Utilization of carbon and nitrogen sources by Streptomyces kanamyceticus M 27 for the production of an Anti bacterial antibiotic

We tested a number of carbon and nitrogen compounds for their effect on the production of an antibacterial antibiotic by Streptomyces kananmyceticus M27. Dextrose was found to be the most suitable carbon source, though maltose, sucrose, and soluble starch gave moderate yields. (NH4)H2PO4 and yeast extract were adequate nitrogen sources for antibiotic production. There was, however, no direct relation between the growth of the organism and antibiotic formation. The pH of the medium might be an important factor for antibiotic formation, as media giving high antibiotic yields showed an alkaline pH

Barriers to big data analytics in manufacturing supply chains: A case study from Bangladesh

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Recently, big data (BD) has attracted researchers and practitioners due to its potential usefulness in decision-making processes. Big data analytics (BDA) is becoming increasingly popular among manufacturing companies as it helps gain insights and make decisions based on BD. However, there many barriers to the adoption of BDA in manufacturing supply chains. It is therefore necessary for manufacturing companies to identify and examine the nature of each barrier. Previous studies have mostly built conceptual frameworks for BDA in a given situation and have ignored examining the nature of the barriers to BDA. Due to the significance of both BD and BDA, this research aims to identify and examine the critical barriers to the adoption of BDA in manufacturing supply chains in the context of Bangladesh. This research explores the existing body of knowledge by examining these barriers using a Delphi-based analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Data were obtained from five Bangladeshi manufacturing companies. The findings of this research are as follows: (i) data-related barriers are most important, (ii) technology-related barriers are second, and (iii) the five most important components of these barriers are (a) lack of infrastructure, (b) complexity of data integration, (c) data privacy, (d) lack of availability of BDA tools and (e) high cost of investment. The findings can assist industrial managers to understand the actual nature of the barriers and potential benefits of using BDA and to make policy regarding BDA adoption in manufacturing supply chains. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to justify the robustness of the barrier rankings

Multiple order-up-to policy for mitigating bullwhip effect in supply chain network

This paper proposes a multiple order-up-to policy based inventory replenishment scheme to mitigate the bullwhip effect in a multi-stage supply chain scenario, where various transportation modes are available between the supply chain (SC) participants. The proposed policy is similar to the fixed order-up-to policy approach where replenishment decision “how much to order” is made periodically on the basis of the predecided order-up-to inventory level. In the proposed policy, optimal multiple order-up-to levels are assigned to each SC participants, which provides decision making reference point for deciding the transportation related order quantity. Subsequently, a mathematical model is established to define optimal multiple order-up-to levels for each SC participants that aims to maximize overall profit from the SC network. In parallel, the model ensures the control over supply chain pipeline inventory, high satisfaction of customer demand and enables timely utilization of available transportation modes. Findings from the various numerical datasets including stochastic customer demand and lead times validate that—the proposed optimal multiple order-up-to policy based inventory replenishment scheme can be a viable alternative for mitigating the bullwhip effect and well-coordinated SC. Moreover, determining the multiple order-up-to levels is a NP hard combinatorial optimization problem. It is found that the implementation of new emerging optimization algorithm named bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA) has presented superior optimization performances. The robustness and applicability of the BFA algorithm are further validated statistically by employing the percentage heuristic gap and two-way ANOVA analysis

Defending the genome from the enemy within:mechanisms of retrotransposon suppression in the mouse germline

The viability of any species requires that the genome is kept stable as it is transmitted from generation to generation by the germ cells. One of the challenges to transgenerational genome stability is the potential mutagenic activity of transposable genetic elements, particularly retrotransposons. There are many different types of retrotransposon in mammalian genomes, and these target different points in germline development to amplify and integrate into new genomic locations. Germ cells, and their pluripotent developmental precursors, have evolved a variety of genome defence mechanisms that suppress retrotransposon activity and maintain genome stability across the generations. Here, we review recent advances in understanding how retrotransposon activity is suppressed in the mammalian germline, how genes involved in germline genome defence mechanisms are regulated, and the consequences of mutating these genome defence genes for the developing germline

Efficacy of anti-thrombotic treatment in thrombophilia patients with adverse pregnancy outcome

Background: Thrombophilia is a potentially treatable cause of adverse pregnancy outcome. The objective was to compare the fetomaternal outcome in thrombophilia patients with adverse pregnancy outcome after treating with low-molecular-weight (LMW)/ unfractionated heparin and aspirin.Methods: 54 antenatal women studied who had an earlier or presenting pregnancy complicated by adverse pregnancy outcome were included in this study. In the present pregnancy, therapy consisting of LMW heparin and aspirin was administered who were found to be thrombophilia positive. Patients also received folic acid supplementation throughout their pregnancy. The fetomaternal outcome is compared according to the time of initiation of treatment.Results: Low-molecular-weight heparin and aspirin was well tolerated and none of the women or the newborns developed any hemorrhagic complications.3 thrombophilia negative cases with history of recurrent pregnancy loss aborted even getting treatment from 1 trimester. 1 thrombophilia positive case with history of recurrent pregnancy loss aborted when received treatment from 2nd trimester. There is 25.8% increase in birth weight of neonate if thrombophilia positive cases were treated from 1st trimester. Whereas there was only 10.23% increase in birth weight in thrombophilia negative cases when treated from first trimester. We found, our treatment was significantly effective in preventing IUD, IUGR, abruption, abortion, eclampsia. Though prevention of PIH had no significant correlation with antithrombotic treatment, only 2 cases booked from 1st trimester developed PIH among thrombophilia positive cases. But neither of cases had suffered from any severe complication as compared to 81% of eclampsia cases, 16.67% of DVT cases, 1 case of mortality in cases treated after third trimester.Conclusions: This case control trial suggests that patients with adverse pregnancy outcome and thrombophilia may get benefit from treatment with combined LMW heparin and aspirin in subsequent pregnancies. We suggest all patients with adverse pregnancy outcome should be investigated for thrombophilia markers

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Genetic dissection of heterosis using epistatic association mapping in a partial NCII mating design

Heterosis refers to the phenomenon in which an F1 hybrid exhibits enhanced growth or agronomic performance. However, previous theoretical studies on heterosis have been based on bi-parental segregating populations instead of F1 hybrids. To understand the genetic basis of heterosis, here we used a subset of F1 hybrids, named a partial North Carolina II design, to perform association mapping for dependent variables: original trait value, general combining ability (GCA), specific combining ability (SCA) and mid-parental heterosis (MPH). Our models jointly fitted all the additive, dominance and epistatic effects. The analyses resulted in several important findings: 1) Main components are additive and additive-by-additive effects for GCA and dominance-related effects for SCA and MPH, and additive-by-dominant effect for MPH was partly identified as additive effect; 2) the ranking of factors affecting heterosis was dominance > dominance-by-dominance > over-dominance > complete dominance; and 3) increasing the proportion of F1 hybrids in the population could significantly increase the power to detect dominance-related effects, and slightly reduce the power to detect additive and additive-by-additive effects. Analyses of cotton and rapeseed datasets showed that more additive-by-additive QTL were detected from GCA than from trait phenotype, and fewer QTL were from MPH than from other dependent variables

Effects of Hydrogen Peroxide on Wound Healing in Mice in Relation to Oxidative Damage

10.1371/journal.pone.0049215PLoS ONE711

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO