Abstract: Chemically defined Schlegel-s medium was modified
to improve production of cell growth and other metabolites that are
produced by fluorescent pseudomonad R62 strain. The modified
medium does not require pH control as pH changes are kept within ±
0.2 units of the initial pH 7.1 during fermentation. The siderophore
production was optimized for the fluorescent pseudomonad strain in
the modified medium containing 1% glycerol as a major carbon
source supplemented with 0.05% succinic acid and 0.5% Ltryptophan.
Indole-3 acetic acid (IAA) production was higher when
L-tryptophan was used at 0.5%. The 2,4- diacetylphloroglucinol
(DAPG) was higher with amended three trace elements in medium.
The optimized medium produced 2.28 g/l of dry cell mass and 900
mg/l of siderophore at the end of 36 h cultivation, while the
production levels of IAA and DAPG were 65 mg/l and 81 mg/l
respectively at the end of 48 h cultivation.
Abstract: An alarming emergence of multidrug-resistant strains
of the tuberculosis pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and
continuing high worldwide incidence of tuberculosis has invigorated
the search for novel drug targets. The enzyme glutamate racemase
(MurI) in bacteria catalyzes the stereoconversion of L-glutamate to
D-glutamate which is a component of the peptidoglycan cell wall of
the bacterium. The inhibitors targeted against MurI from several
bacterial species have been patented and are advocated as promising
antibacterial agents. However there are none available against MurI
from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, due to the lack of its threedimensional
structure. This work accomplished two major objectives.
First, the tertiary structure of MtMurI was deduced computationally
through homology modeling using the templates from bacterial
homologues. It is speculated that like in other Gram-positive bacteria,
MtMurI exists as a dimer and many of the protein interactions at the
dimer interface are also conserved. Second, potent candidate
inhibitors against MtMurI were identified through docking against
already known inhibitors in other organisms.
Abstract: Over a million tonnes of cigarette butts (CBs) are produced worldwide annually. These CBs accumulate in the environment due to the poor biodegradability of the cellulose acetate filters and pose a serious environmental risk. This paper presents some of the results from a continuing study on recycling CBs into fired clay bricks. Properties including compressive strength, flexural strength, density, water absorption and thermal conductivity of fired clay bricks are reported and discussed. Furthermore, leaching of heavy metals from the manufactured clay bricks was tested. The results show that the density of fired bricks was reduced by about 8 – 30 %, depending on the percentage of CBs incorporated into the raw materials. The compressive strength of bricks tested was 12.57, 5.22 and 3.00 MPa for 2.5, 5.0 and 10 % CB content respectively. Water absorption and initial rate of absorption values increased as density, and hence porosity, of bricks decreased with increasing CB volume. The leaching test results revealed trace amounts of heavy metals.
Abstract: In this paper, an efficient structural approach for
recognizing on-line handwritten digits is proposed. After reading
the digit from the user, the slope is estimated and normalized for
adjacent nodes. Based on the changing of signs of the slope values,
the primitives are identified and extracted. The names of these
primitives are represented by strings, and then a finite state
machine, which contains the grammars of the digits, is traced to
identify the digit. Finally, if there is any ambiguity, it will be
resolved. Experiments showed that this technique is flexible and
can achieve high recognition accuracy for the shapes of the digits
represented in this work.
Abstract: The article deals with technical support of intracranial single unit activity measurement. The parameters of the whole measuring set were tested in order to assure the optimal conditions of extracellular single-unit recording. Metal microelectrodes for measuring the single-unit were tested during animal experiments. From signals recorded during these experiments, requirements for the measuring set parameters were defined. The impedance parameters of the metal microelectrodes were measured. The frequency-gain and autonomous noise properties of preamplifier and amplifier were verified. The measurement and the description of the extracellular single unit activity could help in prognoses of brain tissue damage recovery.
Abstract: Two short sediment cores collected from mangrove
areas of Manori and Thane creeks along Mumbai coast were analysed
for sediment composition and metals (Fe, Mn, Cu, Pb, Co, Ni, Zn, Cr
and V). The statistical analysis of Pearson correlation matrix proved
that there is a significant relationship between metal concentration
and finer grain size in Manori creek while poor correlation was
observed in Thane creek. Based on the enrichment factor, the present
metal to background metal ratios clearly reflected maximum
enrichment of Cu and Pb in Manori creek and Mn in Thane creek.
Geoaccumulation index calculated indicate that the study area is
unpolluted with respect to Fe, Mn, Co, Ni, Zn and Cr in both the
cores while moderately polluted with Cu and Pb in Manori creek.
Based on contamination degree, both the core sediments were found
to be considerably contaminated with metals.
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to investigate Thai Muslims’ way of life through the way their clothes. The data of this qualitative research were collected from related documents and research reports, ancient cloths and clothing, and in-depth interviews with clothes owners and weavers.
The research found that in the 18th century Thai Muslims in the three southern border provinces used many types of clothing in their life. At home women wore plain clothes. They used checked cloths to cover the upper part of their body from the breasts down to the waist. When going out, they used Lima cloth and So Kae with a piece of Pla-nging cloth as a head scarf. For men, they wore a checked sarong as a lower garment, and wore no upper garment. However, when going out, they wore Puyo Potong. In addition, Thai Muslims used cloths in various religious rites, namely, the rite of placing a baby in a cradle, the Masoyawi rite, the Nikah rite, and the burial rite. These types of cloths were related to the way of life of Thai Muslims from birth to death. They reflected the race, gender, age, social status, values, and beliefs in traditions that have been inherited.
Practical Implication: Woven in these cloths are the lost local wisdom, and therefore, aesthetics on the cloths are like mirrors reflecting the background of people in this region that is fading away. These cloths are pages of a local history book that is of importance and value worth for preservation and publicity so that they are treasured. Government organizations can expand and materialize the knowledge received from the study in accordance with government policy in supporting the One Tambon, One Product project.
Abstract: Knowledge of patterns of genetic diversity enhances
the efficiency of germplasm conservation and improvement. In this
study 96 Iranian landraces of Triticum turgidum originating from
different geographical areas of Iran, along with 18 durum cultivars
from ten countries were evaluated for variation in morphological and
high molecular weight glutenin subunit (HMW-GS) composition.
The first two principal components clearly separated the Iranian
landraces from cultivars. Three alleles were present at the Glu-A1
locus and 11 alleles at Glu-B1. In both cultivars and landraces of
durum wheat, the null allele (Glu-A1c) was observed more
frequently than the Glu-A1a and Glu-A1b alleles. Two alleles,
namely Glu-B1a (subunit 7) and Glu-B1e (subunit 20) represented
the more frequent alleles at Glu-B1 locus. The results showed that
the evaluated Iranian landraces formed an interesting source of
favourable glutenin subunits that might be very desirable in breeding
activities for improving pasta-making quality.
Abstract: Fair share objective has been included into the goaloriented
parallel computer job scheduling policy recently. However,
the previous work only presented the overall scheduling performance.
Thus, the per-user performance of the policy is still lacking. In this
work, the details of per-user fair share performance under the
Tradeoff-fs(Tx:avgX) policy will be further evaluated. A basic fair
share priority backfill policy namely RelShare(1d) is also studied.
The performance of all policies is collected using an event-driven
simulator with three real job traces as input. The experimental results
show that the high demand users are usually benefited under most
policies because their jobs are large or they have a lot of jobs. In the
large job case, one job executed may result in over-share during that
period. In the other case, the jobs may be backfilled for
performances. However, the users with a mixture of jobs may suffer
because if the smaller jobs are executing the priority of the remaining
jobs from the same user will be lower. Further analysis does not show
any significant impact of users with a lot of jobs or users with a large
runtime approximation error.