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FBXO31, a member of F-box protein family, has been shown to play an important role in preventing tumorigenesis by preserving genomic stability during cell proliferations as well as upon genotoxic stresses. Inactivation of FBXO31 due to loss of heterozygosity is associated with various cancers, including ovarian cancer, one of the deadliest forms of gynecological cancers. However, the role and regulation of FBXO31 in ovarian cancer remained elusive. Here, using biochemical and molecular biology techniques, we show that c-Myc suppresses the mRNA levels of FBXO31 in ovarian cancer cell lines and mouse model. Chromatin immunoprecipitation experiment showed that c-Myc is recruited to the promoter region of FBXO31 and prevents FBXO31 mRNA synthesis. In contrast, FBXO31 maintains the c-Myc expression at an optimum through proteasome pathway. FBXO31 interacts with and facilitates the polyubiquitination of c-Myc through the SCF complex and thereby inhibits ovarian cancer growth both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, FBXO31-mediated proteasomal degradation of c-Myc is unique. Unlike other negative regulators, FBXO31 recognizes c-Myc in phosphorylation independent manner to direct its degradation. Further, expression levels analysis revealed that c-Myc and FBXO31 share a converse correlation of expression in ovarian cancer cell lines and patient samples. We observed an increase in the expression levels of c-Myc with a concomitant decrease in the levels of FBXO31 in higher grades of ovarian cancer patient samples. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that oncogene c-Myc impairs the tumor-suppressive functions of FBXO31 to promote ovarian cancer progression, and therefore c-Myc-FBXO31 axis can be explored to develop better cancer therapy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The present study focused on synthesizing, characterization, and evaluating an in vitro anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic potential of green synthesized silver nanoparticles (TB-Ag NPs) from aqueous stem bark extract of Terminalia brownii (TB-AQ). The TB-Ag NPs were characterized by ultraviolet (UV)-visible, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), dynamic light X-ray diffraction, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, as well as scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The in vitro anti-inflammatory and cytotoxic potential of TB-Ag NPs and TB-AQ were evaluated against RAW 264.7 macrophage and MDA-MB-231 triple-negative breast cancer cells, respectively, by using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. Further, the inhibitory effect on LPS-induced production of inflammatory mediators PGE2 and NO in RAW 264.7 cell lines was evaluated. The results showed that TB-Ag NPs were crystalline with face-centered spherical polydispersed shaped nanoparticles with an average size between 20 and 67 ± 0.5 nm. Also, TB-Ag NPs had no cytotoxic effect on RAW cells (normal healthy cells) in the range of 6.25–50 µg/mL. Besides, TB-Ag NPs at 50 µg/mL concentration exhibited 67.02% of cytotoxic effect against MDA-MB-231 cells with observed IC50 values of 29.08 µg/mL. TB-Ag NPs have shown significantly in vitro anti-inflammatory activities by exhibiting dose-dependent NO and PGE2 inhibitory activities with IC50 values of 32.82 µg/mL and 67.25 µg/mL, respectively. This study concluded that the novel green synthesized TB-Ag NPs can be used as a potential novel anti-inflammatory and cytotoxicity agent to treat inflammatory-related diseases and inflammatory breast cancer (invasive ductal carcinoma) with biocompatible nature by targeting the tumor environment.

Mangroves in small islands are critical resources for the stability of the island and the livelihood of local coastal communities. However, scientific inventories of mangroves in small islands are rare due to their limited distribution. Considering this, the present study was conducted during 2014–2015 to determine the species composition, biomass, vegetative carbon stock and spatial distribution of mangroves at Neil Island, one of the small islands of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. The spatial locations of different species of mangroves identified from our extensive field surveys were compared with high-resolution images, and the coverage of mangroves (genus level distribution) was interpreted entirely based on the elements of tone and texture. The results show that the mangroves of Neil Island consist of 17 true mangrove species belonging to 12 genera in eight families. The co-existence of all three Indo-West Pacific mangrove species of the genus Rhizophora (Rhizophora apiculata, Rhizophora mucronata and Rhizophora stylosa), and their hybrids (Rhizophora × annamalayana, Rhizophora × lamarckii and Rhizophora × mohanii) shows that this island is a unique place for studying the hybridization and speciation of Rhizophora, a worldwide dominant mangrove genus. Rhizophora mucronata was found to be the dominant species in terms of density, basal area and biomass estimated from forest structural assessments using the quadrat method. The mean density and basal area were 1162 trees ha−1 and 28 m2 ha−1, respectively. The mean above-ground biomass was 271 Mg ha−1, while the mean below-ground biomass was 104 Mg ha−1. The total mean biomass of Neil Island mangroves was 375 Mg ha−1 and its corresponding vegetative carbon stock was 171 Mg C ha−1. The present study provides a practical approach to species-level mapping and assessment to gain site-specific knowledge of the mangroves of Neil Island. Since mangroves are vital for small islands such as Neil Island to cope with rising sea level and increases in natural calamities, the baseline scientific information provided by this study will be beneficial for Integrated Island Management.

International audience; Understanding the morphological changes to the electrodes during electrochemical processes is important to many fields. These morphological changes often lead to dendrite formation and significant heat generation that can be detrimental to the process, especially the performance and lifetime of batteries. In situ infrared thermometry and microscopy are used to study the evolution of temperature profiles during the microscale electrodeposition of copper from copper sulfate. Under certain conditions, the growth front of the deposit receded and the fastest growing dendrites would suddenly stop growing. Analysis of physicochemical, temperature, and current changes show that many dynamic phenomena are correlated and associated with localized pH changes that change the chemistry of electrodeposition and potential drops occurring across the electrodes that alter the transport around dendrites.

Municipal solid waste disposal poses a serious issue to the environment and human health. Technical measures along with management actions are essential for sustainable management of municipal solid waste. Design of engineered landfill is considered as technical measures and management measures such as segregation of waste as organic and inorganic can be considered as an effective waste management strategy. The present study aims to investigate Municipal Solid Waste landfill parameters to design an engineered landfill. The primary objective was to reduce the negative effects of municipal solid waste on the environment by designing an engineered landfill that complies with the technical requirements. A proper site has been chosen to dump the solid waste generated in Muscat by analyzing the geology, lineament, and contour map of the study area. The proposed landfill is located in Al Jafnayn, Muscat Governorate, Sultanate of Oman. The proposed landfill area is around 72,890 m2. The design of a conventional landfill without segregation of waste fails to reach the goal of resource recovery and energy generation. The present study suggests a modified landfill design with organic and inorganic cells useful for biomass energy recovery and compost generation. The landfill area is stratified into organic and inorganic cells to reach the goal of resource recovery and energy generation. The compost generated from the segregated cells can be used for agriculture which will reduce the usage of fertilizers, enhances country economical condition and protect the environment from pollution. The leachate collection drainage system has been designed by assessing the quantity and volume of leachate by using the Swiss method. Proper solid waste management is necessary for energy recovery and thereby reduces the pollution load to the environment.

In this paper, the thermal, hydraulic and thermodynamic performances of heat exchanger with spiral coils are placed cascading on the cylindrical shaped shell inside the heat exchanger. Tube side pressure drop and exergy efficiency are considered as a hydraulic and thermo hydraulic performance whereas overall heat transfer coefficient (U), effectiveness are considered as thermal performance. The tube side flow rate varies from 2 to 6 lpm and shell has two flow rates 4 lpm and 10 lpm. Flow conditions are varied and conducted the experiment to find the best flow rate inside the spiral heat exchanger. From the experiment results effectiveness, nusselt number, prandtl number, heat transfer rate, overall heat transfer coefficient and exergy efficiency, to validate the outlet temperature CFD analysis were performed on various flow rates. The experiment results are good in agreement with CFD results. Shell side flow rate of 10 lpm gives higher efficiency for the different flow rates of tube side from 2 to 6 lpm.

Different forms of remote education and massive online open courses are gaining reputation. The skill to proctor the online examination is a main essential factor for the scalability for promoting the students for next stage education. Existing manual monitoring is the most approaching method in education either by visually monitoring or by physically accompanying test takers to the examination centre and monitoring them. Learner’s identity verification and proctoring of online examinations is one of the main challenges in online learning systems. The migration and implementation of the online exam have been accelerated during the pandemic COVID-19. So the existing systems need a safe mechanism to authenticate and proctor online students. In this paper, we propose a system for providing the solution for authentication and proctor by using the different biometric technologies. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated by using real time videos with different scenario. The experimental results provide an improved accuracy than existing research works.

Rice is one of the most widely consumed staple foods, especially in the Asian subcontinent. The quality and varieties of rice grains identification is necessary to avoid mislabeling of rice grain varieties. Mostly it has done by visually. In manual classifications features like Major Axis, Minor Axis, Perimeter, Area, Aspect Ratio, Eccentricity, and Shape Factor are measured by using the specialized tools like calipers and other specialized tools. These features are feed into the machine learning techniques. It is a time consuming process and also there is a chance for measurement errors. In this proposed work the rice images are captured by camera and some preprocessing is done on the image to enhance the image quality. Feature extraction is performed on the collected image using image processing method through MATLAB. The extracted features are given to the Support Vector Machine for classification. The proposed work provides an improved classification accuracy up to 96% with minimum process time.

Heat transfer enhancement using nano-fluids has gained significant attention over the past few years. Nano-fluids are potentially applicable as alternative coolants for many areas such as electronics, automotive, air conditioning, power generation and nuclear applications. Heat transfer coefficient and the friction factor characteristics of SiC/water nanofluid will have been numerically investigated using ANSYS FLUENT 14.0. The Nanofluid was employed in a circular tube equipped with modified Horizontal Wing Twisted Tapes (HWTT) with different twist ratio (y = 2.0, 4.4, 6.0) were used for simulation and compared with Plain Twisted Tapes (PTT). The results of CFD investigations of heat transfer Coefficient and friction characteristics are presented for the HW-TT with Different twist ratio in comparison with the P-TT case.

BackgroundIntermittent catheterization (IC), considered the gold standard for bladder management for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) with sufficient dexterity, is usually performed using hydrophilic (HPC) or non-hydrophilic (non-HPC) catheters. Currently, there is no evidence on the temporal burden associated with IC with either catheter.ObjectiveTo compare both catheters regarding their time requirement for IC and participant satisfaction.Design, setting and participantsTwenty individuals with chronic (>1-year) SCI at any spinal segment were randomized to undergo two cross-over assessments within 10 days (i.e., either starting with HPC or non-HPC). We measured time taken to perform IC using a 13 step pre-determined IC protocol (e.g., enter bathroom, wash hands, transfer to toilet, etc.). Furthermore, we assessed user satisfaction of both catheters using a Likert scale (i.e., strongly agree=5, strongly disagree=1).Outcome measures and statistical analysisTime (i.e., for each step and in total) to perform IC and participant satisfaction were compared between catheters using non-parametric statistics, i.e., Wilcoxon rank sign tests. Results are presented as median with interquartile range.Results and limitationsParticipants using HPCs spent less time to prepare a catheter [15 s (10-20) vs. 41 (20-69), p=0.002] and overall to perform IC [283 s (242-352) vs. 373 (249-441), p=0.01] compared to non-HPCs. Moreover, participants rated the preparation of HPCs to be easier [5 (4-5) vs. 4 (2-4), p=0.047] compared to non-HPCs. The key limitation of this pilot study was the sample size.ConclusionsPreparation and usage of HPCs for IC is easier and faster compared to non-HPCs. IC can be a significant temporal burden for SCI individuals.Patient summaryWe compared coated and uncoated catheters on time needed for intermittent catheterization and user satisfaction in individuals with spinal cord injury. Participants can manually empty their bladder quicker and easier with coated compared to uncoated catheters.