Showing papers by "Jaypee Institute of Information Technology published in 2012"

Nanostructured lipid carriers system: Recent advances in drug delivery

Abstract: Nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC) is second generation smarter drug carrier system having solid matrix at room temperature. This carrier system is made up of physiological, biodegradable and biocompatible lipid materials and surfactants and is accepted by regulatory authorities for application in different drug delivery systems. The availability of many products in the market in short span of time reveals the success story of this delivery system. Since the introduction of the first product, around 30 NLC preparations are commercially available. NLC exhibit superior advantages over other colloidal carriers viz., nanoemulsions, polymeric nanoparticles, liposomes, SLN etc. and thus, have been explored to more extent in pharmaceutical technology. The whole set of unique advantages such as enhanced drug loading capacity, prevention of drug expulsion, leads to more flexibility for modulation of drug release and makes NLC versatile delivery system for various routes of administration. The present review gives insights on the definitions and characterization of NLC as colloidal carriers including the production techniques and suitable formulations. This review paper also highlights the importance of NLC in pharmaceutical applications for the various routes of drug delivery viz., topical, oral, pulmonary, ocular and parenteral administration and its future perspective as a pharmaceutical carrier.

DNA-protein interactions: methods for detection and analysis.

Abstract: DNA-binding proteins control various cellular processes such as recombination, replication and transcription. This review is aimed to summarize some of the most commonly used techniques to determine DNA–protein interactions. In vitro techniques such as footprinting assays, electrophoretic mobility shift assay, southwestern blotting, yeast one-hybrid assay, phage display and proximity ligation assay have been discussed. The highly versatile in vivo techniques such as chromatin immunoprecipitation and its variants, DNA adenine methyl transferase identification as well as 3C and chip-loop assay have also been summarized. In addition, some in silico tools have been reviewed to provide computational basis for determining DNA–protein interactions. Biophysical techniques like fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) techniques, FRET–FLIM, circular dichroism, atomic force microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, surface plasmon resonance, etc. have also been highlighted.

Transcription factors in heart: promising therapeutic targets in cardiac hypertrophy.

Abstract: Regulation of gene expression is central to cell growth, differentiation and diseases. Context specific and signal dependent regulation of gene expression is achieved to a large part by transcription factors. Cardiac transcription factors regulate heart development and are also involved in stress regulation of the adult heart, which may lead to cardiac hypertrophy. Hypertrophy of cardiac myocytes is an outcome of the imbalance between prohypertrophic factors and anti-hypertrophic factors. This is initially a compensatory mechanism but sustained hypertrophy may lead to heart failure. The growing knowledge of transcriptional control mechanisms is helpful in the development of novel therapies. This review summarizes the role of cardiac transcription factors in cardiac hypertrophy, emphasizing their potential as attractive therapeutic targets to prevent the onset of heart failure and sudden death as they can be converging targets for current therapy.

Degradation of Polyurethane by Aspergillus flavus (ITCC 6051) Isolated from Soil

Abstract: The present study deals with the isolation of fungi from soil with the ability to degrade polyurethane (PU). A pure fungal isolate was analyzed for its ability to utilize PU as a sole carbon source in shaking culture for 30 days. Incubation of PU with Aspergillus flavus resulted in 60.6% reduction in weight of PU. The scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results showed certain changes on the surface of PU film and formation of some new intermediate products after polymer breakdown. Thermogravimetric curves showed changes between the thermal behavior of the samples that were inoculated with A. flavus and control. FTIR spectra showed detectable changes in control and incubated samples, suggesting that degradation occurs, with the decreased intensity of band at 1,715 cm(-1), corresponding to ester linkages. We have identified an extracellular esterase activity which might be responsible for the polyurethanolytic activity.

Effect of point source and heterogeneity on the propagation of SH-Waves in a viscoelastic layer over a viscoelastic half space

Abstract: The present paper is concerned with the propagation of shear waves in a homogeneous viscoelastic isotropic layer lying over a semi-infinite heterogeneous viscoelastic isotropic half-space due to point source. The inhomogeneity parameters associated to rigidity, internal friction and density are assumed to be functions of depth. The dispersion equation of shear waves has been obtained using Green’s function technique. The dimensionless angular frequency has been plotted against dimensionless wave number for different values of inhomogeneity parameters. The effects of inhomogeneity have been shown in the dispersion curves. graphical user interface (GUI) software in MATLAB has been developed to show the effect of various inhomogeneity parameters on angular frequency. The topic can be of interest for geophysical applications in propagation of shear waves on the Earth’s crust.

Recent patents on anti-telomerase cancer therapy.

Abstract: Telomerase, a specialised RNA-directed DNA polymerase extends and stabilises the telomeres at the ends of the eukaryotic chromosomes. The progressive loss of telomeres results in limited number of cell divisions and has been linked to the mechanism of human cellular ageing. Tumour cells marked by indefinite proliferation have stable telomere length maintained by telomerase. The differential expression of the telomerase enzyme in normal and cancer cells have led to the evolution of tumour specific anti-telomerase approaches which inhibit the telomerase enzyme activity so as to destabilise and shorten the telomeres leading to senescence in cancer cells. In the current review, we have selected nine tumour specific anti-telomerase approaches based on their mechanism of action or the target components of the human telomerase enzyme: Antisense-oligonucleotides, hammerhead ribozymes, dominant negative hTERT, reverse-transcriptase inhibitors, immunotherapy, G-quadruplex stabilisers, gene therapy, small molecule inhibitors and RNA interference. Recent research developments for each of the anti-telomerase approaches with the detailed analysis of specific granted patents from the perspective of different claims and downstream applications have been provided. A comprehensive list of patents for the different anti-telomerase approaches which includes information regarding the authors and institutional ownership along with the year of issue of the patent has also been provided.

Client satisfaction in Indian banks: an empirical study

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors impacting customer satisfaction in Indian banks and analyze their effects the level of customer satisfaction through a regression analysis. The primary contribution of this study is the analysis and resulting insights on the critical factors impacting client satisfaction within the Indian retail banking sector.Design/methodology/approach – A 28 item questionnaire was prepared based on literature review and discussions with current customers of Indian banks. The questionnaire was then sent out to current customers of 13 retail banks in India. In total, 420 completed questionnaires were received, out of which 400 were found to have been accurately and completely answered. The 28‐item instrument has been empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability and validity using Cronbach alpha and exploratory factor analysis.Findings – A factor analysis suggests that there are five factors driving customer satisfaction: “service quality”, “ambience/...

Performances of different metals in optical fibre-based surface plasmon resonance sensor

Abstract: The capability of various metals used in optical fibre-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing is studied theoretically. Four metals, gold (Au), silver (Ag), copper (Cu) and aluminium (Al) are considered for the present study. The performance of the optical fibre-based SPR sensor with four different metals is obtained numerically and compared in detail. The performance of optical fibre-based SPR sensor has been analysed in terms of sensitivity, signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio and quality parameter. It is found that the performance of optical fibre-based SPR sensor with Au metal is better than that of the other three metals. The sensitivity of the optical fibre-based SPR sensor with 50 nm thick and 10 mm long Au metal film of exposed sensing region is 2.373 μm/RIU with good linearity, SNR is 0.724 and quality parameter is 48.281 RIU − 1. The thickness of the metal film and the length of the exposed sensing region of the optical fibre-based SPR sensor for each metal are also optimized.

Children's influence in family buying process in India

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: to categorize and rank products based on children's influence and to compare their influence on the different stages of the family buying process.Design/methodology/approach – The study was based on an extensive literature review and focus group discussions. Using a structured questionnaire, a survey was conducted with children aged 8‐12 years. The sample size was 175.Findings – Factor analysis revealed three distinct product clusters: “loud”, “noisy” and “quiet” goods. Children's influence was found to be highest for noisy goods, lesser for loud goods and lowest for quiet goods. One‐way MANOVA analysis found that for loud and noisy goods children's influence was highest in the initiation stage, and lowest in the search stage. For quiet goods, the highest influence was in the final decision stage followed by initiation and choice stage.Practical implications – The identified product clusters and children's relative influence across the buying stages for thes...

QoS based trust management model for Cloud IaaS

Abstract: Trust Models are used to enhance secure and reliable scheduling in Distributed, Grid and Cloud environment. Trust models that are being proposed or implemented in Distributed and Grid environment, does not fully fit in cloud computing environment. Since the parameters that have being taken into consideration in these trust models, does not fit in the cloud Infrastructure As A Service, a suitable trust model is proposed based on the existing model that is suitable for trust value management for the cloud IaaS parameters. Based on the above achieved trust values, a scheduling is done for better allocation of resources and further enhance the QOS of services been provided to the users. In this paper, an approach for managing trust in Cloud IaaS is proposed.

Situation recognition in sensor based environments using concept lattices

Abstract: A variety of sensors are available nowadays for fine grain continuous monitoring of our environments in many desired ways. Comprehension of streams of data from deployed sensors in a meaningful way is critical to usability of the sensors. One such comprehension is context and situation which may affect our actions and decisions. Context is deduced from the sensor data using probabilistic methods like maximum likelihood estimation and Bayesian probabilities. Possible situations are abstracted using deduced contexts. Event trees, template and rule based methods have been used for deriving situations from contexts. Lattices are constructed using formal concept analysis methods for representation and recognition of situations. When the context information is either noisy or incomplete, set of Implication and Association Rules are derived from the lattice and used for situation recognition. For illustration, Situation of an elderly person living alone in a house, deployed with various sensors is recognized using the above technique.

Composing Signatures for Misuse Intrusion Detection System Using Genetic Algorithm in an Offline Environment

Abstract: In recent years Internet has experienced a rapid expansion and also facing increased no. of security threats. However many technological innovations have been proposed for information assurance but still protection of computer systems has been difficult. With the rapid growth of Internet technology, a high level of security is needed for keeping the data resources and equipments secure. In this context intrusion detection (ID) has become an important area of research since building a system with no vulnerabilities has not been technically feasible.

Beyond the Goldenberg-Vaidman protocol: Secure and efficient quantum communication using arbitrary, orthogonal, multi-particle quantum states

Abstract: It is shown that maximally efficient protocols for secure direct quantum communications can be constructed using any arbitrary orthogonal basis. This establishes that no set of quantum states (e.g. GHZ states, W states, Brown states or Cluster states) has an advantage over the others, barring the relative difficulty in physical implementation. The work provides a wide choice of states for experimental realization of direct secure quantum communication protocols. We have also shown that this protocol can be generalized to a completely orthogonal-state-based protocol of Goldenberg–Vaidman (GV) type. The security of these protocols essentially arises from duality and monogamy of entanglement. This stands in contrast to protocols that employ nonorthogonal states, like Bennett–Brassard 1984 (BB84), where the security essentially comes from noncommutativity in the observable algebra.

Lightweight Cryptographic Primitives for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract: The tight computing constraints of low capacity mobile devices require lightweight cryptographic implementations.A software and hardware based performance analysis of cryptographic primitives: lightweight encryption/decryption, lightweight key exchange and lightweight authentication using hashing mechanism are conducted in this work. The parameters taken for software comparison are: high throughput, minimum delay and for hardware are: minimum gate equivalents (GE) and minimum power consumption. Cryptographic primitives are combined using two scenarios: (i) authentication to plaintext and confidentiality to message_to_send and (ii) confidentiality to plaintext and authentication to message_to_send. Two combinations are having similar results comparisons but authentication to plaintext and confidentiality to message_to_send is more meaningful. Furthermore, these two combinations provide implementation of cryptographic primitives with 30% of total GE at 52 μW. Thus, these are two complete cryptographic solutions with ultra-lightweight features which are suitable for extremely resource constraint environments such as mobile sensor devices.

Natural Selection Mediated Association of the Duffy (FY) Gene Polymorphisms with Plasmodium vivax Malaria in India

Abstract: The Duffy (Fy) antigens act as receptors for chemokines as well as for Plasmodium vivax to invade human RBCs. A recent study has correlated the occurrence of the FY*A allele of Duffy gene with decreased susceptibility to vivax malaria, but no epidemiological correlation between the distribution of FY*A allele and incidences of vivax malaria has been established so far. Furthermore, if such correlations exist, whether natural selection has mediated the association, is an important question. Since India is highly endemic to P. vivax malaria with variable eco-climatic and varying vivax malaria epidemiology across different regions, such a question could well be answered in Indians. For this, we have genotyped the FY gene at the −33rd and the 125th nucleotide positions in 250 Indians sampled from six different zonal plus one tribal population covering the whole of India and studied possible correlations with eco-climatic and vivax malaria incidences. No FY*O allele was found, however, both the FY*A and FY*B alleles forming FY*A/FY*A, FY*A/FY*B and FY*B/FY*B genotypes were widely distributed among Indians. Five out of seven population samples significantly deviated from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium expectation, and two alleles (FY*A and FY*B) and the homozygote genotype, FY*B/FY*B were clinally distributed over the population coordinates. Furthermore, vivax malaria incidences over the past five years were significantly negatively and positively associated with the frequencies of the FY*A and FY*B alleles, respectively. The Northern Indians were highly differentiated from the other zonal population samples at the FY gene, as evidenced from the reconstructed Neighbor-Joining phylogenetic tree. The results specify the role of natural selection in the distribution of FY gene polymorphism in India. Furthermore, the hypotheses on the part of the FY*A allele in conferring protection to vivax malaria could be validated following population genetic studies in a vivax malaria epidemiological setting, such as India.

Exploring the dimensions of attrition in Indian BPOs

Abstract: Business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in India is progressing with an unparalleled velocity. Despite the momentous growth and brilliant future, the BPO industry has experienced high attrition rates since inception. There are many factors that lead to attrition in BPOs and much research has taken place time and again. In this study, we have made a comprehensive attempt to explore the dimensions of attrition by identifying the factors that lead to it, assessing the contribution of the factors toward attrition, and comparing the dimensions across the various demographic variables. Data have been collected from 500 BPO employees and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Science 17.0. Factor analysis, correlation, regression, t-test, and Duncan's mean test have been done to empirically interpret the result. The paper not only identifies the significant dimensions of attrition but also provides scope for further studies in the field of employee retention in the BPO industry.

A complete, efficient and lightweight cryptography solution for resource contrainst Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract: This paper examines the lightweight cryptography primitives and proposes a novel integration mechanism of primitives to provide complete cryptography services for resource constraint Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs). In this work, Tseng's protocol is modified to integrate primitives [30]. In order to evaluate the performance of secure MANETs, software; throughput, jitter & end to end delay; and hardware parameters; area consumption in terms of gate equivalents (GE); are taken into consideration. An integration proposal of these cryptography primitives has been proposed and it has been observed that these primitives can be clubbed with hardware cost of 36.5% of the total GE with maximum through and minimum delay using Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) protocol.

Application of Bayesian Belief Networks for context extraction from wireless sensors data

Abstract: Networks of Wirelessly connected low power sensors have ability to closely sense activity of individual and social interest The usefulness of Wireless Sensor Networks is increased further by deriving contextual information from it From sensors data, context like activity, location, weather and surroundings (nearby persons, devices) can be deduced Techniques to represent & extract the context include ontology, Markov Models, decision trees, clustering and Bayesian approaches Given incomplete and erroneous nature of sensor data, Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) are used here to obtain features defining context Five algorithms of BBN construction have been evaluated for comparing feature classification performance Simple rule based matching is then applied to map the features to already defined context The mechanism is applied here on sensors data obtained from Intel research lab at Berkeley to extract the “weather” context Similar mechanism can be applied to other application and contexts also

Building extraction from very high resolution multispectral images using NDVI based segmentation and morphological operators

Abstract: In this paper, we have proposed an approach for building extraction from very high resolution (VHR) multispectral images using NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) based segmentation and morphological operations. This approach uses both spatial and spectral properties of an image scene for building detection. Spectral properties are related to NDVI based segmentation and spatial properties are related to the morphological operations. Normally an image scene consists of natural region (vegetation and soil) and manmade regions (buildings and roads). Use of NDVI (spectral properties) eliminates the chance of shadow being a building region and other similar regions that are not road like soil, vegetation etc because shadow is a spatial property and NDVI is based on spectral property irrespective of brightness in the image. By using NDVI we can eliminate the natural regions from the manmade regions because NDVI values of these two regions differ a lot, so using NDVI as a threshold we can segment image into two parts one is natural and other is our desired parts that consists of manmade regions (buildings and roads). After segmentation here comes the use of spatial property, use of morphological operation to separate the roads from building regions on the basis of their spatial property that roads have elongated and larger area than buildings and mostly building has the rectangular rooftops. This approach provides very satisfactory results with very less overhead and time.

Efficient Hierarchical Threshold Symmetric Group Key Management Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract: With rapid growth of Ad Hoc Networks consisting of low power computing devices, security will be an important factor for their full implementation. Because of scarcity of resources in terms of computing capability and energy efficiency, designing of computationally efficient group key management protocols with dynamic topology is a major concern. Teo and Tan [11] proposed an energy-efficient generalized circular hierarchical group model, but this approach suffers from: (i) exponential increase of key messages due to dynamic topology and (ii) energy loss because the vicinity of nodes in a subgroup is high. This work is an extension of Teo & Tan’s circular hierarchical model for fixed number of group members. The proposed modification overcomes these two weaknesses of Teo & Tan’s protocol. The proposed modifications make this protocol secure against replay, masquerading, spoofing, chosen ciphertext and impersonation attacks because of proper authentication and digital signatures. The comparative numerical and simulation analysis of proposed approach has been made with Teo & Tan, Wen-Lin-Hwang’s (WLH) and along with Tseng’s group key agreement approach. The analysis shows that proposed approach is well suited for low computational mobile devices with minimum delay. Through WLH protocol shows maximum throughput and minimum delay however it lacks in terms of security aspects.

Thermal stability and crystallization kinetics of Se–Te–Sn alloys using differential scanning calorimetry

Abstract: The present article deals with the differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) study of Se–Te glasses containing Sn. DSC runs are taken at four different heating rates (10, 15, 20 and 25 K min−1). The crystallization data are examined in terms of modified Kissinger, Matusita equations, Mahadevan method and Augis and Bennett approximation for the non-isothermal crystallization. The activation energy for crystallization (E c) is evaluated from the data obtained at different heating rates. Activation energy of glass transition is calculated by Kissinger’s relation and Moynihan theory. The glass forming tendency is also calculated for each composition. The glass transition temperature and peak crystallization temperature increases with the increase in Sn % as well as with the heating rate.