, 2014
Protein ubiquitination is a core regulatory determinant of neural development. Previous studies h... more Protein ubiquitination is a core regulatory determinant of neural development. Previous studies have indicated that the Nedd4-family E3 ubiquitin ligases Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2 may ubiquitinate phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) and thereby regulate axonal growth in neurons. Using conditional knockout mice, we show here that Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2 are indeed required for axonal growth in murine central nervous system neurons. However, in contrast to previously published data, we demonstrate that PTEN is not a substrate of Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2, and that aberrant PTEN ubiquitination is not involved in the impaired axon growth upon deletion of Nedd4-1 and Nedd4-2. Rather, PTEN limits Nedd4-1 protein levels by modulating the activity of mTORC1, a protein complex that controls protein synthesis and cell growth. Our data demonstrate that Nedd4-family E3 ligases promote axonal growth and branching in the developing mammalian brain, where PTEN is not a relevant substrate. Instead, PTEN controls...
Clinical and applied thrombosis/hemostasis : official journal of the International Academy of Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis, Jan 7, 2014
Rectus sheath hematoma (RSH) develops due to rupture of epigastric arteries or the rectus muscle.... more Rectus sheath hematoma (RSH) develops due to rupture of epigastric arteries or the rectus muscle. Although RSH incidence rate is low, it poses a significant diagnostic dilemma. We evaluated the risk factors for RSH, its presentation, management, and outcomes for 115 patients hospitalized with confirmed RSH by computed tomography scan between January 2005 and June 2009. More than three-fourth (77.4%) of the patients were on anticoagulation therapy, 58.3% patients had chronic kidney disease (CKD) stage ≥3, 51.3% had abdominal injections, 41.7% were on steroids/immunosuppressant therapy, 37.4% had abdominal surgery/trauma, 33.9% had cough, femoral puncture was performed in 31.3% of patients, and 29.5% were on antiplatelet therapy. Rectus sheath hematoma was not an attributable cause in any of the 17 deaths. Mortality was significantly higher in patients with CKD stage ≥3 (P = .03) or who required transfusion (P = .007). Better understanding of RSH risk factors will facilitate early dia...
Introduction: The healthcare sector is one of the most rapidly expanding and dynamic industries i... more Introduction: The healthcare sector is one of the most rapidly expanding and dynamic industries in the world. Pharmaceutical expenditure is now growing faster than other components of healthcare overheads. Globally, pressures to manage pharmaceutical spending have led to increased prescribing of generic drugs. Use of generic drugs in private medical centres in Malaysia, however, remains low, despite intervention from the Ministry of Health. Methods: Specialists serving in privately owned medical centres were interviewed to evaluate their perceptions and knowledge about generic medications. Results: Eighteen medical specialists from diff erent medical fi elds were interviewed. The majority of specialists were positive about generics substitution but cynical about their quality in terms of effi cacy and safety for some drug categories. Physicians preferred to see the results of bioequivalence conducted by generics manufacturers and also preferred them to supplement it with some smallscale community-based pharmacodynamic studies. Conclusion: The success of generics in private hospitals in Malaysia depends on changing the perception of these physicians about generic drugs. In addition to implementing generic drug usage policy for private hospitals in Malaysia, this can also be achieved through improved marketing and promotion of generic drug products. High-quality educational programmes are needed to inform and educate physicians about the role of the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau in regulating generic drugs.
Biometric based identification is an emerging technology that can solve many security problems. A... more Biometric based identification is an emerging technology that can solve many security problems. Although systems based on fingerprint and eye features have so far achieved the best matching performance, human hand also contains a wide variety of features, e.g. shape, texture and principal palm lines etc. This feature of the human hand is quite stable and hand images can be extracted very easily. Palm-print is a new and emerging biometric feature for personal recognition. This paper describes an automated approach to palm-print recognition. In contrast to existing palm-print based biometric systems, a new system which is resistant to motion variance of the palm has been proposed. A Palm-print image is taken as an input and then a low pass Gaussian filter is applied to remove the noise from image. Further, since the centre of mass always remains constant, so this property has been taken into account to extract the ROI (Region of Interest) from palm-print image. SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transformation) features have been used further for extracting stable texture features from the ROI and are stored. These stable features extracted from the ROI are further used for comparison with stable texture features extracted from ROI of other palmprint images to provide biometric based identification and security.
Various post-translational modifications (PTMs) fine-tune the functions of almost all eukaryotic ... more Various post-translational modifications (PTMs) fine-tune the functions of almost all eukaryotic proteins, and co-regulation of different types of PTMs has been shown within and between a number of proteins. Aiming at a more global view of the interplay between PTM types, we collected modifications for 13 frequent PTM types in 8 eukaryotes, compared their speed of evolution and developed a method for measuring PTM co-evolution within proteins based on the co-occurrence of sites across eukaryotes. As many sites are still to be discovered, this is a considerable underestimate, yet, assuming that most co-evolving PTMs are functionally associated, we found that PTM types are vastly interconnected, forming a global network that comprise in human alone 450 000 residues in about 6000 proteins. We predict substantial PTM type interplay in secreted and membraneassociated proteins and in the context of particular protein domains and short-linear motifs. The global network of co-evolving PTM types implies a complex and intertwined post-translational regulation landscape that is likely to regulate multiple functional states of many if not all eukaryotic proteins.
The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 2010
The present study was undertaken to explore the potential of erythropoietin in memory deficits of... more The present study was undertaken to explore the potential of erythropoietin in memory deficits of mice. Memory impairment was produced by scopolamine (0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) and intracerebroventricular streptozotocin (i.c.v STZ, 3 mg/kg, 10 μl, 1 st and 3 rd day) in separate groups of animals. Morris watermaze test was employed to assess learning and memory. The levels of brain thio-barbituric acid reactive species (TBARS) and reduced glutathione (GSH) were estimated to assess degree of oxidative stress. Brain acetylcholinesterase enzyme (AChE) activity was also measured. Scopolamine/streptozotocin administration induced significant impairment of learning and memory in mice as indicated by marked decrease in Morris water-maze performance. Scopolamine/streptozotocin administration also produced a significant enhancement of brain AChE activity and brain oxidative stress (an increase in TBARS and a decrease in GSH) levels. Treatment of erythropoietin (500 and 1,000 IU/Kg i.p.) significantly reversed scopolamine-as well as streptozotocin-induced learning and memory deficits along with attenuation of those-induced rise in brain AChE activity and brain oxidative stress levels. It may be concluded that erythropoietin exerts a beneficial effect in memory deficits of mice possibly through its multiple actions including potential anti-oxidative effect.
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Papers by ROHIT KUMAR