Effect of vitamin A deprivation on the cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme activity of testes and ovaries of rats (Short Communication)

The cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme activity is decreased considerably at the mild stage of vitamin A deficiency in rat testes and ovaries and the decrease in activity becomes more pronounced with progress of deficiency. Supplementation of the deficient rats with retinyl acetate, but not retinoic acid, restores the enzyme activity to normal values. The cholesterol side-chain cleavage enzyme of adrenals is not affected by any of the above treatments.

Microprocessor Based Sinusoidal PWM Inverter by DMA Transfer

The implementation of three-phase sinusoidal pulse-width-modulated inverter control strategy using microprocessor is discussed in this paper. To save CPU time, the DMA technique is used for transferring the switching pattern from memory to the pulse amplifier and isolation circuits of individual thyristors in the inverter bridge. The method of controlling both voltage and frequency is discussed here.

Location of concentrators in a computer communication network: a stochastic automation search method

The following problem is considered. Given the locations of the Central Processing Unit (ar;the terminals which have to communicate with it, to determine the number and locations of the concentrators and to assign the terminals to the concentrators in such a way that the total cost is minimized. There is alao a fixed cost associated with each concentrator. There is ail upper limit to the number of terminals which can be connected to a concentrator. The terminals can be connected directly to the CPU also In this paper it is assumed that the concentrators can bo located anywhere in the area A containing the CPU and the terminals. Then this becomes a multimodal optimization problem. In the proposed algorithm a stochastic automaton is used as a search device to locate the minimum of the multimodal cost function . The proposed algorithm involves the following. The area A containing the CPU and the terminals is divided into an arbitrary number of regions (say K). An approximate value for the number of concentrators is assumed (say m). The optimum number is determined by iteration later The m concentrators can be assigned to the K regions in (mk) ways (m > K) or (km) ways (K>m).(All possible assignments are feasible, i.e. a region can contain 0,1,…, to concentrators). Each possible assignment is assumed to represent a state of the stochastic variable structure automaton. To start with, all the states are assigned equal probabilities. At each stage of the search the automaton visits a state according to the current probability distribution. At each visit the automaton selects a 'point' inside that state with uniform probability. The cost associated with that point is calculated and the average cost of that state is updated. Then the probabilities of all the states are updated. The probabilities are taken to bo inversely proportional to the average cost of the states After a certain number of searches the search probabilities become stationary and the automaton visits a particular state again and again. Then the automaton is said to have converged to that state Then by conducting a local gradient search within that state the exact locations of the concentrators are determined This algorithm was applied to a set of test problems and the results were compared with those given by Cooper's (1964, 1967) EAC algorithm and on the average it was found that the proposed algorithm performs better.

Vibration-rotation pattern in acetylene. II. Introduction of Coriolis coupling in the global model and analysis of emission spectra of hot acetylene around 3 mu m

A high temperature source has been developed and coupled to a high resolution Fourier transform spectrometer to record emission spectra of acetylene around 3 mu m up to 1455 K under Doppler limited resolution (0.015 cm(-1)). The nu(3)-ground state (GS) and nu(2)+nu(4)+nu(5)(Sigma(+)(u) and Delta(u))-GS bands and 76 related hot bands, counting e and f parities separately, are assigned using semiautomatic methods based on a global model to reproduce all related vibration-rotation states. Significantly higher J-values than previously reported are observed for 40 known substates while 37 new e or f vibrational substates, up to about 6000 cm(-1), are identified and characterized by vibration-rotation parameters. The 3 811 new or improved data resulting from the analysis are merged into the database presented by Robert et al. [Mol. Phys. 106, 2581 (2008)], now including 15 562 lines accessing vibrational states up to 8600 cm(-1). A global model, updated as compared to the one in the previous paper, allows all lines in the database to be simultaneously fitted, successfully. The updates are discussed taking into account, in particular, the systematic inclusion of Coriolis interaction.

Energy use in Indian household sector - An actor-oriented approach

Over the years, significant changes have taken place with regard to the type as well the quantity of energy used in Indian households. Many factors have contributed in bringing these changes. These include availability of energy, security of supplies, efficiency of use, cost of device, price of energy carriers, ease of use, and external factors like technological development, introduction of subsidies, and environmental considerations. The present paper presents the pattern of energy consumption in the household sector and analyses the causalities underlying the present usage patterns. It identifies specific (groups of) actors, study their specific situations, analyse the constraints and discusses opportunities for improvement. This can be referred to ``actor-oriented'' analysis in which we understand how various actors of the energy system are making the system work, and what incentives and constraints each of these actors is experiencing. It analyses actor linkages and their impact on the fuel choice mechanism. The study shows that the role of actors in household fuel choice is significant and depends on the level of factors - micro, meso and macro. It is recommended that the development interventions should include actor-oriented tools in energy planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The analysis is based on the data from the national sample survey (NSS), India. This approach provides a spatial viewpoint which permits a clear assessment of the energy carrier choice by the households and the influence of various actors. The scope of the paper is motivated and limited by suggesting and formulating a powerful analytical technique to analyse the problem involving the role of actors in the Indian household sector.

Feature extraction for fingerprint classification

This paper presents two algorithms for smoothing and feature extraction for fingerprint classification. Deutsch's(2) Thinning algorithm (rectangular array) is used for thinning the digitized fingerprint (binary version). A simple algorithm is also suggested for classifying the fingerprints. Experimental results obtained using such algorithms are presented.

Cochannel Interference in Partially Coherent Communication

Effects of cochannel interference and synchronization error of the carrier phase on the probability of error in binary communications are considered. Several bounds on the probability of error are proposed. The bounds are easy to compute and do not require complete statistical characterization of the errors. They turn out to be simple linear combinations of error probabilities with no cochannel interferences and no phase errors. Several illustrative examples are given which show that the bounds can be tight.

Specific immunoneutralization of FSH leads to apoptotic cell death of the pachytene spermatocytes and spermatogonial cells in the rat

Although requirement for follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) in the initiation of spermatogenesis is well documented, its role in adult spermatogenesis is still debated. In the present communication, we have investigated the effect of specific immunoneutralization of FSH on apoptotic cell death in the testicular germ cells both in immature and adult rats. The germ cells of control animals showed predominantly high molecular weight DNA while the antiserum (a/s) treated group showed DNA fragmentation characteristic of apoptosis. The pattern could be detected within 24 hours of a/s treatment, and became more pronounced after 48 hours. The germ cells were purified from FSH a/s treated rats by centrifugal elutriation and vulnerability of each cell type to undergo apoptosis on FSH neutralization was investigated. The pachytene spermatocytes were found to be most sensitive to absence of FSH, even in the adult animals suggesting the involvement of FSH in spermatogenesis. The in situ analysis of DNA strand breakage following FSH a/s treatment showed fragmentation of the DNA of the pachytene spermatocytes confirming this observation. The in situ analysis also showed that the spermatogonia undergo apoptosis in addition to the pachytene spermatocytes. These data clearly demonstrate the role of FSH in the adult rat spermatogenesis.

Application of optimization methods to vibration control of stretched strings

In this paper, non-linear programming techniques are applied to the problem of controlling the vibration pattern of a stretched string. First, the problem of finding the magnitudes of two control forces applied at two points l1 and l2 on the string to reduce the energy of vibration over the interval (l1, l2) relative to the energy outside the interval (l1, l2) is considered. For this problem the relative merits of various methods of non-linear programming are compared. The more complicated problem of finding the positions and magnitudes of two control forces to obtain the desired energy pattern is then solved by using the slack unconstrained minimization technique with the Fletcher-Powell search. In the discussion of the results it is shown that the position of the control force is very important in controlling the energy pattern of the string.

Joint evaluation of multiple speech patterns for speech recognition and training

We are addressing the novel problem of jointly evaluating multiple speech patterns for automatic speech recognition and training. We propose solutions based on both the non-parametric dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm, and the parametric hidden Markov model (HMM). We show that a hybrid approach is quite effective for the application of noisy speech recognition. We extend the concept to HMM training wherein some patterns may be noisy or distorted. Utilizing the concept of ``virtual pattern'' developed for joint evaluation, we propose selective iterative training of HMMs. Evaluating these algorithms for burst/transient noisy speech and isolated word recognition, significant improvement in recognition accuracy is obtained using the new algorithms over those which do not utilize the joint evaluation strategy.

Ligand dependent intra and inter subunit communication in human tryptophanyl tRNA synthetase as deduced from the dynamics of structure networks

Homodimeric protein tryptophanyl tRNA synthetase (TrpRS) has a Rossmann fold domain and belongs to the 1c subclass of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. This enzyme performs the function of acylating the cognate tRNA. This process involves a number of molecules (2 protein subunits, 2 tRNAs and 2 activated Trps) and thus it is difficult to follow the complex steps in this process. Structures of human TrpRS complexed with certain ligands are available. Based on structural and biochemical data, mechanism of activation of Trp has been speculated. However, no structure has yet been solved in the presence of both the tRNA(Trp) and the activated Trp (TrpAMP). In this study, we have modeled the structure of human TrpRS bound to the activated ligand and the cognate tRNA. In addition, we have performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on these models as well as other complexes to capture the dynamical process of ligand induced conformational changes. We have analyzed both the local and global changes in the protein conformation from the protein structure network (PSN) of MD snapshots, by a method which was recently developed in our laboratory in the context of the functionally monomeric protein, methionyl tRNA synthetase. From these investigations, we obtain important information such as the ligand induced correlation between different residues of this protein, asymmetric binding of the ligands to the two subunits of the protein as seen in the crystal structure analysis, and the path of communication between the anticodon region and the aminoacylation site. Here we are able to elucidate the role of dimer interface at a level of detail, which has not been captured so far.

Mathematical model and rule extraction for tool wear monitoring problem using nature inspired techniques

In this paper, pattern classification problem in tool wear monitoring is solved using nature inspired techniques such as Genetic Programming(GP) and Ant-Miner (AM). The main advantage of GP and AM is their ability to learn the underlying data relationships and express them in the form of mathematical equation or simple rules. The extraction of knowledge from the training data set using GP and AM are in the form of Genetic Programming Classifier Expression (GPCE) and rules respectively. The GPCE and AM extracted rules are then applied to set of data in the testing/validation set to obtain the classification accuracy. A major attraction in GP evolved GPCE and AM based classification is the possibility of obtaining an expert system like rules that can be directly applied subsequently by the user in his/her application. The performance of the data classification using GP and AM is as good as the classification accuracy obtained in the earlier study.

Joint decoding of multiple speech patterns for robust speech recognition

We are addressing a new problem of improving automatic speech recognition performance, given multiple utterances of patterns from the same class. We have formulated the problem of jointly decoding K multiple patterns given a single Hidden Markov Model. It is shown that such a solution is possible by aligning the K patterns using the proposed Multi Pattern Dynamic Time Warping algorithm followed by the Constrained Multi Pattern Viterbi Algorithm The new formulation is tested in the context of speaker independent isolated word recognition for both clean and noisy patterns. When 10 percent of speech is affected by a burst noise at -5 dB Signal to Noise Ratio (local), it is shown that joint decoding using only two noisy patterns reduces the noisy speech recognition error rate to about 51 percent, when compared to the single pattern decoding using the Viterbi Algorithm. In contrast a simple maximization of individual pattern likelihoods, provides only about 7 percent reduction in error rate.

Enhancing sensor network lifetime using interactive communication

We are concerned with maximizing the lifetime of a data-gathering wireless sensor network consisting of set of nodes directly communicating with a base-station. We model this scenario as the m-message interactive communication between multiple correlated informants (sensor nodes) and a recipient (base-station). With this framework, we show that m-message interactive communication can indeed enhance network lifetime. Both worst-case and average-case performances are considered.