Blood Transfusions: Are They Life Saving or Transfusing Infections?

Introduction: There is a risk of 1 - 2 per 1000 recipients receiving contaminated blood with viral, bacterial and parasitic agents.TTI’S are the most commonly encountered complications in transfusion medicine. The objective of the study was to determine the seroprevalence of TTI’s among blood donors, who represent healthy population at large. Materials & methods: A total of 33,658 blood units were received from voluntary and replacement donors over a period of 5 years. Surface antigen of HBV and antibodies to HIV and HCV were determined using ELISA. Syphilis was detected using TPHA test. Results: 947 (2.81%) blood units tested positive for HBV, HCV, HIV and / or syphilis. Overall prevalence was HBV – 1.77%, HCV – 0.13%, HIV – 0.63% and Syphilis – 0.28%. Nine (0.03%) donors had coinfections. Conclusion: The screening of blood donors is the corner stone in assuring the safety of blood transfusion

Universality of the collapse transition of sticky polymers

The universality of the swelling of the radius of gyration of a homopolymer relative to its value in the $\theta$ state, independent of polymer-solvent chemistry, in the crossover regime between $\theta$ and athermal solvent conditions, is well known. Here we study, by Brownian dynamics, a polymer model where a subset of monomers is labelled as "stickers". The mutual interaction of the stickers is more attractive than those of the other ("backbone") monomers, and has the additional important characteristic of "functionality" $\varphi$, i.e., the maximum number of stickers that can locally bind to a given sticker. A saturated bond formed in this manner remains bound until it breaks due to thermal fluctuations, a requirement which can be viewed as an additional Boolean degree of freedom that describes the bonding. This, in turn, makes the question of the order of the collapse transition a non-trivial one. Nevertheless, for the parameters that we have studied (in particular, $\varphi=1$), we find a standard second-order $\theta$ collapse, using a renormalised solvent quality parameter that takes into account the increased average attraction due to the presence of stickers. We examine the swelling of the radius of gyration of such a sticky polymer relative to its value in the altered $\theta$ state, using a novel potential to model the various excluded volume interactions that occur between the monomers on the chain. We find that the swelling of such sticky polymers is identical to the universal swelling of homopolymers in the thermal crossover regime. Additionally, for our model, the Kuhn segment length under $\theta$ conditions is found to be the same for chains with and without stickers.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, supplementary material (see ancillary directory), to appear in Soft Matte

Sufficient condition for nonexistence of symmetric extension of qudits using Bell inequalities

We analyze the connection between Bell inequality violations and symmetric extendibility of quantum states. We prove that 2-qubit reduced states of multiqubit symmetric pure states do not violate the Bell Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. We then prove the more general converse that any 2-qubit state that violates the CHSH inequality cannot have a symmetric extension. We extend our analysis to qudits and provide a test for symmetric extendibility of 2-qudit states. We show that if a 2-qudit Bell inequality is monogamous, then any 2-qudit state that violates this inequality does not have a symmetric extension. For the specific case of 2-qutrit states, we use numerical evidence to conjecture that the Collins-Gisin-Linden-Massar-Popescu (CGLMP) inequality is monogamous. Hence, the violation of the CGLMP inequality by any 2-qutrit state could be a sufficient condition for the nonexistence of its symmetric extension.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Version 2: Corrected typos, added a reference, added a paragraph at the end of proof of theorem

Storage Life of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungal (AMF) Inoculum in Vermiculite Based Culture

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is ubiquitous soil borne fungi which provide an intimate link between soil and nutrient absorbing organs of plants. AMF fungi optimize the uptake of phosphorus in plant which results in increase in yield. Production of AMF inoculum and the storage in a viable condition for a longer period of time is still a serious constraint. This study describes the survival capability and infectivity of AMF spores under different storage conditions. The vermiculite based AMF inoculum contained spores of AMF namely Glomus sp., Gigaspora sp., Scutellospora sp., Entrophospora sp., and Acaulospora sp., identified from the rhizosphere soil collected from the maize crop cultivated at Mellur block of Madurai District in Tamil Nadu, India and the mixed AMF colonized host root bits as propagules. The AMF inoculum spore count was 5-6 / 100g inoculum and the infectivity was 100% in the roots of maize plant at the time of packing of the inoculum for storage. During storage, at the end of 180 days the AMF spore count was reduced to 2-5 / 100g inoculum and the infectivity was reduced to 90-95%. But the AMF inoculum stored with 10% moisture content at 20ºC - 30ºC and under the light intensity of 1500 lux maintained the same initial spore count of 5-6 / 100g inoculum and infectivity of 99% for the storage period of 150 days (5 months). The results of the present study suggest that AMF propagules, spores and hyphae colonized root bits in the form of vermiculite based culture maintained with 10% moisture content at temperature range of 20ºC - 30ºC and under light condition of 1500 lux for 5 months can be expected to be viable for infectivity in crop plants

3D Face Recognition using Significant Point based SULD Descriptor

In this work, we present a new 3D face recognition method based on Speeded-Up Local Descriptor (SULD) of significant points extracted from the range images of faces. The proposed model consists of a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from range images of faces that can be used to perform reliable matching between different poses of range images of faces. For a given 3D face scan, range images are computed and the potential interest points are identified by searching at all scales. Based on the stability of the interest point, significant points are extracted. For each significant point we compute the SULD descriptor which consists of vector made of values from the convolved Haar wavelet responses located on concentric circles centred on the significant point, and where the amount of Gaussian smoothing is proportional to the radii of the circles. Experimental results show that the newly proposed method provides higher recognition rate compared to other existing contemporary models developed for 3D face recognition

Studies on Nodulation, Biochemical Analysis and Protein Profiles of Rhizobium Isolated From Indigofera species

Nodulation characteristics in five species of Indigofera viz., I .trita, I. linnaei, I. astragalina, I. parviflora and I. viscosa was studied at regular intervals on the plants raised in garden soil. Among the species studied, highest average number of nodules per plant of 23 with maximum sized nodules of 8.0 mm diameter was observed in I. astragalina. Biochemical analysis of root nodules of I. astragalina revealed that the leghaemoglobin content of nodules and nitrogen content of root, shoot, leaves and nodules were gradually increased up to 60 DAS, and then decreased with increase in age. Rhizobium isolates of five species of Indigofera were isolated and screened for enzymatic activities and total cellular protein profiles. All the five isolates showed nitrate reductase, citrase, tryptophanase and catalase activity while much variation was observed for enzymes like gelatinase, urease, caseinase, lipase, amylase, lysine decarboxylase and protease activities. Among the isolates studied, only the isolate from I. viscosa has the ability to solubilize the insoluble tricalcium phosphate. All the Rhizobium isolates exhibit similarity in protein content, except the isolate from I. viscosa which showed one additional protein band

On-Chip Generation of Functional Tests with Reduced Delay and Power

This paper describes different methods on-chip test generation method for functional tests. The hardware was based on application of primary input sequences in order to allow the circuit to produce reachable states. Random primary input sequences were modeled to avoid repeated synchronization and thus yields varied sets of reachable states by implementing a decoder in between circuit and LFSR. The on-chip generation of functional tests require simple hardware and achieved high transition fault coverage for testable circuits. Further, power and delay can be reduced by using Bit Swapping LFSR (BS-LFSR). This technique yields less number of transitions for all pattern generation. Bit-swapping (BS) technique is less complex and more reliable to hardware miscommunications