Differential cellular recognition pattern to M. tuberculosis targets defined by IFN-gamma and IL-17 production in blood from TB plus patients from Honduras as compared to health care workers: TB and immune responses in patients from Honduras

Background: A better understanding of the quality of cellular immune responses directed against molecularly defined targets will guide the development of TB diagnostics and identification of molecularly defined, clinically relevant M.tb vaccine candidates. Methods: Recombinant proteins (n = 8) and peptide pools (n = 14) from M. tuberculosis (M.tb) targets were used to compare cellular immune responses defined by IFN-gamma and IL-17 production using a Whole Blood Assay (WBA) in a cohort of 148 individuals, i.e. patients with TB + (n = 38), TB- individuals with other pulmonary diseases (n = 81) and individuals exposed to TB without evidence of clinical TB (health care workers, n = 29). Results: M.tb antigens Rv2958c (glycosyltransferase), Rv2962c (mycolyltransferase), Rv1886c (Ag85B), Rv3804c (Ag85A), and the PPE family member Rv3347c were frequently recognized, defined by IFN-gamma production, in blood from healthy individuals exposed to M.tb (health care workers). A different recognition pattern was found for IL-17 production in blood from M.tb exposed individuals responding to TB10.4 (Rv0288), Ag85B (Rv1886c) and the PPE family members Rv0978c and Rv1917c. Conclusions: The pattern of immune target recognition is different in regard to IFN-gamma and IL-17 production to defined molecular M.tb targets in PBMCs from individuals frequently exposed to M.tb. The data represent the first mapping of cellular immune responses against M.tb targets in TB patients from Honduras.

Accelerated multistress aging of polymer nanocomposites and its condition monitoring

In recent years, the time dependant maintenance of expensive high voltage power equipments is getting replaced by condition based maintenance so as to detect apriori an impending failure of the equipment. For condition based maintenance, most monitoring systems concentrate on the electrical quantities such as measurement and evaluation of partial discharges, tan delta, tip-up test, dielectric strength, insulation resistance, polarization and depolarization current. However, in the case of equipments being developed with novel nanodielectric insulating materials, the variation in these parameters before an impending failure is not available. Hence in this work, accelerated electrothermal aging studies have been conducted on unfilled epoxy as well as epoxy nanocomposite samples of 5 wt% filler loading, and the tan d values were continuously monitored to obtain the condition of the samples under study. It was observed that those samples whose tan d increased at a rapid rate failed first.

Growth kinetics and immune response of chimeric foot-and-mouth disease virus serotype `O' produced through replication competent mini genome of serotype Asia 1, 63/72, in BHK cell lines

Regular vaccinations with potent vaccine, in endemic countries and vaccination to live in non-endemic countries are the methods available to control foot-and-mouth disease. Selection of candidate vaccine strain is not only cumbersome but the candidate should grow well for high potency vaccine preparation. Alternative strategy is to generate an infectious cDNA of a cell culture-adapted virus and use the replicon for development of tailor-made vaccines. We produced a chimeric `O' virus in the backbone of Asia 1 and studied its characteristics. The chimeric virus showed high infectivity titre (>10(10)) in BHK 21 cell lines, revealed small plague morphology and there was no cross reactivity with antiserum against Asia I. The virus multiplies rapidly and reaches peak at 12 h post infection. The vaccine prepared with this virus elicited high antibody titres.

Fourteen gene GBM prognostic signature identifies association of immune response pathway and mesenchymal subtype with high risk group

Background: Recent research on glioblastoma (GBM) has focused on deducing gene signatures predicting prognosis. The present study evaluated the mRNA expression of selected genes and correlated with outcome to arrive at a prognostic gene signature. Methods: Patients with GBM (n = 123) were prospectively recruited, treated with a uniform protocol and followed up. Expression of 175 genes in GBM tissue was determined using qRT-PCR. A supervised principal component analysis followed by derivation of gene signature was performed. Independent validation of the signature was done using TCGA data. Gene Ontology and KEGG pathway analysis was carried out among patients from TCGA cohort. Results: A 14 gene signature was identified that predicted outcome in GBM. A weighted gene (WG) score was found to be an independent predictor of survival in multivariate analysis in the present cohort (HR = 2.507; B = 0.919; p < 0.001) and in TCGA cohort. Risk stratification by standardized WG score classified patients into low and high risk predicting survival both in our cohort (p = <0.001) and TCGA cohort (p = 0.001). Pathway analysis using the most differentially regulated genes (n = 76) between the low and high risk groups revealed association of activated inflammatory/immune response pathways and mesenchymal subtype in the high risk group. Conclusion: We have identified a 14 gene expression signature that can predict survival in GBM patients. A network analysis revealed activation of inflammatory response pathway specifically in high risk group. These findings may have implications in understanding of gliomagenesis, development of targeted therapies and selection of high risk cancer patients for alternate adjuvant therapies.

Mobile agent based node monitoring protocol for MANETs

Mobile ad-hoc network is a wireless ad-hoc network with dynamic network topology. The Dynamicity, due to the random node movement, and scarcity of resources lead to a challenge in monitoring the nodes in a MANET. Monitoring the lack of resources (bandwidth, buffer, and energy), misbehavior, and mobility at node level remains, a challenge. In a MANET the proposed protocol uses both static as well as mobile agents, where the mobile agents migrate to different clusters of the zones respectively, collect the node status information periodically, and provide a high level information to the static agent (which resides at the central node) by analyzing the raw information at the nodes. This, in turn, reduces the network traffic and conserves the workload of the central node, where a static agent is available with high level information and in coordination with other modules. The protocol has been tested in different size MANETs with variable number of nodes and applications. The results shown in the simulation indicates the effectiveness of the protocol.

SeaMo plus : a virtual real-time multimedia service framework on handhelds to enable remote real-time patient monitoring for mobile doctors

The key requirements for enabling real-time remote healthcare service on a mobile platform, in the present day heterogeneous wireless access network environment, are uninterrupted and continuous access to the online patient vital medical data, monitor the physical condition of the patient through video streaming, and so on. For an application, this continuity has to be sufficiently transparent both from a performance perspective as well as a Quality of Experience (QoE) perspective. While mobility protocols (MIPv6, HIP, SCTP, DSMIP, PMIP, and SIP) strive to provide both and do so, limited or non-availability (deployment) of these protocols on provider networks and server side infrastructure has impeded adoption of mobility on end user platforms. Add to this, the cumbersome OS configuration procedures required to enable mobility protocol support on end user devices and the user's enthusiasm to add this support is lost. Considering the lack of proper mobility implementations that meet the remote healthcare requirements above, we propose SeaMo+ that comprises a light-weight application layer framework, termed as the Virtual Real-time Multimedia Service (VRMS) for mobile devices to provide an uninterrupted real-time multimedia information access to the mobile user. VRMS is easy to configure, platform independent, and does not require additional network infrastructure unlike other existing schemes. We illustrate the working of SeaMo+ in two realistic remote patient monitoring application scenarios.

Real time monitoring of petroleum leakage detection using etched fiber Bragg grating

Detection of petroleum leakages in pipelines and storage tanks is a very important as it may lead to significant pollution of the environment, accidental hazards, and also it is a very important fuel resource. Petroleum leakage detection sensor based on fiber optics was fabricated by etching the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) to a region where the total internal reflection is affected. The experiment shows that the reflected Bragg's wavelength and intensity goes to zero when etched FBG is in air and recovers Bragg's wavelength and intensity when it is comes in contact with petroleum or any external fluid. This acts as high sensitive, fast response fluid optical switch in liquid level sensing, petroleum leakage detection etc. In this paper we present our results on using this technique in petroleum leakage detection.

Compositional hierarchical monitoring automaton construction for LTL

In this paper we give a compositional (or inductive) construction of monitoring automata for LTL formulas. Our construction is similar in spirit to the compositional construction of Kesten and Pnueli [5]. We introduce the notion of hierarchical Büchi automata and phrase our constructions in the framework of these automata. We give detailed constructions for all the principal LTL operators including past operators, along with proofs of correctness of the constructions.

Resource usage monitoring for KVM based virtual machines

Realization of cloud computing has been possible due to availability of virtualization technologies on commodity platforms. Measuring resource usage on the virtualized servers is difficult because of the fact that the performance counters used for resource accounting are not virtualized. Hence, many of the prevalent virtualization technologies like Xen, VMware, KVM etc., use host specific CPU usage monitoring, which is coarse grained. In this paper, we present a performance monitoring tool for KVM based virtualized machines, which measures the CPU overhead incurred by the hypervisor on behalf of the virtual machine along-with the CPU usage of virtual machine itself. This fine-grained resource usage information, provided by the above tool, can be used for diverse situations like resource provisioning to support performance associated QoS requirements, identification of bottlenecks during VM placements, resource profiling of applications in cloud environments, etc. We demonstrate a use case of this tool by measuring the performance of web-servers hosted on a KVM based virtualized server.

A method of developing an agent based ubiquitous node monitoring protocol

A ubiquitous network plays a critical role to provide rendered services to ubiquitous application running nodes. To provide appropriate resources the nodes are needed to be monitored continuously. Monitoring a node in ubiquitous network is challenging because of dynamicity and heterogeneity of the ubiquitous network. The network monitor has to monitor resource parameters, like data rate, delay and throughput, as well as events such as node failure, network failure and fault in the system to curb the system failure. In this paper, we propose a method to develop a ubiquitous system monitoring protocol using agents. Earlier works on network monitoring using agents consider that the agents are designed for particular network. While in our work the heterogeneity property of the network has been considered. We have shown that the nodes' behaviour can be easily monitored by using agents (both static and mobile agent). The past behavior of the application and network, and past history of the Unode and the predecessor are taken into consideration to help SA to take appropriate decision during the time of emergency situation like unavailability of resources at the local administration, and to predict the migration of the Unode based on the previous node history. The results obtained in the simulation reflects the effectiveness of the technique.

6PANview: Application performance conscious network monitoring for 6LoWPAN based WSNs

6PANview[1] is a Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) monitoring system for 6LoWPAN/RPL networks which we developed as an overlay network for a WSN application. A monitoring system, while performing its operations for maintaining the health of the monitored network, must also be conscious of its impact on the application performance, and must strive to minimize this impact. To this end, we propose a centralized scheduling algorithm within 6PANview which non-intrusively analyzes application traffic arrival patterns at the base station, identifies network idle periods and schedules monitoring activities. The proposed algorithm finds those periodic sequences which are likely to have given rise to the pattern of arrivals seen at the base station. Parts of those sequences are then extended to coarsely predict future traffic and find epochs where low traffic is predicted, in order to schedule monitoring traffic or other activities at these times. We present simulation results for the proposed prediction and scheduling algorithm and its implementation as part of 6PANview. As an enhancement, we briefly talk about using 6PANview's overlay network architecture for distributed scheduling.

Structural health monitoring of aerospace structural components using wave propagation based diagnostics

The paper discusses a wave propagation based method for identifying the damages in an aircraft built up structural component such as delamination and skin-stiffener debonding. First, a spectral finite element mode l (SFEM) is developed for modeling wave propagation in general built-up structures by using the concept of assembling 2D spectral plate elements. The developed numerical model is validated using conventional 2-D FEM. Studies are performed to capture the mode coupling,that is, the flexural-axial coupling present in the wave responses. Lastly, the damages in these built up structures are then identified using the developed SFEM model and the measured responses using the concept Damage Force Indicator (DFI) technique.

Acoustic emission techniques for NDE & structural health monitoring of advanced composite materials

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is an effective extension of NDE to reduce down time and cost of Inspection of structural components. On – line monitoring is an essential part of SHM. Acoustic Emission Techniques have most of the desirable requirements of an effective SHM tool. With the kind of advancement seen in the last couple of decades in the field of electronics, computers and signal processing technologies it can only be more helpful in obtaining better and meaningful quantitative results which can further enhance the potential of AET for the purpose. Advanced Composite materials owing to their specific high performance characteristics are finding a wide range of engineering applications. Testing and Evaluation of this category of materials and SHM of composite structures have been very challenging problems due to the very nature of these materials. Mechanical behaviour of fiber composite materials under different loading conditions is complex and involves different types of failure mechanisms. This is where the potential of AET can be exploited effectively. This paper presents an over view of some relevant studies where AET has been utilised to test, evaluate and monitor health of composite structures.

Monitoring of ultraviolet pulse rate dependent photomechanical actuation in carbon nanotubes using fiber Bragg gratings

In this Letter, we present a non-contact method of controlling and monitoring photomechanical actuation in carbon nanotubes (CNT) by exposing it to ultra-violet radiation at different pulse rates (10 to 200 Hz). This is accomplished by imparting a reversible photo induced strain (5-330 mu epsilon) on CNT coated fibre Bragg gratings; CNT undergoes an internal reversible structural change due to cyclic photon absorption that leads to the development of mechanical strain, which in turn allows reversible switching of the Bragg wavelength. The results also reveal an interesting pulse rate dependent rise and fall times of photomechanical actuation in CNT. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

A Networked Control Systems Perspective for Wide-Area Monitoring Control of Smart Power Grids

This paper presents a networked control systems (NCS) framework for wide area monitoring control of smart power grids. We consider a scenario in which wide area measurements are transmitted to controllers at remote locations. We model the effects of delays and packet dropouts due to limited communication capabilities in the grid. We also design a robust networked controller to damp wide-area oscillations based on information obtained from Wide Area Monitoring Systems (WAMS), and analyze the improvement in system stability due to networked control. With communication integration being an important feature of the smart grid, detailed consideration of the effects of communication is essential in the control design for future power systems. We believe that this work is an essential step in this direction.