West Bengal University of Technology

About: West Bengal University of Technology is a education organization based out in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Quantum dot cellular automaton & Routing protocol. The organization has 516 authors who have published 869 publications receiving 9321 citations.

Targeted Next Generation Sequencing Revealed a Novel Homozygous Loss-of-Function Mutation in ILDR1 Gene Causes Autosomal Recessive Nonsyndromic Sensorineural Hearing Loss in a Chinese Family.

Abstract: Hereditary hearing impairment is one of the major and common birth defects in Chinese population. Non-syndromic sensorineural hearing loss (NSHL) is the most common types of hereditary hearing impairment. Genotypically and phenotypically NSHL is extremely heterogenous and follow either autosomal dominant or autosomal recessive or X-linked mode of inheritance. Presently, 127 genes have been identified to be associated with both syndromic and (NSHL). Here, we studied a Chinese family with moderate and profound hearing impairment. The proband is a 30-year old Chinese man. The proband was born with normal hearing and at the age of 5-years, the proband was first noticed with hearing impairment. Gradually and progressively the proband was presented with loss of hearing in his both right and left ears at the age of 30 years. The clinical symptoms, age of onset or progression to loss of hearing was similar in both the proband and his younger brother. The proband's parents are phenotypically normal and non-consanguineous. Clinical diagnosis of the proband and his younger brother has been done by classical pure tone audiogram (PTA). Computed Tomography (CT) found no abnormality in bilateral external ear, middle ear and inner ear. Targeted next generation sequencing was performed with a panel of 127 genes reported to be associated with hereditary hearing impairment. A novel homozygous single nucleotide deletion (c.427delT) in exon 4 of ILDR1 gene has been identified in proband and in his younger brother. Sanger sequencing confirmed that proband's father and mother are carrying this mutation in a heterozygous manner. This mutation has not been identified in 100 normal healthy control individuals. This mutation (c.427delT) causes frameshift (p.Tyr143Ilefs∗19) which leads to the formation of a truncated ILDR1 protein of 162 amino acids instead of the wild type ILDR1 protein of 546 amino acids. ILDR1 associated hereditary hearing impairment is very rare and this is the first report of identifying a loss-of-function mutation in ILDR1 gene associated with hereditary hearing impairment in Chinese population. Our present study also emphasized the significance of rapid, accurate and cost-effective screening for the patient with hereditary hearing impairment by targeted next generation sequencing.

Entomotoxic effect of silica nanoparticles against Sitophilus oryzae (L.)

Abstract: Fumigants and residual insecticides are commonly used to combat stored grain pests. In recent years, consumer awareness of the health hazard from residual toxicity and the growing problem of insect resistance to these conventional insecticides have led the researchers to look for alternative strategies for stored grains protection. For example, diatomaceous earth (DE) can be effective against stored grain insects. In this study, DE was used to design amorphous nano sized hydrophilic, hydrophobic, and lipophilic silica in 15–30 nm size range. Nanocides are expected to reduce the volume of application and kinetics of development of resistance in pests. We hypothesized that surface-functionalized silica nanoparticle (SNP) might be a viable alternative to conventional pesticides. Entomotoxicity of SNP was tested against rice weevil Sitophilus oryzae and its efficacy was compared with bulk-sized silica (individual particles larger than 1 μm). Amorphous SNP was found to be highly effective against this insect pest causing more than 90% mortality, indicating the effectiveness of SNP to control insect pests.

Rice disease identification using pattern recognition techniques

Abstract: The techniques of machine vision are extensively applied to agricultural science, and it has great perspective especially in the plant protection field, which ultimately leads to crops management. The paper describes a software prototype system for rice disease detection based on the infected images of various rice plants. Images of the infected rice plants are captured by digital camera and processed using image growing, image segmentation techniques to detect infected parts of the plants. Then the infected part of the leaf has been used for the classification purpose using neural network. The methods evolved in this system are both image processing and soft computing technique applied on number of diseased rice plants.

A Power and Latency Aware Cloudlet Selection Strategy for Multi-Cloudlet Environment

Abstract: Fast interactive response in mobile cloud computing is an emerging area of interest. Execution of applications inside the remote cloud increases the delay and affects the service quality. To avoid this difficulty cloudlet is introduced. Cloudlet provides the same service to the device as cloud at low latency but at high bandwidth. But selection of a cloudlet for offloading computation at low power is a major challenge if more than one cloudlet is available nearby. In this paper we have proposed a power and latency aware optimum cloudlet selection strategy for multi-cloudlet environment with the introduction of a proxy server. Theoretical analysis show that using the proposed approach the power and the latency consumption are reduced by approximately 29-32 and 33-36 percent respectively than offloading to the remote cloud. An experimental analysis of the proposed cloudlet selection scheme is performed using cloudlets and cloud servers located at our university laboratory. Theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that using the proposed strategy power and latency aware cloudlet selection can be performed. The proposed approach is compared with the existing methods on multi-cloudlet scenario to demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces the power consumption and the system response time.